A Window, A Light...

( Boring Car Problems Waaaah )

Okay, so, disclaimer : I have never played a paper and pencil, sit down game of either Vampire : the Masquerade or Requiem. I've played in a fair number of LARPs, but I really can't help but feel that the structure of gaming that LARP encourages represents either an aberration in the social structure in Kindrid society or, generally, the worst possible way to encourage the themes of Vampire while being required to accomodate a large number of players. 

Court, in Vampire, is an aberrant social setting. Obviously it happens. I think calling court, and an organized vampire society has some very specific social purposes, and it's entirely designed to support an elder population. Younger vampires are weaker, so they band into cotieres as a method of protection. Younger vampires are basically pack predators that protect each other from larger, more dangerous predators because a young vampire tends to be able to protect themself from the majority of mortals. While courts allow for a pooling of resources, the reason they really seem to exist is because vampires are bored, but also because it pulls younger vampires into the orbits of older vampires. Especially in Requiem, older vampires with more potent blood need to feed on younger vampires. In Masquerade, a younger vampire can be manufactured then eaten with fair ease, but in Requiem it's not so simple. This creates a dynamic where younger vampires are not just in danger of falling to their own beasts, but to the predations of the areas apex predators. The more powerful vampires in the area, though, must be careful not to agitate younger vampires too much, or facilitate their fall. Thus, politics.  

In the games I've been playing, the game is set in a three game period, often over the course of about two weeks. It's always Masquerade. I consider the games to be something of an abberation if only because the norms that are presented in Vampire books are not typically followed. That's because there's really no tomorrow - the game ends forever pretty shortly. Most of the third sessions end in a bloody frenzy as whoever's left fight for the final dominance of themselves or their faction. From the fiction that I've seen and from the setting books, this seems to be a microcosm of vampire relations. At the end of one game, I posited that the only reason a lot of this happens is, strictly speaking, boredom. If you live forever, and you're inclined to be canny about it, there's really no reason to tip off huge bloodbaths for territory as long as everyone's financally comfortable (as vampires tend to be social parasites, and that's a metaphor for another time) and able to feed. There's the general entertainment that comes in jockeying for power and there's the pulls of ideology and religion. 

Interestingly, I'm not really sure that being inherant predators really has all that much to do with it, unless the older generations start eating the younger wholesale (which they might in Requiem). I think that defeated vampires might get eaten if only because that's an efficient way of really destroying them. Otherwise, removals of vampires from power seems like it would be more akin to couting coup - it's a way to pass the time that's really fairly non-lethal, considering how resiliant vampires can be. Their only real resource is kine. 

The frenzies that happen at the end of the LARPs I play? The result of this boredom alliviation gone awry or an ideological power grab. Almost always. These represent the only real changes in vampire power structure - when it cannot be risked that certain vampires come back to power. Interestingly, to me anyhow, it's the advent of new clans that creates the greatest turnover. A mortal mindset still comes back to death as being final (and so, final death is required), so entire clans that are unused to prolonged violence because of how immortals might tend to operate can find themself face to face with final death. Mortals, even when vampires, are truly the most dangerous enemy because mortals are most accustomed to the death as a solution.