Dracula has influenced much of modern entertainment, particularly the world of tabletop roleplaying games. The classic gothic tale reimagined how a monster could be presented, and the charismatic deviant has been interpreted again and again in live-action roleplaying games.
“Do you realise that Dracula was massively influential on gaming?”
It has been two years since those fateful words were uttered. I was chatting with Alex Davis, who had organised a talk by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker expert and professional descendant, about the history of Dracula, from novel to stage and screen.
Image Credit: Lycanthia Rare Books / Dracula First Edition (1897)
Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in the early 1890s and published it in 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company. Although Stoker died in 1912, his wife Florence continued his legacy and commissioned the playwright Hamilton Deane to create a stage play of Dracula.
The subsequent cinematic adaptations of Dracula were based on the stage play, rather than the novel. In the novel, the count is portrayed as a bloodthirsty fiend. However, in the play, the actor Edmund Blake portrayed the character as a genteel monster, with slicked-back hair and an opera cape – used to hide the wires for lifting.
Image Credit: Universal
The film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, released two years before the play, was an unofficial adaptation of the novel. Despite several deviations from the novel, Florence Stoker successfully sued for copyright violation. A court ordered that all copies of the film had to be destroyed, but some copies survived.
Gaming the Monster
The Dracula archetype of the vampire as a genteel monster has since been adapted into a multitude of roleplaying games, from Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun.
Vampires have been a part of roleplaying games ever since the white box edition of D&D. The vampires in this era of D&D owed much to the classic Dracula look. However, a vampire’s blood drinking was replicated as the Level Drain ability – instead of biting someone to drain their blood, vampires in D&D use level drain, draining the victim’s character levels to represent the vampire weakening their victim.
Dracula also clearly influenced one of the most iconic villains in D&D; the vampire lord Count Strahd von Zaravich. A complex villain, Strahd was described by the author John D. Rateliff in the introduction for Ravenloft II as “fusion of a monster with the abilities of a player character class; that is, a vampire magic-user.”
Image Credit: Curse of Strahd / Wizards of the Coast
Strahd shares many of the visual elements of Dracula. Unlike other D&D vampires, which are all chaotic evil, Strahd’salignment is Lawful Evil. Although Strahd has fundamentally malicious intentions, he is a creature of his word; he is someone who can be reasoned with.
Dracula influenced characters in other roleplaying games as well. Although not a vampire but a necromancer, Drachenfels in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay shares many of Dracula’s characteristics: a charismatic monster that repeatedly comes back from the dead and resides in a gothic castle. The character first appeared in Drachenfels by Jack Yeovil – the pen name of Kim Newman, who would go on to write Anno Dracula.
Image Credit: Games Workshop / Warhammer
Vlad von Carnstein, also in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, is a vampire lord who dresses similarly to Bela Lugosi’s portrayal in Dracula and appears as a handsome man with long hair and dark eyes. Carnstein was a romantic; he turned his dying wife into a vampire, as he could not bear to be separated from her. The character is also named after Countess Mircalla Karnstein, from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novel Carmilla, which influenced Bram Stoker when writing Dracula.
Vampires appear in a diverse array of roleplaying games, from the high-fantasy of Tunnels & Trolls to the near-future dystopias of Shadowrun. Dracula even makes an appearance as a character in various roleplaying games, such as adventures for Chill and Mutants & Masterminds. Most notably, the character appears in the Dracula Dossier for Night’s Black Agents.
Playing the Monster
Vampires are also one of the few monsters that are regularly available as a player character.
The first game that allowed players to be a vampire was Nightlife. Released in 1990 by Stellar Games, Nightlife was a splatter-punk horror game that was stylistically akin to the film Nightbreed, where different factions of monsters vie with each other in an underground world hidden from modern society.
However, the best-known vampire roleplaying game is Vampire: The Masquerade. Created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf, the classic roleplaying game of personal horror focused on a vampire’s need to feed. These vampires have the powerful abilities as portrayed in classic vampire fiction, but each use of these powers requires blood. Characters need to sustain themselves by feeding, but doing so could lessen a character’s humanity, causing them to become increasingly monstrous. This elegant dichotomy effectively revolutionised roleplaying, as it demonstrated what was possible within the hobby.
Image Credit: Modiphius / Via Facebook
Dracula was a major part of Vampire: The Masquerade. The character appears as a powerful vampire in the game’s background. The earlier editions of the core rulebook open with a letter from V.T. (Vlad Tepes) to W.H. (Wilhelmina Harker). Many vampiric powers in the game replicate Dracula’s abilities of mesmerism and shape-changing. Similarly, the vampire clan Tzimisce originates from Transylvania and needs the soil of their homeland to rest, whilst the Nosferatu clan was inspired by a film of the same name.
The character-driven roleplay of Vampire: The Masquerade, which focused on social interaction and political intrigue, meant that games were soon being played by participants dressed as their characters, which led to the proliferation of live roleplays (LARP).
LARP is a form of roleplaying, which combines interactive theatre with immersive storytelling. Instead of saying what their character says or does, participants dress and behave as their character – with appropriate safeguards to ensure boundaries are respected.
Image Credit: Peter Gatehouse
Vampire: The Masquerade’s modern-day setting and its focus on character interaction resulted in vampire LARPs exploding across the world. There were vampire LARPs in most of the major towns in the UK in the 1990s. With gothic attire underpinning the game’s aesthetic, the roleplaying and gothic subcultures soon became intertwined.
Derby and Dracula
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Dracula being first performed on stage, Dracula Returns to Derby was announced: a series of cultural events marking this auspicious occasion. As part of the celebrations, a series of gaming events were organised.
Vampire Games Day is now an annual event in Derby. Storytellers from across the UK gather to run a variety of roleplaying games, all focused on a vampire theme. There have been games of D&D and Vampire: The Masquerade, as well as Eat the Reich, Mothership and Vaesen. The event is held every February in The Wardwick, a historic 19th-century Gothic library in central Derby.
Another regular event is As Night Falls, a rules-light live roleplay about vampires in the modern day. In order to make As Night Falls as accessible as possible, the LARP became an immersive experience. There is no combat or use of powers, but rules are based around codes of conduct. It has been described by the co-designer Eunice Morecroft-Low as a ‘parlour LARP’, where the focus is on roleplaying character interactions.
As Night Falls is set in the modern day, players choose from one of five vampire dynasties for their character. Each dynasty is led by a monarch, and these dynasties are based on the different vampire archetypes in modern fiction, such as the ruthless Orlock dynasty, representing the primal hunters as seen in films such as 30 Days of Night, and the beguiling vampires of the Bathory dynasty.
Other than choosing which dynasty their character belongs to at the start (they can change dynasty throughout the LARP), participants are free to create the character however they wish – it is all about how the players believe vampires would appear today.
There are three narrative levels within the LARP: the overarching narrative of the main storyline, the faction storyline for each of the dynasties, and character-driven narratives for each participant.
The next As Night Falls LARP is The Crimson Ball, a vampire LARP held as a masquerade ball, with music composed exclusively for the event. Following the events of As Night Falls: The Auction, where the founder of the Tepes dynasty returned and poisoned the monarchs, the vampire dynasties are coming together to restore the monarchs to their full strength. It is up to the players to determine who and how they choose to restore, whilst enjoying the glorious majesty and bloody politics of a vampire ball.
As Night Falls: The Crimson Ball will be held on the evening of Saturday 21st November at The Wardwick in Central Derby. Tickets to this event are available here.
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash+ / Vitaliy Shevchenko
