The early nineties was an interesting time for me. As an avid role playing game player, I was accustomed to a hobby dominated by boys and men. At 23, I was out of school and on my way in a new career. But then two things combined to bring a significant change for the time. First, the Goth culture had grown significantly in the United States, even if many people had widely varying definitions of the term. Secondly, there was the release of Vampire the Masquerade, or more accurately, the Mind's Eye Theater live action rules for that game. That game brought many more women into the hobby, even if such gaming was considered a derivation from the usual tabletop versions. I've often wondered how many of today's Twilight moms were yesterday's Goths and Vampire LARPers. While I had played Vampire the Masquerade occasionally with some friends, it was a co-worker that told me about Julie and her Mind's Eye Theater group.
At 42 years old, Julie had been a regular participant in the SCA... the society for creative anachronism... for quite some time. Her son, who was a gamer, had picked up Vampire and the Mind's Eye rules, and this is how Julie found them. The SCA is a much larger scale past time, while a Vampire game could be as little or as large as those running it desired. Julie's ex-husband had been a successful CEO of a fortune 500 company. One of the assets she came out of the marriage with was a very large, very old mansion on the outskirts of the city. It was a newer house, but had been built with old architectural styles in mind. While it wasn't gothic, it was very appropriate to the setting of the game, especially once Julie set out to convert many of the rooms specifically for the game.
I was no actor, nor even an outgoing person. Amongst gamers I could feel comfortable however, and my co-worker eventually got me to join their group (or troupe as Julie preferred to call them) and I started to work on finding appropriate clothing for my character. Already possessing long hair and a goatee, I was already somewhat well suited to the role, albeit, skinny and underweight for the typical vampire. This latest troupe of Julie's was new, and we had not yet started an actual Chronicle. We spent several weeks running one night scenarios so that people could grow accustomed to how the game worked, how Julie wanted to run it, and to each other's characters. It was at the end of this period that I met Katie when she joined the group.
Katie was everything I was not, blonde haired, blue-eyed, bubbly, and outgoing. She was every guy's dream of the young college co-ed. She was a 20 year old junior at the state university in town near where I lived, studying theater, music, dance, and of course, cheerleading. She was most certainly out of my league, so of course I was immediately infatuated with her. When she learned I lived close to the university later that night, she asked if I might be able to give her a ride here every week, as she didn't have a car and her roommate was not at all thrilled at having to drive all the way here and sit on the side bored by her friend's play-acting. I agreed immediately and headed home that night with her phone number.
Not only did I become a chauffeur, I was also quickly drafted to teach Katie the mechanics of the game so she could participate. After two sessions with my own lack luster performance and costuming, she also soon took it upon herself to teach me a few things and help refine my "look". I soon had an opera coat, an odd, misshapen top hat, and a cane. I hated suits, and in fact, the time I spent playing Vampire was one of the few times I tried to look good in one. My character was Stefan, a Ventrue, and needed to be suave, dashing, and elegant; all things I had to learn, or at least learn to fake. I also presented myself as the cunning planner and plotter of the group often setting up things that took several sessions to completely play out.
Katie's character was Elena, a Toreador, an artistic and hedonistic type. And while she had no trouble turning her acting skills to playing a part somewhat similar to her own, she was not happy with her look. For this she added a black wig that had blood red highlights and heavy makeup that she employed during the times she visited the few Goth-oriented establishments in the university area. She loved playing parts after all. Her clothing, however, was fairly modern, consisting of a black mini-skirt, a black midriff shirt spattered with paint, and some shiny black thigh boots. She broke up all the black with jewelry accents that were very old styled and a bit garish. Eventually, I bought her a pair of costume contacts that changed her blue eyes to a baleful red color, and of course she thought they were amazing.
Katie became a regular visitor to the house before and after game sessions, but I never harbored any realistic aspirations toward her. I know what you're thinking; I was being nice to her so that perhaps something might happen. I grew up with John Hughes films, I know how those sorts of things play out, but there was a lot more going on here. Honestly, in the beginning, I just enjoyed being around Katie even as just a friend, no matter what I might dream or fantasize about. Then after seven months of fairly regular gaming, something happened to change everything.
On our regularly scheduled game night, we showed up at Julie's only to find that everyone else... all 7 of them... had cancelled. I'm not sure why Katie wasn't suspicious... maybe it was because it happened to be the Friday before a holiday. Julie had tried to call me, she said, but by the time she got word from everyone else, I had already left the house. Not having anything else scheduled for the night, she offered to run a session for just the two of us since we had come all the way out anyhow. Katie quickly agreed for both of us. Julie was an excellent Storyteller and could weave all sorts of sideline occurrences into the overall chronicle quite smoothly. For us, she created a scenario where we would need to infiltrate a rival vampire group's home and obtain information that could be used against them. Fairly boring probably, as I describe it, but Julie could bring such things to life with details and mood.
After our first hour of information gathering, locating the house, and getting inside, we found that we would need some sort of distraction. In that moment I struck upon a plan to both serve as a distraction, and to also open myself up to Katie a little. Or she would be outraged and everything would go horribly wrong.
I should explain my character a little so that this makes sense. The term "power gaming" didn't really exist in the common terminology back then, at least not outside of computer games. But it was that sort of thing that I tended to do when making characters for games. Julie was not unaware of this, and in fact structured several encounters around how my character was built. In the game, Generation was important. It was not a measure of the age of a vampire, but of his general power. Older vampires did tend to be more powerful, but you could have recently turned vampires of an older Generation if they completely consumed the blood of a more powerful vampire. When creating a character, you could buy Negative Traits to increase Generation, which I did, starting at 8th Generation instead of 13th. This was important for my second aspect. Vampires possessed powers called Disciplines, and mine had put all his points into one called Dominate. Dominating humans is typically easy. But my older Generation allowed me to dominate fellow vampires of a younger Generation. This was the only Discipline Stefan had. I was a bit of a "one trick pony" if you will, but it was a powerful trick. No one in the group knew the mechanics behind anybody's characters except their own, outside of what was revealed during play. Even though I taught Katie the game, I had no idea of the mechanical aspects of her character. However, I was almost certain that Elena was 13th Generation. Now you can probably see where this is going...
As I was formulating my plan, Julie announced that the key opposing vampire was entering the dance hall where we were, and now was the time to put into play any plan that we had. I quickly scribbled down a note and passed it to Julie. She read it and looked up at me quickly.
"On her?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Are you sure," she asked again, sounding concerned. Katie stood nearby with a look of confusion.
Using powers on fellow players is considered a no-no in some groups. It can create very bad situations and lead to broken gaming groups and even broken friendships and relationships. Julie had no such rule in place, and while I built my character with this sort of thing in mind, I had never intended to use it on Katie in such a fashion, at least not initially.
Julie glanced at Katie and said, "I hope you know what you're doing." I told Julie I was bidding one trait; Beguiling. She then scribbled a note of her own and handed it to Katie, who responded after reading it by shaking her head no. This meant Katie was not going to resist what I was doing.
"Dance with me," I whispered to her as I stared into her eyes. Domination requires eye contact and verbal commands to be effective, so I maintained eye contact for the entire dance. We twirled around the room to the old music Julie had playing in the room for this scene and while we danced, Julie moved to where our target was positioned. I moved Katie toward the wall near Julie when the music began to wind down. I let my hand drift slowly, but firmly down her back and over her skirt covered ass.
