Tired of the Vampire Role Playing Game? - Try NightLife, a Horror Classic

Vampire, the Masquerade was a great role playing game, but sometimes it just seemed too serious. If you're looking to play a role playing game as a monster, and you don't feel like playing through a dissertation on Jungian philosophy, then the Night Life role playing game is for you.

Night Life RPG was published in the 90's by Stellar Games. Although it is out of print today, you might be able to find a copy on the Internet or in a used bookstore. I remember seeing a website that will sell it to you in PDF format.

Night Life had a real "beer and pretzels" feel to it. You could play as a vampire, werewolf, ghost or anything in-between. The last edition printed had about 30 playable races in the one book, so you didn't have to shell out a ton of cash to get the whole Night Life experience. If you don't have any of the books yet, try to get your hands on the last edition. This thick tome contains the most information.

Vampire: The Masquerade had a mood that described itself as "gothic-punk." This was meant to be a dark and foreboding atmosphere that was still cool and fashionable. Night Life's atmosphere was "splatter-punk". Splatter-punk style has lots of blood flying around, as well as game systems for determining exactly how big a hole you just put into a demon's chest with your gun. Although this sounds complicated, the game devotes less than a page to this, so it's more about style than rules.

The great thing about Night Life was that it maintained a tone that made it easy to play and create games for. You could throw together a gang of supernaturals and have the players fight them in a dark alley, and you didn't feel guilty if you didn't write up all the particulars. Whereas the Vampire RPG tended to hammer you into stereotypes, Nightlife had more of a "devil may care" attitude. In the Vampire RPG, for example, vampires and werewolves almost never hung out together. Also, vampires were categorized into clans, each with their own powers and viewpoints. In contrast, Night Life characters were more free-form, if you're a vampire, you have a big list of powers to choose from, so you could custom create the kind of creature you want to play.

White Wolf's World of Darkness games came in many different books, such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Armageddon, etc. These books were stand alone games that could be combined with some re-tooling. Night Life was printed as one book, with a few expansions (such as a magician book, and a music-band book, etc). Eventually Stellar Games came out with one jumbo book that had almost everything in it, which kept the game inexpensive to play.

Here is a list of the most common and/or interesting monsters you could play as:

Vampire: Strong, fast and pretty. Vampires had a huge list of powers to choose from. Some could turn into a wolf, a bat, a rat, or a cloud of mist. Some could mesmerize their victims or create other vampires. Holy relics, sunlight and running water could kill a vampire fast. And of course, vampires need to drink blood.

Werewolf: Very strong, fast, and ugly. As a werewolf character, you could cherry-pick from a list of forms that you could assume. You might be able to turn into a wolf-man, a giant wolf, a wolf that can walk upright, or all three. Each form had its own strengths and weaknesses. Werewolves gained sustenance by inflicting pain on things, but in my games it was though eating fresh meat.

Ghost: These were both the most and least powerful characters in the game. Ghosts didn't exist on the material plane, so they were difficult to harm. On the same token, they could not effect the material world unless they use their powers. Cold wrought iron and exorcists were dangerous to they spirits. Ghosts were cool because they bled ectoplasm, a transparent green substance which was neither solid, liquid nor gaseous. Ghosts gained strength by causing fear in people.

Wights: Wights looked like decomposed corpses. They were stronger than vampires. Wights could drain the life force out of people, causing premature aging in humans. With their dead skin and white, wiry hair, wights could not walk around in society without scaring people. Like vampires, wights could be harmed by sunlight and holy objects.

Inuits: These are the spirits of Native Americans walking around in modern times. Unlike ghosts, they have solid forms. Inuits are kind of angry to see all these pale faces walking around, and so are known for their mean attitudes. They compulsively wear stereotypical Indian clothing, like feather headbands. Communicating with animals and turning people into statues were just some of the strange powers that these ancient spirits could employ.

Daemons: These creatures have escaped from hell and now influence human society. They are not to be confused with demons, which are actually their masters stuck on the plane of hell. Because of this, daemons are on the run from demons. Daemons have all sorts of options when it comes to powers. They can grow wings, cause heart attacks, spit fire, or reach into your chest and pull your heart out. Although powerful, they weren't necessarily the strongest monsters in the game. Holy objects can repel daemons, and anyone that knew a daemon's true name could control them.

Animates: Golems, Frankenstein monsters, living dolls, and moving statues are all examples of animates. These creatures were created by magic. They were strong and hard to hurt. Animates were mostly brawny, fighter types; although they could use their scary appearance to give mortals the hebbie gebbies. There is usually a magical object which gives the animate its power. By destroying this object one can neutralize an animate. In my games, flesh animates didn't have this flaw, but were suseptable to fire attacks.

Miscellaneous: There are a whole lot of strange creatures in Night Life. One might come across zombies, were bears, poltergeists, or any other type of monster. These sub-creatures usually had fewer powers than the main races, but any game master worth his or her salt could make them more powerful if it suited the game.

The main problem I had with Night Life was the humanity system it had in place. Although I can see how such a system is important, the way it was hard coded into the rules meant if you had problems with a particular aspect with the system, changing the problem would be difficult. For example, all monsters in Night Life had a power called drain. Vampires drained blood, were wolfs drained pain (or meat), etc. Now whenever a character tried to drain some poor human (or use any power), that monster would lose some humanity. Okay, now this does make sense because: a) drinking people's blood is a mean thing to do and b) the more you use your powers, the less human you became. However, since doing anything requires a successful roll of the dice, it was possible to botch a blood drinking and become a total monster as you continually tried and failed to drink someone's blood. Also, the fact that you spend humanity to become more powerful meant that players had to play nice guys, at least some of the time, if they wanted to keep playing the game.

Night Life was an awesome game for its time, and is in line to become a classic RPG some day. Despite a few rough edges here and there, its pick up and play system, and creative setting makes Night Life a winner in my book.

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