Talking Vampire: The Masquerade with Joshua Alan Doetsch

Ok, you read last week’s guide about Vampire: The Masquerade (VtM), and now you’re dying to know more? Well, there’s only so much that I, a mere mortal, can tell you. So I went straight to the Kindred themselves.

Or at least as close as you can get. 

Today, we’ll be talking to Chicago’s own Prince of the Camarilla, Joshua Alan Doetsch. You might know him as a lead writer/designer on more than a dozen World of Darkness books, a short story author, or haunting your nightmares writing the dialogue in horror and sci-fi video games.

Keep reading to learn more about all there is to love in VtM, how it’s different from other systems, and what we might be able to expect with the Intrepid Heroes at the helm. 

A Mini-Interview with Joshua Alan Doetsch

What made you fall in love with VtM?

“From a young age, I was enamoured with vampires and gothic horror. The ‘gothic punk' setting and aesthetic of this game, in the mid-90s, hit my teenage brain like the teeth of a skeleton key on lock tumblers. Click-click-cachunk!

Even seeing the cover of the book told me this was something different. I was in a little bookstore after a shift at the movie theatre, black tie stained with popcorn butter. Some of my cooler workmates talked about the game, and I had to know more. The hardbound cover was simple, just a red rose lying on green marble, VAMPIRE etched in stone — simple and thematic, as opposed to the action scenes on most roleplaying game book covers.

Picture now, a shy kid in a high school English class, getting unexpected praise from the teacher and fellow students on his breakdown of the themes and motifs in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." I was discovering I really liked this sort of work, and maybe I even had a knack for it. Now, I was deep into this game book, and there was a chapter on storytelling and establishing theme and mood — the sorts of things that were in my school texts. Love at first bite. Vampire: The Masquerade came to me at just the right time and place.

This game fulfilled something for me that I think underground music scenes did for others. For a somewhat sheltered kid from the far-flung suburbs of Chicago, this was the dipping of my toes into counterculture. There was a music component — the books were filled with lyrics and literary quotes from its influences. 

With the live action games, there were gatherings with other delightful weirdos in the backs of stores or warehouses or wherever else we could play — a parade of the costumes we could scrounge together. VtM was one of the things that helped get me out of my shell. I remember after one particular game, where I played a snarky, fast-talking character, actively thinking, "Wait… I can just do that in real life… right?"

For those new to VtM, especially those who may have only played D&D, what do you feel like is the biggest difference from other TTRPGs? 

“This game really stresses the art of collaborative storytelling. It's where I really cut my teeth in the skill sets that I would eventually use in my professional life.

As a horror game, it departs from the fantasy adventures that form the first games of many who get into the hobby. Even among other horror games, it departs a bit in that much of the horror comes from the player characters. They are the protagonists, but much of the frightful nature of the stories comes directly from them.

It's also a game (along with Call of Cthulhu) that teaches players the glories joy of failing. Like the protagonists of gothic horror as well as crime dramas, the best stories come when they fuck up. Complications and failures generate some of the best moments and storylines, if you but bite your lip and lean into them.” 

How do you think the setting of VtM might influence the tone for a group of comedians?

“Horror and comedy actually share a very similar pedigree in storytelling. They rely on a similar bag of tricks and skill with timing. It's about building tensions and releasing those tensions with a surprise or subversion that causes the brain to hiccup. 

In comedy, that manifests as laughter. In horror, it's screams. But the two intersect. Plenty of good horror uses laughter to cleanse the palate for the next scare. Watch Evil Dead II in a crowded theatre, and the laughter and screams meld together like a gibbering monstrosity.”

Want to see more of Josua’s work?

Check out one of his latest scenarios for Vampire: the Masquerade, “Old Wounds” in the book Trails of Ash and Bone. Ask for it at your local TTRPG retailer, or you can also find it on DriveThruRPG.

And if you’re open to running or playing Indie TTRPGs, you can find his short story “The Strange Addiction of Johnny Peculiar” can be found in the anthology Accursed Tales for the new TTRPG Curseborne. This horror-centric TTRPG allows you to play various creatures of the night and provides their Storytellers (GMs) with story anthologies like this one to base sessions or spell-binding lore around. Accursed Tales can be found on DriveThruRPG.

You can also follow along the updates for Dune: Awakening to see his current video game writing.

Want to be part of Chicago’s TTRPG conversation? 

Need someone to talk about VtM or Dimension 20 with? Come join the Chicago Tabletop Gaming Association! We host events all across Chicago to connect players, GMs, and designers like the Adverterer’s Wanted 2: A TTRPG Community Expo. You can also hang out with us over on Discord, use the button below for an invite!

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