Enlightenment in Blood Design Diary 2: The Masquerade

Much of Enlightenment in Blood is based on the roleplaying game Vampire: the Masquerade. So what is the Masquerade and what are its implications in terms of larp design?

The World of Darkness consists of a number of games that share a common idea: beneath the surface of our world, there are secret powers at work, invisible to normal people. For the vampires, this idea is encapsulated in the Camarilla Tradition of the Masquerade, which forbids vampires to reveal their existence to humanity at large.

Other games have similar ideas. Werewolves, mages, wraiths and changelings all seek to avoid making themselves known. This means that the World of Darkness can be closer to our world. Both are united by the fact that ordinary people think there are no supernatural creatures.

The first World of Darkness larp we designed in this constellation was End of the Line, played for the first time in Helsinki in early 2016. The larp is set in an underground techno party. Some characters are vampires, most are not. The Masquerade is a key part of the game's design – even the participants don't know who's a vampire and who's not. Even the vampires are not fully in the loop; they might know a few other of their kind, but never all of them.

To me, this is one of the most interesting features of the Masquerade. If vampires never reveal themselves publicly, how do you even find other vampires? Vampires are good at hiding and pretending to be people, so you might find yourself in a situation where both parties are vampires but think the other is human. It also means that you can have parallel vampire societies in a single city, hiding from each other as well as the population at large. For example, the Camarilla and the Sabbat.

The Masquerade is a key concept for Enlightenment in Blood as well. The larp features large societies of supernatural beings, but they are not all aware of each other and certainly not all acquainted. No character has an overview of the entire larp, or of the supernatural population of Berlin. As an Anarch you know all the Anarch parties, but might be surprised to learn some of the things a Camarilla vampire thinks are common knowledge. Similarly, a Camarilla vampire might be taken aback at just how many Anarchs there are in Berlin.

The Masquerade makes it possible to give the game a sense of discovery. You might find yourself at a party in a squat, when suddenly you start to feel that your hosts are not what you thought they were. Or perhaps you're negotiating in a business meeting at an advertising agency when you realize that the people you just assumed were vampires are actually something worse.

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