It started with action movies, I guess. I always loved those movies with sexy vampires clad in what basically amounted to bondage uniforms having secret wars in the dark places of our world. The idea that stories like that could be taking place somewhere while I slept quietly in my bed thrilled me in some deep way, and I clung to those fantasies as an escape from the doldrum of shitty school and shittier summer jobs. So, when Garrett told me about The Blood Game, I was instantly interested.
Garrett was, you know, a Dungeons and Dragons guy. I had played those sorts of imaginary games with him and his crew a few times but it never really stuck with me; it just wasn't real enough for me. I liked them in theory but I could never really lose myself in them. The Blood Game was different.
The concept was fairly simple, like some of those other pen and paper roleplaying games I had tried with Garrett, you had a character with different powers and abilities and such, but unlike those other games, the Blood Game was a game that you were playing all the time, everywhere you went. Players would leave stuff for each other to find that related to the game, like special notes and clues, and they would have pre-planned events, but all you had to do was bump into someone else who was a player and you could do a little scene from the game right there, wherever you were.
In case it wasn't already obvious, the theme of the game revolved around various "creatures of the night," including vampires, but also werewolves, demons, and various other undead creatures you could play as. There were some less common things you could be too, like faeries and stuff, but I didn't pay much attention to those things. I (like most people involved) played a vampire.
I was hooked right away, I mean, after all, it was just like those fantasies I had in my head of a secret world hidden from our own but going on all around us. Plus, it turned out kind of a lot of people at school were playing it. Most of them just turned up for the big events which mostly happened on Friday evenings and Saturday during the day, but there were a fair number of us (and I say us because I became one of them very quickly once I found out about it) who were super active and playing all the time. Most of us were semi-social rejects, but even some of the cooler kids were involved.
Most of the planning for the game was done by a group of a half a dozen or so people. There was Garrett, who had made up the rules of the game and would settle disputes, and then there were the moderators: Victoria, Isaiah, Chris, and Bethany, and one or two others whose names I can't remember. The moderators would plan the formal events and also help settle disputes while keeping the game running. Of the moderators, Bethany was what I guess you would call the "highest ranking" of the bunch, and even Garrett answered to her. It had been her idea to start the Blood Game, and she ran it with a bit of an iron fist.
When Garrett told me that Bethany was the person in charge of this whole thing, I couldn't help but laugh. Bethany was a bubbly valley girl who wore preppy clothes and loved horses more than anything. She probably would have been a cheerleader if it weren't for her being a little chunky and the fact that she walked with a slight, but apparently permanent limp. She wasn't exactly the most popular girl in school (and to be honest, she annoyed the hell out of me most of the time), but it still didn't seem like a fit for what I had initially imagined to be a game played exclusively by our school's nerd and goth crowds.
The rules of the game were fairly boring, but there were a few things about them that are worth mentioning. One of the big rules was that your character had to use your real name and that you weren't supposed to dress up in any way to play the game. This was explained as helping with immersion, and I didn't question it at the time. The other thing was that there was not much combat in the game, instead the focus of the game was on a sort of personal/political intrigue with the goal of collecting "Power," a somewhat straight-forward value measured with special cards Bethany made and had control over, and getting other people indebted to you in the form of favors, which were more vague.
