http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/comedy/685...ight-spoof.html


My friends and I have reason to believe that the Occult Investigator sample character from the core book was based on Dresden.

I think it's World of Darkness's fault for sexy vampires, actually. They've been charismatic politico machines for how long now?

that might be something in the RPG crowd, but would have a much much much smaller impact on everyone else in the world.

Interview with the Vampire?

Doesn't take much though. All it takes is a WoD-player to do something with charismatic vampires (say, write a novel) that gets semi-popular in another crowd of people, one of whom is inspired to do something else, which inspires yet another person to create a TV show that becomes a widespread, vomiting sensation.

Look at the evolution of dragons in popular culture.

"I call dibs on the street sam!"

/Jim Butcher, the author of the series, is a LARPer and avid gamer.
//The Dresden universe is the only fictional universe I know better than the Sixth World

I still wouldn't blame WoD. Maybe it's a carrier, but between comic books, tattoo flash, penny dreadfuls, b-movies and all the other material that's floated around out there on the margins blaming sexy undead any one thing is rather pointless. I've got an older cousin who laughed about this argument and Twilight 'cuz she remembers having this same discussion in college back in the '80s when Fright Night and Lost Boys came out. Much like Shadowrun WoD was actually a bit late to the party and largely reflects trends that had been going for quite some time. Successful RPGs just happen to be uniquely suited to perpetuating themselves compared to the average movie release.

Really, what we're talking about here is tipping points: Interview with the Vampire was released in 1976, for example, but it didn't really have its full cultural impact until the '94 film after the studios had sat on the rights for over a good decade or so. Even if you narrow things down to one specific franchise it's not uncommon to find that things need a long time to percolate.

Fair enough.

"I'm going to need thews."

"Cyberthews!"

Bah, I didn't get to this thread until tonight, and I was thinking "oh please let no one have used that line yet" as I hit the last page... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Love Harry though; he (well, a mashup of him and Simon Green's John Taylor) is a major contact/ally of my crew in Denver. It's nice that he's really, really easy to write up by SR rules^^

On vampires, they've really almost always been a sexual creature of legend; one thing I've always found interesting is that in the West, vampires are mostly male (or serving as a harem to a male vamp^^) while in most Asian legends, it's the women who are the dangerous bloodsuckers...

But old legends aside, it really can't be argued that the massive popularity of the vampire (anti)hero was rocketed forward by anything other than Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. It's something that gives me the giggles every time I pass her more recent works.

Actually, yes, it can be. There were vampire anti-heroes in other fiction prior to that which was really just as popular in its day. For example, there was the '60s soap opera Dark Shadows, which introduced an egotistical vampire searching for his lost love. He basically stole the show to the point that he went from a character planned for a short run to someone the final couple seasons revolved around. Like many soaps, the show was both campy and melodramatic, and it was most popular with kids and high schoolers (apparently it came on just after school). Tim Burton was a big fan and is currently working on a film version (with Johnny Depp as the vampire, of course (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif) ). There is nothing new under the sun.

I did say rocketed forward, not created. Grunge music existed before Nirvana's Nevermind, it was even pretty popular, but Nevermind is what shot it to the level of cultural omni-awareness. Chronicles did the same for sexy vampire heroes.

To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you at all - as I said, the vampire has been a sexually charged symbol since we've had recorded legends of them. Dracula brought them into mainstream culture with it's release and over the next 100 years the culture shifted; sex wasn't quite as much of a boogey-man any more. I've always felt that Chronicles just kind of hit the market at the right time, with a nicely coherent idea of vampirism, and bam - cultural icon.

It's kind of like how Hamilton kicked off this whole urban fantasy noir genre, though thankfully, most of the writers that came after her are far, far better^^

It gets even funnier if you actually read one of her newer books and notice it's almost exactly the same as her old stuff which she totally renounced as the devils work.

@topic: 2877 I am not allowed to promise to "Make a radically different character this time" only to pull the same trick again, using grenades painted another colour.

2878: I am not allowed to add random requests into the negotions just to watch the Jhonson sweat trying to figure out how I'm going to use them during the run
2878a: I am not allowed to actually use any items that are odd random requests just to get around this...
2828b: Especially if it's an interogation mission!

Hey... you'd be surprised how effective an enema kit can be in the hands of a psychopath... with an jug full of odd colored kool aid covered with warning labels...

Tent stake, hammer, and a blow torch.

Guy spilled his guts before the face even laid a finger on him (only pounded the tent stake into the floor). Then his cranial bomb fried him (remote detonation? suicide?)

2879: During interrogations, a mace is not an accepted form of enhanced information gathering. This is doubly true if your only healer is a medtech or a mage who has made it so his healing is lay on hands. Botching -one- roll on controlling an intimidating swing, you end up paying for it for the rest of the character's life.
2879a: I am also not allowed to point out to the victim in 2879 the price of a penile implant, because that's just adding insult to injury
2880: I am not allowed to select Cthulhu as a mentor spirit
2880a: I am not allowed to select -any- Great Old One as a mentor spririt, even if it is just what my mage believes his mentor spirit is
2881: If the GM has created rules for anything resembling sapient pearwood, staves are the only acceptable item to be created from it
2881a: I am not, as a player, to try and create sapient pearwood by starting a global wizard war
2881b: I am not, as a player, to try and start a global wizard war period
2882: A cat is also not an accepted interrogation tool

Pff. My second-best mage banished spirits by feeding them to shoggoths.

His fireball spell threw a tentacled shadow. It was great.

The hell you say. A tame Blackberry Cat can be very useful!

A tame blackberry cat might. But when it's an angry cat shoved down someone's pants....

2883: If I absolutely must interrogate someone by placing an angry tiger in their pants, I am to try it with an angry housecat first.
2884: I may not mod a suitcase to have legs and stupidly high armor, and then have a spirit inhabit it. Variations of The Luggage do not exist in Shadowrun.

I think comic books have about as much to do with that as Anita Blake, since neo-noir and urban fantasy have been touchstones there for literally decades. Honestly, choosing one thing to crown as the king of influences is a really dodgey practice to be taking in these cases when you're talking about things that are ultimately still largely niche interests. Whatever has been most recent gets the crown simply because people have short attention spans and a few favorites get picked out as the most likely explanations despite the fact that the table has to be set for years before a tipping point can be reached. For example, as far as urban fantasy and vampires 'n' such goes, my old WoD group was FAR more interested in vertigo comics like Preacher and Hellblazer than Anne Rice and nobody even knew who the hell Anita Blake was back then. My sister reads Blake now, but she got there by way of Neil Gaiman and horror manga. There's a difference between drawing spotlights or getting your foot in the door first and being a formative influence. It's like the difference between Bon Jovi and Velvet Underground. One was insanely popular but a bit late to the party and the other's impact wasn't appreciated until well after the fact. Trying to definitely act like one or the other can be said to have affected music more is basically an exercise in futility. Trends are something bigger than all of us.

2885: Clovis the Devil Bunny shall never be used in a Shadowrun game (again)
2885a: I most certainly not introduce Clovis to a group that contains a character who has Ed like tendencies, just to watch the fireworks
2886: Flying squirrels aren't a motivational tool when dealing with resonant or awakened monkeys. While it does make them more irate than just simply poking them with a pointy stick, the fact the squirrel will return to me means that I will be the victim of the angry primate. This is not optimal

I do not.

The rigger does