ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230153
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
EVERY OTHER SATURDAY when the sun goes down on Center in the Square, more than 30 vampires - otherwise known as waiters, day-care workers, homemakers and high-school students - roam the streets. It's all part of the popular live-action, role-playing game "Vampire: The Masquerade.
TWO weeks ago, Emmanuel Camp broke into the Roanoke City Jail, killed a prisoner and shot his way out, slaying several policemen and guards. He made his escape out a third-story window, landing on the street and running away in full view of news cameras.
This week, there's hell to pay.
At a gathering of his vampire brethren, Camp must explain why he came out of hiding to slay the prisoner, a vampire hunter.
As Camp stands, the other vampires, dressed in their black leather regalia, whisper among themselves in a meeting hall decorated with strange and fantastic graffiti. In the background, pinball machines and video games glow, letting off faint beeps. Clouds of blue cigarette smoke linger overhead.
"How do you answer for your crimes?" asks Solomon Steele the Justicar, judge of the vampires, his eyes blazing and mouth set firm in the middle of his pointed red goatee.
The scene was real enough. Except nobody broke in and killed anybody at the jail, and instead of being vampires, the leading players were a bookstore clerk and a nursing assistant.
However, the rest of the players are vampires.
Well, OK, they're not vampires, either, really. In actuality, they're all teen-agers and 20-somethings who gather in Roanoke every other Saturday after sundown to play a hot new live-action, role-playing game called "Vampire: The Masquerade."
And they're not alone. The game is catching on across the country. Leagues have formed in almost every major city, especially in college towns like Blacksburg. The Fox Broadcasting Network, seizing on the game's popularity, even has a television show based on it - "Kindred: The Embraced."
In Roanoke, the game is sponsored by The Eccentric Wizard, a new store at 11 S. Jefferson St. devoted to fantasy books and role-playing games.
Players wear white nametags that identify their characters. The game is played within 15 city blocks bordered by Williamson Road, Jefferson Street, Church Avenue and the Norfolk Southern tracks.
Different areas represent different places as needed. A park near the City Market represents Mill Mountain, for instance, and a coffee shop could be a place to buy arms, or just a coffee shop.
First off, the organizers will tell you, there are some ground rules. A lot of people have heard about the guy down in Virginia Beach who played this game and was arrested, charged with drinking people's blood and performing sexual acts with young female players.
As the game's supposed to be played, there's no touching anyone else. If you're going to attack someone within the game, you call out the words "physical challenge" and the dispute is settled by the time-honored method of rock, paper, scissors.
In fact, according to the game rules, vampires aren't even supposed to kill humans. They just drink enough blood to sustain themselves.
Also, no one is to carry weapons or anything resembling one. Instead, the players carry note cards that describe a weapon.
"They point the little note cards at each other, as silly as that sounds," says Mike Boaz, one of the four co-owners of The Eccentric Wizard. "It takes a lot of imagination."
He adds, ``In case people think they're going to be accosted by people running around downtown dressed as vampires, they're not allowed to. I've told everyone that. If you're harassing the `normals,' I'll kick you out.''
Generally, Boaz crafts the storylines and basic structure for the game, but it's up to the players to determine what happens.
"I have so many secrets in this game, if you actually had the knowledge I had, it would burn your mind and drive you insane," he says, throwing back his long, brown hair and laughing with the "bwa-ha-ha-ha!" of a mad scientist.
Suddenly turning serious, he adds, "Please say I'm joking when I said that."
"It's a little weird," co-owner Jason Luci says of the game. "It reads just like a book." Or a movie script. Some of the players have dramatic backgrounds, and their dialogue is so good, observers feel as if they're in the middle of a TV show.
Boaz describes a lot of the people who play the game as "Gen X-ers with a great education and nothing to do with it."
"It's a definite night crowd," Luci says.
When co-owner Jerry Rush Jr. isn't working at The Eccentric Wizard, he works at Kinko's Copies and waits on tables at Ragazzi's.
In the game, Rush plays Lawrence Livingston, a 150-year-old vampire who was embraced, or transformed into a vampire, while he was an English explorer in Africa. Rush has woven an intricate history for Livingston, who he says was nearly fatally burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and who stole paintings from a Berlin art gallery during an Allied air raid in 1945.
Livingston is the Toreador primogen, or leader of the local Toreador clan, a group of artistically inclined bohemian vampires. He's a pacifist who wants to achieve peace with all creatures. "My character's a wuss," Rush says. "He never kills unless he has to."
Rush, 21, has a receding hairline and a thick brown goatee that gives his face an angular quality. For his costume, he wears a black fedora, black slacks, black suit jacket and black T-shirt.
A former theater major in college, Rush's been role-playing since he was in the fourth grade. To prepare for the part, "I put on eye makeup," he says. "That's about it."
Other players dress more elaborately in character - some as punks with pierced noses and face paint, others as aristocrats dressed for Wall Street domination. One player, whose character was embraced in the 1850s Wild West, dresses with the elements of a prairie gunslinger, favoring bandanas, overcoats and cowboy hats.
Will Lewis, a 17-year-old senior at Salem High School, plays John Marshall, the embraced 65-year-old former U.S. chief justice. "I'm going into the profession of law and I always loved history, so he seemed like an interesting person to choose," Lewis says.
In character, Lewis speaks in an English accent, dresses in a conservative blue blazer and hobbles around with a cane. The chief justice lost an eye to a werewolf attack, he explains, and can't get around so well. But "I'm not so infirm up here," he says, tapping his head.
Josh Simpson, also 17, goes to Patrick Henry High School. He plays the Ventrue primogen, leader of the aristocratic clan. For his character, Simpson wears his long, blond hair brushed straight and dons a pinstriped power suit with a neatly pressed white shirt and paisley tie.
Simpson has role-played before, but he says he was attracted to this game because of the vampire novels of Anne Rice.
His 13-year-old brother, Andrew, plays a street urchin who discovers that he is a werewolf. "It's really interesting," Andrew says. "I've played other role-playing games with books, but in this one, you're a character, alive, a real person. It's better than just sitting down, talking."
"For one night out of the week, you're actually someone else. You can put all your problems away," says Chris Cerak, an 18-year-old senior at Salem High School who works part time as a host and busing tables at the Olive Garden.
Cerak plays the vampire Killian Vaughn Beck. Cerak's girlfriend, Jul Basham, plays Beck's childer, Rain. Basham, 19, is studying elementary education at Virginia Western Community College and works at a day-care center.
In character, she leads Beck around on a leash and has elaborate face makeup down one side of her face. She wears silver jewelry, including an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for everlasting life, over her Gothic black dress.
"I met her character in New York," Cerak explains. "And it's an odd story with Killian. He doesn't usually associate with humans, but there was something about her that was different. He wanted her to walk in his immortal shadow."
"He bit me," Basham says, laughing.
Eli Moore, a 17-year-old junior at Lord Botetourt High School, has one of the more interesting characters. He plays Kae, a "sidhe," or mischievous elf, who lives on Mill Mountain and gains his creative energy from the Mill Mountain Star. However, with his thin frame, blond hair, black leather pants, jacket and boots, and his green and blue lipstick and facepaint, this elf looks more like David Bowie and a lot less like the Keebler guys.
Kae is a perennial clown, always dancing around the other characters and causing havoc. In fact, Moore receives penalties if he ever gets bored. As the vampires glide lithely down the sidewalks, fanning out in packs across the city in the gusty night, Kae is right along beside them, blowing their cool.
"Do you have a crayon?" he asks innocently of everyone who goes by at one point. Another time, he drops on the sidewalk with his hand outstretched, yelling, "Alms! Alms for the poor lepers!"
"I just like role-playing," Moore says. "It gives you a chance to act out any character you want. Mostly, though, I like it because I'm a musician, and this gives me another way to perform."
LENGTH: Long : 166 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Jul Basham is made up as "Rain," aby CNBchilder, one who is turned into a vampire by an older vampire. 2.
Vampires Joshua Simpson and Jerry Rush Jr. 3. When it's time to do
battle, warring vampires resort to the rock, paper,scissors method
of settling disputes. On Jefferson Street on a Saturday night, Dave
Heare (left) has just been "killed" by Jeremy Mason. 4. (From left)
Jeffrey Anderson, John Rose, Shannon Harmon and Jeremy Mason were on
the prowl in downtown Roanoke on a recent Saturday night for a round
of "Vampire: The Masquerade." color.