Rein-Hagen felt that hunting vampires, as a game premise, would get boring so he came up with the idea of a game where the players played vampires instead of hunting them. Vampire was inspired by RPGs such as Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest, as well as the writings of Joseph Campbell and vampire films such as The Lost Boys. In 1996, a short-lived television show loosely based on the game, Kindred: The Embraced, was produced by Aaron Spelling for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Several associated products were produced based on Vampire: The Masquerade, including live-action role-playing games ( Mind's Eye Theatre), dice, collectible card games ( Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), video games ( Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines), and numerous novels. It is set in a fictionalized 'gothic-punk' version of the modern world, where players assume the roles of vampires, who are referred to as 'Kindred', and deal with their night-to-night struggles against their own bestial natures, vampire hunters and each other. Vampire: The Masquerade is a tabletop role-playing game (tabletop RPG) created by Mark Rein-Hagen and released in 1991 by White Wolf Publishing as the first of several Storyteller System games for its World of Darkness setting line.
