I stumbled into White Wolf’s game, Vampire: The Masquerade completely by accident. A fan of vampires, I joined a number of IRC (Internet Relay Chat, in those archaic internet days of the mid 90s) chat rooms. Someone directed me to a gaming store in Manhattan – The Compleat Strategist , and it was there in or around 1993 or so that I picked up Clanbook: Toreador. It was a guidebook to one of the many vampire clans in the game, but I didn’t own the main rule book. It took a while before I was able to get my hands on it, but thankfully, I met a number of people who helped me understand the game.
To help storytellers get an idea of the atmosphere of the Gothic-Punk culture they were playing in, V:tM offered some songs/bands to listen to. Depeche Mode was a common recommendation, but it was a friend who introduced me to their music with a copy of their Violator album. It wasn’t long before I picked up my own copy. Released in 1990, the whole album is brilliant, which each song seemingly better than the next. It’s highly recommended if you want to give DM a try. World In My Eyes is the first track off the album. If it happens to sound more than familiar, it was used as recently as 2018’s Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg.
