The Gaming Den

The year was 2001, and White Wolf was in full swing. Their World of Darkness books had entered the "Revised" stage, Exalted and Adventure! were released, and in the back of comics magazine Dork Tower #13 was published a little pseudo-supplement called Clanbook: Perky...



The music for this review is Mr. Blue Sky.

We don't normally cover straight-up parodies in OSSR, but it's important to remember that a great parody is also by necessity a good example of whatever it is parodying. So while this is a joke-supplement meant to poke fun at the classical tropes of Vampire: the Masquerade, it is also a dead-solid example of how White Wolf was writing its entries back in the days, and probably more balanced in play than some of the shit that came later when shovelware really hit. This should probably come as no surprise, since the section was written by old gaming hand Phil Masters (here presented as Phil * Masters, in homage to Mark Rein*Hagen), and illustrated by Aaron Williams of Nodwick fame.

The "Clanbook" is all of five pages, which sounds like a joke in itself, but keep in mind it actually manages to cram in all the relevant info for an entire "clan," so I think it says more for how overbloated the actual clanbooks were than anything else.

The game is based around one of John Kovalic's breakout characters, Gilly the Perky Goth.



Gilly loves the goth dress, accessories, and lifestyle. But she's just a happy, bubbly, outgoing person, the kind that never misses an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (remember, this is 2001), and subsidizes Hot Topic. More Addams Family than Anne Rice, in other words. Her status as a "Perky Goth" set her apart from the societal conventions that was the grungy goth scene of the early oughts.


We would like to enter into evidence characters 1 through 4.

So this "sourcebook" takes as its assumption that there is an actual full Clan of vampires who are, well, Perky. In the grim World of Darkness, they are:

The Clan Who Wave To Their Friends, Those Who Bring Sunshine To Those Who Hate The Sun, The Ones Who Quite Like Lilac: Clan Perky

By comparison, this is what White Wolf released in 2001.

The book is a severely condensed version of a typical clanbook, consisting of three chapters and an introduction. The chapters are prefaced with quotes from various sources. For example, the introduction starts with:

Sun is shining in the sky, there ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin', everybody's in a play, and don't you know,
It's a beautiful new day! Hey hey!
- The Electric Light Orchestra, Mr. Blue Sky

Chapter 1: Eternal Cheerfullness
Mysterious origin, living on the edges of Kindred history, now in the FInal Nights - this is basically a microhistory of how the Perkies fit in and what they are. Granted, it's more about being a Perky goth than an actual blood-drinker, but it's still a thousand times more concise than anything else. Has a shot but amusing "Views of Other Supernaturals."

Werewolves: "Don't worry, I'mm not going to do anything silly like trying to tickle his stomach, or shouting 'Fetch.' Do you think I'm stupid? Anyway, Snookums here always says he prefers being scratched behind the ears."

Chapter 2: The Power of Perky
This not being an official product, we don't get the clan strengths and weaknesses, but they do list two unique disciplines - although there aren't any mechanics involved. Which might be why these disciplines are so much better than the ones dreamed up for the bloodlines in later sourcebooks. In any event, the two powers of the Perkies are Heliocentricity and Optometry.

Heliocentricity is a five-dot (her called a "splodge" and represented by a happy face) discipline where you take gradually less damage from sunlight, to the point that at ☺☺☺☺☺ you can go hang out on a tropical beach without tanning or bursting into flames.

This sort of graduated-elimination-of-common-weakness is something a lot of disciplines in Vampire try to address, but usually end up fucking it up a bit. Even without addressing soak rolls and shit, the designers of V:tR could have taken notes from Heliocentricity on how this kind of thing is done. It's way less broken than the old Thaumaturgy ritual that covered the same.

Optometry, on the other hand, is a talent that represents being cheerful and looking on the bright side. Okay, that sounds retarded, but it's also infectious and about as powerful as Dementation from the descriptor. This is the sort of thing you kind of wanted the Malkavians to have had, not twisting reality but temporarily bringing others around to their way of view and even protect them against anyone that tries to get them all dour and gloomy.

Chapter 3: Perky Folk
Covers who the clan is. It presents three archetypes - the Closet Perky (who pretends not to be a Perky), the Undead Gamer (who is so obsessed they're not entirely clear on when they slipped into unlife), and the Weekend Bloodsucker (who likes the whole vampire thing, but still has a "life.") The Undead Gamer actually quotes the 1st edition AD&D Player Handbook:

Get in the spirit of the game, and use your persona to play with a special personality all its own. Interact with the other player characters and non-player characters to give the game campaign a unique flavor and "life."

And seriously these are not bad archetypes. I mean, oWoD Vampire had some crazy shit for what they considered as prototypical clan members, but if the Perkies were a Real Clan (TM), you could totally see a subsect of the vampire population that took the piss out of the World of Darkness, or a LARPer who was embraced and never quite realized that the "game" had ended, or somebody who thinks the whole vampire thing is fun but isn't going to dominate who they are. It's really anti-indoctrination that's the key here, by refusing to be part of the seriously negative World of Darkness, the Perkies are the ultimate rebels of the setting...or would be, if this were official.

The final part of this chapter is "Famous Perkies" which includes Mozart, Doc Holiday, Rasputin ("Look, do we really have to explain this one?"*), and Darth Vader with a nose ring.

*

We've covered this before, but many different factions of supernaturals - including at least three Vampire clans - had claimed the Mad Monk as one of theirs.

Yeah, it's only five pages...but they still managed to seriously cover the gist of the clan, hitting all the right points and spot-on archetypes. It really makes you think about all those splat books White Wolf churned out, endless pages of history and organization and rumors and bizarre batshit mechanics...five pages. I submit that there's no White Wolf clan that wouldn't be better characterized if you squeezed everything you needed to know about it into five pages. Fuck a thousand years of darkness, let's get to the bones of the thing.

Anyway, two years later they revisited the concept with Clanbook Mopey. But I'll cover that tomorrow.

Ancient History wrote:The final part of this chapter is "Famous Perkies" which includes Mozart, Doc Holiday, Rasputin ("Look, do we really have to explain this one?"*), and Darth Vader with a nose ring.

That has to be one of the most spectacularly blown calls since Dewey Defeats Truman.

They're clearly talking about after he gets Embraced.

Anakin Skywalker was already a vampire then, though.

...

... emotional vampires are STILL vampires, you know.

I'd just like to add that much like lesbians, perky goth chicks also make everything better.

Clanbook: Mopey


According to this book, the soundtrack to this review is Pack it Up.

In 2004, the old World of Darkness ended...and a new one was to be released. So in Dork Tower #27, printed in April between the two editions, they went back to the well with Clanbook: Mopey, a 7-page supplement done in the late-oWoD style. Writing again by Phil Masters, cover by John Van Fleet, art by Raven Mimura


Who has an amazingly punchable face, but I probably wouldn't start shit in person.

Mopey Goths are representative as the other end of the spectrum from Perky Goths; they're the ones that like to well...mope. It's quite chic among some.



As explained in the introduction, the Mopey Clan gets along by being...sad and angsty and miserable. Life is a tedious bore, undeath is a torturous state of existence, etc. but they are better than you because they realize and acknowledge this fact, and in fact wallow in it. It's the kind of poseur attitude that Michael Moorcock took the piss out of with Werther de Goethe in his Dancers at the End of Time series.

So Clan Mopey not only endures, but does okay for itself. Now, let's get on with the crunchy bits.

Chapter 1: Lifestyles of the Bitch and Fatuous
This is basically what a WW Vampire clan write-up would look like if it was honest and six paragraphs long. As it is written "even moping can vary." The major distinction is that Mopeys consider all other vampires as Perky to greater or lesser degree. The "Views of Other Supernaturals" is done as a conversation between elder and neonate.

Oh, you'll find out soon enough. Not only is the world laden down with problems and woes, but there's more than one way to fend off the abysmal depths of existential despair by exertion of metaphysical and paranormal power. Or so I've been told, by some loser who cared. I mean, to begin with, there's the puppies.

Chapter 2: Things We Can't Avoid Doing (Despite Our Best Efforts)
This is the section on disciplines, again doing the "splodges without numbers thing," except this time using sadfaces. Anyway, Misericord is the uncanny ability to find something to get miserable about, and Declivity is the ability to broadcast their negativity, making other people miserable - at first by talking to them, and at five splodges just by existing. Both of these are just for lulz, of course, but the last one wouldn't be amiss in a V:tR game if you gave it some stats.

Chapter 3: We, The Purple
Archetypes include Nightclub Philosopher, Movie Buff, and I. T. Support Techie. Which all sound about right. Famous Mopeys include Hamlet, Edgar Allan Poe, Queen Victoria ("Moped continuously for forty years. Respect."), and, of course, Rasputin.

Okay, so Clanbook: Mopey isn't as fun or clever as Clanbook: Perky, even if it is spread out an extra couple of pages. Revised wasn't really much of an improvement on Classical V:tM as far as fluff went. I think both do rather well in taking the piss out of the gothic player stereotype - you know, the idea that WoD players are in any way a distinct breed of geeks from any other roleplaying gamers, like they all dress up like Abbey from NCIS or take their LARPing super seriously.

We might laugh at the idea that the World of Darkness roleplayers are distinct from any other type these days...but I think that's more to do with the general popularization of RPGs in general. When White Wolf first started putting stuff out, I think it did appeal to the whole gothic punk Hot Topic target audience crowd more than it did to generic Ravenloft players. But even ten years on, the scene was a lot more diverse than kids who thought dressing in black was cool and dabbling in Satanism would piss off their parents and Death Metal was "serious" grown-up music, and today there's basically no distinction whatsoever. You don't have to be Goth to play Vampire. You never did. But if that floats your boat, whatever works for you.

And a Bloom County to joke to seal the deal.