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The Evolving Genre of the Vampire Games

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The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic
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Abstract

This chapter looks at the evolving Gothic of the Vampire role-playing games. It offers a brief explanation of role-playing games, defining their textuality in Bakhtinian terms—as ‘chronotopes’. It lays out the particular relationship that role-playing enjoys with the Gothic, drawing on Spooner’s postmodern “ludogothic”, and Kryzwynska’s sense of genre as defined by coordinates. But mostly, it summarises the Vampire game line’s complex design history, and offers a swift tour through Vampire’s various editions, charting how the game’s Gothic has evolved and, eventually, come to transcend itself over nearly thirty years.

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Garrad, J. (2020). The Evolving Genre of the Vampire Games. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_55

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