2025: Year of the Vampire
In my previous end-of-year blog post, I joked that 2025 would be year of the vampire, as I would be organising events for Dracula Returns to Derby. Little did I realise how this project was going to develop.
I continued my technology journalism by writing for ITPro and Live Science, as well as Computer Weekly, which has now published over a hundred articles by me. I also wrote for the BBC Science Focus magazine about wearable technologies that augment the body.
I started writing for Secret Passages magazine, as I knew the editor from when he was commissioning articles about science fiction television for The Companion. This time, it was about foundational tabletop games of the 1980s and 1990s. My first article, about the development of Vampire: The Masquerade, included an interview with the creator Mark Rein-Hagen. This was followed by an article about vampire live roleplays (LARPs).
I continued being the managing editor for Geek Pride, which included interviewing White Wolf’s community brand manager Jason Carl and Free League Publishing’s co-founder Tomas Härenstam. We also invited dozens of guests onto the podcast, including The Laundry roleplaying game developer David Chapman and professional DM and therapist Katie Walford.
I was invited to several conventions this year. The first event was the UK Ghost Story festival, where I gave a talk about the tools of writing. Sci-Fi Weekender is always fun and this year I hosted the horror writing panel, as well as interviewing Carolyn Seymour on stage. At Edge-Lit, I was invited on stage to interview the acclaimed science-fiction author Peter F Hamilton, whose works I have been reading for over twenty years. At the UK Games Expo, I was one of the panellists for Dummies & Dragons – a quiz show where we demonstrated how little we can actually remember about the rules. My last event of the year was the roleplaying convention Dragonmeet in London, which I went down to for the day.
I have dedicated a significant amount of this year to running Mythic Echoes with my friend Eunice. Mythic Echoes is a ‘collaborative storytelling events provider,’ which is a posh way of saying “we organise roleplay events.”
Our first event of the year was Vampire Games Day; a celebration of vampire-themed roleplaying games in a gothic former library (The Wardwick in Derby). Since this was our first event as Mythic Echoes, we wanted something fairly simple. In the end we had five games on offer, as well as raffle and prizes for the best dressed players.
The vampire LARP As Night Falls: The Auction was our main event of the year and, as I saw it, our make-or-break moment. We created a system that was accessible and as rules-light as possible, which allowed players to focus on their characters being in a vampiric auction. It also had to have zero-combat, as Elvaston Castle is Grade II listed building.
As this was our inaugural LARP, we needed to heavily promote the event. Fortunately, the UK’s largest LARP convention LARPCon is held thirty minutes from Derby, so we used that to announce our event. At this point, we had no publicity material other than for the venue itself, so we held a micro-LARP experience, providing “free blood tests” (where we pretend to sample people’s blood as if we were vampires).
In the summer, Eunice and I had the opportunity to hold a photoshoot in Elvaston Castle for the day, so we recruited my friend Jamie (Fotoblitz) to take the photographs and Katie to be an extra model. Images from the shoot were then published through the Mythic Echoes social media pages to promote our LARP. We also held a photoshoot at the Dracula Exhibition at Pickford’s House in Derby.
We recruited five friends to be the monarchs, which were non-player characters (NPCs) for the LARP; these were all experienced LARPers apart from Katie (but as a professional DM with a theatre background, this was not an issue). Two other friends helped out with door duty and event photography. My eldest also volunteered to be an NPC and assist the monarchs as a seneschal, as well as running the raffle.
The event itself pretty much went as I hoped and Elvaston Castle looked amazing with everyone dressed up as vampires. Food was provided by Wyatt’s Tea Rooms, who created a themed buffet, with coffin-shaped pizzas and an alcohol-free “blood” punch in cauldrons. The LARP came to a suitably tense conclusion, with two of the factions bidding against each other, before the grand reveal of the auctioneer’s true identity. After the LARP was brought to a close, we announced the costume winners and held the raffle, and went out for a meal on the following day.
Two weeks later, I found myself leading the ‘March of the Vampires’ as part of Love Sadler Gate’s Halloween celebrations. Despite only having two weeks to organise, we still had a good turnout for the march itself and plans are already afoot for next year!
In May, there was the Dracula Conference, where I was invited to give a talk about Dracula’s influence on roleplaying games; tracing the narrative threads of how vampires have been interpreted in gaming and how the various interpretations inevitably tied back to Dracula.
I was also asked to be one of the DMs for D&D at Elvaston Castle. Elvaston Castle has an incredibly welcoming management team and is such an atmospheric venue with a rich history that it is a delight to play there.
Life, the universe and something
Somehow, despite all the various medical calamities in my life, I celebrated my 50th birthday this year. The day itself was spent at home, but we celebrated it properly later in the year.
It seemed appropriate for it to have a vampire theme for my party, and so “Fang Bang” was formed (also the name of an incredibly good album by Wednesday 13). This was a vampire-themed fancy dress party. Yes, I still do not act my age. It was great to see so many friends that I had not seen for far too long.
I prefer meaningful experiences to ‘big’ presents, so Caelia gave me a tank driving lesson in a cold-war era tank designed for urban operations at a military museum in Leicestershire. A few weeks later, my parents gave us a two-day family holiday in London. After braving the overwhelming crowds at the Natural History Museum, we decided to walk around London and seeing the sights, rather than being inside them.
We returned to Whitby for our family holiday this year. We all love this seaside town, which was the setting for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, so I did wonder whether it might be considered a business expense as research for Dracula Returns to Derby. With our daughter now being a young adult, it also meant Caelia and I could go out at night and enjoy some quality time together.
For our anniversary this year, Caelia and I went pony trekking. Our first date together was when Caelia invited me for a ride on her horses and our first holiday together was pony trekking on Exmoor, so this felt especially appropriate.
World’s Lair was a new roleplaying convention that took place in London this summer. There was not much notice, but what piqued my interest was that there would be a live actualplay of Vampire: The Masquerade, run by Jason Carl. I have been chatting with Jason occasionally over the years, so it was great to finally meet in person.
Much of the summer was spent visiting various university open days with our daughter, as she decided which universities to apply to. She would like to study English Literature, so we spent several weekends visiting several universities. Universities have changed a lot since I went there. Visiting York University was particularly interesting, as parking was at an airfield and we had to drive along the runaway.
Another major event of the summer was a friend’s wedding. They had been engaged for a long time and dating for even longer, so it was lovely to see them marry. As they are both LARPers with humanistic/pagan philosophies, it was held at a campsite and conducted by a friend who is a registered pastor (through an American religious organisation and definitely not a cult).
When not busy with events or visiting various university open days, I was able to enjoy classic Vampire: The Masquerade live roleplay with Stafford by Night. The LARP only started in January, but has already become one of the largest regular vampire LARPs in the UK.
I continued training in Kung Fu and gained my purple belt. I am now learning pole fighting (all I can think of is Darth Maul from Star Wars). I asked my instructor if it were possible to get a pole that lit up in red, and apparently it is, but they not entirely practical for practising with…
With various vampire shenanigans, we did not get to see as many bands as we had hoped, but we did catch Forevanessence; an Evanescence tribute band that a friend recently joined. We missed the Rob Zombie tribute that I hoped to also see, but Forevanessence played a cracking set and we will definitely be seeing them again.
Read, watched and recommended
With everything seemingly happening this year, we never made it to the cinema, but I did make time to watch MCU films with my eldest two. Although Fantastic Four: First Steps was fun but forgettable, Thunderbolts* was much more interesting – offering a unique take on depression.
Caelia and I have been fans of Anne Rice since we were teenagers, so we made a point of watching the shows Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches when they arrived on Netflix. Interview with the Vampire made some changes, which did surprise me, but actors nailed the characters perfectly and we cannot wait for the next series. Although Mayfair Witches wasn’t as riveting as Interview with the Vampire, it was still very good and we are already looking forward to the Talamasca: The Secret Order that follows the events of the other two shows.
Alien: Earth was a series that I had been looking forward to. Based on the Alien films, the television series was set before the original Alien. Purists may have been dismayed at the changes to some of the background lore, but for me it worked brilliantly and had fantastic world-building.
White Zombie was one of my favourite bands in the 1990s, so I was keen read Sean Yseult’s photobook “I’m in the Band”. Although it does not go into as much depth as I would have liked, it demonstrates what can be achieved by refusing to give up.
I finally read the classic novel The Woman in Black by Susan Hill after picking it up in a charity shop a couple of years ago. It is a brilliantly written gothic horror with a brutal twist at the end that unfolds with remorseless dread.
Finally, I read have been reading James Tynion IV’s Slaughter-verse books, which began with Something is Killing the Children. The premise is deceptively simple; what if monsters were real and could only be seen by children? Who would hunt the monsters and what would the hunters be like? It is a brutal tale that is filled with pathos: would you ever really want to meet a monster hunter?
Back to the future
Next year is already filling up with events.
Vampire Games Day II will be taking place on Saturday 21st February in The Wardwick again, and we are already confirming dates for the sequel to our vampire LARP with Elvaston Castle. We will also be at LARPCon to showcase photos from The Auction and promote our next vampire LARP.
I have been invited to give a talk about Dracula’s influence on roleplaying games at Tabletop Gaming Live in February, as well as to host panels at Sci-Fi Weekender. On the technology journalism side, I will also be attending the data storage conference TechnologyLive.
However, far more importantly, next year will be the twentieth anniversary of when I met Caelia. I have no idea what we will do yet, but we will definitely be doing something – probably involving vampires…
