NightLife: The Role-Playing Game Of Urban Horror.
Published in 1990 by Stellar Games.
I bought this when I was 16 at a place called Comic Kingdom, located around 6 Mile & Gratiot in Detroit. It was mainly a comic store, but had a back room dedicated to RPGs and miniatures. It totally looked like you would imagine a comic store from those days, not the brightly lit affairs of today. I seem to remember faded yellow walls and light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, well that was the vibe anyway. It was only a few miles from us who lived just north of 8 Mile Road, yet a different, seedier world. (I used to occasionally dream of being lost in Detroit and having to find my way home on foot. If you've ever seen the movie Judgement Night... the dreams weren't nearly that exciting).
In NightLife, a game that aims to combine Splatterpunk with sexy monsters, you play as one of the 7 kin: Vampyres, Werewolves, Ghosts, Daemons, Wyghts, Inuits, and Animates. It had a cyberpunk feel to it, in that, style is stressed, drugs are present, and there are skills like skating, seduction, and skateboards, a club called Afterdark owned by the world's oldest vampyre named, Golgotha, factions for how to treat the Herd (Humanity) and a fear of losing one's humanity (thus becoming an NPC). There was a later supplement focusing on rock bands -- perhaps influenced by The Vampire Lestat. There were also supplements for playing sorcerers and an alternate post-apocalyptic setting.
It was a percentile system, which at the time disappointed me -- I was so burned out on percentiles, having spent most of my non-D&D gaming time on other TSR stuff: Marvel, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, and yes, even Indiana Jones. Much of the 80s was percentile based. I've since come full circle on that mechanic.
Also, NightLife's production quality was clearly Indy. Indy back then meant cheap, and though the game fascinated me enough, I then considered cheap a flaw (no longer of course). The days were also approaching when my interest in the hobby would wane for awhile, so, I never really gave NightLife a chance.
The very next year, Vampire: The Masquerade came out and everyone went gaga for playing the bad guy -- myself not included. But I wonder, what, if any connection NightLife had to the World of Darkness. Was it simply a cheaper version that coincidently came first? Had the masquerade already been conceived? Did they see NightLife and say, cool, but how about this? Or was horror from the monster's point of view simply in the air?
This was certainly apparent in novels. Anne Rice dove into her Vampire Chronicles, the first of which was written back in 1976. There was a book called I, Vampire, by Michael Romkey, that was published in 1990 -- I recall enjoying this one. John Steakley's, Vampire$ also came out in 1990, though this was the outlier as it focused on the hunters. And there were others. Being a monster was certainly in vogue.
To my taste, NightLife was better than the "woe is me" WoD in that it had less self-loathing and damnation, and was punk as opposed to goth. Imagine Billy Idol as a vampire. Punks are energetic, they're loud, they do, they exist, while goths cry, mope, blame, brood, and lament the fact that they exist at all.
NightLife -- shame, could've and should've had fun with this one.
Just a jaunt down memory lane.
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