Post originally by Wart at 2004-09-13 10:58:34
Converted from Phorums BB System

Actually, the least amount of "Wait, how does that work?" is required if you just dumped the "Vampires don't appear in mirrors" myth. After all, Vampire dumps other vampire-related myths like the garlic thing and the vampiric inability to cross running water.

The objection that if vampires could be picked up in video cameras the Masquerade (or whatever's replaced it in the Requiem) would fall to pieces is a poor argument. Given how many vampires seem to exist in the world of darkness, and how much blood per night they'd need on a global level, you'd really expect the whole world to know about them if you looked at things from a 100% realistic point of view. However, the World of Darkness is supposed to be a place which looks an awful lot like the real world, except that there are Vampires bodding about without anyone realising they're there, so we all accept that human society hasn't discovered the vampires: if they had, the World of Darkness wouldn't look like 21st century Earth.

Our world, our history, our society would actually look very different if werewolves and mages and vampires existed. Perhaps working through the consequences of this could make for a very exciting setting, but it wouldn't be the modern-day horrro of the World of Darkness, it'd be some sort of alternate history horror thing.

Junking the "they're invisible to mirrors/video/photos" thing means that PCs in Vampire would actually have to think about the consequences of their actions a little more and be a little more clever about how they go about their business. This can only be a good thing. And it also means that in some ways humanity's ignorance of the vampiric situation is *less* unbelievable in some respects: you don't have a whole class of people who never show up properly on camera or in mirrors, which would surely become apparent eventually.