In an age of cellphone cameras, cloud servers, instant global communication, and satellite networks-it's slightly more believable the intelligence communities want to avoid a global panic from the revelation the supernatural is real. The idea of the government knowing about the undead is probably the only way you could believably do the Masquerade in the 21st century. Yes, the Masquerade is partially broken and now vampires have to fear drone strikes as well as thermal-vision equipped Special Forces. Other fiction talks about how the Camarilla (vampire society) has fallen and a Second Inquisition of ABC agencies globally has started a massive purge of the undead. The opening story is a letter from Mina Harker, a real person in the setting, who is addressing one of her descendants she's Embraced (turned into a vampire) out of loneliness.
The 5th Edition of the game opens up with thirty pages of in-universe fiction that is designed to appeal to the now 30 and 40 year old fans of the game who played it in high school. If you give into the killing urge too often, you'll eventually degenerate into a mindless beast that has to be put down. Nightly unlife is a constant struggle against the vampire nobility, vampire hunters, werewolves, and your dwindling humanity. You are part of an undead society that exists behind the scenes and must maintain a constant vigilance so humans cannot find out about your existence.
At some point in the last fifty years, your character was a normal human being transformed into one of the undead. The premise of the game is extremely simple: you are a vampire in the modern world. It was an influence on my STRAIGHT OUTTA FANGTON and I WAS A TEENAGE WEREDEER books and I can name many other urban fantasy authors who had some experience with the game.
There was a badly made Aaron Spelling TV series that I still have a fondness for and a couple of awesome video games. BLADE, TRUE BLOOD, UNDERWORLD, and other works all drew from the lore of the game. Ironically, it's in part because of the tabletop roleplaying game that the undead became so over-saturated. Its difficult to overstate just how influential Vampire: The Masquerade was in a post- Twilight era when vampires have so much shade thrown on them.
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