The adaptation of Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe heads to BackerKit this fall
The gothic horror tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade owes a lot to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, including the structure of vampiric society, the types of powers vampires can inherit from their makers, and the sleeping ancient vampires that might end the world if they ever woke up. White Wolf will be revealing a new version at Gen Con in July, but the game’s current publisher, Renegade Game Studios, is going to give Vampire: The Masquerade some competition by launching a BackerKit campaign in the fall to fund a TTRPG based on Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe.
The game is specifically based on AMC’s interconnected adaptations of Rice’s novels. Just as White Wolf created a core system for vampires that it modified for other creatures like werewolves, changelings, and wraiths, Immortal Universe will launch with an Interview with the Vampire starter set and a New Orleans rulebook, with the plan of building a connected game that will incorporate witches and psychics.
While most Vampire games are defined by political intrigue and territorial squabbles, Immortal Universe will emulate the source material by focusing on telling relationship-driven stories across centuries. The focus on unreliable memory makes it sound more like a group version of the ENNIE-winning solo TTRPG Thousand Year Old Vampire.
Vampire: The Masquerade was first released in 1991, and has been having something of a resurgence with a Dimension 20 actual play game and an unlikely Dungeons & Dragons crossover. Renegade is betting there are enough people looking for ways to play brooding creatures of the night to support another game. With AMC’s The Vampire Lestat airing its season finale on July 19 and Mayfair Witches not set to return until 2027, the game will at least give fans of the TV franchise a new way to experience Rice’s strange world.