Playing a vampire versus playing Vampire

Repost from my LJ, 2012: 

So I'm watching Near Dark again ("Best vampire film ever." "I knew there was a reason I liked you." "That and I'm adorable when drunk.") and thinking that:

(a) this kind of thing happens in the world of Vampire all the time, having been one of its defining influences and influenced in turn by its number one source Interview With The Vampire,

and (b) unlike Interview it never connects to a wider world. And it would be very different if it did. Like Dracula they could be the only vampires out there.

Would Jesse (or indeed Dracula) be less cool if we knew his backstory? Probably a bit. Would he be a less threatening figure if he mentioned avoiding big cities because they're crawling with other vampires?

Being Human, meanwhile, has made a WoD-y Interview-y world of hidden vampire conspiracies and outcast werewolves and stuck ghosts work by making the vampire protagonists outsiders who want no part of it, at least partially defined by their enmity to the local kings and the Old Ones, and sometimes pulled in against their will. So, hmm.

When playing Vampire one's PC being a vampire is somewhat secondary because it's far from unique. So if I wanted to make a big thing of a PC being a vampire, I'd do it in something else or at least take it out of the wider milieu. (This might factor in to the old "I'm running Vampire - " "can I play a Mage?" problem, which I saw in action just a few weeks ago.)

It's certainly encouraged me to keep the number of vampires in The Centre Cannot Hold (my Vampire game at the time) down to a minimum, but the support framework of bosses and rules and clans and covenants is still there. Hmm. Maybe next time I'll go all the way. The PCs and starting NPCs are the only monsters in the whole setting. It'd be interesting to try, certainly.