# Mark Rein·Hagen - Maker: Game designer - Date: b. 1964 - Houses: White Wolf Publishing - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/mark-rein-hagen/ > The co-creator of Ars Magica who, on a road trip to Gen Con in 1990, came up with Vampire: The Masquerade and launched the gothic-punk World of Darkness that took roleplaying beyond the dungeon. **Why it matters:** Rein·Hagen's Vampire made 'personal horror' and brooding, story-first play a commercial force in the 1990s, built White Wolf into a major publisher, and is widely credited with bringing new kinds of players into the hobby. ## Quick answers **Who is Mark Rein·Hagen?** The co-creator of Ars Magica who, on a road trip to Gen Con in 1990, came up with Vampire: The Masquerade and launched the gothic-punk World of Darkness that took roleplaying beyond the dungeon. **When was Mark Rein·Hagen born?** Mark Rein·Hagen was born in 1964 in Ohio. **What is Mark Rein·Hagen known for?** Mark Rein·Hagen is best known for Vampire: The Masquerade and Ars Magica. **Why does Mark Rein·Hagen matter to fantasy and games?** Rein·Hagen's Vampire made 'personal horror' and brooding, story-first play a commercial force in the 1990s, built White Wolf into a major publisher, and is widely credited with bringing new kinds of players into the hobby. ## Life Mark Rein-Hagen, who writes his name as Mark Rein·Hagen, was born on August 30, 1964, in Ohio. He grew up with a religious upbringing, which he later identified as the source of some of Vampire's central themes about the power of belief. He went to college at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he met [Jonathan Tweet](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jonathan-tweet/) and, through their gaming circle, Lisa Stevens. In 1987, while still students, Rein·Hagen and Tweet founded a game company, Lion Rampant. His father predicted that the company would fail because its founders were too young, inexperienced and poor, but that he would learn a great deal from it. Rein·Hagen later said his father had been right, and that the lesson taught him never to give up. ## Work Rein·Hagen and Tweet spent about nine months designing [Ars Magica](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ars-magica/) (1987), a game of wizards in "Mythic Europe," a version of the High Middle Ages in which medieval beliefs about the world are literally true. Its magic system built spells from combinations of verbs and nouns, *Techniques* and *Forms*. Its other innovation was social. Ars Magica was one of the first games built around troupe play: players ran a whole covenant of magi, companions and grogs, and could take turns as Story Guide instead of relying on a single permanent [Game Master](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/game-master/). Lion Rampant published it with supplements and the novelty *Whimsy Cards*, but money was always short. When Lion Rampant ran into financial trouble around 1990, Stevens proposed merging with White Wolf, the magazine publisher run by Stewart Wieck. The combined company, [White Wolf Publishing](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/white-wolf/), had Rein·Hagen and Wieck as co-owners. On the road to [Gen Con](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/gen-con/) in 1990 with Wieck and Stevens, Rein·Hagen came up with the game that would make it. He thought hunting vampires would quickly get boring as a premise. What if the players were the monsters instead, struggling to keep their humanity? [Vampire: The Masquerade](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/vampire-the-masquerade/) appeared in 1991, credited to Rein·Hagen with Graeme Davis, Tom Dowd, Stevens and Wieck. It was set in the World of Darkness, a "gothic-punk" mirror of the modern city, and its subtitle, *A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror*, stated its aims. The Storyteller System, adapted by Dowd from [Shadowrun](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/shadowrun/)'s dice pools, was deliberately light. The game's real attention went to clans, politics, the vampires' ancestry from the biblical Cain, and the slow loss of humanity. Its striking cover, a rose on green marble, looked nothing like the dragon-and-sword covers on neighboring shelves. Vampire was a hit. Rein·Hagen followed it with a linked line of games: *Werewolf: The Apocalypse* (1992, with Robert Hatch and Bill Bridges), *Wraith: The Oblivion* (1994) and *Changeling: The Dreaming* (1995). *Mage: The Ascension* (1993) grew from his old idea of a "modern-day Ars Magica," though he was not directly involved in writing it. Wizards of the Coast licensed the setting for [Richard Garfield](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/richard-garfield/)'s *Jyhad* card game, later *Vampire: The Eternal Struggle*, and the Mind's Eye Theatre rules took the World of Darkness into [live-action play](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/larp/). Rein·Hagen was a writer and producer on *Kindred: The Embraced* (1996), Aaron Spelling's Fox series loosely based on Vampire. He was unhappy with the result, and the show was cancelled after eight episodes. White Wolf's financial trouble in 1995–96 caused a split with the Wieck brothers. Rein·Hagen left, taking with him an unfinished science-fiction game, *Exile*, which reached only a 1997 playtest draft. His later companies published *Z-G* (2001), the card game *Democracy* (2014) and the horror RPG *I Am Zombie* (2015), though some of his crowdfunded projects drew criticism for delays and one failed to fund. He sold his remaining White Wolf shares in 2007. In 2008 he was living in Tbilisi with his family during the war between Russia and Georgia; he was evacuated with other Americans and set up a website to help international media follow events there. ## Legacy Vampire changed who played roleplaying games and why. It is widely credited with drawing new players, including many women and many who had never cared for dungeon crawls, into a hobby dominated by teenage boys. It moved the emphasis from tactics and treasure to character, mood and moral struggle. The [Urban Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/urban-fantasy/) and "personal horror" it popularized helped shape later tabletop and video-game storytelling, from indie [narrative games](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/narrative-rpg/) to the cult computer RPG *Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines* (2004). By the mid-1990s White Wolf had become one of the leading roleplaying publishers. Ars Magica, meanwhile, has been kept in print by other publishers for decades and its magic system is still widely admired. Between them, Rein·Hagen's two early games gave players good reasons to play something other than D&D. ## Facts - He founded Lion Rampant with Jonathan Tweet in 1987 while both were students at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. - Ars Magica was one of the first RPGs with 'troupe' play, in which players could take turns as the Story Guide. - He thought hunting vampires would get boring as a game premise, so Vampire made the players the vampires. - Vampire's dice pools adapted Shadowrun's mechanics, switching from six-sided to ten-sided dice. - He worked as a writer and producer on Kindred: The Embraced (1996), Aaron Spelling's Fox series loosely based on Vampire. - He was living in Tbilisi during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and was evacuated with other U.S. citizens. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rein-Hagen) - [Wikipedia: Vampire: The Masquerade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.