In-Character Swarthmore and Philadelphia
An In-Character Timeline
The Humor Page
The Chronicles of Swarthmore By Night
In the beginning, of course, there was White Wolf, a company which develops and markets role-playing games of personal horror based on the Storyteller system. For more information, please visit the Official White-Wolf Site. The first of these games was Vampire: the Masquerade, which inspired a live-action version. It was this game that attracted many high school role-players from the Wallingford-Swarthmore area of Pennsylvania, just south-east of Philadelphia. Two of them, Cliff Hebner and Keane Sadler, designed a campaign of live-action Vampire around the small town in which they lived. Swarthmore By Night was born.
Their mutual friend, Mae Kalwaic, put together a school club which formed the nucleus of the cast. At this time, there was no difference between the Strath Haven Role-Play Club and the LARP (Live-Action Role-Play). It was unorganized at first, with games tending to happen at the drop of a hat, or be cancelled just as quickly. Eric Ross stood as the first Storyteller of SBN, which ran nearly bi-weekly for the first few months. At its height, SBN had a cast of 40 - 50, with a core of about 25 regulars. Games were held at the houses of cast members, leaning an air of elegance to the In-Character parties thrown by characters.
Times change, people grow old. Many of the original cast members went off to college, or found their time taken up by school, work, and other facets of life. The Staff of SBN has changed many times, as has the atmosphere of the game. However, the LARP has endured since the summer of 1997, and shows no sign of slowing down. We've had a lot of great players over the years, and doubtless we'll have more in the years to come. Some players of SBN have undertaken running their own games, links to which can be found on the Links Page.
The links below are information on the In-Character setting of the game, the real-life cities of Swarthmore and Philadelphia, an In-Character Timeline for those new to the game, or those curious about SBN's history, the Swarthmore Humor Page, and the Chronicles (IC stories) of many of the games.
In-Character Swarthmore and Philadelphia
An In-Character Timeline
The Humor Page
The Chronicles of Swarthmore By Night