Vampire: The Masquerade is a tabletop role-playing game, created by Mark Rein•Hagen and released in 1991 by White Wolf Publishing, as the first of several Storyteller System games for its World of Darkness setting. It is set in a fictionalized "gothic-punk" version of the modern world, where players assume the role of vampires, referred to as Kindred or Cainites, who struggle against their own bestial natures, vampire hunters, and each other.