Mark Rein-Hagen

Mark Rein-Hagen is a role-playing, card, video and board game designer best known as the creator of Vampire: The Masquerade and its associated World of Darkness games. Along with Jonathan Tweet, he is also one of the original two designers of Ars Magica. His work on World of Darkness has influenced the movie series Underworld, True Blood, and otherkin sub-cultures such as Real Life Vampires and Real Life Werewolves.

Career

In 1987, Rein-Hagen and Jonathan Tweet founded game publisher Lion Rampant while students at Saint Olaf College; here they met Lisa Stevens who later joined the company. Rein-Hagen and Tweet designed Ars Magica over a period of nine months, publishing it in 1987. Lion Rampant encountered financial difficulties in 1990, but after Stevens pitched the idea of a merger to Rein-Hagen and Stewart Wieck, they decided to merge White Wolf and Lion Rampant forming a new company White Wolf Game Studio, with the two as co-owners.Of his experience at Lion Rampant, Rein-Hagen recalls: "My father told me when I started my first game company, Lion Rampant: 'Mark, this company is going to fail, you are too young, inexperienced and poor to make it work. But, you are going to learn a lot, and next time you might just get it right.' At the time I didn't believe him, I thought we could make it, but he was right, and because of his words, I never, ever gave up."