Mark Rein-Hagen (born 1964), stylized as Mark Rein•Hagen, is an American 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.
Career
Late 1980s: Lion Rampant and Ars Magica
Rein-Hagen and Jonathan Tweet founded game publisher Lion Rampant in 1987 while attending Saint Olaf College; there 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. Ars Magica, and major Ars Magica supplements through Lion Rampant. The team worked with John Nephew and others who would become hobby game professionals.
Lion Rampant encountered financial difficulties in 1990, but after Stevens pitched a merger to Rein-Hagen and Stewart Wieck,
1990s: Vampire: The Masquerade and The World of Darkness
Rein-Hagen was on the road with Wieck and Stevens to GenCon 23 in 1990, when he conceived of the game Vampire: The Masquerade which became his main project of 1991, and the new company was able to publish the game that same year. He was unhappy with the finished product because FOX's producers had a vision for the series he did not share. “The show wasn’t as good as it could have been, if they only had listened to me more.” Rein-Hagen continued to work in Hollywood for four years total, but disillusioned and fed up trying to make it as a writer, he decided to leave it behind. “It was the goal of my life, but finally I just left”.
2010s
In 2012, Rein-Hagen worked on the card game Democracy, for his company Make Believe Games. This game was successfully funded by Kickstarter in November 2012. On February 4, 2014, Rein-Hagen released a statement citing poor health as the reason for his lack of communication and promising that backers would get their game. Commentators were extremely unhappy with the tone of the message and complained that Rein-Hagen's ill health had not affected his ability to work on other crowd-funded projects. Democracy shipped on November 18, 2014.
In a YouTube interview, Rein-Hagen spoke fondly of his former work on role-playing games and how he is working on a new role-playing game. Rein-Hagen elaborated on this role-playing game in March 2013, in another YouTube interview, describing some of the mechanics and speculating on a release date without naming it. In addition, he discussed his new game Succubus: The Reborn. The game had a Kickstarter campaign through Make-Believe Games that started on March 18, 2013, and failed to be funded on April 19.
The result of a June 2013 Kickstarter campaign, a horror RPG entitled I Am Zombie was released in 2015.
2020s
Some of Rein-Hagen's current projects that have been in development around the 2020s include The World of Lostlorn, The Curse of BloodStone Isle, and FangKnight.
Bibliography
Lion Rampant
Author
- Ars Magica First Edition (1987)
- Whimsy Cards (1987)
- The Bats of Mercille (only available at 1988 and 1989 Gen Con)
- Saga Pack (1988)
- The Stormrider (1989)
- Covenants (1989–1990)
- The Broken Covenant of Calebais (2004)
White Wolf
Author
- Vampire: The Masquerade Rulebook (1991)
- Vampire: The Masquerade's Book of the Damned
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse's Werewolf: The Apocalypse Second Edition
- Wraith: The Oblivion's The Face of Death
- Book of the Kindred (1996)
- Chicago Chronicles Volume 1
- Vampire: The Dark Ages Rulebook (1996)
Additional Design
- Vampire: The Dark Ages Rulebook (1996)
Additional Material
- The Book of Shadows: The Mage Players Guide (1994)
Design
- Vampire: The Masquerade Rulebook (1991)
- Book of the Kindred (1996)
- The Dark Ages Rulebook (1996)
Developer
- Vampire: The Masquerade Rulebook (1991)
- Vampire: The Masquerade's Book of the Damned
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse's Rite of Passage
- Chicago Chronicles Volume 1 (1996)
- Chicago Chronicles Volume 3 (1996)
Original Concept and Design
- Mage: The Ascension Second Edition (1995)
- Chicago Chronicles Volume 1 (1996)