Obviously, in the Wendorf case, the youths were at least familiar with the Vampire role-playing material. The question that emerges is whether or not the material is responsible for their behavior. Clearly, the idea is preposterous. When five people commit a heinous criminal act and attribute it to fictional work which is read by hundreds of thousands of others, we have to decide whether it is the work or the individual that is to blame. The youths in the Wendorf case exhibited extreme sociopathic behavior.
Vampire constitutes neither a reason or an excuse.
Whatever sad reasons may lie behind this crime, the youths identification with Vampire is incidental to the act, not contributory. If we are to condemn every work of literature or art in Western civilization which has ever been perused by, or cited by, a criminal, we would have to condemn a great deal of our culture. The ILF believes that live role play is an important art, whether presented a light entertainment, or as a form of serious drama. Already primitive text based role play is a common phenomenon on computer networks, and primitive Virtual Reality is supported through the Internet. The ILF has assembled reference information indicating that Roleplay is an excellent educational tool.