- Pronouns
- She/Her
And then you suddenly find yourself without a group, congratulations hero.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
And then you suddenly find yourself without a group, congratulations hero.
I see your point, but at the same time it kind of plays into the simplification and the stereotypes of the of the game, not to mention the goal is kinda fucked up at best. Yet I can see WtA doesn't have a lot of fans here so I'm not going to bother defending it.
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AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
It sold a fuck ton of books because people like myself are OCD about owning EVERYTHING in a over all 'system' that we like. Like, say, Shadowrun! Or the World of Darkness! Or Pathfinder! (RIP my Wallet)
Similarly, most people I know only bought books for 1 of those lines, maybe 2. Because crossover was so incompatible that it just didn't make sense to own the books for that reason. In comparison, nWoD (while it says all of it's individual components are optional), doesn't FEEL like it's optional. It feels like when you buy the Blue Book, you're buying a case with all these cutouts for tools in it, and a screw driver. So then you look at it, and see that you're missing tools for slots, and feel compelled to Complete The Set. Which when it's just a few books, is fine. Spending $100-$300 for a set of RPG supplements is fine for most people, especially if it's a toolbox since such sets get A LOT of mileage in comparison to focused stuff. But once the collection expands to any degree... it starts to become overwhelming to your average consumer. Which means that you're then locked into people like me who feel compelled to finish the collection (like a trading card game player who's to deep to stop) and True Fans.
Which, ironically, are the people also buying the nWoD stuff from my experience...
I mean... for a comparison. I was part of the Cam (now known as the Minds Eye Society iirc, I haven't been a member for a couple of years now), for years and years. Over a decade now that I think back on it... anyway. When they sanctioned oWoD for a return, there was a massive wave of support from local players. Everyone was out to play them some Masquerade, Sabat, Apocalypse, etc. The first session? 30+ people showed up, not including storyteller staff. It was a massive success, and everyone partied the night away (so to speak). Second session? 15 - 20 people. Ok, ok, yeah, you're going to get some people who get into it and then go, "ewww, now I remember why I didn't play." also scheduling. Session 3? 10 - 15. It continued to decline until only 4 people were showing up on average, not including the ST staff. And that's not even including people who were 'play by posting'. Most of the people just realized by session 3 that really... oWoD is just a cluster fuck on so many levels. Something to be admired and appreciated, not to be immersed in.
By comparison, when the Chronicle Reboot finally hit the nWoD lines, those games consistently saw 20+ people for every game night. And players actively participating with downtime actions even if they couldn't physically make it to the game. Part of the 'fun' for me? It was a Carthian controlled city, and there were 5 of us all playing Invictus. And the Lance? The Lance were being lead by a 'Southern Preacher' type, who was siding with the Cartians! There was everything you could imagine / want and more! And, if you wanted to just play whatever and team up like some dark twisted version of the Super Friends, there was Accord!
I don't even know where I'm going with this at this point. I just feel like Paradox keeps slapping me in the face and telling me to say, "thank you sir! May I have another?!"
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I know the nWoD just never really made it in France. I've met a lot of Vampire: the Masquerade fans, some Ascension player, some Apocalypse fans. And I talked to them about the nWoD, about Requiem, and they'd look at me blankly. Many did not know those things existed. Of those who did, most saw them as inferior knock-offs that had put out of circulation the game they loved.
There are still brick-and-mortar RPG shops around but I learned quickly enough to not ask about White Wolf books there; those I asked tended to feel betrayed by White Wolf's move to digital print and to resent the line in general, combined with the fact that nWoD never sold well. Translations cut off early on. You can find the three big's cores in French, but not Changeling, and not most supplements.
This is striking because my country isn't exactly a bad RPG market. Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu is so insanely popular here that there actually French-specific supplements written by French authors for that market, like a 250 pages setting book for freaking Lyon.
How true is this in other non-English speaking countries? Did the nWoD ever manage to pierce outside the US/UK? A disproportionate failure to reach the foreign market even by dismal 00s expectations might explain why it's seen as having failed.
There are still brick-and-mortar RPG shops around but I learned quickly enough to not ask about White Wolf books there; those I asked tended to feel betrayed by White Wolf's move to digital print and to resent the line in general, combined with the fact that nWoD never sold well. Translations cut off early on. You can find the three big's cores in French, but not Changeling, and not most supplements.
This is striking because my country isn't exactly a bad RPG market. Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu is so insanely popular here that there actually French-specific supplements written by French authors for that market, like a 250 pages setting book for freaking Lyon.
How true is this in other non-English speaking countries? Did the nWoD ever manage to pierce outside the US/UK? A disproportionate failure to reach the foreign market even by dismal 00s expectations might explain why it's seen as having failed.
You're the one who brought up the politics, not me. And I remember the WoD books, especially in the later half of the 90s when I got into the OWoD. All these causes that were their supposed bread and butter were ridiculed by the writers, especially when written from most of the POV characters. The Anarchs were idiot children who either fell into the same traps as the Camarilla and Sabbat or were a chaotic mess of gangs that accomplished nothing. One of the points of Werewolves was even if they united it was too late. The Traditions were presented as a bunch of stuffy assholes that were almost as stagnate as the Technocracy they hated. Aside from taking the option of raging against the medieval-esque institutions of the Hierarchy, which tend to be pretty universally reviled across the globe, there wasn't much emphasis on any issues in Wraith. And Changeling again was more about holding onto dreams and imagination, with a focus on preserving Changelings and their society rather than trying to overthrow Western culture or even some asshole bank manager. At best there was the commoner vs noble struggle, which again, is not something unique to 90s or how its presented.
And I remember in that period, especially the late 90s and into the 00s, was a time of apathy. Everything sucked - corporations and government sucked but that's the way it's always been, the environment is fucked, and protesting is useless was just shoved down my throat. College kids didn't care about issues they just played bear pong and had orgies. Yet by me recognizing all this made me sooooooooooo superior was also the general mantra I got from pop culture throughout my adolescence. And there was this slight and brief change about fighting terrorism and being patriotic until Iraq and Afghanistan turned into long term insurgencies. And that's when I saw things change, and people started protesting more and more and issues like green energy, global warming, the criticism against banks, corporate corruption, and spying got more and more attention until it exploded into not just Occupy, but Idle No More and Black Lives Matter. Then, in the States, there's the populist movements of Bernie Sanders and Trump. Hell here's an article about incoming college Freshman being more politically engaged than in decades. So yeah, I don't see anything special about 90s political thought and activism that propels the OWoD and holding it forever back in that decade. So again, it sounds more like something you personally feel rather than some societal change.
What makes it so 90s was how the supernatural was connected to aspects of pop-culture championed by their games. Vampires for instnce, though sexy, were more on the edgy side of that spectrum. And I'm not saying Twilight ruined it, but it was actually Buffy, ironically. Whedon even said in his interviews about the show he was making fun of goths and the subculture's connections with vampires because it was not only done to death, but also because people were taking that image too seriously. That show, which I still love mind you, helped propel the whole urban fantasy genre to a more mainstream audience. And throughout the 00s I seen a lot of writers and TV shows run with vampires and werewolves and other supernatural creatures in a similar manner - from the Dresdon Files to the Vampire Diaries. When you read the OWoD books, especially the older ones, it just wreaks of that old school goth-rock vamp feel.
At the time things like Wicca and New Age spirituality were huge throughout the 90s, but even by the end of the decade a lot of that stuff was being ridiculed. Charmed, with their yuppie rom com take on magic, liberally sprinkled with Wiccan religion broke any edgy mystery on that too (Willow and Tara in BtVS didn't help at all either), which was another aspect OWoD relished in.
About the one thing 9/11 and the politics that followed effected was the X-Files level conspiracy stuff the games also thrived on. If you came up in the 90s you could almost believe the government was behind some cosmic level cover up of aliens. Then the massive fuck ups of running the War on Terror followed, and at least for many in my circle, it became impossible the numb skulls running the world were capable of hiding aliens. It's my opinion why that 9/11 truther shit was so big because society was still a little hung over from watching too much of Mulder and Scully.
Honestly, there was some political shit here and there that terribly ages the games (like the Fianna being all pro-IRA), but a lot of it deals more with the same issues our global industrialized society has been dealing with since we've become a global industrialized society. It's largely tone and aging inspirations behind aspects of the games than "Fuck da man!"
- Location
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon
As a tabletop game character himself, he brings a unique perspective.
If Threat Null feels less 90s, the fact that it was introduced in a 2013 book might have something to do with it.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
>It's just like your opinion man just stuff you're feeling
>Talks at length about personal experiences during the 90's
okay.jpg
Idk man if your argument is that the post-9/11 period didn't mark a fairly substantial change in how the US conducted itself and, more importantly, how it and the West as a whole viewed itself, and how that change wasn't a substantial break from the 90's ethos I...legit don't know what to say to you because we're coming at this from two fundamentally opposite views.
I mean I think yours is wrong but, y'know. Yaknow.
Brick walls and Dark Souls bosses.
Fwiw it's a bit silly to go "oWoD isn't really about fighting The Man tho" when most of the primary antagonists of the main lines (The Union, Elders, Pentex) are paranoid representations of tangible, traditional authority that's ruining everything for everyone ever. And most of your short-term methods of improving shit as a PC involve punching The Man in the face; while your long-term methods generally concern wresting the reins of control away from The Man/punching The Man everywhere. You raise salient points about the apathy of the period and the goth needling but that's more symptomatic slash tangential to the thematic stuff I think. The Man's keeping you down. Authority has a familiar (and punchable) face. Etc.
Yeah I know that at least.
Honestly it's sort of interesting because Threat Null is implicitly (basically explicitly really) "Western policy has created it's own monsters". America has created its own demons. We have met the enemy and he is us. Which is a much more recent thing I think? Comparatively I mean.
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Couldn't have phrased it better myself.>It's just like your opinion man just stuff you're feeling
>Talks at length about personal experiences during the 90's
okay.jpg
Idk man if your argument is that the post-9/11 period didn't mark a fairly substantial change in how the US conducted itself and, more importantly, how it and the West as a whole viewed itself, and how that change wasn't a substantial break from the 90's ethos I...legit don't know what to say to you because we're coming at this from two fundamentally opposite views.
I mean I think yours is wrong but, y'know. Yaknow.
Brick walls and Dark Souls bosses.
Fwiw it's a bit silly to go "oWoD isn't really about fighting The Man tho" when most of the primary antagonists of the main lines (The Union, Elders, Pentex) are paranoid representations of tangible, traditional authority that's ruining everything for everyone ever. And most of your short-term methods of improving shit as a PC involve "punching The Man in the face"; while your long-term methods generally concern wresting the reins of control away from The Man/punching The Man everywhere. You raise salient points about the apathy of the period and the goth needling but that's more symptomatic/tangential to the political/philosophical stuff I think. The Man's keeping you down. Authority has a familiar (and punchable) face. Etc.
Kool story bro
If you're denying that the Francis Fukuyama "End of History" thing started in the 90s and came to an abrupt, explosive end on September 11, 2001, that's a fairly ludicrous claim but I'd like to see you try to support it. If you're denying that a lot of the oWoD is thematically tied to the End of History that's even harder to support.
Like, the idea of Technocratic victory being some kind of least common denominator stasis is built on the whole "End of History" idea. You're going to have generic western consumerism forever. That's what people thought was going to be the world. History is over, we're going to have a safe boring happy future for all eternity.
My argument boils down to two things. One, that the OWoD feeling very 90s is not just because of political changes that happened after 9/11. And two, that people have not become apathetic drones since, thus leading to the downfall of the OWoD.
In detail I'm saying that a large part of why they feel so 90s is because WW was really successful at channeling aspects of 90s pop culture, but the double edged sword of that was they didn't age well as the 90s came to a close. These things were changing regardless if 9/11 happened or not. 9/11 did bring a big change, and this effected all aspects of American culture and the world, but this was not the tipping point that ended interest in the game lines. Also "punching the Man in the face" never truly went away, and those feelings in fact built even higher than they were in the 90s as the 00s went on, and intensified even more in this decade. Ultimately what did in the OWoD, aside from aging material, was RPG sales were declining in general and they had spent all the material they really had for each of the games. Hell, they already regurgitated the same books several times over. It was done and they decided to end the line for a total reboot. I should have said this from the beginning, it was economics and changing technology that is vastly more to blame.
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- Location
- Italy
Here in Italy the nWoD had the Mortals-corebook, several bluebook supplements (something like five or six), the main three and the Changeling core translated, along two supplements for Werewolf and Mage and several for Vampire.
I don't know if it's because of market at time, but I know that the company that had the rights to the italian WoD (new and old) stopped printing WW books after a merger and a refocus on M:TG in 2008, when they made RPGs in general a rather secondary focus.
- Location
- England
Elricsson's pic is kind of hilarious, isn't it?
He's wearing a gauntlet.
Like, a super fancy ornate one, but it's still a gauntlet.
That's actually the picture of Dracula in V20.
Yes, Martin did model for it, but it's based on him rather than an actual picture of him.
All of those chapter openings are various people who were heavily involved in Masquerade fandom or behind the scenes at the time; I think Rose Bailey is one of them, too.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- England
No, that isn't Rose. That's a LARPer who helped organize the Grand Masquerade. I met her at a GenCon one time, and she still had the hair.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Right.
She also modeled for Flowers of Hell if I remember correctly?
Ritterin Sophia
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- A den of iniquity.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Since we're on the subject of World of Darkness v. Chronicles of Darkness, 5433632 Internet 568 (2015) how do people feel about the two Hunter lines in comparison to one another? Like I remember before my hard drive died and I lost 20GB of oWoD books Reckoning was actually one of the least interesting book series (right after Dreaming) with very forgettable Hunters with pretty bland theme of being chosen ones, whereas Vigil had very distinct and interesting Hunter organizations with the theme of regular people overcoming otherworldly monstrosities. Am I the only one who felt this way?
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AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
Nope, that was basically how I felt. It is, in fact, why Vigil is one of my favorite lines even with its problems. Because at a fundamental level, it's about regular people deciding that enough is enough and taking the fight to the monsters the lurk in the shadows. And not because some mystical force / being chose them. But because they personally made the choice to take up arms and protect their fellow man.
- Location
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon
Unless they're in the Lucifuge or Les Mysteres, of course.
In defense of Reckoning, it also had the theme of ordinary people choosing to rise up against the things that go bump. They got a helping hand from the Messengers, certainly, but the books made a point of emphasizing that your character was some random schmuck before they got the message, and some random schmuck with a couple weak tricks afterwards. And they had to choose to do something in response to the supernatural, strike back or offer help or demand answers or whatever, because the ones that didn't got smacked with the nerfbat for their failure.
I mean, I like the way Vigil handled it better, too, but it's not like Reckoning wasn't trying to do the same thing.
Ritterin Sophia
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- A den of iniquity.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, yeah, that was kind of the point of CoD when it was NWoD, to reshape it into something a bit less dated and to do things better. I think what makes Reckoning look so poor is that unlike Requiem, Forsaken, and Awakening which were mechanically far superior but lacking in a meaningful plot of any kind and thus overshadowed by Masquerade, Apocalypse, and Ascension; Vigil is the only Chronicles of Darkness book line that does have a more interesting plot (as bare bones as it is) than it's World of Darkness counterpart and is unique in the regard that it succeeded in that goal of going back and did do things better. That having been said at least it's not one of the Changeling books.
On another tangent can someone explain Demon: The Descent to me? I was kind of put off by the summary and I kind of want to get a (hopefully) better one before I invest time in reading those books.
It's a Spy Game made by people who don't have a fucking clue what a Spy Games is.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You're claiming that Changeling: The Dreaming has a better/more interesting plot than Changeling: The Lost?
Grunt
Well, sorry Sword-Princess!
- Location
- Austria
For those of you interested in it, David Hill has released a giant load of spoilers for Changeling the Lost 2E
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well. The Contracts are certainly more powerful, which I think in theory is a good thing? And possibly in practice, since that was something that has been commented on before.
Pretty much all of the Contracts are just rewritten/cheaped/somewhat powered up 1e Contracts, which is interesting, though does mean I won't be getting that many new ideas for how to translate anything there into 1e.
Edit: Wait, what? Really? How the hell would Riddle-Kith be three...oh, you can do it to someone else. I guess that makes an interesting change, I guess.
Biggest thing is the Seeming-specific bonuses.
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AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
*shrug* Having 'Hunting' be 'in your blood' or 'a tradition passed father to son' or 'because it turn's out that my great grandfather was the wolf man, so now I shall turn my wicked blood against the darkness' are all especially valid things for Hunter. But the baseline 'template' as it were, is literally just a mortal. You only get magic powers or super tech or something like that if you're special. Most hunters? They're just five people with guns who want to make sure that the spider demons that keep pulling children into the sewers are killed once and for all. They're a pair of brothers out to make sure that no one has to loose family members to things that go bump in the night They're three kids who discovered that beneath the old Town Hall, there's a mass grave and want to find out what's been killing people and stop it once and for all.Unless they're in the Lucifuge or Les Mysteres, of course.
They're just people. Even though H:tR tried to pull that off too to an extent, the fact that every 'Hunter' got magic powers of any kind just undercuts the general 'theme' of 'you were just a random schmuck', because you obviously WEREN'T a random schmuck. You are the CHOSEN of
It's a game about Spies. If spies had magic powers that let them casually warp reality ("I throw this burger wrapper on the ground, the president is assassinated before he can sign bill X.").
In Demon, you were once an Angle, one of the servants of the God Machine. You were sent to earth to do something. Then, for some reason, you rebelled and / or questioned your purpose. The God Machine cut it's connection with you, and now you're on the run, trying to bring it's plans to a grinding halt while simultaneously dodging its active servants. Think Cold War Spy Games with a dose of Reality Terrorists. So... oWoD Mage if everyone with magic was a deserter from the Technocracy