# Renegade Game Studios Takes Over World of Darkness



## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 13, 2020)

I hope they finally get their tabletop act together. V5 needs regularly published books. This year there hasn't been anything published except a POD book. I understand if companies want to follow the D&D model of publishing. But WotC gives us a major release about 4 times a year. V5 doesn't do anything comparable yet. V5 might as well be in limbo.


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## FallenAkriel (Nov 13, 2020)

Justin was hired to speed up and clean the ttrpg schedule. I was a mess and I'm sure Paradox wasnt happy with. Just the fact that the Companion will be free and the Clans written by the WoD team directly show the total rejection of all Modiphius work on the Player's Guide.

Hope that Onyx Path will be able to keep one v5 book per year. Chicago by night & Cult of the Bloods Gods plus there supplements were of amazing quality.


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## FallenAkriel (Nov 13, 2020)

I have high hope for them


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 13, 2020)

FallenAkriel said:


> Justin was hired to speed up and clean the ttrpg schedule. I was a mess and I'm sure Paradox wasnt happy with. Just the fact that the Companion will be free and the Clans written by the WoD team directly show the total rejection of all Modiphius work on the Player's Guide.
> 
> Hope that Onyx Path will be able to keep one v5 book per year. Chicago by night & Cult of the Bloods Gods plus there supplements were of amazing quality.




I am not sure, if Modiphius' work was completely rejected. I'll see as soon as the companion is released. Also, I hope that Onyx Path gets the shaft. I don't like their publishing model. While keeping the WoD/CofD spirit alive, they basically withdrew completely from bookstores. If your products can be only found at DriveThru RPG, you have no chance of growing the audience. So, all OPP achieved was ossifying the following of WoD/CofD instead of reaching out to new gamers. Considering the number of streaming show both official and unofficial for V5, Paradox does a much better job at this. Besides, with Achilli on board, OPP isn't really required anymore.

Cults of the Blood Gods hasn't even been released yet. While the draft indeed looks amazing, I am not thrilled with all the delays. Even "Let the Streets Run Red" is not out to general public, yet. KS isn't something you want to pursue when you are planning to play in the big leagues (WotC and Paizo). 

A clean re-start for WoD/V5 would be best. Up to and including getting rid of OPP. They can continue publishing the CofD. Then maybe, they have the chance of getting their Kickstarter act together.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Nov 13, 2020)

You know I love to speculate about possible future merger and acquisitions, and watching the last actions by Renegade Games Studios, the publishers of, among others, Warldings TTRPG..... I wonder.... about if it would be possible an intercompany crossover between Pugmire and My Little Pony, for example. Is a too fool idea? If Hasbro wants to be the new Disney empire then it will want to get more IPs for projects of multimedia franchises. and today RPG publishers are a good source of relatively original ideas. And we know after D&D the main cash-cows in the TTRPG industry have been the Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness.


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## opacitizen (Nov 13, 2020)

Can they please abandon the cheap and badly 'shopped fashion magazine look full of what look like actual cosplayers (?), and get back to a more appropriate, traditional and readable and usable design aesthetic? Yeah, that would be great. (The look of v5 played a rather significant part in me skipping the 5th edition of the game entirely.)


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## univoxs (Nov 13, 2020)

The comic that is out now has been stellar. I highly recommend. It is a cut above the usual licensed comic fare. It toes a great line of introduction for new people and plenty for OVs (old vampires) to chew on. I would really look forward to a new Dark Ages line. 

From what I have seen, the new video game keeps getting pushed back sort of like Cyberpunk. Which on the one hand is good. I am a proponent of companies putting out games when they are actually finished. I jumped off the beta train years ago. This has both saved my sanity and my wallet.


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## zhivik (Nov 13, 2020)

WisdomOfWombats said:


> I am not sure, if Modiphius' work was completely rejected. I'll see as soon as the companion is released. Also, I hope that Onyx Path gets the shaft. I don't like their publishing model. While keeping the WoD/CofD spirit alive, they basically withdrew completely from bookstores. If your products can be only found at DriveThru RPG, you have no chance of growing the audience. So, all OPP achieved was ossifying the following of WoD/CofD instead of reaching out to new gamers. Considering the number of streaming show both official and unofficial for V5, Paradox does a much better job at this. Besides, with Achilli on board, OPP isn't really required anymore.
> 
> Cults of the Blood Gods hasn't even been released yet. While the draft indeed looks amazing, I am not thrilled with all the delays. Even "Let the Streets Run Red" is not out to general public, yet. KS isn't something you want to pursue when you are planning to play in the big leagues (WotC and Paizo).
> 
> A clean re-start for WoD/V5 would be best. Up to and including getting rid of OPP. They can continue publishing the CofD. Then maybe, they have the chance of getting their Kickstarter act together.



Onyx Path are doing what they can afford to. The reality of today’s tabletop RPG market is that only large publishers can afford to release print editions regularly. Everyone else needs to rely on crowdfunding campaigns or they will go broke. This issue has been brought up on Onyx Path’s forums more than once, and they have been very open about what they can afford to do.

Sure, it is not pleasant and makes getting new players difficult. However, if it wasn’t Onyx Path to maintain the World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness lines, then they would be completely gone now. CCP had practically buried White Wolf, with nothing coming out for years, and I seriously doubt Paradox would have bought the IP if it were not maintained.

So there, it’s just much more expensive to publish anything that is not PoD right now and most independent developers don’t even try. Sure, they may be wrong and some books could get enough sales. The big issue is that a publisher can swallow an unsuccessful release, but it will be the end for an independent one like Onyx Path. I don’t know what idea do you have about Onyx Path, but they don’t have a lot of permanent staff and work primarily with contractors - it is indeed that bad. As far as I am concerned, they should get a lot of praise for keeping World of Darkness a thing so long, despite all odds.

I can only hope that after the new Bloodlines game is released next year, things could get better, though the change in lead developers so shirt before release doesn’t bring a lot of hope ...


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Nov 13, 2020)

WisdomOfWombats said:


> I am not sure, if Modiphius' work was completely rejected. I'll see as soon as the companion is released. Also, I hope that Onyx Path gets the shaft. I don't like their publishing model. While keeping the WoD/CofD spirit alive, they basically withdrew completely from bookstores. If your products can be only found at DriveThru RPG, you have no chance of growing the audience. So, all OPP achieved was ossifying the following of WoD/CofD instead of reaching out to new gamers. Considering the number of streaming show both official and unofficial for V5, Paradox does a much better job at this. Besides, with Achilli on board, OPP isn't really required anymore.
> 
> Cults of the Blood Gods hasn't even been released yet. While the draft indeed looks amazing, I am not thrilled with all the delays. Even "Let the Streets Run Red" is not out to general public, yet. KS isn't something you want to pursue when you are planning to play in the big leagues (WotC and Paizo).
> 
> A clean re-start for WoD/V5 would be best. Up to and including getting rid of OPP. They can continue publishing the CofD. Then maybe, they have the chance of getting their Kickstarter act together.



Chicago by Night was in my FLGS and it is/was sold on the Modiphius web store too. They also have a copy of Geist 2e, which is CofD (and personally I feel it's an atrocious version of just how good first edition Geist was, but that's just conjecture). They have also gotten Scion 2e and Trinity Continuum books at one point. But they have always only gotten these books from backing the Kickstarters I think.

I do agree that how OPP handles getting their deluxe books out to market is bad. Every Kickstarter of theirs they push the idea that they want to get their books to retail market, but market to them seems to be Indie Press Revolution and sometimes Amazon and not regular distribution. I could be wrong, but that's how it seems.


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 13, 2020)

opacitizen said:


> Can they please abandon the cheap and badly 'shopped fashion magazine look full of what look like actual cosplayers (?), and get back to a more appropriate, traditional and readable and usable design aesthetic? Yeah, that would be great. (The look of v5 played a rather significant part in me skipping the 5th edition of the game entirely.)



And here I was looking at V5 and going: finally the artwork in the game book looks like the artwork I bring to the table


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## opacitizen (Nov 13, 2020)

WisdomOfWombats said:


> And here I was looking at V5 and going: finally the artwork in the game book looks like the artwork I bring to the table




…aaaand I've just realized that I definitely should've added that YMMV (of course.)


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## imagineGod (Nov 13, 2020)

I am not a fan of The World of Darkness but would still be grateful if someone with knowledge of the brand can explain who actually owns the Intellectual Property in its spiderweb of ownership.

Is it Onyx Path, or Paradox, or Modiphius or this new Renegade Game Studios?


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## RAdeMorris (Nov 13, 2020)

imagineGod said:


> I am not a fan of The World of Darkness but would still be grateful if someone with knowledge of the brand can explain who actually owns the Intellectual Property in its spiderweb of ownership.
> 
> Is it Onyx Path, or Paradox, or Modiphius or this new Renegade Game Studios?



Paradox Interactive owns the World of Darkness brand and all of its subbrands (e.g.: Vampire the Masquerade).


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## stadi (Nov 13, 2020)

Did maybe Modiphius send in a 2d20 manuscript for  Player's Guide instead of the expected V5 one?


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## stadi (Nov 13, 2020)

I really like the V5 art direction so I'm happy with that generally. What I don't like is the layout and that the book is not logical. Some important things are at seemingly random places. There is one thing I don't like about the art and that is the Brujah. I hope they will stop portraying them as gang members all the time. They could be so much more. Why not make them modern warrior-philosophers? I don't know how warrior-philosophers look like, but definitely not like a mexican gang.


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## Bayushi_seikuro (Nov 13, 2020)

stadi said:


> I really like the V5 art direction so I'm happy with that generally. What I don't like is the layout and that the book is not logical. Some important things are at seemingly random places. There is one thing I don't like about the art and that is the Brujah. I hope they will stop portraying them as gang members all the time. They could be so much more. Why not make them modern warrior-philosophers? I don't know how warrior-philosophers look like, but definitely not like a mexican gang.



Now, bear in mind I haven't played Vampire in quite a while, but the Brujah if I recall right were set up to be both the warrior-philosophers as well as the basic rage-filled gang members.  I think it was part of their curse, post- Carthage, but I agree - if they're only showing one and not the other, that should be fixed


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 13, 2020)

Modiphius took over the line in December 2018; there's no mention of whether that is continuing.

It is implied that they aren’t, considering that the content of the Vampire Companion book was mooted to be in Modiphius’ Vampire's Player’s Handbook which never materialized. It doesn’t appear that Modiphius is writing new material for Vampire.

Maybe Modiphius will continue to distribute? 

Justin Achilli’s experience of directing Vampire development will be valuable, although it does seem a bit disjointed to have multiple companies running different sub-lines for the WoD. Seems odd that the supplements seem to add up the Clans to 14 rather than 13 (with Banu Haqim, The Ministry, Lasombra, Hecata already added in supplements, along with Ravnos, Tzimisce and Salubri Clans in Companion along with the seven in the core).


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## stadi (Nov 13, 2020)

Bayushi_seikuro said:


> Now, bear in mind I haven't played Vampire in quite a while, but the Brujah if I recall right were set up to be both the warrior-philosophers as well as the basic rage-filled gang members.  I think it was part of their curse, post- Carthage, but I agree - if they're only showing one and not the other, that should be fixed




Yeah, I would be happy if they would also show the philosophers. Even better would be showing the rage filled rabble as something else. They could be a group of MMA fighters or wrestlers. They could be a group of mercenaries who do it for the fight and not the money. There are probably a lot of other options they could come up with.


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## Abstruse (Nov 13, 2020)

imagineGod said:


> I am not a fan of The World of Darkness but would still be grateful if someone with knowledge of the brand can explain who actually owns the Intellectual Property in its spiderweb of ownership.
> 
> Is it Onyx Path, or Paradox, or Modiphius or this new Renegade Game Studios?



So there's a bit of history going on here and before I start, there's one key thing to understand: The market for video games is at least an order of magnitude or two larger than the RPG industry. Smaller RPG companies think in the tens/hundreds of thousands. Larger ones think in the millions. Video game companies think in the _billions_.

So White Wolf was founded in 1991 and sold (or merged depending on who you ask) with video game company CCP (an Icelandic company best known for Eve Online). They began work on an ambitious World of Darkness MMO using the Eve Online model (as in players could amass political power to become Prince of the city and make laws that would govern the other players, could be overthrown, etc.) During this time, CCP produced a few World of Darkness books in-house before licensing the brands to Onyx Path Publishing for the tabletop games and By Night Studios for the LARPs. Onyx Path produced new material both for the original World of Darkness and the New World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, etc.), which they rebranded to "Chronicles of Darkness" to prevent confusion after they started creating new material for the "Old World of Darkness".

In 2014, development on the MMO ended and, in 2015, the World of Darkness IP and the "White Wolf" name were sold to Paradox Interactive (a Swedish video game developer known for strategy games like Crusader Kings, Stellaris, and Cities: Skylines). Paradox then created a new publishing company and called it White Wolf (though it had no ties to the original White Wolf other than the name and IP). A lot of bad/weird/controversial things happened that I won't go into, but it ended up with their White Wolf company causing an international incident with the country of Chechnya and threats of criminal prosecution before Paradox dissolved the company. They then placed Modiphius in charge of the World of Darkness IP for tabletop roleplaying games. They started producing new editions of the V:TM 5e sourcebooks that caused the controversy. A license was also given to Hunters Entertainment to produce a fifth edition of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Meanwhile through all this, Onyx Path Publishing and By Night Studios retained their licenses to create new products for World of Darkness including material for 5e.

And that brings us to today. With this announcement, the development of the World of Darkness tabletop roleplaying games is back in-house with Paradox Interactive, Renegade Game Studios will publish the books, and we're not sure of the status of the license deals with Modiphius, Onyx Path Publishing, Hunters Entertainment, and By Night Studios.


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## MGibster (Nov 13, 2020)

opacitizen said:


> Can they please abandon the cheap and badly 'shopped fashion magazine look full of what look like actual cosplayers (?), and get back to a more appropriate, traditional and readable and usable design aesthetic? Yeah, that would be great. (The look of v5 played a rather significant part in me skipping the 5th edition of the game entirely.)



I like V5 a lot, but that's in spite of the art not because of it.  I much prefer the artwork they were using in 1st end 2nd edition.


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 13, 2020)

stadi said:


> Why not make them modern warrior-philosophers? I don't know how warrior-philosophers look like, but definitely not like a mexican gang.



 You'll find that in the Camarilla book where they are portrayed as "Hellenes". The Chicago book also shows Critias and his circle in that light.


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## stadi (Nov 13, 2020)

WisdomOfWombats said:


> You'll find that in the Camarilla book where they are portrayed as "Hellenes". The Chicago book also shows Critias and his circle in that light.



Thanks, will have a look


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## Dire Bare (Nov 13, 2020)

I'm surprised Modiphius lost the license . . . or, I'm assuming they have, not that the situation isn't already complicated. Modiphius is a stellar game company, but perhaps they simply had too much on their plate to do justice to the World of Darkness?

Anyway, wake me up when Paradox, or one of their partners, does a new edition of Mage: The Ascension. I'll start paying more attention then!


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## steeldrac (Nov 14, 2020)

Maybe Modiphius was always meant to be something “until we solve this mess”... aren’t Conan and John Carter also owned by Paradox?


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

My feeling was that when White Wolf, as it was, was dissolved in 2018, their publishing partner, Modiphius, just felt that V5 was too much of a sales success to let it be dropped as a product. There is strong evidence that V5 was their strongest selling product for at least three quarters (based on retail figures from ICv2).

So, they decided to take on the license themselves, and made up a list of products to supplement it. However, after a couple of years, they only really delivered on re-releases of the Camarilla and Anarchs books and the Fall of London chronicle. The starter set went straight to PDF-only, and it looks like the Player’s Handbook is going to end up as the PDF-only Vampire Companion now.

I think the writing was on the wall when they let the Werewolf: The Apocalypse license pass (on to Hunters Entertainment). As a cash cow, the WoD works by having multiple games in one shared setting - where fans can collect a load of supplementary gamebooks, and the base remains interested with strategic, periodic releases. On it’s own, V5 without many supplements to support it, will only have a limited lifespan like any other game.

While Modiphius possibly lost interest because of this, and they do have lots of other games they manage, Paradox Entertainment still have lots invested in the WoD brand. One suspects, the value of the brand lies mainly in the video games, however they do need to maintain development with their tabletop games for the IP to remain recognisable to its roots. So, by licensing out the IP to smaller publishers, who can enjoy increased exposure themselves, they can keep their IP development alive and focus on the video game profits themselves.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Nov 14, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Modiphius took over the line in December 2018; there's no mention of whether that is continuing.
> 
> It is implied that they aren’t, considering that the content of the Vampire Companion book was mooted to be in Modiphius’ Vampire's Player’s Handbook which never materialized. It doesn’t appear that Modiphius is writing new material for Vampire.
> 
> ...



I see the Hecata as a new clan all its own, based on the lore of what I know of it so far, which isn't a whole lot I confess. They sound cool as hell and lots of fun to try out.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Nov 14, 2020)

Is Renegade Games taking over the entire WoD game line now or just V5?


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## BRayne (Nov 14, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> My feeling was that when White Wolf, as it was, was dissolved in 2018, their publishing partner, Modiphius, just felt that V5 was too much of a sales success to let it be dropped as a product. There is strong evidence that V5 was their strongest selling product for at least three quarters (based on retail figures from ICv2).
> 
> So, they decided to take on the license themselves, and made up a list of products to supplement it. However, after a couple of years, they only really delivered on re-releases of the Camarilla and Anarchs books and the Fall of London chronicle. The starter set went straight to PDF-only, and it looks like the Player’s Handbook is going to end up as the PDF-only Vampire Companion now.
> 
> ...




Cam and Anarch books were in house at White Wolf before they got shut down and arguably were the reason for it what with the whole Chechnya thing. Modiphius only ever did the erratas and Fall of London, both of which were pretty criticized, large amounts of the corebook errata having been taken without credit from community playtesters and Fall of London being a disaster. Plus the apparent mishandling of the Ravnos and Tzimisce in the Player's Guide


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

BRayne said:


> Cam and Anarch books were in house at White Wolf before they got shut down and arguably were the reason for it what with the whole Chechnya thing. Modiphius only ever did the erratas and Fall of London, both of which were pretty criticized, large amounts of the corebook errata having been taken without credit from community playtesters and Fall of London being a disaster. Plus the apparent mishandling of the Ravnos and Tzimisce in the Player's Guide



Nobody is arguing that the Camarilla and Anarch books were not written by White Wolf before they were dissolved. Modiphius did essentially just republish them after editing them. Errata is errata - it isn’t something that gets credited, unless it is done by a professional editor. Lots of games have forum threads where fans can cite issues. Fall of London wasn’t a disaster - not sure what you are citing here. Whatever mishandling of Ravnos/Tzimisce could have been remains entirely speculative because the Player’s Guide was never released.


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## zhivik (Nov 14, 2020)

A few more notes on events and timeline. The CCP-White Wolf merger (effectively a buyout by CCP) took place in late 2006. At that time, White Wolf had completed their classic World of Darkness lines, with the final books released in 2003, and had launched New World of Darkness in 2004. While CCP claimed the deal wouldn’t affect White Wolf’s tabletop products, what happened is that they were increasingly pulling White Wolf staff into development of a World of Darkness MMO, thus bleeding tabletop products dry. It reflected into fewer tabletop releases. In the meantime, there were growing rumours that White Wolf writers were used to write for Eve Online and adjacent products, rather than the new MMO.

After a few years, CCP had increasing trouble, as it tried to launch a first-person shooter in the Eve Online universe that didn’t work out, it had controversy with micro transactions and developers favouring certain players, which led to big financial loss. There was no news about the World of Darkness MMO, either, so many suspected something bad was going on. In the end, CCP announced massive layoffs in late 2011, a lot of them from White Wolf.

It is when Richard Thomas, creative director for White Wolf, founded Onyx Path Publishing. You should have in mind that it was a weird time, as tabletop books were still printed mostly in North America at the time (mainly in Canada), as Chinese printers were not that good yet. All this made print publishing a very expensive business, which forced Onyx Path embrace digital publishing. Also, in February 2012, Double Fine Productions, a video game studio headed by Tim Schafer, did its now historic Kickstarter campaign, which showed everyone crowdfunding was a viable way to secure funding for a game - any kind of game, as it turned out.

So that’s how it started. It was rough at first, though Onyx Path did the right thing and decided to start with 20th anniversary editions of classic World of Darkness lines. By the way, if you are looking to play these classic games, don’t look further. The 20th anniversary editions are a consolidated and cleaned-up version of the books released for Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling and Wraith, with rules revision and clarification, where necessary - I very strongly recommend these versions.

Anyway, Onyx Path became the only source of new World of Darkness products, whether classic or New World of Darkness. Things at CCP kept going poorly for White Wolf, or what was left of it, until the World of Darkness MMO was axed in 2014 and White Wolf became effectively defunct.

Then, Paradox stepped in, taking over White Wolf in 2015, which was only the IP at the time, as all staff was let go. It was Paradox that decided to rename “new World of Darkness” to “Chronicles of Darkness”, leaving it entirely to Onyx Path to develop those lines, of which they have done an admirable job, in my opinion. I still wish they weren’t making the CoD game world so crowded, though.

Meanwhile, Paradox started development of their own, fifth edition of Vampire: the Masquerade - it’s fifth because you have first, second, revised and 20th anniversary editions before. Back then, they said they would make all the major game lines compatible for cross-play, as the Chronicle of Darkness books allow, though nothing other than Masquerade books have been released since.

The big controversies came mostly from adjacent products, like adventures, rather than the core book, which is mostly lucklustre, though it does have some good ideas (I like hunger dice a lot, for instance). The biggest issue with the core book is that there is simply not a lot there regarding lore and available clans, and many argued, deservedly, in my opinion, that they could have cut on art in favour of more actual content.

Paradox decided to end in-house development after the controversies and contracted other developers like Modiphius in late 2018 or Hunters Entertainment in 2019 to produce Vampire and Werewolf books, respectively, but nothing seems to have come out of that, either. I am kind of sceptical that a new Werewolf book will arrive soon, after Ivan van Norman from Hunters Entertainment went to run Critical Role’s Darrington Press. For Paradox, getting someone like Justin Achilli is a good thing, but who knows what will happen. Hopefully, the upcoming video games in that universe will do well, which will likely boost tabletop products. I myself went into World of Darkness after playing the original Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines game back in 2003 or 2004, so it makes a difference.


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

zhivik said:


> So that’s how it started. It was rough at first, though Onyx Path did the right thing and decided to start with 20th anniversary editions of classic World of Darkness lines. By the way, if you are looking to play these classic games, don’t look further. The 20th anniversary editions are a consolidated and cleaned-up version of the books released for Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling and Wraith, with rules revision and clarification, where necessary - I very strongly recommend these versions.



It is probably worth noting that Onyx Path were already in the process, and had already started promoting the development of a 5th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade even before Paradox stepped in. Although they were pleased with the 20th Anniversary editions there were problems. Namely, the books were all very large (between 500 and 700 pages each) and, as such, difficult to market to new players of the game who could be overwhelmed by the lore. 

Personally, I also felt that the rules and systems presented in these games were only really tweaked from the original games rather than streamlined or developed in any meaningful way. Some of the systems, for me at least, carried a legacy of clunky mechanics that were never properly addressed. When Vampire 5th came about, it felt like the first time for a long time that any developer had really looked at creating a set of rules that were genuinely tied to the themes of the setting.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Nov 14, 2020)

We also have to remember the metaplot was very important but in the age of internet fandom didn't need spending lot of money to know the lore. WotC is mainly lore, blackground, fluff. Players loved the crunch, the new disciplines and some magic item, but the roleplayers who want more crunch would rather to buy D&D.

And the lore had got an indirect rival, the genre of supernatural romance, and not only Twilight saga but other titles with their own mythologies. 

Other weak point or Aquiles talon was to add too many supernatural creatures. Not only about the troubles of an "ecosystem with too many predators" but different factions fight each other and the ordinary humans never noticed nothing at all. The idea of "monsters hidden among us" was harder to keep. 

And WoD as urban fantasy is too linked with the real world, and this may cause serious controversies. I guess we need to say no example.

I guess not even they are sure about future plans. Maybe talking with Netflix about a kid-friendly version of Changeling: the Dreaming, for example.


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 14, 2020)

The original anniversary edition V20 was the last published book by CCP/White Wolf, before OPP licensed the WoD brand from CCP. The effort was headed by Justin Achilli. One of the reasons why I am confident in V5 again. Justin Achilli to me is basically THE authority on Vampire: The Masquerade.



TrippyHippy said:


> It is probably worth noting that Onyx Path were already in the process, and had already started promoting the development of a 5th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade even before Paradox stepped in. Although they were pleased with the 20th Anniversary editions there were problems. Namely, the books were all very large (between 500 and 700 pages each) and, as such, difficult to market to new players of the game who could be overwhelmed by the lore.
> 
> Personally, I also felt that the rules and systems presented in these games were only really tweaked from the original games rather than streamlined or developed in any meaningful way. Some of the systems, for me at least, carried a legacy of clunky mechanics that were never properly addressed. When Vampire 5th came about, it felt like the first time for a long time that any developer had really looked at creating a set of rules that were genuinely tied to the themes of the setting.




I remember something along the line of Onyx Path not being involved in/aware of the talks by CCP to sell the license. At the time of the OPP announcement at Gen Con about VIV (as a 4th edition of the game), the presentation seemed rather rushed. But became moot only weeks later with the sale of the IP to Paradox Interactive. We will never know what a VIV by Onyx Path would have looked like. But I suspect, it would mostly have involved cleaning up the rules in accordance with some of the work for DAV20, as well as addressing some of the more problematic issues still embedded in V20.

While I like the fluff that Onyx Path put out for the V20 line, I think they are not really the company to deliver a good and solid rules/system design. They are able to build on existing mechanics. But their own inventions like the Storypath system and the updated CofD system leave me pretty cold. The designs aren't really tight, and require far too much focus on rules to suit a "Story.."-system. V5 on the other hand is quite solid and easy to grasp. The system does a good job to vanish into the background, yet is solid enough to handle crunchy aspects like combat.

One single complaint remains the rule organization. The rules would have needed a lot tighter editing and clearer presentation. But I get that VtM is always about style.


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## MGibster (Nov 14, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> When Vampire 5th came about, it felt like the first time for a long time that any developer had really looked at creating a set of rules that were genuinely tied to the themes of the setting.



I know there were some complaints that V5's rules were too specific whereas they should have been a bit more generic. But for me, I much prefer a tight set of rules designed for a specific purpose.  I really, really like the concept of Hunger far more than I ever liked Blood Pool.


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

Stacie GmrGrl said:


> I see the Hecata as a new clan all its own, based on the lore of what I know of it so far, which isn't a whole lot I confess. They sound cool as hell and lots of fun to try out.



Yep, I’ve ordered Cult of The Blood Gods, which should be with us early next year. I’m just confused by the number of official ‘Clans’ now, which was always mooted to be 13. There has always been plenty of ‘Bloodlines’ - including Salubri - but they weren’t all considered Clans.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Nov 14, 2020)

I can agree with the above comment about how the systems that OPP have developed in house, especially the Storypath Engine, are pretty bad and much more obtuse then they need to be. It's like they wanted a more narrative system but then applied a lot of additional game mechanisms to gameify the narrative. It doesn't work for either Scion or Trinity Continuum, but it does for Dystopia Rising: Evolution surprisingly. Haven't looked at their They Came From... series of games yet that use it.


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 14, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Yep, I’ve ordered Cult of The Blood Gods, which should be with us early next year. I’m just confused by the number of official ‘Clans’ now, which was always mooted to be 13. There has always been plenty of ‘Bloodlines’ - including Salubri - but they weren’t all considered Clans.




I can see a case for the Salubri to be a clan. Even with the new bloodline system introduced in Cults of the Blood Gods, the Salubri are hard to pin down as a bloodline using that system. So turning them into a clan won't hurt, and seems plausible. In the lore of VtM they have been a full clan once. 

Other bloodlines like the Daughters of Cacophony, Kiasyd, Baali, True Brujah can comfortably fit into the new bloodline system (Clan + Loresheet). But the Salubri are kind of a separate case.


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

Stacie GmrGrl said:


> I can agree with the above comment about how the systems that OPP have developed in house, especially the Storypath Engine, are pretty bad and much more obtuse then they need to be. It's like they wanted a more narrative system but then applied a lot of additional game mechanisms to gameify the narrative. It doesn't work for either Scion or Trinity Continuum, but it does for Dystopia Rising: Evolution surprisingly. Haven't looked at their They Came From... series of games yet that use it.



I also have found the StoryPath system a bit convoluted - they’ve added in some details that comes from games like Fate or whathaveyou - although I have hopes to be able to use it sometime. This is largely because the writing and ideas in Scion, especially, are really good - its almost like a mirror image of the WoD games as a more upbeat modern fantasy setting - so the system is a bit of a barrier in a way. 

The thing about the StoryPath system is that it moves away from the looser, more freeform aspects of the original _Storyteller_ system. What I like about V5 is that it manages to tighten up these rules while simultaneously keeping and, in fact, enhancing the freeform aspects (like diceless play).


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

WisdomOfWombats said:


> I can see a case for the Salubri to be a clan. Even with the new bloodline system introduced in Cults of the Blood Gods, the Salubri are hard to pin down as a bloodline using that system. So turning them into a clan won't hurt, and seems plausible. In the lore of VtM they have been a full clan once.
> 
> Other bloodlines like the Daughters of Cacophony, Kiasyd, Baali, True Brujah can comfortably fit into the new bloodline system (Clan + Loresheet). But the Salubri are kind of a separate case.



So should we now refer to 14 Clans, or dis-include the Hecata?


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 14, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> So should we now refer to 14 Clans, or dis-include the Hecata?



That's a good question. I guess, Paradox will have to tell us. The Hecata are part of the 13. The Salubri aren't even mentioned so far anywhere, right?


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## TrippyHippy (Nov 14, 2020)

WisdomOfWombats said:


> That's a good question. I guess, Paradox will have to tell us. The Hecata are part of the 13. The Salubri aren't even mentioned so far anywhere, right?



Well, they’re going to be in the upcoming Vampire Companion. That is what left me confused. Actually, it was touch and go as to whether they were going to include the Ravnos this time round, although it looks like they are just going to remove heavy references to ‘Gypsies’ as in previous publications and include them as just ‘tricksters’.


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## WisdomOfWombats (Nov 14, 2020)

Yeah, there've been issues around the Ravnos apparently. But I guess, in the end it is manageable. The Dark Ages Libellus Sanguinis and the Ravnos Revised clanbook took steps in the right direction, but didn't finish all the way.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Nov 15, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Well, they’re going to be in the upcoming Vampire Companion. That is what left me confused. Actually, it was touch and go as to whether they were going to include the Ravnos this time round, although it looks like they are just going to remove heavy references to ‘Gypsies’ as in previous publications and include them as just ‘tricksters’.





WisdomOfWombats said:


> Yeah, there've been issues around the Ravnos apparently. But I guess, in the end it is manageable. The Dark Ages Libellus Sanguinis and the Ravnos Revised clanbook took steps in the right direction, but didn't finish all the way.




This is what I wondered too, about how they would clean it up and deal with the baggage of them being tied to the Roma peoples. Strahd and Barovia weren't the only ones with this problem to fix.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Nov 15, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> I also have found the StoryPath system a bit convoluted - they’ve added in some details that comes from games like Fate or whathaveyou - although I have hopes to be able to use it sometime. This is largely because the writing and ideas in Scion, especially, are really good - its almost like a mirror image of the WoD games as a more upbeat modern fantasy setting - so the system is a bit of a barrier in a way.
> 
> The thing about the StoryPath system is that it moves away from the looser, more freeform aspects of the original _Storyteller_ system. What I like about V5 is that it manages to tighten up these rules while simultaneously keeping and, in fact, enhancing the freeform aspects (like diceless play).



I know. V5 has a really good rules system. The changes to the basic Storyteller System are good and Hunger dice are genius. I can see Werewolf 5 using Rage dice, or Mage 5 using Quintessence/Paradox dice. 

I have never felt a disconnect with any rpg system like I have with OPP's Storypath System. They threw the entire narrative kitchen sink into the system and then applied gamey rules to every part of that; gamey rules that come off very discordant to me. I mean, they literally have a rule for Enhancement Drawbacks... I have never seen such an oxymoron in an rpg book like this before.


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## MNblockhead (Nov 16, 2020)

I'm starting a new Mage the Ascension game using the 20th Anniversary ruleset. I don't really need a new version of the game, but boy would it be nice if would do more to bring their games into the modern era of online play. The lack of support for online character sheets and assets is a big downside to playing the game. You don't need much, I doubt I'll use a battlemap, but I would like to have online charactersheets and access to online content.  I really hate using PDFs. 

I love what Fandom is doing with Cortex. It would be much easier to digest and reference MAGE materials if there was something like D&D Beyond for it. 

I'm starting to build out my campaign in World Anvil, but I gave up trying to create a charactersheet MAGE.  

I'm hoping that the soon to be released Creative Suite for Role early access will give me an easy way to build MAGE charactersheets that players can use and reference in on-line games, with very basic roll automations.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Nov 16, 2020)

If I want bluff/lore/background I don't need the need editions. Mage is my favorite WoD line, and I would like a sourcebook about the Disparate Alliance, about the new crafts appeared in the 20Ann edition. Why to buy a rehash when I have bought it in the past? I bought Progenitors and Interaction X and after reading once I didn't want read them again. The had got some "crunch", but then I would rather to spend my money with d20 Future or Stardrive.

Really I would rather a mash-up, using WotC factions in other fantasy universes, for example an alternate version of Ravenloft+Innistrad.

I love the 20Anniversary books I bought, but I don't want new rehash. When White Wolf published the revised edition of vampire then I chose to not buy D&D until 3.5 Ed arrived.


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## Ulfgeir (Nov 16, 2020)

steeldrac said:


> Maybe Modiphius was always meant to be something “until we solve this mess”... aren’t Conan and John Carter also owned by Paradox?




Paradox at least claims to own the IP for Conan. I do seem to recall a few years ago when they came out with these claims, some discussions of whether or not Conan was public domain or not. It never got resolved in court as far as I know. The situation was a bit murky like the issue with Sherlock Holmes if I can recall correctly.

No idea on whether or not they also own John Carter, or if it is Modiphius, or if it is public domain.. Modiphius has at least made games involving both IP's.

--

I like some of the rules in V5. It is the first version afaict where it is a horror that the beast will take over, and make for personal horror, instead of super-critters with fangs and claws. However, the rules do have some drawback, in that your character WILL have he beats take over, very likely to risk breaking the masquerade, and that the difficulty for feeding is absurdly high.


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## MGibster (Nov 16, 2020)

Ulfgeir said:


> However, the rules do have some drawback, in that your character WILL have he beats take over, very likely to risk breaking the masquerade, and that the difficulty for feeding is absurdly high.




Yeah.  If a character doesn't have access to a herd or hunting grounds then finding blood becomes very, very difficult.  I think the likelihood of violating the Masquerade in mundane situations is mitigated by encouraging Storytellers to avoid having PCs roll for actions whose success or failure really don't matter to the game.  When I ran my campaign, there were more than few times where I asked myself, "Why did I have them roll for that?"


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Nov 19, 2020)

For those talking about Cults of the Blood Gods, the PDF was released to backers yesterday. I am not a backer, just saw this posted to Twitter. Also, the Thursday episode of WoD News will be talking about this book and about Let the Streets Run Red.


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## BRayne (Nov 19, 2020)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> For those talking about Cults of the Blood Gods, the PDF was released to backers yesterday. I am not a backer, just saw this posted to Twitter. Also, the Thursday episode of WoD News will be talking about this book and about Let the Streets Run Red.



You can preorder it now and get the backer pdf immediately


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Dec 17, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Well, they’re going to be in the upcoming Vampire Companion. That is what left me confused. Actually, it was touch and go as to whether they were going to include the Ravnos this time round, although it looks like they are just going to remove heavy references to ‘Gypsies’ as in previous publications and include them as just ‘tricksters’.




The free Companion out now available to download and the Ravnos section never mentions Roma or Gypsy even once, so it looks like they did the smart thing and ended that association completely.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 17, 2020)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> The free Companion out now available to download and the Ravnos section never mentions Roma or Gypsy even once, so it looks like they did the smart thing and ended that association completely.



Yep. Picked up my copy too. They definitely did the smart thing regarding the Ravnos - they are just the Clan of tricksters now, akin to Loki or other archetypes of that sort. I expect quite a few people will find them fun to play.

I’d also note that while they also included the Salubri Clan - technically making 14 Clans in total - they do explain that these are so rare that it would have to be a special reason to include one in any storyline. The backstory, of course, is that the Salubri were one of the original 13 Clans, before the Tremere (a medieval group of dark wizards) usurped them and then hunted them to virtual extinction. So, officially, 13 Clans is what stays in the lore.

I could see a good Chronicle, similar in storyline to Children of Men, where a secret Salubri vampire needs to get transported somewhere for their own safety and perhaps a political agenda to undermine the Tremere.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Dec 17, 2020)

Isn't it curious? Renegade Games has got deals with Hasbro and White-Wolf, and we know WotC has been the most important IP in the TTRPG industry after D&D. Do you think Hasbro may wish WoD? This franchise is perfect for action-live productions by Entertaiment-One.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 17, 2020)

LuisCarlos17f said:


> Isn't it curious? Renegade Games has got deals with Hasbro and White-Wolf, and we know WotC has been the most important IP in the TTRPG industry after D&D. Do you think Hasbro may wish WoD? This franchise is perfect for action-live productions by Entertaiment-One.



Well considering the (unconfirmed) rumors about Hasbro wanting to sell WotC, I think the connection is more the other way. Both Hasbro and Paradox want an interested third party business to run their RPGs, while they themselves can focus on using their _brands _for more lucrative projects like boardgames and video games, respectively.

Within the RPG hobby/industry, nevertheless, Renegade Games seems to have become a giant almost overnight.


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## Ruin Explorer (Dec 22, 2020)

I was like sounds great until we got to Justin Achilli, who was directly and intentionally responsible for how terrible VtM Revised was, which was this hilariously perverse attempt to "course correct" VtM away from how it was actually played by most people, i.e. as a sort vaguely romantic gothic urban fantasy deal (which is what 95% of the inspiration for VtM was too!) into hardcore body horror and nothing else. Instead of leaning in to how people played, he pushed away hard.

I can only hope he has learned, in the intervening decades, the error of his ways. Because otherwise the next VtR is going to be similarly hilariously perverse.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 22, 2020)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I was like sounds great until we got to Justin Achilli, who was directly and intentionally responsible for how terrible VtM Revised was, which was this hilariously perverse attempt to "course correct" VtM away from how it was actually played by most people, i.e. as a sort vaguely romantic gothic urban fantasy deal (which is what 95% of the inspiration for VtM was too!) into hardcore body horror and nothing else. Instead of leaning in to how people played, he pushed away hard.
> 
> I can only hope he has learned, in the intervening decades, the error of his ways. Because otherwise the next VtR is going to be similarly hilariously perverse.



I think your history is challenged.

I played all the editions of Vampire: The Masquerade, and while Vampire Revised and V20 (both of which were developed primarily by Justin Achilli) were not my favourite editions, they both had the impact of broadening the scope of the game from the original game’s brief. That is, the game expanded more in the direction of an open urban fantasy, while the original game (the first edition - by Mark Rein-Hagen) had a much more narrow focus on personal, gothic horror. The game got hugely expanded out with supplements after the 2nd edition came out (developed mainly by Andrew Greenberg), along with a bunch of other follow-on WoD games. What Justin Achilli did, primarily, with Vampire Revised was consolidate the setting material and tweak the rules to make them more consistent and a bit more functional.

The text of pretty much every Vampire Revised book developed by Achilli says ‘do what you want’ with the material and play the game however you want. Hardly a hard push.


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## Ruin Explorer (Dec 26, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> I think your history is challenged.
> 
> I played all the editions of Vampire: The Masquerade, and while Vampire Revised and V20 (both of which were developed primarily by Justin Achilli) were not my favourite editions, they both had the impact of broadening the scope of the game from the original game’s brief. That is, the game expanded more in the direction of an open urban fantasy, while the original game (the first edition - by Mark Rein-Hagen) had a much more narrow focus on personal, gothic horror. The game got hugely expanded out with supplements after the 2nd edition came out (developed mainly by Andrew Greenberg), along with a bunch of other follow-on WoD games. What Justin Achilli did, primarily, with Vampire Revised was consolidate the setting material and tweak the rules to make them more consistent and a bit more functional.
> 
> The text of pretty much every Vampire Revised book developed by Achilli says ‘do what you want’ with the material and play the game however you want. Hardly a hard push.



Nah.

My history is accurate - I played from 1st edition too, thanks. There are a number of lore changes and even IIRC mechanical ones in VtM Revised which push towards body horror, and more importantly, Achilli was quite open and explicit about the reasoning for the changes when discussing them, and entirely clear on his dislike of both "trenchcoats and katanas" and more "Anne Rice-y" modes of play in the Revised era (as compared to body horror). It's accurate to say the rules were consolidated and broadly improved (whilst retaining some problems, unfortunately), but not accurate to suggest that was all that changed. Again, the lore changes were significant, and a push away from the way that I suspect the vast majority of people played VtM. "Do what you want" is something pretty much every non-insane designer says. The issue here is taking an existing and popular game/setting and then changing things for no reason other than to make certain popular approaches to the game less popular. It was, I admit, not the first time this had happened with a WW game, but it was still rather irritating, because it was such a high-profile line and because Achilli went on record about his reasoning for the changes (rather than people guessing at them).

It's good to hear that V20 was by Achilli because whilst I don't own it myself, I had heard it reverted some of the Revised lore changes and generally was more based on the vibe of 2nd edition rather than Revised (with better mechanics than either).


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 26, 2020)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Nah.
> 
> My history is accurate - I played from 1st edition too, thanks. There are a number of lore changes and even IIRC mechanical ones in VtM Revised which push towards body horror, and more importantly, Achilli was quite open and explicit about the reasoning for the changes when discussing them, and entirely clear on his dislike of both "trenchcoats and katanas" and more "Anne Rice-y" modes of play in the Revised era (as compared to body horror). It's accurate to say the rules were consolidated and broadly improved (whilst retaining some problems, unfortunately), but not accurate to suggest that was all that changed. Again, the lore changes were significant, and a push away from the way that I suspect the vast majority of people played VtM. "Do what you want" is something pretty much every non-insane designer says. The issue here is taking an existing and popular game/setting and then changing things for no reason other than to make certain popular approaches to the game less popular. It was, I admit, not the first time this had happened with a WW game, but it was still rather irritating, because it was such a high-profile line and because Achilli went on record about his reasoning for the changes (rather than people guessing at them).
> 
> It's good to hear that V20 was by Achilli because whilst I don't own it myself, I had heard it reverted some of the Revised lore changes and generally was more based on the vibe of 2nd edition rather than Revised (with better mechanics than either).



Your history is challenged if all you took from reading Mark Rein-Hagen’s version of the game is ‘trenchcoats and katanas’. You are making the error of assuming that this was how ‘the vast majority of people played VtM’. The term ‘trenchcoats and katanas’ was lampooning how the intent of the game was lost on certain groups from the 1st edition onwards - it is literally a parody of how the game was intended to be played. The ‘personal horror’ motif, however, was written on the cover and discussed within it. Body horror was always implicit in the game too, while the flesh crafting Tzimisce was already well established. The game incorporates all sorts of horror.

Justin Achilli, when he took over, went to some lengths to express what the was trying to do, but his job as director was to steer the game through changes - whether yourself or others appreciate it or not. If I was taking over, I’d be steering it away from 'trenchcoats and katanas' too. Your attribution to his motivations are your own perspective - not historical fact.


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## Ruin Explorer (Dec 27, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Your history is challenged if all you took from reading Mark Rein-Hagen’s version of the game is ‘trenchcoats and katanas’. You are making the error of assuming that this was how ‘the vast majority of people played VtM’. The term ‘trenchcoats and katanas’ was lampooning how the intent of the game was lost on certain groups from the 1st edition onwards - it is literally a parody of how the game was intended to be played. The ‘personal horror’ motif, however, was written on the cover and discussed within it. Body horror was always implicit in the game too, while the flesh crafting Tzimisce was already well established. The game incorporates all sorts of horror.
> 
> Justin Achilli, when he took over, went to some lengths to express what the was trying to do, but his job as director was to steer the game through changes - whether yourself or others appreciate it or not. If I was taking over, I’d be steering it away from 'trenchcoats and katanas' too. Your attribution to his motivations are your own perspective - not historical fact.




You seem confused by what "historical fact" means. You also seem strangely confused about what "literally" and "parody" mean.

Achilli was extremely clear about his motivations, and you're actually agreeing with everything I said now, rather than contradicting any of it as you did previously. All you're adding is that you think he was right to do what he did, and giving a very specific and rather shallow justification. Which is exactly the problem with Revised.

My point is pretty simple, and is "historical fact" (let's not get into how that's a oxymoron, but whatever). Justin Achilli decided to make significant changes to the lore (and possibly mechanics, I forget), of VtM, as soon as he got in charge of it, in order to "purify" the game of people "playing it the wrong way". You seem to think that sort of purification is cool, and justify it, I get it. Some people did. I was unimpressed myself. The specific groups he outlined his dislike of were people who played it as "superheroes with fangs" or "trenchcoats and katanas"-style, and people who played it as if vampires were sort of more "romance-novel" than Nosferatu. The latter of which is of course hilarious given VtM emerged from what were quasi-romance-novels, and that most of the most successful vampire stuff has sort of circled the romance novel space (especially post-VtM!).

No, "trenchcoats and katanas" was not "literally a parody". It was neither of those things (not literal, and not a parody). It was a derogatory _phrase_ some people used to sneer at an extremely common way that VtM was played, and it was very broadly used. Basically any VtM game that didn't focus almost exclusively on:

1) How much it sucked to be a vampire.

or

2) That combined with largely violence-free intrigue.

Could potentially be described as "trenchcoats and katanas" or "superheroes with fangs" (again, irony here given that could apply to a lot of popular vampire stuff in pop-culture).

Essentially it was an exclusionary move, designed to reject modes of play that, quite frankly, not only did no harm to VtM, but sold an awful lot of copies. Sure, sell it as a game of personal horror, but don't pretend that's all it is, not when you're going to bring out massive books full of combat stuff, or spend far more time and energy on vampire powers and deep lore than on how much it sucks to be a vampire (which actually gets kind of short shrift for a game supposedly about this - don't even get me started on Paths vs Humanity).

As an aside, I literally never came across an actual game of VtM, online or off, that could not be described, albeit sometimes rather unfairly as "trenchcoats and katanas", "superheroes with fangs", or "romance-novel" (or worse, basically just ERP). I played in one, which, if you maybe took like four sessions out of the dozens (admittedly they were in a row), you could have said it was just "personal horror", but that's it. This idea that "personal horror" - particularly body horror (which has little to do with and predates any real mention of the Tzmisces) - was the main mode of VtM play in the 1990s seems to me impossible to sustain. It also very clearly wasn't how the LARP was played either.

To put it another way - it seems like Justin Achilli wanted VtM to only be about the Louis of the world, but most players were playing Lestat, Nick Knight, or Blade. 

EDIT - Just realized you might be REALLY REALLY CONFUSED about trenchcoats and katanas, esp. if you weren't around in the 1990s. Do you think I'm referring to the RPG called "Katanas and Trenchcoats"?









						Katanas & Trenchcoats: Retromodern Roleplaying
					

Embrace the dream of '90s tabletop roleplaying through the darkness-fueled madness of immortals, werebeasts, car wizards, and more!




					www.kickstarter.com
				




Which IS "literally a parody", so your comment would make more sense there. If so, okay, no, I'm talking about the phrase that RPG is referring to, which dates back to the 1990s (hence it being a 1990s RPG). The phrase "trenchcoats and katanas" is a derisory one as I said, designed to denigrate people who have vampires who are too cool and too heavily armed (there is, amusing, an episode of True Blood which basically devolves into this, what with Vampire Erik having a rocket launcher whilst wearing an all-black outfit and so on).


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 27, 2020)

Ruin Explorer said:


> You seem confused by what "historical fact" means. You also seem strangely confused about what "literally" and "parody" mean.
> 
> Achilli was extremely clear about his motivations, and you're actually agreeing with everything I said now, rather than contradicting any of it as you did previously. All you're adding is that you think he was right to do what he did, and giving a very specific and rather shallow justification. Which is exactly the problem with Revised.



Then you’d better start providing quotes, because you are talking absolute garbage as far as I can see. You don’t speak for the majority of gamers playing Vampire, for sure.

What you are doing is revising history to make your own narrative. It is not factual, and no I don’t agree with you, and I doubt Justin Achilli would either. The derogatory phrases, as you insist, of ‘superheroes with fangs’ or ‘trenchcoats and katanas’ were around way before Achilli - which you can find in White Wolf magazines as much as anywhere else.

If you played the game _in this manner_, you were seen as playing the game _as a parody_ of its intent - and no, the majority of gamers did not try to play it that way.  If you did, then I can see why any utterances from Achilli would have upset you - or indeed any developer worth his/her salt. It is simply not what any of the creators of any edition of Vampire intended - merely a hiccup in the looseness of the game’s mechanical design that anybody could interpret the game as ’superheroes with fangs’ if they chose to. Regardless, the Revised and V20 versions of the game still encouraged an open inclusivity for all types of games - and were more open than previous editions, explicitly and practically in terms of support.

However, if your accusation against his stewardship of the game was that he ‘purified’ it from playing the game from playing it like ‘superheroes with fangs’ or ‘trenchcoats and katanas’, then you’d be disappointed as I am that some people were shocked to find that V5 was not built around the idea either - and its mechanics are much more clear to the intent. Either way, I don’t think this game is aimed at you. As such, I doubt Achilli or anybody else should heed your advice about how it should move forward.


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## Neonchameleon (Dec 28, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Then you’d better start providing quotes, because you are talking absolute garbage as far as I can see. You don’t speak for the majority of gamers playing Vampire, for sure.
> 
> What you are doing is revising history to make your own narrative. It is not factual, and no I don’t agree with you, and I doubt Justin Achilli would either. The derogatory phrases, as you insist, of ‘superheroes with fangs’ or ‘trenchcoats and katanas’ were around way before Achilli - which you can find in White Wolf magazines as much as anywhere else.
> 
> If you played the game _in this manner_, you were seen as playing the game _as a parody_ of its intent - and no, the majority of gamers did not try to play it that way.  If you did, then I can see why any utterances from Achilli would have upset you - or indeed any developer worth his/her salt. It is simply not what any of the creators of any edition of Vampire intended - merely a hiccup in the looseness of the game’s mechanical design that anybody could interpret the game as ’superheroes with fangs’ if they chose to. Regardless, the Revised and V20 versions of the game still encouraged an open inclusivity for all types of games - and were more open than previous editions, explicitly and practically in terms of support.



I too was around in the 90s but would not presume to speak for a majority; I only know what was going on in my circles and what the rules pointed towards.

And superheroes with fangs is what I remember the rules pointing towards. The Vampire: the Masquerade powers were (and are) straight up superpowers and blood isn't a scarce resource. The Path of Humanity's hierarchy of sins is something close to a superhero code (no killing, no theft, don't give in to anger). And the setting isn't short of supervillains. It's not a parody - it's playing the game as was actually written rather than the game that was intended and that could be forced towards.


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## humble minion (Dec 28, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> *And superheroes with fangs is what I remember the rules pointing towards*. The Vampire: the Masquerade powers were (and are) straight up superpowers and blood isn't a scarce resource. The Path of Humanity's hierarchy of sins is something close to a superhero code (no killing, no theft, don't give in to anger). And the setting isn't short of supervillains. It's not a parody - it's playing the game as was actually written rather than the game that was intended and that could be forced towards.




I'd argue it's what the _mechanics _pointed towards, while all the flavour text, background, Storyteller advice, etc etc etc painted a picture of something much slower, more subtle, and more character-focused.  But 'the game' is the sum of background and ruleset.

The Superheroes With Fangs gamestyle was (I've always thought) the result of WW making the same mistake that WotC did with approximately a million prestige classes back in 3/3.5e, or kits back in 2e - balancing mechanical advantages with roleplaying disadvantages.  Vampires have to hunt (ie, attack and violate people), vampires are lorded over by vile elders whose power they'll almost certainly never be able to rival, vampires have to scrupulously hide any trace of their existence for fear of getting crushed like bugs for Masquerade breaches, vampires are in near-constant danger of losing it and bloodily slaughtering anyone around them, vampires are subject to the most stranglingly tight addiction imaginable (and it only gets worse if you're blood bound, then you'd slavishly addicted and love your dealer with all your heart and soul even though your mind knows they're awful).

Yeah, being a vampire is the pits.  But the great majority of all this stuff depends on Storyteller enforcement.  With a Storyteller who just lets you offhandedly make Herd rolls to feed at the start of a session so you can all get to the interesting part, or plays elders dumb and/or weak, or doesn't come down on the coterie like a ton of bricks for stuff like Masquerade violations or diablerie, etc etc - you're going to end up with Superheroes With Fangs.  And hey, if that's what floats your boat, have fun with it.  But it's not how the game is written to be played, because the game is more than the mechanics, otherwise the book would be a lot thinner.

Edit: not to say that players didn't need to read the background/setting material and buy in as well.  The best and most lore-y ST in the world is going to struggle when PCs are things like toreador with maxed celerity, melee, and generation, who 'find beauty in the art of combat' (that's the usual excuse for this character type, yeah?) who's an amnesiac orphan etc etc.  Session 0 matters...


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> I too was around in the 90s but would not presume to speak for a majority; I only know what was going on in my circles and what the rules pointed towards.
> 
> And superheroes with fangs is what I remember the rules pointing towards. The Vampire: the Masquerade powers were (and are) straight up superpowers and blood isn't a scarce resource. The Path of Humanity's hierarchy of sins is something close to a superhero code (no killing, no theft, don't give in to anger). And the setting isn't short of supervillains. It's not a parody - it's playing the game as was actually written rather than the game that was intended and that could be forced towards.



Yep. It was the ongoing issue of the game through the earlier editions that the loose mechanics didn’t really enforce the gameplay described in the text - and different groups ended up interpreting it their own way.

The most recent edition - V5 - actually fixes this because the mechanics very much support the text, including the text and intent of the original game (we know this because the original creator, Mark Rein-Hagen was involved). This does, in part, explain some of the negative reaction to it and the negative reaction to Justin Achilli’s comments in previous editions, but like I say, the game wasn’t aimed at that audience. It was always written as a personal horror game about playing monsters. If you want to play 'superheroes with fangs', you’d be better off adapting Champions, Mutants & Masterminds or BESM.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Dec 28, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Yep. It was the ongoing issue of the game through the earlier editions that the loose mechanics didn’t really enforce the gameplay described in the text - and different groups ended up interpreting it their own way.




The original White Wolf games also had their own "Rule 0", if I remember correctly, so there was no wrong way to play them. All the groups I was in who played the Storyteller games usually played as a mix of all the books and never an "everyone is a vampire" or "everyone is a werewolf" game. One group even used the fan-made rules based on the Highlander movies and TV show.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> The original White Wolf games also had their own "Rule 0", if I remember correctly, so there was no wrong way to play them. All the groups I was in who played the Storyteller games usually played as a mix of all the books and never an "everyone is a vampire" or "everyone is a werewolf" game. One group even used the fan-made rules based on the Highlander movies and TV show.



The 'golden rule’ is more to do with mechanics than setting. That is, if you don’t like the rules they present, then it is ‘Rule 0’ that you can play it how you like instead. This is common in a lot of games, although it may have been novel when Vampire first came out in 1991.

Look, there is no right or wrong way to play any game however you like. It’s your game at your own table. There is a difference between saying that, however, and berating a developer for developing the game in the specific way that the text of the game presents itself as being about. The Vampire: The Masquerade game is not obliged to support a ‘superheroes with fangs’ type of play.


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## macd21 (Dec 28, 2020)

humble minion said:


> I'd argue it's what the _mechanics _pointed towards, while all the flavour text, background, Storyteller advice, etc etc etc painted a picture of something much slower, more subtle, and more character-focused.  But 'the game' is the sum of background and ruleset.



Something I’ve always found odd about the ‘Superheroes with fangs’ or ‘trench coats and katanas’ cracks: IMO both the background and ruleset pointed towards such types of play, so I tended to wonder what game critics of such a style were playing, because it wasn’t VtM.

Sure, 1st Ed seemed to be going for that. But by 2ed (and definitely by Revised), the flavour text, background etc was all about superpowered Camarilla and Sabbat battling in the streets while evil elders pulled the strings - providing the perfect boss-nemeses for your party to slice up. And then a bunch of Kung fu vampires turned up to increase the katana saturation to maximum levels.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

macd21 said:


> Something I’ve always found odd about the ‘Superheroes with fangs’ or ‘trench coats and katanas’ cracks: IMO both the background and ruleset pointed towards such types of play, so I tended to wonder what game critics of such a style were playing, because it wasn’t VtM.
> 
> Sure, 1st Ed seemed to be going for that. But by 2ed (and definitely by Revised), the flavour text, background etc was all about superpowered Camarilla and Sabbat battling in the streets while evil elders pulled the strings - providing the perfect boss-nemeses for your party to slice up. And then a bunch of Kung fu vampires turned up to increase the katana saturation to maximum levels.



Again, I’d be interested if you could quote the text where the game was illustrated as superpowered Camarilla and Sabbat battling in the streets with Kung Fu vampires. Again, I just think people are lost in interpretation.

Moreover, this argument seems to be going full circle - where the previous claim was that Justin Achilli was trying to dial this back, yet the claim now is that Vampire Revised (his first edition as developer) was taking this approach to the max?! Which one is it?

Because the ‘game critics’ as you put it were also the actual developers and writers of the game it seems.


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## macd21 (Dec 28, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Again, I’d be interested if you could quote the text where the game was illustrated as superpowered Camarilla and Sabbat battling in the streets with Kung Fu vampires. Again, I just think people are lost in interpretation.
> 
> Moreover, this argument seems to be going full circle - where the previous claim was that Justin Achilli was trying to dial this back, yet the claim is that Vampire Revised (his first edition as developer) was going this approach to the max? Which one is it?
> 
> Because the ‘game critics’ as you put it were also the actual developers and writers of the game it seems.



Sorry, but I’m not going to dig out my VtM supplements from 20 years ago to provide quotes. Though you could always just google image the covers of Nights of Prophecy or San Francisco By Night for particularly blatant examples of the phenomenon.

I have no idea what Justin Achilli said or tried to do, but if he tried to scale it back in Revised, I think he failed utterly.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

macd21 said:


> Sorry, but I’m not going to dig out my VtM supplements from 20 years ago to provide quotes. Though you could always just google image the covers of Nights of Prophecy or San Francisco By Night for particularly blatant examples of the phenomenon.
> 
> I have no idea what Justin Achilli said or tried to do, but if he tried to scale it back in Revised, I think he failed utterly.



So, the short answer is you can’t. 

San Francisco by Night was a sourcebook for Kindred of the East and both that and Nights of Prophecy were fairly late releases in any case (both in the 2000s). You’d have to cut it more that just a couple of covers to support what you claimed. I have my core books in front of me as I type, by the way, so just page references will do.


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## macd21 (Dec 28, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> So, the short answer is you can’t. San Francisco by Night was a sourcebook for Kindred of the East and both that Nights of Prophesy were fairly late releases in any case. You’d have to cut it more that just a couple of covers to support what you claimed.
> 
> I have my core books in front of me as I type, by the way.



Good for you?

So do you want to address the war between the Camarilla and the Sabbat? The swarms of shovel heads rampaging through the streets? The Kuei Jin invasion? The Assamite Civil War? I can’t be bothered getting quotes for these setting elements, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. When the background fluff and novels spend so much time detailing the battles of superpowered immortals battling in streets, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lot of people played it as superpowered immortals battling in the streets.

Not that I think 5ed is doing any better. Whatever the mechanics, the new background fluff starts with special forces and drone strikes hitting the Vampires of London and Vienna.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

macd21 said:


> Good for you?
> 
> So do you want to address the war between the Camarilla and the Sabbat? The swarms of shovel heads rampaging through the streets? The Kuei Jin invasion? The Assamite Civil War? I can’t be bothered getting quotes for these setting elements, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. When the background fluff and novels spend so much time detailing the battles of superpowered immortals battling in streets, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lot of people played it as superpowered immortals battling in the streets.
> 
> Not that I think 5ed is doing any better. Whatever the mechanics, the new background fluff starts with special forces and drone strikes hitting the Vampires of London and Vienna.



Well, if you want to shift the goal posts, sure.

The Camarilla vs Sabbat conflict was actually only made a core theme after the 2nd edition of the game had been released. The Players’ Guide to the Sabbat, which came out about 1992/3, attempted to make what had been a peripheral bogeyman group playable (as they did with all groups in the WoD), introducing the final Clans to make up the mystical 13 and introducing alternative moral ‘Paths’ to replace Humanity. The core books, however, were still based on the central notion of young ‘Anarchs’ up against the Elders of the Camarilla - so the Sabbat were still supplemental, but becoming increasingly references and detailed as an alternative (and hostile) group to the Camarilla.

Vampire: The Masquerade essentially suffered from its success in that it released a huge amount of supplements for World of Darkness games (something like 50 a year) for a range of games and spinoffs that were meant to be consistent and coherent to a combined setting, but actually weren’t. Some were good and others were not, and what was canonical or not also became confusing. By the time that White Wolf decided they wanted to do a Revised edition of all the core games, which was really done more for financial reasons, they also decided they needed to consolidate the setting details. Vampire Revised included all the 13 Clans for the first time, naturally dividing them into Sects, which immediately put the Camarilla at odds against the Sabbat and essentially made it a core theme of the game by doing so.

The Kuei-Jin were a spin-off in the form of Kindred of the East, which was part of a general drive in all the main game lines to create Eastern-based games. The Assamites (now Banu Haqim) are a Clan of historical warriors/assassins, and while there are plenty of political conflicts throughout the game, this doesn’t equate to making the game all about playing superpowered immortals fighting in the streets. The conflicts are usually political in nature.

The background fluff and novels do not spend much time about superpowered immortals battling in the streets. Like.... at all, frankly! Yes, they do have scenarios that depict physical conflict - including in 5E where The Second Inquisition is detailed as major antagonists for vampires in the 21st Century. But the tone is that of a gritty thriller, not superheroes. The mechanics in 5E make this absolutely clear. 

Indeed, one of the advantages of gaming these days, is that there are ready exemplars of what most games are about by simply watching or listening to podcasts or actual play videos. If you want to see how the game developers and writers actually intend Vampire: the Masquerade to be played, go and watch LA by Night or listen to Red Moon Roleplaying.


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## macd21 (Dec 28, 2020)

How am I shifting goal posts?

None of what you posted refutes the contention that VtM was a game about superheroes with fangs wielding katanas while wearing trench coats. Sure, the core books didn't outright focus on it. But - as you said - the Camarilla vs the Sabbat became a core theme. The fact that the Sabbat were initially supplemental is irrelevant to the impact they had on people's perception of the setting. Likewise the Kuei Jin. And while the game may have initially focused on the Anarchs vs the Elders, that didn't mean they weren't Katana wielding Anarchs wearing trench coats (though I'll grant you, it was more often katana wielding Anarchs wearing leather jackets). The 'political' conflicts in the game usually ended up with superpowered immortals battling each other in the streets (or the sewers, or rooftops, or boardrooms). 

Nights of prophecy literally has a picture of a vampire in a trenchcoat with a katana, fighting in the street. That didn't come out of nowhere. It was a reflection of what the game had become, regardless of what the writers may have initially intended. People playing it that way weren't playing some parody of VtM, they were playing the game that was depicted in the background and the fluff, and that was supported by the system.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

macd21 said:


> How am I shifting goal posts?
> 
> None of what you posted refutes the contention that VtM was a game about superheroes with fangs wielding katanas while wearing trench coats. Sure, the core books didn't outright focus on it. But - as you said - the Camarilla vs the Sabbat became a core theme. The fact that the Sabbat were initially supplemental is irrelevant to the impact they had on people's perception of the setting. Likewise the Kuei Jin. And while the game may have initially focused on the Anarchs vs the Elders, that didn't mean they weren't Katana wielding Anarchs wearing trench coats (though I'll grant you, it was more often katana wielding Anarchs wearing leather jackets). The 'political' conflicts in the game usually ended up with superpowered immortals battling each other in the streets (or the sewers, or rooftops, or boardrooms).
> 
> Nights of prophecy literally has a picture of a vampire in a trenchcoat with a katana, fighting in the street. That didn't come out of nowhere. It was a reflection of what the game had become, regardless of what the writers may have initially intended. People playing it that way weren't playing some parody of VtM, they were playing the game that was depicted in the background and the fluff, and that was supported by the system.



_Everything_ in my post refutes that contention, and you aren’t addressing the point that you cannot back up anything you say with actual quotes or examples. That is why you are shifting the posts towards discussing various conflicts in the game. The game was not written with examples of play that suggests you are playing superheroes with fangs, with katanas or otherwise _regardless_ of what conflicts existed.

Like I say, a couple of covers in late supplements after the hundreds that were published and thousands of art pieces used (not all of which were appropriate) does not establish that the _text_ of the game illustrates that the game was about playing superheroes. The fact that you chose a Kindred of the East book in order to find an picture of a katana being used is not winning your case here - it was not a typical depiction of the game, and more to do with showing ‘Eastern’ tropes - do a simple Google image search for ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ and you’ll see a better representation of the game. It was not written at all in the ‘fluff' of the game either. If you argue it was - then give quotes and examples.

In fact, the Storyteller system didn’t itself lend itself towards playing that type of game either. The dice-pool based combat was not good at simulating high octane violence - it was too slow and clunky by half.

The Camarilla vs Sabbat conflict only became ‘core' when Revised came out, because that was the first time the Sabbat were detailed in the core rules. Likewise, the Keui Jin were never core. In V5, the Camarilla vs Anarchs is now core, with the Lasombra and Tzmische now being associated with the Camarilla and Anarch groups, respectively. The Sabbat still exist in reduced numbers, but aren’t in the core of the game in any meaningful way currently, although there is a future Sabbat book mooted.


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## macd21 (Dec 28, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> _Everything_ in my post refutes that contention, and you aren’t addressing the point that you cannot back up anything you say with actual quotes or examples. That is why you are shifting the posts towards discussing various conflicts in the game. The game was not written with examples of play that suggests you are playing superheroes with fangs, with katanas or otherwise _regardless_ of what conflicts existed.
> 
> Like I say, a couple of covers in late supplements after the hundreds that were published and thousands of art pieces used (not all of which were appropriate) does not establish that the _text_ of the game illustrates that the game was about playing superheroes. The fact that you chose a Kindred of the East book in order to find an picture of a katana being used is not winning your case here - it was not a typical depiction of the game, and more to do with showing ‘Eastern’ tropes - do a simple Google image search for ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ and you’ll see a better representation of the game. It was not written at all in the ‘fluff' of the game either. If you argue it was - then give quotes and examples.
> 
> ...



I’m not providing quotes because I’m not digging out the books, not because they’re not there. I’ve provided plenty of examples, you’re just ignoring them. Nights of Prophecy isn’t a KoE book, it was a VtM book, one intended to catch players up on metaplot elements of the setting. And when I do a Google image search for VtM I get stuff like this:


Spoiler








Sure, she's wielding a machine gun instead of a katana, but that's not any better. Most of the other images I got were of trench coat (or occasionally leather jacket) wearing bad asses who look ready to cut you up.

The ST system wasn’t great, but it was better at katanas and trench costs than it was just about anything else. It certainly wasn’t well suited to a game of social intrigue and the struggle to retain one’s humanity. In fact VtM has long been the poster child for the argument 'why system matters,' because the system pushes people towards superheroes with fangs instead of what the writers initially wanted for the game.

The Camarilla vs Sabbat only became core when Revised came out, but the conflict was still there before that, and it wasn't the only conflict in the game - like I said, Anarchs vs Elders isn't any better. The Sabbat conflict became core _because people were already playing the game that way._ And it doesn't really matter whether a conflict was included in the core or not - the overall impression of the game isn't created by the core alone. And the examples I've given above are just a sample. There was the arrival of the Hunters, the epic battle that was the destruction of Ravnos, the fall of the Tremere, etc etc.

I'll grant you that this wasn't the game the designers wanted to create when they released 1ed. But it's the game people saw. When the metaplot is all about epic struggles between powerful undead superbeings, when that's what the supplements cover, and when that's what the rules promote, that's what people end up playing.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 28, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I’m not providing quotes because I’m not digging out the books, not because they’re not there. I’ve provided plenty of examples, you’re just ignoring them. Nights of Prophecy isn’t a KoE book, it was a VtM book, one intended to catch players up on metaplot elements of the setting. And when I do a Google image search for VtM I get stuff like this:
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...



The reason why you are not providing quotes is because you can’t provide any that support your contention - no other reason.

The image you found (out of one suspects were thousands), doesn’t even come from any of the books - it was an image that comes from White Wolf games, not used in V5, and was highlighted in a promotional article. She isn’t using a katana, but looks like she was modeled from Seline in Underworld. There were several other images in that article - why didn’t you source them?: Vampire: The Masquerade’s latest edition is trying to deal with sex and power in 2018

There are plenty of conflicts sourced in the game, but again, this is different to claiming that the game was about superhuman street battles - Camarilla vs Sabbat was a political conflict first and foremost, and so were all the others you cite. You are not speaking for all ‘people' when you claim you know what they ‘saw’. Your own perception is your own - and it is evidently selective. The rules do not ‘promote' playing superheroes either - they were just loose in their original development (but became much more efficacious in the most recent edition).


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## LuisCarlos17f (Dec 28, 2020)

It's curious because the future videogame don't respect the spirit of the franchise too much.


_Disclaimer: no members of the deep state were hurt by the second inquisition for the production of this trailer. (despise our best efforts and intentions, but we are working hardly to fix this soon)._

I have bought some books of WoD, mainly Mage: the Ascension, and V:tM isn't my favorite title. When I can I am buying some titles of the Spanish translations of WoD 20A by Nosolorol. And I don't mind the crunch. If I want cruch then I buy D&D (I bought some Pathfinder titles also, but the candence of translations by Devir was veeeeeeeeeeeeeery slow). I neither worry about the metaplot, but the background, the lore, the factions. I don't have to spend money when I can read lots of fandom wikis about supernatural romance titles.

V:tM was designed to be a "Falcon Crest* with fangs" (*a soap opera from the 80's) but lots of players would rather to be superhumans with humans, and if they spend their money to buy the books, then they are totally free to do what they want. And many Storytellers/Game Masters aren't ready to create complex stories about conspirances and intrigues in the court. You can't ask your Game Master to writte a plot as Game of Thrones. Even profesional authors can't with that level.

I am a collector, not a player, and my point of view is WoD can't be a Jurasic Park for gothic horror monsters, because it would be like a ecosystem with too many predators and not enough preys. Monsters can't live hidden among the humans without these to be controlled by the supernatural factions.

And 2021 society isn't 1995. It is not only about last-tech, new materials as graphene, internet, mobile apps, remote-control drones but other social changes are happening now. For example you can't play Werewolve: the Apocalypse and being totally muted about pollution in China and Russia by fault of no-Western companies. Today you ask a Chinese, a Sourth-Korean and a Japanese about how a reboot of Kindred of East should be, and their points of view woul be very different, with their own predjudices against their neighbours countries, or even against compatriots from different regions. Today a WoD storyteller would writte about children prisoners in underground secret tunnels under New York to farm blood, or worse things, because they have read in internet about.... the last conspirancy theories.

My suggestion is a fictional counterpart world where players could enjoy more creative freedom without worry about to be enough politically correct.


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## MGibster (Dec 29, 2020)

LuisCarlos17f said:


> V:tM was designed to be a "Falcon Crest* with fangs" (*a soap opera from the 80's) but lots of players would rather to be superhumans with humans, and if they spend their money to buy the books, then they are totally free to do what they want. And many Storytellers/Game Masters aren't ready to create complex stories about conspirances and intrigues in the court. You can't ask your Game Master to writte a plot as Game of Thrones. Even profesional authors can't with that level.



Admittedly, my Vampire games in the 1990s were of the trench coat and katana variety.  We were all used to playing D&D and couldn't shake that particular mentality.  


LuisCarlos17f said:


> I am a collector, not a player, and my point of view is WoD can't be a Jurasic Park for gothic horror monsters, because it would be like a ecosystem with too many predators and not enough preys. Monsters can't live hidden among the humans without these to be controlled by the supernatural factions.



This is a problem for _all_ settings with a robust supernatural ecosystem that remains hidden to mundane humans. It's just one of those things you can either accept or not.


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## MGibster (Dec 29, 2020)

With all this talk of katanas and trench coats I can't help but think you guys are missing out on something very vital.  Desert Eagles!  You were supposed to be armed with a katana and a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.  Or possibly dual wield Desert Eagles.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 29, 2020)

MGibster said:


> Admittedly, my Vampire games in the 1990s were of the trench coat and katana variety.  We were all used to playing D&D and couldn't shake that particular mentality.



That is the honest answer.


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## MGibster (Dec 29, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> That is the honest answer.



I don't feel the least bit bad admitting I wasn't ready to deal with mature subjects like abusive relationships or addiction in any meaningful sense when I was a teenager.


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## Morrus (Dec 29, 2020)

MGibster said:


> With all this talk of katanas and trench coats I can't help but think you guys are missing out on something very vital.  Desert Eagles!  You were supposed to be armed with a katana and a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.  Or possibly dual wield Desert Eagles.



Dang. That's brought back a memory. At the time, there was this weird fascination with Desert Eagles amongst some RPG players. I never understood it. I assumed it was just some of the people I knew, but it sounds like it was more widespread!


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 29, 2020)

MGibster said:


> I don't feel the least bit bad admitting I wasn't ready to deal with mature subjects like abusive relationships or addiction in any meaningful sense when I was a teenager.



Nor should you. As before, there isn’t anything wrong with playing the game how you want. The issue, as I said, with fans berating developers for actually developing the game in the way that the text of the game presents itself as. It's like ‘Damn you! This game _really is_ about personal horror!!’.


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## MGibster (Dec 29, 2020)

Morrus said:


> Dang. That's brought back a memory. At the time, there was this weird fascination with Desert Eagles amongst some RPG players. I never understood it. I assumed it was just some of the people I knew, but it sounds like it was more widespread!



There might have been statistics for it in one of the Vampire splat books but the Desert Eagle is such a ridiculous pistol that I can't help but think it could have come from the fevered mind of an RPG player.  It was also a popular firearm in a lot of action movies from the late 80s early 90s including such classics as _Hell Comes to Frogtown_ and _La Femme Nikita_. I may be using the word classic in the loosest sense. I really associate the use of the Desert Eagle with the early 1990s and gaming though.


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## MGibster (Dec 29, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Nor should you. As before, there isn’t anything wrong with playing the game how you want. The issue, as I said, with fans berating developers for actually developing the game in the way that the text of the game presents itself as. It like ‘Damn you! This game _really is_ about personal horror!!’.



I'm a big fan of V5.  I like very much that the rules encourage a certain type of game.


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## GreyLord (Dec 29, 2020)

Morrus said:


> Dang. That's brought back a memory. At the time, there was this weird fascination with Desert Eagles amongst some RPG players. I never understood it. I assumed it was just some of the people I knew, but it sounds like it was more widespread!




Max Payne!!!

Using Double Desert Eagles as you slow mo your way through various areas shooting up gangsters...

Though some liked to use other guns instead...but almost always one in each hand.


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## Ruin Explorer (Dec 31, 2020)

TrippyHippy said:


> Then you’d better start providing quotes, because you are talking absolute garbage as far as I can see. You don’t speak for the majority of gamers playing Vampire, for sure.
> 
> What you are doing is revising history to make your own narrative. It is not factual, and no I don’t agree with you, and I doubt Justin Achilli would either. The derogatory phrases, as you insist, of ‘superheroes with fangs’ or ‘trenchcoats and katanas’ were around way before Achilli - which you can find in White Wolf magazines as much as anywhere else.
> 
> ...




You're continuing to support my point after initially contradicting me, which is kind of amazing, I have to say. You keep trying to have your cake with "Achilli didn't do it!" and yet eat it with "Achilli was totally right to do it!". I dunno man, you didn't add anything to your previous post, and you demand "quotes" from a time you know perfectly well is just gone from the internet, and I'm not even sure what quotes you want, or from who.

As for "a parody of intent", that sounds a lot like I was right about you being confused re: the RPG I mentioned, and you're backpedaling, because if you'd meant that, you wouldn't have said "literally" (unless you're one of those people who uses literally to mean "metaphorically").

V5 I haven't played or bought but a lot of people seem to think it repeats the same mistakes as Revised, whilst making a whole bunch of new mistakes to boot.

This whole thing where you want it both ways though is amazing. You're claiming Revised was inclusive, but also claiming that "any developer worth their salt" should have been angry about "superheroes with fangs". As for "I don't think this game is aimed at you", that's amazing after you claiming it was "open inclusive", because you're literally saying it's exclusionary by saying that. You're just contradicting yourself directly.

And the rules absolutely supported, even encouraged "superheroes with fangs" or "katanas and trenchcoats". Humanity basically meant that acting like Nick Knight or other vampire quasi-superheroes/goody-two-shoes was absolutely the way to go - and the combat and ability rules very much made you a superhero.

This hysterical stuff where you try and argue that the Sabbat are some latter-day addition is absolutely amazing too. Dude, they're from 1993 at latest. When did Vampire 1st come out? 1991. So what, you think "TRU VAMPIRE!" is like a two-year period in the early 1990s? Come on. You're not allowed to talk about "moving goalposts" when your idea of what VtM is, is limited to a two-year period. Maybe that's not what you meant, but that claim, wow.

As for claims re: "not aimed at that audience", that's a ridiculous approach, because that's not only the audience who made it successful, but it's an audience that WW pandered to. Even in Revised, just not initially. The peak of success, financially, for WW, was the 2E era for their various games, and they pumped out huge numbers of splatbooks, many of them very mechanics-heavy and with a ton of combat stuff - including making katanas particularly good weapons, IIRC. But that pandering alone hard-disproves the notion of "not aimed at that audience". Achilli was essentially being juvenile, like one of those musicians who decides the mass appeal of his music sucks, so he's going to tell most of his audience that they suck. And it clearly worked - Revised was a lot less financially successful and less broadly popular than previous editions (I don't think was the only or even dominant factor, to be honest). But again the pandering disproves the claims re: not aimed at. This is a company who brought out the Street Fighter RPG for goodness sake - they nearly convinced Capcom to created a WtA-based Street Fighter/Vampire Saviour (i.e. Darkstalkers)-style beat 'em up at one point in the 1990s.

Also can I just say, from an entirely personal note, how extremely unpleasant it is that you're basically telling me I need to not like VtM, when my brother and I were fascinated by it from 1991, and I still remember the shock and amazement when he threw the copy he'd just bought onto my bed, and I started reading it (I was getting up at like 1pm, to be fair it was a Saturday), and we basically bought everything that came out for 2E (and a lot for 1E), and played it a ton (in a way that was both personal horror and superheroes-with-fangs, because they're not incompatible, whatever Achilli thought in like 1998). We even pre-ordered two (2!) copies of Revised Special Edition, before Achilli made his various comments. I still have one unopened on my shelf (shrink-wrap still on!) because we really didn't enjoy the changes. And I know I wasn't the only one, because I was at university, and most of the people at the RPG club (which wasn't small, 30+ people turning up a lot of the time, not always the same people) ran WoD games (I mean, it was 1998 so...) and when Revised came out, a lot of people were unhappy or unimpressed.

But honestly, as I've said a few times, V20 makes this a moot point. I've got a copy now, and it's basically 2E updated, without the Revised lore and style changes for the most part. So Achilli is forgiven.


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## Ruin Explorer (Dec 31, 2020)

LuisCarlos17f said:


> And many Storytellers/Game Masters aren't ready to create complex stories about conspirances and intrigues in the court. You can't ask your Game Master to writte a plot as Game of Thrones. Even profesional authors can't with that level.



More to the point, even GRRM can't consistently write at that level, as he's been finding out for the last decade or two.


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## Ruin Explorer (Dec 31, 2020)

MGibster said:


> I'm a big fan of V5.  I like very much that the rules encourage a certain type of game.



Sure, but the rules of VtM 2E particularly also encouraged a certain type of game, which WW then totally pandered too/exploited re: splatbooks (KotE literally couldn't exist unless "superheroes with fangs" was basically the main mode of play at that point), and that wasn't "personal horror". And rules-wise, Revised largely continued to support that too. None of 1E, 2E, Revised or V20 do a particularly good job of encouraging "personal horror"-style play (nor does the LARP, which is generally intrigue/politics/vampire peacocking-centric). It's poorly supported by splatbooks and even the storyteller advice/resource books for those editions take more of a badgering/hectoring approach to encouraging that mode of play, rather than explaining it well, or adding more rules support or the like (or modifying the rules to support it better). Maybe V5 does a better job - I've certainly seen similar reactions to it to Revised, and it seems to be somewhat unpopular, though for a variety of reasons.

To be fair this is sort of representative of an entire era of 1990s gaming, where people still didn't fully realize that the rules shape the game (indeed many people outright rejected the idea), and instead a lot of authors thought you could just demand people play a certain way and they would, even if the rules pushed in another direction. It wasn't just a WW or Revised problem, though the actual disavowing of fans was pretty wild and unusual. I think the first game I met where the author really understood how rules shaped what actually happened, like really got it, was Feng Shui, but it wasn't until well into the 2000s that the idea really blossomed.


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## TrippyHippy (Dec 31, 2020)

Ruin Explorer said:


> You're continuing to support my point after initially contradicting me, which is kind of amazing, I have to say. You keep trying to have your cake with "Achilli didn't do it!" and yet eat it with "Achilli was totally right to do it!". I dunno man, you didn't add anything to your previous post, and you demand "quotes" from a time you know perfectly well is just gone from the internet, and I'm not even sure what quotes you want, or from who.
> 
> As for "a parody of intent", that sounds a lot like I was right about you being confused re: the RPG I mentioned, and you're backpedaling, because if you'd meant that, you wouldn't have said "literally" (unless you're one of those people who uses literally to mean "metaphorically").
> 
> ...



These posts seem to get longer and longer each time, however, one relevant thing at this point is you don’t play the current version of the game. It shows. Playing Vampire as ‘superhero with fangs’ is your own business, which is clearly stated in Vampire Revised and is why it is inclusive, but it lacks the ambition that the Vampire game had for itself. That is what Justin Achilli was talking about. If you turned up to _my_ group and insisted on playing ’superhero with fangs’ when we play Vampire, I _personally_, would be less inclusive about it because it comprises the atmosphere I try to build with the narrative.

The backlash about Revised that you are citing isn’t really any different to typical edition wars of any game, but your attribution to Achilli’s motivations are your own interpretation which are not objective. You are merely reflecting on the game you imagined in your head not being supported by the game the creators set out to design - and then asserting that you were playing it the right way and the developer, or anybody else, didn’t know what he was doing. I don’t think that is particularly pleasant - because you don’t speak for the entire fanbase. Revised sales, incidentally, were more of a plateauing effect than a decline. It is actually not my favourite edition either, but that is not because it declined to let people play ’superheroes with fangs’ but because it broadened the scope of the game, to be less focussed on the gameplay of 1st and 2nd, and _more_ inclusive of being able to play it that way.  There is more imagery and capacity to play ‘superheroes with fangs' in Revised than in previous editions, and then more capacity again in V20. That is the reason why I don’t like it as much.

The point about the Sabbat, is that they were not integrated into the core rules until Vampire Revised came out too. In V1, the Sabbat was merely referenced without details. V2 came out in 1992, and again, they were only mentioned without details. Both were ‘complete’ games, in as much as you din’t need to buy anything else to play. In order to include the Sabbat in your chronicles, you had to wait till 1993 and then buy a supplemental book - which gave the ST the option of whether to include them as playable options or not. Many groups didn’t choose to make them a playable option - they are a very inhuman group - and it was only in Revised that they were fully included in the core. Again, it was a more inclusive edition.

In the most recent V5 edition of the game - of which Justin Achilli was not involved with, but was influenced by the original creator Mark Rein-Hagen - the capacity to play ‘superheroes with fangs’ is significantly reduced by the mechanics in play. Again, there is substantial flexibility within the core premise, but the purpose of the game is clear and flatly, if you did want to play 'superheroes with fangs’ you’ll probably end up being disappointed. It’s not what it is designed to do - it never was - and there are other games out there more suited for this purpose.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jan 11, 2021)

TrippyHippy said:


> The backlash about Revised that you are citing isn’t really any different to typical edition wars of any game, but your attribution to Achilli’s motivations are your own interpretation which are not objective. You are merely reflecting on the game you imagined in your head not being supported by the game the creators set out to design - and then asserting that you were playing it the right way and the developer, or anybody else, didn’t know what he was doing.



My entire point is that this is a false claim on your part.

I'm not attributing things I've "thought up" to Achilli. That's the whole point. If Revised had just, y'know, come out, without Achilli saying anything about the whys/wherefores of the design/lore changes, I'd have been like "Hmmm some of these changes are rubbish", but not felt like I was being excluded, or like they were motivated by exclusionary thinking, just that they were a bit dumb.

The reality, however, as that Achilli explained at some length, on sadly long-gone sites, what they had done with Revised, and why, and was quite open that his motivation was basically exclusionary (obviously he never used that term - it wasn't one in much use back then) towards a lot of people playing VtM. Claiming it's "imagined in my head" is just extremely rude gaslighting on your part.

Also, claiming I'm saying we were "playing it right" and everyone else was "wrong" is straightforward lying about what I've said in my post. I've not said anything of the sort. I'm saying that it was a playstyle they supported heavily in terms of 2E material published, and indeed, even in Revised, they later started supporting it again. So it was bizarre to try and exclude this both "superheroes with fangs" and more "romantic" takes on vampires - let's not forget that latter bit. I doubt V5 does the latter.


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## TrippyHippy (Jan 11, 2021)

Ruin Explorer said:


> My entire point is that this is a false claim on your part.
> 
> I'm not attributing things I've "thought up" to Achilli. That's the whole point. If Revised had just, y'know, come out, without Achilli saying anything about the whys/wherefores of the design/lore changes, I'd have been like "Hmmm some of these changes are rubbish", but not felt like I was being excluded, or like they were motivated by exclusionary thinking, just that they were a bit dumb.
> 
> ...



You still talking? 

I don’t care whether you think it’s a false claim - then onus is on you to provide evidence for your claims, not the other way round. You cannot, because you made it up in your head. 

And yes, you precisely did say that the game was supposed to be played the way which you like, and that Achilli was wrong to do whatever you assume he did. So you’re simply in denial if you start accusing others of lying. 

Either way, it doesn’t matter, because we have established that the game in its current form isn’t for you - not that you’ve even read it anyway.  

Feel free to post again in another couple of weeks or so. Are you trying to win an argument by invoking sheer boredom?


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## Ruin Explorer (Jan 11, 2021)

TrippyHippy said:


> And yes, you precisely did say that the game was supposed to be played the way which you like, and that Achilli was wrong to do whatever you assume he did.




Wow. It's kind of amazing that you say this - you're asking me to go back to 1998, find websites and forums long since deleted, and get "quotes" for them and claiming it's "made up in [my] head" unless I do, which is pretty extreme - it's very different to you simply saying "I don't remember it that way", or "I sure don't remember that happening", for example.

But you yourself can't even be bothered to quote from within this thread to support this nonsensical claim which you've repeated twice now. I didn't say the game as "supposed to be played that way" (which is a very specific claim). That's a lie you've stated at least twice now, without any kind of support. I said that was a way that the game could be played, and which was materially supported (which is unarguable, given the existence of the combat sourcebooks, I would suggest) by the developers. I guess by your own logic, what you're claiming here is "made up in your head", though, due to the lack of quotes so...


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## TrippyHippy (Jan 11, 2021)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Wow. It's kind of amazing that you say this - you're asking me to go back to 1998, find websites and forums long since deleted, and get "quotes" for them and claiming it's "made up in [my] head" unless I do, which is pretty extreme - it's very different to you simply saying "I don't remember it that way", for example.
> 
> But you yourself can't even be bothered to quote from within this thread to support this nonsensical claim which you've repeated twice now. I didn't say the game as "supposed to be played that way". That's a lie you've stated at least twice now, without any kind of support. I said that was a way that the game could be played, and which was supported (which is unarguable, given the existence of the combat sourcebooks, I would suggest). I guess by your own logic, what you're claiming here is "made up in your head", though, due to the lack of quotes so...



Well done for not leaving it a couple of weeks before your next response, but I don’t know if you can read the subtle hints: nobody cares what you think on the matter any more. It is boring.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jan 11, 2021)

TrippyHippy said:


> Well done for not leaving it a couple of weeks before your next response, but I don’t know if you can read the subtle hints: nobody cares what you think on the matter any more. It is boring.



OK? The point remains that you've made demonstrably false claims in this thread - claiming, for example, that it was never "intended" that people play it in the ways described as "superheroes with fangs" or with a "trenchcoats and katanas" bent, when the very existence of the combat sourcebooks shows it was - they push the game _extremely hard_ in that direction, and make a focus on combat much more likely. And as I've noted, stuff like Kindred of the East barely even makes sense outside of a pretty "trenchcoats and katanas" approach.

Mage was even more open about this, I note, it had the whole "Tales of Magick: Dark Adventure" sourcebook which was entirely and literally about this mode of play and how to better support it.

What I'm pointing out is that there's a distinct and odd break between 2E's approach, and Revised's approach (at least initially, when Revised hasn't been out long), and the claim I am making, but don't have direct evidence for, because it's gone, is that Justin Achilli made detailed comments clearly outlining that he wanted to go from a scenario where "superheroes with fangs "and "trenchcoats and katanas" were common part of VtM, to one where they were not. You have repeatedly agreed that this was a de facto impact of Revised, and defended it on ideological grounds, but seem to simply be claiming that unless I provide quotes, the comments were never made. Which isn't much of an argument.

One thing not mentioned yet, that to me is kind of interesting, is that at the same time, WW was putting out more adventure-oriented, less horror-oriented RPGs - Aeon/Aberrant/Adventure, and not long thereafter, Exalted. So maybe the feeling was that instead of making the WoD stuff more "adventure-oriented", as I would argue 2E very much defacto did, WW wanted to try and have a horror line and an adventure line separately. I think the decline in popularity of the WoD in Revised, and the lower popularity of the nWoD (despite VtR, frankly being pretty great - less so the nWoD Mage and Werewolf), is actually in part a result of this. My feeling is that the popularity of the 2E WoD, and the fact that it's still remembered fondly today by a lot of people was in large part down to it being a "broad church", where one group could happily be Nick Knight'ing it up, but another could be Vampire Diaries-ing it, and yet a third could be a very serious and horror-y The Hunger-but-less-sexy-type deal. The same in other games. One Werewolf game might be about tribal politics, or even politics and change in general, and another could be "LETS STAB PENTEX WITH KLAIVES WOOOO". Or one Mage game could be esoteric arguments about the nature of reality and philosophical threats and so on, but another could involve a mage using magic to ride an motorbike through a window whilst blasting away at Matrix/Terminator-style enemies with a shotgun. And Revised in general, initially at least, seemed to really try to clamp down on the adventure, and focus more on the horror (and the nWoD seemed to try and do that whilst also upping the "personal" element and moving away from ideological stuff - which is particularly evident in the nWoD Mage and Werewolf).

I'm not saying that was entirely illegitimate. I am saying it seemed rude at times, and was probably a bad idea.


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## TrippyHippy (Jan 11, 2021)

Yep, just keep trying to bore the opponent to death. If you keep saying things long enough, eh? Great tactics.


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## Morrus (Jan 11, 2021)

TrippyHippy said:


> Yep, just keep trying to bore the opponent to death. If you keep saying things long enough, eh? Great tactics.



Calm down please. If somebody’s posts aren’t interesting to you, you don’t have to read them.


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## LuisCarlos17f (Jan 11, 2021)

The TTRPGs are like the bloc-building toys, after buying the product you can create how you want, and it hasn't to be like in the cover of the box.

If I want because I am totally free to do it, I will play a mash-up, a noir-punk version of Ravenloft (with arcologies or super-skycrapper buildings) with the factions and creatures, from WoD and CoD, I liked, and even if I want I can say the rose of Gualaupe ( = a Mexican supernatural drama TV sere about miracles by Guadalupe Virgin) can hurt, or heal, supernatural creatures.

Or the storytelling system totally replaced with a homebred version, closer to d20 system, with some litle changes in the list of abilities scores.

Or the metaplot totally changed, for example adding a civil war within Technocrazy, between members of different rival powers, or "patriots vs globalists", or to add a Russian and a Chinese "cousin" for Pentex megacorporation. Or mixing Demon: the Fallen and Demon: Descent. Or mixing WoD with Aeon franchise (Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!..).

This is a TTRPG, and we are totally free to break, destroy the canon, no orthodoxy has to be keeped here.


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