So, what's happening with the WoD IPs?

[theliel]

Exceedingly political things of the CWoD -
Vampire - SplatterPunk, especially 1st, Rev & V20, is about the Young Idealists vs. Old Hypocrites. The Elders have done everything they tell you not to do, literally in the case of creating childre, and have all the power and money. You could rebel, join the Sabbat, who's elders sit back safely while they send hordes of the young to die for them. The entire system is broken and the only way to change it is to get power, but by getting power you become part of the system and lose your ability to change it. It's not just Punk it's nihilistic anarchist punk.

Acceptance? LGBT all over the place. Women's acceptance, after all once you're a vampire only the blood matters (discussions about powerful women vampires having to hide their power because otherwise jealous petty men will get their feelings hurt and lash out in Dark Ages) and of course missgendering a Tzmisci or not using their preferred pronouns is a good way to die with onlookers only commenting "had it coming for being rude." The last one being an example from the fiction.

The Technocracy, the Bad Guys (who in first edition were just going to gilghoul everyone that wasn't them on the planet to make reality shaping easier) are literally Secular Western Culture. The Modern World is literally killing creativity, the soul of the world, the spirit of humanity. Only those who reject the trappings of the modern world can save it! Hipsters, Hippies, Martial Artists, Indians, steam punk mad scientists, Crowly wannabees, neo-wickians & unitarians to save the world! Oh, and we suppose everyone else who are totally all shamans.
The Man is, well, you. And you're very lifestyle is eating at the world.

Very similar to Werewolf's Corporations are always evil. Pentax is but the worst, they're knowingly cultists, but every other corp is part of the problem. So is modern technology & farming & medicine, especially vaccines. Capitalism, especially late stage, is always terrible. Wanton destruction of society fight club style is acceptable within the premise of Werewolf. Your average moderate werewolf gives the "drying leather on the remains of an overpass" speech. The more enthusiastic call for ethnic cleansing as retribution for that which their Kin have suffered. Some even start to question whether humanity should be allowed to exist at all.
And under all that is a gigantic anti-war theme: the only reason the Garou are in this mess is because of the War of Rage in the first place. Violence begets only violence, eye for an eye leaves the world blind.

Just school and daily life in a capitalist society kills the spark of creativity that powers faeries.

The very fundamental premise of the gamelines is political. You wind up with inclusiveness & politics all over the line, from the Rom vampires attempting to protect their own to the neo-nazi Get of Fenris, but man the Politics are all UP IN THERE.

I take it as a sign of progress that people look at 90's White Wolf products and "don't see the big deal" because they were considered horribly filled with politics, practically ramming it down everyone's throat.
Now they're an acceptable level of inclusiveness.

You should anticipate White Wolf, in whatever form it takes, to be exactly as 'political' as the old White Wolf was in their day.
We know this because Martin has specifically cited it as one of his goals.

 

[Phibs]

I think that somewhat misses the point.
Naturally, most fiction, that takes place in a not entirely newly crafted, made up world will have familiar social/political themes.
That's almost not a point worth making.

But there are a couple of distinctions. Firstly, how contemporary is it?
If I look at my WOD library, it holds up. It doesn't depend on a petty political context.
Neither temporal nor geographical. It doesn't get bogged down in the irl minutiae or leaders of the day, the themes are rather broad.

Secondly, it never came across as preachy or contrived. The themes that were in the fiction were in there to paint a full picture of the characters etc, not to shove politics in your face.
This perception may, of course, vary depending on how 'inclusive' your society may be/have been at the time. To my mind, it hardly pushed the envelope (maybe some Tzimisce stuff).
Most of the things you list are predated by other fiction doing very similar stuff. It didn't even register as edgy with me as a teen for crying out loud.

Lastly, there was almost never a clear delineation between good and evil. The very point (at least within vampire and werewolf) was personal horror.
You were the/a monster. Pretty much everything was shades of grey at best. It may, of course, be, that ascension always stood apart, which I couldn't really judge.

I looked at the mage game in a YT LP and it came across as heavy-handed politically motivated writing that just happened to take place in WOD.
And that's the first time I've encountered that in WW writing. So, to my mind, comparisons with contemporary sjw moral pontificating within entertainment don't quite hold up.
The first scene where magic is applied in a bookshop sounds like it coulda been written by Baron Noir for heaven's sake. I was half expecting ... what's the name of that author Baron hates ... I can't think of it rn, to make an appearance.

If that's where they're going with this, I'll be treading carefully to be quite frank.

 

[theliel]

1st Edition Ascension is so black and white it's not even funny.
The 1st edition Convention books & entire first edition adventures are full of comic book villainy.

The aforementioned 'gilghoul everyone' is from the Progenitors book, where the NPC in charge of the program has been testing it on orphans. He plans on putting it into cola. Oh and they developed the chemtrails that are used as mind control agents that the Artificers spread around.

The Artificers have a gigantic set of extra dimensional gulags that they stow people for 'spare parts' - they can do these horrible things because they have an AI controlled chip surgically inserted into their brain where the empathy part goes making them instant sociopaths as well as subject to the AI's control.

The Syndicate not only engineer recessions to keep people in trouble, they also run the drug trade & are in bed with Pentax because $$bill y'all.

The NWO have Room 101, never simply use mind magic to make minor edits but instead perform mass mind-wipes, use TV to mind control people, kidnap, torture, and generally behave with less subtly than Will Smith's Man In Black character.

 

[Phibs]

First gen was well before my time, can't speak about it. I think 'revised' was already coming out shortly after I started.

That being said, of course, there's comic book villainy. Sometimes you need cannon fodder or a simple adversary.
I don't see how that's pertinent. There was no overarching political message being dispensed.
There were virtually no real life moral stances being taken.

It was very much escapist, so it doesn't matter what cosmic horror were put into the word.


I can only encourage you to look at some of the 'gameplay' and the writing of the actual game, if you haven't already.
For instance, dialogue:

Spoiler: spoiler

"I guess you only carry new stuff. Or whatever is politically correct at the moment."
"We're ultra-PC here."
"... the so-called New Wave [...] since when was science fiction about sex or race or gay rights? [...]"

This is full body cringe type stuff and there's a good helping of it.
If you remember similar quality social commentary from wod, we were reading very different material.

 

[theliel]

Ok. You were coming in at the very end then, and well past when WW was 'blazing new trails'.

Remember that Rocky Horror Picture Show wasn't that 'camp movie you take your highschooler to their first showing of' but something that got theaters showing it static from the moral majority back when Masquerade first came out. Still, you've got overt politics out there.
The Sons of Ether have a section about changing the name because it's sexist waaaaaaay back in the first Tradition book.
Dreamspeakers 1st edition is trash but revised is the long overdue "What, we all look the same to you Heremtic?" because it's true. The OoH & Choirsters just dumped all the brown people that weren't colonized (or Asian) into a single bucket and assume they all had the same paradigm.
Clanbook Giovanni (1st), Ghouls: Fatal Addition, original Clanbook Tszmiski
Black Furies, revised over 1st. Original Get of Fenris - where being a neo-nazi is just, y'know, a cool thing to do if you're a werewolf.
Orphan Survival Guide.

Just remember you're not going to find three lines that trigger you like the little snippet did there - you aren't someone from 1994 reading the books. They're not going to seem overtly political to you or espousing an especially progressive agenda unless you were in the various subcultures of the era or study it you're not going to get the subtle jabs or insider wink/winks.

It's not going to be a big deal that Ghouls: Fatal Addiction has an accurate portrayal of healthy vs. unhealthy BDSM & comes down on the side of '..long as we're all consenting adults.."
That's not a controversial stance anymore. When it was written BDSM practices were still disorders in the DSM that could get you committed.
It's really hard to see that as being political in the age of Fiddy shades X being a mainstream blockbuster movie. Hell I remember going to Secretary and getting thanked by the theater owner for being brave enough to see the movie because it was considered controversial.

 

[mirta000]

I deeply agree with Phibs.

I felt like vampire the masquerade bloodlines and redemption were not trying to sell me their value system. The rebels were a far cry from

- transvestite vampire that eats Trump supporters that is portrayed as a good character and you can not have a differing opinion about them no matter you choose to continue talking to them or not (while in Bloodlines you could tell everyone you wished to F themselves essentially)
- a mage refugee camp worker that is as a character YOU. That character has such deep political routes that there's nothing helping you to identify with them if you are not of the same opinion there. Creating a character (especially important for VN's) you don't want to leave them a blank slate, however you want them to be bendable to make them more relateble for a varying audience.

I realize that it is written taking into account the newer tabletop books, however I feel like it goes against many things stated in the previous games that just makes it odd and uncomfortable. Such as the necrophiliac butt fucker guy. Remember the Malkavian woman in Santa Monica that was having sex with mortals? It wasn't something NORMAL for vampires, it was seen as an atrocious oddity even, because they are not sexual creatures.

Both games came off more like someone's fantasy than anything I imagined WoD reborn to be.

 

[macd21]

I deeply agree with Phibs.

I felt like vampire the masquerade bloodlines and redemption were not trying to sell me their value system. The rebels were a far cry from

- transvestite vampire that eats Trump supporters that is portrayed as a good character and you can not have a differing opinion about them no matter you choose to continue talking to them or not (while in Bloodlines you could tell everyone you wished to F themselves essentially)
- a mage refugee camp worker that is as a character YOU. That character has such deep political routes that there's nothing helping you to identify with them if you are not of the same opinion there. Creating a character (especially important for VN's) you don't want to leave them a blank slate, however you want them to be bendable to make them more relateble for a varying audience.

It's really not. You're just seeing current topics through the WoD lense - if refugees and Trump were the issues of the day back in the nineties, you would have seen the same response.

White Wolf was an unashamedly liberal, progressive company. It was so ingrained into everything they wrote that I don't even know where to begin (thanks to theliel, who gave a great summary, but even that's just scratching the surface).

 

[Phibs]

Sorry, theliel, I just disagree. You see this as a continuation of a long-standing practice. It really doesn't look like it to me. For reasons I tried to lay out.

I've read wod stuff that practically included gay porn and didn't care. This is different. This is an author, who's been told his/her preachy writing sucks, creating an in-game critic to tell off.
This is not pushing any envelope, it's not the next stage of socially aware writing. It's just cringy and almost infantile. And I just chose one example, it's not like I looked for stuff to dislike.

I gotta say I find it a curious narrative that wod was supposedly always super woke and now the fans of the franchise who criticize some newly released fiction do so for ... reactionary reasons or something? Oh, ok.

In conclusion, looking at previous games, I'd be quite surprised if this level of nonsense were to make it into a major game release so I'm still cautiously optimistic. Meanwhile I think we can all agree that it's good to see the franchise actually see some action again. It's been too damn long.

 

[Roadie]

My thoughts on this whole thing are something like:

1. WoD has always been full of weird anarcho-leftist political leanings, but,
2. that's not really relevant to what the actual issues at hand:
   • the writing in this is just stuffed full of low-quality cringe material regardless of political views

 

[Quaterlife]

The issue is that WoD, like any TT RPG setting, could be whatever one wanted it to be. You could pick and choose what from the setting was part of your "canon" and what wasn't, in fact you often had to, the cosmology of werewolf would be difficult to reconcile with Demon, for example. WoD's lore was basically a buffet of story and setting ideas for people to use in their chronicles.

Regardless of what themes and messages White Wolf might have tried to lace into the setting it was ultimately up to the storytellers who bought the source-book how much these themes would be present in his and the players experience of the material, if at all. This is why I think TT to video game transitions just haven't worked out so well in the past. Developers assume that fans of the table-top will want to play through the content the devs create, and experience the stories the devs want to tell. But many of these players grew attached to the setting through the stories and characters they crafted with their friends, their sessions might have followed the grim, dark atmosphere of something like penny dreadful, not a punk-themed story laced with current political issues which might not even be approached in a way they agree with.

Bottom-line, by it's very nature, not everyone's experience of WoD has been the same. WoD is not a novel or film series with set-in-stone beginning-middle-end story with a set cast of characters. It was never really "supposed" to be anything other than what White-Wolf's customers had in mind when the created their chronicles, thus they should keep in mind that whatever they decide the setting "should" be may not be to the liking of many longtime fans.

 

[Eöl]

The more I think about it the more I wish they'd started with less lore heavy PoV with rational window dressing such as a low level Technocracy MiB perspective or a fairly ignorant Hunter and built from there.

 

[Reblosch]

There are some very interesting points made in this thread. In VtMB, I loved how there were some social issues portrayed in the game (sex crimes, human traficking, porn industry, dubious political ads on the radio...) while not being preachy about it. Actually it would be very hard to be preachy, since vampires are all more or less perverse creatures, with long lifespans that put them away from petty mortal debates.

But nevertheless they also have, in a caricatural way, some "human" qualities : lust, greed, sometimes courage, heroism, or they just want to annoy other people out of boredom...

I fear that the public mood nowadays will make it hard to achieve such a good a result in the next Vampire game. People are all pissed either at liberals, at conservatives or at alt-righters. Because of the social media, that did not exist in 2004, everyone is so easily offended. Regardless of your political leanings, I think every one gets the sense that it can't end well. People will not want a game that is about all the scariest parts of the human condition, which are about to get more and more real.

 

[IconOfEvi]

So saw the two Preludes released recently. If that's the direction White Wolf under Paradox is taking the franchise, I guess it's the end of the road, where I get off the train, for me. I've read the back and forth here, and in the end, I feel like a Soviet revolutionary who in the end gets purged because they're not "in" with the newthink. For you guys trying to get at Phibs, I don't think you're really seeing what he's trying to say. I feel it too. Something has fundamentally changed. I don't think it's a case of rose tinted goggles. It's subtle, or not so subtle depending on the author's lack of subtlety with their axe to grind, but the grand story doesn't seem to matter anymore.

If everything is going to be like those Preludes, then I'll just pretend Bloodlines was the last VtM game ever, and keep the happy memories. I don't want another beloved piece of my life going down a spiraling dumpster fire of disappointment and ruin.

 

[Fred F]

So, ill let you know a secret.

There is this new Paradox building, right?

Well inside, hidden in some dark place, there is a secret vault (personally i suspect its bellow Johan's desk but thats mere speculation).

Inside this vault are all secret, semi secret and super secret projects, stuff they are working on or plan to work on in the near future.

It is my life's goal to break into Paradox Vault and steal all their secrets.

Even I would get my custom bow strings from proline or some other place that has high quality strings that don't break.
I even dreamed about it once.

Love it!

 

[theliel]

So saw the two Preludes released recently. If that's the direction White Wolf under Paradox is taking the franchise, I guess it's the end of the road, where I get off the train, for me. I've read the back and forth here, and in the end, I feel like a Soviet revolutionary who in the end gets purged because they're not "in" with the newthink. For you guys trying to get at Phibs, I don't think you're really seeing what he's trying to say. I feel it too. Something has fundamentally changed. I don't think it's a case of rose tinted goggles. It's subtle, or not so subtle depending on the author's lack of subtlety with their axe to grind, but the grand story doesn't seem to matter anymore.

If everything is going to be like those Preludes, then I'll just pretend Bloodlines was the last VtM game ever, and keep the happy memories. I don't want another beloved piece of my life going down a spiraling dumpster fire of disappointment and ruin.

You have my sympathies. It always sucks when a game you love is sold to new owners that take it in a direction you don't like. Hopefully you find something you do like to take its place.

Just a quick question though, who here has been keeping up with the WW properties since Bloodlines? Not the NuWW stuff, but the stuff that White Wolf/Onyx Path have been doing since Vampire 20th in 2011.

If you want to see how "White Wolf" would handle the modern world...well..it's all the classic game developers going back to their babies and updating it. Satyros Phil Brucato for Mage (line developer from 1st Ed publishing right through just before Revised), the missing Convention books, Ethan Skemp for Werewolf 20th, etc. Onyx Path may be the company name but the people working on the books are the same as those who were there back when it was called White Wolf.

While NuWhite Wolf has expressed a desire to go in a....different direction that the Onyx Path cadre, so far eschewing long time White Wolf writers developing their stable, but even then the current 20th Anniversary lines did update the setting.

So give the 20th lines a look. If that's your bag, congrats, you've got a fresh edition.

If not, at least all the original books are available?

 

[IconOfEvi]

I got Vtm 20th and was on the KS for Lore of the Clans, it's wonderful. And yeah, all the original books are still there.

 

[Eöl]

So saw the two Preludes released recently. If that's the direction White Wolf under Paradox is taking the franchise, I guess it's the end of the road, where I get off the train, for me. I've read the back and forth here, and in the end, I feel like a Soviet revolutionary who in the end gets purged because they're not "in" with the newthink. For you guys trying to get at Phibs, I don't think you're really seeing what he's trying to say. I feel it too. Something has fundamentally changed. I don't think it's a case of rose tinted goggles. It's subtle, or not so subtle depending on the author's lack of subtlety with their axe to grind, but the grand story doesn't seem to matter anymore.

If everything is going to be like those Preludes, then I'll just pretend Bloodlines was the last VtM game ever, and keep the happy memories. I don't want another beloved piece of my life going down a spiraling dumpster fire of disappointment and ruin.

It's not exactly subtle, based on just the vampire stuff it does feel consciously like its aimed, ideologically speaking, at fans of Conservative young adult fiction that people in their early-to-mid 20's will be familiar with but a bit edgier.
I think the best way to approach things is to have an abstract attitude and a sense of humour, personally I'm curious to see how things develop as people approach their 30's and decay sets in, one way or another.
I'm not going to judge, it makes money, lots of it and the Right is on the rise, might as well make bank.
Feel free to delete this or whatever.

 

[IconOfEvi]

Well if we're going to speak, ideologically, for both of the Preludes for a second, I'm pretty worried about your political scale if you're finding romanticized right wing sentiments in the Vampire story. The Mage Prelude has of course all the subtlety of a jackhammer, but it's not like the Vamp one is exactly a master of subtlety. But moreover, it's a celebration of millennial bullshit everywhere. You can barely relate.

And I'm one of those people who's approaching their 30's and decay sets in lol. Or are you referring to the vampires?

 

[Eöl]

Well if we're going to speak, ideologically, for both of the Preludes for a second, I'm pretty worried about your political scale if you're finding romanticized right wing sentiments in the Vampire story. The Mage Prelude has of course all the subtlety of a jackhammer, but it's not like the Vamp one is exactly a master of subtlety. But moreover, it's a celebration of millennial bullshit everywhere. You can barely relate.

Well I perceived the characters as some-what sympathetic larger than life caricatures of millennials, yeah its using millennial culture but that's not the same as supporting it.

Still I liked Vampire (In a so bad its good sort of way) even with its weird millennial bashing, better than Mage which from a minds eye imagery point of view it has a pretty cool and beautiful frame (travelling into magic realms etc) but ultimately nothing in the picture but an allusion to choice and a Mary Sue whose only flaw is 'working to hard'.
Sure you can pick the 'bad' option but if you could reset time, why would you?
Which is a god-awful trend in modern fiction.

And I'm one of those people who's approaching their 30's and decay sets in lol. Or are you referring to the vampires?

Just societal trends really.

 

[theliel]

Hopefully nuww will get thier own forums up soon so all these questions can get in front of actual devs. Has anyone seen nuww respond to paradox board threads?

So far the community button on the white wolf publishing site goes nowhere.