Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 17, 2024, 01:17:24 PMUgh. I'm not trying to sound sexist here, but can't we make a new genre like urban fantasy that appeals to the male demographic? How can we market urban fantasy to general tabletop gamers?

I don't know. I'm not part of this "we" you're throwing around. I have some familiarity with WoD, through Exalted. Enough for me to check a thread out of curiosity and follow along.

Tenbones hit the nail on the head earlier. Somehow White Wolf hit the magic formula where you could have it both ways - you could play your Anne Rice game while simultaneously acting like you were too cool for Anne Rice.

I'm not interested in Anne Rice. I'm interested in the modern fantasy. Dresden Files, Anita Blake, that sort of thing. I know it's currently romance fodder, but it doesn't have to be. Back in the good old days there were lots of detectives and monster of the week series.

But that's just it - Dresden and Anita Blake are themselves derivative of Anne Rice. I'd say Dresden is effectively a derivative of WoD - but I'm not holding that against Butcher.

Anne Rice ignited what was a stale genre but from a gaming perspective absolutely can and does contain the elements you're talking about, if you want it.

There is a legitimate reason why WoD was such a milestone and it certainly wasn't the shit-tastic system, nor was it the heavy handed metaplot (though a lot of people at that shit up).

A cool "middle-ground" for the Monster-of-the-Week/Detective vibe was *absolutely* a thing in WoD via "Forever Knight".

Quote from: tenbones on October 17, 2024, 09:25:27 PMBut that's just it - Dresden and Anita Blake are themselves derivative of Anne Rice. I'd say Dresden is effectively a derivative of WoD - but I'm not holding that against Butcher.

Anne Rice ignited what was a stale genre but from a gaming perspective absolutely can and does contain the elements you're talking about, if you want it.

There is a legitimate reason why WoD was such a milestone and it certainly wasn't the shit-tastic system, nor was it the heavy handed metaplot (though a lot of people at that shit up).

Is there anything to indicate that Dresden was inspired by WoD?  There are plenty of other possible sources.  WoD is a small fish in a big genre.

Tenbones, All you seem to be saying here is that WoD is generic, derivative and uninspired.

Maybe I should use Gumshoe as a basis for an urban fantasy detective game?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 18, 2024, 07:18:28 AMTenbones, All you seem to be saying here is that WoD is generic, derivative and uninspired.

Maybe I should use Gumshoe as a basis for an urban fantasy detective game?

I'm not *just* saying that. I'm saying they did a GREAT job with their obvious inspirations. I'm saying that while everyone is asking "why people don't play WoD anymore?" - I'm pointing to the fact that the people that originally made WoD *left* their own inspirations behind. I'm saying that they turned their back on their own creations and what made them cool and interesting.

Mark Rein-Hagen said it himself - he was riffing on Anne Rice. There is nothing wrong with that. What people seem to be forgetting or not realizing is the ground between where we're standing now, not playing WoD and when we did play it is not very far in distance. We should be retracing those steps back and recontextualizing - whether that means simply changing the names and system, or doing an actual *good* cosmology that doesn't get in the way of what players really want. Super-hero Horror with ties to conspiracy-shit. Now mix and flavor carefully and slowly, with no half-assery.

I suspect people are so jaded with the WoD brand that any kind of whiff that reminds them of WoD is suddenly rank. I point to the derivative nature to get everyone to look at the GOOD stuff in there that's worth re-creating.

Hope that's a little more clear.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 18, 2024, 07:18:28 AMTenbones, All you seem to be saying here is that WoD is generic, derivative and uninspired.

McDonalds' food is generic and uninspired. It is also the number one fast food in the world. Oscar Meyer hot dogs are a pale imitation of genuine all beef franks, much less genuine sausage. Guess which sells more?

You say generic, but a lot of people would instead call it familiar or iconic.

Plenty of people just want to play a Superman or Wolverine expy, not invent their own unique superhero... the same holds for playing vampires or werewolves or what have you; and the closer to their idea of those critters as possible the better.

I get that you find these things boring and tiresome, but you are significantly outside the norm on that.

Quote from: tenbones on October 18, 2024, 05:34:28 PMI suspect people are so jaded with the WoD brand that any kind of whiff that reminds them of WoD is suddenly rank. I point to the derivative nature to get everyone to look at the GOOD stuff in there that's worth re-creating.

Hope that's a little more clear.

Indeed. I also think there's a zeitgeist factor involved. Subversion sells in good times, but in bad times people are looking for "comfort food."

VtM was satire and subversion of contemporary times and came out in the best of times; the Cold War was over, we were still riding the momentum of the Reagan economy, America got respect for its military back with the Gulf War, the internet was showing all sorts of potential, etc. People were inventing stresses just to pretend they had it as bad as prior generations.

In short, it was the perfect time for faux-angst and poking at a reasonably benign establishment. But times changed while the authors' belief that it was always Year Zero of the Revolution remained fixed.

When the towers fell in 2001, the audiences stopped feeling like satirizing their own society (which was under threat) and had an external threat to contend with.

WoD still had its fans, but their failure to pivot with the times (plus D&D 3e and LotR reigniting interest in more traditional heroic fantasy) curtailed much of its future growth potential (which at one point stood on the threshold of dethroning D&D) and likely had some impact on their effort to relaunch with the NWoD.

Only they completely lost the wave they had ridden with the decision for a more generic sandboxy approach.

The huge irony for me is how they basically caught lightning in a bottle again with the 20th anniversary editions and probably could have ridden that wave if they'd been self-aware enough to realize that their 90's oppressed groups had become the current establishment and the zeitgeist today, at least in my area, is more of a counter-revolution against it.

Instead they lost the plot, pretending their views were still those under oppression (instead of doing the oppressing) and pushed out mechanics to enforce their view of how the should be played.

Worth noting with that is that when we say World of Darkness, we need to acknowledge that it was really only Vampire the Masquerade that truly caught lightning in a bottle and even that was more due to horror-themed superheroes fighting conspiracies than the existential angst the creators intended.

All the other splats were merely attempts at replicating the success with a traditional monster being the protagonist and those that succeeded to greater or lesser degrees did so mostly based off things largely unconnected to the authors' original intent (ex. werewolf was basically violence porn with buckets of dice and not the nihilistic environmental angst-fest intended, Mage in my experience always appealed to zany escapes from the mundane and not the persecution of dying minority cultures), but from everything I've read all of them combined were less than VtM on its own (MtA being a distant second, WtA third, and the rest barely worth mentioning in comparison to VtM).

Anyway, the WoD's biggest issue has always been it's prima donna creators who were butthurt people weren't playing the games as they intended and kept trying to hammer that playstyle into the game with each new edition (culminating in V5 making many playstyles entirely unworkable with their mechanical changes) coupled with the lack of self-awareness that the times have changed and they are no longer the oppressed minority... their positions are now those of the elites and those who oppose those views are now oppressed.

Those same creators also decided they were frustrated authors and started introducing their Metaplot elements that did nothing but cause issues (many of the books focusing heavily on metaplot had "adventures" that amounted to the PCs standing and watching while the DevPCs do something and are told how awesome it is to witness).

Basically, the "lost their way" comes down to their losing the zeitgeist, trying to force their OneTrueWay onto their fanbase, and trying to make players into spectators of their "brilliance" in the same vein as the worst railroady frustrated author GMs.

Getting back to the brilliant parts would be figuring out the current gamer zeitgeist, present that as the beliefs and positions of the protagonists with appropriate antagonists, then layer onto that the fantastic elements until it functions as metaphor and satirism for that.

My own view with HotD is that those of faith and virtue are under assault by the legions of the damned, who control much of the apparatus of power (Satan is "King of this world" per the saying). Lots of people feel like they should be doing something, but feel too powerless and isolated to do so.

So the protagonists are those with the power and courage to act against supernatural evil who have banded together with others of like mind to fight for a better world.

The villains are supernatural monsters controlling the levers of worldly power to slake their desires through the misery of mankind. Vampires work with human traffickers to supply themselves with victims. Feral lycanthropes form violent criminal gangs to indulge their urges for violence. Covens of witches weave the power of Hell into media to raise up entertainers devoted to them and curse those spreading messages of faith and virtue. Demons encourage futurists towards transhumanism and the stripping away of the very soul of humanity and replacing it with hollow AI.

I also think, though I'm sure Box will find it trite, that since most of the humans-turned-monsters in actual myth and legend are ultimately some combination of "actually witchcraft" and "too evil to stay dead" it is pretty easy to have a common origin for most such monsters as the result of various pacts with the Devil and his demons.

After all, when you actually look at him, the literary Dracula is actually just a warlock who was too evil to stay dead. His many powers are not "vampire powers", they are sorcery learned from the Devil himself at Scholomance; the legendary school for black magic in the Carpithian mountains. Even his cheating of death via vampirism could be said to have been just another power granted by the Devil to one of his favored students and devotees.

The vampire and werewolf's bites are just curses via a particular medium and have particular counters, just as a witch's curse requires certain conditions and have particular counters.

Undeath (i.e. too evil to stay dead) can be just another power of Hell granted by the Devil giving leave to a damned soul to return to its body or enter the world as a disembodied spirit.

The Fae, depending on interpretation of the actual myths, are such wicked spirits, either demons or of the restless dead.

People of faith against the creations of The Devil is suitably iconic/mythic to match VtM's Caine among the general public. The Devil is even older, more timeless, and can adapt to the times (he loves to turn the virtuous into hypocritical sinners... making heroes of the past into today's villains).

Cain could even be the first vampire under that setup... the WoD version didn't become one from the curse of God but through bargaining with the demon Lilith for magical power.

That said, I would actually find it more interesting to have Cain long since surpassed by a succession of even more ambitiously evil beings and ultimately by the invoking of the "from nobody to nightmare" trope for some recent setting original character to be the Devil's current most favored.

For a default setting I'm envisioning the head of Blackguard; the multi-trillion dollar hedge fund megacorp with its finger in everything; as the current Dark Lord's Favored; having supplanted the prior one, Dracula, after WW2) and he would lead a council of other potent Damned who in turn seek to bring about the ruin of souls in their respective spheres of influence.

I'll admit, my main reasoning for the above is so the Big Bad can unleash evil AI Terminators and Cyborgs upon PCs funded through their trillions in managed assests.

I don't mind a Christian cosmology. It's not trite if nobody else does it. Even the WW writers and fans hate that the Christian God is real in their game but refuse to change it because of their OCD grognardism.

Chris, I totally respect that you want to build a coherent universe around that, aren't afraid to do something new and rethink assumptions. When you say I find that trite, I must protest.

I find monolithic canons dominating entire genres trite and annoying. Speaking from my experiences with the toxic WoD fandom, that design attracts religious nutjobs who hate fun and creativity. It's failed microfiction pretending to be a game. I prefer universal systems that explicitly support multiple settings and the freedom to just make shit up without worrying whether it fits into some dude's fanfic he wrote 30 years ago.

Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Unisystem All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Night's Black Agents, that sort of game is what I want. Variety is the spice of life.

I've said this loads of times. Do I have to make my own game to stress my point?

I used to enjoy the game system, playing VTM, Vampire Dark Ages, Hunters Hunted, and planning on GMing Mage The Ascension. However after DMing an evil group for a summer in AD&D 1e and running a short villains version of Marvel Superheroes I got tired of playing and GMing villains. Heck, when I played VTM all the other players ever wanted to do was to attempt to diablerize <sp?> the more powerful vampires.

I don't have any problems with an actual Christian presence in any RPG. In fact, Gygax' clerical spells in D&D were based on the miracles granted by God to the Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles in the Bible.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 19, 2024, 01:50:47 PMI've said this loads of times. Do I have to make my own game to stress my point?

Please do. I'd much rather see what you come up with rather than just continuing see you grouse about.

Quote from: HappyDaze on October 19, 2024, 04:19:41 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 19, 2024, 01:50:47 PMI've said this loads of times. Do I have to make my own game to stress my point?

Please do. I'd much rather see what you come up with rather than just continuing see you grouse about.

Thank you! Well, coincidentally I just started working on a d10+Attribute+Skill system inspired by 90s and 2000s games like Fuzion and Unisystem. I'm releasing it into public domain so that I don't have to worry about it dying off in the event that I lose interest.

Quote from: tenbones on October 17, 2024, 09:25:27 PMBut that's just it - Dresden and Anita Blake are themselves derivative of Anne Rice. I'd say Dresden is effectively a derivative of WoD - but I'm not holding that against Butcher.

Anne Rice ignited what was a stale genre but from a gaming perspective absolutely can and does contain the elements you're talking about, if you want it.

There is a legitimate reason why WoD was such a milestone and it certainly wasn't the shit-tastic system, nor was it the heavy handed metaplot (though a lot of people at that shit up).

As teenagers we bought the WoD books and then just wanted to recreate the Underworld and Blade movies with them, movies which were themselves highly derivative of WoD. I think a big part of the reason why the system never stuck for us was that it was never designed for doing "90s-Cool" wire-fu action, but we were young and didn't spot that.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 19, 2024, 12:23:20 PMMy own view with HotD is that those of faith and virtue are under assault by the legions of the damned, who control much of the apparatus of power (Satan is "King of this world" per the saying). Lots of people feel like they should be doing something, but feel too powerless and isolated to do so.

So the protagonists are those with the power and courage to act against supernatural evil who have banded together with others of like mind to fight for a better world.

Sounds like a cross between Witchhunter: The Invisible World and a Stryper album.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 19, 2024, 01:50:47 PMI don't mind a Christian cosmology. It's not trite if nobody else does it. Even the WW writers and fans hate that the Christian God is real in their game but refuse to change it because of their OCD grognardism.

It's almost inevitable in anything that wants to focus on Vampires and Werewolves. Most of the lore around those monsters is from Christian cultures, and like Chris said, in their traditional manifestations they're inextricably tied in with witchcraft and Satanism. Various attempts have been made over the years to divorce the logic of vampirism from Christianity, but they always come across to me as kind of toothless and milquetoast. Trying to explain vampirism away as a blood disorder or saying that they're somehow weak to faith of any kind, regardless of the object of that faith just cheapens the monster to me.

Besides, Satan is just such a fun villain, why would you not want to use him?