Quote from: Corolinth on September 19, 2024, 03:12:56 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 02:12:34 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 19, 2024, 01:33:55 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 09:59:24 AMDF is a survivor from the good old days, not representative of anything being released nowadays. Most of the writers from the 90s and 2000s don't write anything anymore. It's frustrating.

To be fair... the 90's was THIRTY years ago. i.e. many of those authors not writing much anymore are in their 60's or even 70's and 80s now. Priorities change as you get older, especially if you've been successful enough earlier to be able to now live comfortably off savings and investments.

Sure, but nobody's come along to replace them with a new generation of writers. Urban fantasy has been completely taken over by romance. Pure romance where the conflict is "will the heroine fuck the werewolf hunk, the selkie stud, the leprechaun prince, or the dragon shifter?" Other genres and conflicts like action, mystery, etc. have all faded into irrelevance.

I don't know how this happened.

Yes, you do. Right from the start, World of Darkness attracted a lot of sex-starved gen x women who were into hot vampire and werewolf studs. The infatuation with urban fantasy romance goes at least back to the 80s (predating WoD by several years).

As grrrl powa~ became all the rage in the late aughts and early teens, vampire erotica became ascendant. Then Twilight came out, and I'm willing to bet men petty much checked out of urban fantasy.

If you think that Urban Fantasy is only for women anymore, then you should read some Monster Hunter International stories by Larry Correia. There is a bunch of Urban Fantasy out there, it's just not woke so it doesn't get mentioned a lot.

Anybody want to make new urban fantasy games? Wanna share any pitches?

Like, I'm brainstorming a spiritual successor to hunter the vigil where you can join one of multiple organizations that study and/or fight the paranormal. You can play antichrist candidates, cyborgs, genemods, slayers, etc. There's conspiracies like the templars, new world order, rosicrucians, roswell grays, etc. Cryptids, aliens, angels and demons... it's a giant love letter to the paranormal investigations genre as a whole.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 06:10:59 PMAnybody want to make new urban fantasy games? Wanna share any pitches?

Like, I'm brainstorming a spiritual successor to hunter the vigil where you can join one of multiple organizations that study and/or fight the paranormal. You can play antichrist candidates, cyborgs, genemods, slayers, etc. There's conspiracies like the templars, new world order, rosicrucians, roswell grays, etc. Cryptids, aliens, angels and demons... it's a giant love letter to the paranormal investigations genre as a whole.

I'll take suggestions for mine, but I'm pretty rooted in going with Roman Catholicism as the underlying supernatural metaphysics (albeit stretched at the edges so things like vampires and werewolves can be things... fae too; though they like to appear as aliens when they abduct people these days).

There's enough anti-Christian material in the mainstream versions of the genre if that's what you're looking for. Plenty of Gnostic BS too. If I wanted to continue that trend I'd just make supplements for the Storyteller's Vault and have a guaranteed customer base.

One of the organizations I'm looking at having will be The Order of Saint Joseph; a seemingly innocuous title unless one knows that one of Saint Joseph's titles is Terror of Demons... and exorcists will tell you that calling upon Saint Joseph is second only to the name of Jesus in casting out demons).

But there will also be secular hunters like Task Force Ultraviolet; the US Government's program to investigate and exploit aspects of the supernatural (i.e. the things invisible to the public); and The Paradigm Group (founded by a billionaire innovator seeking "The Truth" about what he sees as the true frontier of human knowledge).

There's also various Cryptozoology, Ghost Hunter, and Conspiracy Theory groups out there, but most PC groups will likely get their start due to an inciting incident (or divine Providence depending on how you look at it) where a town or city is being plagued by evil and the PCs are in the right place at the right time to fight it.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 19, 2024, 07:46:37 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 06:10:59 PMAnybody want to make new urban fantasy games? Wanna share any pitches?

Like, I'm brainstorming a spiritual successor to hunter the vigil where you can join one of multiple organizations that study and/or fight the paranormal. You can play antichrist candidates, cyborgs, genemods, slayers, etc. There's conspiracies like the templars, new world order, rosicrucians, roswell grays, etc. Cryptids, aliens, angels and demons... it's a giant love letter to the paranormal investigations genre as a whole.

I'll take suggestions for mine, but I'm pretty rooted in going with Roman Catholicism as the underlying supernatural metaphysics (albeit stretched at the edges so things like vampires and werewolves can be things... fae too; though they like to appear as aliens when they abduct people these days).

There's enough anti-Christian material in the mainstream versions of the genre if that's what you're looking for. Plenty of Gnostic BS too. If I wanted to continue that trend I'd just make supplements for the Storyteller's Vault and have a guaranteed customer base.

One of the organizations I'm looking at having will be The Order of Saint Joseph; a seemingly innocuous title unless one knows that one of Saint Joseph's titles is Terror of Demons... and exorcists will tell you that calling upon Saint Joseph is second only to the name of Jesus in casting out demons).

But there will also be secular hunters like Task Force Ultraviolet; the US Government's program to investigate and exploit aspects of the supernatural (i.e. the things invisible to the public); and The Paradigm Group (founded by a billionaire innovator seeking "The Truth" about what he sees as the true frontier of human knowledge).

There's also various Cryptozoology, Ghost Hunter, and Conspiracy Theory groups out there, but most PC groups will likely get their start due to an inciting incident (or divine Providence depending on how you look at it) where a town or city is being plagued by evil and the PCs are in the right place at the right time to fight it.

I have absolutely nothing against that. If you want a Christian cosmology, then great!

I'm not into anti-Christian stuff either.

I use a hybrid approach where stuff like Jesus and angels are 100% real. You could play an angel or a member of the Jesus bloodline who uses their powers to fight crime or whatever. At the same time, I'd have various pagan deities be real: you can even play as a mythic demigod if you want to. Dragon shifters, reincarnating immortals, highlanders, whatever. I wholeheartedly embrace the diversity of the genre.

There's no games currently on the market that allow all that, so I wanted to be the first.

Quote from: Brad on September 18, 2024, 09:36:06 PM

Quote from: Omega on September 18, 2024, 02:18:41 PMAeon/Trinity

I remember seeing Aeon in the gaming store and thinking how badass it would be to play. That lasted a couple of months before it magically disappeared, changed its named, then fell off the radar completely. Funny how popular WW was for a few years (they had a fucking stable in WWF) before just almost becoming completely nonexistent.

WW also had a short lived Vampire TV series that was actually not bad. Unfortunately its lead actor died.
The Werewolf PSX game never saw light. I had the poster advertising it.

WW near the late 90s was busy like 95% of all other publishers bleeding themselves out on trying to ride the CCG biz. There were also internal squabbles going on.

The Problem with Aeon/Trinity was that it told the players. "Hey? All your heroes from Aberrant? Oh they turned into monsters and killed millions." and ramping up the conspiracy theory aspect put a damper on some folks interest.

Interesting Psionics + biopunk setting with some sci-fi space travel tossed in. But it failed to deliver.
 

If you could make your own urban fantasy game, without being chained by any prior continuity, then what would you write? It's as good a time as any to try

Quote from: jeff37923 on September 19, 2024, 05:59:21 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on September 19, 2024, 03:12:56 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 02:12:34 PMSure, but nobody's come along to replace them with a new generation of writers. Urban fantasy has been completely taken over by romance. Pure romance where the conflict is "will the heroine fuck the werewolf hunk, the selkie stud, the leprechaun prince, or the dragon shifter?" Other genres and conflicts like action, mystery, etc. have all faded into irrelevance.

I don't know how this happened.

Yes, you do. Right from the start, World of Darkness attracted a lot of sex-starved gen x women who were into hot vampire and werewolf studs. The infatuation with urban fantasy romance goes at least back to the 80s (predating WoD by several years).

As grrrl powa~ became all the rage in the late aughts and early teens, vampire erotica became ascendant. Then Twilight came out, and I'm willing to bet men petty much checked out of urban fantasy.

If you think that Urban Fantasy is only for women anymore, then you should read some Monster Hunter International stories by Larry Correia. There is a bunch of Urban Fantasy out there, it's just not woke so it doesn't get mentioned a lot.

I'm not particularly interested in urban fantasy. I'm just expressing my skepticism that someone who is wouldn't know how vampire and werewolf romance became so prevalent. For that to be true, you'd have to not know any women between the ages of 30 and 60.

Quote from: Corolinth on September 19, 2024, 09:00:40 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on September 19, 2024, 05:59:21 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on September 19, 2024, 03:12:56 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 02:12:34 PMSure, but nobody's come along to replace them with a new generation of writers. Urban fantasy has been completely taken over by romance. Pure romance where the conflict is "will the heroine fuck the werewolf hunk, the selkie stud, the leprechaun prince, or the dragon shifter?" Other genres and conflicts like action, mystery, etc. have all faded into irrelevance.

I don't know how this happened.

Yes, you do. Right from the start, World of Darkness attracted a lot of sex-starved gen x women who were into hot vampire and werewolf studs. The infatuation with urban fantasy romance goes at least back to the 80s (predating WoD by several years).

As grrrl powa~ became all the rage in the late aughts and early teens, vampire erotica became ascendant. Then Twilight came out, and I'm willing to bet men petty much checked out of urban fantasy.

If you think that Urban Fantasy is only for women anymore, then you should read some Monster Hunter International stories by Larry Correia. There is a bunch of Urban Fantasy out there, it's just not woke so it doesn't get mentioned a lot.

I'm not particularly interested in urban fantasy. I'm just expressing my skepticism that someone who is wouldn't know how vampire and werewolf romance became so prevalent. For that to be true, you'd have to not know any women between the ages of 30 and 60.

I know that. I just can't understand how it got so popular and displaced everything else. It's hard as hell to find something that isn't romance and the world building always leaves something to be desired.

I'm sick of it. I want decent urban fantasy. New urban fantasy. It does exist, but it's rare and hard to find.

Like, there's one about a triceratops plushie trying to solve a murder mystery in imaginary friend land. Sometimes I think authors try too hard to be weird in order to stand out, but it's something, I guess?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 20, 2024, 07:18:20 AMI'm sick of it. I want decent urban fantasy. New urban fantasy. It does exist, but it's rare and hard to find.

Not that hard. Go here. Read the blog. Buy urban fantasy books.

MonsterHunterNation.com

Anyway, seriously, does anyone want to play (or make) new urban fantasy games? It's an easy genre to write for.

I made a list of some existing games before: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1umoHUYUskl-oXdXM-pg1D_k8tYu7XysQiobjP4mk5l8/pub

If you could play (or make) a new game, then what would like to see in it?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 03:27:14 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 19, 2024, 02:38:36 PMI'd play old Vampire, if the people were right. But not any of that new 5e shit.

Why play that IP at all? It has so much idiosyncratic baggage and unplayable rules. Is this a Gen X nostalgia thing?

Eh? We made VtM our game. We played it our way (and always as Sabbat). We ignored most of the splat books. And after playing it for so long, we'd smoothed out the kinks in the rules.

So assuming that I could get players with a similar attitude, why wouldn't I play it? That's like saying why would I bother to play WFRP 1e? Because we had classic games, it's really that simple.

Sure, nostalgia comes into it. But I don't know anyone that doesn't have nostalgic feelings from a certain point in their RPGing careers, if you will.

As far as I can tell, even in that substantial list of games you've made. I still have-not seen anything that can match VtM in terms of style and substance (not talking about the V 5e wank of course).

Your second point about making an urban fantasy game. I have been, and now that I've finished Terminus and had it published, I can get back to it. I thought V5 was so bad, it actually inspired me to write my own game. I wanted to make vampires horrific and with a Lovecraftian origin. It will contain no angst stuff or politically correct krud like 5e tried to implement.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 20, 2024, 12:38:04 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 19, 2024, 03:27:14 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on September 19, 2024, 02:38:36 PMI'd play old Vampire, if the people were right. But not any of that new 5e shit.

Why play that IP at all? It has so much idiosyncratic baggage and unplayable rules. Is this a Gen X nostalgia thing?

Eh? We made VtM our game. We played it our way (and always as Sabbat). We ignored most of the splat books. And after playing it for so long, we'd smoothed out the kinks in the rules.

So assuming that I could get players with a similar attitude, why wouldn't I play it? That's like saying why would I bother to play WFRP 1e? Because we had classic games, it's really that simple.

Sure, nostalgia comes into it. But I don't know anyone that doesn't have nostalgic feelings from a certain point in their RPGing careers, if you will.

As far as I can tell, even in that substantial list of games you've made. I still have-not seen anything that can match VtM in terms of style and substance (not talking about the V 5e wank of course).

Your second point about making an urban fantasy game. I have been, and now that I've finished Terminus and had it published, I can get back to it. I thought V5 was so bad, it actually inspired me to write my own game. I wanted to make vampires horrific and with a Lovecraftian origin. It will contain no angst stuff or politically correct krud like 5e tried to implement.

I think WitchCraft and Everlasting have style and substance, more than any other I found, but they've been dead for decades unfortunately. The owner of Everlasting died years ago and the owner of WitchCraft has health problems. Unfortunately, nothing written since the Great Recession has been any good. No idea why.

If you're ignoring most of the rules and setting anyway, then you might as well use a system that's actually designed to be played. I would recommend Vampire City or Feed. They're sparse on setting (you're expected to convert your own), but they're the most flexible I found and would save you time writing your own rules. Feed in particular has a humanity mechanic that doesn't suck: rather than punishing you with schizophrenia for stealing candy bars, it's a lightside/darkside mechanic that gives actual temptation to lose humanity and gain vampirism. Everyone I chatted with, who actually played it, says they love the mechanic.

Good luck with your original game. God knows we need more new IPs these days. I've heard a few people tried making their own games in response to V5, but I'll yet to hear of anyone getting published thus far. Hope you can break the barrier

Quote from: Orphan81 on September 19, 2024, 03:41:03 PMBecause believe it or not, people *LIKED* The world of Darkness.

That's an understatement. Even the hardcore grognards at the gaming store I frequented were running Vampire games. It was a literal phenomenon for quite some time. I'm not a fan of Anne Rice or that sort of crap, but I played in a couple of those games and had a good time.

In retrospect, WoD seems like parachute pants or pogs, insane levels of market penetration and engagement until no one but the hardcore fans were interested anymore.

The only thing about folks griping about how Trinity killed Aberrant by turning the heroes into villains?

Trinity (1997) preceded Aberrant (1999). It wasn't released after Aberrant. So if you read Trinity first, you knew the Aberrants were not going to end well.

Maybe you had your hopes up - OH KEWL A WW SUPERHEROES GAME! - if you hadn't read Trinity yet. In which case, oops.

I was never a big fan of superhero games anyway, so I was pretty cool with the Novas becoming disgusting and perverted mutations of humanity instead of evolutions of Humanity as the Psions were supposedly. But then they weren't. Oh well.

WW always had to introduce some "twist" into their metaplot rather than let a GM do it themselves. Part of the reason I grew less and less fond of their games as the piles of splatbooks grew ever-higher.

I think a few great replacements for WoD are Sigil & Shadow, Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars, and After the Vampire Wars.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 20, 2024, 09:12:15 PMWW always had to introduce some "twist" into their metaplot rather than let a GM do it themselves. Part of the reason I grew less and less fond of their games as the piles of splatbooks grew ever-higher.

Could be faulty memory but I recall this being one of the complaints about nWoD.  That they didn't have the metaplot.