Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:48:49 PMHow much of the movie Underworld is lifted from those games?  I remember seeing that movie wondering if anyone is getting sued.

There actually was a lawsuit at one point, I think; if I recall correctly, it was dismissed on the grounds that you can't copyright general ideas, tropes or stylistic resemblance.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on April 18, 2022, 05:27:34 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:48:49 PMHow much of the movie Underworld is lifted from those games?  I remember seeing that movie wondering if anyone is getting sued.

There actually was a lawsuit at one point, I think; if I recall correctly, it was dismissed on the grounds that you can't copyright general ideas, tropes or stylistic resemblance.

  I looked this up after typing about it, and it seems the studio settled very quickly (the suit was brought a few weeks before the movie debuted) to get the movie into theatres with no delay.  So they got some money out of it, but I did not read about any dismissals (I suppose there could have been other suits).

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 03:58:36 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on April 18, 2022, 03:17:56 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 03:02:53 PM
was always more appealing to people who lean more left?

Nah... We hated the idea of playing a nambi pampi Edwards. We always played Sabbat and loved kicking the shit out of the Camerilla.

  But...you said you are left leaning.  I am not implying the weird Glow in the Sun vamps for teen girls when I spoke about vampires.   I mean the death dealing monsters.

Death dealing monsters sounds good to me. AKA - The Sabbat.

I'm just making the point that the original lefties were about counterculture and any sensible lefties still are to this day, the left hasn't changed. The woke scolds are some weird American hybrid of fascists blended with Stalin. The real left doesn't consider them left at all or at best if they do they are considered extremist morons.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on April 18, 2022, 05:27:34 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:48:49 PMHow much of the movie Underworld is lifted from those games?  I remember seeing that movie wondering if anyone is getting sued.

There actually was a lawsuit at one point, I think; if I recall correctly, it was dismissed on the grounds that you can't copyright general ideas, tropes or stylistic resemblance.

I think WW actually got a payout (if I remember correctly). Which was pretty ironic seeing that they were heavily influenced by Anne Rice (and a lot more). I reckon she would have gotten a big payout if she wanted it.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:48:49 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 04:30:00 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:04:31 PM
  I also mean with appeal to left, in the sense that the OP was asking if it was always woke.  I assumed Vampire had a following more or less built in thanks to Anne Rice (and her fiction never appealed to me at all) where vampires are presented in a more anti-hero/sympathetic light.  I do remember most of the people who were more drawn to that sort of fiction were my more left leaning friends (though left back then is almost far right now), but I dunno.   The Frog Brothers, Barlow, and Jerry Dandridge as movie characters had already ruined that perspective for me as a kid.

Mark Rein-Hagen made his game more or less as a pastiche of vampire fiction at the time. There's lots of influence from Anne Rice, but there's also influences from other works. Some of the character classes (they're basically character classes, even if its a skill-based system) are blatant copies of very specific works of vampire fiction, such as punk counterculture vampires from The Lost Boys, body horror vampires from Necroscope, vampires that look identical to Graf Orlock from Nosferatu, sexy vampires with telepathy like Lestat from Anne Rice's books, snake-like vampires that worship a snake god like in the b-movie The Lair of the White Worm, or even a non-vampire like the three-eyed protagonist from the anime Sazan Eyes. Sometimes this goes beyond inspiration and straight into uninspired rip-off, and some of it is weird arbitrary stuff that you wouldn't ordinarily associated with vampires. Beyond that already listed we get stuff like Hollywood Satanists, Italian mafia incest aristocrat necromancer vampires, the historical assassins as vampires, some Ars Magica characters as vampires, the rough likeness of Baron Samedi, sirens, fairies, time travelers...

Honestly, I think Nightlife did this stuff better. Mark Rein-Hagen hamstrings his classes by forcing all vampires to follow rules like "allergic to sunlight, drinks bloods" whereas the kin in Nightlife were free to vary in diets and weaknesses to a great extent. I don't remember if they had sirens, but they did have gorgons that fed by turning victims to stone and one class that blatantly copies the inuat monster from Nomads.

  Interesting.   I just remember that time period being a rise in popularity for Rice's books.   It makes sense the authors would use every tool they could find for the vampires.  I have no familiarity with white wolf past paging through a Vampire the Masquerade book in the early-mid 90's.  How much of the movie Underworld is lifted from those games?  I remember seeing that movie wondering if anyone is getting sued.

I watched all the Underworld movies and there isn't anything to suggest the writers had ever read a WW book. The lawsuit was nitpicking in the extreme.

There's basically only two things that can be traced back to WW vampires: vampires permanently decreasing in power with every generation and needing to cannibalize prior generations to increase in power (which is a variation of Anne Rice's power increasing with age, except with an obnoxious counterculture message), and becoming a vampire's sycophantic thrall if you drink their blood on three separate occasions (which is a variation of the trope that vampires turn a victim by biting them on three occasions).

Everything else can be traced in some form to an earlier work. Vampire bloodlines with different traits actually date back to Captain Kronos. Half-vampire servants goes all the way back to Dracula (the transformation was depicted as occurring in stages). Etc.

White Wolf was always woke. I remember back in the day reading the Book of the Wyrm and the thing is full of these absurd Captain Planet style villains. It said that Pentex had a company whose job it was to make gay people feel guilty for being gay. Pentex fought to keep guns legal because the Wyrm wanted more gun crimes. The Abrahamic God was the Patriarch spirit whose purpose was to oppress women. There was loads of ridiculously obnoxious woke garbage in those early WW books.

Though, the woke left has gotten a lot worse since the 1990's. The woke leftists now are much more nasty, mean, intolerant, and openly supportive of oppression and intolerance. So they were woke back then, but they could still tell some good stories or create interesting material, they could even occasionally diverge from leftist narratives here or there. The woke of today can't tolerate anyone who isn't in total lockstep with them. You're either 100% woke or you're a Nazi and any terrible act is justified against Nazis.

So those interesting elements of the WoD could not be created by the woke developers of today, they are too dogmatic for that. They are going to have a rough time creating 5th Edition Mage, since the Technocracy is this monolithic oppressive combination of government and corporate power which controls the world - which is something that the woke of today 100% want and support. They are even having the Get of Fenris fall to the Wyrm in 5th edition W:tA, too right wing I guess.

Quote from: ShieldWife on April 18, 2022, 06:38:54 PM
The woke of today can't tolerate anyone who isn't in total lockstep with them. You're either 100% woke or you're a Nazi and any terrible act is justified against Nazis.

That's it right there...

Quote from: ShieldWife on April 18, 2022, 06:38:54 PM
So those interesting elements of the WoD could not be created by the woke developers of today, they are too dogmatic for that. They are going to have a rough time creating 5th Edition Mage, since the Technocracy is this monolithic oppressive combination of government and corporate power which controls the world - which is something that the woke of today 100% want and support. They are even having the Get of Fenris fall to the Wyrm in 5th edition W:tA, too right wing I guess.

Some of the 5e changes are good IMO. I still despise the IP and its toxic fandom, but I can recognize when the changes are good. Ditching the italian mafia incest aristocrats as the main purveyors of necromancy? Ditching the werewolf incest babies? Good, because they never should have been a thing in the first place. Using hunger instead of mana points? Definitely feels more evocative.

Other changes just have me scratching my head. Hunter: The Reckoning 5e is using the same basic premise as Hunter: The Vigil but with different world building, which makes the subtitle nonsensical because it refers to the metaplot event that dramatically altered the cosmology and created a bunch of new splats liked the imbued, the fallen, and the new mummies. Is that even still a thing in the 5th edition lore? Did I mention that I grew to hate lore/metaplot after years of being a lore junkie because of shit like this?

Some changes, like the consolidation of the vampire powers, make me think "hey, maybe these rules should be rewritten from the ground up?" I've always thought that, actually, but V5 demonstrates it even better than VtR2.

Some changes are stupid and unnecessary or have an interesting concept but ridiculous execution. Take blood resonance. Hypothetically, it's evocative that vampires might feed on different flavors of blood to get different effects. BBC/Netflix Dracula got mileage out of the idea that vampires feed on your soul/mind/memories. In practice, it means that characters will behave in bizarre, hilarious and generally illogical ways in order to get various benefits or learn new powers. For example, to learn necromancy/shadow magic (they're the same thing here, but also not because it's weird like that) you need to do stuff like feed on the blood of serial killers. As opposed to, I don't know, meditating in a cemetery?

Overall I find it much better for my mental health to just not care about this and make my own urban fantasy settings. I only wish WoD fans could do the same. Hopefully Paradox will finally kill the IP sooner rather than later.

Quote from: Omega on April 18, 2022, 02:24:51 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on April 18, 2022, 09:35:03 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 18, 2022, 05:39:53 AM
Especially the LARPers.

I never LARPed thank god. The concept always felt a little bit too creepy for me.

But whatever floats your boat...

I playtested the early version way back. Two of my local players used to host the local VtES LARP and it was pretty baseline really. Mostly interaction and intrigue focused far as I recall. Its the perfect LARP for a more casual play and doesnt usually need the props that other LARPs tend to need. Cthulhu Live was another that could pull this off. But the real fun was the ones with props and monsters.

I remember when VtM LARPers were all over Seattle around 1995 and they were nothing but fucking obnoxious asses at conventions. They had this unwritten rule that said they had to freak out the bystanders whenever possible. I guess it was a regional thing.

Quote from: ShieldWife on April 18, 2022, 06:38:54 PM
White Wolf was always woke. I remember back in the day reading the Book of the Wyrm and the thing is full of these absurd Captain Planet style villains. It said that Pentex had a company whose job it was to make gay people feel guilty for being gay. Pentex fought to keep guns legal because the Wyrm wanted more gun crimes. The Abrahamic God was the Patriarch spirit whose purpose was to oppress women.......

Thanks for pointing this out. Not sure why (and I know I shouldn't) but I found this hilarious. 

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 08:17:59 PMSome of the 5e changes are good IMO. I still despise the IP and its toxic fandom, but I can recognize when the changes are good. Ditching the italian mafia incest aristocrats as the main purveyors of necromancy? Ditching the werewolf incest babies? Good, because they never should have been a thing in the first place. Using hunger instead of mana points? Definitely feels more evocative.

Other changes just have me scratching my head. Hunter: The Reckoning 5e is using the same basic premise as Hunter: The Vigil but with different world building, which makes the subtitle nonsensical because it refers to the metaplot event that dramatically altered the cosmology and created a bunch of new splats liked the imbued, the fallen, and the new mummies. Is that even still a thing in the 5th edition lore? Did I mention that I grew to hate lore/metaplot after years of being a lore junkie because of shit like this?

Some changes, like the consolidation of the vampire powers, make me think "hey, maybe these rules should be rewritten from the ground up?" I've always thought that, actually, but V5 demonstrates it even better than VtR2.

Some changes are stupid and unnecessary or have an interesting concept but ridiculous execution. Take blood resonance. Hypothetically, it's evocative that vampires might feed on different flavors of blood to get different effects. BBC/Netflix Dracula got mileage out of the idea that vampires feed on your soul/mind/memories. In practice, it means that characters will behave in bizarre, hilarious and generally illogical ways in order to get various benefits or learn new powers. For example, to learn necromancy/shadow magic (they're the same thing here, but also not because it's weird like that) you need to do stuff like feed on the blood of serial killers. As opposed to, I don't know, meditating in a cemetery?

Overall I find it much better for my mental health to just not care about this and make my own urban fantasy settings. I only wish WoD fans could do the same. Hopefully Paradox will finally kill the IP sooner rather than later.

Some of the changes in V5 are good, some are bad, but I don't think that it's particularly creative or compelling and the people making the books likely don't have the capacity for that. The original WoD had a lot of ridiculous crap in them, but they were fun in a way and had some cool ideas too. It's easy to look back at the silliest things and toss them out, it isn't that impressive.

Personally, I don't find the Metis to be objectionable and I actually like the Giovanni. The Giovanni didn't make sense as a full fledged Clan, they would have been a better bloodline - which is actually what they did with them in V5 but they did this ham fisted semi-retcon semi-metaplot hammered story arc. As far as the independent Clans went, the Giovanni were by far the most interesting. Both changes stink of cowardice to me, that they don't want to trigger their sensitive fan base, not creative additions to the setting.

Quote from: ShieldWife on April 18, 2022, 10:31:04 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 08:17:59 PMSome of the 5e changes are good IMO. I still despise the IP and its toxic fandom, but I can recognize when the changes are good. Ditching the italian mafia incest aristocrats as the main purveyors of necromancy? Ditching the werewolf incest babies? Good, because they never should have been a thing in the first place. Using hunger instead of mana points? Definitely feels more evocative.

Other changes just have me scratching my head. Hunter: The Reckoning 5e is using the same basic premise as Hunter: The Vigil but with different world building, which makes the subtitle nonsensical because it refers to the metaplot event that dramatically altered the cosmology and created a bunch of new splats liked the imbued, the fallen, and the new mummies. Is that even still a thing in the 5th edition lore? Did I mention that I grew to hate lore/metaplot after years of being a lore junkie because of shit like this?

Some changes, like the consolidation of the vampire powers, make me think "hey, maybe these rules should be rewritten from the ground up?" I've always thought that, actually, but V5 demonstrates it even better than VtR2.

Some changes are stupid and unnecessary or have an interesting concept but ridiculous execution. Take blood resonance. Hypothetically, it's evocative that vampires might feed on different flavors of blood to get different effects. BBC/Netflix Dracula got mileage out of the idea that vampires feed on your soul/mind/memories. In practice, it means that characters will behave in bizarre, hilarious and generally illogical ways in order to get various benefits or learn new powers. For example, to learn necromancy/shadow magic (they're the same thing here, but also not because it's weird like that) you need to do stuff like feed on the blood of serial killers. As opposed to, I don't know, meditating in a cemetery?

Overall I find it much better for my mental health to just not care about this and make my own urban fantasy settings. I only wish WoD fans could do the same. Hopefully Paradox will finally kill the IP sooner rather than later.

Some of the changes in V5 are good, some are bad, but I don't think that it's particularly creative or compelling and the people making the books likely don't have the capacity for that. The original WoD had a lot of ridiculous crap in them, but they were fun in a way and had some cool ideas too. It's easy to look back at the silliest things and toss them out, it isn't that impressive.

Personally, I don't find the Metis to be objectionable and I actually like the Giovanni. The Giovanni didn't make sense as a full fledged Clan, they would have been a better bloodline - which is actually what they did with them in V5 but they did this ham fisted semi-retcon semi-metaplot hammered story arc. As far as the independent Clans went, the Giovanni were by far the most interesting. Both changes stink of cowardice to me, that they don't want to trigger their sensitive fan base, not creative additions to the setting.

After the first two or so editions WW basically stopped devising new ideas and just resorted to repackaging the same stuff over and over again.

I find those concepts more bizarre and idiosyncratic than anything else, but it's the names that seal the deal. Metis is the name of a first nations tribe. That's like naming your werewolf incest babies Americans, Germans, or Spaniards. Giovanni is the Italian given name equivalent to John. So your vampire conspiracy is named... the Johns? I don't know whether to laugh or cry. (For comparison, they also use Puttanesca as a surname. Yes, as in pasta sauce.) WW jargon is always like this and I find it obnoxious and culturally appropriative. If it was deliberately ridiculous that would be one thing, but this all reads like the result of really bad research and laziness. It makes Rowling's lazy "no-maj" look like Tolkien by comparison.

If I were writing a vampire setting, I'd give up and say there were hundreds of clans/bloodlines/whatever. Trying to limiting oneself to any particular number and forcing ideas to fill the quota hasn't produced great results so far.

The big thing VtM had that a lot of vampire games/settings lack is the way it ties into, frankly, epic threads of mythology (whereas vampires in general mostly tie into folklore).

The first vampire isn't some few centuries old nobleman turned witch (i.e. Dracula) or an undead countess (Carmilla)... or something weird like the ghost of alien/human hybrid (Rice's vampires).

Nope in VtM he's Cain, the first murderer, cursed directly by God and his angels, taught blood magic by the demon/witch Lilith, and whose further sins led to the Biblical Flood with a Titanomacy (the slaying of the second generation by the third who went on to create all the lines of vampires) and an eschatological prophecy akin to Armageddon layered on top complete with blood gods from before history and a Messianic "Last Daughter of Eve" (to contrast the First Son).

It's basically tailor made for tapping into the West's cultural foundations in a way that feels bigger than "learned black magic and became a vampire from it" and way more familiar than "has the essence of an half-alien ghost referred to as a 'Core' inside them."

That's why VtM casts a bit of a longer shadow than you'd expect.

My opinion is that the biggest mistake they made was in creating competing cosmologies for Werewolf, Mage, Wraith and Changeling (the latter four all being expressly against the Jewish/Christian origins for vampires. Either that or made it clearer that they existed in separate universes. The route they took of they're all sorta connected but don't actually fit just made everything muddy and led to ruining the themes of other game lines to try and make a unified metaplot work (hence Mage suddenly getting an eschatological event out of nowhere in Revised so all the splats could be racing towards the end of days).

Trying to shoot for a mythologically unified world was what they tried to do with NWoD, but all their best ideas were expended on the original so you ended up with second tier things like all Mages being Gnostics tied to Atlantis and Longinus possibly being the first vampire (despite him actually being venerated as a saint in the Roman and Orthodox Churches for his conversion to Christianity... so basically in v2.0 they villainized someone considered a saint whereas Cain had always been cast as a villainous type making his further demonization easy to accept).

That's probably why it was always doomed to play second fiddle to a no longer supported  game line until the original recipes ultimately got brought back and it was the NWoD that had to rebrand itself 'Chronicles of Darkness' so as not to step on the toes of the more valuable property.

It just goes to prove that a good setting trumps bad mechanics.

Quote
It just goes to prove that a good setting trumps bad mechanics.

Shadowrun says "Hi!"

Quote from: Godsmonkey on April 19, 2022, 09:27:53 AM

Quote
It just goes to prove that a good setting trumps bad mechanics.

Shadowrun says "Hi!"

FASATrek says "Hi!"