Quote from: tenbones;922112...This thread reminds me of how... incestuously asinine it is to be sentimental over shit like this. Vampire is a game. It's not "Goth" anymore than it makes you a hardcore rap-fan.

I wasn't claiming that it was. I never played Vampire in an ultra Goth way (see my earlier post about katanas and trenchcoats). I was just being sentimental about a gone era of my youth when I used to play this game.

"Incestuously asinine"? Lol fuck you.

Quote from: yosemitemike;922233That's not what I said or argued.  I argued that a 20th anniversary nostalgia edition with no real new material isn't a resurrection.  When the line actually moves forward from where it was, the it will have been resurrected.  That's going to be tough since they destroyed the world.  

V20 was new material, insofar that it was totally rewritten from base and some of the rules were different. There was, as far as I am aware, no duplicate text from previous editions in it, aside from maybe the odd reference here and there. It's also had a number of original supplements written for it since release (about a dozen or so?). It was released as an edition designed to appeal to nostalgia, but that is a different thing. There is an argument that any new edition of a game essentially taps into nostalgia, otherwise people would just buy new games all the time instead. V20 itself, however, was updated to be set in the 21st century, as have all the 20th Anniversary editions.

Quote from: Omega;921963Alternatives were being created nearly from day one. Traveller, Bunnies & Burrows, Superfero 2022, James Bond, Boot Hill, Call of Cthulhu and all the rest. White Wolfs RPGs were just one in a long chain of these sorts of breaks from the norm.

That's not the point. The point is, in the early 1990s, there was a huge appetite amongst gamers for alternatives to D&D. Most of Vampire's innovations could be seen rooted in earlier games, but these games didn't make the same impact that Vampire did in terms of sales and gaming culture. What Vampire was significant for was being the nexus point in gaming history when the alternative became mainstream. A bit like what Nirvana did for alternative rock about the same time, really. The long term impact could be debatable though.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;922250That's not the point. The point is, in the early 1990s, there was a huge appetite amongst gamers for alternatives to D&D. Most of Vampire's innovations could be seen rooted in earlier games, but these games didn't make the same impact that Vampire did in terms of sales and gaming culture. What Vampire was significant for was being the nexus point in gaming history when the alternative became mainstream. A bit like what Nirvana did for alternative rock about the same time, really. The long term impact could be debatable though.

It's like I always say: World of Darkness (/Vampire The Masquerade) was the original alternative. Like in a REALLY big way. You don't get 25% market share at your height in an industry dominated by D&D without being that.

You know what though? I'm genuinely happy for games we got around the early 2000s. We got 3rd Ed D&D and NWOD, two of best godamm games this hobby has EVER had. That can not be understated. While the previous nerd generation had AD&D 2nd and OWOD, we got something really special from the lessons learned and creativity of the talent making these games. For all it's awesomness, D&D's style of fantasy can be incredibly annoying and the WOD is just far more relateable (and different, in a good way!) -- I'm really, really not surprised it did so well. I wholeheartedly agree that the Gothic aesthetic (and the insane production values) is what got it in the door and what kept it platinum. Very tabletop RPGs can claim to be the equivalent of music industry platinum but White Wolf managed to pull it off.

I honestly never could get into the nwod. I found it too sterile, lacking in history, I hate all those bullet points with unfinished story seeds and I can't stand the purple prose writing style (that could be said about both versions of the wod). My mind goes blank when reading those books. I am glad I got out of the wod mold and found some no nonsense rpg's like unisystem or DwD. Reading those wod books don't seem to open up options for me, but rather closes them off.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;922283I honestly never could get into the nwod. I found it too sterile, lacking in history, I hate all those bullet points with unfinished story seeds and I can't stand the purple prose writing style (that could be said about both versions of the wod). My mind goes blank when reading those books. I am glad I got out of the wod mold and found some no nonsense rpg's like unisystem or DwD. Reading those wod books don't seem to open up options for me, but rather closes them off.

I think the toolbox approach to the game was beautiful. It requires a certain capacity, competency and ability to craft a believable, functional world with NWOD. It doesn't hold your hand yet it doesn't stymie you with ridiculous vagueness; it provides a strong foundation to work from yet its only there to provide a shared framework that everyone understands and which can permeate in any given direction. The streamlining of the Clans in VTR from VTM was inspired and entirely necessary: archetypes rather than stereotypes. My Gangrels can easily be different from your Gangrels but they're still Gangrels; and I can introduce my own custom Covenants, being that they are ideological/political/cultural factions, not set-in-stone sides which demand conformity to the tropes they present (a la Camarilla/Sabbat). It's made it much easier cultivating a metaplot and metamechanics for my club and I'm thankful for that.

Awesomely, the actions in our ongoing Hunter The Vigil game have affected the world in our Changeling The Lost game within the same region the former is set in (Third Crusades, near east) and which those Changeling PCs have been informed of (via conversation with a Changeling history buff) and will have to face later in the current Story. We couldn't do that with OWOD because it could potentially infringe upon the metaplot in any given angle (if you're going to have metaplot, you better godamm well enforce it!). NWOD's create-your-own-metaplot is class, 'love it.

I've played Unisystem games: it's a more granular system that focuses on specific styles of games (combat, conventional skill use, maybe some stealth if you're doing AFMBE) which can be fun but ultimately its not great for worldbuilding or unconventional characters (even with point-buy) as much as playing settings pre-established (again, great example is AFMBE). It's D&D but not D&D. I can still deal, though. At least it's not godamm Burning Wheel, bloody hell...

Quote from: jan paparazzi;922283I honestly never could get into the nwod. I found it too sterile, lacking in history, I hate all those bullet points with unfinished story seeds and I can't stand the purple prose writing style (that could be said about both versions of the wod). My mind goes blank when reading those books. I am glad I got out of the wod mold and found some no nonsense rpg's like unisystem or DwD. Reading those wod books don't seem to open up options for me, but rather closes them off.

I'm going to be honest, I have no idea if it was anything about nWoD, I just couldn't get into another WoD. In other words, nWoD could have been perfect, and I still would have been done with the genre by the end of cWoD.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;922249V20 was new material, insofar that it was totally rewritten from base and some of the rules were different.

Th same thing rewritten with some rules tweaks is not new material.  New material is new material.  New material is not a rewrite of existing material.  It's new.

Look, let's be honest: there's more than a few "new editions" of RPGs that were just "the same thing rewritten with some rules tweaks" and a new cover.  Off the top of my head, Stormbringer, Shadowrun and Justifiers are all guilty of this.  Arguably Champions as well.

Quote from: daniel_ream;922324Look, let's be honest: there's more than a few "new editions" of RPGs that were just "the same thing rewritten with some rules tweaks" and a new cover.  Off the top of my head, Stormbringer, Shadowrun and Justifiers are all guilty of this.  Arguably Champions as well.

Shadowrun 1 to 2 - Staging and Drain codes normalized to 2 with a necessary increase in Power, that's a pretty fundamental math alteration.
Shadowrun 2 to 3 - Lot of skill changes, not to mention complete magic, rigging and decking revamp.
Shadowrun 3 to 4 - Completely different games.
Shadowrun 4 to 5 - Hmm, was this just a new coat of paint over Anniversary Edition?  I don't think so, pretty fundamental hacking changes if nothing else.

Personally, I think oWoD makes for more interesting reading but nWoD works better in play.  If I were doing a Vampire game now, I would prefer to use Requiem rather than Masquerade.  At a nuts and bolts level, I just think it works better as a game than Masquerade ever did.    

Quote from: daniel_ream;922324Look, let's be honest: there's more than a few "new editions" of RPGs that were just "the same thing rewritten with some rules tweaks" and a new cover.  Off the top of my head, Stormbringer, Shadowrun and Justifiers are all guilty of this.  Arguably Champions as well.

I was responding to the specific claim that V20 was new material when it clearly wasn't.  Vampire:the Masquerade was discontinued along with the rest of the oWoD lines in 2004.  White Wolf stopped making new material and shifted their efforts to the nWoD line.  The oWoD books were either not available at all or were only available as PDF or POD.  In 2011, they come out with an anniversary edition that had to be crowdfunded.  I don't know of any comparable situation with any of the other games you mentioned.  Shadowrun and Champions have never been discontinued that I know of.  Newer editions of these games would be much more comparable to the Revised editions of the oWoD lines than the 20th anniversary ones.  I don't really know anything about Justifiers.  Stormbringer is defunct and has been since 2007.

Quote from: yosemitemike;922337I was responding to the specific claim that V20 was new material when it clearly wasn't.

It is new material, with original writing and new supplements.

Have you read them?

Quote from: Necrozius;922236I wasn't claiming that it was. I never played Vampire in an ultra Goth way (see my earlier post about katanas and trenchcoats). I was just being sentimental about a gone era of my youth when I used to play this game.

"Incestuously asinine"? Lol fuck you.

hah I wasn't talking about you specifically. Just the inevitable association others make about Edgelords and "Goth" as intrinsically Vampire. When in reality it was just a gamer-version of Goth. Nothing was intended to be directed at you personally.

V20 - I don't consider it a new edition. Just a revision. I still prefer NWoD mechanics, but settingwise - meh. I can pick and choose easily. I prefer OWoD for the setting. But nothing is sacrosanct about it.

Quote from: tenbones;922349V20 - I don't consider it a new edition. Just a revision. I still prefer NWoD mechanics, but settingwise - meh. I can pick and choose easily. I prefer OWoD for the setting. But nothing is sacrosanct about it.

They already had a 'Revised' Edition back in 1998! But the point is, in both cases, they were not duplicates of previous editions but were written from the ground up and incorporated changes. In the case of V20, there were system changes from previous and the setting was designed for use in the 21st century. If you look at other games in the 20th Anniversary series, you will find that Mage: The Ascension is quite radically rewritten and expanded on previous editions and it's all original writing.