Greetings to all...

Back in the 90's, I was a big fan of Vampire: The Masquerade because I felt it really emphasized the role-playing aspect and the need for elaborate social contacts. The relationship of the Prince, Primogen, one's Sire, the cotiere, inter-clan political games, clan vs clan stuff, Camarilla vs. Sabat, etc -- this was all very involved and nessessitated really commited players who were versed in social politics.

I thought the system worked well and the various Clans were well written and balanced. I also thought the Werewolf system worked well and it was easy to interface it with Vampire.

Somewhere around the end of the 90's, Vampire games started dying out and I quit seeing new books for a long time. Then, about a year ago, I was in a RPG store and ran into Vampire: The Requiem.  It had changed a lot of the clans, added new ones, changed the magic, but had kept much of the premise of the original 'Masquerade' books.

Since there are a lot of very knowledgable players here, I'm wondering if anyone knows why White Wolf shit-canned the original version and came out with Requiem? Was it just a marketing ploy?

Thanks for your time.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;493720Greetings to all...

Back in the 90's, I was a big fan of Vampire: The Masquerade because I felt it really emphasized the role-playing aspect and the need for elaborate social contacts. The relationship of the Prince, Primogen, one's Sire, the cotiere, inter-clan political games, clan vs clan stuff, Camarilla vs. Sabat, etc -- this was all very involved and nessessitated really commited players who were versed in social politics.

I thought the system worked well and the various Clans were well written and balanced. I also thought the Werewolf system worked well and it was easy to interface it with Vampire.

Somewhere around the end of the 90's, Vampire games started dying out and I quit seeing new books for a long time. Then, about a year ago, I was in a RPG store and ran into Vampire: The Requiem.  It had changed a lot of the clans, added new ones, changed the magic, but had kept much of the premise of the original 'Masquerade' books.

Since there are a lot of very knowledgable players here, I'm wondering if anyone knows why White Wolf shit-canned the original version and came out with Requiem? Was it just a marketing ploy?

Thanks for your time.

Only 7 years late.

Quote from: 1989;493729Only 7 years late.

Please try to limit your verbosity in future posts. Thanks.

What he means is that the new World of Darkness line is 7 years old, now. Seriously, WTF?
Is starting a thread asking a question that has been hashed and rehashed by everyone who pays the least bit of attention really that much harder than a wikipedia search?. I don't want to sound like condescending dick, but man, r u srs?

Amongst other things, the oWoD was mechanically awful, especially for crossover games. It had huge canon bloat which was almost impossible for writers to keep track of, and that contributed to thematic drift. Finally, the zeitgeist had changed, since pre-millennial angst was no longer "a thing".

nWoD is much cleaner mechanically. It still has its problems, but they are no longer as overwhelming as oWoD. It crosses-over more easily, and it has a more schematic structure that makes modifying and developing it easier than before.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;493720Somewhere around the end of the 90's, Vampire games started dying out and I quit seeing new books for a long time.

I am afraid it must have been a local thing, because Vampire kept getting new books at strong rate up to its end in 2004.

QuoteSince there are a lot of very knowledgable players here, I'm wondering if anyone knows why White Wolf shit-canned the original version and came out with Requiem? Was it just a marketing ploy?

Apart from Pseudo's answer, I would add that the End of the World was something that was part of the premise of the game since Day 1. So they decided it was about time.

I like nWoD more than oWoD, but I still love Masquerade. They have released a 20 anniversary edition recently. It looks great.

I never thought the OWOD worked when played as a crossover (except perhaps Werewolves v Vamps). The rules were fine. For me the appeal was playing as the supernatural force; the moralising I could take or leave. It was playing as a supernatural hero/antihero. I thought that was a refreshing take and that WW took it seriously (perhaps too seriously) made it work. The new stuff is perfectly decent, just different. What the future holds for it, I know not. I don't think WW is doing well as a producer of rpg's. Perhaps they'll reboot it again.

Nobody gives a shit about the internal decisionmaking of a small business 7 years after the fact. Do you have a question about Requiem itself? It's a good game.

There's only so many years you can carry on a metaplot about being right on the edge of Gehenna/Apocalypse/Armageddon/The Gathering/Ragnarok/whatever  before you have to pull the trigger.  Especially when your main marketing technique is to advance the metaplot closer to it with every novel and splatbook, of which there seemed like a hundred.

There were some quirky aspects to Masquerade and Co. yes, but running the game several times a week for seven years, I must say I've rarely had huge issues with it. The cross-overs were sometimes awkward, particularly if you lacked the balls to say "no" to a guy who wanted to play a gypsy werewolf ghoul mummy, and balance went through the window most of the times, given specific generation, Spheres allotments in Ascension and the like. The system seemed to become really annoying once you started dealing with enormous dice pools on difficulties of 8 and above, mostly because of the botch rules which made incredible fumbles more and more likely to happen. Ditto combat, with millions of dice rolls, hit-damage-soak-repeat, for not much benefits as far as the game itself was concerned, given its particular MO at our tables at least.

So the OWoD had its weaknesses, sure, but if you were aware of them and were not getting out of your way to break the game, most of the time you wouldn't notice them.

Overall, the flavor of the game world is fantastic, and you can pick and choose whatever you like to build your own game experience from there (except that's not exactly how they present it with the metaplot and contant hinting at 'the truth at WW offices' and so on).

Which is where Requiem comes in, as far as I'm concerned.

I had the same reaction as the OP seven years ago. I was a fan of Masquerade, and wondered "why the fuck would I invest in a reboot when the original game works fine for me?" so I moved on with the d20 games I played at the time.

It's Promethean which made me have a second look at the NWoD. At last, a game based on a genuinely new idea as far as the WoD was concerned. Frankenstein's monster? Osiris? Golems? All of that with an alchemical theme running throughout? Holy shit, let me check that out.

So I bought the WoD rules, the Promethean game, and read. And really, really, really liked what I saw. Rules very much cleaned up. All games acting as supplements to the WoD whole. Games concepts reworked to favor a personal and local feel to the books themselves, without getting lost into world conspiracies, macro-metaplot bullshit and the like.

NWoD is like a gigantic modern-supernatural RPG buffet where the authors just tell you "here, here, have a bite, pick and choose what you want for your game". Which basically means that, if you are so inclined, you can just pick up your OWoD notes and books and basically rework whatever stuff you like from there to make it work in your NWoD Chronicle. Check out the Requiem-Masquerade conversion guide on OneBookShelf on that score - it's really well done and gives you tons of ideas to make it work like YOU want it to.

That's the key to NWoD I think: that it really encourages you to think of the WoD as your own, and consider your chronicle as your own thing, not someone else's, and just gives you loads of ideas in the form of various toolboxes from there. That's how I use it anyway.

Now I just got V20, just finished reading it, and I'm considering rebooting my old Paris by Night as well, in addition to the NWoD Paris Alchymique I am currently running on a French-speaking message board. The point being that these are like parallel universes where you can explore different themes and known NPCs and conspiracies from different angles and still make each 'world' feel unique in its own way. That's how I look at it anyway. I really like both OWoD and NWoD, for different reasons, and I'm fine with that. My players seem to be fine with it as well, despite some initial doubts about the NWoD 'thing' when I pitched it to them, so I must be doing something right as far as they're concerned.

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote but this....

Quote from: Benoist;493822It's Promethean which made me have a second look at the NWoD. At last, a game based on a genuinely new idea as far as the WoD was concerned. Frankenstein's monster? Osiris? Golems? All of that with an alchemical theme running throughout? Holy shit, let me check that out.

Hell yeah. This particular game replaces my madlove for Mage 1E. To say I was sceptical is an understatement. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this one.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;493858Hell yeah. This particular game replaces my madlove for Mage 1E. To say I was sceptical is an understatement. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this one.

Regards,
David R

This game is totally awesome. A gem. Really is. And I used it. It really is awesome in actual play. Did you check out the supplements? If you fell for Promethean like I did, you totally need to check out all the supplements. They're all fucking dynamite for your games.

I've avoided Promethean on account of it sounding vaguely misery-touristy (after reading comments like, "most depressing game since Wraith: the Oblivion 1e"), but your endrosement is intriguing. Now I just might pick it up to round out my nWoD core collection.

Gus, mate, the people who think Promethean is about misery tourism are the same people who are going to tell you that LOTR is "really" about WW2 or how Frodo wanted nothing more than an excuse to use his OneCockRing with Sam on the way to Mount Doom.

These are the same sore losers who fall asleep during representations of Hamlet and then pretend to explain to you why it's such a terrific play. You know the type.

Changeling: The Lost, btw, was a masterpiece.