What went wrong?

Goth craze ended.

After a decade, story-focused gaming was becoming cliché. People wanted something crunchier.

White Wolf had gotten complacent and arrogant. They looked down on their own fan base. Quality went way down. Even the really good writers hated their jobs, hated the fans, and didn't really care anymore.

Hey now, I like the rules. But I'm not a LARPer and not likely to get into it.

The Metaplot is bullshit, however. The setting can exist intact without having events in the game world be dictated to Storytellers and their players by the game devs.

But then, maybe you thought the Week of Nightmares was a brilliant idea.

Holy shit your spelling.

A matter of taste. Mage and Changeling are pretty good. (But Vampire, the most important line, is very boring)

The changes to Mage are pretty much my biggest problem with the new setting. They replaced a really cool original idea with boring generic urban fantasy shit.

>Shittily designed & balanced game mechanics.
>toxic larp scene.
>larpers setting the standard for the setting and expecting the setting in tabletop play like the song in the larp.
>muh boon system!
>some people also took issue with the metaplot.

Mostly #1. #2/3/4 is only a problem if you run a tabletop game and have a vtm Larper in it, or play the larp.

The books make an interesting read though.

The masquerade to requiem conversion give gives it better game mechanics, as does the gurps release.

What does 9/11 have to do with VtM?

Themes of secret warfare and appropriated and slightly altered Arabic words (including jyhad, pronounced jai-had)

As opposed to jihad (jee-hawd).

Whoever publishes Vampire these days does not want or care about new players.

DnD has this down to a science: you've got a starter set, free basic rules, a very nice book for around 25-30 bucks on Amazon. Say what you will about 5e, but they have made it very accessible to anyone who wants to pick up that game can do so and get a lot of content for a decent price.

With VtM, they fucked it all up. Now, you have two Vampire the games (which, thankfully, they are trying to fix) so you'll have people buying VtR when they really want VtM and vice versa.

Then you have the fact that it is literally impossible to buy a new VtM game at a bookstore or gamestore. Hell, when I was starting out I had to make due with a used Revised rulebook. If you want the newest VtM rules in a book of similar quality to the 5e rulebooks you have to pay a hundred fucking dollars plus shipping *and* wait two weeks for them to print and ship it.

I actually really like the new anniversary editions of WoD, but they fucked up so bad by pulling the Kickstarter deluxe card paired with the print-on-demand option. I'm sure it does well for them as a business, but jesus christ I cannot think of a worse model for enticing new players.

the 90ies ended

Nothing.

>but NWoD was so bad it killed the company.
no. It wasn't great, but the company was ruined by bad investments into an MMO that went absolutely nowhere, and the books were hit by the culture that spawned them largely dissolving.

It never performed like owod did though, which is why they brought owod back, albeit in limited print on demand form.

that's true, but a very different thing from 'so bad it killed the company'.

This to be quite honest senpai.

VtM (and all OWoD by extension) could have only been made in the gothic, grungy, needlessly angsty, pre-9/11, pre-identity politcs world of the '90s. If you need any proof, go check out the official forums and see how many threads there are from recent years discussing how Kindred of the East is culturally "problematic".

Good thing this is a thing that exists then.

Onyxpath is a fucking mess regardless but it's gone to high hell since it took the clique bullshit of Reddit and started shilling for Beast. Funny enough I was trying to prove that a Hero could be justified with the hypothetical of a Giant who fed off the fear of trauma victims. I had a hero (really a retooled avenger slasher) who was a woman that had been beaten and raped by an unknown assailant. The Giant kept using its powers to feed off of her fear by having her have psychotic episodes where she relived her assualt and rape for a month straight (nightmares such as it's all your fault, etc). She cast out her family and friends as she started to develop mental illness but upon her darkest days she broke but saw the Beast for what it truly was and sought it out. She killed it but realized that there were more of them and therefore she needed to be the strength that others needed when monsters kept making them relieve their worst fears. Long story short she became the female Punisher against Beasts but was written that she'd only go after those who abused their powers like it happened to her. Suprise they had problems with it but not because of the rape but because the Beast should of been in the right and made her relive her rape so she could be a "better person" from it and she's a monster for killing Beasts. Also someone else made a two Beast cops partner upwho would take SVU people like the above and use their powers to make them stop being victims by making them relive their trauma but realizing that it was partially their fault but get over it and were the good guys. I called them out on them hating victim blaming but validating it for their PCs and they had a shit show. Worst was that the mods were acting like these guys were the best for making this idea, especially the one with the avatar looking like Jessica Rabbit.

Well, to be fair, the books were atrocious.
Every nWoD decision was born from the same terrible decision-making that got them into the hole in general.
I mean, the worst book they ever made wasn't nWoD, it was Scion, so clearly it's a problem of the era and where WW's head went, rather than just the game world.
>nWoD still a shit

>Angst.
>Generic NPCS that go through PCS like wet newspaper
>Too many fucking splat books.
>Uneven playing field between various supernatural characters.
>Mark Rein-Hagen.
>Better games on the market.
>Fucking angst.

>people wanted something crunchier

Have you seen a WW game? I've been in a WtA game for the better part of a year and I still have to double check rules some times, so does the GMwho's been running the system for years.

>shilling for Beast
>literally promoting their latest product

I'm not gonna say that Beast is great user but what do you want? OP to tell you not to buy their games?

I wonder if anybody ever made the connection between the VtM cover and the album art for With Sympathy.

Freaky LARP bitches didn't cease to exist, they just...stayed with VTM. It's not like nWoD rules were actually good or even better than oWoD's Revised 2e. They still suck, tbdesu, but the point of WoD games was the playstyle (and fucking hot goth girls).

VTR fucked up the sexy politics and the Superheroes with Fangs playstyles. WTF fucked up the Furry Robot Chicken murderhobo playstyle of Apocalypse, and Awakening traded one set of bullshit solipsism with atrocious and unplayable rules for one without the Technocracy.

They also ended up nickel and diming you on the core book and the splatbooks costing a lot of money.

Also, mismanaged by incompetents in all aspects of business. Too much cocaine, probably.

people got tired of npcs overshadowing their characters
people got tired of books full of world building and 10% game mechanics
people got tired of limits in their games, of playing in someone else's box

9/11 killed the 90's

And that's when goth culture and White Wolf were at its peak

This

I would've loved the setting better if they would've skipped the metaplot horseshit

I hear VtR is better about that- no metaplot, just "here are some things and some people. Go do Vamper stuff"

Most of the successful WoD games I've run, or played in were like this. It usually messes with the fluff lawyers when you do it too.

Justin Achilli

>meatings
>road his dick

Only wotc and a few others can afford to print the books. Embrace pdfs, faggot, this is where all small companies abd publishers have gone.

In addition to what's been said, there was a very obvious problem of not everyone being on the same page.

They could never decide if it was an actual shared universe with all the WoD games. Books often directly contradicted each other, the exception usually being Wraith. The Java chat game ran on the site took this to mean "Vampire supercedes everything." Which invariably pissed off people who preferred other base games in the setting, seeing it as an official preference.

The overuse of "unreliable narrator" in flavor, especially ones written specifically for the ST, was annoying at best.

The super special bloodlines they just had to write and then stamp them as "DO NOT LET THEM BE PCs" made every special snowflake just have to beg to play them. Same for the nonwolf shifters, rare kith of changeling, etc.

All in all it was too spread out over too quickly of a time. Had they let some of the ideas brew longer, lengthened the release schedule, there might have been a better way.

>Only wotc and a few others can afford to print the books.
Bullshit. I have seen even the most obscure RPGs get print runs. Maybe not in a bookstore, but certainly in game stores and online. If you think 100 dollar PoDs are the only viable option then you are insane.

oWoD Vampire was awesome! All you welfare queens and illegals preferring the low energy sequel; get out of my America!

the 90s ended

cant stump the trump

>tfw people hitching about the splatbooks and metaplot

The 20th anniversary edition breaks everything into on book with only sparse metaplot and all the clans and bloodlines are listed there in One book.

Someone tried posting a /v/ thread on Veeky Forums

The goths graduated college and went corporate. No time left for hobbies.

Everybody who wasn't dead tired of rolling huge handfuls of dice multiple times to do anything moved to Shadowrun.

Five stand-alone games with no good way to do crossovers.

Most of the published adventures we played in felt like stories in which we were side characters, with no control or influence over the narrative. Pretty frequently we resorted to killing as many key NPC's as possible, in order to fuck up the story.

What clan would Trump play as? The glib answer would be Ventrue, but I think he's a bit too anti-establishment for that. Maybe Trujah?

Ventrue Antitibu masquerading as a Camarilla Ventrue? Moving the local Camarilla into oppressing the Catiff and Bruja in a attempt to get them to join the Sabbat?

Anons are whining that their book stores and gamestore aren't regularly stocked with physical prints. Limited runs do the go in your Barnes & Noble, fuck face.

Plugging is okay but it's how they shill is the problem. Except for Geist and most hunters, most splats have problems sure but at least both sides can be justified. The way Beast is made and how they shut down conversation on it is appalling. They market Beasts as these creatures that can do no wrong and have to cause pain, fear, etc on people but even when they go full monster they are still justified and anyone caught in their wake and retaliate in any way hero or not is just being mean and victimizing them and are always in the wrong. Plus since these characters are more OC Donut Steels then most splats it gets really skeezy and tumbly when you have to discuss things. If anything I think the biggest problem is that it appeals to the worst tumblr crowds overall. Just like many have said the crowd VTM was made for has dispersed and fallen to the wayside. To gain a new demographic they are reaching for the tumbly crowd but we all know that they are the worst community to support anything. They won't buy the material they "champion", criticize and alienate prospective buyers/players, and prevent actual discussion on the game. It encourages That guy/girl mentalities and it's becoming more and more prevalent on the Onyxpath forums. Sure we know everyone who plays White Wolf isn't like that but when your first introduction to the game, especially the official forums is like this then it becomes a problem for both the games and the community as a whole.

Lasombra/Giovanni

I was thinking Lasombra as a possibility. Giovanni does not feel right to me. How about Malkavian?

This is weird because other than D&D Masquerade is the only game I can find people willing to play.

Vampire Superheroes is boring, though. My current GM keeps trying to go Vampire Superheroes and I keep trying to drag it back to at least Vampire Dune.

I feel like Nwod's setting is less boring but easir to make your own events in. The setting and plot are so detailed in oWod that it's hard to add new things or play around without bumping into things. Which was kind of the point, but GMs like making shit up.

The week of nightmares was a cool concept, but it really works better if you're in a massive game like OWBYN. If you are just trying to run a fucking chronicle, I feel like ignoring the metaplot other than "The legends and religious beliefs of some kindred" is the best way to go.

The most annoying thing about VtM is that the clans don't really always work together all that well, so it's hard to keep the party interacting without metaplot. In Nwod at least they fixed it so you could play with a group of people from different splats but in Masquerade it's really hard to get a group together who end up with characters that would ever really interact. You always end up with like a streetwise megalomaniac malkie, a super clean ventrue who is slowly, carefully climbing the corporate ladder at the all ventrue company, and so you're thinking of running a campaign that reminds you of a noir/gangster movie, but with long term thought and vampires, and then in wanders the person who made a toreador professional groupie or something.

Goth is coming back, though. You'd think it would be more popular now.

>This is weird because other than D&D Masquerade is the only game I can find people willing to play.
Is Vampire a regional game?

This guy gets it. I think Lasombra, except that he loves cameras so much. If he were Giovanni I feel like someone older than him would have smacked his ass down when he did stupid shit a bit more often.

I don't know. I had to pull teeth to get my group to play shadowrun.

It's possible. I'm in the upper midwest for our population of nerds there are a lot of OWBYN groups here and a lot of older people looking to relive their past as playing the game.

It probably helps that my LGS has a lot of used splat books and always has Masquerade books in stock.

>Vampire Dune

I've never heard this metaphor... please elaborate.

I'm currently a few streets away from a university campus and I haven't met a single goddamn person who's played this game or has any interest in trying.

>Week of Nightmares

I'm not really sure the Week of Nightmares was a good idea, even in concept. It wiped out an entire clan (made up mostly of people who were were playing contrarian/special snowflake characters to begin with), making the remnants of that clan either improbable or extremely "special".

I'm still not sold on the Technocracy having demigod killing satellites in orbit.

>Clans not working closely together

This was a problem even for Camarilla characters. Nosferatu can't go anywhere without violating the Masquerade, Brujah and Ventrue have a 1,000 year old grudge against each other, the Tremere can never be trusted under any circumstances, Gangrel don't really care for politics or sticking around in one place, and the Malkavians are about as trustworthy as a cobra with googly eyes stuck on it.

Toreador are almost as bad as the Ventrue and Brujah, but in their own "head up their own ass" way.

When you throw in the non-Camarilla and Sabbat clans, it only gets worse from there.

I don't think other people use it.

In the early Dune books you have all these factions trying to pretend they aren't constantly vying for dominance and pulling off ancient grudges and that they don't have all these crazy abilities. So there will be battles and people using powers but a lot of the time what actually causes the change of events is some guy asking another guy a seemingly innocuous question in public.

Lots of back and forth spying and betrayal and gambit pileups and stuff. But most of the time, everyone is pretending nothing is happening at all.

Must be regional then.

Yeah, so unless your chronicle is fucking MASSIVE, I feel like for the best experience you have to get the players to agree to play a chronicle in one clan or maybe a sabbat pack who is bound together. Which really limits you a lot.

I feel like Requiem solved that problem really neatly, but it somehow never caught people's imaginations the way the original game did and fewer people know of it.

In my experience, the best way to have group cohesion is to give them all something to care about, and require them to come up with how and why they all know each other.

Requiem would have been better served if it hadn't tried to recycle some of Masquerade's clothes (some clans are similar, both in tone and even name). I remember when it came out and I wasn't interested in playing the lesser brother when I already had the original that I liked.

I'm not saying Requiem was bad or terrible. It just didn't appeal because I was already changing the things I didn't like in Masquerade.

>Goth is coming back, though. You'd think it would be more popular now.

No wonder. Currently WoD is de facto invisible.

Forums became the most toxic kind of echo chamber. And they get their new talent from said echo chamber.

I read who is making changeling, guy cannot go 2 sentences talking about mechanics without starting to ramble poetically about "his" vision of the one true changeling.

>a cobra with googly eyes stuck on it

What do you mean with echo chamber?

The white wild forms are a toxic place where the mere mention of an idea that the forum disagrees with (such as running a different setting with the wod rules, or running the setting "wrong", or any kind of houserules) results in dozens of personal attacks and the kids locking the thread.

These people are the ones the devs are writing for.

Hence toxic echo chamber.

I probably wouldn't be welcome. I made a Wheel of Time homebrew using the Storyteller system (yeah, I know, shit taste).

I also use house rules, but I've always done that. Usually just table etiquette stuff, but occasionally rule changes.

In a perverse way, I kind of wonder what it would be like to tell them that I'm running oWoD with Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand in play.

I'm not. It's a hypothetical what-if to rustle jimmies.

Not enough penises.

>But then, maybe you thought the Week of Nightmares was a brilliant idea.

I've always wanted to run Week of Nightmares with Troile under Carthage instead of Zapathasura. I think it would be dope as fuck for some deranged psycho super bitch with the power to punch niggas really hard to just wake up and start trashing the Mediterranean.

9/11 was an Assamite conspiracy to get the US military to bomb Baali outposts across the region.

>Maybe Trujah?

He's neither intelligent nor a wizard, m8.

>Limited runs do the go in your Barnes & Noble, fuck face.
Yeah, okay. Get back to me when you learn how to type in English.

It's not a bad system for the Wheel of Time. If you retool the mage spheres a bit you have some great One Power rules. Maybe throw in some stunting, and you're all set.

It is more or less what I had done. One day I should type it all up and make a PDF.

It sounds like they learned the wrong lessons from Mage and its propensity for some people to use the Technocracy as good guys as a default rather as the exception, and built Beast to avoid the heroes being used as good guys to avoid a repeat of that problem.

In my game, I made one change that I liked from Requiem. Instead of the Jihad, which never really sat well with me, I instead call the wheels within wheels thing the Danse Macabre, when its even referenced in game. Most of the time my players just calling "Fucking Politics."

>Storytellers gave up on the game the way the book was intended to play and started playing it as Vampire Superheroes and that got boring fast.

this

>White Wolf had gotten complacent and arrogant. They looked down on their own fan base.

This too

In fact the developer of Beast hates it when people play the designated bad guy faction, and refuses to ever provide any rules for it.

>What do you mean with echo chamber?

Let me put you a example. When mage 2E came out there was a power (time 2 attainment) that allows mages to cast any spell into a subject past. No explanation of how to deal with that nor how to balance or what something like that meant to the game. Just that time paradoxes arent a thing.

The few thinking people who had a problem with that asked about the problem of 1/5 of starting mages being able to make time their bitch and they receive the custom white wolf answers:

A) Its realist not narrative
B) Its narrative not realist
C) Its not broken/op because you can always rule 0
D) You should take this as a DM challenge to hone your storytelling.

And then they errata that shit out. What do this same fans say? "Well, it makes sense they remove it.....it was almost unplayable"

Its reverse evolution, the developers breed this kind of fan who lack criterion, who suck enough to the devs until they become mods of their clique forum and finally become developers themselves who in turn breed fans with less and less criterion. When the dev are also the mods of their own feedback structure, then this sort of search for the breeding the shitiest writer happens.

I did, that album is fucking badass. Ministry lost its way after 1984.

>A company literally run out of some guy's garage should be able to do business on par with a subsidiary of one of the biggest toy companies in the goddamn world

Nosferatu. Bravo/Curmudgeon.

Smaller companies then Onyxpath somehow manage to get books in print without any problems.

The lore and setting was great, the problem started when the writers started to create their own characters, plots and storylines.

They weren't mature enough to handle the adult themes. Their characters turned out childish cartoon cutouts and their plots ended up full of holes.

None of them had any experience writing actual narrative, they had spent all their time in college dealing with styles, settings, and themes.

Its like the joke about an art student who graduates without learning how to sculpt, paint, or draw.

trump would be a ghoul, since he walks about during the daytime.

This. You can not tell me that Fantsy Age is more popular than WoD.

What did Justin?

Gurps is what made oMage playable to me. Maybe there's a pattern here?

>GURPS oWoD

Sure, If you like 400 point campaigns. Hell, Werewolf was closer to 600.

I haven't looked at the other GUROS conversions but I think Mage is really good for what it is. High point characters aren't bad, it just means a fair amount of front loading but the games running very smooth once you get that out the way. But that's par for the course for the GURPS system.

Focus on metaplot safari instead of personal horror. Much what points out.