How White Wolf's "Murderer's Row" Carved Its Mark on Genre Fiction

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I think there was some really neat stuff in there. Mage: The Ascension and Changeling: The Dreaming were two of the games that pushed probably some of the most interesting ideas I've ever encountered in table top RPGs. I just think between finding a group mature enough to handle the vague complications of those games and and finding a "Storyteller" who could engage the group without it being a hand-holding tour of the WoD, they're just hard to play without becoming a mess.

Mage was my test run for new players, to gauge maturity level and critical thinking. Also because if I started with Vampire or Werewolf, I always seemed to run into Anne Rice fans, or power hungry oh-so-obvious virgins who wanted the Vampire/Werewolf power fantasy (and this was before Twilight). Thats not how I ran my games, nor did I accept players who couldn't play mature characters. Mage was the easiest because it involved being responsible with powers and coming up with ways of using them without major guidelines telling them how to use them or giving them a list of spells. It was easy in that the concept was so much different than other RPG's I'd played that it gave me something to judge the character of each player and their abilities. Usually if we could get through a good Mage story, then any of the other WoD games would usually play well also.
But man was it tough to find a group who fit the criteria... I was storyteller 90% of the time, just because I knew the system almost well enough to not need the books.