This is huge! We might get a new Vampire game after all. The possibilities are endless. Maybe they even manage the WoD MMO Project from CCP?
White Wolf Publishing Acquired by Paradox Interactive
- Thread starter Conrad Zimmerman
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Thats a dream come true to me.... Especially if you could simulate starting out as a new vampire, and seeing your rise to power over the ages.Bat Vader said:
There have been multiple attempts to achieve something similar through mods, but ehh - its an ambitious goal.
OT: Honestly, PI is one of my favorite publishers. If they bring out VtM PC game out - thats at least competent - they might just be one of the best things to happen to PC gaming. At least imho.
Paradox mostly does strategy games as a developer, but as a publisher they're all over the place - GalCiv and Sword of the Stars, Pillars of Eternity, Mount and Blade, Cities: Skylines, and a pile of other stuff from all kinds of different genres. As awesome as a WoD grand strategy game would be, if Paradox act as publisher rather than developer, games could end up in pretty much any genre.Recusant said:
Knights of pen and paper(turn based RPG), Mount and Blade, and Runemaster.Recusant said:
they have done first person survvival horror before with Penumbra.
I have a feeling we will see something good out of this, just by virtue of this not being a single game publisher like CCP is.
I'm still hankering for a good Werewolf videogame. Old, New, 2E ... don't really care which version (though 2E is a pretty phenomenal experience). Not enough games with werewolves as player characters. The new Harmony system might work well in a sandbox-y type of setting. I mean ... form up with a pack, help hold and develop territory every now and again between 'missions', maybe even downloadable hunts of dangerous prey through DLC, interact with spirits, develop klaives and fetishes ... cross in and out between flesh and Hisil. I mean ... gah. So much potential.
Perhaps too much stuff to incorporate. Vampire is kind of easier and has brand name recognize beyond the pen and paper types like me. I think Werewolf might have more longevity, however. Simply given the two worlds mechanic, all the weird shit, hunting, crafting essentially 'magic' items, territory options.
Perhaps too much stuff to incorporate. Vampire is kind of easier and has brand name recognize beyond the pen and paper types like me. I think Werewolf might have more longevity, however. Simply given the two worlds mechanic, all the weird shit, hunting, crafting essentially 'magic' items, territory options.
You may want to keep an eye on The Onyx Path. They have been licensing WW IPs from CCP for some time and have been producing some successful books; Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Mummy. Exalted 3rd Edition is coming out finally after many delays but very positive feedback thus far (just need to ignore the angry Kickstarter trolls).Fappy said:
www.theonyxpath.com
Interesting news, but to be honest I'm not 100% sure if White Wolf can be brought back successfully after this much neglect, bad writing, and poor business decisions. I've been critical of the people working with the IPs for a long time, both pre and post CCP, and sort of predicted what was going to happen with it a long time before it did. WW's IPs were a product of their time and had the benefit of being relatively fresh, so fresh in fact that I feel it was widely imitated through a lot of the modern "paranormal drama" genera both books and TV shows, with everything from "Supernatural" to "The Vampire Diaries" and tons of others owing a debt to it. It of course doesn't help that White Wolf failed to defend it's IPs in regards to things like the movie "Underworld" which was apparently based on a story called "For Love Of Monsters" published by White Wolf, which pretty much opened the door for all of the things it inspired in one way or another. I think a lot of this kind of material is beginning to be tapped out for the moment even if it's going strong and in many cases wound up doing White Wolf better than it did itself. I'm not sure if the audience is there for it anymore, it having evaporated into other things. It also doesn't help that we already saw how they ended their popular world/canon and then rebooted the whole thing as "WoD 2.0" which has done okay but I think managed to hurt the following to begin with and it seems like they lost a good number of people along with the changes. New management means what is likely going to be a 3.0 and I'm not sure how well that is going to go over since I can see it decimating the fan base that has continued under publishers like Onyx Path more than bringing more people into the fold. Right now does not exactly seem to be a good time for PnP RPGs in general with even WoTC shutting down it's D&D forums due to lack of traffic.
I'll also be brutally honest on another front. Part of the success of White Wolf, especially "World Of Darkness" is how it pushed the envelope and good taste and then smugly sat back and played the whole "art" card as a defense. Things have become a LOT more politically correct in recent years and while the pendelum always swings back, the bottom line is that when a lot of their popularity comes from pushing the envelope, I do have to question as to whether they have the guts to make it work given the invariable backlash that will be incoming. I suppose they could produce far more sanitized works than they have in the past, but that would kind of defeat half the purpose.
That said my opinion of White Wolf has always been fairly mixed as I've gone on about at length in the past, and I confess to having a dislike of a couple of "names" attached to it. I myself would like to see more done with the IPs however including another decent video game or three. I also confess that I have more interest in seeing a revival of the Aeonverse, especially "Aberrant" and it's world building, assuming they can stay away from the scripted meta plotty stuff.
That's my thoughts at any rate. "Bloodlines" is an old game and shows the potential for Vampire based RPGs if people put in the time and effort.
I'll also be brutally honest on another front. Part of the success of White Wolf, especially "World Of Darkness" is how it pushed the envelope and good taste and then smugly sat back and played the whole "art" card as a defense. Things have become a LOT more politically correct in recent years and while the pendelum always swings back, the bottom line is that when a lot of their popularity comes from pushing the envelope, I do have to question as to whether they have the guts to make it work given the invariable backlash that will be incoming. I suppose they could produce far more sanitized works than they have in the past, but that would kind of defeat half the purpose.
That said my opinion of White Wolf has always been fairly mixed as I've gone on about at length in the past, and I confess to having a dislike of a couple of "names" attached to it. I myself would like to see more done with the IPs however including another decent video game or three. I also confess that I have more interest in seeing a revival of the Aeonverse, especially "Aberrant" and it's world building, assuming they can stay away from the scripted meta plotty stuff.
That's my thoughts at any rate. "Bloodlines" is an old game and shows the potential for Vampire based RPGs if people put in the time and effort.
If only I could like posts. I would like yours into oblivion.GeneralChaos said:
The thing I'm hoping for is a new Geist book (or game I guess but more eh on that) that was one of my favorite new world books that got next to no love.
As someone that has played nearly every iteration of White Wolf's many products and their re-envisionings, it still seems to have a lot of support. Particularly on the online chat model given its reliance on not merely being a dungeon crawl kind of game, where much of it relies on a general aura of secrecy. Whilst Masquerade was fun its market model wasn't going to work, and it became way too much about establishing world-building as opposed to creating tools for a ST to use to build their own. Mechanically Masquerade was kind of all over the place, and lore wise it was all a bit silly particularly towards the end. Honestly, having played every instance of Vampire, Werewolf and Changeling ... thematically and mechanically, they're improving. 2E Vampire is actually a lot of fun, and I quite like the ideas put forward into the God-Machine Chronicles in general. They've fixed up the morality systems and transformed it into a more meaningful integrity slide which charts just how much of you remains as you experience the World of Darkness, and how much of your core values that create your individual moral compass still survive.Therumancer said:
From Classic WoD to 2E ... the process has been all about refinement and making things organic. And overall it works ... it creates vulnerabilities, and heightens aspects of being a predator in the two splats currently out for the latest iteration of the base product.
If I'm bummed out about one thing, it's that they going to have to do Mage first before they get around to Changeling ... if only for a sake of tradition. C:tL is perhaps one of the finest roleplaying games ever made. Not only that, but each expansion diud more than add new mechanics, new entitlements, or new game play elements but created whole new feels in the game that you could explore. Expanding the game universe not so much in cases of merely what was happening in the material, the Hedge and Arcadia, but created new dimensions to each that all players and STs could explore. If 2E Werewolf is anything to go by, as well as 2E Vampire, they're merely taking the feel and environment, and improving them to make better predators and better prey. Addition of tilts and beats rewards weakness in so far that it acts as an organic means to chart weakness and strength.
So I don't really see any doom and gloom for White Wolf, or at least Onyx Publishing. The artwork, the feel, the ingenuity of the new setting? All of it comes together well, and all of it works to breed new dimenions of fear and triumph. A lot of players got turned off when you had nWoD after Gehenna ... but the thing is that most players who played nWoD agree that most of the splat venues (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling ....) well that they are more or less improvements on Classic, and that you 2E Werewolf and Vampire, as well as the base game, are further improvements on those.
Even the artwork and presentation is improving. The books are nicer in general ... better value for money. I just hope the Mage book isn't like Mage: the Awakening ... bright gold and bleached white should never be a primary art palette in a book that you will need to constantly reference and read as you're playing a game. It's a recipe for headaches. That being said, juxtapose it with Changeling: the Lost, which has singularly the best artwork and presentation of any roleplaying book ever (with the possible exception of Planescape).
Hence why a lot of fans including myself, have stuck around around. From Classic to New, to 2E. Because the direction is an overall improvement, and because Classic was ... silly. I mean it was awesome, but it was silly. It had a pseudo-campyness to it that it on the surface tried so hard to avoid. Since New World of Darkness, most of the mythos is split up and distinct from one another. Werewolves had a creation story, vampires don't really but nor do most of them care, mages have a creation myth that is largely seperate from werewolves, changelings have their own but it begins and ends in Arcadia and what Arcadia and the True Fae really are ... etc. Given there isn't an attempt to world build and create some clusterfuck-y umbrella of world history, the books no longer read like bad fan fiction.
I think you are overrating just how much the Methusaleh and the Jyhad added to the gaming enjoyment of vampire. The Methuselah were a good narrative idea on paper, but because they existed every ST felt the need to tie their consistent battles over their own narratives when Vampire should have always remained a game of survival and personal acquaintance with horror and deceit. Not some ever distant, omnipotent force of magical McGuffin-ery.
I also fail to see the 'political correctness' of it. Neither Classic, New, or 2E were or are politically correct. It's about mortals interacting with ever better predators in a world that is harsh and impersonal to human suffering. That story hasn't changed ... if anything it's become less politically correct as the narrative reasons for people's suffering have become less about archaic conspiracies, and timeless contracts and mistakes, and more a protracted message of; "Life sucks. People suffer and die."