[video=youtube;1UMf8SgSH5A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UMf8SgSH5A&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I'd actually be interested in watching it, but the whole  "Everything before World of Darkness was stupid fantasy games for NERDS" message is so pathetically self-aggrandizing it wrinkles my brain.

Honestly, I think they're right but for the wrong reasons.

Before the 90's, D&D -was- "a game for nerds".  I mean, you had some toys and a cartoon in the 80's, but the TTRPG hobby/industry was pretty much D&D, and D&D was "nerdy".  

And then four related things happened: computers became big, people who knew how to work computers became important, people wanted to be like the computer savvy folk, and a lot of computer savvy folk were into TTRPGs.  And White Wolf exploded right around the same time computers and "nerd culture" did.

Now, we could go into things White Wolf did (intentionally or not) that made it more mainstream in 10 years than D&D managed in 30.  Things like having a modern setting, simplified mechanics, pushing supplement treadmills and "game book fluff as cheap fantasy literature", and -actively- trying to appeal to women as players.  Meanwhile D&D was getting bought and sold and resold.

tl;dr - White Wolf was very big in the 90's, and D&D wasn't despite (or perhaps because of) being older.

Quote from: san dee jota;948247I mean, you had some toys and a cartoon in the 80's, but the TTRPG hobby/industry was pretty much D&D

Sure, if you discount the hundreds of other RPGs.

Hmm...

"You could not separate the game from club culture and club fashion."

I'm willing to believe that most WoD players are club animals, but that doesn't mean they influenced club culture in any way. I mean, me and five horse racing fan friends might create and publish a horse racing RPG, but the fact that the six of us and our dozens buyers spend all our time at the track would NOT mean that we've had any sort of influence of the millions of horse racing fans who also go to the track and have never heard of us. Now, if they could show (i.g. prove) that most clubgoiers were WoD players, that would mean something. Of course, it's not going to happen.

"The World of Darkness has influenced a whole generation of supernatural entertainment."

Are you quite sure that generation was primarily influenced by WoD (1991-)? And not, say, Anne Rice's novels (1976-) or Gothic literature (Dracula 1897)?

Sure, you are the biggest thing since sliced bread; you just have to pull grandiose statements out of your ass.

Quote from: Premier;948257"The World of Darkness has influenced a whole generation of supernatural entertainment."

Are you quite sure that generation was primarily influenced by WoD (1991-)? And not, say, Anne Rice's novels (1976-) or Gothic literature (Dracula 1897)?

Sure, you are the biggest thing since sliced bread; you just have to pull grandiose statements out of your ass.

Just gonna leave this here - https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/09/08

There was definitely a huge shift when World of Darkness came out. I remember that. But I do agree with Tristram that there were plenty of non-Fantasy RPGs prior to it. Heck my first RPG experience in '86 was a sci-fi mecha-RPG. And I remember playing Batman, TMNT, and Top Secret well before vampire. I think what vampire did was bring a new crowd to gaming. Definitely I saw more women coming into the hobby with vampire, and more people who were not fantasy or science fiction fans. In boston I remember it being really big in Salem and among the new age crowd. But there was also lots of cross over. I was in a regular D&D group and one of our players was super into WoD, and he would frequently run WoD campaigns for us. Also, I do remember there being a sense that WoD was catching up to D&D in the 90s and a lot of the Ravenloft products I bought at that time felt like they were chasing after some of the WoD fanbase.

They utterly ignored the greatest breadth of genres that rpgs had before the rise of Vampire. RPGs were not just D&D prior to Vampire. Horror games were very big before the rise of the WOD. So were all kinds of scifi games. So in fact was the diversity of available superhero games. The field was enormous. And it was only building momentum from those early years of the hobby.

The D20 boom was greater than the boom that Vampire caused. Much greater. It caused a total industry rebirth.

This is the *definition* of SWINERY right there. As a "documentary." Expressed as "the truth."

They are not saying "some gamers were treated like losers back then, there was prejudice." They are saying "gamers WERE losers, dirty nerdy losers, look at how SAD they looked back then before VAMPIRE, the first mature, adult, relevant game for COOL PEOPLE indivisible from the club scene."

It's official now: White Wolf stereotypes are all true!

Even the folks at the Big Purple are against it.

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?799220-New-White-Wolf-quot-Before-Vampire-RPGs-were-all-childish-fantasy-games-for-losers!-quot

They have some points.  WoD was certainly explicitly tied more into a non-gaming real world subculture than D&D was.  I mean sure, if you look at Computers/D&D, there was a lot of crossover in the populations, but Vampire fed from and was fed upon by the Goth culture to a much greater extent.  It definitely brought in a different crowd, and you do see its influence, even if there is also cross-pollination from Vampire's own sources.

However, just like D&D took those sources, blended them into something different, and became the foundation of the entire fantasy rpg computer game industry, Vampire took those sources, blended them into something different and became the foundation of the entire paranormal romance, urban fantasy/hidden supernatural society literature genres.

Quote from: RF Victor;948269Even the folks at the Big Purple are against it.

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?799220-New-White-Wolf-quot-Before-Vampire-RPGs-were-all-childish-fantasy-games-for-losers!-quot

The Big Purple hates White Wolf currently.  Serious frothing at the mouth, gather the pitch forks hatred.  Doesn't mean anything.
Edited to add my source: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?798635-Whitewolf-Hires-Zak-Sabbath-and-Denies-Harassment

As for this "documentary", it looks like an ad.  I'd expect it to oversell everything about World of Darkness.  I will say that as someone who never played WOD stuff (I was mostly played AD&D 2e and Alternity in the 90s), I was still very much aware of it and the impact it had on gaming culture, and I don't think I can say that about any other game systems.  I was just never into the goth thing, except that one time when I dyed my hair black and went to a cool club in an old packing warehouse.

Who cares about ties to non-gaming subculture? (Let's see... oh - posers.)

It's an annoying ad trying to suck attention from the weak willed, which is about the only appropriate aspect I see (given that it's about vampires). The whole genre seems like fantasy for posers to me. So I suppose it's natural that an ad of theirs would be poser-bait.

White Wolf games are their own dumb thing that seems better considered as a related thing. I bought a used copy of their magic-based RPG (Adept? I forget the title, and don't care enough to look it up) and lost what little interest I had after understanding their idea of game mechanics, and realizing I would never want to play that type of game, let alone be able to use anything from it in a game I would want to run.

Trying to claim that they're even the same thing as an RPG, let alone any kind of superior RPG or evolution of RPG, just seems like next-level poser-dom to me.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;948248Sure, if you discount the hundreds of other RPGs.

I do.  I really, really do.

Pre-90's there were other RPGs, but they were small fry.  Call of Cthulhu, Traveler, GURPS, etc.  Big names right?  Nope.  D&D was -the- game in the 80's, and everything else was just churning along in their own little niches, getting by, dreaming of a distant 2nd place behind D&D.  When the 90's rolled along, RPGs went (relatively) mainstream, and that's when you see all those old games come out with new editions and gluts of product.  Just so they could try to reach a distant third place in terms of sales.

"But over in this other country, this popular game was even -bigger- than D&D!"  I'm guessing it was a fantasy game that came out after D&D was already licensed, translated, and the other publisher got sick of seeing all that royalty money disappear?

BADD, Mazes & Monsters, and Dark Dungeons weren't ignoring Call of Cthulhu because they approved of it, but because it was something only a subset of members in a niche hobby even knew about.

This isn't an issue of whether or not other games existed, or were fun, but an issue of market share.  An issue of how many people were playing X vs D&D.  And in that light, pre-90's, D&D ruled the hobby and industry both.

And then it all came crashing down.

Quote from: under_score;948285The Big Purple hates White Wolf currently.[

Enh, they hate the -new- White Wolf.  

They love the old-freelancers-and-staffers-who-used-to-work-for-White-Wolf-but-now-work-for-a-different-company-on-all-the-old-White-Wolf-games that is Onyx Path.  It probably helps that they have a sizable percentage of the mod staff doing freelance work for Onyx Path.

Well, I think a few people are being a bit thin-skinned about it.

White Wolf and Vampire: The Masquerade undoubtedly had an impact on the hobby. While it is certainly true that there were plenty of RPGs out there before Vampire, they were not at all as widely played as they are these days. The bulk of gamers - possibly more than 80% of them - exclusively played D&D/AD&D. Yes games like Traveller, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia et al  all had their moments, but they were still only played by a small minority of gamers. What Vampire did, as with a number of other cultural expressions (like Grunge or Tarantino movies) in the early 1990s, was to take the alternative into the mainstream (and playing a game about being Vampires in a modern gothic punk world was pretty alternative to the D&D experience). White Wolf managed to capture about 25% share of the RPG market and maintained it for the best part of 20 years. Other game companies were also then emboldened to pursue their own game's markets by redressing issues of presentation and so on, while others went about driving storytelling design and indie publication.

In terms of the documentary, it's purpose as much as anything is to sell the importance of White Wolf to potentially new audiences, so if it seems a little self-important it's pretty much doing it's job.

Why do you care, and why are you bothering to come to a gaming forum to post it? Or why, if what you care about is sales, don't you just hop to Magic: The Gathering, or Pokemon, or Hollywood films, or pop music, or the fossil fuel industry, since they make all RPGs "small fry" and are "-bigger-"?