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Author Topic: OSR for World of Darkness?  (Read 10211 times)

BoxCrayonTales

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« on: May 11, 2020, 11:59:17 AM »
So there's an OSR for lots of things now. Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Exalted... why not World of Darkness?

EDIT: For example, Opening the Dark is an OGL retroclone of the Storyteller rules.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2020, 09:11:03 PM by BoxCrayonTales »

BronzeDragon

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2020, 02:11:31 PM »
Even more angsty than before?
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Mordred Pendragon

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2020, 02:57:16 PM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1129565
So there's an OSR for lots of things now. Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Exalted... why not World of Darkness?


I'd say it has to do with the specific setting itself.

WoD has been fucked over hard by radical setting changes since Revised Edition in 1999 at least, but the early setting of 1st Edition and the first few years of 2nd Edition were very good.

The problem is that a successful OSR take on WoD would have to be at least partly reliant on the WoD IP, at least the early material for it.

The original OSR with D&D is largely dependent on mechanics as opposed to a specific setting, which is where a lot of the initial nostalgia for WoD is for, even the pre-metaplot and pre-Revised materials from the early 90's.

Call of Cthulhu was able to develop its own OSR setting because the Mythos is partially in the public domain.

Just going "hurr durr make your own setting" is a half-ass "Some Other Game" cop out that the Goths and Punks who run White Wolf/Onyx Path have relied on to suppress any and all wrongthink

The initial drive for the OSR in D&D was largely mechanical. People didn't like the newer rules of D&D or WOTC's narrow focus on Forgotten Realms, and this came to a head with the release of the infamous 4th Edition in 2008.

The earliest OSR games were mostly generic clones of TSR-era D&D, mostly OD&D or Basic, although the first major one was OSRIC, a clone of AD&D 1E. It was assumed you used the clones since older versions of the rules were hard to find back then, and were often very rare and expensive in the case of early stuff like OD&D, Holmes Basic, or certain early 1E AD&D books.

The earliest OSR games were really meant to be used with either pre-existing modules and supplements from the TSR era or for a GM's homebrew setting.

The idea of the OSR games having distinct settings and lore of their own happened a bit later.

White Wolf's later iterations have been about enforcing a thematic and ideological purity and punishing any attempt at deviating from the metaplot and the pretentious themes of "personal horror", to the point of intentionally conflating the entire genre of horror with the specific theme of "personal horror"

Onyx Path's dreadful output and the god-awful V5 metaplot changes are merely that purism taken to its most extreme, to say nothing of garbage like Monsterhearts or iHunt.

Unless you can somehow get the rights for World of Darkness, or be able to negotiate the ability to pay for a licensed fork of the setting, you can't do a successful old-school take on the game and be able to publish it.

So all you have is shitty "Some Other Game" titles that are even more disgraceful to the urban fantasy and modern horror genres as World of Darkness is nowadays, with none of the success or past glory of the early White Wolf years.

Given the animosity between Onyx Path and Paradox, I'm surprised nobody has tried to raise the money to license Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness from Paradox and get it out of Onyx Path's hands. But that is neither here nor there.
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BoxCrayonTales

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2020, 04:59:29 PM »
Quote from: BronzeDragon;1129577
Even more angsty than before?


I was thinking that we could introduce a sliding scale so that everybody could select an amount that worked for them.

But seriously, I was thinking that the OGL would promote more creativity than we otherwise see. People could invent their own cosmologies, organizations, powers, blah blah, share them, and see others use and promote them. For example, Opening the Dark is an OGL retroclone of the Storyteller rules.

Jaeger

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2020, 05:51:26 PM »
I find myself in almost total agreement with everything Doc Sammy said.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1129583
I'd say it has to do with the specific setting itself.
...The problem is that a successful OSR take on WoD would have to be at least partly reliant on the WoD IP, at least the early material for it. .


I would say that it would at the very least have to have some very common tropes with the early Vampire/WoD IP. (Serious serial numbers filed off and renamed stuff, but still recognizable to the fan-base).

Close enough to sway the nostalgia brigade to give your brand of Vampire a chance.

And make no mistake; you would have to set yourself up as the 'new' Vampire RPG. You would have to go straight for the WW base in order to make a run at actually being successful.

(Also have your LARP rules ready to go when your RPG is released...)

But then you get into a potential 'underwold' situation; where if the WW ip holders think you are too close, you get sued...

Doesn't matter if you could win in court, what would matter is do you have the $$ to ride it out.



Quote from: Doc Sammy;1129583
...Given the animosity between Onyx Path and Paradox, I'm surprised nobody has tried to raise the money to license Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness from Paradox and get it out of Onyx Path's hands. But that is neither here nor there.


Personally if it was me...

I would want to control all the WW IP or nothing.

And although all things WW are basically on life support, the IP holders probably still want a good chunk of change beyond what most are willing to pay for what is functionally a dead game line, except among the hardcore faithful.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2020, 05:54:18 PM by Jaeger »
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trechriron

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #5 on: May 11, 2020, 05:56:08 PM »
In the spirit of an OSR clone, you should not need WW IP. Instead, I would suggest you create a similar setting that pushes all those same buttons without directly copying the original WoD metaplot.

So, you would might have Bloodlines (used in several vampire games, so likely not copyrighted...) and say Cults (again, ubiquitous term...) for vampires. Tribes is another general term. Bloodlines is general enough to apply to most supernatural types; even sorcerers or wizards. You could setup the same "race + class" detail as found in the oWoD.

There were also problems with the original system's math. The idea of changing TN AND dice pools was over-complicated. So was the original critical failure mechanic. If someone is going to clone oWoD, they would want to touch it up vs. adhering to some rabid perfect recreation cult.

I picked up a system recently that WAS basically a clone of oWoD, including varying TN on die + varying die pools + 1's cancel out successes. Can't remember the name of it...
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Mordred Pendragon

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #6 on: May 11, 2020, 06:17:23 PM »
Quote from: Jaeger;1129598
I find myself in almost total agreement with everything Doc Sammy said.



I would say that it would at the very least have to have some very common tropes with the early Vampire/WoD IP. (Serious serial numbers filed off and renamed stuff, but still recognizable to the fan-base).

Close enough to sway the nostalgia brigade to give your brand of Vampire a chance.

And make no mistake; you would have to set yourself up as the 'new' Vampire RPG. You would have to go straight for the WW base in order to make a run at actually being successful.

(Also have your LARP rules ready to go when your RPG is released...)

But then you get into a potential 'underwold' situation; where if the WW ip holders think you are too close, you get sued...

Doesn't matter if you could win in court, what would matter is do you have the $$ to ride it out.





Personally if it was me...

I would want to control all the WW IP or nothing.

And although all things WW are basically on life support, the IP holders probably still want a good chunk of change beyond what most are willing to pay for what is functionally a dead game line, except among the hardcore faithful.

True.

At the same time, if any option was even close to being feasible, it would be buying out or at least paying the license fees for New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness.

Crowdfunding could be a potential avenue for this option, at least initially.

After all, Paradox Interactive has outright stated they have no interest in Requiem or anything like that and they only bought WW for the Classic World of Darkness.

That's the main reason why Onyx Path was able to keep the licensing agreement to publish New World of Darkness they got from CCP largely unchanged, with the only stipulations being that the name had to be changed to Chronicles of Darkness to avoid brand confusion and that Paradox would not allow any video game adaptations of Requiem or the other New WoD lines.

Even after Nu-White Wolf was officially disbanded, that policy remained in effect.

Of course, I'm really curious about how this whole thing has affected the LARP scene.

As far as I know, nobody has heard so much as a whimper from By Night Studios after the Paradox buyout in 2015. They were still kind of quiet even then, but they did get full LARP adaptations of Vampire and Werewolf with an updated metaplot that wasn't as drastic in its alterations as V5 was, but wasn't metaplot-neutral like V20 and W20 were.

They were working on a LARP adaptation of Changeling The Dreaming last time they said anything, but I don't think anything has come of that.

Also, By Night Studios also refused to adapt New World of Darkness for LARP, but they also emerged from the era of the 20th Anniversary Editions where Onyx Path was meant as the successor to White Wolf's tabletop division and By Night was to do the LARP stuff while CCP got the royalty checks and licensing fee payments.

I'm not sure how the Paradox buyout affected them, or even if they still exist anymore.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2020, 06:19:37 PM by Doc Sammy »
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Itachi

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #7 on: May 11, 2020, 06:23:39 PM »
Because WoD is horror+politics setting while the OSR is based on combat+adventure?

Jaeger

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #8 on: May 11, 2020, 06:45:16 PM »
Quote from: Doc Sammy;1129603
...That's the main reason why Onyx Path was able to keep the licensing agreement to publish New World of Darkness they got from CCP largely unchanged, with the only stipulations being that the name had to be changed to Chronicles of Darkness to avoid brand confusion and that Paradox would not allow any video game adaptations of Requiem or the other New WoD lines..

Yeah, this whole mess...

It's done nothing but create brand confusion.

This is the #1 reason to me that if your going to go IP hunting for Vampire/WoD it is all or nothing.



Quote from: Doc Sammy;1129603
...
Of course, I'm really curious about how this whole thing has affected the LARP scene. ...

As I've been told by a friend: (So I could be really talking out of my ass here...)

The crossover between Vampire LARPer's and Vampire RPG players was actually pretty big.

So when the big edition change/metaplot fuckups came down and knifed their player base, it had a big knock-on effect on the LARP side.

Too many players of both just said "fuck it".
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Jaeger

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #9 on: May 11, 2020, 06:56:20 PM »
Quote from: Itachi;1129604
Because WoD is horror+politics setting while the OSR is based on combat+adventure?

For me, and one of the reasons I really liked Vampire the masquerade in spite of its warts, was that "horror+politics" Is a really entertaining game when done right.

Especially when interactions with the "mortal" world are not just glossed over so that you can keep having your Werewolf vs. Vampire super-fight of the week.

The real secret to the game is that the "big bad" that all the supernaturals are really afraid of are humans who realize that the world they've been sold is just a 'sugar coated topping'...

Vampires enforce the Masquerade for a reason. And a group of 'hunters' operating in a city should be #1 on a Vampire Lord's "Need to deal with this shit right fucking now" agenda.
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BoxCrayonTales

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #10 on: May 11, 2020, 07:15:42 PM »
Quote from: trechriron;1129600
In the spirit of an OSR clone, you should not need WW IP. Instead, I would suggest you create a similar setting that pushes all those same buttons without directly copying the original WoD metaplot.

So, you would might have Bloodlines (used in several vampire games, so likely not copyrighted...) and say Cults (again, ubiquitous term...) for vampires. Tribes is another general term. Bloodlines is general enough to apply to most supernatural types; even sorcerers or wizards. You could setup the same "race + class" detail as found in the oWoD.

There were also problems with the original system's math. The idea of changing TN AND dice pools was over-complicated. So was the original critical failure mechanic. If someone is going to clone oWoD, they would want to touch it up vs. adhering to some rabid perfect recreation cult.

I picked up a system recently that WAS basically a clone of oWoD, including varying TN on die + varying die pools + 1's cancel out successes. Can't remember the name of it...


That's basically what I was thinking. The online successes of other recent urban fantasy titles like Night Shift, Urban Shadows, and Liminal shows that there is a market out there for more creative settings. What I wanted to do was harness the OGL in order to make the creative community stronger and more integrated.

I'm not married to a particular rule system. I want to avoid slaving myself to a single setting. I wanted to do a modular multiverse to give myself more freedom. Recreate the good old days of B.J. Zanzibar's archives.

For example, with vampires I have no shortage of possibilities for splats drawn from world folklore: succubi, wamphyri, vrykolakas, lamia, adze, obayifo, nekomata, jorogumo, etc.

In terms of settings, again I'm not married to a particular one. I like having many possible campaign settings, including ones that aren't modern Earth. Maybe a fantasy world like Warhammer World or Nosgoth, I don't know?

Pat
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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #11 on: May 11, 2020, 07:38:59 PM »
I never played World of Darkness seriously, but I do think playing monsters struggling to maintain their humanity, while engaging in political maneuvering against other even more powerful monsters, all in the modern world, makes for a compelling setting. But I'd be more interested in a version adapted to old school D&D, than a retroclone of the Storyteller system. The level system would probably have to change significantly, but you could still have infinite progression by peeling back layers after layers of secrets; as you get more powerful, you learn of another group that's behind the group you just mastered, and then you start moving in those circles.

BoxCrayonTales

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #12 on: May 11, 2020, 08:04:23 PM »
Quote from: Pat;1129618
I never played World of Darkness seriously, but I do think playing monsters struggling to maintain their humanity, while engaging in political maneuvering against other even more powerful monsters, all in the modern world, makes for a compelling setting.
Also, that's basically the premise of Nightlife. It's basically like Vampire except that it's not limited to blood-sucking vampires but includes demons, ghosts, werewolves, wights, and more.

Quote from: Pat;1129618
But I'd be more interested in a version adapted to old school D&D, than a retroclone of the Storyteller system. The level system would probably have to change significantly, but you could still have infinite progression by peeling back layers after layers of secrets; as you get more powerful, you learn of another group that's behind the group you just mastered, and then you start moving in those circles.

Fair enough. That's why I'm personally going for systemless settings. Different people have different tastes.

Night Shift seems to use OD&D. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/290972/Night-Shift-Veterans-of-the-Supernatural-Wars-Quick-Start-Kit

Orphan81

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #13 on: May 11, 2020, 08:11:11 PM »
I can't tell you the number of times Wod LARP got me laid. I used to go to Vampire LARPs specifically because it was THE scene to meet girls who were actually interested in roleplaying games. More than a few of my girlfriends in the past came from that scene. WoD was actually considered "Cool" among women as opposed to D&D which was largely considered not.

WoD is largely responsible for bringing women and minorities into Gaming. That is a FACT, it cannot be disputed. There were women and minorities playing before WoD, but WoD is the setting that brought them in with much greater numbers. Particularly the LGBT scene, since they were embracing it from the beginning while D&D was in it's Disney state.

The WoD setting is that glue, that mass appeal that brings people together. A fucking Mage: The Ascension supplement, currently has almost 2K backers on Kickstarter right now. Wod is not "On lifeline".

The setting and the ease of the system is what draws people in. The system makes "Sense" and is easy to grasp for people who are completely new to RPGs, more so than even D&D... Attribute+Skill, rated up to 5 dots each. But the setting with all of it's lore is what draws people in. The different Clans, Tribes, and what have you inspire people and give them something to identify with. No knock off game has ever approached it, ever gotten close to it.

Suffice to say, there has been no "Pathfinder" version of WoD. There's no other Supernatural Urban Fantasy Horror setting out there that has the same draw, mass appeal, and ease of learning. Dresden Files was maybe the closest setting wise one could get, and it still doesn't come close.

On the LARP scene, it's dying. By Night Studios is ran by the same people who own Mind's Eye Society as well. Mind's Eye Society used to be the official White Wolf Larp known as "The Camarilla" it's been incestuous and driving out new members for years based on cronyism and favoritism among it's longtime members. It's biggest competitor "One World by Night" is the only one with a stable population, and doesn't use anything created from "By Night Studios". One World by Night is STILL using the 90's "Laws of the Night" book.

Really though, while WoD isn't dying or on lifesupport... it's nowhere near the phenomena it once was. This is of course Whitewolf's own fault. They screwed the pooch killing off the Classic World of Darkness and introducing a New world of Darkness that was less unique. It's original intention was to allow for customization and building of your own setting like this very thread is talking about... but just came off as a lesser version of the original. There are things I like about Nwod, some real gems in there like "Hunter: The Vigil" but the rest pales in comparison.

The 20th Anniversary Books were a massive success, and brought new life back to WoD. They were supposed to just be one offs, but were so successful they relaunched entire lines. Enough, Onxy path was going to make an official "4th edition" of Masquerade. But as I've stated in other threads.. that got fucked up. Paradox bought them, declared 20th anniversary was the "4th edition" and hired outsiders with no experience writing WoD to create the new "5th edition". 5th edition has really split the fanbase, it's basically wod's D&D 4th edition, you either love it or hate it.

All of this is to say though... at the end of the day, capturing that "Zeitgeist" that Wod created is probably impossible at this point. Urban Shadows, Dresden Files, Bleed, Monster Hearts, Buffy the Vampire Slayer... none of them are as good as WoD, none of them are as interesting as the classic setting. Mark*Rein-Hagen, the original creator of WoD is a fucking genius when it comes to setting creation.. no one has been able to match his creations since.
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Itachi

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OSR for World of Darkness?
« Reply #14 on: May 11, 2020, 08:12:21 PM »
Quote from: Jaeger;1129609
For me, and one of the reasons I really liked Vampire the masquerade in spite of its warts, was that "horror+politics" Is a really entertaining game when done right.

Especially when interactions with the "mortal" world are not just glossed over so that you can keep having your Werewolf vs. Vampire super-fight of the week.

The real secret to the game is that the "big bad" that all the supernaturals are really afraid of are humans who realize that the world they've been sold is just a 'sugar coated topping'...

Vampires enforce the Masquerade for a reason. And a group of 'hunters' operating in a city should be #1 on a Vampire Lord's "Need to deal with this shit right fucking now" agenda.
Totally agreed.

Which goes back to the original question: how to pull it out with a D&D based engine? I like OSR but it's too tied to medievalesque combat to fit a modern, personal horror+politics game IMHO. Things like Thaco or AC stop making sense in a setting there is no armor to begin with.

Except if the OP is using "OSR" here to mean any old system and not only D&D.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2020, 08:16:59 PM by Itachi »