So, last week i was playing VTES with some friends and a debate started when one of them stated that for him, White Wolf's games (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse...) was always woke, or at least heavily leaning towards left wing ideology.

So what's your thoughts on the matter? Was he right or you disagree?

Well, they certainly were "progressive" at the time.  But the thing about "progressive" is that it's all about moving the bar.  So what was "woke" thirty years ago is now awkward and backwards and regrettable.

It's probably inaccurate to say "woke." They were rabidly counterculture for the time, which isn't the same thing.

You can see this in the deeper premises and mechanics of the "classic" games. Vampires have fixed "generations" that can only be improved by literally eating the richer older generation vampires. The werewolves are vicious ecoterrorists who worship Gaia and believe civilization is fundamentally evil and everything was better when humans lived in caves and werewolves culled the weak. The mages live in a universe where science is a lie and homeopathy works if you believe hard enough. The ghosts live in a ridiculously oppressive society where slavery never went out of style. The fairies are killed by concrete and think spreadsheets are the great satan.

There's also a ton of shitty research and cultural appropriation, of pretty much every culture. If you care at all about Slavic folklore, then books like Rage Across Russia will make you tear your hair out. If you're one of those worldbuilders who prides yourself on logical constructed languages and jargon in the vein of Tolkien and Rowling, then the WW jargon will make you want to tear your hair out (I speak from experience).

Fans are autists who will give you tons of shit if you point this out. That's one of the reasons I left the fandom over a decade ago.

They thought Publishing Beast the Primordial was okay.

This said, WW hasn't always been woke, they however have always be staunch Leftists with alot of those opinions. Thus when becoming Woke became a thing WW was more then happy to take those steps.

Let us not forget the timeless classic Pimp: The Backhanding.

Woke? No. Rotten? Yes. Theyve been pulling stunts since probably the get-go. I had more than one run in with them up to no good. And thats not even getting to the fiasco of their Gamma World product.

WW was always looking for new angles and the books are really pretty neutral or middle ground. They never that I saw ever pushed any agenda. Im certainly not seeing it in their final product Orpheus.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse was everything FATAL was accused of being. And yet White Wolf/Onyx Path are still selling it. They are a company with no shame. Willing to go to any depth in their products to be "edgy". Which is sickening and absolutely immature.

I stopped giving them money when I realized what they actually were. But they got way too much money out of me with little tangible return.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 17, 2022, 10:13:55 AM
It's probably inaccurate to say "woke." They were rabidly counterculture for the time, which isn't the same thing.

You can see this in the deeper premises and mechanics of the "classic" games. Vampires have fixed "generations" that can only be improved by literally eating the richer older generation vampires. The werewolves are vicious ecoterrorists who worship Gaia and believe civilization is fundamentally evil and everything was better when humans lived in caves and werewolves culled the weak. The mages live in a universe where science is a lie and homeopathy works if you believe hard enough. The ghosts live in a ridiculously oppressive society where slavery never went out of style. The fairies are killed by concrete and think spreadsheets are the great satan.

There's also a ton of shitty research and cultural appropriation, of pretty much every culture. If you care at all about Slavic folklore, then books like Rage Across Russia will make you tear your hair out. If you're one of those worldbuilders who prides yourself on logical constructed languages and jargon in the vein of Tolkien and Rowling, then the WW jargon will make you want to tear your hair out (I speak from experience).

Fans are autists who will give you tons of shit if you point this out. That's one of the reasons I left the fandom over a decade ago.

It sounds a lot like what 2000Ad was for comics on the 80's and 90's, not too obvious on politics as things is today but definitely into counterculture and left wing politics.

Quote from: arctic_fox on April 17, 2022, 08:37:33 AM
So, last week i was playing VTES with some friends and a debate started when one of them stated that for him, White Wolf's games (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse...) was always woke, or at least heavily leaning towards left wing ideology.

So what's your thoughts on the matter? Was he right or you disagree?

lolno, ww had a book that featured artwork of a woman chained to a urnial, raped to death with a strapon, and her attacker preparing to drink the blood pooling around her hips, out of a test-tube.

That's degeneracy, but it ain't woke.

Degeneracy and wokeness are the same thing, they just used the degeneracy to tear down other people's standards and then replaced them with their own (objectively worse) standards.

As was said, I think they were trying to be more forward-thinking and expand the possibilities for RPGs and I think they succeeded in that.
They introduced diversity the way it should have been done.

They also brought way more gravitas to gaming which was clearly aimed at a more mature audience. So in my estimation, they were pretty cutting edge.

They were putting out content that had balls too, and we're not afraid to ruffle the feathers of all those prudish Christian Dudley do rights.

Shame they crawled up their own arse but they did leave us with some very impressive games.

Quote from: thedungeondelver on April 17, 2022, 06:27:15 PM
artwork of a woman chained to a urnial, raped to death with a strapon, and her attacker preparing to drink the blood pooling around her hips, out of a test-tube.

That's degeneracy, but it ain't woke.

And what a thing of beauty it was... One of the biggest FUs to those repressed oxygen thieves who think RPGs are for mincing about baking cupcakes.

More games need to tell people to 'eat shit'. It's an art so you can't censor it.

Quote from: thedungeondelver on April 17, 2022, 06:27:15 PM

lolno, ww had a book that featured artwork of a woman chained to a urnial, raped to death with a strapon, and her attacker preparing to drink the blood pooling around her hips, out of a test-tube.

That's degeneracy, but it ain't woke.

That's just the thing; The left used to pride itself on being "edgy" and "shocking" like this all the time. Now they are the holier than thou pearl clutching prudes, as pointed out by Johnny Rotten, Bill Maher and others. Even Obama seemed to notice it, no matter how guilty he might have been.  I think the period around 2010 was pivotal.

Quote from: Trond on April 18, 2022, 12:03:20 AM

Quote from: thedungeondelver on April 17, 2022, 06:27:15 PM

lolno, ww had a book that featured artwork of a woman chained to a urnial, raped to death with a strapon, and her attacker preparing to drink the blood pooling around her hips, out of a test-tube.

That's degeneracy, but it ain't woke.

That's just the thing; The left used to pride itself on being "edgy" and "shocking" like this all the time. Now they are the holier than thou pearl clutching prudes, as pointed out by Johnny Rotten, Bill Maher and others. Even Obama seemed to notice it, no matter how guilty he might have been.  I think the period around 2010 was pivotal.

One of the many reasons I no longer consider myself leftist.

Woke wouldn't be the term to describe them back then, it really only applies to the left after the pivotal period mentioned above. But they were unabashedly liberal. Their publications were one of the first places I saw female pronouns used instead of male when referring to non-specific nouns. Despite the edgy artwork described above, their products brought a lot of women and queer people into gaming (there were homosexual characters in their work, mostly lesbians if I'm remembering correctly). There was a lot of politics in their work, all of it 90's leftist ideology.

They did bring more serious gaming with adult themes to the mainstream. They were also incredibly pretentious, had their heads up their asses, and as noted earlier, the quality of their research wouldn't even get a "C" in a high school essay. They would literally write into their products that real role-playing was narrative gaming (what they called storytelling) and it was the only way to correctly game.

Quote from: Trond on April 18, 2022, 12:03:20 AM

Quote from: thedungeondelver on April 17, 2022, 06:27:15 PM

lolno, ww had a book that featured artwork of a woman chained to a urnial, raped to death with a strapon, and her attacker preparing to drink the blood pooling around her hips, out of a test-tube.

That's degeneracy, but it ain't woke.

That's just the thing; The left used to pride itself on being "edgy" and "shocking" like this all the time. Now they are the holier than thou pearl clutching prudes, as pointed out by Johnny Rotten, Bill Maher and others. Even Obama seemed to notice it, no matter how guilty he might have been.  I think the period around 2010 was pivotal.

If it wasn't the exact same people, it would be really hard to draw a connection between the beliefs of the left of the 90s and the beliefs of the left of today. There are a general areas that have remained central, like gay rights, but methods and expression have completely changed. And it's not just them aging, because this seems to be driven by the college culture of the younger generations, which was adopted like a memetic plague by the former vampiregothedgelords.