I think there is a very simple reason why there isn't a White Wolf competitor. For the audience that want to play a WoD style game White Wolf does it well enough that there is no demand for an alternative, or little enough to make no difference.

There are nearly endless games that do what D&D does, and have been since 1975 at least. The reason is that many people who want to play a D&D style fantasy game do not like the way D&D does it. I am not talking about OSR, I am talking about RuneQuest, Palladium Fantasy, Tunnels & Trolls, etc. Even those games have never really rivaled D&D. Pathfinder is perhaps the most serious rival D&D has ever had, and it really is a version of D&D.

There were "play the monster" games before White Wolf and will continue to be after, but White Wolf set the genre standard for emo monsters and not enough people are seriously dissatisfied with it to buy the same something else.

Immortal comes to mind as a try at the WW look and feel. And wasnt there something called Covenant or the like that had a a really odd background as well.

Quote from: Orphan81;852093Edit: I forgot to add... the thing I dislike most about Nwod is "Conditions". It's something very Fateish that's bolted onto the system and doesn't really work well in my experience... that and "Beats" for getting XP. Conditions and Tilts have the problem of every new book adding more and more, so you end up having to memorize or look up 50 different mini-things that can affect someone rather than just saying what a specific power does... or having a simple set of rules for advantages and disadvantages... I really don't like them so I don't use them..

Beats are the other thing, it's hard to keep track and remember when Beats are suppose to be handed out for each player, so I just award XP after games.

A lot of extra bookkeeping. The main reason I didn't switch. There wasn't anything wrong with the nWoD 1.0 system. The system was fine. The combat was a bit bland. That was the only thing that needed fixing.

The main problem were the settings. I miss a brief history where the reader gets informed what the vampire/werewolf/mage society etc. did during the Roman Era, the Middle Ages, the Victorian Era etc. I also really like some worldbuilding, like for example the Path of Kane does, describing several continents around the world. Hellfrost and Leagues of Adventures also do this very well with descriptions of several locations you can visit. The nWoD is too undefined for my taste.

Another biggie for me is the lack of practicality. This is a problem in all editions of the WoD. And it is the main reason I prefer BRPG, Unisystem and Savage Worlds right now. I think WW/OP could really learn a lot from a game like Covert Ops. This game sets you up with a descriptions from spy bases all around the globe, a prefab base you can toss into your game and random generators for creating missions, NPC´s, villains and organisations. Much better than flipping back and forth through each book like a motherfucker, searching for that one piece of info tugged away between walls of text, usually the very angst kind. Like in the setting chapter of Hunter the Vigil, where it takes them ten whopping pages to describe the world is dark and monsters are out there. That annoys me so much it makes me wanna eat my RPG book out of sheer frustration.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Whitewolf beat the pants off of Palladium however by being infinitely more accessible and actively attracting women to the game..

Agreed.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Shadowrun and Palladium may have had similar themes in some of their games, Chill as well.... but their some of the most complicated systems to master and don't have an easy concept like "Vampires" that attracts a female audience who had enjoyed Anne Rice novels and Vampire movies...

Shadowrun I can agree with. Palladium, and Chill I don't. System wise they are pretty simple. Though Palladium is a bit ponderous in character creation. Also Palladium does have a vampire class in Nightbane if I remember correctly. Not to mention all the psychic classes.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Throw in the LARP scene as well, an excuse to dress up in interesting clothes and you can see why Whitewolf cornered the market.

LARPing.... Yeah not a fan. But if folks out there want to, more power to them.

Quote from: Omega;852238Immortal comes to mind as a try at the WW look and feel. And wasnt there something called Covenant or the like that had a a really odd background as well.

Immortal seemed like the same storytelling concept, with a bit of a highlander feel (before the highlander WoD fan-port), and its own backstory. It didn't have the same horror feel as I recall.

Did it have more success elsewhere? I seem to feel like it was a failed product.

Quote from: Ronin;852019Being Jasons a Detroiter, I would hope the setting is detailed. Thats also one of the reasons I'm interested in this project. Being Detroit is practically in my backyard.

The setting book is out now. It has one extra chapter with NPC's and one with a case generator and some sample adventures.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;852391Immortal seemed like the same storytelling concept, with a bit of a highlander feel (before the highlander WoD fan-port), and its own backstory. It didn't have the same horror feel as I recall.

Did it have more success elsewhere? I seem to feel like it was a failed product.

It played more like what Exalted would years later be I guess. But with the emphasis on the storytelling aspects and the grand scope.

It seemed to just come and go. It was heavily promoted at cons and in magazines for a while. Then faded out like so many RPGs do.

If you're going to compete with White Wolf, you're going to need to focus on where your approach is different from theirs. I'll provide a few useful examples from the more notable contenders. If you want to compete, the best approach I can see is to take all the things that made those games unique and combine them.

Nightlife -- Nightlife is arguably the original inspiration for Mark Rein•Hagen. It has a few major differences: the in-game slang sounds like something people would actually use, all the monsters recover energy by consuming humans life force, all the monsters live in shared societies rather than being artificially segregated, and it is generally not pretentious.

Nephilim -- This actually came out the same time WoD did... except it was French. Anyway, the only part of it that stands out to me is the past life mechanic. Past lives are great for immortal campaigns, rediscovering past lives, being taken over by past lives, etc.

Everlasting -- This game was made by dissatisfied WW writers and as a result shares some similarities. What makes it different is that it includes a wide variety of unique character classes (including elves and dragons!) that all work off the same rules. I would even argue it inspired nWoD. All classes can play well together, magic is open to everyone, and players can invent new powers. All classes also have some kind of "torment" that made their immortal lives suck in some strangely fascinating fashion.

Witchcraft -- This is loosely similar to Everlasting, but focuses more on down to earth settings rather than the more fantastical approach of the other. It focuses primarily on human sorcerers with werewolves, vampires and ghost coming in supplements.

Monsterhearts -- WW books always mentioned in the intro that monsters were metaphors, but this quickly got lost in power fantasy. Here, the main rule of the classes is that each is an obvious (and usually dysfunctional) metaphor: zombies are addicts, vampires are emotionally dependent, werewolves are overprotective boyfriends, etc. This makes them resonate better than WW's power fantasies.

Feed -- This is a small press game, but it has by far some of the best innovations in the genre. Vampires come in "strains" that are be defined by players or GM: e.g. WW vampires are a strain with "sub-strains" (clans) and those monsters in the Night Horrors book are other strains. The two primary fluff mechanics are hunger and the conflict between vampirism and humanity; the former is self-explanatory but the latter is unique. Character traits are defined by their personal background: as a character loses human traits, these are replaced by vampiric ones until the character is unable to interact with others except by using their vampiric powers.

Urban Shadows -- I am less familiar with this, but from what I understand it is most similar to Witchcraft. It includes a special "corruption" mechanic where characters can get a short-term power boost at a cost to their soul.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I forgot to mention a couple others:

Dead Inside -- Produced by Atomic Sock Monkey Press. I don't know much about it, but from the product description it is fairly more bizarre and whimsical than other urban fantasy games.

Dresden Files -- Powered by FATE. It's more or less a straight adaptation of the setting in the books.

Strands of Fate -- Along with its companion book Strands of Power, this game can be used to emulate many genres including comic book superheroes and urban fantasy. SoP in particular includes various rules to simulate world of darkness-style monster characters.

Lost Souls -- an old, old game that still has minor support from the original author on its website. It's about playing ghosts, but with comedy rather than sorrow and grief.

Fireborn -- loosely similar to any World of Darkness game, but the PCs are reincarnated dragons.

Box - I want to thank you for these breakdowns on these alternative games! I plan on looking into several of them!!!

Rock on man!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;852877...

Nightlife -- Nightlife is arguably the original inspiration for Mark Rein•Hagen. It has a few major differences: the in-game slang sounds like something people would actually use, all the monsters recover energy by consuming humans life force, all the monsters live in shared societies rather than being artificially segregated, and it is generally not pretentious.

...

Thoughts?

Umm, I don't want to make a competitor and I need to check out Nightlife?

:-)

Quote from: trechriron;852880Umm, I don't want to make a competitor and I need to check out Nightlife?

:-)

Eh, Nightlife suffers from being too simulationist (common in 90's RPGs) and the humanity mechanic is broken. I would use the Feed rules instead with the Nightlife setting.

Excellent Breakdown Crayon!

For the game I'm working on, I'm trying to take inspiration from a variety of sources to make the game myself and my players would be interested in playing.

Many inspirations from the various games you listed, mixed together to make something original of my own. Monsters who exist in major cities in their own political groups (i.e. Detroit could be it's own fiefdom with it's own rules and own leadership who have no say or control over the monster society in Chicago who have their own rules and own leadership)... With individual sub-groups giving loyalty ties and differing goals to characters (i.e. Detroit's leader may belong to the Werewolf Supremacy group and therefore feel obligated to help Chicago's Werewolf population overthrow it's Ghost Leader)...

With an overarching apolitical mega-group who pool their resources to enact a "Masquerade" together across the globe. The mega-group's leaders are unknown to monster society at large, but are guessed to be powerful leaders and members of the sub-groups...even ones who may work at cross purpose to one another...but who all agree on the principal of "Don't shit where you eat".

There will also be multiple clear cut "These separate societies of strange monsters are bad guys that nobody likes" to provide easy Adventure fodder and threats for GM use and to unify disparate PC's.

System wise, I'm not going to re-invent the wheel here. As a tiny rpg writer whose only worked on a handful of books, I don't have the "Juice" to create a brand spanking new system and hope it gets picked up. So I'm going to be doing an OGL style version ((But much more open character progression, think closer to Mutants and Masterminds than Dungeons and Dragons)) and a Savage Worlds version since that's where my original material has already been published before and I love the system.

Quote from: Orphan81;852942Many inspirations from the various games you listed, mixed together to make something original of my own. Monsters who exist in major cities in their own political groups (i.e. Detroit could be it's own fiefdom with it's own rules and own leadership who have no say or control over the monster society in Chicago who have their own rules and own leadership)... With individual sub-groups giving loyalty ties and differing goals to characters (i.e. Detroit's leader may belong to the Werewolf Supremacy group and therefore feel obligated to help Chicago's Werewolf population overthrow it's Ghost Leader)...

With an overarching apolitical mega-group who pool their resources to enact a "Masquerade" together across the globe. The mega-group's leaders are unknown to monster society at large, but are guessed to be powerful leaders and members of the sub-groups...even ones who may work at cross purpose to one another...but who all agree on the principal of "Don't shit where you eat".

I can't take conspiracies seriously due to problems of logistics and security. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics WoD has always glossed over that, but it is fairly important for verisimilitude. Either there are so few monsters in any one populated area that they don't need to worry about logistics, or they have the omnipresent Big Brother powers from that movie The Adjustment Bureau or Harry Potter. Shouldn't the US government  get involved at some point?

Secondly, The idea that any character could break the masquerade is questionable. There are already millions of lunatics in real life who claim to be magical or whatever. What makes people any more likely to believe someone with yet another shaky handheld iphone video?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;852877Nightlife -- Nightlife is arguably the original inspiration for Mark Rein•Hagen.

I seem to recall that Vampire was already in development when Nightlife came out. I was a big fan of Ars Magica at the time, so I had an interest in what he was up to. I have a distinct memory of picking up Nightlife as soon as it came out and thinking that it will be interesting to compare to Vampire when it came out.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;853026I can't take conspiracies seriously due to problems of logistics and security. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics WoD has always glossed over that, but it is fairly important for verisimilitude. Either there are so few monsters in any one populated area that they don't need to worry about logistics, or they have the omnipresent Big Brother powers from that movie The Adjustment Bureau or Harry Potter. Shouldn't the US government  get involved at some point?

I liked early Vampire, in that everything revolved around city politics. There were conspiracies, but they were local ones, and players could either oppose them or join the Elders and get involved. It was great for sandbox play.

Both Werewolf and Mage gave you vast and unbeatable evil conspiracies that I found boring. Where Vampire let you make your own allies and enemies, these games served up your antagonists on a platter. Having ready-to-go enemies in a game isn't automatically bad, but when you combine it with enemies you can't every really beat it gets old quickly. Both games are basically Windmills: The Tilting.

The best model for conspiracies is just to model good old-fashioned, real world corruption. Conspiracies don't demand perfect secrecy. They just need to ensure that anyone with power to stop them has no interest in doing so.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;853026I can't take conspiracies seriously due to problems of logistics and security. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics WoD has always glossed over that, but it is fairly important for verisimilitude. Either there are so few monsters in any one populated area that they don't need to worry about logistics, or they have the omnipresent Big Brother powers from that movie The Adjustment Bureau or Harry Potter. Shouldn't the US government  get involved at some point?

Secondly, The idea that any character could break the masquerade is questionable. There are already millions of lunatics in real life who claim to be magical or whatever. What makes people any more likely to believe someone with yet another shaky handheld iphone video?

Because Monsters don't exist in real life. In a world where they in fact do, and HAVE infiltrated local governments, businesses, criminal organizations and other such things... the idea enough evidence could come out to blow the whole thing open is a real possibility...

If you have a cult of Liches unleash a mass of walking dead into a neighborhood, there is a real chance it could end up being exposed... Sure conspiracies don't exist in the real world so much (Like the idea of "Crisis Actors" and 9/11 being an inside job) but in an Urban Fantasy Horror game, the idea the local Newstation is ran by a Vampire is a very real possibility.

Hence for my setting, I have the overarching apolitical mystery conspiracy known as "The Keepers". Most monsters in the world know they exist...they even have public representatives of other apolitical monsters known as "Judicators" who act as neutral parties to help solve disputes and also keep an eye on areas to help clean up public supernatural incidents..

The Keepers are not omniscient or omnipotent, and I'm making sure to state they can be kept out of an area completely by a strong enough force... But they specifically exist as a tool for the GM to say why the zombies unleashed in a suburban neighborhood doesn't make CNN and ends up discredited..

Also, they use teams of specialists known as "Ferrymen" which gives a easy campaign model for GM's and players who prefer doing more "Action orientated" gameplay instead of political gameplay.

As for the U.S. government, I haven't finished writing the setting, but I planned on branches of it being aware of the supernatural at various levels. At the end of the day though, since most Monsters aren't trying to replace the president and spend more time fighting one another, they're less worried about it, and are treated more like organized crime is. The NSA doesn't care so much what the crips and the bloods are up to when they're looking for terrorists... unless said terrorists begin to work with the Crips and the Bloods..

Anyway, I'm drawing inspiration from a variety of sources and whitewolf is only one of them. I don't want to just copy what whitewolf does...Whitewolf has political monsterplay pretty down pat...while that will certainly be an aspect of my game and a big one...I'm also making sure to build in tools for GM's and PC's who want to instead play their monsters as a group of globe trotting action stars fighting off even worse threats if they want to as well.