Quote from: Omega;856373Tapping into the LARPing community probably was another big boost for White Wolf. Aside from Werewolf, their stuff is overall absurdly easy to costume for overall.

Shadowrun was another that could have pulled that off if FASA hadnt folded.

I think Shadowrun has a more limited appeal for LARP compared to Vampire.

Vampire is primarily a social game in the end, and attracts those Larpers who want to dress up and play pretend, but don't want to do the Boffer Larp scene.

Shadowrun lends itself more to Boffer Larp style play, than social salon play...and doing Dungeons and Dragons with a Boffer LARP is easier than a game with guns, cyberware, decking, rigging, and magic.

True. Back in the 90s the gunfights would have been a little harder. But like Vampire, its pretty easy to costume for.

Now with the advent of nerf guns being cheap and stylish a Shadowrun LARP would be more viable.

A Johnson Arms repaint.

Quote from: Omega;856382True. Back in the 90s the gunfights would have been a little harder. But like Vampire, its pretty easy to costume for.

Now with the advent of nerf guns being cheap and stylish a Shadowrun LARP would be more viable.

A Johnson Arms repaint.

Oh wow.  Nice job!  Did you paint those?  Freakin' awesome!

On topic:

The reason there's no White Wolf Competitor is because as Orphan81 pointed out, they've stopped making games for that particular sub-set of Urban Fantasy, and as such, no one seems to be willing to pick up the slack.

Nope. One of Johnson Arms pieces. Lots of prop work for people. Do a search for nerf blaster on DA and you'll get all sorts of amazing pieces people have done. Lots of steampunk for obvious reasons.

Sometimes Exalted feels like it is following White Wolf. Ive met a few players who used to play various WW games who moved to Exalted. They do not seem very simmilar at all so not sure what the connection is? None?

I wouldn't worry too much about what specific monster types to support in the core rules. Ignoring the power fantasy, monsters work best as metaphors and those metaphors work best if the rules support those. Monsterhearts and Feed are the best examples of this. Monsterhearts is about taking a personal struggle and then building a monster metaphor around it, while Feed is basically about vampirism as addiction. Werewolves, for example, are extremely well suited as a metaphor for disability (papers have even been written about that).

Beyond that, a big part of what made World of Darkness popular was the extensive backgrounds and the (oft high school level) politics. The changing cultural zeitgeist has watered down these elements severely. Vampire is no longer as psychosexually transgressive as it once was. Werewolf's ecoterrorist crusade falls flat in a world where anyone who denies climate change is derided as a lunatic. Mage... well, the 20th anniversary edition has unironically made mages out to be SJWs.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856454Beyond that, a big part of what made World of Darkness popular was the extensive backgrounds and the (oft high school level) politics. The changing cultural zeitgeist has watered down these elements severely. Vampire is no longer as psychosexually transgressive as it once was. Werewolf's ecoterrorist crusade falls flat in a world where anyone who denies climate change is derided as a lunatic. Mage... well, the 20th anniversary edition has unironically made mages out to be SJWs.

They could have gone for a different extensive background. Now they just went for little background and leave the rest up to the GM's imagination. Landing somewhere between an extensive background and something like a Sine Nomine game. Somewhere in the uncanny valley of rpg's. Still it sells a lot, so I guess we are stuck with it.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;856467They could have gone for a different extensive background. Now they just went for little background and leave the rest up to the GM's imagination. Landing somewhere between an extensive background and something like a Sine Nomine game. Somewhere in the uncanny valley of rpg's. Still it sells a lot, so I guess we are stuck with it.

The cracks are beginning to show. The upcoming 4th edition is going to move the metaplot past the 90s. From the metaplot developments I read in the Mage 20th anniversary book and the new convention books, it is not going to be pretty.

The consensus in the Mage metaplot seems to be that "new media is evil." The technocracy and the virtual adepts were utterly blindsided by the advent of social media and have lost all hope of control, so both now hate social media. The traditions have become lunatic SJWs trying desperately to remain relevant in a popular culture that has left them behind.

In werewolf, the coming apocalypse has been retconned away with the eighth sign of the phoenix. I have no idea how that's going to work out.

In vampire, gehenna is going to be resolved. It happened, but it wasn't as apocalyptic as everyone feared. A lot of vampires bit the dust, but human society didn't notice and now the survivors are picking up the pieces.

You know how everyone hated the metaplot, particularly during the revised edition when it took center stage (to the point of sending the writers hundreds of death threats)? It's not only staying, it's being continued. The avatar storm, the sixth great maelstrom, etc are back and they're going to be resolved.

Not only that, but ever since CCP destroyed WW, OPP has been forced to make do with substandard efforts. They can only raise funds through kickstarter by piggy backing off the good will of their long-time fans. They hire freelancers to write nearly everything, and quite a few of these freelancers are SJWs. They even instituted a retroactive mandate where villainous characters cannot be of LGBT background (e.g. Vykos was made a "good" vampire because it's technically a transexual).

The resulting fallout may break OPP's monopoly on the market.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856516The resulting fallout may break OPP's monopoly on the market.

It's more likely to me that it'll kill that part of the market.  If there was a big demand for a White Wolf competitor, I think there would be one.  People want White Wolf, and a WW that doesn't suck, and I don't think that can happen any more.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856516The consensus in the Mage metaplot seems to be that "new media is evil." The technocracy and the virtual adepts were utterly blindsided by the advent of social media and have lost all hope of control, so both now hate social media. The traditions have become lunatic SJWs trying desperately to remain relevant in a popular culture that has left them behind.

Shouldn't the SJW's be connected to the Technocracy? They're progressive and empowered by a number of establishment institutions. Plus they want to control how everything thinks.

Quote from: Sergeant Brother;856531Shouldn't the SJW's be connected to the Technocracy? They're progressive and empowered by a number of establishment institutions. Plus they want to control how everything thinks.

The whole "SJWness" of Mage 20 is severely being overstated here. The Traditions have always been about marginalized groups. I'm sick of SJW rhetoric myself even as a Liberal, and Mage didn't really set off my alarm bells or make me roll my eyes. Mage 20 was great BECAUSE it resolved the Avatar Storm and got rid of the punitive paradox rules of revised..

Mage 20 was all about pushing forward "Magick is still alive!" and painted the Nephandus as the real villains of the setting allowing players to be Technocrats OR Tradition mage and possibly even work together.

Suffice to say, I was VERY satisfied with Mage 20 and thought it was great.

Werewolf 20 has been excellent too, and if anything, the 8th sign of the Phoenix, the fact the Garou now have hope is probably the greatest addition to the setting, and what was needed to continue going forward.

Now, here's where things fall apart...

Vampire 20 was an excellent book and was mostly metaplot agnostic... HOWEVER, the supplements for Vampire 20 DID push plot forward, only a different plot. It undid the worse aspects of Revised edition...the Anarch state never fell, the Keui-jin aren't in california, the red sign has not appeared, the Ravnos have not been destroyed, ect....

Yet it still updated the setting...bringing the Anarch state into the modern day, as well as Thamaturgy and talking about how Vampires handled Facebook and social media... overall it was awesome stuff...

Now, however, it seems Onyx Path is undoing all of that. Vampire IV is going to be ignoring everything Vampire 20 did...It's bringing back all of the ugly revised edition metaplot most people hated...

See, Vampire 20 gave Vampire fans what they always wanted... an awesome sandbox to play in, where they could do what they wanted with the best parts of Vampire. Vampire IV is continuing what everyone hated about Vampire... The metaplot..

Not only that, it's actively seeking to remove what made Masquerade fun, and still makes it fun...the Gothic Punk element... As much as some people say "Gothic Punk is so 90s" the fact Vampire 20 has sold so well, and Gothic asectrics are still very much alive in the modern fiction (I'm not talking about black trenchcoats and make up here, I'm talking about Gargoyles roofs, Skyscrappers like Tombstones, rain and melodrama)...

Basically it sounds like they're going to turn it into Requiem....They even have Rose Bailey on board to try and make sure it doesn't get to close to Requiem....which tells you right then and there huge problems are going to be within the setting...

Then you also have all the problems Dark Ages 20 had, with rabid PC police like David Hill being the developer. That's where you get the mandate Sasha Vyokos is now a Heroic "Good" Vampire, and a "She" rather than an "It", and that LGBT Vampires cannot be portrayed in a negative light. It's also where you got horrible rules problems, from weapons tables not having the correct information, to Disciplines missing entire rules sections..

You also have the other problems of Onyx Path chipping away their good will...Exalted Delays, the whole Beast Fiasco, the fact physical copies of books are not in stores, and the attitude of many of their current staff which is very toxic and dismissive of anyone who doesn't have the same exact politics they do.

Masquerade IV strikes me as an attempt to make themselves relevant again. They're hoping for another win, hence the "Bringing it into the modern day" spiel... If anything, since Eddy Web announced this, and he's not actually an Onyx Path employee but a CCP employee, it makes me wonder if the mandate came down from on High from CCP...

Onyx Path isn't going to vanish anytime soon, I'm not saying that...however if they do continue down their current "path" they're going to end up making themselves irrelevant to anyone who doesn't post on the big purple.

I haven't read Mage 20th, though from some of the discussion I've seen about it on some of the forums, I don't think I'll be buying it. Largely what turned me off was some of the book's defenders, not claiming that it was a-political, but agreeing that it had SJW content and that they were glad that it was pissing off the evil scum who aren't SJW's.

Then there is all of the Beast stuff. Which I also haven't read, but I don't think I'll be reading it either with some of the horrible things I have heard about it, including from its defenders and opinions in general over on Big Purple.

I do have V20 and like it. In fact, one thing about V:tM I like as opposed to some of the other WW lines is that they don't beat you over the head with an ideological bias.

Not a huge fan of "SJWs" but I will say that the "Children of Ether" bit was a controversy (in game) as early as MAGE 2nd Edition.  Although female Akashics didn't seem to raise too much fuss about being in a Brotherhood.

JG

I thought that their new name was going to be Etherism+

Sadly all of this talk of what WW has become and what rhey have done to their product afterwards makes me really glad that so far they have not revisited Aberrant or Aeon/Trinity.

It's the "Society of Ether" now, which sounds better than "Sons of Ether" to me.

The "Chakravanti" is the replacement name for the "Euthantos" and I prefer that as well..

The "Khavadi" as the replacement for "Dream Speakers" is stupid though. Dream Speakers is a much more evoactive name, and multicultural for a shamanistic group as is..

The "Akashyana" and "Mercurial Elites" is kinda "meh". I think the point with the "Mercurial Elites" was to try and modernize the Virtual Adepts....but Virtual Reality is actually a big thing again, so that sorta backfired.