White Wolf Despeately Needs New "Experts"

[RPGPundit]

White Wolf has managed to drop another monumental turd into the world of role-playing, and I'm not talking about the latest Exalted sourcebook.
 
I'm talking about their new "pay-to-play" policy; A new policy where they try to make the pseudo-legal claim that if you charge a fee IN ANY WAY to run a WW game of any kind, White Wolf will sue you for "violation of IP" if you don't pay $20 to become part of the Camarilla organization.
 
What the fuck is this about? You pay to buy the book, and then you pay to run the game? Its like if you bought a CD at a record store, and then were expected to pay for it all over again if you intended to play it at a party where you charged a $5 cover to pay for the beer kegs.
 
If you run a game with friends where for whatever reason you have to pay, for use of the room, or for various costs; you are being legally attacked by WW if you do not join the Camarilla. And may the Magic Deer and the Great Vampire in the Sky help you if you try to run an unsanctioned LARP.
 
Note: It DOESN'T have to be "For-profit": you could be running to just pay your costs, you could be charging for charity ("all proceeds from this craptacular gothy reunion of fuckwits goes to the Foundation for the Promotion of Crappy Adolescent Poetry").  If you charge as much as a penny, you have to be in for the $20 pound-of-flesh that is Camarilla membership.
 
And what exactly is Camarilla membership?  Well, it means you and your crew get to be part of an organization of institutionalized pretentious fuckwits instead of just being lone Swine.  This organization then gets to establish RULES telling you how you are or are not allowed to run your game. For example, the brilliant "no touching" rule. No player may touch any other player at ANY point in the game, ever.  Because, you know, touching might lead to sex, and sex might lead to happiness, and happiness would lead to and end of gothy pretentious pseudo-depression angst. And that would be bad for White Wolf, who have an essential financial interest in keeping their players lonely depressed angsty virgins.
 
Another great rule: once you are in the Camarilla, you are NOT ALLOWED to turn away any potential player of your game if they have Camarilla membership.  They could be one of those guys who doesn't bathe in weeks or the guy who pissed on your lovely rug the other day, or just a TOTAL STRANGER with an eerie smile and a copy of "Knife Afficionado Magazine" clutched in his sweaty palms; it doesn't matter. You have to let him in because he has the membership, even if yours is a small six-man game that had to charge to use the room at the local student union. I guess you've gots yerself a seven-man game now, boy!
 
 But not to worry, because the Camarilla is there to assure that WW games will be "quality", right? Never mind the fact that its only raison d'etre appears to be so WW can get in on the financial action of all the LARPS they saw people playing, and never mind that dozens of people have had nothing but horror stories to tell about how the institution is full of power-gaming power-mongers who have made the Cam their own personal playground to give them a sense of importance in their lives that I suspect they do not find at work or home ("Unemployed 'artist'? Live with your mom? Dress all in black? No one understands how dark and deep and smart and powerful you really are, even though you're scared of going into the basement with the light off and still wet your bed, and haven't killed yourself only because you're too much of a coward to do so? YOU might have a grand future as one of the "PRINCES" of the Camarilla organized play organization!  At last WW can help you FORCE other goth poseur losers to accept just how wonderful and important you are!").
 
So why the fuck would anyone, even the WW fanboy Swine, want to give up their own control over their own games for WW by joining the Camarilla?  That's just the problem. No one did, not even the WW fanboy Swine.  The Camarilla organization is resoundingly less succesfull than they had hoped it would be, so now WW is resorting to cheap pseudo-legal mumbo-jumbo to try to scare people into joining.
 
Frankly, its a crappy thing to do, but then White Wolf is a pretty crappy company, and people who are White Wolf fans more or less deserve whatever's coming to them.  Its just going to amuse me to watch the fanboys turn on WW, as they already have on RPG.net, bitching them out and creating yet another embarrasment for the company; which is only the latest of many (my favourite is still when they tried to sue the creators of the movie Underworld, and got their litigious asses kicked).
 
Like always, Justin Achilli makes it worse, jumping into RPG.net to insult his own fanboys and make a fool of himself in general.  He insults the people who are very rightly pointing out that the WW press release is legally toothless by claiming that they're just "armchair internet lawyers" and that he'll trust his own legal counsel who assure him that he will not be laughed out of court when he tries to sue the South Bend Gaming Club for charging $2.50 a table when they run their Requiem game.
 
Hey Justin, are these the same brilliant lawyers who told you that you could sue Underworld's producers for making a movie about Vampires and Werewolves (which obviously you must have invented)? They wouldn't also happen to be the "Latin experts" you hired to tell you that "lancea sanctum" is correct Latin grammar and to simultaneously declare that "no one knows how to translate a thousands of years dead language"; even though any first year latin student could tell you that you can't mix genders?

Maybe they were even the very same sensitivity experts who told you that no one could possibly be offended by a card game called "Pimp: The Backhanding" that's all about being a Pimp abusing and beating your prostitutes?
 
Oh yea, clearly your experts are to be trusted. Clearly WE'RE the ones who don't know what we're talking about, and clearly you're not an absurd little cunt who can't walk two steps without slamming his foot into his mouth, and clearly this latest news from WW is not in the least a cheap money-grubbing tactic that will cost you far more than it brings in, by causing a loss of trust even in your own Swine fanboys.
 
Please, Mr.Achilli, you keep believing these things. Please. You continuing on this track makes my job so much easier and more enjoyable.

RPGPundit July 8 2005

[Geek Messiah]

I thought they were doing that for the WOD games and I thought they got enough complaints where they dropped that idea.

[Zachary The First]

Geez, I had half-forgotten about that whole debacle.  What a mess.

[RPGPundit]

Don't forget that what you're looking at here is a historical post. But I thought it was worth reminding people... its interesting that WW has been relatively much quieter now since Achili left it, almost like they're trying to be respectable.

RPGPundit

[Geek Messiah]

Don't forget that what you're looking at here is a historical post. But I thought it was worth reminding people... its interesting that WW has been relatively much quieter now since Achili left it, almost like they're trying to be respectable.

RPGPundit

Perhaps WW is quiet and Achili isnt and all the so called WW noise was coming from him.

Did he get fired or did he leave WW on his own?

[RPGPundit]

That isn't completely clear, as tends to happen in these sorts of situations.

RPGPundit

[Lawbag]

So what are White Wolf doing now without Justin? And which game company is he ruining right now?

[Mr. Analytical]

I'd half forgotten about all that too.

I remember at the time the concensus was "attempted shake-down, legally unenforceable" and time has proved us to be correct.

[GRIM]

One of these days I'll explode with hate and splurge all my WW LARP organisation related venting here.

It is a tale of comedy and tragedy and bitter infighting and nastiness.

[Mr. Analytical]

bitter infighting and nastiness.

  Isn't that the point?

[Lawbag]

One of these days I'll explode with hate and splurge all my WW LARP organisation related venting here.

It is a tale of comedy and tragedy and bitter infighting and nastiness.

do you recount the ways online anywhere?

[GRIM]

Isn't that the point?

Of the In Character game perhaps, but the OOC game was often played with far more skill and deviousness.

In reply to the other chap I did, several types, but alas while start part of the thing and subject to its disciplinary procedures and madness.

[Mcrow]

I remember that whole deal, that was the very moment when my last shred of respect for WW went down the shit hole.

Never did Like justin, but his responses in those threads made me want to cram every WW book I own down his throat.

IIRC, Justin is "no longer working in the gaming business" according to his blog.


 Good thing to, what a rotten bastard.
:mad:

[Geek Messiah]

I remember that whole deal, that was the very moment when my last shred of respect for WW went down the shit hole.

Never did Like justin, but his responses in those threads made me want to cram every WW book I own down his throat.

IIRC, Justin is "no longer working in the gaming business" according to his blog.


 Good thing to, what a rotten bastard.
:mad:

I agree.   We don't need more people giving gaming a bad name.  And a person like him does more damage then good.

[fonkaygarry]

Looking at all that fun shit (and the way people wax poetic about the bad old days of the Storyteller hegemony) I'm so glad I spent the WW years on either d20 or nothing.

Looks like I missed out on some choice dipshittery.