News Digest: Controversy Abounds! New Vampire Edition Details, Green Ronin's Talent Search, 7th Sea

Hello everyone! Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! And this week is all about controversy. Vampire: The Masquerade 5^th Edition release information (with a controversial hiring), Green Ronin is looking for female writers for Lost Citadel, International Tabletop Day may not be able to meet demand for promotional items, and more! Even this week’s Kickstarters are loaded with controversy!

View attachment 83119​

Okay, this is a very simple story with a very complicated background. I’m going to tell the story first this time and, if you’re not sure what’s going on, I’ll explain more in the next paragraph. White Wolf Publishing announced details about the new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. This new fifth edition of the game will come out in early 2018 and, according to ICv2, “continue the metagame that was shaped in 2004”. This would be the sourcebook Gehenna which presented several options for the “end of the world” of the World of Darkness and the tie-in novel Gehenna: The Final Night be Ari Marmell. If these events will be rolled into the new edition in an “After the End” manner, it’s not yet known. This project began in controversy after White Wolf announced hiring Zak Smith (aka Zak Sabbath or Zak S) back in February, a man who has been accused of harassing behavior, to work on a video game. WW's response can be found here.

So some of you may be wondering where Onyx Path is in all this. They’re still around, but they’re not involved with this new edition of the game. They are, however, still creating new material for World of Darkness. But not for the new edition. Onyx Path still holds the license for the Chronicles of Darkness (which is the official name of what was called the New World of Darkness titles: Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, etc.) and they hold the license for the 20^th Anniversary editions of all the World of Darkness (the official name for Old World of Darkness titles: Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, etc.). So Onyx Path is still publishing new material for both of these lines, but are NOT publishing material for the new 5^th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade.

So White Wolf was purchased by CCP Games (makers of the Eve Online franchise) who only wanted the IP rights to make a World of Darkness MMO. After many years of development, the title was finally canceled in 2014 and White Wolf plus all its assets were sold to Paradox Interactive in 2015. Late last year, Paradox Interactive spun White Wolf Publishing into its own (but fully owned) company in anticipation of publishing a new edition. At this time, the licensing deals were restructured and, when the dust settled, the licenses for Chronicles of Darkness and the 20^th Anniversary versions of the original World of Darkness games were with Onyx Path and the live-action Mind’s Eye Theater remained with By Night Studios. So this is how White Wolf is coming out with a new edition at a time when Onyx Path is running a Kickstarter for a World of Darkness themed card game.

View attachment 83120​

Green Ronin launched a talent search for contributors to The Lost Citadel roleplaying game, based on the fiction anthology and world developed by Jaym Gates, C.A. Suleiman, and Ari Marmell about a fantasy world in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. There is a catch, as they’re specifically accepting proposals from women. From the announcement:

In the lead-up to June’s Kickstarter for the LCRPG, we are going to be running a talent search for women who are interested in coming to work on the project. If you identify as female and dark fantasy is your jam, we want to see what you can bring to the table! Not to worry, fellas, we have some other opportunities for you coming up later in the year, as well, but this talent search is just for the ladies.

A statement was issued to further clarify that the talent search was also open to those who identify as non-binary gender. The announcement from Green Ronin General Manager Nicole Lindroos comes following a post from Green Ronin President Chris Pramas [EDIT: This post was from Green Ronin General Manager Nicole Lindroos, not Chris Pramas as original posted] speaking about his [EDIT: her] experience on a panel at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, noting the gender discrepancy of those in the industry and those looking to break in, noting both how far the industry has come and how far it still has to go.

View attachment 83121​

7^th Sea promised a platform for user-created content during their wildly successful Kickstarter last year, and now they’ve delivered as Explorer’s Society is live. The online store allows users to create and sell content for the 7^th Sea 2^nd Edition game, including adventures, NPCs, homebrew rules, or more. There is a content guideline that acts as a license for use of the Intellectual Property, laying out exactly what you can and cannot use from published materials and in what way you’re allowed to use them (this is similar to the license for the DM’s Guild). In the week since launch, there’s already two dozen products available for purchase ranging in cost from free to Pay-What-You-Want to a set price of $3.99 for some of the adventures.

View attachment 83122​

International Tabletop Day has run into a minor issue: The event is so big that they can’t keep up with demand! This is the first year that all promotional items have been released a la carte rather than as a single one-size-fits-all pack. Personally, I preferred the old way, but that’s because I live in a rural area so my local event always had more promotional items than attendees. However, retailers in more populated areas could customize their orders in order to make sure they could meet demand based on previous events. And this year, the demand was higher than ever – so much so that not everyone will be getting their products. Quoted in ICv2, Producer Ivan Van Norman said “We opened up the print sizes significantly as well with publishers, but didn’t know what to expect with the new system. After collecting all the pre-orders we can tell you that you meet and beat the expectations out of the park. Despite opening up numbers significantly, we are at 85-95% fill rate to pre-orders for almost all items for International Tabletop Day.” The only odd one out was the promotional card from Cryptozoic’s Master of Orion, which only had enough product to fill 16% of the orders and cannot be reprinted in time for the event. International Tabletop Day is on Saturday, April 29 and the official website has a locator to find the event closest to you.

View attachment 83123​

Even the Kickstarters this week haven’t managed to evade controversy this week! Alternity is now on Kickstarter bringing a world of science fiction adventure. Technically speaking, however, this is not a new edition of the original Alternity game. Instead, this game takes the abandoned trademarks from the original Alternity and creates an entire new rules system inspired by the original. Some on social media criticized Sasquatch games for using the abandoned trademarks rather than creating an original property. My response: Yeah, how dare this Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek rip off the hard work of the original Alternity creators, Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek! And can you believe they’re letting George RR Martin write the next Song of Ice and Fire novel? But more seriously, this new game captures everything from the original Alternity with the original creators involved as they update and streamline the game system bringing in the knowledge of twenty years of advancement in the industry since the original. You can get the core rulebook in PDF for $25, a print version for $40, or a bundle of all content including stretch goals in PDF for $45 or adding on a print copy of the core rulebook for $65. This project is about halfway to its funding goal, but has until Thursday, May 4 to reach its $35,000 goal.

Now for some controversial nepotism! EN Publishing, the game design and publishing arm of EN World, is creating a book of brand new classes for the 5^th Edition of “the world’s most popular roleplaying game”. Alchemist, Cardcaster, Diabolist, Feywalker, Morph, Noble, and Occultist are each detailed with multiple subclass builds (see the links for previews). In addition, the book includes new subclasses and build options for the core classes and much more. You can get the PDF version immediately at the end of the Kickstarter for a £10 (about US$13) pledge, or a print copy for £17 (about US$21) for a print copy as soon as it’s printed. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Friday, May 5.

Underworld Races & Classes gives you even more options for your 5^th Edition or Pathfinder games from Adventure a Week Games. What’s the controversy with promoting this one? While I’m not directly involved with this project, I am currently working with AAW Games on another project they haven’t announced yet. That said, this book is a collection of new races, classes, spells, and items all themed around the things that dwell beneath the surface of the world, thriving in the darkness. The PDF is available for $25 for your choice of edition or $45 for both with hardcover versions available for $55 or $105 for both. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Friday, April 28.

That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming news at the EN World News Network website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’ve been ranting about the Pepsi controversy (there’s no reason not to bring back Crystal Pepsi permanently!), or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.

SaveSave
SaveSave​

 

[Jester David]

Romance is a part of some D&D campaigns, not at all a part of others. Romance has been a part of RPGs since before BioWare let you woo Bastila Shan, and the 5e DMG list romantic entanglements on its carousing table in the downtime activities section.

Romance can be a big part of D&D. But so can running a spice trading business across an island archipelago, or riding dragons between floating islands, or travelling between planes via portals in a city inside a Torus.
But they're not assumed parts of the game. And it's not so representative of the game that it needs to be on the damn cover. It's not as iconic as fighting King Snurre.

While no one would by a $50 book for the cover art, they would absolutely pick it up and check it out. Good art, especially good character art inside the book very much helps to sell the fantasy. I'm not saying it would have been impossible for Pathfinder to steal the RPG crown in a brown paper wrapper, but it would have been a lot more difficult.

I do agree. It certainly helps attract the attention. More that likely it makes people curious enough to Google and find out more about the game. Or reassure people that the purchase is worthwhile.

Pathfinder is a good example as well. Because the art is so diverse. You have the iconic paladin and cleric, whom are both women of colour fully covered in reasonable armour. And yet everyone keeps being drawn to the images of Seoni the iconic sorcerers who is very cheesecake.

Likewise, it is difficult to imagine the staggering success of D&D 5e without the art on and in the books.

True. But 4e had equally pretty art, albeit less representative of the diversity of humanity.
While I doubt 5e would have done as well without the art, having high quality colour artwork is clearly not the only factor in the success of the game.

The art sells the fantasy, and for some people the fantasy includes cheesecake and/or beefcake, either to be or to be with.

And just as easily "bad" art can un-sell a book.
See the Pathfinder example above, and look how much flack that's caused for that game despite the rest of the art being so much better (and despite the presence of beefcake like Seltyiel).

 

[Abstruse]

First off, you don't seem to really understand marketing very well.

You're plain wrong.

 

[epithet]

No.
...
It's not frumpy they want. It's practical. Reasonable. Armour that actually functions as armour. Women dressed comparable to men. Women adventures who seem competent as adventurers whom they can imagine themselves as.
...
The fact is, male adventurers presented in the books should be characters that male players want to imagine being. And that female characters in the books should be characters that female players want to imagine being. (And anyone who wants to play a character of a different gender is also cool.) Art of adventurers is there so you can imagine being that character, not so you can imagine boning that character.

The great popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer among women and girls wwas not a result of Buffy's practical body armor, but it might have had something to do with Angel and Spike.

There are certainly people who make characters spectacularly unatractive, but this is usually (in my experience) either for comedic effect or because of min/maxing, not because it is a fantasy role the player wants to inhabit.

Of the women I've played RPGs with, I cannot think of a single one who wanted her character to be dressed "practical, reasonable," or "comparable to men." I'm not saying my game friends are necessarily a representative sample, but those terms don't describe their fantasy. Not all of them wanted a "sexy" character, to be sure, but they certainly haven't seemed interested in practical or reasonable gear loadouts.

 

[Rygar]

Umm, it's TRACY Hickman, and he's a dude. But, you knew that right.

Now would be a *really* good time to notice this his wife Laura writes too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Hickman

It makes it so much less embarrassing when trying to claim someone else doesn't know what they're talking about.

 

[Abstruse]

I commend the many people in this thread still responding to the sexist and transphobic crap. You have the patience of saints to still try explaining to these people why they're wrong.

I should warn you, however, that this column has been linked on message boards and other sites for a certain group concerned about "ethics in gaming journalism" if you can't tell by the various comments. To those people I have this to say: Stop reading my column. I neither want nor need you reading my words. You're sexist, racist, homophobic, hateful people and I want nothing to do with you in any way, shape, or form.

To those who aren't members of that group but still in here arguing like there's some point to prove in what Green Ronin's doing beyond attempting to be actively inclusive and finding new voices to enrich their product and the industry as a whole:

View attachment 83198​

 

[Morrus]

Time to close this trainwreck down.