What happened with Vampire?

[IanWatson]

The closure of the MMO sucks for a lot of our friends, but that hasn't affected Onyx Path's license to create new materials.

I would love to see some new OWOD products come out from Onyx Path, but so far I haven't really seen anything interesting. I would love to be able to buy some new material (in printed form) for OWOD, so hopefully they'll come out with something soon, but I don't see much of interest on their release schedule.

For the Classic World of Darkness, not including Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, which was one of the final CCP products, we've done:

- WTA: Werewolf Translation Guide
- VTM: V20 Companion
- VTM: Children of the Revolution
- MTA: Convention Book: N.W.O.
- MTA: Convention Book: Progenitors
- WTA: Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition
- MTA: Mage Translation Guide
- WTA: Skinner
- VTM: The Hunters Hunted II
- MTA: Convention Book: Syndicate
- MTA: Convention Book: Void Engineers
- WTA: Changing Breeds
- WTA: W20 Rage Across the World
- WTA: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II
- VTM: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology
- DA: Dark Ages: Darkening Sky
- WTA: W20 Cookbook

All of which are available in print. So yes, we have been releasing plenty of stuff in the last two years. If none of that interests you... well, there's not much I can do about that, but the books are there regardless. We have been making them, even if they're not to your taste.

The new World of Darkness also continues to do quite well. Out of the top five of our "hottest" items on DriveThruRPG, the top three are for the new WoD.

 

[evilbob]

Re-reading this multi-necro'd thread got me curious, and so I did more research... Actually, the shift from oWoD to nWoD was pretty interesting, and I think at the time it made a lot more sense that people give it credit for nowadays. I had personally jumped into 3.5 by then so I missed it all, but in 2004 White Wolf made the transition by actually going through with the apocalypse... essentially, they followed through on their primary premise of the meta-story, which is honestly pretty justified. (I'm sure this is hardly news to many of you, but I didn't realize it.) Here's a great quote from the time:

"An apocalypse is only exciting and terrifying if it can actually occur," said Mike Tinney, White Wolf’s President. "Our fans have come to expect top-notch storytelling from the World of Darkness, and a great story needs a great ending. It’s time to deliver."

So they had pretty much gotten to the end of their rope, story-wise, and needed a reboot to support new players and broaden their base, so they intentionally self-destructed the entire storyline... but when your game is literally about self destruction and the end of times, you can't really bluff something like that out! People think about it now (ten years later - yes, we are that old) as this "greedy" or "corporate" move, but the actual setting fits very well within their choice at the time, and honestly it was completely authentic.

The long-term ramifications seem obvious now, but unlike what D&D did (sell off its previous line to another publisher who vowed to keep it going until the end of times), they gave their meta-story final death - and fans got understandable pissed. I guess that was part of the huge reaction at the time - it wasn't a choice, gamers were given an ultimatum: switch or quit. We know how us gamers tend to react to those sorts of situations, and I wonder if this wasn't one of the biggest reasons why so many fans just left the game completely - even though the line of reasoning at the time was pretty sound.

Which makes the Onyx Path stuff all the more interesting to me. They're basically playing WoD's Paizo to WW/CCP, and giving fans the third option that they said they always wanted. Sadly, seven+ years was a long time to wait, and the interim has been filled with jillions of quality games that probably make this market even tougher - and without coattails to market off of, Onyx Path has quite an uphill battle to even get the word out. I'm just some random nobody, but I hadn't even HEARD of all the stuff they've been putting out and kickstarting - other than the actual 20th anniversary re-release of the core book - and it's actually a ton of stuff. (Sidebar: V20 DARK AGES WOOHOO!!!) Take this entire thread, for example: people are still asking "what happened to Vampire?" when they've been publishing new stuff in the oWoD setting for three years. (Edit: And IanWatson just ninja'd me with even more proof!)

But then again, maybe a decade break was a good thing, because it let the genre get fresh again, and opened it up to new ideas and new directions... And if there was ever a story that could appear to be dead, but rise again... (Ok that was intentional, too.)

 

[IanWatson]

Re-reading this multi-necro'd thread got me curious, and so I did more research... Actually, the shift from oWoD to nWoD was pretty interesting, and I think at the time it made a lot more sense that people give it credit for nowadays.

Here's the thing. Sales had been on a steady downward trend, and with the evolving metaplot, the line was increasingly hard to get into for newcomers. Products being released were more and more niche, since just about everything had already been covered in the previous 13 years. So they made the very risky decision to do the Time of Judgment and then introduce an entirely new World of Darkness: one with no metaplot and a toolbox approach, which would help avoid some of the previous issues.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the cause was a sales slump industry-wide. Publishing in general, but RPGs in particular, were suffering. But that wasn't easy to see at the time. WW made their decision for entirely sensible reasons, they just happened to be wrong.

As an example of the sales slump -- one of the few for which numbers were made public -- VTM's 1998 Limited Edition rulebook sold 10,000 copies, and many more unlimited editions. Six years later VTR's 2004 corebook, which only had the one version, sold 10,000 copies, and that was exciting enough that WW issued a press release. That's a huge change in such a short period of time. WW was hurting.

But it means we get to play in two different WoDs. We get to explore two different interpretations of werewolves, of changelings, of vampires, of demons. We get to introduce new weird stuff like Sin-Eaters and Prometheans. It's very freeing, creatively speaking. Both WoDs have their fans (and many are fans of both).

I guess that was part of the huge reaction at the time - it wasn't a choice, gamers were given an ultimatum: switch or quit.

Or the third option, "keep playing." It was brought up multiple times during the Time of Judgment. Existing books weren't going to catch fire, and there was 13 years of material to build from, so people could continue to play their Classic games for as long as they wanted. And many did exactly that.

 

[Umbran]

Here's the thing. Sales had been on a steady downward trend, and with the evolving metaplot, the line was increasingly hard to get into for newcomers. Products being released were more and more niche, since just about everything had already been covered in the previous 13 years. So they made the very risky decision to do the Time of Judgment and then introduce an entirely new World of Darkness: one with no metaplot and a toolbox approach, which would help avoid some of the previous issues.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the cause was a sales slump industry-wide. Publishing in general, but RPGs in particular, were suffering. But that wasn't easy to see at the time. WW made their decision for entirely sensible reasons, they just happened to be wrong.

If what you say in the first paragraph is true (I agree with it, at least - I think the vast majority of their late-stage material was only of interest to completists, rather than to rank-and-file players) then they were *going* to have a slump, regardless of what the rest of the industry did. This would mean WW wasn't wrong, this was an issue.

Now, since there was an industry-wide slump, the nWoD wasn't going to save them - but that doesn't mean it was a bad choice. They might have tanked *even worse* without the nWoD.

 

[evilbob]

Thanks for that very informative response! It sounds like others in this thread either guessed or professed their knowledge correctly.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the cause was a sales slump industry-wide. Publishing in general, but RPGs in particular, were suffering.

I was not in the business so I am sure I don't know, but since D&D 3.5 released at that time and seemed quite huge, I wonder if it was industry-wide or was 3.5 just taking so much of the pie the rest of the industry just got scraps? That's my perspective but it's from the D&D crowd, not in the know. I'd bet WoW debuting in late 2004 made a huge dent in tabletop play as well.

Or the third option, "keep playing."

This is totally fair, but a game without publisher support will rarely ever last as long as a game with publisher support. Support is what keeps the blood flowing (not meant to be a pun). And a number of people may have also quit spitefully, just because their world was "destroyed" and they felt abandoned (that's far too dramatic but I couldn't think of the right word - and to be fair, WoD is pretty dramatic). Hard to say, though.

Curiously, Bloodlines (perfectly described upthread as "a flawed masterpiece") which could have been a nice crossover tie-in was released in late 2004 - immediately after the "end" of the oWoD. It's hard to know if that could have brought more people to the tabletop game... Especially since being released (buggy and broken) in the same month as WoW and Halflife 2 didn't do it many favors... But it was still one of the best VtM stories I've seen.

They might have tanked *even worse* without the nWoD.

Edit: This also seems like a good point.

 

[Scorpio616]

Yeah, it seems unfair to characterize the shift to New WoD as greedy

They were getting greedy by the 1998 revision, long before the second WoD.

They need to sell off the rights and let someone else have a go at it if they aren't willing to.

Why? So Another competitor can emerge on the MMO circuit? So the competitors can pick up ex-employees who will bring valuable development effort that your company paid for?! You vault the IP and use that to shore up the company's net worth.

 

[Balesir]

Why? So Another competitor can emerge on the MMO circuit? So the competitors can pick up ex-employees who will bring valuable development effort that your company paid for?! You vault the IP and use that to shore up the company's net worth.

Only if you are incompetent will you do this.

Intellectual Property represents capital; capital that is idle (not earning) is wasteful and poorly managed. You either sell it (to replace it with capital that will earn) or you get it earning by whatever means necessary (e.g. licensing). This is basic stuff - to fail on it is simple incompetence.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Only if you are incompetent will you do this.

Intellectual Property represents capital; capital that is idle (not earning) is wasteful and poorly managed. You either sell it (to replace it with capital that will earn) or you get it earning by whatever means necessary (e.g. licensing). This is basic stuff - to fail on it is simple incompetence.

Well, not quite. Sometimes capital is left idle because of a business being on the downslope of a declining cycle in the market, when to sell it off would leave the company unable to compete when the market turns around. Often, paying storage/maintenance fees are cheaper than selling off and re-buying later. Factories get temporarily mothballed, franchise locations get shuttered for years.

IP is no different. Some very well managed IP- see Disney, Hendrix, Presley, etc.- gets held back in order to properly leverage it in the market, either by keeping scarcity (and thus, price) high, taking the time to create derivative IP in different media, etc. Some video games once considered "abandonware" have returned to the market decades later, repackaged in new forms. The Atari 2600 was first released in 1977...and just a few years ago, Atari released the Atari Flashback consoles featuring 40 or so of the old games.t- see Disney, Hendrix, Presley

 

[Umbran]

Well, not quite. Sometimes capital is left idle because of a business being on the downslope of a declining cycle in the market, when to sell it off would leave the company unable to compete when the market turns around. Often, paying storage/maintenance fees are cheaper than selling off and re-buying later. Factories get temporarily mothballed, franchise locations get shuttered for years.

See, for example, Marvel Productions. When strapped for cash, they sold off rights to X-Men, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four movies. Now, when they are in a position of being able to actually develop those properties themselves, they are stuck in agreements negotiated from a position of weakness. They may *never* get those rights back, and they've proven to be worth billions of dollars.

"Make the IP work for you, at all times, at any cost," is not necessarily the best business decision. Sometimes, sitting on it to make it work for you later is a sound choice.

 

[Mark Hope]

Here's the thing. Sales had been on a steady downward trend, and with the evolving metaplot, the line was increasingly hard to get into for newcomers. Products being released were more and more niche, since just about everything had already been covered in the previous 13 years. So they made the very risky decision to do the Time of Judgment and then introduce an entirely new World of Darkness: one with no metaplot and a toolbox approach, which would help avoid some of the previous issues.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the cause was a sales slump industry-wide. Publishing in general, but RPGs in particular, were suffering. But that wasn't easy to see at the time. WW made their decision for entirely sensible reasons, they just happened to be wrong.

That's a really interesting perspective. Apocalypses, while rumoured, weren't the core focus of any of the cWoD games, barring the obvious Werewolf. Gehenna was a fairy-tale and Mage had no end-of-world metaplot to begin with. As players, we were a little bemused by the overt shift in the metaplot towards the End of the World being a real thing, and having it play out in the near future. It's interesting to think that those decisions were driven so much by sales. You often hear that the OWoD promised the end of the world from the get-go, but that's not the case - it was a relatively late addition to the 13-year run. It makes sense, though. I worked in retail (ran the games section of a book store) in the late 90s and we could already see the downward trend in sales. We were fighting to keep sales level, never mind grow them, so it makes sense to try something radical. As players, we certainly weren't ready, lol. The ToJ release period was lots of fun, but we still haven't gotten around to it in-game .