WoD renaming, White Wolf returns

[hirou]

Press release:

World of Darkness today announced that it is rebranding to White Wolf and is now the official licensing and publishing entity for all its transmedia properties, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Hunter: The Reckoning. As part of the rebrand, White Wolf and Paradox Interactive are working together as co-publishers for Vampire: The Masquerade–Bloodlines 2, launching in October 2025. Additionally, World of Darkness tabletop role-playing game and IP development will move in-house, enabling the studio to expand and deepen its commitment to games and gameplay systems that complement its story worlds.

This marks a new era for White Wolf, empowering the brand to work closely with partners to create interconnected stories and develop more products for fans. White Wolf is unifying its vast story worlds and building on its legacy of celebrated entertainment properties that resonate with its audience.

Operating as an independent entity within Paradox Interactive, White Wolf oversees products set in World of Darkness story worlds across all major media, including video games, tabletop role-playing games, board games, streaming shows, and more. All White Wolf projects, licensed or published, will have direct access to the brand’s development resources and marketing support. White Wolf has access to a global network of distributors and partners, ensuring that World of Darkness fans worldwide can experience the brand’s compelling stories.

Haven't seen a topic for this, I hope it's the appropriate forum.
Is this "nothing news", just bureaucracy for publishing? Could this be risk management, separating development of low-profit tabletop games from main Paradox Interactive things?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Somehow, White Wolf returned!

What was the most recent status quo before this?

 

[hirou]

What was the most recent status quo before this?

I think back in 2018 they got absorbed into Paradox after some kind of VtM v5 scandal with bad drama. TBH I haven't played the latest revision, so it blew right past me.

 

[Deadstop]

Yeah, I honestly thought they were already calling themselves White Wolf.

 

[Shawn Kehoe]

Paradox bought some of the original White Wolf IP from CCP (World of Darkness, "new" World of Darkness, Exalted) and created a new White Wolf to develop VtM 5 and publish it with Modiphius.

The release year for VtM 5 had a variety of bad press:

• The quick start had a character which some folks equated with a pedophile.
• A rules-in-play example was accused of hiding a white supremacist dog-whistle.
• The clan write-up for the Brujah noted that some Brujah end up in the alt-right and Neo-Nazi movements, which some people felt was an endorsement for player characters to do those things.
• Finally, the Camarilla expansion book suggested that the real-life genocide of LGBT people in Chechnya was a vampiric ruse to hide that vampires ruled the country openly.

The last point caused some press in mainstream outlets, and Paradox killed the White Wolf brand and fired a couple of the managers. They pulped the entire Camarilla and Anarch print runs and delayed publication for months to change the content.

After that, Paradox started using the World of Darkness brand exclusively, and partnered up with various RPG companies to publish WoD books. Onyx Path designed Chicago By Night and Cults of the Blood God, then Modiphius was the exclusive TTRPG licensee but only managed to publish the Fall of London, and finally Renegade became the exclusive licensee for TTRPG. They have published a half-dozen supplements for V5 and the entire output of the modern Hunter and Werewolf lines. Notably, Werewolf had a tortured development where Hunters Entertainment developed the first take on the new edition, but it was scrapped and the final edition was developed in-house by World of Darkness, and published by Renegade.

 

[Shawn Kehoe]

Also, since it comes up a bunch in these discussions:

Onyx Path is a separate company, created when CCP shuttered the original White Wolf. They licensed the classic World of Darkness, the new World of Darkness (since re-branded Chronicles of Darkness), and Exalted. They also bought the Scion and Trinity IPs outright, and developed their own Storyteller-inspired system called Storypath that powers most of their games now. Last year they crowdfunded an urban horror RPG called Curseborne that uses Storypath and is seen by many as a successor to their WoD / CoD work.

 

[MGibster]

White Wolf isn't really back. This is just a rebrand. Nothing to get excited about.

 

[Staffan]

Paradox bought some of the original White Wolf IP from CCP (World of Darkness, "new" World of Darkness, Exalted) and created a new White Wolf to develop VtM 5 and publish it with Modiphius.

Also, since it comes up a bunch in these discussions:

Onyx Path is a separate company, created when CCP shuttered the original White Wolf. They licensed the classic World of Darkness, the new World of Darkness (since re-branded Chronicles of Darkness), and Exalted. They also bought the Scion and Trinity IPs outright, and developed their own Storyteller-inspired system called Storypath that powers most of their games now. Last year they crowdfunded an urban horror RPG called Curseborne that uses Storypath and is seen by many as a successor to their WoD / CoD work.

I believe Paradox bought all of White Wolf's IP originally, and the ones Onyx now owns directly (which also includes Scarred Lands) were bought from Paradox, not CCP. But that's quibbling about details.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Last year they crowdfunded an urban horror RPG called Curseborne that uses Storypath and is seen by many as a successor to their WoD / CoD work.

Boy, I would really like to be excited about Curseborne, but amazingly, they seem to have crammed a whole "of Darkness" line of complex worldbuilding into a single book.

This feels like it would have been an ideal time to have started over with a simple base and add complexity in a modular fashion, rather than going straight in at the deep end, like they have.

Onyx Path: You folks seem like the ideal ones to do a lo-fi urban fantasy game. Think about it, please.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Wow, next thing you know Jolt Cola and goths will come back too.