Autumnal
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
That’s close to the opposite of what I said. Also, this is really abusive language. Good luck finding other folks unusually keen on having you insult them, their friends, and their colleagues.
WoD renaming, White Wolf returns
- Thread starter hirou
- Start date
Mod Note:
Just a reminder to keep things civil and not escalate things with our rhetoric…
Just a reminder to keep things civil and not escalate things with our rhetoric…
aramis erak
Legend
There are too many IPs, causing many of us to lose... Hey, Look! Squirrel! Woof! WOOF! uh...
Squirrels of Darkness, from White Woof…
Autumnal
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
Species and favored nuts are the axes for splats. Disciplines determine where on the spectrum from serious to cartoony your character is. Merits cover things like tail bushiness and cheek pouch capacity.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
And they say new IPs are dead!
VelvetViolet
Adventurer
They already were. The White Wolf writers were paid by the word. They don’t get residuals.
The only bank accounts who would be harmed would be whoever drivethrurpg is sending money to whenever a PDF is bought. I strongly doubt that’s to the original writers.
The copyrights are owned by a corporation for 95 years after publication. They’re free to turn it into a skinsuit and attack dissenting fans for the next century, unless the fans move on and make products that suit their tastes. Vampires, werewolves, witches, fairies, etc. are not copyrighted. The fans could have easily made lots of their own IPs by now, but have refused to because of the sunk cost fallacy or something.
The toxic fandom vitriol we see in the edition wars is the fault of these tightfisted corpos running roughshod over IPs they didn’t create and don’t actually seem to like. The corporate copyrights have lasted long enough. It should be abolished and the fans should be free to make and sell their own versions of their beloved IPs.
There are so many canceled IPs that I would love to revive and build new fandoms around. Hunter: The Vigil and Changeling: The Lost, for example. Right now the best I can do is write original fiction with the serial numbers filed off, but I’m forever looking over my shoulder for fear of lawsuits.
I’ve checked out Liminal, Elegy, Urban Shadows, Night Shift, Vampire City, Wine Dark Nights, etc… they never measure up to 90s classics like Everlasting or WitchCraft. While some of them have really neat mechanics that solve problems I had for years with traditional systems, they never release supplements. The rulebook just teases a bunch of stuff that never comes.
If they expect me to DIY everything, then I’m not wasting my time on their experimental one-off game pitches. I’m gonna write original fiction exploring detailed settings instead, because I can publish that and maybe make money or something.
I’m sick of the edition wars. I already know V6 is gonna be another disaster that splits the fandom again, and I don’t even like VTM because I always preferred Requiem. I can’t imagine how V5 fanboys are gonna lose it and cyberbully V6 fans. Worse, the new creative director Paradox hired, Jason Carl, said they might do a new edition of Mage: The Ascension. Remember how Jess Henig got so many death threats that he was afraid to open his email for years, just for developing the third edition metaplot? I do not envy Carl.
I’m gonna make my own stuff because that way I don’t have to deal with fandom vitriol. I encourage everyone to do that. Give up on White Wolf and make your own IPs. You’ll all be a lot happier that way.
And there's always one dude in the group who insists on playing a chipmunk.
Jd Smith1
Hero
I'm pretty happy already.
But I agree, you should definitely make your own material.
VelvetViolet
Adventurer
I really don't understand why all the people who are vitriolic about V5 haven't already done that several times over. It's an extremely derivative and generic IP.
I can make 1:1 comparisons between the setting's various conceits and specific works of vampire fiction. The great laws from Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat (among other Ricean comparisons), the sacred ground non-violence prohibition from Nancy A. Collins' Sunglasses After Dark (and Highlander), the ugly Graf Orlok from Nosferatu, Nicholas Cage's role in Vampire's Kiss, Set in the works of Robert E. Howard, the unkara from Sazan Eyes, the Wamphyri from Necroscope, etc.
There's no reason that you couldn't go back to the same wells of inspiration and make your own IPs. There are plenty of IPs that are distinctive enough that you'd be hard pressed to do a knock off without running afoul of copyright infringement, like Nephilim or Star*Drive, but this IP ain't one of those.
About the only thing in the IP that I could determine was original and not directly inspired by an earlier work was the rule that drinking vampire blood enslaves you to that vampire even if you're a vampire yourself. This is simply not a thing in any earlier stories I could find (although Google books is really naughty word at research) and it still doesn't seem to be a thing in general vampire fiction. All the non-game IP references to "blood bond" I could find uses it as a vampiric equivalent of the soul bond trope: if you exchange blood with a vampire, then you develop a tele-empathic bond. This particular usage goes back to Dracula, where Mina has a link to Dracula while she's turning into a vampire.
So it's pretty ridiculous that none of the many angry fans decided to make their own game in protest. Not tabletop, anyway. I did find a guy who had previous been working under the licensed video game umbrella had decided to change his project into an original video game that he titled Nightborn. It's a pretty blatant ripoff and replicates the same bizarre "race as class as faction" structure that turns me off White Wolf, but it's a pretty clear example that you don't need the White Wolf IPs anymore and can make your own.
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