Big Changes At White Wolf Following Controversy

Following an online backlash regarding the content of their recent publications, White Wolf Publishing has just announced some big changes, including the suspension of the Vampire 5th Edition Camarilla and Anarch books, and a restructuring of management.

White Wolf's Shams Jorjani made the following announcement about an hour ago:

"Hello everyone,

My name is Shams Jorjani, VP of Business Development at Paradox Interactive and interim manager at White Wolf Publishing. I wanted to inform you of some changes that will be implemented at White Wolf, starting immediately.

Sales and printing of the V5 Camarilla and Anarch books will be temporarily suspended. The section on Chechnya will be removed in both the print and PDF versions of the Camarilla book. We anticipate that this will require about three weeks. This means shipping will be delayed; if you have pre-ordered a copy of Camarilla or Anarchs, further information will follow via e-mail.

In practical terms, White Wolf will no longer function as a separate entity. The White Wolf team will be restructured and integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and I will be temporarily managing things during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.

Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.

The World of Darkness has always been about horror, and horror is about exploring the darkest parts of our society, our culture, and ourselves. Horror should not be afraid to explore difficult or sensitive topics, but it should never do so without understanding who those topics are about and what it means to them. Real evil does exist in the world, and we can’t ever excuse its real perpetrators or cheapen the suffering of its real victims.

In the Chechnya chapter of the V5 Camarilla book, we lost sight of this. The result was a chapter that dealt with a real-world, ongoing tragedy in a crude and disrespectful way. We should have identified this either during the creative process or in editing. This did not happen, and for this we apologize.

We ask for your patience while we implement these changes. In the meantime, let’s keep talking. I’m available for any and all thoughts, comments and feedback, on shams.jorjani@paradoxinteractive.com."

White Wolf is currently own by Paradox Interactive, who acquired the World of Darkness rights in 2015 from previous owner CCP (who you might know from Eve Online) whose plans for a WoD MMO failed to bear fruit.

The recent Camarilla and Anarch books have met widespread criticism. The former, Camarilla, includes a section which appears to trivialise current real-life events in Chechnya, where the LGBTQ community is being persecuted, tortured, and murdered and uses that current tragedy as a backdrop for the setting. This comes after the company was forced to deny links to neo-Nazi ideology. White Wolf recently announced that "White Wolf is currently undergoing some significant transitions up to and including a change in leadership. The team needs a short time to understand what this means, so we ask for your patience as we figure out our next steps" and this appears to be the result of that decision.

 

[Guest 6801328]

"Freedom from offense" is a problem, in my opinion. There are lots of ideas that we should be discussing, but those who want to are silenced by those who are afraid of having those things discussed.

And the fact that it's a problem gets used as a defense by people who should not be given a platform from which to spout their truly offensive opinions.

Both things can be true simultaneously.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, this is where art runs into capitalism.

If a work offends only one person, well, unfortunately for that one person, not much is going to happen. If 1000 people buy the work and 1 person is offended, well, the market has spoken. It's never about "how many people need to be offended". It's a business decision based on negative reactions by a large enough group that it hurts the bottom line. If you can convince enough people to agree with you that films with naughty language should be banned, then, yup, you win. You get to force your will on others.

Welcome to capitalism.

Right, I get that, and I’ve acknowledged it already in this thread. That’s why I asked the question separate of the business concerns.

Do you think that someone, or many someones, who finds a work offensive should have the ability to see that work removed or altered? Or should they simply avoid that work and similar ones that fon’t suit their taste?

 

[Rygar]

Sure, let me try.

On the guides in general:
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/vampire-5th-ed-camarilla-anarch-guides.836416/

Offending piece (image):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dreh9TrV4AMdzsI?format=jpg

Offending piece (text):
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/vampire-5th-ed-camarilla-anarch-guides.836416/post-22218511

Other issues:
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/white-wolf-to-no-longer-develop-books-internally-camarilla-book-to-be-edited.837179/
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/white-wolf-to-no-longer-develop-books-internally-camarilla-book-to-be-edited.837179/post-22227731

Could you please put a large warning when linking to RPG.net? Given the very political nature of that site and its participants, and the actions they've taken over the past few weeks, some of us would prefer to avoid giving them any traffic or revenue.

 

[Shasarak]

Welcome to capitalism.

Forcing your will on others is not capitalism.

All most all of the other -isms do a better job of that.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Forcing your will on others is not capitalism.

All most all of the other -isms do a better job of that.

Botulism, for instance.

 

[Jester David]

In my opinion, yes, commissioned works are art. Works produced with the intention of making money are art. I don’t mean this as a statement of quality...there can be impressive art and there can be uminpressive art. But that’s subjective.

And roleplayong games are also works of art, I would say. Especially for the purposes of how they are considered and critiqued.

Fair enough.
Do you think this particular passage of this particular book for this particular game was an artistic expression?

(But for the sake of argument... if a roleplaying game is a work of art, would a game of football be art too? How about chess? Poker? Or is it just their rulebooks?)

As for your points about the target audience, yes of course work intended for children will have different standards than those intended solely for adults. I disagree with you that RPGs in general have some shared expectation of their target audience. I think that’s no more true than just about any other media. And I would say that Vampire: The Masquerade is firmly in the adult area.

Agreed. Vampire the Masquerade is very firmly "adult". While D&D is much more PG.
But that doesn't mean anything goes in VtM.

That doesn't mean they can present anything and everything in the book and not have to worry about upsetting people.

Earlier I questioned what the reaction would be if White Wolf postulated that the Sandy Hook Massacre was the result of a fledgling vampire who lost control of the Beast and the shooting was a cover. Because that would work as a plot hook. Plus the murder of a couple dozen people and a cover-up is well within the scope of what you see in VtM.
And the idea of thematically equating vampirism with gun violence has some very interesting connotations. You could tell a very interesting and multi-layered narrative with that hook.
But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be upsetting or offensive or cross a line.

I don’t think that the content in question was against some kind of rule or expectation on the part of the reader. I don’t find it all that outrageous given the way that White Wolf has presented the world in the past. Yes, they’ve avoided some sensitive topics. But they’ve also used all manner of real world atrocity as fodder for fiction. Now, I can understand why folks would find it to be in poor taste. I cannot blame anyone for finding offense, or at least insensitivity, in how this material was presented.

I just don’t think that means that it shouldn’t exist.

It's not a question of whether or not it should exist. It's a question of whether or not it should be in an official book. And whether or not the writing of that material should have been paid for and supported by White Wolf?

If the author in question really loved the idea of the Chechnya campaign seed, where you have to liberate or combat a country controlled by vampires... why couldn't that be a PDF product? That's literally what the Storyteller's Vault is for. Or they could do it on their blog and get funds through Patreon. No one is saying that idea should not exist in any form.

Or, alternatively... why does it need to be a real country and use the name of the real head of state while referring to the real murder of human beings? Comic books regularly have real-ish sounding countries. Sokovia. Markovia. Bialya.
Heck, they could even use a former country and say "Czechoslovakia".
That fills the same narrative role without potentially being seen as making light or taking advantage of the suffering of others.

As I’ve already said, commercially I understand the decision of the company to edit the works and to change how they operate going forward. I realize what’s happened and why.

I’m just questioning if that’s the way it should be.

What's the alternative?
The writers publish whatever they want? The publisher has no say in the product they're funding?

 

[Hussar]

Right, I get that, and I’ve acknowledged it already in this thread. That’s why I asked the question separate of the business concerns.

Do you think that someone, or many someones, who finds a work offensive should have the ability to see that work removed or altered? Or should they simply avoid that work and similar ones that fon’t suit their taste?

Does it matter? The reality is that if enough someones (and that number is never fixed) see something as offensive, then the work gets removed or altered. Democracy in action. That's how society works. Society judges that certain things are offensive (and that decision itself is not fixed - it changes over time) and exercises that judgement through economic means. Questions over whether or not someone should be able to do so are the wrong questions to ask since there is no real functioning alternative.

Telling someone to just change the channel is no different really than them telling you not to spread an offensive idea. And since we have a history of letting offensive ideas fester in small groups until it spills over and someone decides to run over several innocent women and children on the streets of Toronto (just to give an example) then it's much better, IMO, to categorically denounce these things very publicly. No, this or that is not acceptable and it's society's responsibility to make that judgement known.

 

[Hussar]

Forcing your will on others is not capitalism.

All most all of the other -isms do a better job of that.

Sure it is. There's all sorts of ways to force your will on others through capitalism. Monopolies for example. As well as boycotting. Both of these are very effective ways of forcing your will on others.

 

[Shasarak]

Sure it is. There's all sorts of ways to force your will on others through capitalism. Monopolies for example. As well as boycotting. Both of these are very effective ways of forcing your will on others.

I guess if you can drive other competitors from the market by being more efficient or providing a better product then yes capitalism can cause a monopoly. Which in this case would mean that someone has refined their RPG to such an extent that they have produced a product so awesome that no other RPG can compete with it.

And boycotting is kind of a hard way to force your will on someone. Not impossible but just really hard. Certainly hard enough that I would struggle to call it an effective tactic.

 

[Hussar]

I guess if you can drive other competitors from the market by being more efficient or providing a better product then yes capitalism can cause a monopoly. Which in this case would mean that someone has refined their RPG to such an extent that they have produced a product so awesome that no other RPG can compete with it.

And boycotting is kind of a hard way to force your will on someone. Not impossible but just really hard. Certainly hard enough that I would struggle to call it an effective tactic.

Really? Worked in this case didn't it?

And that's really, really not how monopolies work. There's a reason we have laws against them. Granted those laws are socialist in nature, but, hey, there's still pretty darn good reasons why monopolies are illegal in our countries.