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<blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4770256" data-attributes="member: 15538">Prince Valiant is roughly contemperous with Vampire and did not make the same splash, to put it mildly. But moving past that, there is very little that differentiates Prince Valiant from traditional fantasy wargames, and in fact uses the same basic tropes (encounters, tests, XP/Fame, etc). It uses storytelling tools to good effect, from my understanding (never played) but does very little to distinguish in style from a stripped down OD&amp;D game. Vampire shifted things in so many ways. GM fiat was encouraged, even as players were encouraged to take on a narrative role. The setting became highly player-driven as the PCs were a good proportion of the vamps in any given setting. Willpower and humanity were long-term &quot;hit points&quot; that were carried over from session to session. Most importantly, the game did not encourage a series of tests (a la the dungeon crawl or a joust or an escape from Arkham) but rather an ongoing set of conflicts in which the participants often remained the same until climactic events occured. Ars Magica had a lot of these traits, but did not succeed in transforming gaming in the same fashion. Other games had elements that anticipated Vampire (Call of Cthulhu and its sanity rules, for instance). But Vampire was the game that crystallized the shift. Storytelling games became a sub-genre of RPGs unto themselves, neighboring the fantasy wargaming tradition.That is not to say the Vampire did anything impossible in D&amp;D or vice versa; it is in the nature of a roleplaying game to be configurable. My point is that Vampire changed the assumptions underpinning the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pawsplay, post: 4770256, member: 15538"] Prince Valiant is roughly contemperous with Vampire and did not make the same splash, to put it mildly. But moving past that, there is very little that differentiates Prince Valiant from traditional fantasy wargames, and in fact uses the same basic tropes (encounters, tests, XP/Fame, etc). It uses storytelling tools to good effect, from my understanding (never played) but does very little to distinguish in style from a stripped down OD&D game. Vampire shifted things in so many ways. GM fiat was encouraged, even as players were encouraged to take on a narrative role. The setting became highly player-driven as the PCs were a good proportion of the vamps in any given setting. Willpower and humanity were long-term "hit points" that were carried over from session to session. Most importantly, the game did not encourage a series of tests (a la the dungeon crawl or a joust or an escape from Arkham) but rather an ongoing set of conflicts in which the participants often remained the same until climactic events occured. Ars Magica had a lot of these traits, but did not succeed in transforming gaming in the same fashion. Other games had elements that anticipated Vampire (Call of Cthulhu and its sanity rules, for instance). But Vampire was the game that crystallized the shift. Storytelling games became a sub-genre of RPGs unto themselves, neighboring the fantasy wargaming tradition. That is not to say the Vampire did anything impossible in D&D or vice versa; it is in the nature of a roleplaying game to be configurable. My point is that Vampire changed the assumptions underpinning the game. [/QUOTE]

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