Modiphius Takes Over Vampire: The Masquerade

The latest update in the ongoing White Wolf/Vampire saga has just been announced! Modiphius Entertainment (Conan, Star Trek, John Carter) has signed a deal with Paradox to manage the Vampire: The Masqeurade brand.


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Modiphius Entertainment has signed a publishing deal with Paradox Interactive to manage the tabletop roleplaying brand Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

“We are thrilled to become the official stewards of this incredible roleplaying game,” said Chris Birch, President and CEO of Modiphius. “And we look forward to developing and publishing the official Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (V5) tabletop roleplaying game under license from Paradox. We’re committed to providing fans with a truly exceptional range of new products to help them enjoy this rich, exciting world.”

Modiphius has already earned recognition for its hugely successful pre-order and distribution of Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition following its 2017 distribution deal with White Wolf Entertainment. After discussions with Paradox, Modiphius has agreed to oversee all publishing and licensing for V5 tabletop roleplaying games.

Modiphius will be responsible for guiding the plot development running throughout V5 tabletop roleplaying products and ensuring each product is fully approved by both the White Wolf brand team within Paradox, and also with Modiphius own team of V5 experts.

Modiphius is committed to delivering a truly exceptional range for V5 that maintains the high standard of editing, production, and development seen in their other lines. Working with existing White Wolf partners Onyx Path Publishing, Elderwood Academy, Dogmight Games, Nosolorol, Arkhane Asylum, Need Games, Studio 101, By Night Studios, and many more to be announced soon, the team will continue to expand on the diverse product range as well as available languages. Modiphius will work with all partners to ensure major releases are also available at retail.

The White Wolf brand team have completed re-editing the Anarch and Camarilla supplements to go to production early January, with pre-orders shipping in late January for web orders and early March for retail.

Modiphius plans to produce a host of exciting new releases to expand the range for new and old players alike including:

The Fall of London V5 Chronicle (Summer 2019) – London is burning. As the Second Inquisition put the city's Kindred to the torch, your characters wake from torpor. The sensible thing would be to flee now, but before you can leave the capital, you have one last job to do... This campaign is perfect to bring your Vampire players up to speed on the plot developments in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition or as as a gateway for new players.

V5 Players Guide (Summer 2019) – A guide to playing different styles of Vampire: The Masquerade to help you play the way YOU want to play, from gritty street level drama to romantic blood opera, complete with advice, new rules, and guidance on using the 5th Edition system to play previous editions of Vampire..

V5 Starter Set - (Christmas 2019) - An introductory starter set containing rules to play a self-contained campaign, with premade characters, handouts, maps, tokens and dice.

The Second Inquisition (Summer 2020) – Discover the plans, strategies, resources, and technologies of the highly secret organisations charged with investigating and eliminating the vampire threat, including Firstlight and the Society of St. Leopold.. This supplement for V5 will give Storytellers everything they need to know about these feared and fearless organisations to provide all manner of covert opposition for your Chronicle, along with advice for Storytellers who want to run chronicles featuring player characters as a well-equipped covert team of Second Inquisition operatives.

Further releases will be announced as they are agreed.



White Wolf's corresponding announcement reads:

Hello again, everyone.

I am delighted to inform you all that we have reached an agreement with Modiphius Entertainment to manage, publish, and guide the Vampire RPG product line going forward. As of today, Modiphius will take over the creation of new products within the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition line, while White Wolf will move into a brand management role to ensure these books and games fit elegantly into the World of Darkness. We’re glad to have the Modiphius team steering V5 into the future, and full details on their new role — and new books coming soon — are available in a press release here.

This new arrangement goes into effect immediately following the publishing of the Camarilla and Anarch books. As promised, the section on Chechnya that previously appeared in the Camarilla book has been removed from both the print and digital versions, and replaced with new content. All pre-orders for these books, as well as the Anarch books, will now be fulfilled, and we expect delivery to be complete as soon as possible, with all orders estimated to be filled by early Q1 2019. I want to again thank all pre-order customers for their patience during this process.

Once all existing pre-order commitments are finished, both the Camarilla and Anarch books will no longer be available for sale in print or in digital form. White Wolf is moving away from internal development and publishing, and this is part of that process. The creation and sale of these books would not happen under the incarnation of White Wolf that we are building — the creation, production, and editorial oversight of such products is now entirely run by Modiphius Entertainment and their partners. Until then, we’ve made promises to customers and partners who have pre-ordered these books, and we feel a strong obligation to fulfill those commitments as they were made. Those orders will be filled, and then we will focus entirely on working with licensees who will create the White Wolf products yet to come.

I see White Wolf in the future as a company that will continue steering the World of Darkness as the setting for incredible experiences that both entertain and challenge our players, but with strong editorial leadership, and more guidance and input from a broader set of voices. There needs to be new leadership for this new direction, and we believe Modiphius will be an integral part of this process with regards to Vampire, but there are more steps still to be taken for the World of Darkness and White Wolf as a whole.

In the last few weeks, many of you have reached out to share your opinions, and it’s been enlightening to see just how many differing viewpoints there are on where the World of Darkness ought to go next. I’m glad there are so many of you who feel strongly on the subject, because as mentioned, we are looking for someone to lead White Wolf into its next chapter. I’ve placed a job ad for a new Brand Manager at White Wolf: someone who will lead the marketing and creative sides of the company. This person will be the most senior member of the White Wolf team, and they will report directly to me at Paradox Interactive.

If you think you’re the right person for the job, and you want to do justice to these amazing brands, please apply. Have a look and send your application here: (https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/154773-brand-manager-white-wolf)

Best regards,
Shams Jorjani
 

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gyor

Legend
Honestly, Onyx Path Publishing has been managing WoD starting 2012, they have been doing that very well! Since then they've also done a good job at some of the other WW properties like Aeon Trinity and Scion. At least under CCP the RPG development of the IP was left to OPP, with the sale of WW to Paradox they tried to launch another version of Vampire (by themselves), imho that only dilutes the property. Looking at V5 I absolutely detest the art style that primarily use RL photography instead of thematic drawn art. With the whole controversy around the release I thought they would finally kill V5, but no, it's now under Modiphius's control. I don't think it's healthy that two RPG companies compete for the exact same audience with almost the same product. Also Modiphius has it's hands full with all the other IP they have under their control, release dates are already slipping (look at Infinity or Siege of the Citadel).

Agreed, this feels like a betrayal of Onyx Path who handled WoD and CoD extremely well before the new White Wolf ever exisited.
 

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Henry

Autoexreginated
If the alternative is the death of World of Darkness as an RPG (which is what it was looking like a month ago) it's still good news. Modiphius seems to be a pretty good company with gamers' interests at heart, so I hope they do well and more importantly don't cause any more public relations meltdowns...
 

5atbu

Explorer
If the alternative is the death of World of Darkness as an RPG (which is what it was looking like a month ago) it's still good news. Modiphius seems to be a pretty good company with gamers' interests at heart, so I hope they do well and more importantly don't cause any more public relations meltdowns...
It'll also give the line a British flavour, which will be nice for a change. Not that I am complaining at all about US focused games at all!!!!
 

Gradine

The Elephant in the Room (she/they)
Well, let's wait and see. They certainly don't seem to be interested in doing that in the next couple of years - and it would take significant development on their part. Honestly, I think they just want to make a profit out of the license - the system itself is a secondary issue to them.

I do agree that the 2d20 system isn't my first choice, although if the licence is good enough, it's enough to tempt me (hint: Dune).

If nothing else, adopting the 2d20 system means that nobody will be able to slip in any more oblique references to neo-nazis in their gameplay examples :p
 


Agreed, this feels like a betrayal of Onyx Path who handled WoD and CoD extremely well before the new White Wolf ever exisited.
The Onyx Path don't have any retail distribution. They base their entire business on kickstarter, PDF and POD. This largely means that only established fans buy their products, while it has a very limited reach to new audiences.

The reason why White Wolf went to Modiphius was that they have very good retail distribution system. The actual writers and creators largely stem from the same pool, and I expect there will be a lot of collaboration between Modiphius and The Onyx Path on than front.
 



VelvetViolet

Adventurer
I'm ambivalent. I've never really liked the restrictive nature of the IP nor its stranglehold over the urban fantasy market.

Allowing Onyx Path to keep publishing their World of Darkness derivatives is an unsound business decision. It makes more sense to mandate Onyx Path release their products as supplements for V5.
 

Cergorach

The Laughing One
I'm ambivalent. I've never really liked the restrictive nature of the IP nor its stranglehold over the urban fantasy market.

Allowing Onyx Path to keep publishing their World of Darkness derivatives is an unsound business decision. It makes more sense to mandate Onyx Path release their products as supplements for V5.
They may have a longer running contract with OP that allows them to publish oWoD. Also, many people find the new art direction of v5 abysmal. There is a sound business reason why OP started publishing oWoD books, they were in demand, a far greater demand then the nWoD books. I suspect that V5 is only further fracturing their own market, the new artstyle, the whole 'incident', etc. But the new owner is launching a new videogame in the same v5 'setting', so we're stuck with it unless they change their minds in the coming year...
 

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