News Digest: Controversy Abounds! New Vampire Edition Details, Green Ronin's Talent Search, 7th Sea

Hello everyone! Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! And this week is all about controversy. Vampire: The Masquerade 5^th Edition release information (with a controversial hiring), Green Ronin is looking for female writers for Lost Citadel, International Tabletop Day may not be able to meet demand for promotional items, and more! Even this week’s Kickstarters are loaded with controversy!

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Okay, this is a very simple story with a very complicated background. I’m going to tell the story first this time and, if you’re not sure what’s going on, I’ll explain more in the next paragraph. White Wolf Publishing announced details about the new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. This new fifth edition of the game will come out in early 2018 and, according to ICv2, “continue the metagame that was shaped in 2004”. This would be the sourcebook Gehenna which presented several options for the “end of the world” of the World of Darkness and the tie-in novel Gehenna: The Final Night be Ari Marmell. If these events will be rolled into the new edition in an “After the End” manner, it’s not yet known. This project began in controversy after White Wolf announced hiring Zak Smith (aka Zak Sabbath or Zak S) back in February, a man who has been accused of harassing behavior, to work on a video game. WW's response can be found here.

So some of you may be wondering where Onyx Path is in all this. They’re still around, but they’re not involved with this new edition of the game. They are, however, still creating new material for World of Darkness. But not for the new edition. Onyx Path still holds the license for the Chronicles of Darkness (which is the official name of what was called the New World of Darkness titles: Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, etc.) and they hold the license for the 20^th Anniversary editions of all the World of Darkness (the official name for Old World of Darkness titles: Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, etc.). So Onyx Path is still publishing new material for both of these lines, but are NOT publishing material for the new 5^th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade.

So White Wolf was purchased by CCP Games (makers of the Eve Online franchise) who only wanted the IP rights to make a World of Darkness MMO. After many years of development, the title was finally canceled in 2014 and White Wolf plus all its assets were sold to Paradox Interactive in 2015. Late last year, Paradox Interactive spun White Wolf Publishing into its own (but fully owned) company in anticipation of publishing a new edition. At this time, the licensing deals were restructured and, when the dust settled, the licenses for Chronicles of Darkness and the 20^th Anniversary versions of the original World of Darkness games were with Onyx Path and the live-action Mind’s Eye Theater remained with By Night Studios. So this is how White Wolf is coming out with a new edition at a time when Onyx Path is running a Kickstarter for a World of Darkness themed card game.

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Green Ronin launched a talent search for contributors to The Lost Citadel roleplaying game, based on the fiction anthology and world developed by Jaym Gates, C.A. Suleiman, and Ari Marmell about a fantasy world in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. There is a catch, as they’re specifically accepting proposals from women. From the announcement:

In the lead-up to June’s Kickstarter for the LCRPG, we are going to be running a talent search for women who are interested in coming to work on the project. If you identify as female and dark fantasy is your jam, we want to see what you can bring to the table! Not to worry, fellas, we have some other opportunities for you coming up later in the year, as well, but this talent search is just for the ladies.

A statement was issued to further clarify that the talent search was also open to those who identify as non-binary gender. The announcement from Green Ronin General Manager Nicole Lindroos comes following a post from Green Ronin President Chris Pramas [EDIT: This post was from Green Ronin General Manager Nicole Lindroos, not Chris Pramas as original posted] speaking about his [EDIT: her] experience on a panel at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, noting the gender discrepancy of those in the industry and those looking to break in, noting both how far the industry has come and how far it still has to go.

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7^th Sea promised a platform for user-created content during their wildly successful Kickstarter last year, and now they’ve delivered as Explorer’s Society is live. The online store allows users to create and sell content for the 7^th Sea 2^nd Edition game, including adventures, NPCs, homebrew rules, or more. There is a content guideline that acts as a license for use of the Intellectual Property, laying out exactly what you can and cannot use from published materials and in what way you’re allowed to use them (this is similar to the license for the DM’s Guild). In the week since launch, there’s already two dozen products available for purchase ranging in cost from free to Pay-What-You-Want to a set price of $3.99 for some of the adventures.

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International Tabletop Day has run into a minor issue: The event is so big that they can’t keep up with demand! This is the first year that all promotional items have been released a la carte rather than as a single one-size-fits-all pack. Personally, I preferred the old way, but that’s because I live in a rural area so my local event always had more promotional items than attendees. However, retailers in more populated areas could customize their orders in order to make sure they could meet demand based on previous events. And this year, the demand was higher than ever – so much so that not everyone will be getting their products. Quoted in ICv2, Producer Ivan Van Norman said “We opened up the print sizes significantly as well with publishers, but didn’t know what to expect with the new system. After collecting all the pre-orders we can tell you that you meet and beat the expectations out of the park. Despite opening up numbers significantly, we are at 85-95% fill rate to pre-orders for almost all items for International Tabletop Day.” The only odd one out was the promotional card from Cryptozoic’s Master of Orion, which only had enough product to fill 16% of the orders and cannot be reprinted in time for the event. International Tabletop Day is on Saturday, April 29 and the official website has a locator to find the event closest to you.

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Even the Kickstarters this week haven’t managed to evade controversy this week! Alternity is now on Kickstarter bringing a world of science fiction adventure. Technically speaking, however, this is not a new edition of the original Alternity game. Instead, this game takes the abandoned trademarks from the original Alternity and creates an entire new rules system inspired by the original. Some on social media criticized Sasquatch games for using the abandoned trademarks rather than creating an original property. My response: Yeah, how dare this Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek rip off the hard work of the original Alternity creators, Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek! And can you believe they’re letting George RR Martin write the next Song of Ice and Fire novel? But more seriously, this new game captures everything from the original Alternity with the original creators involved as they update and streamline the game system bringing in the knowledge of twenty years of advancement in the industry since the original. You can get the core rulebook in PDF for $25, a print version for $40, or a bundle of all content including stretch goals in PDF for $45 or adding on a print copy of the core rulebook for $65. This project is about halfway to its funding goal, but has until Thursday, May 4 to reach its $35,000 goal.

Now for some controversial nepotism! EN Publishing, the game design and publishing arm of EN World, is creating a book of brand new classes for the 5^th Edition of “the world’s most popular roleplaying game”. Alchemist, Cardcaster, Diabolist, Feywalker, Morph, Noble, and Occultist are each detailed with multiple subclass builds (see the links for previews). In addition, the book includes new subclasses and build options for the core classes and much more. You can get the PDF version immediately at the end of the Kickstarter for a £10 (about US$13) pledge, or a print copy for £17 (about US$21) for a print copy as soon as it’s printed. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Friday, May 5.

Underworld Races & Classes gives you even more options for your 5^th Edition or Pathfinder games from Adventure a Week Games. What’s the controversy with promoting this one? While I’m not directly involved with this project, I am currently working with AAW Games on another project they haven’t announced yet. That said, this book is a collection of new races, classes, spells, and items all themed around the things that dwell beneath the surface of the world, thriving in the darkness. The PDF is available for $25 for your choice of edition or $45 for both with hardcover versions available for $55 or $105 for both. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Friday, April 28.

That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming news at the EN World News Network website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’ve been ranting about the Pepsi controversy (there’s no reason not to bring back Crystal Pepsi permanently!), or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.

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[epithet]

Dude, we already have ALL the special. Green Ronin is a couple guys graciously sharing a bit of the special with people who have less.

And that's cool. I'm just saying "more women" is a better way to say it than "fewer men." Or in this case, "anyone who is female" carries a better connotation than "anyone who isn't male." That's all I'm saying.

 

[Caliban]

I do understand it. I fully comprehend their objectives. I'm just positing the notion that hammering a "no boys allowed" sign over the tree house door isn't perhaps the most positive way to go about reaching their goal. It is, in my opinion, unnecessarily antagonistic. Clearly my opinion is not widely shared, and that's ok, but I felt like my position was being misread and misrepresented as something hostile, which is wasn't. No one enjoys being arbitrarily singled out for exclusion, and in fact doing so in the name of inclusivity seems particularly contrary.

So getting a tiny (oh so tiny!) taste of what transgender people and women (and a host of other minorities) have had to deal with for centuries is antagonizing you? My heartfelt condolences to your newly discovered sense of oppression.

It's only "antagonistic" if you are looking for something to be antagonized about.

 

[epithet]

So getting a tiny (oh so tiny!) taste of what transgender people and women (and a host of other minorities) have had to deal with for centuries is antagonizing you? My heartfelt condolences to your newly discovered sense of oppression.

It's only "antagonistic" if you are looking for something to be antagonized about.

I see.

It is unfortunate that you've gone there, although I suppose it was inevitable that someone would. Let's just get this out of the way: you have no clue what I have or haven't faced in my life, and even if you did it wouldn't be relevant. You don't get to tell a person that they need to stop complaining about getting poked with a stick just because some other folks were run over by a truck. I'm fully aware that human history is filled to overflowing with people who've had it worse off than me, and I'm absolutely not playing for sympathy here (or anywhere.) Nothing about this thread, Green Ronin's talent search for women, or in fact anything I would even remotely expect you to be aware of constitutes anything even vaguely resembling an oppression of me.

Your post, however, does express a dismissiveness that is, based on what I've seen of your other posts on this site over the years, beneath you.

 

[Caliban]

I see.

It is unfortunate that you've gone there, although I suppose it was inevitable that someone would....

Your post, however, does express a dismissiveness that is, based on what I've seen of your other posts on this site over the years, beneath you.

Oh, the irony.

 

[redrick]

And that's cool. I'm just saying "more women" is a better way to say it than "fewer men." Or in this case, "anyone who is female" carries a better connotation than "anyone who isn't male." That's all I'm saying.

I'm unable to find the quote which you are referring to.

As I understand it, Green Ronin made it clear that, in addition to wanting to include women in this talent search, they also wanted to include people of non-binary gender. Is it the inclusion of non-binary folks that offends you, or is it the language defining non-binary?

I am imagining the white male party across the hall from the Green Ronin event, with two non-binary folks standing in the corner. A few minutes in, the non-binary folks get a text message and go over to the Green Ronin event. Nobody was inviting them to participate in the Men Only contest being cooked up over by the punch bowl, but now that they leave, everybody throws their solo cups to the floor and shouts, "Now that does it! At first we thought it was that you only wanted women with vaginas, but now it's clear that you want EVERYBODY except the manly men!"

 

[ssspaladin]

The vitriol I see in this thread absolutely baffles me. For the record I've been gaming since the early 1970s and have been a freelance writer/developer since the mid-80s, I'm friends with Ari, CA, Chris and many of the other people involved in the Lost Citadel project. To address all the Internet lawyers who are claiming sex discrimination... GR is conducting a TALENT SEARCH. It is not a guarantee of employment, nor is it any kind of hiring discrimination -- it is exactly what is printed on the box -- a search for new authors and creators. GR would like to include more female and female-identified creators on this project, which they are entirely legally, ethically and morally entitled to do. In pursuit of this goal they have begun a TALENT SEARCH to find such creators.

GR is not saying that they will not hire men, they are not saying that men will be excluded from creative jobs on Lost Citadel or any other project. They are asking interested individuals from a certain group to submit work and be considered for future assignments. This is so that GR will have more female writers among its roster of writers and creators. It is not to prevent men from working for them. To suggest otherwise is just plain stupid -- as a male writer I've produced a number of products for Green Ronin and many other companies, and believe me there is no discrimination against men in any of them, given that the vast majority of freelancers are men. The desire to bring more women and minorities into the rpg industry is an admirable one, and a talent search such as this is one way of attracting them.

Even if GR chose to publish a collection of RPG products by women, there is nothing illegal about this, or else you'd see publishers of series like "Women of Wonder," "Genesis: An Anthology of Black SF" and "Where the Stars Rise: Asian SF" (and many others) sued. Contracting individual authors as work for hire contractors (which is what an author is, essentially) for an anthology with specific author requirements is not discriminatory, either legally or ethically. I'm sorry, but a lot of the people on this thread have a very poor understanding of what constitutes discrimination.

 

[Caliban]

And that's cool. I'm just saying "more women" is a better way to say it than "fewer men." Or in this case, "anyone who is female" carries a better connotation than "anyone who isn't male." That's all I'm saying.

So your position is that, you aren't feeling outraged, you aren't feeling oppressed in any way, and you aren't objecting to being excluded from the contest.

You are just objecting to the way you are being excluded?

I can see why you feel this is a major issue that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. But perhaps a message board not affiliated with Green Ronin isn't the best way to get your message out.

 

[epithet]

So your position is that, you aren't feeling outraged, you aren't feeling oppressed in any way, and you aren't objecting to being excluded from the contest.

You are just objecting to the way you are being excluded?

I can see why you feel this is a major issue that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. But perhaps a message board not affiliated with Green Ronin isn't the best way to get your message out.

Dude, I didn't start this conversation. I don't have "a message" that I'm trying to get out, I was just participating in a discussion. At least, that's what I thought I was doing... although apparently some people thought I was trying to offer a trite summary of certain gender issues--a perception I sought to correct.

I'm not excluded from anything, since I'm not currently an author seeking any sort of publication. My gender doesn't factor into the equation. I can't imagine getting outraged by something like this, and I actually laughed at the guy on the first page who hammered out a wall-of-text screed about it. Clearly, though, you have seized upon my musings as an opportunity to deploy your rapier wit wield sarcasm to strike a blow for social justice.

Bravo.

 

[Caliban]

Dude, I didn't start this conversation. I don't have "a message" that I'm trying to get out, I was just participating in a discussion. At least, that's what I thought I was doing... although apparently some people thought I was trying to offer a trite summary of certain gender issues--a perception I sought to correct.

I'm not excluded from anything, since I'm not currently an author seeking any sort of publication. My gender doesn't factor into the equation. I can't imagine getting outraged by something like this, and I actually laughed at the guy on the first page who hammered out a wall-of-text screed about it. Clearly, though, you have seized upon my musings as an opportunity to deploy your rapier wit wield sarcasm to strike a blow for social justice.

Bravo.

Well, I glad my efforts do not go unappreciated. But am I wrong? All I've been able to glean from your posts is that you mainly object to how they worded it. Which just seems incredibly petty to me.

 

[Michael Dean]

This post is not meant to address any other post this forum or address their opinion in any way because I am not here to thought police anyone and truth be told I don't really post much of any thing at all. That said I will not ever buy another Green Ronin product again for the same reason I don't entertain Jehovah's Witnesses on my door step, that is if I cared about your politics or religious beliefs I would ask about your politics or religious beliefs. I was a huge Star Wars fan my whole life. Grew up a fan boy, can tell you which companies designed and manufactured 3PO and R2 and the exact make and model of Han's heavy Blaster Pistol. I will never watch another Star Wars movie ever again either. When Disney decided that they were going to have their new feminists publicists refer to the empire as a white power organization I tried my best not to vomit. I failed. After I cleaned the chunks off my lap top I promptly emailed my friends that I would not be watching Rouge One, ever. My friends have even offered my the opportunity to see it for free, still won't do it. When I even see trailers for rouge one I try not to vomit. I fail. After hurling in the face's of several of my friends who kept trying to get me to watch they decided that my chunks were not worth the trouble of trying to convert me anymore and gave up. Why this extreme reaction, because if there's one thing I do not want in my fictional entertainment its real world politics. When you have to sell your story, movie, play, etc. by pandering to left wing political elitism or right wing religious ideologies that means only one thing: your story sucks. I was particularly aggrieved when George Lucas decided to dub Anakin Skywalker: Jesus Vader by deciding he was an immaculate conception. Wouldn't have minded an all female casts of Ghostbusters at all if they hadn't written a script that even your average ten year old didn't find funny and hadn't decided to force feminism down everybody's throats. I never listened to the right wing when they railed against gay marriage i'm not listening about the left wing whine about the LBGT community non stop either. All in all if we, the geek community, keep buying products that pander to either left wing or right wing ideologies we will lose this meaningless hobby that we love so much. Propaganda is not for entertainment, its for indoctrination. Gary Gygax made a game millions of geeks still love even after he was gone, he didn't try to indoctrinate us into a cult no matter what the religious nuts said. He just gave us food for our imagination and to this day millions of us are grateful to him for that. Star Wars was once all about a great, fun, fast moving, scifi epic about the struggle of the light vs the dark, now its about feminists rhetoric and pandering to liberals. I spend a lot of time eating member berries these days remembering a time when I could read a book that was just a book or watch a movie that was just a movie and above all else play and RPG that was just an RPG, not an exercise in socialist propaganda. Disney did it to their marvel line of comic books when they decided to inundate their titles with leftist propaganda and sales have dropped off drastically according to what I've read, and the same thing will happen to RPG if companies like Green Ronin try to force a political agenda in our face rather then just entertain us. I liked Green Ronin's stuff. I own ASIF, the DC universe RPG, but I'll never but anything else from them just like I won't ever watch another Star Wars movie while Disney wants to tell me how I should think rather then just take my imagination to a place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Two issues here: 1. You have some serious issues with vomit and should get it checked out; and 2. For the love of God it's ROGUE ONE!!! ROGUE ONE!!! Not "Rouge One!" Get it right, dammit.