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]

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.

No, I honestly think that while it's cool to reach out to women, it's not cool to go the next step and make it clear that you're not so much championing women as excluding men. I see one as positive, the other as negative. I understand that nuance generally has no place on the internet, but I keep trying.

What I don't understand is how my opinion can be petty. I'm not complaining, not demanding redress, not claiming any personal impact. I'm not suggesting that people who don't share my opinion are wrong. I'm just participating in a conversation that has no direct impact on me whatsoever, because I happened to have a relevant opinion.

Somehow we've gone from a conversation about whether or not it's cool to nail a "no boys allowed" sign over the door to your treehouse to a discussion of some of my various possible character flaws. Hey, if that's where you want to take this, I could probably use the therapy.

 

[redrick]

No, I honestly think that while it's cool to reach out to women, it's not cool to go the next step and make it clear that you're not so much championing women as excluding men. I see one as positive, the other as negative. I understand that nuance generally has no place on the internet, but I keep trying.

What I don't understand is how my opinion can be petty. I'm not complaining, not demanding redress, not claiming any personal impact. I'm not suggesting that people who don't share my opinion are wrong. I'm just participating in a conversation that has no direct impact on me whatsoever, because I happened to have a relevant opinion.

Somehow we've gone from a conversation about whether or not it's cool to nail a "no boys allowed" sign over the door to your treehouse to a discussion of some of my various possible character flaws. Hey, if that's where you want to take this, I could probably use the therapy.

The question I have is simply how the move from "women only" to "women and gender non-binary only" crosses the line into "no boys allowed club" for you. Is this the post that put you over the edge? https://greenronin.com/lostcitadel/lost-citadel-news/

History shows us that women often feel apprehensive about trying to make their way in arenas that are traditionally male-dominated, even when the talent and willingness to contribute are there, and being proactive about including them is one of the best ways to address that concern.

And for clarity’s sake: Tabletop gaming is one of those largely male-dominated arenas.

Or is there some other post not linked in the original EN World article that contained that contained the language you are concerned over? This is an honest question.

We talk a lot about the subtlety language and, hey, I agree, language is important, but I haven't figured out what actual piece of language is that you are concerned about. The above post that I quoted doesn't strike me as being anti-man. It's simply stating some of the justification for wanting to focus on women creators — males largely dominate this field. Without actively working to include women, males will continue to largely dominate this field, because these things are self perpetuating, even without any intention of discrimination.

 

[epithet]

... Imagine if this had been a themed contest in which women and LGBT were strongly encouraged to submit material, but which did not actually exclude men. One way to do something like that would be to clarify that the contest seeks work which incorporates or addresses LGBT and women's issues. This would now mean you, as a man, could submit something, but need to provide content related to the issues to be addressed. Would you have accepted it? I think it would have been a way to make an inclusive, teaching-focused contest. That said: GR may not want to waste time with trying to incorporate an inclusive, thematic contest and then get deluged (anyway) with hundreds of alt-right men-first sentiment or flak online, which I feel would have happened regardless of how the contest was framed.

I don't disagree with you, but I also think it is worthwhile to specifically encourage women to write about any and all topics, not just women's issues. I'd like to see women write about dungeon ecology, magic item creation, trade practices among underdark cultures, nesting behavior of dragons by age and scale color, etc.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the largest segment of the game writer demographic wouldn't be interested in writing a certain issue-focussed piece, then in all likelihood a similar segment of the gamer demographic wouldn't be interested in reading it. Women need to be encouraged to write whatever they want to write, but at the end of the day women's voices will be heard more broadly if they're writing the stuff that everyone wants to read.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I don't disagree with you, but I also think it is worthwhile to specifically encourage women to write about any and all topics, not just women's issues. I'd like to see women write about dungeon ecology, magic item creation, trade practices among underdark cultures, nesting behavior of dragons by age and scale color, etc.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the largest segment of the game writer demographic wouldn't be interested in writing a certain issue-focussed piece, then in all likelihood a similar segment of the gamer demographic wouldn't be interested in reading it. Women need to be encouraged to write whatever they want to write, but at the end of the day women's voices will be heard more broadly if they're writing the stuff that everyone wants to read.

On the second paragraph I think we'd need some demographic sampling to sort out whether this is true or not. My experience is that there's non-insignificant percentage of gamers who are women, enough so that a fair amount of media in gaming in general targets them specifically. There is profit to be had here when a game company is able to broaden its appeal. Likewise, the industry won't grow to encompass the full audience without going through some effort and growing pains.

The end goal is really easy: men and women able to write on topics without a sense of controversy, in equal numbers (since we're all a 50/50 split on the general population) with a fan base for gaming that is completely disinterested in the fact that the author is a man or woman other than for basic curiosity. To reach this goal is going to require effort, however, because culturally we are fighting deeply ingrained traditions that are so thoroughly part of the collective consciousness that we all buy in to it as implicit truth, when in fact it is not at all. So experiments like GR are a step in that direction, but it's fighting against a long cultural history of deliberate and often unconscious oppression.

Lifting the oppression will work both ways: men will perhaps one day feel more comfortable with being exposed to a woman's writing, and women will feel confident that they can submit work and be taken equally seriously in the ideal future environment. But a lot....A LOT...of cultural blood must be shed before we get there.

 

[epithet]

The question I have is simply how the move from "women only" to "women and gender non-binary only" crosses the line into "no boys allowed club" for you. ...

I only read the blurb on the front page here at ENWorld, I didn't follow links to original statements because it was never my intention to get this deep into the weeds on this topic.

To answer your question, the (apparently) original blurb in red text cheerfully declares "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." As I've said way too many times, that seemed cool to me.

Then, the blurb refers to a clarification advising that "the talent search was also open to those who identify as non-binary gender." That means it's not "just for the ladies." It means it's for anyone but the "fellas."

It is my opinion that the clarifying statement changed the tone of the overall statement from "girls' special treehouse" to "no boys allowed," the former being a positive message directed at women, the latter a negative message directed at men.

That's just my opinion, based on my perception and reading of a blurb purporting to quote a couple of primary sources. If I had known my opinion mattered this much, I would probably have gone ahead and read the source text...

Who am I kidding? If I had known there would be this much analysis of my off-the-cuff remark, I would have kept my damn thoughts to myself.

 

[epithet]

...men will perhaps one day feel more comfortable with being exposed to a woman's writing...

Asking in all seriousness: do you really think a significant number of men are uncomfortable reading a woman's writing? That seems like an incredible assertion.

 

[Caliban]

Somehow we've gone from a conversation about whether or not it's cool to nail a "no boys allowed" sign over the door to your treehouse to a discussion of some of my various possible character flaws. Hey, if that's where you want to take this, I could probably use the therapy.

Who am I kidding? If I had known there would be this much analysis of my off-the-cuff remark, I would have kept my damn thoughts to myself.

Playing the victim card? Seriously? Don't try to make this about you.

I simply don't agree with your opinion on this. That is all. This is a single talent search, from a single game company in a single market (RPG's) in a tiny sector of the overall gaming industry.

Based on a single blurb, where you admit to doing no further research, you have declared "they are doing it wrong." They explicitly want submissions from non-male authors, but because they have chosen to define "non-male" to include "non-binary gender" people as well, you have decided they crossed some sort of line. That is what I think is "petty". It's just silly to be upset (or whatever level of dissatisfaction you want rate yourself as feeling) about this.

And now you are upset because people (or perhaps just me, since this is supposed to be "beneath me" for some reason) disagree with your opinion.

 

[The M'hael]

I only read the blurb on the front page here at ENWorld, I didn't follow links to original statements because it was never my intention to get this deep into the weeds on this topic.

To answer your question, the (apparently) original blurb in red text cheerfully declares "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." As I've said way too many times, that seemed cool to me.

Then, the blurb refers to a clarification advising that "the talent search was also open to those who identify as non-binary gender." That means it's not "just for the ladies." It means it's for anyone but the "fellas."

It is my opinion that the clarifying statement changed the tone of the overall statement from "girls' special treehouse" to "no boys allowed," the former being a positive message directed at women, the latter a negative message directed at men.

That's just my opinion, based on my perception and reading of a blurb purporting to quote a couple of primary sources. If I had known my opinion mattered this much, I would probably have gone ahead and read the source text...

Who am I kidding? If I had known there would be this much analysis of my off-the-cuff remark, I would have kept my damn thoughts to myself.

I agree that the inclusion of non-binary people does point it to all "No Boys" kind of view, but I don't think that was their intention. There is a huge number of male individuals and a huge number of female individuals. Transgender individuals shift some people around, but it stays basically the same. There are also a small number of individuals who do not identify as male or female all of the time, or at all. These individuals being included in the contest was out of kindness. Green Ronin is so small they can't do a contest for females and a separate contest for non-binary people.

I think their intention was not to have a contest for "anyone but the fellas" but for "the ladies" AND nonbinary individuals too. Someone at GR could have been reading the announcement and thought "we're not including non-binary people in our contest, that's a bit discriminatory. They already get excluded from so much, we shouldn't add on to that." I honestly think it was more of a "toss in" than anything explicitly intended to make the contest exclusionary. Nevertheless, by writing out a list of gender identities that included "everyone but the fellas" GR made it appear to be exclusionary.

Sort of like having a contest for writers from South America, and then later saying that if you are from Central America you can participate too. So then what was intended to be an inclusionary change appears to now exclude North America.

 

[Caliban]

I agree that the inclusion of non-binary people does point it to all "No Boys" kind of view, but I don't think that was their intention. There is a huge number of male individuals and a huge number of female individuals. Transgender individuals shift some people around, but it stays basically the same. There are also a small number of individuals who do not identify as male or female all of the time, or at all. These individuals being included in the contest was out of kindness. Green Ronin is so small they can't do a contest for females and a separate contest for non-binary people.
I think their intention was not to have a contest for "anyone but the fellas" but for "the ladies" AND nonbinary individuals too. Someone at GR could have been reading the announcement and thought "we're not including non-binary people in our contest, that's a bit discriminatory. They already get excluded from so much, we shouldn't add on to that." I honestly think it was more of a "toss in" than anything explicitly intended to make the contest exclusionary. Nevertheless, by writing out a list of gender identities that included "everyone but the fellas" GR made it appear to be exclusionary.

Even if it was their intention to have a contest for "anyone but the fellas" (not saying it is, but what if) - so what?

Seriously, it's a private company running a contest. Their contest, their rules.

They could run a talent search and only accept submissions from white hetero men who can bench 250 lbs and it would still be fine. (And certain men's fitness magazines probably have criteria similar to that. )

This whole debate is just silly.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Asking in all seriousness: do you really think a significant number of men are uncomfortable reading a woman's writing? That seems like an incredible assertion.

I don't understand it either, but a combination of life and the internet has taught me that many men....especially young men....have a hard time with any media in which they feel the "woman's perspective" is being presented to them. The mere act of putting a woman's name on the cover can cause issues.*

There's actual evidence in the publishing industry for this. A lot of female authors in science fiction and fantasy (and other genres) have historically chosen gender-ambivalent names to help disguise the fact that they were women. This was a common fact of life for publishers,
and considered necessary to avoid diminished sales in many cases (I'll try to find my source, a book on the history of publishing I read a decade or so ago). This was explained along with the reason for pseudonyms when writing in genre fiction to protect the dignity of an author from being diminished be delving into trashier literary genres, or ditching names which lacked the right gravitas for a cover, among other issues.

EDIT: to be honest, if men in general did not have this sort of issue, then I doubt we'd be having this ridiculously long, stupid thread on GR's contest to help promote women writers.

*In defense of some of these guys I know and have known over the years with this isue, a few are aware this feeling is irrational but also can't deny it still affects them.