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!

View attachment 83119​

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.

View attachment 83120​

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.

View attachment 83121​

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.

View attachment 83122​

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.

View attachment 83123​

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.

SaveSave
SaveSave​

 

[Jester David]

Only in 2017 can the news front page of a tabletop RPG site have two stories and "Game Company Launches Talent Search for Female and Genderqueer Writers" gets more comments than "New Dungeons & Dragons Movie".

After how bad the last three movies are, I don't think anyone is expecting much. And sooooo very many movies get planned, scripted, and actors associated and then never make it into the filming phase. Until it actually starts production, most people aren't going to get their hopes up.

 

[RedPenOfDoom]

I find it *incredibly* offensive that you belittle the work of Margaret Weiss

Weis*

and Laura Hickman among others with your narrative that women have been barred from doing anything in this industry. Never mind all of the women working in the genre like Anne Mccafferty.

McCaffrey*

If you're going to make a point about how influential women's voices have been, do the minimal research necessary to spell their names correctly. It shows respect.

Also, Anne McCaffrey isn't working in this or any other genre, having been dead for five years.

 

[epithet]

... I'm not sure women have ever purchased products because of beefcake in the history of time. ...

Back when you bought music on physical media, my mother's collection was largely inspired by how attractive she found the guy on the disc cover. She has some horrible music. My wife used to insist that we go to every single movie Leonardo DiCaprio was in, until finally one (can't remember which, they all blur together) was so bad she reconsidered that policy.

Sex sells really well, to men and to women. One of the reasons we really need women involved in publishing, though, is that we men are typically really, really bad at predicting what women will find sexy.

 

[Jester David]

Back when you bought music on physical media, my mother's collection was largely inspired by how attractive she found the guy on the disc cover. She has some horrible music. My wife used to insist that we go to every single movie Leonardo DiCaprio was in, until finally one (can't remember which, they all blur together) was so bad she reconsidered that policy.

Buts is Leonardo DiCaprio is what you would consider "beefcake"? Is that the kind of male image that you want on the PHB? Leo and a hot warrior woman in a chainmail bikini?

Sex sells really well, to men and to women. One of the reasons we really need women involved in publishing, though, is that we men are typically really, really bad at predicting what women will find sexy.

Sex is one way of selling. But it's not the *only* way, and certainly not everything needs to be sexy to sell.

And when said industry is really, really trying to expand its demographics, it really doesn't need to risk pushing anyone away for cheap titillation.

 

[IanWatson]

Neatly sidestepping the rest of the discussion for the moment:

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 20th 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 5th Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade.

This is something I see often repeated, but it's not entirely accurate. Our World of Darkness license is not limited to the 20th Anniversary material, although that's obviously our focus at the moment. We have, for example, released four Convention Books for Mage: The Ascension's Revised Edition, Dark Ages: Darkening Sky for 2002's Dark Ages line, as well as Werewolf, Mage, and Demon Translation Guides which all target the Revised-era versions of those game lines.

Our license includes the World of Darkness, without edition limits. White Wolf has, however, decided to do the 5th edition rulebook in-house. While we aren't working on the 5e core rulebook, that doesn't exclude us from working on other books: Rich commented on the latest Monday Meeting Notes blog that we're still planning to pitch ideas for V5, for example.

 

[Abstruse]

Neatly sidestepping the rest of the discussion for the moment:



This is something I see often repeated, but it's not entirely accurate. Our World of Darkness license is not limited to the 20th Anniversary material, although that's obviously our focus at the moment. We have, for example, released four Convention Books for Mage: The Ascension's Revised Edition, Dark Ages: Darkening Sky for 2002's Dark Ages line, as well as Werewolf, Mage, and Demon Translation Guides which all target the Revised-era versions of those game lines.

Our license includes the World of Darkness, without edition limits. White Wolf has, however, decided to do the 5th edition rulebook in-house. While we aren't working on the 5e core rulebook, that doesn't exclude us from working on other books: Rich commented on the latest Monday Meeting Notes blog that we're still planning to pitch ideas for V5, for example.

Thanks for the clarification. It's something that isn't talked about openly a lot unless there's a big definitive announcement, like when the rights are acquired to a big property and a new line is announced, or a license is lost and products are going out of print (and even that's rarely announced so much as it's pieced together by noticing when something's pulled from websites/Drive Thru).

 

[Abstruse]

Sex is one way of selling. But it's not the *only* way, and certainly not everything needs to be sexy to sell.

And when said industry is really, really trying to expand its demographics, it really doesn't need to risk pushing anyone away for cheap titillation.

Sex doesn't sell. Sex attracts attention but distracts from whatever the product is because men are looking at the pretty lady and not the product logo, while women are looking away entirely from the body-shaming image. Goes the same way for women and beefcake shots. And it crosses sexual orientation as well, so women who are attracted to women will be similarly distracted from whatever the product is advertising.

Also, what women find physically attractive and what men self-identify as a power fantasy aren't the same thing typically.

View attachment 83189
Source​

 

[Dualazi]

That's a pretty big stretch. You're really focusing on the irrelevant and largely cosmetic parts of the analogy to discredit it.

Because it’s a bad analogy. It only superficially works when it is related to involvement with society as a whole, and falls apart if it gets any narrower than that.

However, certain people applying for careers are societal given said advantage. They start with an advantage. While other start with a bias and outright disadvantage.

This is really something that has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In this instance I can see no reason why a name/race/gender screen wouldn’t remove the majority of perceived hurdles.

In practice, far fewer women and non-binary people will even apply because they're so used to be excluded and ignored that many will thing "why bother?"
In practice, with so very, very many male submissions the odds of picking a woman are reduced.

Frankly, if the assumed blind auditions are in place, the failure to apply because of those thoughts are squarely the women’s own problem and not society’s. The blind audition practice works, you can read about it here http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-“blind”-auditions-female-musicians , and they didn’t have to say that male applicants weren’t needed during. They simply let the best players come forth uninhibited by prior bias.

Also, editors don't just want the same thing by the same people. It's like picking a hockey team. You don't just want six people who are all "the talent" and great at handling a puck. Because they can't take a hit or fill a goal. But you also don't just want six goons. You need a mix. It's not *really* discriminating against a talented hockey player to pick a goon over him, you're just choosing what is needed to round out the team.

This is very true. Yet nothing says that the excluded men couldn’t do it as well as better. Basically the question is what, in particular, does this non-male viewpoint add to the product that could not be equally well met by an equally talented male author? It seems to me that this smacks dangerously close to saying that you couldn’t write a compelling gay character without being gay yourself, which is ridiculous.

When compiling a book you want a nice mix of types of stories but also types of author. Different authors have a different voice. The publishers (and more likely the editor) has an idea of what they want and has decided more female authors are needed to round out the anthology. That they want to encourage more women into gaming.

Sure. James Clavell and J.K. Rowling are two different beasts for two different demographics, but I’m not sure how much that relates to their gender specifically. Sorry to keep hammering it home but the above question stands, unless you think that James Clavell, Stephen King, and Lemony Snicket all have the same ‘voice’ due to being men, then it beggars the question of what specifically requires a female writer.

Is it "ultimately just a form of discrimination that society views more favorably"? YES! Absolutely.
I said so already. It's evil but it's the lesser of the two evils.

I disagree. The blind auditions example proves that we can find methods to foster diversity growth without resorting to simply barring otherwise acceptable applicants based on factors beyond their control.

But when you protest against "discrimination" against males it's pretty much the same thing as protesting against disabled people having their own parking spots.

It is not. The parking spot assures access to necessary facilities or reasonable measures ensuring that they can interact with their place of employment. My continued opposition would be more akin to hiring a sub-par programmer because he is handicapped over more talented but able bodied one.

I’d like to thank you for your civility though. While we may not agree on the issue at least the exchange has been more amicable here than on other sites I frequent.

Sex doesn't sell. Sex attracts attention but distracts from whatever the product is because men are looking at the pretty lady and not the product logo, while women are looking away entirely from the body-shaming image. Goes the same way for women and beefcake shots. And it crosses sexual orientation as well, so women who are attracted to women will be similarly distracted from whatever the product is advertising.

Also, what women find physically attractive and what men self-identify as a power fantasy aren't the same thing typically.

View attachment 83189
Source​

I don’t even know where to start with this really, the idea that sex doesn’t sell is completely insane on its face. This is true for women more than ever in this day and age, do you really think that women flocked to Robert Pattinson, Leonardo Dicaprio, or Chris Hemsworth because of their acting acumen, or because they’re physically attractive? Do you think that 50 shades would have been as well received if the assertive male billionaire was a pudgy bald 65 year old?

Also, there are a not-insignificant number of women who like playing as or imagining themselves as the sexy bombshells. The idea that every woman is repulsed by an attractive female, scantily clad or no, is just as silly as assuming that every dude wants to be the incredible hulk.

Lastly, please drop the straw-manning. If men were uncomfortable with effeminate males to that degree then industries like recent rise in anime consumption would never have occurred. Likewise, it’s not hard to dig up counter-evidence with idle google searches:

View attachment 83191

 

[Jester David]

This is really something that has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In this instance I can see no reason why a name/race/gender screen wouldn’t remove the majority of perceived hurdles.

"I don't see why a screen wouldn't remove hurdles, therefore no hurdles must exist."

It is not. The parking spot assures access to necessary facilities or reasonable measures ensuring that they can interact with their place of employment. My continued opposition would be more akin to hiring a sub-par programmer because he is handicapped over more talented but able bodied one.

Which implies that you believe this talent search will result in a subpar writer.

 

[Abstruse]

Lastly, please drop the straw-manning. If men were uncomfortable with effeminate males to that degree then industries like recent rise in anime consumption would never have occurred. Likewise, it’s not hard to dig up counter-evidence with idle google searches:

View attachment 83191

Cool story, bro. The fiction publishing industry, even romance novels, is still dominated by men.