News Digest: White Wolf Dissolved, MORE New D&D Releases Announced, RPG Now Closing (kinda), and mor

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! New Wizards of the Coast releases (and not just Mad Mage and Ravnica), RPG Now closing in 2019, White Wolf Publishing dissolved, and more!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! New Wizards of the Coast releases (and not just Mad Mage and Ravnica), RPG Now closing in 2019, White Wolf Publishing dissolved, and more!
Paradox Interactive announced on Friday that they were dissolving White Wolf Publishing as an independent entity and taking over direct management of the World of Darkness line. This decision follows a string of controversial events surrounding the company, which was created by Paradox in 2016 (the original White Wolf Publishing was similarly dissolved in 2012 by then-owner, CCP Games). The most recent controversy involves their two new sourcebooks for Vampire: The Masquerade released by White Wolf, named Camarilla and Anarch. The latter contained sections which called those who committed suicide “weak” and a included posts from a “Mommy Vampire” social media group with controversial posts, including one that talked about feeding vampire blood to babies.

The Camarilla book, however, received most of the focus as an entire chapter was devoted to the Chechen Republic. This chapter, which all credited authors on the book have publicly denied writing, described real-world events going on in the country as a camouflage for the activities of vampires, who have openly taken over the country. This included stating that the real-world torture, imprisonment, and execution of gay men first reported in 2017 was part of this cover-up of vampire activities and providing in-game information for the real-world head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, was a low-generation vampire used as a pawn by the Kindred in charge. This sparked not only outrage from the LGBT community for the use of an ongoing real-world tragedy and human rights atrocity as fodder for a game, but also from the Chechen Republic and Russian government who stated the “developers tried to blacken Russia and Chechnya” in an official press release. Additionally, a fifty minute press conference was held by Jambulat Umarov, the Minister of National Policy for the Chechen Republic, and three members of Studio 101, the company localizing Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition (the previous edition of the game) for the Russian language and a statement from Dzhambulat Umarov, the Press Minister for the Chechen Republic, stating he is “studying the option of litigation the game developers” (the source is in Russian, automatically translated by Google Translate)

The newly-created company has been dogged by controversy since it was formed. As recently as this past July, Jason Carl held a Q&A live stream on Twitch responding to allegations of marketing the new edition to Neo-Nazis and the Alt-Right. Before that, the “Pre-Alpha Playtest” released in June of 2017 (later removed from the website) received criticism for controversial content including hunger rules that could force player-characters to commit acts of sexual assault in-game, use of the psychological term “triggered” both in its clinical meaning (“to cause an intense and usually negative emotional reaction”) under Malkavian and its pejorative meaning (“offended by something…and react to it with extrovert anger” from the playtest text) for Brujah, and including one of four pre-gen player characters as a young adult fiction writer whose feeding restriction was “children and very young teenagers”.

Following the backlash over the Chechenya chapter of Camarilla, Paradox Interactive Vice President Shams Jorjani announced that both Camarilla and Anarch would be withdrawn from sale on digital markets and edited before re-releasing them and fulfilling print pre-orders. Additionally, Paradox Interactive will no longer directly create material for the World of Darkness setting for tabletop roleplaying games and return to a “focus on brand management” to “…develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness”. No statement has been made about the status of the Onyx Path Publishing crowdfunding effort for a Chicago By Night sourcebook for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition which started before this current controversy with no comments made on the Kickstarter page, nor whether this will affect the video game for Werewolf: The Apocalypse in development by Cyanide Studios (makers of the Call of Cthulhu video game recently released and licensed from the Chaosium tabletop roleplaying game).

Well, that was heavy. Let’s talk about helping charity by playing games! Wizards of the Coast released the digital adventure Lost Laboratory of Kwalish on DM’s Guild with profits going to Extra Life. The adventure is for characters of fifth to tenth levels and is inspired by the classic module Expedition to Barrier Peaks, including a return to the actual locations. The adventure also features a tribute to fan Laurence Withey who passed away from a rare form of cancer earlier this month by immortalizing his character, the wizard Galder, in the adventure by turning him into an NPC with custom spells and magic items available to players. The adventure is available in PDF for $9.99 with proceeds going to Extra Life.
Additionally, Wizards of the Coast updated their Dungeons & Dragons product page with a new entry, Tactical Maps Reincarnated. The collection includes twenty full-color tactical-sized poster maps ready for use on the table right away. The maps are reprinted from several modules from 3rd, 3.5, and 4th Edition adventures including Tomb of Horrors, Vor Rukoth, Demon Queen’s Enclave, Death’s Reach, The Book of Vile Darkness, Kingdom of the Ghouls, Dungeon Master’s Kit, Orcs of Stonefang Pass, Fields of Ruin, Gargantuan Blue Dragon and Colossal Red Dragon miniature sets (which included maps for the D&D Miniatures skirmish game), Vaults of the Underdark, Legend of Drizzt, and Red Hand of Doom. The map set is due February 19, 2019, with a retail price of $24.95.

A new errata has been released for the core Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition rules covering all three core rulebooks. The majority of the changes for the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual are minor changes, but there are a few important changes to class spell lists and all spellcasting classes have had their descriptions updated to specify which spells various feats and class abilities apply to (so if an ability only affects class spells, it will now say so). The DMG also made changes to the Rod of Lordly Might and Instrument of the Bards magic items, and the Monster Manual includes multiple math fixes for attacks, skills, and saving throws for several monsters. These changes are including in the just-released Dungeons & Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set and the 10th printing of the core rulebooks which should be on their way to stores now (the printing will be listed in the credits page of the book).

One Bookshelf announced that the RPG Now site will be closing in February of 2019. All links will automatically redirect to Drive Thru RPG including bookmarks and links to individual products (so podcasters, bloggers, and video makers don’t need to rush to update links from old posts). Both RPG Now and Drive Thru RPG have been the same company just with different branding and storefronts since they merged in 2006. As of now, the other storefronts for One Bookshelf (Drive Thru Comics, Drive Thru Cards, Drive Thru Fiction, Wargame Vault, Storytellers Vault, and DM’s Guild) will still remain in place, though they generally function similarly where the only difference between them is the branding on the storefront site (you can test this yourself by clicking on a product from Drive Thru RPG and changing “drivethrurpg.com” in your address bar to any of the other sites and leaving of the URL alone). All purchases, accounts, published materials, affiliate accounts, balances for gift cards/sales/affiliate links, and everything else will be unaffected by this change.

As the year starts to close out, eyes are on what’s due out in the future. And as you may have seen on multiple designer social media accounts, EN World’s annual Most Anticipated RPG of 2019 poll is currently live. The poll runs until Tuesday, December 4, and you can vote for as many titles as you like of the list scheduled for release in 2019. I may or may not have given away one of my votes in the image above.

The RPG Game Dev Bundle from Humble Bundle is still going strong with all the assets you need to create your own 2D video game RPG using your favorite game engine. Or, if you’re like me, you can use the art for creating your own home game maps as well as take advantage of the thousands of licensed music and sound effects files for your podcast, live stream, or videos. And if you need inspiration, there’s the Dystopian Worlds Book Bundle with twenty-two novels from bestselling and award-winning authors including James Gunn, Dave Dunca, Steve Erickson, Eli K. P. William, and more. And if you don’t believe that you can be inspired to create a game from these books, the base level includes A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison, which was the direct inspiration for the Fallout video game series.

There’s a lot to talk about with Never Going Home, the World War I inspired occult horror game. The artwork is evocative, the setting is interesting…but I want to focus on the genius of the game mechanic and how it pushes the theme of the game to the forefront in a meaningful way. Each player has a deck of cards that power their spells and abilities and can also be spent to learn new skills, get additional dice for a check, and learn new dark powers…but each card also represents a memory of your former life. This is such an elegant design to really push the theme of how war changes you that I am simply blown away. The PDF is available for a $10 pledge, the softcover for $20, a deluxe edition with custom playing cards and dice for $45, and a limited hardcover deluxe edition (with dice and cards) for $65. This project is fully funded and runs until Monday, December 3.

Eternalverse maps are listed as “Dungeons & Dragons maps” but are useful for any fantasy roleplaying game. These mini-poster sized maps (about the same as two letter-sized pages side-by-side) are laminated so they’re marker-friendly and waterproof. The maps themselves are fairly generic, which makes them perfect for homebrew campaigns, and they come with reusable acetate labels that you can stick and rearrange on the maps to denote unique landmarks, items, and destinations. You can get the maps as PDFs for €5 (about US$6) or the waterproof maps for €25 (about US$28), but you can also get your own maps custom-made for €50 (about US$57). This Kickstarter from the first-time Spanish company (so be careful with shipping costs) is fully-funded and runs until Thursday, November 29.

That’s all from me for this week! Don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com, and you can get more discussion of the week’s news on Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk every week. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’ve been lamenting the lack of easy-to-read textbooks on media studies, follow me on Twitch as I take a break from Dragon Age: Origins to play something a little different chummer, subscribe to Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube featuring videos on gaming history and gaming Let’s Plays, 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, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
 

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Darryl Mott

Darryl Mott

Abstruse

Legend
...Sometimes I'm glad I'm not more entrenched in this hobby than I already am.
Yeah...it's all fun and games until you get into a screaming match with one of your childhood idols over who is the real Nazi. I wish that were less literal than it actually is...
 

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Shasarak

Banned
Banned
The problem is that they dismissed real people, suffering in the real world, as "cover" for the machinations of the Kindred. The problem is that they glossed over the real horror in order to showcase fictional horror. They actually made a real-world wanna-be Hitler into a thin-blood vampire.

Wouldnt he be more of a wanna be Stalin? I think we could agree that he is no Mao.
 

Abstruse

Legend
Wouldnt he be more of a wanna be Stalin? I think we could agree that he is no Mao.
I mean, if you want to nitpick the use of an analogy to Hitler with a Jewish author in reference the game he worked on for over a decade, that's your prerogative but I'm not sure I'd go there...
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
I mean, if you want to nitpick the use of an analogy to Hitler with a Jewish author in reference the game he worked on for over a decade, that's your prerogative but I'm not sure I'd go there...

Of course Jewish authors have advantage on their rolls to identify Hitlers what was I thinking.

Mod note: Folks, if you want an example of a post that comes across as incredibly anti-semitic, this is it. We strongly advise folks use their common sense before hitting "submit" and avoid posting things like this. ~Umbran
 
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Abstruse

Legend
Of course Jewish authors have advantage on their rolls to identify Hitlers what was I thinking.
...you seem to have missed my point of "Are you seriously trying to categorize genocidal dictators?" and doubled-down on the antisemitism...and I'm not sure why...
 


Okay, taking my objective journalist hat off for this one. You want to know what the "moral stance" was? It was two years ago when Paradox created a mobile game that deadnamed a real-life trans person as an NPC to slander her then defending the game writer that put her in and refusing after several patches to make changes. It was a year and a half ago after the "pre-alpha" playtest where there were more rules for when your character was forced to commit various acts of sexual assault than there were for using your skills. It was six months ago when the company allegedly made legal threats against a blogger who posted all of this with cited sources to force him to take down his post with one designer doxxing him so that the blogger deleted his entire online presence to escape the death threats.
Which is tantamount to an admission here that certain individuals have been orchestrating a revenge campaign against Paradox/White Wolf for two years. I don't know about the former case, but I do know that White Wolf writers have been verbally assaulted online and it's a matter of record that some have been doxxed too.

I witnessed the Facebook attack on Mark Rein-Hagen (the original creator of the World of Darkness) when people tried to make him accountable for the hiring of Zac Smith (who was also being verbally attacked for a peripheral involvement with a White Wolf gaming app, and who also refutes claims made against him), and also because they disagreed with his pacifist stance on protest. He argued that the violent protests of Antifa groups were counterproductive - and was accused of being a Nazi sympathiser because of this. It's also a point of record that Mark Rein Hagen has actively campaigned for LGBT rights in Georgia - where homosexuality is illegal - and pioneered the idea of using female pronouns by choice in written text and including example gay characters in gaming fiction (which was unheard of back in the day). The notion that he, or indeed anybody else in White Wolf somehow wants to be associated with anti-LGBT sentiment is ludicrous.

I have already spoken at length about the nature of 'personal horror' in a game with 'mature content', but if you pick up a game about playing vampires, not expecting it to be about playing vampires and all the connotations that suggests, I can't help you. Regardless, nothing that happens in a fictional world should be confused with real life.

You're claim about the blogger is untrue. What happened there was the blogger released an utterly appaling article, across multiple websites at once in order to create maximum damage to the new edition of the game before it was released. The article was sprawling, reaching and spurious in it's claim that the new game was being targeting and marketed to the Alt Right and Neo-Nazis. Some of the issues raised were directly addressed and removed in the edition before it went to print - and White Wolf made a video conference to unequivocally deny they wanted anything to do with the Alt right - but the evidence used to make these claims were hardly overwhelming. The citation of the numbers '1, 4, 4, 8' being rolled in an example of play in the playtest was seen as a major issue. It was certainly news to me that this was apparently a huge dog-whistle to white supremist groups, but you live and learn I guess. Perhaps the reason why I overlooked the number is the same reason why White Wolf may have overlooked it - I just don't circulate in those communities that treat the number as having any relevance beyond obscure coincidence.

In any case, the blogger removed the article after a few days on several grounds - including the reference that third parties had suggested what he wrote was libellous (White Wolf categorically denied that they had ever discussed it at all - and there is no evidence of it), and that both he and White Wolf writers had recieved threats (and were doxxed). It was also the case that over 2500 signatures were involved in an online protest against the article too.

https://www.change.org/p/wesupportv5-fans-of-vampire-the-masquerade-world-of-darkness-in-support-of-5th-and-future-editions

The point I was trying to make is that Paradox's White Wolf screwed us so badly trying to intentionally be edgy and controversial that they, in writing about a real-world event, managed to tick off every single side of that event. Like seriously, the Chechen Republic's official government stance is that homosexuals do not exist yet they're on the same side as the LGBTQ+ community in condemning the Camarilla sourcebook. There's "edgelord" and then there's "causing an international incident that gets a third party localization company working on a completely different product on the block threatened by a totalitarian regime" level screwing up.
It didn't tick off every single side, evidently, as many people could find the relevance in writing about real world events in a fictional game that was meant to be a dark reflection of the real world. Not everybody was offended by it. They understood the context of what the author was trying to do.

I, for one, would feel very uncomfortable if I were standing shoulder to shoulder with an authoritarian regime, actively persecuting the LGBT community, in protesting to get a fictional piece of writing censored and a creative company dissolved.

Now this is a non-political gaming site, and I'm sure the moderators here don't want to see this thread 'dissolve' too! But lets be clear about this, your stance is politicised. To me, calling out 'edgelord' is every bit as pejoritive and vapid as the term 'SJW', and just as loaded. It's just not a worthy point to be debating over.

I am personally over following the V5 game any more than the corebook now anyway - I've run the game from this alone and I don't feel compelled to follow metaplot developments, particularly. Not that I don't think the game design is brilliant - it's probably the game of the year in that respect - but that I am tired of reading 'Edgelord vs SJW' threads in the White Wolf internet communities.

I think Paradox made the decision to pull the plug on White Wolf most probably because of mundane sales figures and other business issues, but I'm fairly certain they were over all these controversies too. Mind you, looking at the whole toxicity of everything at the moment, I doubt many companies will want to touch the IP with a bargepole as it stands.
 
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The problem is that they trivialized it.
This is the official line being taken, I know. However, the counter-argument here is that the Chechnyan government have protested against the writing too. If the actual perpetrators of the persecution itself find it objectionable, it's not because they think it's being trivialised - it's because it has highlighted something they deny is happening. Their propaganda is actually claiming that they have won a 'victory' in the removal of this writing - and that is concerning to the LGBT community in Chechnya as it shows how easily the govenment can shut down dissent.

There is a worthy case, made by White Wolf in books about the Holocaust or World War 2, to not treat serious events in a trivial way by suggesting that they were caused by supernatural forces rather than human causes. In this particular example, apparently, the writers intent was compromised by an editing issue of removing sidebars explaining some thing like this. The actual text was written in character, who was unreliable and unsypathetic, and the sidebars would have apparently countered his view. I don't think the intent was to trivialise the situation, as the tone of the writing still suggests.

Anyway, I think I must move on from this one now. Let's hope next year is a better year for gaming.
 
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This is the official line being taken, I know. However, the counter-argument here is that the Chechnyan government have protested against the writing too. If the actual perpetrators of the persecution itself find it objectionable, it's not because they think it's being trivialised - it's because it has highlighted something they deny is happening.

1) There's no "official line." I'm speaking for myself and people I know very well, who view it as exactly that. If you want to accuse me of having an agenda, please feel free to do it somewhere I can respond appropriately without breaking the rules.

2) They're objecting because they were cast in a bad light. That doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on whether the horrors being portrayed were portrayed well, or even if what they're objecting to is real. For Pete's sake, they objected to their leader being cast as a vampire as much or more than the rest of it. Trying to use their objection as an argument that our utterly unrelated objection is somehow flawed is reasoning so utterly specious as to be worthy of its own logical fallacy.

If I object to someone painting a swastika on a synagogue because it's antisemitic and a violent threat, and a Neo-Nazi objects to it because the swastika was drawn poorly or draws attention to the fact that there the Neo-Nazis are operating in the area, the latter doesn't in any way invalidate the former.
 
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1) There's no "official line." I'm speaking for myself and people I know very well, who view it as exactly that. If you want to accuse me of having an agenda, please feel free to do it somewhere I can respond appropriately without breaking the rules.
The official line, as stated by White Wolf/Paradox in their press release. I didn't accuse you of having an agenda - at all. I don't think you do, I'm just pointing out that your statement matches the official line taken by White Wolf/Paradox.

2) They're objecting because they were cast in a bad light. That doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on whether the horrors being portrayed were portrayed well, or even if what they're objecting to is real. For Pete's sake, they objected to their leader being cast as a vampire as much or more than the rest of it. Trying to use their objection as an argument that our utterly unrelated objection is somehow flawed is reasoning so utterly specious as to be worthy of its own logical fallacy.
Having a leader being portrayed as a vampire in a fictional piece of writing, is not as concerning to me as that individual carrying out real world policies of persecution, torture and murder. If such an individual finds his portrayal in a fictional piece of writing to be objectionable, in the light of his real world actions, then I think the writing is doing a good job.

If I object to someone painting a swastika on a synagogue because it's antisemitic and a violent threat, and a Neo-Nazi objects to it because the swastika was drawn poorly or draws attention to the fact that there the Neo-Nazis are operating in the area, the latter doesn't in any way invalidate the former.
They didn't do anything like this, in this writing however. They drew attention to a murderous regime, and made an analogy of them being vampires in the fictional world.
 
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