Renegade Game Studios Takes Over World of Darkness

Renegade Game Studio is taking over the World of Darkness! They will be publishing books produced in-house by owner Paradox, starting in December with the free (digital) Vampire: The Masquerade Companion, which has rules for playing humans and ghouls, as well as the clans Tzimisce, Ravnos, and Salubri.

Modiphius took over the line in December 2018; there's no mention of whether that is continuing. Renegade Game Studios, which brought us Kids on Bikes, recently announced that it was producing D&D 5E-powered lines for various Hasbro properties, including Power Rangers, and possibly Transformers, G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony.

The new World of Darkness books are to be produced in-house at Paradox, under the leadership of Justin Achilli, from White Wolf. They won't only be making RPGs -- they're also creating video games, comics, and more.

The Vampire Companion is coming free in December.

The Vampire: The Masquerade Companion book brings three highly-anticipated Vampire clans into V5, and gives Storytellers more tools to enhance their chronicles, including:

• Three vampire clans: Tzimisce, Ravnos, Salubri
• Discipline powers representing each of the new clans
• Expanded rules and roleplaying information for ghouls and mortals
• Details on each clan’s view on vampire coteries
• New Merits for players characters
• Rules errata to Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The backlash about Revised that you are citing isn’t really any different to typical edition wars of any game, but your attribution to Achilli’s motivations are your own interpretation which are not objective. You are merely reflecting on the game you imagined in your head not being supported by the game the creators set out to design - and then asserting that you were playing it the right way and the developer, or anybody else, didn’t know what he was doing.

My entire point is that this is a false claim on your part.

I'm not attributing things I've "thought up" to Achilli. That's the whole point. If Revised had just, y'know, come out, without Achilli saying anything about the whys/wherefores of the design/lore changes, I'd have been like "Hmmm some of these changes are rubbish", but not felt like I was being excluded, or like they were motivated by exclusionary thinking, just that they were a bit dumb.

The reality, however, as that Achilli explained at some length, on sadly long-gone sites, what they had done with Revised, and why, and was quite open that his motivation was basically exclusionary (obviously he never used that term - it wasn't one in much use back then) towards a lot of people playing VtM. Claiming it's "imagined in my head" is just extremely rude gaslighting on your part.

Also, claiming I'm saying we were "playing it right" and everyone else was "wrong" is straightforward lying about what I've said in my post. I've not said anything of the sort. I'm saying that it was a playstyle they supported heavily in terms of 2E material published, and indeed, even in Revised, they later started supporting it again. So it was bizarre to try and exclude this both "superheroes with fangs" and more "romantic" takes on vampires - let's not forget that latter bit. I doubt V5 does the latter.

 

[TrippyHippy]

My entire point is that this is a false claim on your part.

I'm not attributing things I've "thought up" to Achilli. That's the whole point. If Revised had just, y'know, come out, without Achilli saying anything about the whys/wherefores of the design/lore changes, I'd have been like "Hmmm some of these changes are rubbish", but not felt like I was being excluded, or like they were motivated by exclusionary thinking, just that they were a bit dumb.

The reality, however, as that Achilli explained at some length, on sadly long-gone sites, what they had done with Revised, and why, and was quite open that his motivation was basically exclusionary (obviously he never used that term - it wasn't one in much use back then) towards a lot of people playing VtM. Claiming it's "imagined in my head" is just extremely rude gaslighting on your part.

Also, claiming I'm saying we were "playing it right" and everyone else was "wrong" is straightforward lying about what I've said in my post. I've not said anything of the sort. I'm saying that it was a playstyle they supported heavily in terms of 2E material published, and indeed, even in Revised, they later started supporting it again. So it was bizarre to try and exclude this both "superheroes with fangs" and more "romantic" takes on vampires - let's not forget that latter bit. I doubt V5 does the latter.

You still talking?

I don’t care whether you think it’s a false claim - then onus is on you to provide evidence for your claims, not the other way round. You cannot, because you made it up in your head.

And yes, you precisely did say that the game was supposed to be played the way which you like, and that Achilli was wrong to do whatever you assume he did. So you’re simply in denial if you start accusing others of lying.

Either way, it doesn’t matter, because we have established that the game in its current form isn’t for you - not that you’ve even read it anyway.

Feel free to post again in another couple of weeks or so. Are you trying to win an argument by invoking sheer boredom?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And yes, you precisely did say that the game was supposed to be played the way which you like, and that Achilli was wrong to do whatever you assume he did.

Wow. It's kind of amazing that you say this - you're asking me to go back to 1998, find websites and forums long since deleted, and get "quotes" for them and claiming it's "made up in [my] head" unless I do, which is pretty extreme - it's very different to you simply saying "I don't remember it that way", or "I sure don't remember that happening", for example.

But you yourself can't even be bothered to quote from within this thread to support this nonsensical claim which you've repeated twice now. I didn't say the game as "supposed to be played that way" (which is a very specific claim). That's a lie you've stated at least twice now, without any kind of support. I said that was a way that the game could be played, and which was materially supported (which is unarguable, given the existence of the combat sourcebooks, I would suggest) by the developers. I guess by your own logic, what you're claiming here is "made up in your head", though, due to the lack of quotes so...

 

[TrippyHippy]

Wow. It's kind of amazing that you say this - you're asking me to go back to 1998, find websites and forums long since deleted, and get "quotes" for them and claiming it's "made up in [my] head" unless I do, which is pretty extreme - it's very different to you simply saying "I don't remember it that way", for example.

But you yourself can't even be bothered to quote from within this thread to support this nonsensical claim which you've repeated twice now. I didn't say the game as "supposed to be played that way". That's a lie you've stated at least twice now, without any kind of support. I said that was a way that the game could be played, and which was supported (which is unarguable, given the existence of the combat sourcebooks, I would suggest). I guess by your own logic, what you're claiming here is "made up in your head", though, due to the lack of quotes so...

Well done for not leaving it a couple of weeks before your next response, but I don’t know if you can read the subtle hints: nobody cares what you think on the matter any more. It is boring.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well done for not leaving it a couple of weeks before your next response, but I don’t know if you can read the subtle hints: nobody cares what you think on the matter any more. It is boring.

OK? The point remains that you've made demonstrably false claims in this thread - claiming, for example, that it was never "intended" that people play it in the ways described as "superheroes with fangs" or with a "trenchcoats and katanas" bent, when the very existence of the combat sourcebooks shows it was - they push the game extremely hard in that direction, and make a focus on combat much more likely. And as I've noted, stuff like Kindred of the East barely even makes sense outside of a pretty "trenchcoats and katanas" approach.

Mage was even more open about this, I note, it had the whole "Tales of Magick: Dark Adventure" sourcebook which was entirely and literally about this mode of play and how to better support it.

What I'm pointing out is that there's a distinct and odd break between 2E's approach, and Revised's approach (at least initially, when Revised hasn't been out long), and the claim I am making, but don't have direct evidence for, because it's gone, is that Justin Achilli made detailed comments clearly outlining that he wanted to go from a scenario where "superheroes with fangs "and "trenchcoats and katanas" were common part of VtM, to one where they were not. You have repeatedly agreed that this was a de facto impact of Revised, and defended it on ideological grounds, but seem to simply be claiming that unless I provide quotes, the comments were never made. Which isn't much of an argument.

One thing not mentioned yet, that to me is kind of interesting, is that at the same time, WW was putting out more adventure-oriented, less horror-oriented RPGs - Aeon/Aberrant/Adventure, and not long thereafter, Exalted. So maybe the feeling was that instead of making the WoD stuff more "adventure-oriented", as I would argue 2E very much defacto did, WW wanted to try and have a horror line and an adventure line separately. I think the decline in popularity of the WoD in Revised, and the lower popularity of the nWoD (despite VtR, frankly being pretty great - less so the nWoD Mage and Werewolf), is actually in part a result of this. My feeling is that the popularity of the 2E WoD, and the fact that it's still remembered fondly today by a lot of people was in large part down to it being a "broad church", where one group could happily be Nick Knight'ing it up, but another could be Vampire Diaries-ing it, and yet a third could be a very serious and horror-y The Hunger-but-less-sexy-type deal. The same in other games. One Werewolf game might be about tribal politics, or even politics and change in general, and another could be "LETS STAB PENTEX WITH KLAIVES WOOOO". Or one Mage game could be esoteric arguments about the nature of reality and philosophical threats and so on, but another could involve a mage using magic to ride an motorbike through a window whilst blasting away at Matrix/Terminator-style enemies with a shotgun. And Revised in general, initially at least, seemed to really try to clamp down on the adventure, and focus more on the horror (and the nWoD seemed to try and do that whilst also upping the "personal" element and moving away from ideological stuff - which is particularly evident in the nWoD Mage and Werewolf).

I'm not saying that was entirely illegitimate. I am saying it seemed rude at times, and was probably a bad idea.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Yep, just keep trying to bore the opponent to death. If you keep saying things long enough, eh? Great tactics.

 

[Morrus]

Yep, just keep trying to bore the opponent to death. If you keep saying things long enough, eh? Great tactics.

Calm down please. If somebody’s posts aren’t interesting to you, you don’t have to read them.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The TTRPGs are like the bloc-building toys, after buying the product you can create how you want, and it hasn't to be like in the cover of the box.

If I want because I am totally free to do it, I will play a mash-up, a noir-punk version of Ravenloft (with arcologies or super-skycrapper buildings) with the factions and creatures, from WoD and CoD, I liked, and even if I want I can say the rose of Gualaupe ( = a Mexican supernatural drama TV sere about miracles by Guadalupe Virgin) can hurt, or heal, supernatural creatures.

Or the storytelling system totally replaced with a homebred version, closer to d20 system, with some litle changes in the list of abilities scores.

Or the metaplot totally changed, for example adding a civil war within Technocrazy, between members of different rival powers, or "patriots vs globalists", or to add a Russian and a Chinese "cousin" for Pentex megacorporation. Or mixing Demon: the Fallen and Demon: Descent. Or mixing WoD with Aeon franchise (Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!..).

This is a TTRPG, and we are totally free to break, destroy the canon, no orthodoxy has to be keeped here.