MGibster
Legend
After seeing other games implement the same ideas better, I can't stand WoD and I can't stand its undeserved market dominance. The only WoD games I can still stomach are Changeling: The Lost and Hunter: The Vigil (first editions, obviously) because they're the single most toolkit games ever released by the company even if they are held back by some WoDisms.
Every time I hear someone complain that a game has undeserved success it just sounds like sour grapes to my ear. Don't get me wrong, we all have our preferences and it's perfectly okay to like or dislike a game regardless of it's popularity. I absolutely cannot abide by the Shadowrun rules and refuse to play it but I'm not baffled by, begrudging of, nor I believe its success over the last 30 years is undeserved. It may be important to you that a game is a toolkit, but it's obviously not very important to the many people who enjoyed Vampire, Werewolf, or Mage.
While I hesitate to say that any game "deserves" success, after all, no game line is entitled to my hard earned dollars, I'm hard pressed to think of why WoD's market dominance is undeserved. When it was released in 1991, Vampire the Masquerade was a very different from the games typically found on the shelves of our local gaming store and it attracted people to the table I rarely saw playing D&D, Palladium, or GURPS. (Has there ever been a sighting in the wild of a girl or woman playing GURPS?) I didn't really play a whole lot of WoD back in the day, but the setting was very interesting and the writing was good. I'd say the game earned its success.