Vampire: The Masquerade is getting a D&D 5.5E crossover product, coming to D&D Beyond this year

White Wolf is the latest publisher to join D&D Beyond's third-party marketplace. Today, D&D Beyond announced its next slate of partner content, coming out later this year. One of the new products is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bound by Blood (5.5e), a new product published by Ghostfire Gaming, presumably under license. Bound by Blood will contain a new Kindred class for 5.5E (a reference to a commonly-used euphemism for vampires in the World of Darkness campaign setting), as well as a new Dark Ages adventure.

Vampire: The Masquerade isn't the first rival game to Dungeons & Dragons to post 5.5E content on D&D Beyond. Chaosium previously released a Call of Cthulhu product on D&D Beyond earlier this year, and Pathfinder released a 5E version of their popular dungeon-crawler adventure Abomination Vaults, which is set in the Pathfinder setting of Golarion. D&D Beyond serves as the largest marketplace for D&D products on the internet, and is possibly the biggest TTRPG marketplace as well, so it's not a surprise that other publishers are partnering with Wizards to get their content on the marketplace.

What's curious is the nature of the relationship between Ghostfire Gaming and White Wolf, which owns the World of Darkness setting. White Wolf has been beefing up its TTRPG studio to bolster production of various World of Darkness games in recent years, notably hiring away Jess Lanzillo from D&D. They have a publishing relationship with Renegade Games, who currently publishes various Vampire: The Masquerade products along with Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Hunter: The Reckoning. What will be interesting is whether Ghostfire Gaming plans to continue publishing Vampire: The Masquerade content for D&D, or if this is a one-off publication.

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[Scribe]

The humorous over-reaction memes here are entertaining, but also likely suggestive of a commitment to siloed content being a certain way.

Speaking for myself, I do not want to see more companies partner with a company I do not wish to support.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My guess is that WotC just spoiled White Wolf's big GenCon announcement.

 

[Reynard]

I am definitely getting 2003 vibes.

 

[Liongo]

Looking forward to hearing more about this.

 

[bedir than]

We will be offering a pre-order of Bound By Blood in June, followed by a release in July.

Does that mean a physical release by WotC?

 

[Reynard]

Man, I don't particularly care about Vampire, but I am still a little sad because a) diversity in game systems is good for everyone, and b) 5.5 is the worst version of 5E.

Oh well. I hope some folks are happy about this and get what they want.

 

[Charlaquin]

What strange bedfellows

 

[Hatmatter]

Speaking for myself, I do not want to see more companies partner with a company I do not wish to support.

Oh come on, White Wolf isn't THAT bad.

 

[Xenolith234]

This feels like the d20 glut.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

It's funny, because for many years the thing I wanted most was an actual dedicated product to bring to D&D the world and lore of Dominaria.

But since then, we've seen how inept WotC is at curating and protecting the tone of its game with MTG.

Nowadays, anyone that enjoyed its fictional world, its lore and its vibrancy has to deal with the guy in front casting Optimus Prime, Gandalf and Glen from The Walking Dead. It's a juvenile pinata of whatever IP might get people to spend money with no regard to the quality of the product.

I hope this is just two execs that had one too many beers and made a mistake and not a growing trend of more pillars of the TTRPG history folding under 5.5E.

I love the cross-game fertilization.

Fertilization is about creating something new, to have more than there was before. Two people make a child. A plant lets its seeds go in the wind for more to grow. This is the opposite of fertilization.

are actually fairly complimentary

Except having vampires present and being generally "dark", I fail to see how their tone or themes are even remotely close.