What happened with Vampire?

[Campbell]

So far I've been extremely impressed with the direction Onyx Path is taking with their more recent New World of Darkness material. God Machine Chronicles was a breath of fresh air for me, Demon delivered a game I had no idea I was missing, and Blood and Smoke made me like my least favorite World of Darkness line. I'm really digging the focus on individual chronicles, game-focused content, and a less punishment oriented morality track. This is pretty much what I wanted to see from the time I first become familiar with the World of Darkness. More questions - fewer answers.

 

[dm4hire]

I've been following WoD lately wondering the same thing and discovered this recent release that just popped up on DriveThruRPG a couple weeks ago.

Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle

It appears they are starting to get smart and doing self contained setting/rulebooks now so anyone getting into the game fresh doesn't need to own everything to play. Will be interesting to see if this is a trend or a one shot.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Urban fantasy and paranormal romance have been going strong and growing since the 1990s. Kelly Armstrong, Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher - they've been selling like hotcakes all through the period.

See also Neil Gaiman and Simon Greene. Even Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas books.

SyFy has just come out with "Bitten" (Werewolf focused, at least to start with), based on Armstrong's work. "True Blood" is based on Harris', and was one of the hottest HBO shows for years. The Underworld movies have been out there as well, and only span the last decade. I could go on. So, I don't think "fizzeled out" is an appropriate descriptor.

Let us not forget two Being Human series, Grimm, and older series like Friday the Thirteenth, The Fades, Demons, Reaper, Aparitions, Sea of Souls, Forever Knight, Special Unit 2, and Kindred: The Embraced (which was directly based on V:tM).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred:_The_Embraced

 

[Dethklok]

Urban fantasy and paranormal romance have been going strong and growing since the 1990s. Kelly Armstrong, Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher - they've been selling like hotcakes all through the period.

Although I'm not as familiar with Armstrong or Harris, they don't seem especially gothic-punk. Jim Butcher also had a very different take on Vampires, and the result was a very different RPG, focused on human (or wizard) society rather than vampire society. But Lost Boys, or especially Interview with a Vampire and Forever Night, felt very much to me like Vampire: The Masquerade.

So, I don't think "fizzeled out" is an appropriate descriptor.

Well, maybe it isn't. Still, it does seem as though it turned into something else - something that, at least some of the time, is covered in glitter.

Vampires have gone mainstream, man.

Arguably so! But when that happened, I suspect that gothic-punk was left behind. And thus it is that we have now moved on to other things.

 

[delericho]

The Underworld movies have been out there as well, and only span the last decade.

Indeed, the first "Underworld" film suffered a legal challenge from White Wolf for being rather too close to their material.

 

[evilbob]

So, I don't think "fizzeled out" is an appropriate descriptor.

Well, maybe it isn't. Still, it does seem as though it turned into something else - something that, at least some of the time, is covered in glitter.

Agreed!

Vampires have gone mainstream, man.

I think this is part of the point. When it was no longer gothic and underground, it was no longer cool.

I generally agree with this whole thread, and lots of good points are being made. Changes in management, vampires' shift in popular culture, genre fatigue, jillions of other new options popping up, d20 dominating the lion's share of the market, and finally the complete and horribly timed retooling of the entire universe (arguably necessary since by in-game cannon the world ended in 1999, right?) made a perfect combination to kill the product.

Still, you can't keep a good vampire down for long... (Ok, that was intentional.)

 

[WayneLigon]

I mark the switch to nWoD as the beginning of the end for White Wolf. I'm not clear on why they thought they needed to scrap everything and start over, but it was a very bad move.

The thing I had heard - and this might be pure rumor - was that the new corporate masters pulled a Blume Brothers and revised all the books to avoid paying royalties to all the previous designers and writers.

For NWoD, I ignored all the 'supers' books and just looked at the human-level stuff: the core book, psychics, etc. Those are really well done, for the most part.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Agreed!

I think this is part of the point. When it was no longer gothic and underground, it was no longer cool.

I generally agree with this whole thread, and lots of good points are being made. Changes in management, vampires' shift in popular culture, genre fatigue, jillions of other new options popping up, d20 dominating the lion's share of the market, and finally the complete and horribly timed retooling of the entire universe (arguably necessary since by in-game cannon the world ended in 1999, right?) made a perfect combination to kill the product.

Still, you can't keep a good vampire down for long... (Ok, that was intentional.)

It may no longer be 'hip to be goth', but the fact that vampires are no longer 'niche' is really all the reason to offer a game to capitalize on all things vampire. The full extent of my WoD exposure is the computer game "Vampire: Masquerade: Bloodlines" (a flawed masterpiece) but my impression was always that WoD and V:tM in particular incorporated all the different flavors of vampire so that people could play whatever kind they most preferred. Just like you can run pretty much any kind of fantasy world in D&D, you could run pretty much any kind of horror/dark fantasy in WoD.

There's no reason that WoD shouldn't be allowed to appeal to current trends. And there's no reason except their own incompetence that they couldn't make bank doing so.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I used to be a conformist, I never fooled around
But I couldn't get my punishment, and had to look around
Now I'm playing it real dark, and yes I dyed my hair
You might think I'm crazy, but I don't even care
Because I can tell what's going on

It's hip to be a goth
It's hip to be a goth

I like my bands in darkest shades, I watch them on TV
I'm avoiding sunlight everyday and cry myself to sleep
They tell me it's not good for me, but I don't even care
I know that it's crazy
I know that it's nowhere
But there is no denying that

It's hip to be a goth
It's hip to be a goth
It's hip to be a goth
So hip to be a goth

 

[Neonchameleon]

It may no loner be 'hip to be goth', but the fact that vampires are no longer 'niche' is really all the reason to offer a game to capitalize on all things vampire. The full extent of my WoD exposure is the computer game "Vampire: Masquerade: Bloodlines" (a flawed masterpiece) but my impression was always that WoD and V:tM in particular incorporated all the different flavors of vampire so that people could play whatever kind they most preferred. Just like you can run pretty much any kind of fantasy world in D&D, you could run pretty much any kind of horror/dark fantasy in WoD.

There's no reason that WoD shouldn't be allowed to appeal to current trends. And there's no reason except their own incompetence that they couldn't make bank doing so.

As far as I know there's only one game that caters to Sparklepires - and I'm pretty sure that unless you made Edward Cullen style vampires into enemies to be slaughtered there'd be a backlash against trying. (The one game is Monsterhearts, which started off as a joke game to play Twilight using the Apocalypse World rules - and as mentioned does a better job than Vampire of replicating 12th and 13th generation vampires politically scheming and infighting while dealing with the beast within and trying not to get squashed by much more powerful folks - I highly recommend it)