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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9817520" data-attributes="member: 87792">And I am disagreeing.I personally find that the WoD's lore is among the best of the 20th Century settings. But we've come a long way in the past 30 years in getting the benefits out of good lore without burying it in extruded content. But why did oWoD lore work? And more to the point why did oWoD lore work when the nWoD basically flopped?<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The oWoD splats all have strong elevator pitches</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It was fresh. Basically nothing like it at the time had been seen</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It had edge at the time, especially compared to the world of 90s D&D</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It was a clean system by the standards of the times (compared to e.g. AD&D)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It was incredibly queer especially by the standards of the 90s, attracting a large subgroup</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It had an actual attempt at a psychological model and meta-resources that allowed characters to express themselves (willpower and whatever the splat resource was, whether blood, quintessence, rage, or whatever)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It was varied. "All Splats WoD" is an entire managerie which gives just about everyone at least one thing that they can identify with. I mean you had vampires, werewolves, changelings, mages, etc. - and structured stereotyped subgroups within each splat.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I'm pretty sure that there's more variety between the vampire clans in V:tM 1e than there is in the "Tolkien Races" of any pre-4e PHB. And there's certainly more inner conflict</li> </ol></li> </ol>But, there's a fundamental but to come. It was the lore that brought the oWoD down. The lore in the core books attracted people in part because it was cooked rare. You were intended to set it in your home town before Chicago By Night came out.I'm also going to suggest my observation. Many many people were drawn into the World of Darkness (and deservedly so) with its larger than life characters and light but existing lore written in ways that inspired players. Very few players were drawn in by the metaplot or clan books. Existing GMs and some players bougth them, and they made money for White Wolf so were worth producing from a corporate perspective but they mostly created a barrier to entry, selling more and more books to fewer and fewer people until most of those that were buying books were the tiny minority that were lore-heads.And then the nWoD came out and (with the honourable exception of Changeling: The Lost) the WoD audience collapsed. The elevator pitch wasn't as strong for Requiem as Masquerade or Forsaken as Apocalypse and they just didn't feel fresh while the people still there for the lore had had all they had learned turned irrelevant.First we need to ask why folks want to get into the lore. In my experience there are three reasons:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">They like the setting and want more. The lore doesn't get them in, the hooks do</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It's a way of engaging with the hobby when not playing. So it's for hardcore fans at the expense of more casual ones.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">To tie into something else (e.g. books, real world history)</li> </ol></blockquote>

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