White Wolf Unveils New Vampire Logo!

White Wolf has unveiled the new logo for the most anticipated RPG of 2018, Vampire The Masquerade 5E! "Elements of the past, present, and future combine in this new logo design by Tomas Arfert and Chris Elliott."

 

[TrippyHippy]

I know people like to think that the D&D edition war between 3.5e and 4e was a big deal, and I am not denying that 4e and Pathfinder fractured the D&D player-base, but what happened when White Wolf ended Vampire: the Masquerade and the OWoD to move on to Vampire: Requiem and the NWoD absolutely destroyed that game.

I loved the OWoD and bought everything they published for it (including collector editions), but when they obsoleted EVERYTHING that I had invested in I stopped buying anything new, and it seems that most of their previously loyal fans stopped as well, because the company died. I haven't looked back since, though I still have all of my old books and would be more than willing to run another game based on the old system.

It deliberately destroyed the OWoD - literally - the whole WoD ended in armageddon meta plots.

Of course this was a marketing ploy. Rather than deal with the increasingly fractious edition warring that had occurred with the release of the Revised editions (especially Mage, which was very poisonous indeed), White Wolf decided to just cut it all out by simply ending the old games and releasing an entirely reimagined set of games. There wasn't, from memory, any major edition warring - how could there be if they were different games? However, the sales of the New World of Darkness games (Vampire: The Requiem et al) never reached the peaks of the Classic World of Darkness games as a point of fact now we know. Whether this was due to the market being split, as you suggest, or just because of the natural diminished returns of maintaining business lines, I don't think we can be 100% sure.

Regardless, it's all just history really. The 20th Anniversary Editions have all been declared de facto 4th editions and the 5th edition is imminent. Lets focus on the future, I guess.

 

[PMárk]

The logo is pretty good, but I can't see any sign of the red rose on marble, which may prove to be a thing of the past I guess as they always seem to use the Ankh these days instead. At least I have my early editions, although the red rose as a symbol doesn't really mean anything I guess - but it did look cool!

Well, they want to do something with the marble and the rose, at least I got assured, when I asked specifically. I hope it'll still be the cover, because well, it always was, except V20 and it always felt jarring to me, although the V20 ankh were cool on itself. I just want the old cover, because that IS Vampire.

Also, I think they used the old cover on the Berlin presentation, or the Grand Masquerade one last year.

The system mechanics look fine to me, but I still have irritations like the re-inclusion of a Dodge skill when it's not a skill, just a manoeuvre with one functional use. Integrate it into Athletics or Brawl again, and free up a skill slot for something more broadly useful. That's a minor thing of course, but I also hope they don't revert back to nine Attributes again, although there seems to be a split in fan preferences about that.

The big major change is in the Hunger rules, and I think this is where Hite was especially critical of the more vague Humanity rules from previous. Honestly, I am ambiguous the issue but the playtest rules certainly don't put me off in this aspect. In fact the only thing I'm iffy about is the use of Virtue/Flaws instead of what I feel is the more thematic Nature/Demeanour from the previous edition (where literally everybody is doing a personal masquerade). You can actually note that much of the core mechanics are really a hybrid of Old and New WoD (which also had fixed target numbers, simplified combat etc).

Sorry, I won't go into specifics, because I did so many times on different forums, I just don't have the inclination to do again! To summarize it: some things about the simplifications I liked, others, didn't, but it's a good start. I like the Hunger stuff, although it needs work. Didn't like the touchstone-humanity at all. Could make peace with the virtue/vice thing, but I agree, i liked the nature/demeanor a lot better.

For me, though, the content and setting material - as well as the art direction - will be the big seller.

Totally agree. Mechanics in WoD are tertiary. First, it has to be a good updating of the setting, fresh, but staying true to the "feel" and history, second it has to look cool.

 

[PMárk]

However, the sales of the New World of Darkness games (Vampire: The Requiem et al) never reached the peaks of the Classic World of Darkness games as a point of fact now we know. Whether this was due to the market being split, as you suggest, or just because of the natural diminished returns of maintaining business lines, I don't think we can be 100% sure.

I firmly believe it was both. It wasn't a good time for rpg publishers and yeah, NWoD suffered too, but at the same time a lot of people just refused to change for it, especially, as I wrote, taking into account the worldwide audience. Also, for various reasons, it couldn't manage to reach as many new people, to make up for the old guard losses.

 

[Wulffolk]

Why not to use V20?

Also, it will be interesting to see how much of the old books will be relevant with V5.

Basically, I never felt the need to even consider buying any White Wolf or WoD book ever again. I already owned everything I would ever need to run the game that I wanted to, despite the company moving on to a new product.

For similar reasons I stopped purchasing any Games Workshop stuff, because every time they came close to finishing the material that they thought they could sell they created a new edition in which the rules were different enough to make all previous material obsolete. I don't even remember what edition it was that was my last for WarHammer FB and 40k.

Things were a little different with D&D. I was ready for a new rules set by the time 3e came out. I had been playing D&D for decades already, and was never happy with any of the previous rules sets. I had drifted away from D&D to play other games like Vampire, and 3e brought me back. I was even ok with 3.5e because everything was still compatible. However 4e drove me away from D&D again, because it was just too different. 5e has done a good job of capturing what worked in 3e, while avoiding some of it's issues, and has drawn me back again.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I firmly believe it was both. It wasn't a good time for rpg publishers and yeah, NWoD suffered too, but at the same time a lot of people just refused to change for it, especially, as I wrote, taking into account the worldwide audience. Also, for various reasons, it couldn't manage to reach as many new people, to make up for the old guard losses.

One thing I know was definitely taken up in any great numbers were the NWoD live action rules. Most troupes I knew of just carried on with the the old MET rules. One of my own pet theories about the success of White Wolf's book sales was that the size of a live action troupe is often 30+ by comparison to a tabletop game of 3-6 players. If each of these players bought White Wolf books, and especially lots of supplements to read, then the number of overall book sales goes up exponentially.

 

[Wulffolk]

I forgot to mention the main point . . . When companies like WW and GW make the games I invested in obsolete I tend to lost faith in those companies. I don't trut them enough to re-invest in their new material. Even when a game is picked up by another smaller company I tend not to trust it to stay true to the soirce, like Ars Magica or BattleTech.

 

[Wulffolk]

One thing I know was definitely taken up in any great numbers were the NWoD live action rules. Most troupes I knew of just carried on with the the old MET rules. One of my own pet theories about the success of White Wolf's book sales was that the size of a live action troupe is often 30+ by comparison to a tabletop game of 3-6 players. If each of these players bought White Wolf books, and especially lots of supplements to read, then the number of overall book sales goes up exponentially.

I ran a Vampire LARP for 3+ years. We started out using MET rules but quickly switched to using the table-top rules for the LARP. Most dice pools were a standard difficulty, so we would carry a handful of pennies with us. When we needsd to roll a dice pool we would shake that many pennies up in our hand then count how many turned up heads. It was simple and looked less stupid in public than rock/paper/scissors

 

[TrippyHippy]

I ran a Vampire LARP for 3+ years. We started out using MET rules but quickly switched to using the table-top rules for the LARP. Most dice pools were a standard difficulty, so we would carry a handful of pennies with us. When we needsd to roll a dice pool we would shake that many pennies up in our hand then count how many turned up heads. It was simple and looked less stupid in public than rock/paper/scissors

Aha - the Prince Valiant method!

 

[Wulffolk]

Aha - the Prince Valiant method!

Not sure I get the reference. Was there a Prince Valiant game that used that method?

 

[TrippyHippy]

Not sure I get the reference. Was there a Prince Valiant game that used that method?

Prince Valiant (1989, Greg Stafford) essentially invented the dice pool mechanisms that developed into the the Storyteller system (in fact, it's where it got the name from). It's been acknowledged by the White Wolf crew in the past, multiple times. The main difference between Prince Valiant rules and Storyteller rules, aside from being simpler with less stats, is that they use a coin toss for each dot in the pool.

If you want to see the antecedent roots of the Storyteller system, then pick up Prince Valiant. For me, it would be the base model for the system of V5 too in many respects, and it also has a new edition coming out next year too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Valiant:_The_Story-Telling_Game

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1861515217/prince-valiant-storytelling-game-by-greg-stafford