White Wolf viciously attacks everyone who roleplays for fun

[Nisarg]

What WW did in the early 90's was show people you could have fun with a RPG by incorporating ideas into the game that were NOT about kicking in the door, killing the monster, and taking its loot. This appeals to a rather juvenile mindset, and while its fun to do occasionally, killing and looting quickly lose their appeal to most folks. I applaud their efforts for broadening the horizons of gaming, and bringing more people into gaming (especially female gamers). You can try to dispute this if you like, but its the reality of what WW did to gaming.

Wow.. now this really is absurd.. are you seriously falling for this idea that before WW no one roleplayed about anything but killing? It was ALL hack and slash before vampire?

Were you even roleplaying back then? Because i was and I assure you that Vampire added exactly NOTHING to the roleplaying world, other than a game about vampires.. and pretentiousness.
They certainly were not the first to introduce the idea of Role playing. Or even of serious issues in roleplaying. If you really think that, you are seriously mistaken.

Amber, which is a far more sophisticated game, was around since 1986. Call of Cthulhu was around from the very early days, as was Traveller, and neither of those were what you could call Hack n'Slash games. Space 1889, many of the GURPS settings, all these and more were around and doing intelligent roleplay LONG before Vampire.
Even D&D; I was playing and running serious, non-combat oriented campaigns long before Vampire. So were many people, I assume.
That's what gets me about Vampire.. they created and continue to create this lie that there was no good roleplaying going on before VtM. And that other systems are somehow inferior at doing good roleplay. And that story-based is the best way to roleplay. And that WoD continues to be the best way to roleplay, or indeed ever was.

What nearly killed RPGs was the CCG craze Magic started. Chaosium, previously a pretty strong publisher, nearly lost it all with the Call of Cthulhu CCG. Many other companies tried to branch into CCGs (TSR with Spellfire for example), and took a big hit. In addition, the biggest RPG company at the time TSR, was being run by people who didn't know anything about gaming, and who mismanaged product lines, overextending themselves, which caused the ruination of TSR. It wasn't due to inferior product (many people point to Planescape, Dark Sun, and Birthright as three of the best settings TSR produced, all during its final days), it was due to bad business practices, pure and simple. In addition, younger players wanted instant gratification and a quick game, which CCGs gave them, while RPGs could not.

Yes indeed, CCGs were bad for roleplaying. No debate there.
And indeed, TSR was being mismanaged, again no argument with you there.
However, the reason CCGs had as much drain from RPGs as they did was because RPGs (due to TSRs mismanagement and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of WW's success) had become something that was less than fun.
You hit the nail right on the head about younger players: they could quickly put to gether a game of magic, but couldn't quickly put together an RPG game.. why? because RPGs went from being easy and fun to being these complex monstrosities where the emphasis was ALWAYS on having to play serious campaign-level stuff, the systems got more complex, and the books became unpalatable to younger readers.
In the 70s and 80s, you COULD make up a character in a few mins and start playing right away. By the 90s, because of story-based gaming theory, you couldn't do that anymore. You also had to buy far more books than before, and you had to suffer through pages of bad game-fiction to get to the rules.
CCG's were just an opportunistic infection. RPGs failed in the 90s because of a massive failure of vision and leadership. Everyone got on the WW story-based bandwagon to nowhere.

not a plot by WW to "kill gaming". That statement is ridiculous in the first place- why would a gaming company, whose success depends on the sale of gaming items, want to end RPGs? Think through a statement like that before you make it.

I never implied that WW intentionally WANTED to set out to kill gaming. It was unintentional. You might find on RPG.net when this same debate fired up I even admitted that their strategy worked perfectly well FOR THEM.
The real fault was in the other companies trying to follow their design theory, which didn't work because it wasn't aimed at the majority of exissting roleplayers, it was aimed at an outside group (goths and vampire fans). But the majority of the members of these other groups weren't going to go for D&D, or GURPS, or any other "orthodox" rpg, no matter how hard they tried. And in switching to this story-based format, these orthodox companies lost their fan base.

If anything, WW helped to keep RPGs alive in the mid to late 90s. While D&D was in a slump, Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage had huge loyal followings because they were innovative, new, and fresh. I don't know how many former die-hard D&D players I knew switched over to WW completely because TSR wasn't releasing often, and because they were tired of the same old D&Disms that hadn't been updated for 20 years..

And I also saw a few people switch over to WW, the minority.. the majority left roleplaying altogether. Virtually none of the people I gamed with back then are gaming today, on the whole, story-based gaming devastated the fan base.

Nisarg

 

[Spell]

Why the hell is this thread so entertaining anyway?

you're joking, right! I mean, this Nisarg is funnier than a chicken on dope!

really, Nisarg, you should strech your boundaries and go out from your ivory tower. there's a world out there!

 

[Spell]

That there would be white-wolf apologists and agents in here to try to defame me is not suprising, its just standard operating procedure.
That there would also be some D20 players saying "who cares", expressing apathy, is not a huge surprise either.

on the other hand, NO ONE has agreed with you. not one poster. zero. nihil.

What is interesting is that no one has been able to refute what I have posted: it is there, in the book, marked in stone. How else can it possibly be interpreted?

you see, the thing is: there is nothing to refute. there's no offending point. you have gone mad over nothing.
and, please, keep it coming. with so much problem in the world, i need to read something like this, while i take my breakfast.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The thing about Amber, CoC, and the others that existed before WW is that they didn't have a large part of the market playing them. Yes, they had their fan bases, and they're good, solid games, but they didn't really make a lasting impact in what was predominantly a D&D-dominated industry. White Wolf didn't invent that sort of role-playing, but it did popularize it. Whether they did that by converting existing players or attracting new ones is immaterial. To then turn around and say that they almost destroyed the hobby--even when, by your own admission, it was those who tried and failed to copy them with whom you have the real issue--is ludicrous.

Oh, but wait. I do freelance work for WW, so I must be an "agent" or an "apologist." My mistake.

 

[Nisarg]

I believe I recognise one of the highlighted terms, namely 'character-driven'. As far as I know, this is generally applied to one of two broad categories of story, the other being 'plot-driven'. As you were comparing roleplaying games, what's the connection (if any), and what do you mean exactly by each term, regardless?

What makes an RPG character-driven, as opposed to story-driven? What are the pros and cons of each, in your view?

Well, Ryan Dancey is the one who really did a great job of explaining the problem with story-driven design theory, but I'll try to summarize...

most RPGs before WW were character-driven. That is to say, the PCs, the characters, are the central figures of the game, the emphasis is on putting the characters through a "plot" of an adventure, where the plot is relatively open with many options. An adventure (published or thought up) that didn't allow for a variety of options would generally be seen as a bad thing, as "railroading".
Story-based RPGs relegated the PCs to minor personalities in a vast setting filled with NPCs who were largely the literary figures of the game designers/failed authors. The setting itself was guided by a "metaplot", the game designer/failed author's "novel" for the setting, that forced GMs to progress the stories along the railroaded lines of the designer's vision. Not to mention forcing the gamers to buy countless "splatbooks" to further the metaplot and get the next little dose of explanation for the setting.

So story-based= lots of metaplot, lots of railroading, the "storytelling" by the GM is more important than the freedom of the players, the "storytelling" of the game designer is more important than the freedom of the GM. Add a liberal dose of bad game-fiction, and voila.. a recipe to alienate most gamers, who want to actually roleplay rather than be turned into low-influence protagonist for the "storyteller's" vision.

Nisarg

-------
"In 1991, White Wolf Almost Destroyed the Gaming Industry. In 2004, 'Almost' Isn't Going To Cut It."
-ESKemp, white wolf employee

 

[molonel]

Nisarg, you keep talking about "failed authors." At this point, unfortunately, since we are talking about the people who wrote the White Wolf system and all of its numerous books, splat books, expansions and several revisions, those "failed authors" are actually "published authors." That separates them from the rest of us poor schmucks who try to get our work published. As a writer, I only wish I could "fail" in the same sense as the White Wolf writers. Give me that kind of failure anyday.

 

[Nisarg]

Nisarg, you keep talking about "failed authors." At this point, unfortunately, since we are talking about the people who wrote the White Wolf system and all of its numerous books, splat books, expansions and several revisions, those "failed authors" are actually "published authors." That separates them from the rest of us poor schmucks who try to get our work published. As a writer, I only wish I could "fail" in the same sense as the White Wolf writers. Give me that kind of failure anyday.

My apologies you are of course correct.. where I said "failed authors", I should have said "failed novelists", to be more clear.

Nisarg

-----
"In 1991, White Wolf Almost Destroyed the Gaming Industry. In 2004, 'Almost' Isn't Going To Cut It."
-ESKemp, white wolf employee

 

[the Jester]

Just thought I'd hop in (without bothering to read past page one of the thread) to say that, while dnd is my game, I've played my fair share of WW games as well; and they do support a different play style, and it's tons of fun. DnD is and always will be my favorite, but WW is cool too- and while I recognize that WW tends to be snarky towards dnd players, that particular comment (way back in the initial post) certainly wasn't snarky. It wasn't saying 'their game is no good'- it was saying, 'their game is fun, but so is ours. Try to share your fun with them.'

 

[molonel]

My apologies you are of course correct.. where I said "failed authors", I should have said "failed novelists", to be more clear.

Again, even as an aspiring novelist myself, I say: give me that kind of failure. Please. I'll take it. I think the folks who wrote about your venom were right. Not everyone is cut out to write novels. Some people who write crappy novels write very good gaming material, and many of the White Wolf authors are among those. Some people aren't cut out for certain forms. Raymond Carver was a shortstory writer. Monte Cook is NOT at his best in his novels. That doesn't make them washed-up hasbeens. It means that they were all lucky enough to find their creative groove, and make a living doing it.

Good on them.

 

[billd91]

What a series of unfounded delusions. As if DMs hadn't been railroading players for years in their own D&D games back in the 1970s and 1980s. As if hyper-complex character generation hadn't been pioneered in other games over the decade preceding 1991 (Traveller, Top Secret, and Champions, all very popular at times, being prime examples of games with complex character generation). And if d20 is the savior coming to save character-based gaming, it certainly isn't making prepping a game any easier since characters are far more complex than earlier editions of D&D and powerful NPCs, once characters reach a high level, take much longer to stat out than in any previous edition... or a number of editions of Vampire as well.
The guys at WW responded to a demand that gamers had, plot-driven settings with a rich background ripe for conspiracy and political wheeling and dealing. And I know plenty of gamers who play that along with D&D and have since the games were published.