WoD renaming, White Wolf returns

[JConstantine]

Boy, I would really like to be excited about Curseborne, but amazingly, they seem to have crammed a whole "of Darkness" line of complex worldbuilding into a single book.

Supernatural/occult stuff of varying stripes is my jam, so I was intrigued by Curseborne when it was first announced, but everything I've seen for it just fell flat for me. A lot of it seemed to be "different for the sake of being different".

Wow, next thing you know Jolt Cola and goths will come back too.

Goths never left, and, er, about Jolt Cola...

 

[dbolack]

Wow, next thing you know Jolt Cola and goths will come back too.

As long as I can get Cherry Bomb again.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

As long as I can get Cherry Bomb again.

Hello, Dad, hello, Mom...

 

[Shawn Kehoe]

White Wolf isn't really back. This is just a rebrand. Nothing to get excited about.

People are definitely the key versus brand.

That said ... we don't really know how the sausage is being made at Paradox/WOD/Renegade, and any corporate-based creative endeavour has so many rungs in the ladder that are invisible to the end user but can affect the product. So even if the same writers and designers develop the next batch of White Wolf-branded books, there could be vastly different outcomes if one or two folks are added or removed from the corporate process.

I say this as someone who has largely enjoyed all World of Darkness offerings since the V20 relaunch in 2012.

 

[Shawn Kehoe]

Also - what do people even mean when they talk about bringing back the old White Wolf?

The pre-CCP White Wolf published "old" World of Darkness games from 1991 until 2004, and "new" World of Darkness / Chronicles of Darkness from 2004 until CCP closed them down. A lot of people came and went during that time, and the various editions of the games could greatly differ in tone.

My initial experience with the World of Darkness started somewhere between the release of Vampire: The Dark Ages in 1997 and Vampire: The Masquerade Revised (3rd) Edition in 1998, and I dropped off the new releases sometime in 2002. The folks who were writing those books put a lot of time and words into revising some of the problematic clan stereotypes that had crept into the initial editions of VtM ... work which continued in the Onyx Path V20 era, which was largely written by White Wolf veterans from that era.

So if people are saying that V5 could benefit from more of that late White Wolf / Onyx Path energy ... sure, I think Onyx Path made the best V5 sourcebooks. But that White Wolf vibe is very different than the 1e Mark Rein-Hagen White Wolf vibe.

 

[Shawn Kehoe]

I believe Paradox bought all of White Wolf's IP originally, and the ones Onyx now owns directly (which also includes Scarred Lands) were bought from Paradox, not CCP. But that's quibbling about details.

We're nerds, friendly quibbling is part of who we are.

Paradox bought the World of Darkness IPs in 2015. Onyx Path started working on WW-licensed stuff in 2012, crowdfunding their first V20 book in March 2012. They bought Scion and Trinity at the same time they negotiated their WoD and Exalted contracts.

Fun alternate timeline to ponder - at GenCon 2014, Onyx Path announced the development of Vampire: The Masquerade 4th Edition under Eddy Webb. (OP didn't consider 20th Anniversary a "true" edition.) That edition was cancelled after Paradox bought the IP and announced their own in-house VtM edition. They decided to count 20th Anniversary as fourth, hence Fifth Edition.

 

[Staffan]

We're nerds, friendly quibbling is part of who we are.

Paradox bought the World of Darkness IPs in 2015. Onyx Path started working on WW-licensed stuff in 2012, crowdfunding their first V20 book in March 2012. They bought Scion and Trinity at the same time they negotiated their WoD and Exalted contracts.

Fun alternate timeline to ponder - at GenCon 2014, Onyx Path announced the development of Vampire: The Masquerade 4th Edition under Eddy Webb. (OP didn't consider 20th Anniversary a "true" edition.) That edition was cancelled after Paradox bought the IP and announced their own in-house VtM edition. They decided to count 20th Anniversary as fourth, hence Fifth Edition.

Thank you for the correction on the timeline.

Also, I'm like 95% sure that the reason Paradox considers the latest Vampire as the 5th edition is because that lets them call it VV which looks like vampire teeth.