D&D General WotC Has Owned D&D Longer Than TSR Did

As Matt Forbeck pointed out on Twitter, WotC has owned D&D for 24 years since it purchased TSR in 1997. TSR created D&D in 1974, 23 years before WotC bought it.

 

[wingsandsword]

That is because in the 90's, White Wolf players got the rep of being elitist snobs who looked down on all other RPGs. Maybe that was a big city thing, or a West Coast thing, because all the people I played the Storyteller games with also enjoyed other games, including D&D.

Oh, in the late 90's/early 2000's, I knew a number of White Wolf players who refused to play D&D, and I even caught them telling new players that White Wolf literally invented the RPG. As one WW player put it "Before White Wolf invented the roleplaying game, there were just wargames like D&D that didn't have any roleplaying aspect." I dang near started a fight at that party when I contested his version of gaming history to point out that D&D was a roleplaying game and had been since it was invented 17 years before the first WoD books came out.

I knew plenty of WW players who wouldn't be caught dead playing D&D, they thought of D&D as a childish, simplistic game focused only on combat, with no roleplaying, no plot, and no maturity. . .claiming it was just simple video-game like hack and slash dungeon crawls, and only in White Wolf was there actual plot and roleplaying.

I knew players who would play both WoD and D&D, but there was definitely a subculture or subset of WoD players who felt superior to D&D players and didn't hide it. I think it had to do with how White Wolf drew from subcultures that didn't normally get involved with RPG's.

This attitude faded out, at least from my experience, in the early/mid 2000's. WW rebooting the WoD ultimately did a lot more harm than good I think in the long term. Fans liked the older setting, even if the New WoD rules were better, and the lack of a metaplot was good for keeping casual players from feeling locked out, but alienated the hardcore players who ate up metaplot like candy. If they'd done a reboot with the new rules, but the old setting (or something very much like the old setting, just a reboot on it to closer to the standard versions from when it came out), and had the metaplot progress much slower and not have huge world-shaking cataclysms every few years then I think it could have gone better.

 

[wingsandsword]

I live only a couple hours from New Orleans, so there was a bigger crowd of WW players in the area. I could tell some tales of the rivalries between the Werewolf and Vampire players, let me tell you. The weirdest were the "panty raids" - the LARP players from one group would sneak into the other group's games and abduct players or props. Then there was the whole IHOP affair...

There were definitely little niches within WW culture, rivalries based on preferred game.

There were the Werewolf players, the Vampire players, and the Mage players, mostly. At least around where I lived.

You had the oddballs that liked the other WW games as their focus, but usually went to something else since those were uncommon. I knew a VERY goth girl who loved Wraith, but since that game was too dark and hopeless even for most WW players, she defaulted to playing Vampire most of the time. . .and someone who loved Changelings, but since that was also too niche to usually get a group together, he'd play a Mage instead.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I knew plenty of WW players who wouldn't be caught dead playing D&D, they thought of D&D as a childish, simplistic game focused only on combat, with no roleplaying, no plot, and no maturity. . .claiming it was just simple video-game like hack and slash dungeon crawls, and only in White Wolf was there actual plot and roleplaying.

I knew players who would play both WoD and D&D, but there was definitely a subculture or subset of WoD players who felt superior to D&D players and didn't hide it. I think it had to do with how White Wolf drew from subcultures that didn't normally get involved with RPG's.

There were definitely little niches within WW culture, rivalries based on preferred game.

There were the Werewolf players, the Vampire players, and the Mage players, mostly. At least around where I lived.

You had the oddballs that liked the other WW games as their focus, but usually went to something else since those were uncommon. I knew a VERY goth girl who loved Wraith, but since that game was too dark and hopeless even for most WW players, she defaulted to playing Vampire most of the time. . .and someone who loved Changelings, but since that was also too niche to usually get a group together, he'd play a Mage instead.

The funny thing is there were plenty of people in the early years of Magic: the Gathering, who would never "lower" themselves to playing D&D and some of them probably practically died from shock when WotC bought TSR. lol

And I find it weird that players would segregate themselves to just one of the White Wolf books. Everyone I played with, played World of Darkness and mixed all the books together. Mages and Vampires and Werevolves and normal human Hunters all working together against a greater evil.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

WoD had got some good ideas, but it later became a Jurasic Park for monsters from Hammer Films. We are talking about supernatural factions controlling all historical events and mankind couldn't notice because we are too simpled-mind. They would be cool in a fictional world as Teath from 7th Sea but in our "real world" I can't believe Technocracy from America being "friends" of Soviets mirror-glasses. In my game there is a "civil war" within the Technocracy betwen "globalists vs patriots".

Wraith was too grimm and sinister even for gothic fiction standard.

Here in Spain WoD became the number one in the last years of 90's when the translations of AD&D sourcebooks stopped to be published.

 

[MNblockhead]

It goes both ways. When I went to college, Magic the Gathering came out and I am embarrassed to admit that I kinda looked down my nose at players of the game. Partly gate-keeping, because it was so popular and brought in lots of people who were not normally in the fan cohort that had been playing TTRPGs, but mostly because I saw it as a shallow facade of fantasy gaming.

Vampire just seemed like a goth party game and an excuse for drugs, sex, and being edgy. There also was a subset of players who made the whole Vampire thing a lifestyle choice, dressing up like that 24/7, going to Vampire themed clubs, etc. I didn't have anything particularly against it, it just wasn't my jam.

Shortly after that, focus on studies, youthful political activism, and hanging with a different crowd lead me to putting gaming aside and I didn't care and was oblivious to all of it. So much so, that I didn't know about TSR going out of business and selling to WotC, and never heard about Paizo until maybe 2012 or 2013 when I moved back to the states and started talking to old friends about trying D&D again. But 4e wasn't the game I remembered and Pathfinder was too intimidating. So I stuck with board games and card games until 5e came out and sucked me back in.

Now I'm polyamorous with my gaming and will play anything. I'm open to LARPing but not enough to spend the time and money on another demanding hobby. I still avoid Magic the Gathering, but that has more to do with an aversion to collectible card games. An inclination strengthened by my experiences with buying and building decks for Pokemon Card Game with my sons. I would rather buy more games than collect cards for one game and I don't like the fact that one's effectiveness is at least partly based on the amount of money you pump into your collection. But I don't begrudge others for their preferences. I can see the appeal, I just don't need another time consuming and expensive hobby.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

Check out Ultramodern: Ultramodern5 (5th Edition) - Dias Ex Machina Games | DriveThruRPG.com

Thanks for suggestion, Marc. I am rather proud of Ultramodern5. We just launched a follow up to it called Affinity, which is doing rather well on Kickstarter now.