Worlds Of Darkness

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Is White Wolf petering out? All of their lines seem to have stagnated. Now they seem lost in an effort to out do every other book they have ever made.
Dont belive me read a copy of Demon: the fallen...

Hopefully this is the last ever WOD title because I dont see Bunnies the pink eyed Terror being that scary.

What's next from the WOD'ies?

[Spriggan]

I never got into White wolf's WOD, talk about confuseing rules.  We tried to play wearwolf and vampire on several occasions and could never figure them out.  I want to hear no more Palladium bashing whilst there is an active White Wolf bashing topic

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Well I never had a problem with Vampire's rules...
Story teller chooses Target # to succeed, you roll  1's cancel out successes, more one's than successes you botch, more successes than 1's or failures you succeed.

but werewolf was a horrid book, disorganized filled with refer to page XX's and just oogy to understand.

The cool part about WW was the golden rule (throw out the rules if they get in the way of the game.)

It was simple and fairly easy...
but the settings....

[Spriggan]

well to be fair we were useing the 1st edition rules wich anyone who's used them will tell you that they were some of the most incohearent ones out there.  They did a rules over haul a few years after the first edition came out to clear up a lot of things.  I rember sitting at my friend John's house and him calling his brother long distance asking him to explain the rules to him.
The books were realy cool to read for the mythos, and I realy enjoyed the character creating rules (especialy if you had the suplement books that had all the bonuses and negatives you could take) and that lead to my love for the GURPS creating rules which if you had a second book let you literaly make just about any type of character.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Yeah that 1st edition was kid of a dog.... I had the convention three ring binder edition for a while. Crappy!
But they fixed that and organized better and now are in a 3rd editon.
The Mythos were fun, but lots of people hated them.

[Slant]

Actually I never got into WOD.  The real world is plenty dark enough; I want to make-believe in brighter places.  

That being said, WOD just released Demon: The Fallen.  I really hope this is the last offering from WOD.  I know that in most of the game stores down near me, WOD stuff is filling up the bargain bins.

What will be next from White Wolf?  How about:

Smurf: The Giggling
Wargamer: The Hording
Osbournes: The BLEEPing
Magic: The Addiction

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Munchkin the splatbook!

[Mr_Pleasington]

I'll have to be the dissenting voice here.

I have a love/hate relationship with the WOD.  I love it for what it could be, but hate it for the way that most people play it.  WW games tend to be real hit or miss with most folks.  Vampire has the potential to be great if you play with people who get away from the pure angst and whining.  Mage is one of my favorite games and is a great amout of fun (though I never have looked at the new edition).  Both Changeling and Wraith are full of some of the most innovative, wonderful concepts in gaming...but are both virtually unplayable unless you have an amazing Storyteller.  Werewolf and the offshoot books (Mummy, Kindred of the East, etc.) all pretty much suck.  As did Hunter.

Demon, I'm in love with.  It's a great game if you're not easily offended with an interpretation of Christianity that's nowhere near the norm.  It manages to combine the themes of each of the other lines without including the crappiness from them.   And, though it is WOD, it can easily be seperated from such (unlike the other books).   I highly recommend this game.

The Storyteller system is indeed wonky in the probability distribution area, but can be house ruled pretty easily.

As for WW not doing well...that's just not right.  Please tell me where you can find their product in bargain bins and I'll be there in a jiffy.  Here it's difficult to get your hands on any of their new releases because they sell out so fast.  While their older lines are kind of dragging on their new stuff is keeping them on the top of the heap:

Adventure!, the third of the Aeon games has a huge following and is one of the best pulp games ever.  Exalted is one of the most popular non-D&D games out there now and is absolutely stunning (if it just weren't for the HUGE dice pools I'd be running it) and if you haven't checked out their Dragon-Blooded book for the line you are missing one out on one of the best books in the last year.  Plus, they have Sword and Sorceries studio and Necromancer games...two of the biggest names in D&D 3E publishing.

WW is not going anywhere, I'm afraid.  

In fact, there's a new WOD game coming out this summer... Orpheus.  Nothing is known about it now and I'll certainly reserve my judgements until it is released.

[Slant]

The one thing I will say in praise of WW is that Adventure! is one of the best games on the market!  Unfortunately it was intended as a one-shot product and will not be supplemented.  Personally I would love to see more stuff for Adventure!  We played two or three sessions of Exhalted and I felt like I was in Dragonball Z.  Not my cup of tea, but not terrible.  

Out of the WoD games, the only ones that I would consider playing are Mage and Changeling.  In particular, I really like how they handle magic in Mage.  Both games would need different rules systems before I would consent to a campaign, though.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I hate adventure, but I like Abberent and Aeon... er Trinity. Trinity is an example of a great game with a big following that white wolf just abandoned.
They advertised the line for 2 years prior to its release and then released it (and got sued by MTV for the AEON FLUX crap which brought it tons of publicity in the RPG market) It sold really well. Then without a word they drop it for Abberent which was a cool take on a supers game. (Actually they ran together for a while, but not too long)
They never developed the coolness of Trinity though. This was one of the best sci-fi books ever made and they just turned their back on it.
I see Exhalted as an interesting diversion for WW and own about 4 of the books. If you just buy Exhalted, Dragon Blooded, Lunars, and Abyssals (and I assume Mercurials) you'll be spending your cash well. But if you buy any splatbooks other than Scavenger sons and Four circles your wasting your time.
Exalted actually reminds me of Streetfighter with all its old combo's and thats the best thing going for it. But What WW should have done is made a book just filled with Charms.
As is its nice to look at but Im never gonna play it.

Your actually right about Demon by the way, best WOD game they have done since Wraith. But its not going to last. So many stores wont carry it around here (and this is Washington DC) and across the nation and thats killing sales. They'll hang on for a little, but ultimately they'll cancel it for Angel the redemption or some other hastily put together piece of crud.

[Entsuropi]

Whoa! White wolf bashing thread
Since im a horrible WW fanboy, ill be leaving now.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Its not bashing at all,... well maybe just a little. WW just needs to innovate again. Or focus on just one game for a little bit.

Right now It seems like they have too many things on the stove to do any one thing well.

[Mr_Pleasington]

I don't know about that...they're doing pretty darn good with Exalted.  They've put out some serious quality material for it.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

They did good with Trinity untill they just decided to drop it out of the blue.

Exalted is doing well, but I dont think the same effort is going into Exalted that went in Vamp.

It could just be me.

[Mr_Pleasington]

I used to love Trinity, but I haven't looked over it in a LONG time.  It wasn't really dropped completely out of the blue... but it just wasn't doing so well.  They have managed to put out some pdf only sourcebooks (Asia Ascendant, etc) in the last few years also so fans can still pick of material for it.

I loved Trinity so much, I owned Battelground, an rpg/miniature hybrid that was fun, but a little cumbersome. Great terrain in that boxed set though.