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Is there any continuing support for the new World of Darkness roleplaying game lines? I've checked White Wolf's website, and it seems (to say the least) utterly dead in terms of new material or news for the new World of Darkness.

Any information on this would be appreciated.

Limited, they have the odd product planned, but sadly White Wolf has had its heart ripped out as a company.

Some argue that the lines are done, and so this is not strange, I don't buy that. A healthy company would be releasing new stuff to keep their revenue streams going.

At the moment they have been releasing original WOD lines via Kickstarter for Vampire the Masquerade, and a W20 release for Werewolf the Apocalypse is also due this year. Probably a M20 next year as well.

Since CCP let about a third of the current staff (and they where already smaller since the merger anyways) around the later half of 2011, they really are just a place name holder at the moment.

Its a sad state of affairs for the company, however, I do not believe they have ever recovered from releasing the nwod. They lost a lot of support when they dropped the original WOD, and it seemed a odd knee jerk reaction to diminishing sales in the RPG industry as a whole.

I still think there was more to it than the 'we promised an ending, so we brought you one' spiel they where throwing around in 2002/2003.
I think it has a lot more with the fact the original WOD books where all pretty much still under Mark Rein·Hagen's banner, thus he was probably receiving royalties for anything with an OWOD stamp on it.

Looking what White Wolf where releasing book wise in the years leading up to the nwod, and then after, it is clear to see how their revenue streams fell sharply.

So yeah, nwod will be limited for the foreseeable future, and I think there is a good chance after the twenty year anniversary editions have died down, the company will be fully absorbed into CCP as little more than an IP label for the World of Darkness lines, new and original.

There also probably getting alot of fluff for CCP to use their World of Darkness MMO if it ever sees the light of day.

Yeah, thats what it'll be in my worst fears. Just a license used by CCP for the MMO.

Oddly if I am remembering correctly, the guy who moved over from White Wolf to CCP to take the intermediate role between the companies, was one of the CCP staff that got canned when all hell broke loose last year.

I've been out of the loop for some time with White Wolf (and I wasn't even aware of CCP until reading these responses), so these next questions may be a bit dumb-sounding.

When did White Wolf merge with CCP, and what was the nature of the hell that broke loose last year with CCP?

grayshadow87 wrote:what was the nature of the hell that broke loose last year with CCP?

It came out they were part of Pentex.



Sorry, couldn't resist.

There is a new nWoD game coming out soonish called Mummy: The Curse.

Yeah, I was factoring that in to my limited releases statement.

As to what happened and why. CCP merged with White Wolf (well brought out and brought the company under its wing) not long after the release of nwod.

I think there may have been discussions previous, but it seems the main reason for this was a planned World of Darkness MMO. Quite a few of us on reflection reading over the nwod changes, felt there where signs of a MMO themed set up with the reduction of Clans/Tribes down to a nice smaller number of five, rather than thirteen, also some of the design calls seemed MMO friendly.

Of course CCP blew that theory out of the water when they announced the WoD MMO was going to be based on the Vampire the Masquerade setting, rather than Requiem. Although I partially would like to think that is because the two settings backgrounds are vastly opposite.
Its quite obvious that the MMO setting gains a hell of a lot more from the Original, WoD, rather than the nwod, with large clashing organizations of supernatural folk, its vast metaplot and much more interesting Clan ideals/clashes.

Everything seemed to be going fine, the WoD MMO had been announced, and it was to share (with a slightly enhanced touch up) a avatar system they where devolping first for Eve. However gamers where not happy with the proposed changes. I don't play Eve, but from my limited understanding of the situation, it would have upped the requirement to play the game by a fair bit, and a swathe of other changes outraged the community, and folks threatened to quit in droves if CPP forced it upon them.

CCP being an odd company in the sense that not only do they listen to their customer base, but they have several player representatives come and have a meeting to discuss the state of the game once (maybe twice) a year, panicked, basically pulled right back on the expansion plans that would have introduced all this new stuff. Sudden realised they had nothing on the cards, so yanked around half the WoD MMO staff back to Eve to work on an emergancy expansion/improvements for Eve. Let a few go at CCP, and let a load of the remaining White Wolf staff go as well.

That was just around the time they where supposed to be shipping out the V20 books last year, so it was all delayed, as the guy running the warehouse was one of those who got fired. I think my book due in October, finally arrived here in the UK in Mid December.

Not 100% sure whats gone on at CCP since then, the WOD MMO is supposedly still in development. Although at a much slower pace, and since then White Wolf moved the remaining V20 releases onto Kickstarter, while closing down their online store, and moving all their lines over to Drivethru RPG, who now pretty much sell most of the White Wolf back catalogue.

grayshadow87 wrote:Is there any continuing support for the new World of Darkness roleplaying game lines? I've checked White Wolf's website, and it seems (to say the least) utterly dead in terms of new material or news for the new World of Darkness.

Any information on this would be appreciated.

They were talking about a World of Darkness MMO on G3 last couple of weeks. Theres also the Kickstarter going on.

There is plenty of White Wolf available over at RPG Now, Drivethrough RPG, in the freebies section. The Support is there, they just as of a few months back have done a gak job of showing it in the adverts.

The material shows up every couple of weeks or so along with the other freebies.

Jack the Ripper, and the Promethius stuff is there for examples.

The MMO is looking pretty good.

Not Secret World good, but pretty close.

I've heard rumors of a Mummy book sometime in the near-ish future.

Not just rumors:

http://whitewolfblogs.com/mummy/

I wasn't aware CCP had put an end to physical books. I'm deeply disappointed, as I'm crotchety and old fashioned and like physical books.

Oh well, I suppose whenever I get around to playing WoD again I'll learn to get used to PDFs.

A lot of them are Print on Demand, as well as PDF, no idea on the difference on quality though.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:A lot of them are Print on Demand, as well as PDF, no idea on the difference on quality though.

Good POD is pretty much indistinguishable from average printing these days. I've been impressed with some samples I've seen.

I own a half dozen or so WW PoDs. The covers are clear and the binding seems strong. The text inside is also clear and the paper is okay. The main problem is that the print doesn't flow to the edge of the page. Instead, there is an unsightly white border around each page.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Limited, they have the odd product planned, but sadly White Wolf has had its heart ripped out as a company.

Some argue that the lines are done, and so this is not strange, I don't buy that. A healthy company would be releasing new stuff to keep their revenue streams going.

At the moment they have been releasing original WOD lines via Kickstarter for Vampire the Masquerade, and a W20 release for Werewolf the Apocalypse is also due this year. Probably a M20 next year as well.

Since CCP let about a third of the current staff (and they where already smaller since the merger anyways) around the later half of 2011, they really are just a place name holder at the moment.

Its a sad state of affairs for the company, however, I do not believe they have ever recovered from releasing the nwod. They lost a lot of support when they dropped the original WOD, and it seemed a odd knee jerk reaction to diminishing sales in the RPG industry as a whole.

I still think there was more to it than the 'we promised an ending, so we brought you one' spiel they where throwing around in 2002/2003.
I think it has a lot more with the fact the original WOD books where all pretty much still under Mark Rein·Hagen's banner, thus he was probably receiving royalties for anything with an OWOD stamp on it.

Looking what White Wolf where releasing book wise in the years leading up to the nwod, and then after, it is clear to see how their revenue streams fell sharply.

So yeah, nwod will be limited for the foreseeable future, and I think there is a good chance after the twenty year anniversary editions have died down, the company will be fully absorbed into CCP as little more than an IP label for the World of Darkness lines, new and original.

The problem I see with NWoD is that they have simply covered all the bases in terms of monsters. There's not really any more they can do. However, what they really ought to do is a rerelease of Mage: The Awakening, and cut down on the rules, making it flow much more smoothly.

Aye, but surely thats a side product of this 'no meta' idea they have running with nwod.

Where are all the interesting books, like Succubus Club, the various Rage Across location books, city by night books and the various expansion type storylines and books, that didn't really have so much as the main WoD metaplot in the original WoD, but where damn fine and useful books for any ST, no matter if followed metaplot to the letter or not at all.

This there isn't much more they can do is sadly a poor excuse of a former great company. So what, if you are a vampire player and you don't have any time to flesh out a detailed city, you can play in Chicago, Mexico or New Orleans, and thats your lot, oh and two of those are multii settings, so info for the three main games are spread thinly through the book.

Hell when you look at all the books they released for the original WoD lines, folks where still suggesting books they'd like to have seen. Stuff that would have been useful and fun to read right up until the changeover to nwod.

Why they haven't at least done World of Darkness: LA, World of Darkness: New York, and then probably two or three each of the City of the Damned, Hunting Ground, Unveiled books at the very least I'm unable to fathom.

Realistically, I think the reason for less books is that it's a different market than a decade or two ago. Most RPGs are moving to a model where a game line has an upper limit of a half-dozen or so books because players aren't crazy about going beyond this.

Back in the 90s a lot of people complained about game lines like releasing tons of splatbooks. White Wolf was something of the poster child for this, with their tendency to do a game, do a revised version, do a splatbook for each sub faction, a player's guide, etc.. I vaguely remember jokes that most game lines had a splatbook that radically changed the viewpoint of the faction, in fact...

Moving to a higher model is probably considered being responsive to customer desires in this case.

Aye I suppose to be fair, you are talking to the guy who is only short of about seven or so book to have a complete WtA, VtM and MtA collection. I also have all but one Changeling book, all the Hunter the Reckoning, even though we've never played it, all the original WoD books and all the Dark Ages.

I have to pull myself away from ebay whenever I see Wraith books up, as I'd be paying over the odds for books I'd never use at all.

Although I would counter that TSR was the bearer of the whole 'too many books' syndrome, partially the reason they ended up selling to WotC.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Although I would counter that TSR was the bearer of the whole 'too many books' syndrome, partially the reason they ended up selling to WotC.

They definitely did a lot in the 2nd edition era. I think TSR was in a position very similar to GW in that 'D&D' was effectively a separate 'niche' from all other RPGs. Much like how GW considers their games 'The GW Hobby' and other wargames are a different thing.

Most game lines got a bit bloated in the mid-late 90s, I think. I've got a stack of Deadlands books that could break a horse's back, and my Heavy Gear RPG books. (For reference, back in the 90s I think DP9 put out a book monthly. Now the new crew (which i provide support for, but don't write for) does a couple (wargame) books a year, with the online magazine quarterly.

RPGs in general seem to be moving towards both high and low ends. At the low end is relatively cheap (Sometimes 'Indie') books, PDFs, etc. Cheap, relatively low production values, but a good deal for gamers. At the other end are some very beautiful books by a variety of companies at a 'premium' price point. I'd guess recent White Wolf releases are up here, as they've always cared a great deal about the way their stuff looks. Expensive, but high-quality.

I think a part of this is a move to the expectation of shorter campaigns by many. A lot of companies seem to expect that gamers will play a setting for maybe 20-30 sessions then move on to something else. Pinnacle is big on this: most of the Savage Worlds campaigns I've seen are a single book with a beginning, middle, and end of a storyline that the GM can flesh out. A far cry from the 'endless' nature of a lot of previous generation RPGs. Interestingly, this has come with the end of the 'metaplot' concept. So isntead of slowly finding out what the setting's Big Heroes are doing while the PCs deal with their own local weirdness, the PCs are the Big Heroes and the story gets resolved in a shorter time.

Or we just all have shorter attention spans.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
I have to pull myself away from ebay whenever I see Wraith books up, as I'd be paying over the odds for books I'd never use at all.

I so need to buy all the Wraith books at one of the local used bookstores. They have a HUGE selection for good prices and Wraith is my all time fave WoD setting(followed by Werewolf then Hunter).

Balance wrote:Or we just all have shorter attention spans.

This. I blame the interwebz

robertsjf wrote:

Balance wrote:Or we just all have shorter attention spans.

This. I blame the interwebz

I blame the inherent "gamer ADD" we all have.

I did pick up a copy of Wraith: The Great War not too long ago. Never gotten a game of Wraith going, doubt half my gaming group could spout off even the basics of what was going on in WWI, but it is a damned beautiful book. And I've been buying up dark ages books when I can find a good deal - surprisingly Amazon has some really good deals - like on par with my local used book store.

Aw man, good find on getting that one. That book and the Charnel Houses of Europe: the Shoah are two I'd pick up in a heartbeat if I could find them, never seen either on ebay.