Did NWoD Kill White Wolf?

[Lysander]

I can't find a source of this, so take this with a grain of salt, but my memory is of Mike Tinney saying that the "supplement treadmill" was becoming unprofitable; not the WoD itself. This is also something that you can see from other companies of a similar size to WW at the time. WotC never relied on the supplement treadmill for D&D as the core duo of PHB and DMG have always been their big D&D profit drivers. Smaller RPG companies weren't in any position to do what made the "mid-sized" production studios successful via going for a large number of supplements and were already putting their eggs in a small number of books at a time.

WW, being in that middle size company status (by RPG standards) was struggling with the 2001 economy because their main model was to make a lot of books because they couldn't sell enough copies of one or two books to be their core profits, they needed to sell lots of books that sold a decent amount to aggregate into good profits. That's where the recession hit them (and a bunch of other similarly positioned companies): too many people weren't buying the supplements to get into that aggregate profit level, and not enough people were buying the core books alone to pull an adequate profit for the size of the company.

IIRC, this is was part of why Orpheus got a green light: to experiment with a different publishing model organized somewhere between "core books and the rest is gravy" and "supplement treadmill."

I don't know if Orpheus's performance really pushed anything regarding keeping the cWoD vs. the move to the nWoD, but we saw some changes in publishing strategy that seemed to build off of Orpheus.

It sounds very plausible and seems to prove the notion that the old setting was stagnating and saw the writing on the wall that the profits would get smaller and smaller and pulled the plug and reboot everything much to the annoyance of the old fans who get emotionally invested in such matters.

[Heavy Arms]

Precisely and that would help to get more details about the inside scoop of what went down if they asked much faster then you or I would.

That presumes they get a useful answer. Have you tried asking someone like Mike Tinney or Steve Wieck? They might not be involved with the WoD directly any more, but they didn't disappear off the face of the Earth either. Hell have you asked Rich Thomas? He has an account here and all.

Even if they might get back Matthew Dawkins faster than us, what makes you think they're going to actually disclose (at least in a fashion that'll get passed on to us) more now than they did in 2003/2004? I really don't know what you expect asking people that weren't there for the CCP take over to be able to tell us that the people that were there didn't say publicly back in the day. Which wasn't a lot on the financial side of things.

Do you know for sure if the other former WW employees would be available to answer such questions like Justin Achil or would they be to busy doing there own things? CT & GG at least can answer questions if asked.

The three people I mentioned above all have public ways to be contacted. But just like Justin Achilli, Matthew Dawkins, and CT Phipps, they all are busy doing their own things. Digging into this involves asking any of them to take time away from whatever else they're doing in life to sate our curiosity. None of these people are being paid to be WoD fan customer service reps and sit around waiting for us to send them questions about the products/company histories.

It sounds very plausible and seems to prove the notion that the old setting was stagnating and saw the writing on the wall that the profits would get smaller and smaller and pulled the plug and reboot everything much to the annoyance of the old fans who get emotionally invested in such matters.

I don't think it proves that specific scenario of the idea that the WoD was "stagnating." Multiple WW employees at the time of the nWoD release stated that it was a financially functional option to have continuing the cWoD with a new edition designed to better handle a changing economic landscape.

What I'm attributing to Mike Tinney by memory, is that the way the WoD was published back in the day wasn't working. So the company had to figure out a new approach. This need would impact either continuing the original WoD with a 4th edition, or the choice to just reboot the whole thing.

The most likely course of event based on what WW people were saying at the time, is that the leadership of the company decided they needed to make some significant structural changes to deal with economic realities, and that prompted a serious discussion between leadership and the creative teams about how this would impact the games, and how this could be leveraged to make the games better.

Those conversations clearly ended in favor of the nWoD, because that's what we got. What feels like a big deciding factor wasn't "stagnation" of the WoD but rather frustration with dealing with a 10+ year old setting that wasn't built to handle everything that got added to it over time. Stagnation isn't really that bad of a thing if people want to keep making it and people want to keep buying it. It means you have a solid product and a solid niche. But when I look at the "Concept and Design" credits in the nWoD core book credits? I see at least five people that were publicly saying at the time that they backed the reboot approach because they didn't want to just doe a WoD 4e, and they wanted to start over and do things better. They could have played it safe, done a new edition, kept the fans happy, put a lot of ideas into other products they would make as parts of other projects, and so on. But they wanted to work on a WoD without all the baggage and with more breathing room to try new ideas out.

[Lysander]

Of the new setting I did enjoy Changeling The Lost, Mage The Awakening, & Promthean the Created the most. I never did follow the original version of the first two games and had no gripes that some of the original fans probably did.

[Iguazu]

Did I read that right? Mage: the Ascension wasn't written by the authors of Vampire: Masquerade? No wonder than games seems different and out of place in the OWoD genre.

I'd like to think, that perhaps, NWoD didn't do was well as they thought it would (i.e. it didn't make hundreds of billions), so they sold it, but, that's probably not the case; creativity has a cycle and sometimes, people want to move on; take GRRM's taking decades to finish a book-series he already spend decades writing and look at Twitter; they got made an offer they couldn't refuse.

No, I killed NWoD, by getting into it.

I have a curse, every time I try to choose between two franchises or "universes," the one I pick crashes and burns. I picked Warhammer Fantasy Battles over Warhammer 40,000, WHFB got "End-Timed." I started a D&D campaign in my old gaming club, Fourth edition happens and suddenly D&D is the worst thing to ever happen. When I finally found stores that sold the old World of Darkness books, they were already publishing the new ones. I didn't understand my curse at the time, so I choose NWoD, since I figured that was the one that would get new material.

I'd say I regret my error, but I'm pretty sure if I bought the older WoD books instead, Requiem would have been the runaway success V5 was.

Please get into D&D, 5th edition.

[Father Enoch]

Please get into D&D, 5th edition.

What makes you think I didn't? Check the news about WotC, lately?

[Lysander]

What makes you think I didn't. Check the news about WotC, lately?

Are you talking about the news about the Lord Of The Rings race swap of Aragon amongst other things?

[Father Enoch]

I was talking about the less recent news where Hasbro did whatever it did with the Open License and pissed everyone off. I have no comment on WotC's depiction of Aragorn, except that it's WotC's depiction.

[Heavy Arms]

Did I read that right? Mage: the Ascension wasn't written by the authors of Vampire: Masquerade? No wonder than games seems different and out of place in the OWoD genre.

Who said that?

All of the WoD core books (classic or new) were written by teams that are a mix of people that tend to include core people that work on most of the core books in a given edition, as well as a team that's more focused on that individual game line.

Some people worked on both VtM and MtA, some people worked on one but not the other. This is easily found information.

I'd like to think, that perhaps, NWoD didn't do was well as they thought it would (i.e. it didn't make hundreds of billions), so they sold it, but, that's probably not the case...

It's explicitly not the case, because the nWoD had never been sold as a separate property. CCP bought the entire original WW company with all its associated IPs. CCP sold the cWoD, nWoD/CofD, and Exalted all to Paradox; while selling other original WW properties went to other places (mostly Onyx Path).

[Mr Gone]

It's explicitly not the case, because the nWoD had never been sold as a separate property. CCP bought the entire original WW company with all its associated IPs. CCP sold the cWoD, nWoD/CofD, and Exalted all to Paradox; while selling other original WW properties went to other places (mostly Onyx Path).

Does Paradox still have it? I know Renegade Game Studios is involved now, but I wasn't sure if they were just licensing or what..

I know all the C of D (NWoD) stuff is being licensed out to Onyx Path, just to keep it kind of separate from the main World of Darkness.

You know, it's funny, I lived through all this and it's still a little confusing looking back. LOL!

[Lysander]

The late 1990's early 2,000's were a strange time indeed Mr. Gone and I can't believe how quickly time has passed.

[Heavy Arms]

Does Paradox still have it? I know Renegade Game Studios is involved now, but I wasn't sure if they were just licensing or what..

Yeah, Paradox owns, Renegade is licensing the WoD, like Onyx Path does for the CofD and Exalted.

[Asmodai]

I don't know if Orpheus's performance really pushed anything regarding keeping the cWoD vs. the move to the nWoD, but we saw some changes in publishing strategy that seemed to build off of Orpheus.

Orpheus always kinda felt like the proto-nWoD line with the focus and the way it approached the material.

[Ragged Robin]

Are you talking about the news about the Lord Of The Rings race swap of Aragon amongst other things?

weirdly I just saw that, I wouldn't call it bad but it does feel strangely corporate a very white middle class approach to diversity.

[Mr Gone]

The late 1990's early 2,000's were a strange time indeed Mr. Gone and I can't believe how quickly time has passed.

I know!! It's crazy how quickly the time goes sometimes... I got into Vampire in college and sometimes that seems like yesterday, but it was like 1995..lol.

Yeah, Paradox owns, Renegade is licensing the WoD, like Onyx Path does for the CofD and Exalted.

Ah, ok! I thought it might have been something like that, but I wasn't totally sure..

Well, hopefully they do a decent job with it.

[Ragged Robin]

I know!! It's crazy how quickly the time goes sometimes... I got into Vampire in college and sometimes that seems like yesterday, but it was like 1995..lol.
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what always weird me out is how 95 wod themes are as applicable as it was back then. It isn't so much prophetic as condemning.