Did NWoD Kill White Wolf?

[Lysander]

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

[Knightingale]

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.

That reminds me of that section in Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" where it's all about the idea of "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.".

[Heavy Arms]

While Fisher has plenty of good points, he's also over a decade out of date and Capitalist Realism really doesn't hold up after the last decade of financial crises. Millenials and Gen-Z broke majority non-favorable to capitalism in 2018. That's only gotten more traction since. The generations not raised in the shadow of the Cold War are not nearly as indoctrinated into capitalist dominance as previous generations, despite efforts to continue such bias in society. The future of a capitalist base economy is actually fairly unlikely at this point because capitalism has repeatedly failed stress test after stress test over the last decade.

To bring this back to the larger topic, I think one of the things that keeps the WoD so relevant is that inter-generational conflict is baked into the themes of the games. Older generations that have had time to amass power continue to stymie younger generations from making changes to solve problems everyone agrees are problems; but the older generations don't want the change necessary.

The CofD toned down this conflict for other things. This isn't bad. There's lots of compelling conflicts to tell stories about through games. But many of the CofD games don't focus on quite the same immediate yet enduringly resonant attraction we have towards generational conflicts.

[LordOfAsh]

No it didnt. The excellent World of Darkness doc currently streaming on amazon prime mentions it just didnt sell as well but theres no reason the company couldnt recover from it or change tack. I agree that the real culprit was mismanagement by CCP - they bought it and cannibalized it when EVE ran into trouble (also mentioned in the doc).

[Iguazu]

New RPGs really aren't that expensive; and a lot of older RPG-books are now, "Collector's Items", ridiculously priced on Amazon, it's not Gen Z or Millennials that's buying RPGs nowadays, it would seem.

Even, back in the day, I was able to pay my bills and have money left over to by RPGs.

[Mr Gone]

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.

I know! It's crazy how that works sometimes... time really is a flat circle!

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

That's just what I was thinking! LOL.

[Heavy Arms]

New RPGs really aren't that expensive; and a lot of older RPG-books are now, "Collector's Items", ridiculously priced on Amazon, it's not Gen Z or Millennials that's buying RPGs nowadays, it would seem.

Even, back in the day, I was able to pay my bills and have money left over to by RPGs.

RPG prices are artificially low because of a number of factors, but they're significantly more expensive than they used to be (esp. when you consider the average consumer's relative buying power not just raw price).

Also.... remember that the older Millenials are in their 40s now. Millenials are definitely a big part of the current RPG customer base, and have been for some time.

That said, there is a different cultural shift to consider with why both of the * of Darkness lines have struggled despite having strong content:

Millenials considering "nerd" and "geek" things much more mainstream. Part of D&D 5e's massive success is that you can play it with your kids, and generally speaking if your kids are into RPGs, D&D style games aren't going to be weird for playing with your parents The * of Darkness games are inherently transgressive. As a generality 15 year old kids don't want to play Vampire with their 40ish year old parents and more than they want to talk about their Internet porn search histories with their parents; your parents being cool with it can make even if more awkward. But that makes it harder to capitalize on RPGs becoming more mainstream because the nature of the material cuts off a lot of avenues of getting newer and younger players into the games.

[Cauthon]

I could see twisting some of CoD's gamelines into kid-friendly stuff to play with your kids though. Mage you just need to up the "Captain Planet villain" feel of the Seers, and tone down the more gruesome elements like blood sacrifice. Most of the 2e core rulebook is pretty safe, unless I've forgotten some pretty glaring things. Changeling too. Promethean is a bit to esoteric even for adults to have a large audience, but "what makes a human" is an interesting question for most age groups.

I don't know enough about WoD, so I won't try speculating there.

[Ragged Robin]

I ran Sorceror tier mage for a bunch of pupils at my school as a training wheel intro to roleplay. They've stated they'd like me to run a sequal next term once they wrap up their first d&d campaign and have apparantly been probing about wod and cod so there is potential to hook the young uns their

[Matt Corleone]

I would say that nWoD didn't kill White Wolf and explain why, but everyone else has already beaten me to the punch.

On a bit of a side note, I love nWoD a lot and tbh, I love it more than V5. Hunter: The Vigil in particular got me into both nWoD and later, Classic WoD as a whole, and it bugs me whenever people still trot out that particular little misconception about "Requiem/nWoD killed the White Wolf IP's" all these years later because it's been debunked so many times.

For some reason, Requiem in particular gets the lion's share of ire from the nWoD haters.

[Heavy Arms]

Part of the problem is that the 1e Requiem core book wasn't great, so a lot of people stopped there. Even in CofD fan circles, most view it as a case of "sucks to be first," as there's a lot of flaws in it that are clearly just because it was the first go at a lot of new systems and that made it buggy. The homages and Easter eggs to VtM aren't rewarding to fans of the old material; some of them felt more like snubs towards the somewhat odd choices of names the VtM Clans had.

Requiem is the vampire game I wanted after Masquerade never entirely feeling right to me, but I can admit the core book was not a great first impression. And unfortunately with a lot of first impressions, bad ones tend to be the only ones.

Like it sucks that we could (or at least in an alternate timeline where the IP owners cared about the game) be getting VtR 20th Anniversary books next year and people still can't intellectually move on from that bad first impression, but as an emotional response I get why it's hard to shake.

[Matt Corleone]

Part of the problem is that the 1e Requiem core book wasn't great, so a lot of people stopped there. Even in CofD fan circles, most view it as a case of "sucks to be first," as there's a lot of flaws in it that are clearly just because it was the first go at a lot of new systems and that made it buggy. The homages and Easter eggs to VtM aren't rewarding to fans of the old material; some of them felt more like snubs towards the somewhat odd choices of names the VtM Clans had.

Requiem is the vampire game I wanted after Masquerade never entirely feeling right to me, but I can admit the core book was not a great first impression. And unfortunately with a lot of first impressions, bad ones tend to be the only ones.

Like it sucks that we could (or at least in an alternate timeline where the IP owners cared about the game) be getting VtR 20th Anniversary books next year and people still can't intellectually move on from that bad first impression, but as an emotional response I get why it's hard to shake.

Exactly. Tbh, I loved the VtR 1e corebook and most of my nWoD experiences are just with the 1e core material but then again, Vigil and Requiem 1e were my introductions to World of Darkness. I never got into Masquerade until the time V20 came out. If I was someone who got deep into Masquerade in the 90's and followed it to the end, I could see why Requiem could be off-putting when it first came out. It's sort of like why I prefer 1e nWoD to 2e CofD a little bit more, even though both are excellent games.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and you only get one chance at making a good first impression.

[Dazert1]

Regarding the popularity of the New World of Darkness (NWoD) from a marketing perspective, it is crucial to consider that the popularity of a game system can vary over time and among different regions. The popularity of NWoD and its various game lines may have experienced fluctuations since its release. However, it's worth noting that World of Darkness, the larger franchise that includes NWoD, has had a significant impact on the tabletop gaming community and has garnered a dedicated fanbase.

Personal experiences, such as purchasing books from specific stores like Borders, can provide anecdotal evidence of the game's popularity during a particular time period. However, it may not offer a comprehensive view of its overall popularity or marketing success.

[Ragged Robin]

Part of the problem is that the 1e Requiem core book wasn't great, so a lot of people stopped there. Even in CofD fan circles, most view it as a case of "sucks to be first," as there's a lot of flaws in it that are clearly just because it was the first go at a lot of new systems and that made it buggy. The homages and Easter eggs to VtM aren't rewarding to fans of the old material; some of them felt more like snubs towards the somewhat odd choices of names the VtM Clans had.

Requiem is the vampire game I wanted after Masquerade never entirely feeling right to me, but I can admit the core book was not a great first impression. And unfortunately with a lot of first impressions, bad ones tend to be the only ones.

Like it sucks that we could (or at least in an alternate timeline where the IP owners cared about the game) be getting VtR 20th Anniversary books next year and people still can't intellectually move on from that bad first impression, but as an emotional response I get why it's hard to shake.

Requiem 1st ed corebook felt more like an an attempt to be what the authors thought masquarade 'should' be one of the reasons i didnt really play it until requiem for rome was because it felt too much like masquarade 4th ed but I couldn't really run the traditional setting for it. Its not a disimular issue to v5 except requiem is far better executed and eventually requiem did come into its own wereas v5 is incredibly stagnant.

[Amethyst]

Exactly. Tbh, I loved the VtR 1e corebook and most of my nWoD experiences are just with the 1e core material but then again, Vigil and Requiem 1e were my introductions to World of Darkness. I never got into Masquerade until the time V20 came out. If I was someone who got deep into Masquerade in the 90's and followed it to the end, I could see why Requiem could be off-putting when it first came out. It's sort of like why I prefer 1e nWoD to 2e CofD a little bit more, even though both are excellent games.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and you only get one chance at making a good first impression.

I started with V20 and only got into CoD later, but I think both settings have some very good features. That being said, I’m enjoying V5 (though I wish they would include some more lore) and I’m generally hopeful for the future of the WoD.