World Of Darkness General (VtM, WtO, MtA, etc.)

[XYZpdq]

You mean like this?
View attachment 2157130

yeah, that'll work, I was thinking more guns and drugs, less bitches, but that's still in the same area
this too

 

[knightlautrec]

So what will they make of the Sabbat when that book finally gets released.

Pathetic and limp wristed. It's clear when they decided to gut the Necromancy clans and make the Setites Anarchs they basically decided to loose the teeth and edge of the game which means dropping the Sabbat. Cuz they are verboten. Tzimisce are getting defanged in the companion.

We can't have evil in our blood sucking game oh no no.

 

[Emperor Julian]

I keep thinking about the statement that Vtm classic is very 90's and how that's bassically bollocks.

The 90's

VTM:

What do they actually mean with this?

 

[Corn Flakes]

I keep thinking about the statement that Vtm classic is very 90's and how that's bassically bollocks.

The 90's
View attachment 2157659

VTM:
View attachment 2157662

What do they actually mean with this?

Well, there are two possible meanings there.

The first is that the people making those claims don't actually remember the 90s. They know VtM started in the 90s and that's as far as that thought goes.

The second is that while the 90s were a very optimistic time after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a strong counterculture element going on underneath all that that Vampire the Masquerade rode like a horse for many years. The early-mid 90s are when Marilyn Manson and other alt-rock and alt-metal acts either formed or gained fame, for example. For another example, The Matrix's club scene (right at the start) is a reference to the nightclub scene in a lot of large cities back in the 90s, and goths were still a thing back then. Anyway, the original VtM aesthetic is very much a 90s creation. Sadly, these people will fuck it up for the sake of pandering to morons who would never play the game to begin with.

 

[Emperor Julian]

The second is that while the 90s were a very optimistic time after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a strong counterculture element going on underneath all that that Vampire the Masquerade rode like a horse for many years. The early-mid 90s are when Marilyn Manson and other alt-rock and alt-metal acts either formed or gained fame, for example. For another example, The Matrix's club scene (right at the start) is a reference to the nightclub scene in a lot of large cities back in the 90s, and goths were still a thing back then. Anyway, the original VtM aesthetic is very much a 90s creation. Sadly, these people will fuck it up for the sake of pandering to morons who would never play the game to begin with.

So they've mistaken the cosmetic aspects for the actual core of the games, WoD has always been pretty pessimistic about the world and it's observations are becoming increasingly prophetic, Especially in the context of "technology cannot solve your problems or alleviate negative aspects of the human condition and may have negative sociological effects".

And that's before I consider if it's even that differant from the 90's outside of cultural flotsam.

Looking at some of the art from the new books and I think a lot of it will age a 'period' a lot more dramatically than a of 3rd ed's work
Compare the Tremere for example

You'll notice how the image tells you everything you need to know about the Tremere: proffesional occultist.
V20-more of the same, if anything a little better since the sexual elements are downplayed in the often cold and academic Tremere

In contrast 5th Ed:

abour half them look like Brujah some look like fucking Hollow ones, one looks like crude steriotypes about gypsies. All of them look like they stumbled out a 1st years fashion students sketch book in 2020. How out of date are any of these guys going to look in 2031 compared to the first two?

 

[Corn Flakes]

So they've mistaken the cosmetic aspects for the actually core of the games, WoD has always been pretty pessimistic about the world and it's observations are becoming increasingly prophetic, Especially in the context of "technology cannot solve your problems or alleviate negative aspects of the human condition and may have negative sociological effects".

Looking at some of the art from the new books and I think a lot of it will age a 'period' a lot more dramatically than a of 3rd ed's work
Compare the Tremere for example
View attachment 2157764
You'll notice how the image tells you everything you need to know about the Tremere: proffesional occultist.
V20-more of the same, if anything a little better since the sexual elements are downplayed in the often cold and academic Tremere
View attachment 2157767

In contrast 5th Ed:
View attachment 2157765
abour half them look like Brujah some look like fucking Hollow ones, one looks like crude steriotypes about gypsies. All of them look like they stumbled out a 1st years art work book in 2020. How out of date are any of these guys going to look in 2031 compared to the first two?

I think the problem there is that they exchanged style for an attempt at realism and "diversity".

The first two look like characters out of a comicbook (and I would argue that even the Tremere would have a sexual edge to them because all vampires are sexually-charged predators. It's just the tremere are the sexy librarians of the Vampire world). And that's what the World of Darkness' goth-punk style was supposed to evoke: a surreal, comicbook feel. The World of Darkness was never supposed to be realistic, it was always a very stylized, static, dark and strange place. It was a world in which details were glossed over in favor of hard, cold edges, and it carried over to the art style. Even the more "realistic" art like those weird late-90s/early-00s photomanipulations were strange and dreamlike.

The most recent shit is just typical recent art school graduate portfolio material, because they're sanding off the edges of the world. These are generic characters, because the World of Darkness is turning into a generic world. Their mandate to make the World of Darkness more "real" are destroying the setting, because the more realistic you make it, the less sense it makes.

Good style is eternal. Team Fortress 2 is still going to look good in 50 years, while all the "realistic" games that came out around the same time look dated as fuck. The original Vampire art is going to look old, but it will never look dated.

 

[Mola Ram]

The most recent shit is just typical recent art school graduate portfolio material, because they're sanding off the edges of the world. These are generic characters, because the World of Darkness is turning into a generic world. Their mandate to make the World of Darkness more "real" are destroying the setting, because the more realistic you make it, the less sense it makes.

The art has really suffered. Can't speak to 5E, but I've read enough of the 20th Anniversary stuff to be disappointed. Changeling 20 is indisputably the best version of oWoD Changeling, so much so that I have a hankering to run a game, but the character portraits for the kiths are unbearably dull and uninspiring. The illustrations for the Gallain kiths in the back of the book are a bit better, but shrunk down to the point a lot of detail is lost.

 

[knightlautrec]

RE: the shitty art in V5 -

It was not originally intended for v5 if Dawkins on discord is believed. It was concept art leftover from the WOD MMO that was reused because 'why the fuck not'. Paradox pretty much paid for it, why not reuse it.

I feel once you know this fact, it starts to make sense why the art is laid out that way and the fashion is the way it is. Because its in that infant stage of a game working out visual style and possible cosmetics.

 

[Dang Woodchucks!]

So they've mistaken the cosmetic aspects for the actual core of the games, WoD has always been pretty pessimistic about the world and it's observations are becoming increasingly prophetic, Especially in the context of "technology cannot solve your problems or alleviate negative aspects of the human condition and may have negative sociological effects".

And that's before I consider if it's even that differant from the 90's outside of cultural flotsam.

Looking at some of the art from the new books and I think a lot of it will age a 'period' a lot more dramatically than a of 3rd ed's work
Compare the Tremere for example
View attachment 2157764
You'll notice how the image tells you everything you need to know about the Tremere: proffesional occultist.
V20-more of the same, if anything a little better since the sexual elements are downplayed in the often cold and academic Tremere
View attachment 2157767

In contrast 5th Ed:
View attachment 2157765
abour half them look like Brujah some look like fucking Hollow ones, one looks like crude steriotypes about gypsies. All of them look like they stumbled out a 1st years fashion students sketch book in 2020. How out of date are any of these guys going to look in 2031 compared to the first two?

Brujah? I thought the brujah look like thugs that could beat your ass without the need of vampire powers. These nerds look like they're running away from mall cops that don't want them loitering near Hot Topic.

 

[Emperor Julian]

The art has really suffered. Can't speak to 5E, but I've read enough of the 20th Anniversary stuff to be disappointed. Changeling 20 is indisputably the best version of oWoD Changeling, so much so that I have a hankering to run a game, but the character portraits for the kiths are unbearably dull and uninspiring. The illustrations for the Gallain kiths in the back of the book are a bit better, but shrunk down to the point a lot of detail is lost.

The anniversary mage books traditions art was a war crime, the Ngoma looked more like an hermetic
Hermetic

Ngoma

You'll notice how the Ngoma isnt holding a bendy sword while posing like a fucking weeb.

 

[Mola Ram]

The anniversary mage books traditions art was a war crime, the Ngoma looked more like an hermetic
Hermetic
View attachment 2158045

Ngoma
View attachment 2158088

You'll notice how the Ngoma isnt holding a bendy sword while posing like a fucking weeb.

I would have brought up Mage, but I've already whined about it too much. Also, I wanted to say something nice about the 20th Anniversary stuff -- Changeling is really well done, other than the new art.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

You mean like this?
View attachment 2157130

yeah, that'll work, I was thinking more guns and drugs, less bitches, but that's still in the same area
this too
View attachment 2157137

Sabbat guide confirmed for Black Metal Zine

Pathetic and limp wristed. It's clear when they decided to gut the Necromancy clans and make the Setites Anarchs they basically decided to loose the teeth and edge of the game which means dropping the Sabbat. Cuz they are verboten. Tzimisce are getting defanged in the companion.

We can't have evil in our blood sucking game oh no no.

Yeah, they basically made them landlords or something. Nothing is more EVIL and DISGUSTING than a landlord. I think that's just the small number of Tzimisce Antitribu, though.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Sabbat is going to be an Alex Jones podcast. "The Antedeluvians are putting chemicals in the blood to turn the Vozhd gay!"

 

[Snekposter]

Sabbat is going to be an Alex Jones podcast. "The Antedeluvians are putting chemicals in the blood to turn the Vozhd gay!"

Yeah, but this is the World of Darkness. How do you know they aren't doing that as part of some centuries-long scheme?

 

[Pentex]

In August 2020, Olivia once claimed I used quotes from my "victims" as cover copy on the back of my books. I don't have that many books out, this would've been so easy to check yet none of her fans do, nobody went "Uh, hey...um...". Yeah. The Internet.

It spread from the Onyx Path forums to RPGnet. Within 48 hours I'd received the first of many physical threats...

...also the first instance of comparing and conflating Jewish people with Nazis, which will weirdly become a motif in later chapters of this White Wolf story.

Of course Zak is a small hat.

At the beginning of the weekend after Olivia Hill launched her smear campaign the Wolf publicly issued a statement reminding the public they'd done an investigation of me long before (which was very easy, because all theses accusations were about online stuff) and knew they were bullshit and at the end of the weekend White Wolf privately let me know there was just too much online harassment and I was being taken off the Vampire 5e team.

What a shame, Zak. It's as if in the hellscape of woke corporatism, the truth is not only no defense, but it is irrelevant to adopting a posture of 'woke' moral superiority.

A rational man might rethink his politco-morality after passing through this crucible of assblasted troons and goons. But not our boy Zak.

 

[robobobo]

For dark urban fantasy I've always liked Palladium's Nightspawn (later Nightbane after Todd McFarlane threatened to sue) better than WoD. The unfortunate part is that Palladium's mechanics are godawful, because the setting itself is both legit horrifying and more interesting than most things White Wolf ever did.

 

[Snekposter]

Ah, Palladium. I got invited to a Palladium Heroes Unlimited game and I just couldn't slog through chargen long enough to make a character. The rules are dense, the book had terrible formatting so I was looking back and forth constantly for what I wanted, etc.

 

[Corn Flakes]

RE: the shitty art in V5 -

It was not originally intended for v5 if Dawkins on discord is believed. It was concept art leftover from the WOD MMO that was reused because 'why the fuck not'. Paradox pretty much paid for it, why not reuse it.

I feel once you know this fact, it starts to make sense why the art is laid out that way and the fashion is the way it is. Because its in that infant stage of a game working out visual style and possible cosmetics.

If that's truly the case, then the Swedes are either stupid, don't care about Vampire nearly as much as they say they do, or both. You don't reuse concept art for a different game on a brand new edition of what should be your flagship product.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

If that's truly the case, then the Swedes are either stupid, don't care about Vampire nearly as much as they say they do, or both. You don't reuse concept art for a different game on a brand new edition of what should be your flagship product.

V5 was littered with reused assets. Chapter intro fiction from the Revised artbook, concept art from the failed MMO and the like.

 

[knightlautrec]

If that's truly the case, then the Swedes are either stupid, don't care about Vampire nearly as much as they say they do, or both. You don't reuse concept art for a different game on a brand new edition of what should be your flagship product.

I take you haven't met much higher ups in game studios or dumb ass project managers who are their lackeys...they're pretty out of touch with how things work and they want it faster with less cost always.

I like Dawkins (I don't like his SJW tendencies but that's every RP writer now who doesn't want the leftist mob to lynch them) but I do believe him on this one. And genuinely believe someone would pinch pennies to this degree as to not spend that much on a new edition. They wanted v5 quickly. It shows. It needed more time in the oven.