The Wolf Returns - Thoughts and Concerns

White Wolf Rebrands their World Of Darkness Enterprise

Press release here, press kit available here.

     I don't know if anyone wants my thoughts on this, but I'm giving them anyways. For context, I started playing Vampire: The Masquerade in 9th grade, in Summer School 1996. My friends and I would pass the same book around, makes notes and characters, then at lunch, talk about the game we were going to play that weekend. One book, one set of dice, and hundreds of hours of sleepovers perfected our obsession- which lead into the other spheres of the White Wolf universe: Werewolf, Vampire Dark Ages, Mage, Wraith, Changeling, and more. I felt like we graduated from the unique and complex rules of AD&D to a much simpler story telling heavy and immersive world that felt like it was set in one of Anne Rice's books. The art was unique, the world was horrific and fascinating, the rules simple to understand... I was hooked.

The Art from The Masquerade was something else.

     Why do we care about this change? I think people have a nostalgic feeling for the original White Wolf  Publishing and the way they did things. They bought live action role-playing to the forefront of the gaming community, which set the basis for modern cosplaying. The Mind's Eye Theatre was a free addition you could pick up at any games store, and used the existing rules and set some guidelines. It was a cool time to game when it was not popular to do so, and White Wolf and World of Darkness has not has it's time in the sun like Dungeons & Dragons is currently having. In short, the change back to the old logo is fan service to the people who played prior to 2006.

        To me, the new editions are less gritty, visceral, and seem to be too polished.  It's time to get back to the dark and grimy roots, and this may be something great for people wanting a return to form. Shit, they are even putting their names on Bloodlines 2. I'm excited to see what happens, and it will be great to get excited about new releases again. However, I have one concern with the announcement post. Not so much my concern, but those in the comments on Facebook:

     I'm not much of a politics person, and tend to stay away from anything that leans too far in either direction, however, some of these comments are pretty concerning; They are nearly split. I'm honestly surprised about the commentary in general. Top and trending comments are against the highlighted statement above, and worry about the (for lack of a better term) woke or sensitive community involvement in the change or brand development. The reality is, mentioning anything about some kind of political or gender movement in your games or products these days is just (or could be) suicide for brands. Look at all the new games and once popular IP's that have failed in recent months, losing 100's of million of dollars for huge companies. Essentially, showing some kind of favoritism to either side could potentially alienate a huge portion of your fanbase, and potential buying customers. It's a risk. My hot take, I could care less- but I'll say it; Sometimes people just want to pretend to be Vampires and play games and leave the real world behind. Take note game companies, just make the fucking games and make them good.. the rest will come. 

Edit - I posted this to the WhiteWolfRPG subreddit for commentary, follow that here. Great conversation and I'm learning a ton. I'll take my downvotes and see what people are talking about then come back here to report. 

Edit 2 - Whelp, my post was removed from reddit for rule number 11 of the WhitewolfRPG sub community rules: I'll do whatever I want. No seriously, that's the reason why it was removed. I deleted the post, but the link should still work. I did not realize that community was so hypersensitive to some regular commentary, and I was down voted right out of there. One person even said I had a bad blog! Okay well, it's not the best so we can agree there.. From what I can tell, unless you whine about something or post fan art, you just get downvoted and insulted. What a welcoming community! This seems to be the norm in there: Ignore what's going on (look at the social media comments), gate-keep the fanbase community with censorship (delete my post for reporting on community reaction) and push some kind of narrative (top 1% commenters are rewarded for bias aggressive comments). This community will never grow past what it is (56k subs?) unless they can be less toxic and more welcoming to all. Strange, that goes against community guidelines. It's worth noting, my upvote ratio on this post was 33% before removal, but when posted on another sub (a much larger one) The upvote rate was 97%.