What RPGs are you playing?

Right now, my focus is on Scion: Hero and Scion: Demigod. (Scion: God is scheduled to be released in December) I am playing a scion of Izanami, the Japanese Goddess of Death, and leader of the Shikome, Death's handmaidens.

I was playing a D20 fantasy PBP but it died due to players real lives interfering. Haven't been gaming much lately besides for playing Betrayal at House on the Hill a week or so ago.

Currently playing Call of Cthulhu at my weekly group (though have broken for Xmas now). I am writing my first D&D 3.5 scenario for a convention next year along with a Mutants & Masterminds game and a couple of Shadowrun Missions.

Currently, playing a D&D meatgrinder (epic fights, epic damage, multiple clerics required), Artesia (way out of control game, playing the newbie in a group of epics), and a Spycraft shell over a fantasy campaign.

I haven't found enough players to start a New Gods game. (I had a home-brew diceless system, but everyone wanted to play a god of sex, battle, and death. There was literally no reason for the players to cooperate, and the 'elders' of my game constantly had to intervene to clear up the mess left by the PCs. Incidentally, if you want to kill a game like this, fine the characters Belief to help defray the cost to repair their damages.

Rhishisikk wrote:

Incidentally, if you want to kill a game like this, fine the characters Belief to help defray the cost to repair their damages.

I thought cleaning up the mess was left up to the players in New Gods, thus requiring a lot of Belief expenditure to begin with. I mean, if they tear it up, they're either going to create a lot of Terror and get themselves taken away, or they're going to have to replenish their tribe or be forgotten. If the player has its god do something utterly moronic, the need for belief from followers forces them to insure their messes are cleaned up or they lose out, right? No need to enforce any additional loss of bellief really, is there?

As for the actual subject of this thread:

I am presently running two 7th Sea campaigns, one weekly at a game store, the other every other week at the UHCL Gamers' Guild.

I used to run Vampire: The Masquerade regularly, but I have completely boycotted the storyteller games since they re-constructed the backstory and details of the WOD setting. I have been known to run Ravenloft d20 and Masque of the Red Death d20 in the past. I have been boycotting Wizards and White Wolf personally for the past two years for ruining my two favorite games and settings, but I don't try to convince others to join me. It's my decision, for personal reasons. I'm not trying to make an impact on the company. I ran an Atlas Games Furry Pirates game for a while in the past year, and continue to develop the adventure though the game has fallen into impossible disrepair (players moved/lost interest). I helped contrive a Firefly/Serenity LARP for a while. I haven't gotten to PLAY in a dedicated RPG in over four years (dedicated meaning regularly meeting game that lasts more than four sessions).

Other games under my belt I enjoy running and sometimes host a one-shot for:
Marvel Super Heroes (the TSR 1985 version) (Not Saga)
BESM (2nd and 3rd Editions)
Stuper Powers Deluxe
Legend of the Five Rings (2nd ad 3rd Editions)
Savage Worlds

I worked for ten years at developing a home brew system, and used to occasionally run games using it, but I gave up on it years ago because I had no time to work on the rules. As I'm closing the gap on my Master's Degree, I may soon find I have time to continue working on the system again.

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

I used to run Vampire: The Masquerade regularly, but I have completely boycotted the storyteller games since they re-constructed the backstory and details of the WOD setting. I have been known to run Ravenloft d20 and Masque of the Red Death d20 in the past. I have been boycotting Wizards and White Wolf personally for the past two years for ruining my two favorite games and settings, but I don't try to convince others to join me. It's my decision, for personal reasons. I'm not trying to make an impact on the company.

Apologoes for the tangent to the thread subject, but I am curious - why do you feel White Wold "ruined" your games and settings? Didn't they just stop creating new products for your game and instead created a completely new game that you didn't like?

As I understand things, in no way was the new World of Darkness meant to be set in the same "universe" as the old WoD - they are completely seperate settings just with remarkable similarities in subject matter - much like James Bond and Jason Bourne are both spy books & movies but they don't inhabit the same literary world.

I don't mean to cause offense I just find it strange that are boycotting a company for ceasing to support an old game and not liking their new game. At least teh oWoD was supported for a very long wrong - if you just bought Warhammer 40K Dark Heresy rpg then I could understand your annoyance at the game being "dropped".

I can see your frustration if the production of the new WoD has meant players in your area who would have been open to playing oWoD are now not interested and instead want to play nWoD. Is this you problem?

DigitalMage,

I doubt apologies are in order from you. By my inserting the comment in my post, I am the cause of the tangent, not you. I apologize whole-heartedly for creating any skew to the thread.

As for your questions, I feel White Wolf "ruined" the old WoD, and the new as well, by adopting a bottom-line driven," end game, RESET" mentality and have never sufficiently acknowledged or explained the reason behind following this course of action. They ignored the interests of their stake holders (no stock holders) and expect their consumers to follow them like sheep from one game product to the next.

As for Ravenloft, it wasn't ruined in their hands alone, and I have to credit them for taking an otherwise under-appreciated setting and game concept and enabling it to return to a state of acceptance in the age of Hack and Slash gaming. I abhor them for "passing the buck" on it (again without explanation) to Wizards of the Coast, who have no invested interest in the setting or material devoted to it, while in mid-production of three titles which would have made the setting even more palpable. Clearly it's an ordeal they lost money on, so I insist Wizards share the blame as well, and I'm sure White Wolf was not happy with the transfer. They gave away the unpublished manuscript set to go to the printers, "Van Richten's Guide to the Mists" for free in PDF format from their site untl the license was completely transferred. An excellent book, it is a shame it will never see book shelves.

To cover bases on possible questions about my boycotting of Wizards of the coast, again it's their method of managing business. The end game, RESET mentality that drives their decisions every four to six years to completely revise the basic structure of the games they own, forcing all their players to conform or be left behind.

As for finding people who play the game, none of the people in my area have started playing any of the new WoD material because we all HATE it, although a few have begun playing Scion, which is a storyteller game, but is not a WoD product. I have considered dropping my boycott to look into it, but the group that plays is too distant for me to join them, so I have haven't bothered. My reasons are purely for selfish reasons I guess. I have abandoned them because they offered me life on their leash or nothing.

I chose nothing, and grant them the same.

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

As for your questions, I feel White Wolf "ruined" the old WoD, and the new as well, by adopting a bottom-line driven," end game, RESET" mentality

I am still struggling to understand how you feel that ruined the old game? Was the ending a bit lame? I know the Apocalypse book etc apparently had a number of ways of ending the various game lines, but surely if you want to ignore that you could, and continue playing oWoD for many, many years - your oWoD books are still the same.

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

and have never sufficiently acknowledged or explained the reason behind following this course of action.

I am sure I read some material that they felt after continuing to talk about Gehenna and the Apocalypse for so long, they had to really deliver on those.

I imagine this also tied into a desire to end the oWoD and start anew so that they could hopefully increase revenure / profits. I know it has been stated that new players were being discouraged from getting into the oWoD because of all the baggage it entailed - yaers of metaplot that resulted in clans dying out and more. The new WoD is not meant to have any advancing metaplot and is more open to allowing GMs to create their own locations to set their games.

I played V:tM, W:tA, M:tA and had W:tO all from 1st ed, but after 2nd ed I didn't carry on with oWoD - my tastes changed and I had enough material that I could run a game anyway. However the launch of nWoD did entice me to buy WoD, V:tR, W:tF & M:tA again (even though I have only read WoD and V:tR so far) along with their respective GM screens (all 4 of them) and the Chicago book.

I haven't bought into any more of the new line because the writing of V:tR was a bit hard going even though the game is good, and because their PDFs do not display well on my pocket PC (I only really read on that now). Also I unfortunately have not found any players interested in any WoD (old or new) other than my current weekly group playing Dark Ages Vampire occassionally. However if I were to run a game again I think I would use nWoD rules as they seem better and I would probably use the new settings as well.

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

They ignored the interests of their stake holders (no stock holders) and expect their consumers to follow them like sheep from one game product to the next.

I imagine WW believed some oWoD players would come over, and that some wouldn't, but that they hoped the new players they enticed would more than make up for the lost revenue of those oWoD players who didn't - remember core books sell better than supplements and I imagine some oWoD players may not have actually been purchasing any supplements after so many years (like I said I felt I had enough material after 2nd edition, never mind revised and all the dark ages variations).

So if you don't like the nWoD just be happy and continue playing oWoD; it sounds like you still have willing players in your area. And if you're a collector it is great because now you have a finite list of books to collect

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

To cover bases on possible questions about my boycotting of Wizards of the coast, again it's their method of managing business. The end game, RESET mentality that drives their decisions every four to six years to completely revise the basic structure of the games they own, forcing all their players to conform or be left behind.

In the end WoTC are a business and if continuing with an old line is not profitable enough (remember they have to answer to Hasbro) they either do something to reinvigorate the game line, or risk the potential of having it pulled completely - look at Dark Heresy, an RPG line cancelled days after it was released because the higher ups didn't believe it would be profitable enough - not that it would make a loss, but that the profit it made would not be as much as they could gain by channelling the resources from the RPG to the novels.

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

I have abandoned them because they offered me life on their leash or nothing.

I think that is a bit stong, WW didn't try to force you to change to nWoD, they simply ceased producing one product line and offered another very similar one - you are perfectly entitled not to pursue the new game line, but I hardly feel WW tried to put anyone on a leash.

Let me ask you this question, would you have felt differently if WW had simply ended the oWoD line and rather than produce nWoD had instead launched a completely different game line (e.g. they had laucnhed Scion earlier). Would you have felt so bitter then?

DigitalMage wrote:

Let me ask you this question, would you have felt differently if WW had simply ended the oWoD line and rather than produce nWoD had instead launched a completely different game line (e.g. they had laucnhed Scion earlier). Would you have felt so bitter then?

First, I apologize for not responding sooner. Thursdays and Fridays I am very nearly without computer access. To answer honestly, I believe I would have been less upset if they had just ended it completely. I'd have been disappointed, but not bitter.

The fact they didn't just end it outright makes it obvious that they knew there was a demand for it, or else they wouldn't have regurgitated the version of it they put out to replace it. I did buy the premiere new rules books, and hoped it would be on par with the previous game. But it was just a painful ghost of the original.

As for a finite collection, finite collections are great only if you have all the material before it becomes finite. After it's become finite, it becomes too expensive to bother collecting.

AEG's 7th Sea is a finite collection now too, AEG having ended the product line completelyl. They promised to continue adding material to their website for it, but haven't added any new material in two years. I'm not bitter with them over their decision to end 7th Sea though, because although I don't own any of the books, I can get them in PDF format on Drive Thru RPG still, something I can't do with any of the old V:tM, W:tA, M:tA, C:tD, W:tO, or any of the first, second or revised storyteller materials from the old World of Darkness. If they ever release it I'll reconsider my bitterness. Because I do not want to pay $70 for a battered rebound source book in order to have access to the material within.

As for delivering on Gehenna and Apocalypse, that argument is a cop out. They could have just as easily ignored their own ending materials as hypothetical and continued with the old WoD, as you've suggested players that didn't like the ending do.

Ultimately DigitalMage, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this point of contention. I can't sufficiently explain why I feel they ruined the game, it has more levels than any one thing can explain. A lot of it has to do with how angry it made me when they announced there would be no more WoD after the Apocalypse and Gehenna, and a lot of it had to do with how disappointed I was in the new materials released as the new World of Darkness. Still more of it has to do with the hit to my bank account to get the collection of books I owned prior to the end, the proposed hit I would have to take co complete that collection now that it is finite, the lack of advanced warning that the "end" was coming (the real end, not the fictional one), the insufficient explanation for ending it, and much more.

I don't know how else to put it. The actions and circumstances surrounding the whole ordeal have left me with an overwhelming loathing for the entire company, and that same feeling extends to Wizards of the Coast. I want nothing to do with them or their products. It may not be anything to do with them. It is probably all me. There may be no understanding it ever. It's just how I feel about them.


Oh, and so no one feels alienated or fears discrimination from me, I do not extend that feeling to other players of the games published by White Wolf or Wizards. If you like their games, great. They make great games. Honestly. They have some really great writers. I used to love them, maybe that's part of the reason for the flip in attitude. Paradise Lost? Perhaps...? *shrugs*

Honestly, what does it matter? I'm only one consumer's sales lost for them, a huge conglomerate... There are a million or more other consumers out there to make up for me loathing them.



Now, what do the rest of you guys play?


I can now officially add New Gods of Mankind to my list of presently running games. I started a campaign Friday night with five players from the UHCL Gamers' Guild.

Hi Varchild,

This is awesome news.

I would love to hear what goes on during your game session. BTW did you get the replacement CD?

BTW sent a PM to you.

Got the PM. The CD has either a.) come and someone else in my family picked it up and didn't tell me, b.) has come and is still in the mailbox because I haven't gotten by to check it this week, or c.) hasn't arrived yet. I'll do some asking around and if nothing else, I'll know for sure Monday. I did download the PDF of the NGoM NGHB from DriveThruRPG though.