(no subject)

[mr_bad_example]

I recently had occasion to purchase the new World of Darkness and Vampire RPGs from White Wolf. I've been reading them on and off for the past couple of weeks, and the new games really got me thinking (first thought: Don't stop in your neighborhood Barnes & Noble when you're really only just out for a walk).


The World of Darkness is pretty straightforward; it provides the rules for playing as a normal human in the WOD setting. It's the core book, and it provides the description and rules of the game world. The other books in the line (Vampire: the Requiem is available now; Werewolf: the Forsaken and Mage: the Awakening are forthcoming) will tell you what to do when, say, your character wakes up to find himmerherself turned into a vampire. I think they're going the right way with this; previously, the basic rules information was included in each core book for each game line. Now, you just have to buy the basic rulebook once, and each game line is available as an add-on. Even without involving vampires, werewolves, and mages, the basic WOD rules have the potential for some good, spooky, Call of Cthulhu-esque fun.

I also find what White Wolf has done with the Vampire line quite interesting. Vampire: The Requiem dumps the baggage that accumulated over the years in Vampire: the Masquerade. They've reduced the number of clans to 5, jettisoning the one-trick-pony clans like the Samedi and the for God's sake Daughters of Cacophony. Now, each Vampire clan represents one of the more traditional elements of vampire myth; for example, Anne Rice's decadent hedonists are represented in the Daeva, and Murnau's deformed plague-carriers are still represented by the Nosferatu. It's a much more back-to-basics approach.

Beyond the streamlining of the clans, though, I was interested by one thing: It's no longer the case that the newly-created vampires are automatically powerless pawns of the older vampires. In the old game, younger vampires were basically screwed; the powerful would always be powerful, and the weak and disenfranchised would always be so. The new game provides more opportunity for advancement in the world of vampires: Especially powerful vampires have to go into vampiric sleep ("torpor") for years or even centuries in order for their blood to thin out enough that they can function in the world again. In the meantime, other vampires have the opportunity to step in and claim some of their power.

I wonder if this doesn't in some way reflect the aging of the fan base. I fathom that many Vampire players got into it at about the same time I did, when we were in college, shortly after the game first came out. At best, many of us were only beginning to enter the workforce and just learning what it was to be subject to the whims of middle management. It's a given that a game whose central point was struggle against an immobile and ossified power structure would appeal to alienated teens and twentysomethings.

Now, ten or twelve years later, our lives are different. Not all of us are middle management drones, but we're more established. Maybe we've begun to accumulate a little power of our own. Suddenly, a game about raging against eternally-established power structures isn't quite as appealing as one about one's elders vanishing and leaving the opportunity for advancement.

Then again, maybe it was all just about getting rid of those useless Daughters of Cacophony.

Comments

[eevilyounggirl.livejournal.com]

You're likely right about the reasons for the update. That, and every set of given variables loses its interest after a certain amount of time. New things are great!

Though I must say, from the name, it sounds like it's that it's set in some sort of "vampire end times," which is lame. That also seemed to be the image they projected while we were at Gen Con. Please to be telling me that it isn't.

[mr-bad-example.livejournal.com]

Actually, the whole "vampire end times" thing was the major subplot of the previous game, Masquerade. That's one of the reasons they ended that game - they'd been teasing it for so long, they sorta had to go somewhere with it. Requiem doesn't pound on that theme at all. "Requiem" is just the term they use for existence as a vampire.