RPG: New Blood for Vampire the Masquerade and Werewolf
Break out your ankhs and black makeup…the World of Darkness is back.
Following in the wake of Paradox Interactive’s 2015 acquisition of White Wolf Publishing, the company’s been curiously quiet as to what their plans were with the licenses that White Wolf owns (many titles, like Exalted and Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition, belong to Onyx Path Publishing). Earlier this year saw the release of two pieces of interactive fiction–a Vampire-centric one entitled We Eat Blood, by Zak Sabbath (one of the authors of the Blue Medusa):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooC_7rHLDU
And another based on Mage: The Ascenscion called Refuge, by Karin Tidbeck of Jagganath fame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKXfCvqCfmY
Now I love games like these, and they certainly jibe with Paradox’ plans to build the franchise out into a transmedia property…but recently over at ICv2 we spotted some more news about the venerable (some might even say antedeluvian) World of Darkness.
White Wolf Publishing was purchased by Swedish company Paradox Interactive in 2015 (see “White Wolf Publishing Acquired by Paradox Interactive”), and Paradox has since split White Wolf Entertainment off as a sister company.
AdvertisementVampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition is planned for Q1 of 2018, with a new edition of Werewolf to follow. Plans are to continue the metagame that was shaped in 2004. White Wolf plans to release new role playing game products, fiction, board games, card games and miniatures games as it develops Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf into transmedia properties. The company is currently getting pitches from creators.
White Wolf has developed two interactive stories with distribution through Asmodee Digital, and will be previewing a World of Darkness – The Documentarydirected by Giles Alderson on May 11 in Berlin at the World of Darkness Berlin convention (see preview below).
White Wolf has not finalized a decision yet on U.S. distribution for the tabletop games.
*Onyx Path Publishing has licensed rights to Exalted, Chronicles of Darkness(Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition, Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition, Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition, Geist: the Sin-Eaters, Mummy: the Curse, Demon: the Descent, and Beast: the Primordial) and World of Darkness: 20th Anniversary. The Chronicles of Darkness, which includes a mix of legacy and nostalgia editions, functions separately from the current White Wolf game lines.
So there you have it folks. Next year will see a new edition of both Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf, with a whole host of accessories to support it. I’m not sure how I feel about this–on the one hand, there’s a lot of storyline retconning that’ll have to get done (and I am one of those weirdos who liked Requiem better than Masquerade [same with Awakening vs. Ascenscion]), but on the other hand, the World of Darkness is a classic for a reason.
The World of Darkness broke new ground for moody, Urban Fantasy, and there’ve been some games that have broken wonderful ground with that whole concept since then (I’m looking at you Dresden Files RPG) and I’m interested to see how they integrate the updated state of play, as it were, into the game–even if they are going back to party like it’s 2004, they can’t pretend that it’s not also 2017.
Now to go dig up my notes for recreating Keifer Sutherland as both Vampire AND Hunter…
