The Gaming Den

So, apparently White Wolf's IP has all been sold to makers of historical strategy games.

Good? Bad? Thoughts?

I think that it was pretty clear at this point that the Eve guys weren't doing much with the IP. This purchase could maybe lead to videogames in the future - VtM: Bloodlines was fairly well received in spite of being a glitchy mess (possibly because of teething difficulties with the then-new Half Life 2 engine Source). No clue what it will mean in terms of actual RPG system / books / etc.

Anything that might get the RPG license away from Onyx Path is good.

Why would you assume that the first release will be an RPG instead of a grand strategy game where you control one of the Vampire clans, and try to rule the night?

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Why would you assume that the first release will be an RPG instead of a grand strategy game where you control one of the Vampire clans, and try to rule the night?

That sounds pretty cool, actually. I'd play it, if the mechanics were decent.

That sounds amazing, I would play it even as a Crusader Kings mod. As its own game - take my money.

A war game where you pick a race of supers and have battles...

40K look out WWWG is on its way.

Honestly that sounds fun if the mechanics don't suck, the codices are balanced, and the minis are not overly expensive.

Edit: Doh! I should learn to read. The video games could be cool we will see. Leaving my original comments up for the posterity of idiocy.

There's actually a fairly large Dark Ages Vampire mod for CK2 as it is. I haven't played it much because I object to a number of aspects that are orthogonal to being a White Wolf-inspired strategy game, but I think that if the Warhammer mod team had opted to do it instead it'd be fairly awesome, and any new Paradox game would actually have the engine built for it and sidestep some of the insane hackery which would be required.

I want fallout shelter with vampires. You have a coterie, you send them out hunting (or whatever), they train their skills and suchnot...

I'd play all these games.

K wrote:I'd play all these games.

so would i.

I guess if you want a halfway decent tabletop game to come out with all that beautiful White Wolf art, you need to go pester Tobias Sjögren. In the meantime, I am looking forward to the upcoming Paradox take on Sim Vampire Coterie. I expect it to have a lot of bugs and for me to not even care and buy all the expansions.

-Username17

I also have a huge boner for Paradox's upcoming space 4x Stellaris. If even half these promises are kept, it will be awesome.

Color me skeptic. Paradox is a one trick pony whose trick has nothing to whatsoever with RPGs.

silva wrote:Color me skeptic. Paradox is a one trick pony whose trick has nothing to whatsoever with RPGs.

They published Pillars of Eternity.

malak wrote:

silva wrote:Color me skeptic. Paradox is a one trick pony whose trick has nothing to whatsoever with RPGs.

They published Pillars of Eternity.

The only more compelling criticism of a companies ability to make RPGs I can imagine is if they published Tales of the Sword Coast Legends.

Paradox is a full-on publishing house these days. They've published Cities:Skylines and Magicka, for instance. Their internal development studio just does the grand strategy games. If they intend to do a small-party roleplaying game it'll be licensed out to someone, while if they intend to do a grand political game of playing an Elder and his childe struggling for power in the Carmilla while battling the Sabbat, it'll be in-house and add playable other splats in $5-$10 DLC.

Or they might do both.

I've just realized given this news, could this revive the IP? Causing White Wolf to regain relevance again like it did back in the ages of AD&D or such where it was KING? That is, is it even likely Paradox will cause this brand to become more successful than D&D's current repute? (considering it's going majorly downhill I'd imagine yes?)

Is the white Wolf IP even worth anything? You can make "Vampire City" and "Vampire Kings" with your own generic IP and people who like vampires and/or sim games will talk about it regardless.

OgreBattle wrote:Is the white Wolf IP even worth anything? You can make "Vampire City" and "Vampire Kings" with your own generic IP and people who like vampires and/or sim games will talk about it regardless.

Sure. Owning it means that you won't be sued like in the whole Underworld fiasco. Certainly worth the 1.7 mil pricetag, a lowball figure compared to the price of even a single legal challenge.

name_here wrote:Magicka, for instance

Yeah, but that's most definitely not Vampire.

PockPaperShotgun wrote:and confirming that the purchase “includes everything,” even assets CCP created for unreleased games.

...RPGnet waambulances of fanboys crying VEENDEEKEESHUNS and "The MMO wasn't killed after all!" in 3...2...1...

OgreBattle wrote:Is the white Wolf IP even worth anything? You can make "Vampire City" and "Vampire Kings" with your own generic IP and people who like vampires and/or sim games will talk about it regardless.

That's a legit question. Obviously, nothing is stopping you from making your own multi-million dollar vampire franchise from scratch. White Wolf doesn't bring in any concepts that are new. The different vampire clans and organizations are all literary references to existing properties and public domain works, and you could rip off those original sources as easily as you could repurpose White Wolf stuff. Some of the properties are completely vacuous - Scion revolves around the players interacting with public domain characters.

As K pointed out though, White Wolf, like TSR in the day, has done legal challenges on people before. If you own White Wolf, no one is going to take you to court because you accidentally used a word in a similar context to some White Wolf splat you've never heard of. And that's a real risk, because old White Wolf launched a court case against Underworld based on someone calling a vampire/werewolf hybrid critter an "abomination." If you look at buying the IP as preventatively settling all future legal harrassment, it's probably worth seven digits to a company that intends to make a bunch of internationally marketed products with vampires and werewolves in them.

Secondly, White Wolf has decades of owned art assets. Buying the whole pile gets you some very pretty pictures that you can then put on things.

Thirdly: Nostalgia. There was a period when White Wolf was the biggest selling RPG company. But more importantly, it's the second biggest selling brand in history. While White Wolf hasn't done anything you'd wipe your ass with in ten years, Paradox is explicitly looking at making things for the "over 25 market." And that means that they are very definitely looking to market to people who lost their virginites as teenagers after a Vampire LARP. You know, people like me. There are millions of people like me. And it's a market that Paradox is courting.

I mean, yes White Wolf had terrible mechanics and they made a lot of choices that were terrible and detrimental to the game and its potential appeal. Werewolves being obligate dog rapists and Mages not being able to play nice nice with Vampires was just bad. You could do better easily. But Paradox can get a lot of free eyeballs by having their upcoming vampire politics game be called "Camarilla Nights" or something, and that's worth the relative fire sale that the White Wolf company goes for these days. For fuck's sake, they are buying the entire history of White Wolf publications and trade marks for less than twenty cents per book sold.

-Username17

The nostalgia thing is probably the biggest point in favor.

If you're making a (genre) thing and you want it to be a guaranteed hit for some degrees of "hit," you can buy... well... White Wolf's WoD is an excellent example. Something that has already sold well in that genre, but is also basically the cheapest thing on the market. Having VtM, or really any existing recognizable vampire brand, means you are way more likely to make the sales to a large audience because people already know what you're on about.

Dogbert wrote:

PockPaperShotgun wrote:and confirming that the purchase “includes everything,” even assets CCP created for unreleased games.

...RPGnet waambulances of fanboys crying VEENDEEKEESHUNS and "The MMO wasn't killed after all!" in 3...2...1...

The response on the Big Purple is... dumber... than I expected.

Actual Statement wrote:My personal 2 cents. The 20th Anniversary Editions have been the end-all-be-all products of the WoD for me and I'm unlikely to sign on for another edition no matter who puts it out. In that way, what Paradox does with the IP is irrelevant to me but if Paradox pulls the plug on Onyx Path before they can put out a Changeling the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition, I will be a very sad panda.

It's sort of sad to watch. Rpg.net has insisted on taking "Onyx Path" shovelware vanity printings seriously so long, and been so hostile to anyone and everyone who pointed out how fucking empty that crap was that there's nothing left. Onyx Path isn't a real game company and it doesn't make real games. But rpg.net insists on treating it as if it was, and as such is way beyond relevancy a lot of the time.

-Username17

OgreBattle wrote:Is the white Wolf IP even worth anything? You can make "Vampire City" and "Vampire Kings" with your own generic IP and people who like vampires and/or sim games will talk about it regardless.

Yes. The brand has traction. Ignoring the fluff, just calling your game/tv show/dildo/whatever Vampire: The Masquarade automatically attracts a built-in audience.