Imperioratorex Caprae said:
maybe they'll do something better with the IPs than let it sit...
Old World of Darkness is actively being worked on, you know. They are calling it
classic World of Darkness but there are supplements that come out for it. All of them are currently related to 20th Anniversary Edition material but there is also a next edition in the works. They are calling it 5th edition right now.
As for nWoD - I agree it had a somewhat rocky start. Or maybe not "rocky" as much as exceedingly bland. It's still a very good game underneath it, especially after they stopped trying to do "old WoD but...new" which
Vampire and
Werewolf were for the most part - mechanical changes and some cosmetic changes but very clearly the same core games underneath. Mage was so-so because it followed the same pattern as the latter two, however, it required a relatively (in-game) metaphysical shift and (out-of-game) mechanics change to make it fit the new paradigm.
Hunter is where nWoD started to do something fresher. The game itself was not that huge a deal but the three tier system[footnote]basically, tier 1 chronicles are very local - few hunters who are active in a city block, for example. Or maybe limited to one city. No big advantages over normal guys, either, though they might have access to a bit more restricted or resouces (guns, some occult texts, etc.). Tier 2 is larger - either city-wide where the PCs are not the only hunters around or it might span in an area. Power level is a bit above mortals in terms that characters have access to more exotic equipment and boosts, sometimes quasi-supernatural but not overtly or excessively so. Tier 3 is all out global conspiracies. The characters will be members of multi-national world-spanning secret organisations and will have access to powers and items that few mortals would even believe exists.[/footnote] started adopting and backporting it. Which, to be honest, makes perfect sense. It was present in various degrees up to that point anyway but it was finally codified.
After that, the real cool stuff started coming out. Even though I don't really like
Promethian it's definitely a different flavour off the beat that nWoD had established at that point.
Geist I'm really conflicted about (love the mechanics. Don't really like the setting portrayed) but it was definitely venturing out there.
Mummy was a big change of pace. In a lot of respects I feel it's close to
Promethean (seems to be better suited to either 1-on-1s or very, very small groups) but I'd argue it does pretty much everything better. Probably because it flips a lot of mechanics on their head, but still.
And then...there was
Demon. I friggin' loved
Demon partly because of the game but partly because it ushered the
new new World of Darkness.
Enter nWoD 2nd edition. This, I feel, was the single most important step that they did with the entire setting. In fact, it is the thing that nWoD was always missing. Being
different. For, like, half its lifespan nWoD was just following the footsteps of its predecessor thus always implicitly in its shadow. Yet 2nd edition re-does the entire setting and all the gamelines. All of them retain the
spirit of their respective franchise but are quite changed on both macro and micro scale. It all fits A LOT better and it all serves to differentiate them from their predecessors. I feel VtR would have been quite better received if it didn't have that constant whiff of "well, here is the same thing as before but, hey, we slightly changed this and tweaked that a bit".
When comparing nWoD 1st and 2nd edition, I can't help but feel that 1st edition was more like "oWoD: Next" with a bunch of meta-story stripped out. The 2nd edition does have that minty new feel and even when it does something similar to before, it
feels different enough to stand up by itself.
Anyway, to backtrack a bit to 1st edition - it wasn't
all that bad (or "bland", if you will). Even if we take the first game lines that were release, the supplements that came out definitely managed to take the building blocks laid down initially and use them to good effect. They could have helped for nWoD to feel more "meaty" if they were released sooner, at a faster rate, or otherwise their schedule was altered to enhance the setting more. Yet, at the same time, some of the first supplements felt sloppy and rushed, too. It was especially apparent in supplements that had very inconsistent formatting - as if several different people wrote them then just stitched them together. Which, is pretty much what happened, as far as I'm aware.
Overall, nWoD did have its share of trouble. Yet it was clear that White Wolf started it with the best of intentions, however, they struggled until they found their footing. That seemed to happen right around the CCP acquisition, however, how much, if at all, of an influence did the merger make, I don't know.
