The State of the Chronicles of Darkness

[Arkandel]

What absolutely puzzles me is the sheer amount of incompetence shown by the company so far. Over the weekend I went to one of Toronto's largest and oldest roleplaying stores which is being ran by this guy who describes himself as 'an old wizard'. Kind of looks the part, too. Anyway, he knows everything about every game I dared bring up in his hallowed presence, he's got stories, their history down, behind the scene anecdotes from the time TSR still owned AD&D, which products are on the backburner, everything I could throw at him. It's his job.

Anyway, he had no idea what's happening with the World of Darkness these days.

He basically said they've burned their bridges with their suppliers so they're just trying to keep themselves afloat now; there's no information coming out of there (at least that brick and mortar stores would be aware of) and since even their print on demand stuff are on such loose schedules, with their rebranding causing confusion before these products even come out ('Blood and Smoke! The Idigam Chronicle! No! Second Edition!') and reliance on Kickstarter campaigns based on their much older lines... I'm not terribly optimistic about them.

I dunno, maybe they're onto something, maybe they'll usher RPG gaming into the new millennium with their PDF offerings and whatnot... but I wouldn't bet on it. At this point my only hope is that although they suck as marketing and creating a viable sales network they can at least make good games.

And note that even if they do, even if the 2nd Edition is absolutely fantastic, that's still not enough. Many companies have made excellent products in the past and still died a lonely death, and that was at much better times for this sort of thing, when files weren't put into torrents the day after (... or before) they were released and board game stores were still nexuses of gamer activity.

[Coin]

Yeah, they aren't really following any sort of best practices when it comes to how they do things. They seem to have chosen to it the cheapest and most barebones way possible (Kickstarter, with a core of maybe three full-time staff and everyone else is a freelancer).

[Bennie]

To be fair, I feel like the gaming community caused this in the first place. We all want to work from home and to be freelance writers. We stopped in the 90s wanting to relocate to whatever city and go to the office of. So let's not act surprised when we've gotten down to this model where the businesses really are a few people who teleconference, and the rest are freelancers. It's been coming for twenty years.

It's becoming the norm in a lot of ways. A lot of places have fewer and fewer people in the actual site, a lot more freelance people, we've been cultivating this freedom for a couple of decades. People want to live in Tiny Houses in the mountains and eat turnips grown in their front yards and raise their kids on the great plains now days. So having them all sending in their writing or artwork to some central authority isn't unusual to me anymore. We even do school remotely these days.

[Coin]

@Bennie, there's a huge difference between "we teleconference and send in our work" and "we're freelancers". Freelancers don't have the same responsibilities a full-time employee has, nor the paycheck of one. Freelancers are the ones that leave you hanging when you need their art by the due date and you end up having to find someone else on the fly.

It also doesn't help that on top of basically making up 90% of their staff out of freelancers, they have too many projects going at the same time, which slows all the projects down.

I don't care if it's the norm; it's a bad way to do business.

[tragedyjones]

Also, I don't believe OP markets to brick and mortar stores at all. The only products they ship to them, AFAIK, are demos for Free RPG day. And I don't think they even do that every year - don't see them on the list for 2015.

[Thenomain]

I kind of consider OP to be a somewhat fan-based attempt to keep WoD going. The fans are professional and semi-professional writers, but it's not their IP.

I will accept some growing pains as the people in charge basically try to run a publishing company out of their garage. As long as it is just growing pains.

[Arkandel]

@tragedyjones said:

Also, I don't believe OP markets to brick and mortar stores at all. The only products they ship to them, AFAIK, are demos for Free RPG day. And I don't think they even do that every year - don't see them on the list for 2015.

How large a market would you folks figure we (as in, the online-playing crowd) constitute compared to the exclusively table-top segment? I mean neither market is exactly bottomless or thriving, and I doubt there's any data to back this up - especially for us MU-players - but at a gut check how would the two compare?

Would it have been profitable for them or any other RPG-making company to adjust their product to take into consideration our kinds of games? I'm obviously not saying to gear them specifically for MU*, that'd be crazy, but to accommodate them in play-testing, official multisphere rulings, etc.

[tragedyjones]

@Arkandel said:

@tragedyjones said:

Also, I don't believe OP markets to brick and mortar stores at all. The only products they ship to them, AFAIK, are demos for Free RPG day. And I don't think they even do that every year - don't see them on the list for 2015.

How large a market would you folks figure we (as in, the online-playing crowd) constitute compared to the exclusively table-top segment? I mean neither market is exactly bottomless or thriving, and I doubt there's any data to back this up - especially for us MU-players - but at a gut check how would the two compare?

Would it have been profitable for them or any other RPG-making company to adjust their product to take into consideration our kinds of games? I'm obviously not saying to gear them specifically for MU*, that'd be crazy, but to accommodate them in play-testing, official multisphere rulings, etc.

I am curious but really I don't have any true idea of how much of the playerbase online gamers represent. If I had to estimate, I'd say 10% as a generous high end. But that is just a guess with no factual basis.

[mietze]

I think freelancing coordination is very much the way of all but the dinosaurs of the industry. It doesn't always mean crappy work ethic/scheduling though. My husband has been a freelance/contractor for very small gaming companies for about 15 years now (he has worked from home this entire time). What I've noticed is the projects that are mostly populated by guys/gals who earned their chops in a corporate setting but then left during the startup-boom of the 90s/00s to do their own thing DO carry a lot of the corporate work ethic with them (they show up/expect meetings to start on time, even if it's a skype one, projects are kept on task/on deadline, sometimes one will act as project manager, ect even when it's not strictly necessary). But the people who are coming up plucked out of the community with no professional experience (which seems to be a thing now) often do not have the same ethic (not because they are bad, but they've just never worked in such a setting) so they do have the "freelance means free spirit" attitude above.

It also seems to be a more prevalent attitude amongst the arts side of the house (take that with a huge chunk of salt, though as I'm married to a programmer, so...I'm sure both sides plus marketing bitch and moan equally about each other. ;> )

Even as a relatively disinterested outside observer, I'd say that the computer gaming industry has really changed in huge ways because of the erosion of a market for brick and mortar stuff. I mean, nobody really even buys physical copies of anything anymore. The company hubs has worked for the longest (he's the sole developer for their flagship game, which is the other hidden reason why things are 'slow' sometimes--yes, one would think there's a team, but in reality even some relatively well known titles are developed/worked on by 1 programmer or maybe 2 tops) has only one programmer on that game--him. Everyone else on the team is art, PR, ect, and he's not full time. I would imagine he and that game are not the only ones like that. I assure you he's extremely professional and also works a full time schedule, but ultimately--he's one brain/set of hands, who has to then wait on input/feedback/last minute changes of many people who don't always understand things from a coding perspective or who deviate from the specific things needed from the art without bothering to inform anyone (one of those mistakes that doesn't happen as much with folks who have ample corporate/professional experience) and thus things need to be redone, ect.

[Arkandel]

@tragedyjones said:

I am curious but really I don't have any true idea of how much of the playerbase online gamers represent. If I had to estimate, I'd say 10% as a generous high end. But that is just a guess with no factual basis.

Alright, second trick question with a little follow-up then. Do you think they know we exist? If so, do they care?

[tragedyjones]

They know we exist - or at least that we did. I know there was mention of MU way back when in SOME book, probably oWoD. And during the Golden Age of WWGS, they of course had a much larger online gaming presence. A Palace Chat, New Bremen, etc. Hell I remember they used to have newsgroups.

[Arkandel]

@tragedyjones said:

They know we exist - or at least that we did. I know there was mention of MU way back when in SOME book, probably oWoD. And during the Golden Age of WWGS, they of course had a much larger online gaming presence. A Palace Chat, New Bremen, etc. Hell I remember they used to have newsgroups.

If that's so I must assume we're at best a secondary priority for them, or view prioritizing MU-related content to conflict with their mainstream table-top concerns. For example they're specifically not balancing spheres (something which MU* traditionally care a lot about), crossover rules exist but they are fairly sporadic and summarized in a single page, etc.

That can't be the result of just not having enough room in the book because they could have easily made an official web page with rules about how to convert their content to games like ours. A centralized reference like that would have been invaluable.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said:

That can't be the result of just not having enough room in the book because they could have easily made an official web page with rules about how to convert their content to games like ours. A centralized reference like that would have been invaluable.

This would require them to familiarize themselves with our style of online roleplaying (we're not the only style out there) and given how many differences there are from group to group--and person to person--in playstyle and preferences in MUing, the effort on their part would probably not be worth it.

[Rook]

I seem to recall a WoD game getting a Cease and Desist from WWGS sometime back in the 90s? But I may be misremembering.

[Arkandel]

@Coin said:

@Arkandel said:

That can't be the result of just not having enough room in the book because they could have easily made an official web page with rules about how to convert their content to games like ours. A centralized reference like that would have been invaluable.

This would require them to familiarize themselves with our style of online roleplaying (we're not the only style out there) and given how many differences there are from group to group--and person to person--in playstyle and preferences in MUing, the effort on their part would probably not be worth it.

That's my point. I don't mind if the choices they made weren't what I would have wanted them to, only that there would be a central point of reference for everyone to comply with if they wanted. I think that would have been really handy.

[Bobotron]

@tragedyjones said:

Also, I don't believe OP markets to brick and mortar stores at all. The only products they ship to them, AFAIK, are demos for Free RPG day. And I don't think they even do that every year - don't see them on the list for 2015.

Their business model doesn't support this, no. Considering I've heard horror stories from buddies in the old WW about an order being a day late, and the order itself getting cut by half (and so books are left on a pallet in a warehouse because they have no buyer at that time), or overprinting and having scads of books left over, I can't blame them. Plus the PoD business model seems to work, and we get good print books, which allows them to try something different here and there.

Free RPG Day also probably just doesn't have an offering this year; they had a Blood & Smoke demo that went out last year, but without something immediately on the horizon, they may not have anything they want to put out that's in that level of readiness. They also have a pilot program/beta test thing for FLGSes to order PoDs with a discount to get new WW stuff on the shelves.

@Arkandel

Alright, second trick question with a little follow-up then. Do you think they know we exist? If so, do they care?

I'd say they know about WoD MUing and just don't care. It's like WoD chatgames; people advertise their chat games (and I think I've seen MU ads too) on their forums, both when it was WW as an entity and now as OPP. Chatgames and such are listed on various meetups, facebook groups and tons of other sites.

It's not a blip on anyone's radar, CCP or otherwise, really. We are not violating their IP (typically) and are using it for the intended use. I don't think they have enough time or care to really go 'here are rules for crossovers for those games that want them'. They had a hard enough time with OWoD books trying to do tabletop stuff and then cram MET stuff in them when MET took off.

@tragedyjones said:

They know we exist - or at least that we did. I know there was mention of MU way back when in SOME book, probably oWoD. And during the Golden Age of WWGS, they of course had a much larger online gaming presence. A Palace Chat, New Bremen, etc. Hell I remember they used to have newsgroups.

I know of at least one of the MET Journals that I have a copy of, which was an MET publication, that talked about a couple of WoD MU*s in conjunction with making a Shining Host (Changeling LARP) MUSH and that was more or less it that I can recall from OWoD books.

[surreality]

I'm pretty sure they know we exist -- or some of them did, way back. I don't know if it's any of the folks that are still around or not. In the early 90s, some of the folks who were in the social circles with employees were M*ers, and I've seen actual conversations about it involving all of the above.

Bear in mind, this is the hazy, muddled recollections of a conversation at a Waffle House from about 20 years ago, but it's how I learned for the first time that M* was a thing, about 2 years or so before I ever logged into one, so it stands out at least vaguely from the haze of WTF that was the college era.

Generally speaking, I don't think they give a crap about us unless we're reproducing the content on the game site/website/etc.. That was the only question I recall being asked even then, really, which is more IP-protection-based than anything else.

[HelloRaptor]

and reliance on Kickstarter campaigns based on their much older lines

They'll continue to do this because owod in tabletop is still going pretty strong, especially with the 20th Anniversary Editions they've been coming out with. One of the devs came so, so close to admitting they get more interest in their owod lines than nwod ones, but they can't really go backwards because REASONS.

It's a shame, I'll note for the millionth time, because owod mage > nwod mage in virtually every way except streamlined mechanics.

For example they're specifically not balancing spheres (something which MU* traditionally care a lot about), crossover rules exist but they are fairly sporadic and summarized in a single page, etc.

That would require them to care about balance between spheres at all, which White Wolf was very clear about for many years, THEY DO NOT CARE. Vampires do not have to be as powerful as werewolves, or vice versa. Not in the sense that it's not something they think about, but that it's not something they feel is necessary to begin with. As you say, or alluded to, it's a concern manufactured almost entirely by MU* environments with large spheres where people get their panties in a bunch if they feel like other people have more stuff than them.

There was an owod dev who wrote about how he ran a tabletop group with folks playing stuff from the major splats, even a Wraith, and they had a lot of fun and did fine. More or less for the same reason that D&D groups can run with a Cleric, a Druid, and a Fighter in the same party and manage for the person playing the Fighter to still have fun despite being wildly outclassed in every way. And since that's the norm they feel should be encouraged, that a lack of balance between characters doesn't mean a lack of balance between players, approaching game design otherwise just isn't necessary.

Mind, I'd personally be a lot happier if everybody else was more or less brought up to the Mage level of things in some fashion, but only so I could stop reading about people whining about whatever real or (more often) imagined offense they've suffered recently.

[Bobotron]

Eh. Kickstarter is just a thing. As far as Kickstarter, most OPP projects get a kickstarter for ONLY the deluxe editions. Like Dark Eras currently for NWoD, and Demon and many others. Kickstarter gives them the ability to do more than the baseline book, but even if the kickstarter doesn't fund the base book is still going to be released.

[tragedyjones]

It kills me inside when I am reminded that people still prefer the oWoD versions of Werewolf or Vampire. Mage was ok.

And @Bobotron, the Blood and Smoke was FreeRPG Day 2013. 2014 was an M20 thing.