Still thinks he is better than you
White Wolf is an interesting company. There position in the turbulent, unholy, and confusing oceans of the RPG market is somewhat unclear. While they seem to exist as an alternate……um…..cruise ship……to the yacht of wizards…they seem to spend most of their time declaring they are simply better than any other gaming company, or um...painting there cruise ship funny colors and ….ok I’m going to stop with this metaphor. Anyways, in a market dominated by Dungeons and Dragons and the D20 format, White Wolf thrives in being the lone alternative non 3E system of any real status (with the possible exception of Legend of the Five Rings). Yes I know I’m insulting so many companies out there, but lets be sort of honest, White Wolf is the most powerful in terms of recognition In fact that’s their entire marketing scheme. Their motto is “We aren’t Wizards” and their entire game system strives to have a different feel than D&D. This is because their target audience is people who for one reason or another are pissed off at Wizards and want something, anything that’s different. But here is the catch, once you get past the advertising and snide remarks, White Wolf is not that different; they just feel the need to project an image of themselves as unique and pretend that they are drawing no inspiration from D&D, which like the cake, is a lie.
While this self deception seems natural for a company that has long survived in the shadow of such a behemoth, it very annoying that they consider me and other D&D players the unwashed masses of the RPG world while the players of their games are the sophisticated elite. The best example of this, and I feel almost guilty using this, but hey White Wolf you did it, is (http://secure1.white-wolf.com/graduateyourgame/). This is an advertisement literally dripping with conceit and arrogance. It’s also, ironically enough, not true on many levels, as I’ll explain when we get into the specifics of each game. They really don’t actually do anything very different, because almost all of there “elite” status comes from there tendency to focus on stories, but that mostly boils down to repeating things that most people take for granted (see also World of Darkness story tips.)
The funny thing is that White Wolf sells itself on being more sophisticated, but there really isn’t anything to back this claim other than their advertising department. In fact, in many ways they are much like D&D, the only real difference boils down to the simple fact that their games have a storytelling system based upon drama as opposed to the more all encompassing system used by Wizards. That doesn’t make them better, it makes them different, and their claims of greater complexity again boil down to just that, claims. White Wolf also sells themselves as being more mature, but that just means that they see the need to insert a curse word, followed by a sex or drug reference in every other paragraph. And it’s not like Wizards avoids touching upon issues like sex, drugs, and what not, they just tend to be more discreet. What is most annoying about White Wolf is their self satisfied attitude that they are the bringers of RPG story telling enlightenment, and that all other games are shallow pastimes for immature wimps
Now, let’s be fair, to an extent White Wolf does have a valid viewpoint. I admire them for not edging around certain topics, and actually being upfront about the existence of drugs and sex while Wizards has an annoying tendency to avoid certain subjects. This might seem like a contradiction, but let me explain. Wizards does still address more mature issues like sex, drugs, and demon worship (not promoting it) and when they do I think they do so in a more adult manner than White Wolf (see also subtly). But they segregate mature materials to a few select books. So I do admire White Wolf for at least addressing some of the more controversial issues, but they seem to do that more out a need to gain the “darker and more mature” label then out of any sense of actual maturity, especially in the World of Darkness game system. So while I’m not going to say they are more mature than Wizards, I will acknowledge that they don’t tiptoe around issues like sex and drugs, though how they handle these taboo subjects is inconsistent and varies from game to game.
This leads to the singular and most annoying aspect of White Wolf; the fans. Now I’m aware that I’m generalizing here, and that the majority (how much of a majority I’m not sure) of White Wolf fans are normal gamers who enjoy a different style of RPG. But there is a disturbingly vocal minority of White Wolf fans who are arrogant snobs constantly going on about how their storytelling based games allow so much more maturity and freedom and that people who play any other game are just dimwitted lunkheads. White Wolf isn’t any more mature than D&D played by mature people. All that White Wolf does is add a few chapters in each book telling people how to be a good role-player, how to use drama, and how to tell stories, but almost all of it is stuff I’ve taken for granted, like how to make sure that everybody in the group knows the type of game you’re your planning on running. It just seems so, simplistic. And personally I find the White Wolf story telling system more limiting in terms of freedom and opportunity but if you are somebody who prefers a focused plot over a more open ended sandbox style of gaming, then I can see how it is better for you. I mean, White Wolf calls itself the more mature system, and while I suppose it can be fun, it seems kind of linear. To be fair, its really just a different set of standards, though some of White Wolf’s fans really seems determined to paint it as the ultimate gaming system. Now normally I don’t judge a system by its fans, but considering White Wolf’s marketing department, its understandable for me to blame the system. Again, not all White Wolf fans are arrogant snobs, and I am certainly not advocating going up and attacking them with rusty lead pipes, but it is a really annoying factor.
But you know what irks me most about White Wolf is that for eight years now I’ve been refuting claims of their superiority, and while I’ve respected them as a company, I’ve refused to admit they were better than D&D. But with the release of 4th Edition D&D, I’m going to have to actually agree with the claims that White Wolf makes better games. Wizards went and made White Wolf’s fantasy of superiority a reality by making an edition that seems to be based upon White Wolf’s negative portrayals of their game as simplistic and primitive. So for all my grievances with White Wolf, I’m going to have to join the fans that hold it up as a superior system, and I’m going to have to admit that they make a better product. So while my article may seem rather negative, in reality it’s just me getting the last of my anger out at White Wolf before I’m forced to join them in supporting them over Wizards. Actually in reality I’m going to join the people supporting Paizo, but still.
Anyways, once your get past their arrogant marketing department, White Wolf actually produces some really good quality stuff. The best example of this is, ironically enough, their D20 production line of 3rd edition games, known as “Swords and Sorcery” and I highly recommend checking out their stuff. When it comes to 3E games, I’d say that while Sword and Sorceries have never produced anything that I think beats D&D’s finest books/settings, they do tend to produce more above-average books on a more frequent basis, and aren’t trying to squeeze more money out of the consumer. Unlike the “average” D&D book, which tends to be mostly slanted in favor of mechanics with fluff being, well fluff, fun extra content, Sword and Sorcery focuses on the story telling and world details more than mechanics (true that does lead to some clunky mechanics). And I really like their world design and the amount of effort they put into their settings, as well as their focus on the details. I mean Scarred Lands and the World of Warcraft RPG setting are really good.
And despite my dislike of their attitude, I have to say that White Wolf tends to produce some very good games. I like how they put effort into the fluff/story works of their games and I like their general cynicism when it comes to how their worlds work. This helps makes their game worlds seem more realistic. I’m mixed about their sense of humor however. On one hand, they can be rather funny and its nice to read a book where you feel that writers area actual people, but on the other hand it can feel rather unprofessional to an extent. There is something rather comfortable about the writing style of D&D (and by that yet again I referring to pre 4E D&D) in the way it seems really professional and rather even minded, and I like that. But there is something to be said about the kind of relaxed attitude of the White Wolf writers. And I really do like their focus on storytelling and background over mechanics and things that involve math (ok I might be slightly biased there) and they do a great job. While I’m not going to say they are more “mature” than Wizards, they do delve head long into some really interesting and complex subjects and themes, which I really appreciate. I also like how White Wolf, unlike Wizards, actually makes more than one game, at least in theory (through in reality they are so similar it doesn’t make much of a difference, but shut up), with different flavors and themes, through I suppose one could make an argument that D&D is deigned, again in theory, to be able to accommodate all types of game styles, so they don’t need to design more than one game. Through seriously, why won’t Wizards make a magic the Gathering RPC, with a separate rule basis. I mean, its guaranteed to sell.
Now I’m not saying White Wolf is inferior to D&D, just that they are different. What White Wolf does best of course is that they are a niche game, i.e. a game aimed at one particular style of gaming or one singular theme. For example, if you like the idea of playing some sort of supernatural creature of legend in a dark modern day setting, well that is pretty much what World of Darkness is designed to do, whether you want to play as vampire trying to exist among the living, a demon struggling with the nature of fate, a werewolf trying to exist without notice, or a fairy from another realm. If you’re into playing epic leveled Heroes, well that is what Exalted is made for. White Wolf focuses upon designing games to appeal to a very specific bunch of players, while D&D is more of a game aimed at being adaptable to any type of style of play, at least in theory. So that said, when I review White Wolf, I have to bear in mind that each game is aimed for one specific audience and try to accept that.
The only thing that White Wolf is really bad is organization. I’ll go more into this when I review the specifics of each game, but they have annoying problems with cross referencing between books, and generally are hindered by incoherent organization and kind of unprofessional activities. A great example of this is the WoW source book referencing to out of print books that haven’t been reprinted yet. There are more, but I’ll touch on those when I get down to the details in each book, but it is a problem that keeps coming up. What is nice about Wizards is that they tend to be rather professional in there presentation, no matter how bad they get (again, not counting 4E).
In conclusion, while I dislike their arrogance and smugness, I still think White Wolf is one of the best RPG companies out there, and produce some really good stuff. I just want to get my bias out of the way for my future reviews. For the record, the reason for the delay was that I wanted to finish all the books before reviewing, and then I had to write this because my bias kept coming up in each article. So that is what I have against White Wolf but in the end I still like them because they are actually a good company who (unlike Wizards) at least give a damn about their product. So with that being said, let’s get to reviewing the specifics. Next, Exalted. Oh and for the Record, Changing the Lost is Freaking AWSOME.
(Note, I was also hindered as I got Silent Hill 2 and Portal for Christmas, and do you honestly expect me to write when I could be playing those? I mean seriously now).
19 comments:
Good job! This was a well-written and interesting start to what will, no doubt, be an interesting series of reviews.
There was an issue you raised which I slightly disagree with.
I actually like D&D's "fluff" to mechanics ratio. This is the case for two reasons: the abundance of options this allows (mechanically) and the freedom it allows the DM.
The first of these reasons is simply explained -- more feats/PrCs/spells/etc. means more ways to make your character be able to do (mechanically) whatever you want it to do. The ability to play around with a character's mechanical capabilities is important to me as a player.
The second reason, however, is even more important to me. I find systems where there is a pre-set "fluff" somewhat limiting as a DM, and somewhat tiring as a player.
I like to have little setting-specific material in RPG books because I like to make up my own worlds. If a system is too closely-tied to a single setting, it becomes difficult to do this.
A good example of RPGs with this problem this would be any of the Star Wars Roleplaying games. Not only has the "world" been written for me, but the overall plot has as well. Everyone, including the players, knows the outcome of the Star Wars saga. As a DM, the only way to make it so the PCs can influence the plot is to break cannon (which some Star Wars fans find intolerable).
I'm not saying that setting-specific RPGs can't be fun. The Star Wars RPGs, Call of Cthulhu, and other such games can be great fun. But, they don't have the endurance that D&D has. After playing a couple campaigns with a Star Wars RPG, you get bored with the setting. However, in D&D, assuming that you've got creative DMs, most campaigns you play in will take part in very different settings alleviating the boredom of repetition which can be encountered in setting-specific RPGs.
Thank you very much. I've been delayed with Exalted because i wanted to review the 1E version after reading the new version, but ordering books from Barns and Noble gives you about a 50% chance of getting what you want at best.
Anyways i think there are two main points here
1) Here is my tentative stance on the D&D fluff. I like it when they put a lot of detail in explaining how there game works from a logical perspective. I mean, rules are fine (well they aren't because its 3E, but shut up I'm trying to make point here) but i always think its more important to understand how a world using these rules would function and the details on he creations/races/classes/items/gods/what have you exist and interact with each other. This can be done great in some books, even non campaign specific books. Lords of Madness has my eternal respect for that, as does Book of Exalted Deeds. But often times Wizards just puts fluff in almost as an add on, or an added bonus, which makes the book seem almost tasteless (Complete series, i am so looking at you). For all of my dislike of there attitude, i will admit that reading White Wolf games seems, well enjoyable, at least with most of there books. One of my biggest complaints with 4th edition is the total lack of fluff and the massive focus on combat above everything else.
2) Oh you misunderstand. I understand what you mean in terms of non setting specific fluff. Whenever i read RPG books, D&D or otherwise, i often prefer fluff that can be easily used in any type of setting/style of game. General fluff, storytelling fluff, and back ground fluff is great, but i like to be able to uses it easily. Stuff that is extremly setting specific that isn't part of a designed setting normally annoys me, because its useless to me as written. So i totally understand your point there. However i think all good games should have a massive focus on fluff and story telling regardless of setting or style, because that is what makes a game actually enjoyable and have depth. D&D pre 4th generally did this, some times wonderfully sometimes in a basic way, but they tried. White Wolf at least tries to do it in almost every book i've read, again with various levels of success, but i applied there trying. Heck, you can play exalted with the same general theme with a totally different setting. So thats my main point. I understand not liking too much focus on setting
I agree that games should have a focus on the "fluff" of the world they take part in. Trust me, I've played in way too many railroaded "hack'n'slash" games to believe otherwise.
Perhaps my prejudice against very setting specific systems spawns from all the trouble I've run into DMing Star Wars RPGs for Star Wars fans. :P
By the way, I've noticed a lot of 4e hate floating around. What's your reason for disliking it? Personally, I prefer 3.X for the options it allows when making characters. I guess 4e is kind of bland flavor-wise, but, with a creative DM, it could work pretty well.
Oh boy... he could start a Phd Thesis on why he don't like 4th ed, and that's just the beginning.
1) Yeah, basically that without fluff the game lacks the mortar to hold it together. Its like how in writing you can technically avoid subtly and be really blatant in all of your points.....but then you have a boring book without any depth (and your like Ann Ryand, insert zing sound here).
But you are right about flexiable fluff being important otherwise you alienate players
2) I actually like setting specific games, but i realize that they aren't the only way to design a game. personally i prefer settings for a rule basis more than a game designed for a specific setting. But anyone can work out. now, i've never actually played Star War through so i can't say.
3) I hate 4th Edition. Now, i wanted to have a new edition, because 3E is horribly broken, but they just made a balanced system by simplifying it down to a basic combat game. Now, not all people who like it are stupid, but it is soley a niche game, a combat hack/slash/ war game at heart. Thats fine, but not as a new edition. So its a disappointment for D&D. Through Fri is right, my anti 4E comments could take up books, so lets just leave it at that for now until i publish articles on the subject. Through you can find me at Order of the Stick i have.....a lot to say about it.
Fri-Give me five years, and i'll give you a copy lol
thanks very much
Why do I get the feeling that you were thinking of a certain Playground opponent of yours as you were writing that rant about certain elements of the White Wolf fanbase, EE? ;)
Kpengiun, are you possibly implying that i might get into an argument with a certain ex playgrounder, who has an obsession with White Wolf and a general sense of bad taste? What a radical idea. I assure you I have never born any grudges against any PLaygrounder, and I have never had any suppressed anger and frustration towards this ex playgrounder, who most likely doesn't exist and i've never met......
DAMNIT RUTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
i mean,........why can't we be friends why can't we be friends
What exactly makes 4e a completely hack-n-slash game? I've played in some 4e campaigns and they weren't as hack-n-slashy as some of the 3.X campaigns I've played in (mind, they were pretty extremely hack-n-slash, but still...). I've spent full sessions in one of the 4e games I play in wandering around a town searching for clues to a mystery.
While the 4e books do spend more time discussing combat than pretty much anything else, from my experience, it doesn't seem that it forces the game to become hack-n-slash at all.
By the way, I'm not trying to be rude or anything. I'm just curious about your opinion. :)
Your not being rude at all, in fact you've been quite civil
The thing is, the only thing that the 4E books as written focus on is combat. Take the Monster Manual. You have 305 sets of totally different states, a picture, maybe three sentences of background, and a picture. its like a monster guide to a video game, its all stats
The game itself is designed with combat in mind. It kinda makes sense, because 3E was so unbalanced, the best way to balance 4E is to simplify everything down to a combat basis because its simpler, but the result is that the entire mechanic system is built upon combat as its main base over everything else (attacks per encounter and minions are the most annoying example of this). So you get a game who's main point is combat, and everything else is like added detail. much like most wargames.
Also there is really no background in the stories themselves at all, which is very annoying sadly.
I know that I'm being very vague and i'm sorry, but if i go into it too much, we will have another essay
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EE
Yeah. I definitely agree on the Monster Manual. Of the 4e book I have, it is by far the worst. The lack of even the vaguest description of the basic biology/society of the creatures makes them hard to use as a DM.
The PHB's not too bad though.
Yeah, its like a book of miniatures or random encounters rather than a bestiary of the beings that inhabit a fantastical world. Very just.....ug
The PHB isn't like painfully horrible (well apart from the rules but....yeah) but it doesn't add anything
On other news, i really shouldn't have said White Wolf is the only other competitor. Warhammer, Shadowrun and Gurps are kinda big, through i personally have never played them
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EE
While my experience with D&D in any variety is limited to a couple one-off games of 3.5, I never objected to the lack of fluff in the Monster Manual.
After all fluff is pretty setting specific, and by construction the MM always felt reasonably setting neutral to me. In short I liked the MM's "here's some stuff, do with it what thou wilt" approach.
WG, i'm talking about the 4E MM,s not 3E. I think 3E does lack content, but it does enough to get by. It certainly could to more indepth, rather than having a bunch of random encounters, but it isn't bad
Right, I understand that you are talking about 4E, not 3E. I just don't find it neccessary for MM style books to provide loads of detail on monster habits. I can make those up in about three minutes, pretty much anybody can. Hell, that's pretty much how my GM runs everything- there are monsters/enemies that make sense for the setting and location as he decides*.
What I can't do in about three minutes, and I know very few people who can do is to whip up a balanced monster from scratch on the spot. That's where the MM comes in, since it gives a major leg up on running a reasonably spontaneous game**.
* Of course my GM also only runs Star Wars Saga Edition and Serenity games, in which enemy selection is significantly easier. Everybody knows that you'll run into some sort of security guards when attacking the spaceport, but whether one would run into orcs this high in the mountains is a more complicated question. It's also the sort of thing I'm getting at- I open the MM and boom, there's a monster I can use. I don't have to spend five minutes reading over its description to see if it would in fact live in the mountains.
**As I intuited earlier, the games I play in tend to be fairly far from the 'adventure path/set dungeon' style. We pretty much just get an adventure hook, then proceed to do random stuff (read: kill things) until we obtain our objective. How we go about this is fairly unpredictable, and can vary from intimidating people to bombing deserted ruins on the off chance we hit something to walking up to guys and shooting them in the face. This naturally calls for a good deal of flexibility from our GM, and simply being able to look up a monster is a real help.
here is the thing through, much like writing a book, making up good back story isn't actually that easy. I mean, look at Eragon when it comes to making interesting cultures and creatures.........
now if your going for a Combat focused game, then your right, you only need stats. But thats the thing, 4E is, for all intents and purposes, a combat built game.
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EE
I agree that creating a good story is not easy. I really don't see what monster fluff has to do with it however.
The thing is, for me anyway, a good story comes from character interaction, suspension of disbelief and the chance of failure. Having monster fluff is only helpful for one of these (suspension of disbelief), and monster habits really are not hard to create at all.
For example if you have a swamp, you need creatures to populate it. So you start looking through the MM for creatures that swim, things like that. With a bit of work, and I mean not very much at all, you can arrange them into a sort of ecosystem, top predator, primary prey animal, scavenger, etc. None of this needs to be that terribly in depth, because if your characters are more worried about your ecology than the story, you are already sunk. Then when you need an encounter, you can just insert a scavenger unwilling to leave a carcass on the trail, or a rabid top predator, or a grazer who becomes hostile if the players get too close to her nest. Something like that.
Now if the MM had ever contained information like this, I might be a bit more upset about its removal. Stuff about monster culture really doesn't help me at all, because the monster's culture is going to be motivated pretty much by neccessity. If I need orcs to live in villages of twenty to thirty under a warchief/shamen power structure, that's how orcs are going to roll. Later if I want orcs to live semi-nomadic lives following herds across grassland plains, orcs will do that too. It'll be just a different orc culture.
Not only is this more expedient, it keeps everything from getting species-cast, and makes culture, well, cultural again.
Two main points through
1) The thing is through, the culture adds a lot to it. It makes it something more than a random encounter. I ask you, what is more interesting. The mind flayer is a squid headed monster that uses phyic powers and eats brains. Or,the Mindflayers are in fact, a race of beings from an alternate version of the future, who have returned to the past to avoid total destruction, only to find that by the very act of returning the past, milliums before they were suppose to exist, they have already fundementally altered the past to the point of being non regonizable. They live in a hive mind societ led by a giant intellegent brain that absorbs the brains of dead flayers. They are afraid of the sun, and leech off emotions, and are created by inserting there spawn into the brains of humans, effectivly taking over there body. Even if you don't want to use the second theory (as shown in Lord of Madness) it is certainly more appealing
2) the thing is, before 4E edition they did include a more detail. Take the blood war, a cosmic fight between the forces of evil law and evil chaos. They scrapped that. Or take the typical battle fodder, orcs and goblins ect, they are presented as total fodder in the 3E MM, but over time they have effectivly evolved into an acceptable race. But 4E just reduced them to an even more battle fodder existance
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EE
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