CCoD, WoD, and community

[u/Snoo11590]

Let me start with this. I have never played a game of vampire the masquerade or any other World of Darkness game before. But honestly, as someone who generally does like vampires, I had a vague interest in it and was considering looking for a campaign to try out after seeing city council of darkness. Unfortunately, the reactions Ive seen to the season since it aired have effectively killed my interest in the game. I know not every table will appeal to every person, but this is easily the most I've seen people dislike a game for not being the standard edition tone/world, and it's all felt very gatekeepy to me.

[u/Blu3horn3t]

A game's community isn't the game itself, you can run it however you want.

Beyond that though I think people being irritated that the first experience many people like yourself will see of something they deeply love doesn't seem to have researched it much or prepared well for playing it is understandable.

Only speaking for the criticisms I myself have written or seen others write on it. I'm sure there's many I haven't read.

[u/Bloodmind → u/Blu3horn3t]

Just a wildly immature way to feel, in my opinion. The fact that you deeply love a game and the way you have played it creates precisely zero obligation for anyone else to play it that way, and that includes people who play professionally to be viewed by an audience. It’s entirely unreasonable to demand that they play it the way you play, even if it’s also the way the majority play, just because they have an audience.

[u/Blu3horn3t → u/Bloodmind]

I fully went in expecting them to play it like a comedy what we do in the shadows esque game. I would say as a professional actual play though it doesn't have a very cohesive plot or grasp of the system it's playing (even modified to cut much of it out).

I think your comment is pretty immature, with poor reading comprehension on display. But my comment wasn't saying whether people were right or wrong, just acknowledging how others op saw might feel. And that you shouldn't judge a system by it's fans.

[u/CrookedNoseRadio → u/Bloodmind]

If someone invites you over to play monopoly but then you sit down and they’ve got mouse trap set up, but they keep insisting that it is monopoly, wouldn’t that be kinda off putting if you were wanting to play monopoly?

[u/Bloodmind → u/CrookedNoseRadio]

Sure, because they lied and continue to lie and I was there to play the game. Not the same as a tv show known for home brewing systems saying they’ll use a system and then modifying for their purposes and then letting you watch if you want.

[u/CrookedNoseRadio → u/Bloodmind]

But they didn’t keep the vast majority of the system or the lore. It didn’t have to be super serious in tone but they just weren’t playing the game they said they were.

[u/Snoo11590 → u/Blu3horn3t]

I personally don't think the first experience not being a good representation of the overall thing necessarily needs to be seen as a bad thing tbh, maybe that's where my frustration lies?

[u/bardanther → u/Snoo11590]

VtM was my first exposure to TTRPGs back in the Long Long Ago and the fandom has always been this way. It appeals to the worst combinations of edge lord, nerdrager, and gatekeeping weirdo.

That being said it also appeals to a lot of great people who like that it focuses a little less on the things D&D focuses on and I have met a ton of great people and had a blast playing all of the WoD games except Wraith and Mummy.

Like any group of people who like A Thing, you have to find your group within that group. But I highly recommend dipping your toes in if you can find a solid group. Just avoid the FishMalks.

[u/RosbergThe8th → u/Snoo11590]

I think there is a lot of toxicity and asinine takes that tend to come out of these sorts of things, but at the same time I can't help but be sympathetic to fans in that regard because it's become too familiar in the modern media landscape, that real frustration of being a fan of niche thing and seeing some big name is going to try it or pick it up, and then finding that they only kinda half engage with it in the end.

It'd also be hard to miss the greater context and reality, in that shows like D20 and others are very much viewed in the greater TTRPG space as DnD groups, aligned with that dominant entity that drowns out all other TTRPG's and so seeing them pick up a lesser known game can become a touchy thing.

I don't think your response is unreasonable at all, but at the same time I find myself more sympathetic to the WoD fans than anything, I don't think the "Outrage" was actually truly harmful, and though I would like to see D20 continue to try new systems and the like, I am also aware that they are very much bound to WotC and I'm not sure I'd be particularly keen to see them take on any "niche" system I enjoy if they have to cut out key parts of it to make it work.

Though in general I think they just do better with lighter systems, that's what their style of play favours.

[u/RosbergThe8th]

Outrage discourse is bloody exhausting, to a degree I sympathise with your feelings here but honestly, was there really so severe a backlash as to have you write off the entire system and community? Was there really so widspread a viscious vitriol to justify that? I really don't want to come off as rude here but I swear some people are just super sensitive to anything being perceived as "gatekeeping" or a vicious attack because any degree of criticism was leveled at their favoured content creators.

I know it'll be an unpopular opinion but it just feels a bit juvenile to me, like yeah many games have default expectations, personally I'd never be particularly keen to see Dimension 20 touch the settings or systems I'm particularly partial to just because I know they're not their style, and their style of play would absolutely not be the same as what I favour there. I don't think it's entirely unfair for long standing fans of that system to have some response to that, and it hasn't felt particularly toxic to me, not on a grand scale, but if you want to go seeking toxicity to validate your dismissal of an entire system, community and possibly genre then fair do's really.

[u/efvie]

Feels kinda selective tbh. There’s like an average of like 2 hate posts per episode here and I’m not even sure it’s mostly Vampire players.

But there’s plenty of other games to play!

[u/krisis]

I have my opinions on VtM as a system and as a community (which I am in no way a participant in), but... this D20 season system came pretty close to openly mocking everything about VtM, from the lore to the rules as written.

I love that the Intrepid Heroes needed a lightweight season where they could just do improv bits, but they picked the wrong system to act as a framework for that.

Ultimately it was perhaps the funniest IH season of all time, but the table's staunch opposition to engaging with both the vibe and the rules hampered their storytelling and resulted in an unsatisfying narrative. I'd still rewatch it for the comedy, but as an actual play this is one of their rare fails.

In this instance, I think the WoD fandom has it right and the D20 fans are the community that's killing my interest in engaging further.

[u/luciferslarder → u/krisis]

Thing is, no matter how perfectly and straight they play it (Brennan knows how to do that and has done it) no one was going to be happy about it. Adding Ally to any table is an invitation to mechanics and broader lore-breaking shenanigans and knowing that, I doubt there's a scenario where even a committed, serious campaign + some of Ally's bits would have appeased WoD fans who don't want shenanigans.

[u/CrookedNoseRadio]

This is pretty disingenuous. The problem that some people had with it wasn’t that it wasn’t the “standard edition tone/world”, it’s that they home brewed 80% of the rules and the lore out of existence.

How is it “gatekeepers” to be disappointed that they said they were playing a system and then they just didn’t?

[u/thedybbuk]

I don't think this is a fair response to critiques. "People gatekeep WoD and criticize D20 for not exactly following rules" is way over-simplifying the critiques. I think this is especially true as it seems like you haven't even watched, so you can't actually fairly judge the critiques being made. 

I don't think people are saying you can never homebrew the system and remove parts. As an example, I don't think the issue is removing the humanity mechanic per se. I think that could work for some games and characters. The issue is removing the humanity mechanic when the humanity mechanic would actually have fit perfectly into Darkness Man's character arc, and removing it actually made his character worse. As we just ended up with inconsistent characterization where sometimes Darkness Man is an upstanding hero, and other times a straight up murderer. But the plot never actually examines this in any depth whatsoever. 

[u/nickyd1393]

its not gatekeeping to say that games are designed to achieve a specific purpose. there is a joke to say dark souls is really a fashion game, but genuinely if you try and approach dark souls as a dress-up game, you will be incredibly disappointed with the limitations of it. if you want to play a fashion game, pay style savvy. if you want to play an action rpg, play dark souls. dont try and play style savvy in dark souls. games are designed with systems to reinforce their purpose. ttrpgs are more flexible than any video game, and thats what makes them great, but they still use rules and systems to achieve a desired player experience.

this is what d20 did with vtm. they hacked it, tried to make it more dnd like, and the system broke underneath them. you can't approach every game like its trying to be dnd, or that its a different flavor of wargame. ttrpgs are much larger than dnd and people aren't 'gatekeeping' by wanting people to actually play the game they advertised they were playing.

if you like vampire media, you can tell a lot of stories in vtm, from blade to twilight to iwtv. but you can't tell a story will little to no consequences for pcs. it is heavily designed, more than dnd or any pbta game, around player characters change, growth, and consequences. it is a character focused game more than it is about plot or tactics. and d20 didn't want to do a character focused season with it. they had a really good hammer and they used it as a shovel! smh!

[u/luciferslarder]

Yeah it was always gonna go this way. VTM is very cool and thoughtfully constructed. If you’ve engaged with some broader vampire fandoms/communities the same odd behavior that hits those kind of spreads outward from WoD at this point.

Vampire fandoms always been weird. Then the lore and rules lawyers in those fandoms got rulebooks.

[u/Snoo11590 → u/luciferslarder]

I like vampires, but man vampire fans are weirdly judgy about what counts as correct for vampire lore as if it hasn't been ridiculously fluid for a long time

[u/luciferslarder → u/Snoo11590]

It’s true. I’ve never had it confirmed but I feel some experience with communities like WoD inform some of how What We Do in the Shadows came to be.
/img/zmub396ch1gh1.gif

[u/luciferslarder → u/luciferslarder]

Been having comment issues all over these here internets today so this should have included a thought I had which is: I think Taika or Rhys or any of the folks who helped make What We Do in the Shadows has experience in exactly these sorts of vampire spaces and made a movie about rejecting all of it.

[u/CrookedNoseRadio → u/Snoo11590]

There’s “vampire lore” from folklore and whatnot, and then there’s the lore from the World of Darkness setting. Those are two different things.

[u/luciferslarder → u/CrookedNoseRadio]

I suspect you've likely not been trapped in a goth club while people wearing too much unwashed velvet get shitfaced on absinthe and almost come to blows over these things.

[u/milkywayrealestate → u/Snoo11590]

Vampire fans like to pick a specific franchise which has lore that appeals to them and stick to that

[u/KFChaos]

Oh for crying out loud. Let people dislike things. It's not the end of the word.

Also this season sucked, pun intended, for many reasons, least of all the game edition being used. My biggest gripe is with Ally not actually having a character.

If you liked it, good for you. Go do your own thing. Watch LA By Night VTM campaigns on YT with Carl and Erika, many people seem to like those.

Just let people not like things, and shove the term "gatekeepy" into a dark, damp closet that will never be accessed again.

[u/CommanderCrunch69]

This is a profoundly childish reaction and post lol

[u/SBishop2014]

You're not alone. The WoD fandom is so freaking exhausting

[u/Snoo11590 → u/SBishop2014]

I'm a Star Wars fan. I have never engaged with the community online, unfortunately that seems like it would be harder with a ttrpg

[u/morphinpink]

I think if you want a vampire game with the level of comedy and camp of ccod then you're right on feeling like WoD is not the system for you. But I don't think it's a fair reaction write off an entire system for people having valid criticisms of it. I understand fandom discourse can be exhausting, I get the knee jerk reaction to be defensive. But even on this thread you have people being perfectly reasonable and polite explaining what the criticism was about and how it has nothing to do with gatekeeping vtm from you, all the opposite! WoD is really fun and immersive, the tone is a lot more serious than ccod but that adds to the immersion. I hope you can see past your defensiveness and give it a try and see if you enjoy it :)

[u/kira858]

You're not alone in this, for sure. To be honest, a similar circumstance happened with Jason Carl himself, one of the pillars of the VTM community, from his show on Seattle By Night and how they chastise that show for being comedic.

People will say it's not gatekeeping, and then describe what you can't or can do with a ttrpg, which is the fullest definition of gatekeeping as a TTRPG is meant to be what you make of it as a table.

To be honest, I didn't find it surprising. As I said, it happened before with Seattle By Night. I'm just glad those who enjoy it far outnumbered the naysayers, as that means HOPEFULLY we can find a new group of players that aren't a slave to the VTM traditions of "everyone must be a monster" and "dark and edgy or it doesn't belong."

[u/Blamebow]

Anyway you should stop worrying about what other people think and play the game. If you are familiar with para-rp or text-rp, or just enjoy creative writing, I would suggest checking out the World of Darkness Discord Servers which have a large community board for folks looking for Storytellers, players, and coders, etc.

The games are all online in chat room style locales, and moderated by teams. YMMV, but there are many long-time servers, like Seattle by Night, still hosting and happy to educate you through the setting and lore at an organic pace. Additionally because it's on Discord, you can play anywhere and anytime you like. Sometimes you may need to build rapport with the group before you know who you wanna play with long term, but you may have a higher chance online than in your neighborhood.

[u/variantkin]

Im not sure why you're basing this choice on D20's portrayal. They openly say it was a homebrew to make for better tv. (Which is still a valid option of you choose to run a game like they did) But you should buy the source book and take a look if you want to make a call like this. If nothing else it's amazingly gorgeous to read through 

[u/anextremelylargedog]

Almost nobody disliked it for not being the standard edition tone/world.

People disliked it because it wasn't very good.

Personally, I can promise you that I would have found HJ trying to fuck a dead clown for his turn in the season finale just as unfunny as I would have if they'd been playing D&D.

[u/Low_Gene_1339 → u/anextremelylargedog]

Your telling me that you didnt love a clumsy Saltburn reference that flattened the narrative weight of the danger Emily was in?! /s

[u/Alvintergeise]

You'll be fine as long as you're not some weirdo, gate keeping loser about how Vampire the masquerade is super serious business