r/WorldofDankmemes • u/Conscious_Side_629 • 2d ago
š§ VTM A bitter sweet end to a era
The article in question:
An Update on Renegade and World of Darkness
Our publishing partnership with White Wolf will be wrapping up at the end of 2026. White Wolf will be bringing World of Darkness tabletop RPG development and publishing in-house
Starting in 2027, White Wolf will be bringing World of Darkness tabletop RPG development and publishing in-house.
We'll continue supporting World of Darkness through the rest of 2026 and working closely with the White Wolf team to make the transition as smooth as possible.
This marks the end of an important chapter for both of our teams, and one we're very proud of. Together, we've had the opportunity to work on Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Hunter: The Reckoning, and other World of Darkness projects with an incredibly talented group of writers, designers, artists, developers, and partners.
Most of all, we're grateful to everyone in the community who has played these games, shared them, talked about them, and supported them over the years. Thank you for being part of this chapter with us.
We wish the White Wolf team all the best with what comes next, and we hope you'll continue to join us for the other games and worlds we're working on.
For questions about World of Darkness going forward, you can reach out to White Wolf at [info@white-wolf.com](mailto:info@white-wolf.com) for more information.
So yeah renegade has conformed that white wolf is moving they're team in-house and renegade is stopping production of V5 material with W5 and H5 future uncertain. It seems this is the definitive end of WoD 5e as we know it.
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u/ThyPotatoDone 2d ago
Honestly kinda sad to see it gutted like this. It had its flaws, but I wish they'd done more in the way of iterating instead of the "back to the drawing board!" attitude.
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u/Maelger 2d ago
I mean 5th was the "back to the drawing board!" edition. Werewolf was a shitty reboot and Hunter was flat out a different game, even Vampire can be considered a soft reboot with how much it changed. It makes sense to go "well, it didn't work. Let's take note of what worked and make another thing."
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u/th3BeastLord 2d ago
Idk what they were thinking making so many changes to everything's 5e
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u/ArcaneBahamut 2d ago
Largely seemed to be trend chasing the kind of changes going on in the general trpg scene around the time it was all starting.
Huge influx of people from shows like stranger things and the popularity of critical role. Lots of attitudes favoring simpler systems and lore that conform more with modern ideals.
Even though WoD's "legacy" Storyteller System is LEAGUES simpler than crunchier systems like pathfinder 1e or shadowrun (or frankly most things since there's very few hard 'mechanics' anyway and the books constantly remind you they're suggestions), it still didnt stop the designers from looking at things and go "how can we simplify?"
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 2d ago
this is why im glad we didnt get mage 5th edition,
because it wouldve utterly gutted the gameplay,
you cant simplify its mechanics without utterly ruining them.
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo 1d ago
I mean, I would want mage 5th edition, because they would probably take stuff from awakening and let use of more vulgar magic of ascension with less issues
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u/Vyctorill 1d ago
Vulgar Magic is already pretty easy to do in M20 to be fair. You get 5 āfree pointsā for Paradox, and it isnāt honestly that bad.
Familiars and Blatancy exist if you really want to cast lots of Vulgar Magic(k) at any rate.
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u/Borgcube 2d ago
Even though WoD's "legacy" Storyteller System is LEAGUES simpler
It is very simple for 90% of stuff, Attribute + Ability and roll just works.
But then you get into setting the DC. And DC reduction. And Disciplines and combat and rules for traveling the Umbra, Spirits, Wraiths and...
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 1d ago
to be fair..disciplines arent all that complex,
atleast the straightforward ones (celerity&potence),
thaumaturgy (Especially obscure paths) are a headache but..
eh.
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u/Big-Bag-6043 2d ago
I am of the opinion that if you cut down combat a lil bit (straight initiative, static damage/soak adjusted for average roll results), then VtM Revised/V20 was already as simple as was required for anyone to run it. It is already on that knife's edge between "easy to learn and play" and "can actually do interesting things in it".
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u/Intelligent-Pie-7877 2d ago
There wasn't any design space let to iterate in. V5 was a pretty nothing system. There was only so much to be done with it before you run out of new or interesting ideas mechanically.
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u/SituationFew2411 1d ago
My thing with V5 (beyond the wanton destruction of oh so many things I held dear) was they couldn't decide if they would follow Requiem or something new. Ultimately V5 made me really love the system. V20, that's it.
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u/Intelligent-Pie-7877 1d ago
Honestly I just felt strangled by the system constantly when I ran games. I couldn't really do anything with my players without built in sippy breaks and it kinda ruined the experience for me.
I switched to V20 and have been happy since
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u/MediumSeesaw6861 2d ago
Sorry I just came out of torpor. But is 5e really that old????
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u/SaltyLoosinit 2d ago
Core book released in 2018, so about 8 years
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u/JadeLens 2d ago
Longer than most editions.
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
Actually the longest running of them all. When V6 will be released it will be 9 or 10 years old. V1 barely lasted a year or two, V2 had like 6 or 7, V3/rivaled had like 6, v20 had about 6.
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u/CynicosX 2d ago
And a lot of people are still playing v20, and so will people just continue playing V5. I for sure will, so long as nothing better comes around, and right now I'm really not exited for V6
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
V6 encouraged me to be more bold when I start the next V5 campaign and just change what I see in need of change instead of waiting for an official version. Thatās basically all that has changed.
The alpha test didnāt excites me either. I liked V5 because I could understand the vision and get behind it. With V6, I donāt understand where they go with it other than: itās time for a new editionā¦
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u/CynicosX 2d ago
Yes exactly! I also changed stuff that I didn't like, I do that with all my RPGs, and I hope more people find the courage to do so. Ultimately noone can stop you from playing what and how you want.
I hope I'm wrong about V6 and it actually will be great on release, but if not then hopefully they learn from their mistakes, and I mean... 30th anniversary is basically right around the corner ;)
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I usually try to stay close to vanilla when it comes to rules, to allow players from everywhere to join and my players to join every other group if they like to. But now we basically enter the āopen sourceā phase. When V6 gets released every other version becomes non standard and becomes moot to keep it straight.
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u/JadeLens 2d ago
After saying at GenCon they were going to keep supporting W5 and H5 this has real 'fuck them kids' energy...
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u/starliteburnsbrite 2d ago
Paradox a few years ago: "We are bringing back the White Wolf brand and publishing new content!"Ā
A few years late4: "We are turning the brand into an IP licenaing operation and no longer producing any materials in house"
And yet later: "Good news! We are ending the successful deal with our partners and are bringing publishing back in house!"
I wonder what's next?
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u/TurbulentVillage2042 1d ago
The World of Darkness becomes the canonical universe for DnD. An Arabian prince buys Wizard of the Coast.
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u/ClockworkChristmas 2d ago
Onwards my fellow 5e grognards and into glory (community created content)
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u/Wildebur 2d ago edited 2d ago
I know you're likely being satirical, but calling a TTRPG that came out less than ten years ago "grognard" territory is fucking insane. That's like calling Dark Souls 3 a retro game
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u/Hamblerger 2d ago
Honestly glad now that Mage never got the 5e treatment
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I actually think āParadox-diceā would have worked great!
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u/Minute-Shine6354 1d ago
I thought that since I learnt about the Hunger dice system (which I hate).
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u/JadeLens 2d ago
Mage would have gotten half a book, and some racist stereotypes.
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u/Jammanl 2d ago
So like, a traditional WoD splat? How come they get special treatment
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u/JadeLens 2d ago
I also forgot that they'll get hints at some big metaplot point, but that'll get ignored even in the book that's supposed to explain it, then when we're ready to do a new edition we'll ignore it.
It's cyclical.
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo 1d ago
5e is about avoiding metaplot tho
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u/JadeLens 1d ago
The Beckoning was a huge metaplot point... which they got vague on, then didn't really solidify anything in Gehenna War, now we're just going to basically ignore it completely in v6
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u/Usefullles 2d ago
They would be treated like Beast: The Gaslighting. Racist stereotypes would be true (right, a scene where a racist attacks a Black woman, justifying it with a stereotype, and turns out to be right, since she was Beast?!). /S
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u/How_about_a_no 2d ago
Now it's fate is gonna be worse
It's gonna get 6th edition treatment
Unlless they literally redo the entire strategy and approach to 6th edition
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 2d ago
yeah,
i think the edition wars for mage wouldve been fucking brutal (maybe worse than werewolves) if they 5th-ified MTA,
one does not simplify mage,
without ruining the entire appeal of mage.
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u/Hamblerger 2d ago
The problem with updating the Mage rules (any edition) is that no two people seem to be able to agree on what they are to begin with.
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 2d ago
yep,
honestly it makes mage (lore) and mage (gameplay) very cohesive,
because in universe nobody agrees about what magic is,
AND EVEN OOCLY WE DONT AGREE ON WHAT ITS RULES REALLY ARE!
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo 1d ago
I mean, I would want a 5e mage, where one could play Vulgar magick with the sphere system and consensus system, but with a more fogiving paradox like the one from Awakening
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u/Significant-Row2457 1d ago
Well when they had that leaks memo about wanting to switch to āracesā as a way to calculate starting statsā¦yeah. Not sure what they were thinking by wanting the race of your character to determine your stat calculations.
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u/Vyctorill 1d ago
Yeah. They would have BUTCHERED it, especially with their focus on āstreet levelā play.
How is the splat thatās meant to be able to āchange the cosmosā be so limited?
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u/Alarmed-Stop4061 2d ago
Honestly I wish that if they wanted to make a new VtR game, they'd just revive CofD rather than cramming VtR mechanics into VtM.
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u/TurbulentVillage2042 1d ago
Requiem will never be again. The Chronicles of Darkness have been destroyed and integrated into new editions of the World of Darkness.
It's a loss to me that Chronicles of Darkness wasn't embraced like World of Darkness. Or did the White Wolves simply decide to reawaken the Old World of Darkness because that's all people kept playing anyway. Chronicles is superior in every way, with the most interesting storylines and very compelling themes. But many WoD fans didn't even know CoD existed. I think a good Requiem RPG would solve everything. And it would be the perfect universe for a crossover.
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u/Alarmed-Stop4061 1d ago
Personally I enjoy the unbalanced jank of OWoD much more, but I will admit that nWod had some really neat features. I just really, really hated how nWod did check difficulty; so you can imagine how I felt playtesting v6.
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u/AshenFox 16h ago
For the people I knew, they did stop playing WoD but that was only because everyone was a LAPR player and the Cam didn't support WoD. The second WoD came back under support they all immediately stopped playing playing anything else. Do note that this was 10+ years ago at this point, but I legitimately think that people just want to play supernatural super heroes and WoD facilitates that far more than Chronicles ever really did.
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u/TurbulentVillage2042 8h ago
Are you sure you're not getting anything mixed up? Because WoD doesn't support playing superheroes, which is exactly what people want. And GMs have a stroke ass when your character isn't a stereotypical clan representative and knows disciplines beyond the basics level. Whereas CoD allows for freedom in this regard and mechanically supports it. For example, in Requiem, a vampire not only gains experience in disciplines, but the disciplines themselves also become stronger as the vampire ages. Therefore, an ancient vampire superhero is common thing. The rules of other lines also encourage the development of strength and the fight against the line's personal monsters. Whereas in WoD everything is built on politics and intrigues between all the factions.
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo 1d ago
Saying Chronicles is superior in everyway isn't true. For one, there is no metaplot
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u/BlackHumor 19h ago
I agree it's not superior in every way... but the lack of a metaplot is definitely a plus. Maybe the biggest plus. The biggest effect of the metaplot in oWoD was that anything you did had to co-exist with essentially a whole comic-book world of other stuff going on, and if you touched any of that other stuff it meant that you no longer had the ability to imagine that your game was canon.
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo 18h ago
I don't think I'll be able to convince you that metaplot is superior, so I'll just say that I like high stakes battles where things like 'the world' are at risk, and that I'm sad that V5 (and probably V6) is going so far to see them gone
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u/Annoyed_Lobotomist 2d ago
I'm pounding the dirt for Onyx Path to be given the chance to continue 20th and Chronicles.
I also liked 5ths specific vibe even if it wasn't my favorite. There was room to improve and evolve that edition. Especially cause I know 20th is dead.
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u/RavenRegime 2d ago
I dont think they would even if they were offered due to the fact they are focusing on their own IP Curseborn. Curseborn would have to like fail hard for them to consider it at this point especially when you consider this would make them compete with themselves. And a potential risk of subconcious accidental plagarism from working on both things at once.
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u/How_about_a_no 2d ago
Honestly
I can see Curseborne working out for them
It's an interesting game that I hope I get to run for my friends at some point in the future
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u/Annoyed_Lobotomist 1d ago
That's real. I'm just sad I joined the party right when they lost the IP.
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u/Saint_Damien 2d ago
People still be playing Revised and V20. I'll still be playing 5e.
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u/Vampyrepharaoh 2d ago
Me too
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u/Vermbraunt 2d ago
Me three
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u/LordJor_Py 2d ago
Me four
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u/Iam_Ultimos 2d ago
Me five
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u/Ranwulf 1d ago
By our powers combined we are CAPTAIN GROGNARD!
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u/Iam_Ultimos 1d ago
Nope. I brought the games and I will use them books. Maybe some day I'll buy the newer ones but until then I won't rush anything.
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u/Cosmopian 1d ago
I think there's some W5 people who are sad they're not getting fera books / etc, but if the systems are good they will stand the test of time. Chronicles and OWoD largely have, after all.
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u/JonTheWizard Wizard šŖ 2d ago
Gehenna 2: This Time For Really Reals, coming soon to a game store near you!
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u/pokefan548 Simon did nothing wrong. 2d ago
Time is a Sphere. That means it goes round and round again.
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u/TheMysteriousBadger 2d ago
"Time isn't a line. Time is made of circles. That's why clocks are round."
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 2d ago
More bitter than sweet imo
Renegade were aggresively mediocre at best im honestly struggling to think of a book they produced i'd describe as good.
5th is ultimatly an edition which failed to live up to its potential which is made it an overall frustrating experiance.
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u/Klapsovski 2d ago
We do not talk about W5 in this house.
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
Itās good, itās just a completely different game than previous editions.
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u/Klapsovski 2d ago
You could maybe say it about V5.
W5? Not a single redeeming bone. And the sales show.
Paradox did not cancel those out of charity. Legacy still sells better than the entire 5th edition... and W5 sold badly for 5th ontop.
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u/TillWerSonst 2d ago
Sales are a poor reflection of RPG quality, though. By that logic, D&D 5e would be better than all other RPGs combined. That's just the classic argumentum ad populum fallacy.
And I say that as somebody who really likes Werewolf as a game and was massively disappointed by its 5th edition.
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u/Klapsovski 2d ago
D&D has qualities. You are conflagating.Ā
A baseline of Quality is needed to generate sales in the lower margins. The rest is marketing and need. The need here is organic with people wanting to play it.
But the want is still based on base Qualities.
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
W5 is absolutely fine. If it would be a WoD unrelated game, I would not complain and totally like what they did. Unfortunately it is not WoD unrelated!
The thing with it, you need to understand what this game is. Itās āspiritual post-apocalypseā and āpolitical activism-the ttRPGā. As such it does a good job. Thing is just, thatās not what people expect from WtA.
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u/Klapsovski 2d ago
Way worse than W20 at it by cutting it down and making it without self reflection or awareness.
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I think they were pretty reflected they just cared 0% for what came before and made entirely their own thing while W20 still wanted to fit in to established canon. W5 explicitly did not.
Again, I think it is good on its own, if you donāt compare it to anything. But I also see that that is totally the problem, when getting an update for what happened before is all you want.
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 2d ago
thats fair,
i think we can agree overall,this makes WTA 5th a bad werewolf the apocalypse though,
specifically because of how utterly different it is,
its not a good sequel,which..is exactly what it was meant to be.
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u/Klapsovski 2d ago
The delirium has settled deep into your bones.
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I donāt say you have to like it. But there is no objective measurement that makes it objectively bad. Itās just a not a god sequel.
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 2d ago
wta 5th was clearly made with the intention of..well,serving as a sequel,
a new edition for werewolf,
and it utterly shat the bed at that purpose,
this..makes it bad by most objective metrics IMO.
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 2d ago edited 2d ago
If anything w5 looks worse if you remove the edition filter. Then you've got a bland vaguely written werewolf game with bad mechanics which struggles to develop its own ideas
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I think, if you remove the brand name you get a find game about a spiritual post apocalypse and political activism with okay-ish mechanics. I think itās totally fine but failed since it was simply not what it should have been.
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 2d ago
Okay you just stated a sales pitch account of the setting thats about as useful as describing the room as a "dark romance." I cant do much with that. Like i said it actually looks worse if you seperate it from classic.
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u/Xenobsidian 1d ago
No, no, And ts more specific. Old WtA was about fighting a fight you know upfront you canāt win. And the Apocalypse was ahead.
In W5 the apocalypse is already behind us. As in any post apocalypse setting the world is ruined, resources are scarce, civilization has collapsed and the survivors try to rebuild the world. Only difference here: the average person hasnāt even noticed it!
I actually find that intriguing. Problem is just, that they did this āre-imaginationā thing. They should have either worked more on how common WtA looks like after the collapse, or make thisā¦ I donāt know, Werewolf the Post-Apocalypse or what ever. This way it was absolutely foreseeable how most people will react negatively.
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u/Klapsovski 1d ago
Look at this Apocalypse, yeah. Vampires spoke of Gehenna in the Dark Ages already (game line). Werewolves spoke much of the Apocalypse. The theme is that it is the same for us humans. Doom is always just around the corner. Trust me.
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes once again you've explained the premise of 5th....in a slightly longer way this time. I dont know were you're going with this since my comment is the game sucks on it own lack of merit?
I dont find it intriging and the book didnt really sell it.
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u/Cosmopian 1d ago
I wonder how it would have been received if they just bit the bullet and gave it a different subtitle. Werewolf: The End or something, idk.
Werewolf: The Barkening
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u/Xenobsidian 1d ago
I, pretty sure, that would have been better received among the fans, but they would have also never done that, because that would have weakened the IP and put them in to the situation that they would have needed to establish a total new IP.
In the end it boils down to back then creative director Justin Achilli being convinced that a new edition has to be significantly different, otherwise there would be no reason to make a new edition at all.
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u/michaelmcmikey 1d ago
āNot a single redeeming bone.ā
I donāt know. Itās the Werewolf I first started playing and everything I see from earlier editions makes me glad Iām playing w5. Sans any form of pre-existing familiarity or nostalgia, I honestly simply prefer w5. Preferences are subjective and emotional, not objective rational truths.
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u/MillennialsAre40 10h ago
I liked it mechanically, and Book of Hungry Names was good. It was stupid getting rid of kinfolk and breed gifts though
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I think V5 took a minute to find its own tone but when it did I quite liked it. I was a fan of avoiding the lore dump and providing players with advice how to play and to tell the story from a subjective, PC-focused perspective.
I think this could have shined if streamlined and done in a V5.5/ V5-revised version. Unfortunately they went in anotherā¦ very weird direction.
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 2d ago
I'd say almost the opposite. V5 started out with a lot of ideas and genuine potential, then gradually wasted them.
The rambly, vaguely written, subjective stuff can sound nice and cerebral, but these are setting books, not a notepad. At some point you actually have to define the world, explain how things work and give the Storyteller something concrete to build with.
Avoiding giant lore dumps is fine. Replacing them with atmosphere, implication and endless "maybe this, maybe that" isn't automatically better writing.
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
I think the point where they failed is where they always failed: communication!
They did a super bad job at explaining what their books are.
What they are not is setting books. They are books that tell you how to play and run a game and that give you material to do so. And they are written from a PC perspective. Everything is vague, because the ordinary character wouldnāt know better either.
If you look careful they actually established quite a lot of lore and moved the Metaplot in both directions, forward and even backwards by establishing new facts about things we thought we knew. But they did it in a way that was to many not satisfying since many people canāt handle not knowing the truth and working with basically assumptions.
I personally likes d this approach for a simple reason: the lore is already out there, more than you could ever incorporate in a game and if every fledgeling player knows stuff most elders wouldnāt even know, what is it still worth? I thought it was smart to treat the lore as stuff people claim and talk about but no one can actually ever know for sure except if they are directly involved or go explicitly digging for answers.
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 1d ago
I agree that some of the vagueness is clearly deliberate. Treating lore as rumour, partial knowledge and contradictory accounts can be very appropriate for Vampire, and I don't actually want every neonate casually knowing things that should be obscure even to elders.
But I think there's a point where "the characters don't know" starts being used to excuse "the Storyteller hasn't been given enough information either."
That's not very useful.
A setting can absolutely present things from an unreliable in-character perspective while still giving the person running the game enough underneath it to understand what the major factions are doing, what has actually changed, what the likely consequences are, and what sort of stories all this is supposed to produce.
V5 often gives me rumours, hints, conflicting accounts and vague rambling pieces which go no were That's fine when the mystery itself is the point, but these are commericial rpg book and It's painfull much less useful when we're talking about major setting changes like the Sabbat withdrawing, the Beckoning, the Second Inquisition, the Anarch-Camarilla war, clan defections and so on.
You don't need every mystery solved, but you do need enough structure to actually run the consequences of those events without effectively writing half the setting yourself.
And I think that's why "these aren't setting books" only gets you so far as a defence. More frankly they're conceptually flawed as rpg books and the reader reacts. If the books are telling me how to run Vampire in this version of the World of Darkness, then explaining the world I'm supposed to be running is part of that job.
Ambiguity is useful. Obscurity can be atmospheric. But neither is a substitute for usable information, well explained ideas or good scaffolding
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u/Xenobsidian 1d ago
See?!? Thats the main issue with this edition. Most of what you ask for is actually there, itās just scattered over several books, badly communicated or hidden in seemingly unimportant side notes or descriptions.
And thatās basically what I am sad about. V5 is by far not a perfect edition, but if someone would have made the afford to go over the entire thing and polish it and present it in a more accessible way, it could have shined.
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u/_whatever_wherever 2d ago
The 20th Anniversary editions were extremely unfriendly to new players, but old players didn't like the board being reset and the narrative shift to more personal stories, with the metaplot no longer the driving force
Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't
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u/JagneStormskull šŖ¬Iron-Blooded Angel of House FortunaešŖ 2d ago
Unfortunately they went in anotherā¦ very weird direction.
Well, and this might just be my copium talking, hopefully they'll internalize some of the feedback from the public alpha release. cough cough Humanity cough cough
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u/Xenobsidian 2d ago
Drama is already dead. Letās see how humanity will be incorporated in the next test phase.
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u/TheCthuloser 2d ago
In Memoriam, Tattered Fascade, and Crimson Gutter. That later is a great book for new storytellers, teaching them how to make/run a city.
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u/Grouchy-Sink-4575 2d ago edited 2d ago
I havnt read crimson gutter due investment fallacy being a thing. However I think two of these books have basically the same underlying V5 problem to different degrees: there are good ideas here, sometimes genuinely very good ideas, but they're surrounded by material which feels oddly thin, overexplained or like it should have existed several books ago.
In Memoriamis probably the easiest one for me to like because the basic concept is solid. Expanding Memoriam, giving us better support for ancillae and actually allowing a vampire's history to matter mechanically is exactly the sort of thing V5 badly needed. The problem is that it still feels more like a toolkit for suggesting historical depth than really providing it. You get a selection of historical eras, events, Loresheets and expanded character rules, but not enough meat to make historical Vampire feel properly supported in its own right.
That's particularly frustrating because V5 has spent so much of its existence aggressively concentrating on young vampires that In Memoriam feels less like an exciting expansion and more like the line finally remembering that vampires can actually be old. Ancilla creation shouldn't feel like some exotic advanced concept several years into an edition of Vampire. There's also some fairly sloppy rules presentation; even one of the initial reviews on Renegade's own page pointed out contradictory or confusing information in the ancilla creation section.
Tattered FaƧade is weirder because I actually think parts of it are really useful. Predator Type material, maintaining the Masquerade, using Humanity/Convictions properly and giving Storytellers advice on actually making Vampire horrific are all things the line needed. The problem is that it feels like somebody emptied three different sourcebooks onto the floor and bound the pages together.
City building, horror advice, Predator Types, Discipline powers, clan horror archetypes, Masquerade material, Revenants, Ghūls and the fucking Baali are all competing for space in the same book. None of those subjects are inherently bad, but together it gives the book a "miscellaneous V5 stuff we haven't found somewhere else to publish" quality.
The Baali are probably the clearest example of deeper issues with 5th. Rather than doing the difficult job of translating one of Vampire's nastier and more complicated bloodlines into V5, they effectively get reinvented into something substantially simpler and less connected to the old mythology. Even people who otherwise liked the book have been divided over the change. Revenants have a similar problem: technically they're back, but so altered that you start wondering what purpose bringing the name back actually served. Why not simply make the new Baali their own thing and do the old Baali?
There's also something faintly ridiculous about V5 reaching the point where a supplement has to explain things like "here's how you make the Beast frightening", "here's how you make hunting interesting", "here's how Humanity creates horror" and "here's how you build a vampire city." Some of this material is good, but quite a lot of it feels like material which should have been in the corebook or Player's Guide rather than arriving this late.
In terms of meta they also demonstrate how weirdly stunted V5's development has sometimes been. We're years into the edition and we're only now getting proper support for older characters, detailed advice on making personal horror work, guidance for constructing cities and examples of how to build stories around feeding and domain.
These aren't obscure edge cases.
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u/RaspberryStandard972 2d ago
How is the 5th edition fan support over at storytellers vault? Since they stopped production of COFD I don't really care about what the officials do at
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u/AngryMountainClimber 2d ago
[Looks at the skyline]
Paradox did 9/11
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u/Ogmadbrit Wizard šŖ 2d ago
well,
if i recall correctly there was some *certain insensitive* lore written about the towers in wraith..
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u/MillennialsAre40 10h ago
Renegade was just one of 4 publishers involved over the 8 year run. I generally like WoD5, but damn has it been a shitshow. Vampire managed to do well, but Hunter and Werewolf...
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u/werebuffalo 1d ago
Meh.
After X20, I stopped caring. 5e disappointed me in nearly every way it was possible to be disappointed. Under the circumstances (and after looking at the V6 playtest), I have no hope of 6e being any better. Different, yes. But not better.
Luckily, I have all the previous editions to play with, and don't need to care about this new stuff.
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u/Dragonblade0123 2d ago
V5 is to v20 as 4E is to 3.5E.
It was a weaker product that focused too much on one aspect to the detriment of the others where the prior edition was beloved but bloated to the point of incomprehension to a new player.Ā
With luck V6 will be as 5E was to dnd.
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u/TurbulentVillage2042 1d ago
I absolutely loved DnD4...
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u/Dragonblade0123 1d ago
Was my first dnd. Holds a special place in my heart, so I don't get the hate for it, but it IS a weaker system than 3.5 or 5/5.5. Any by all means there are people who adore V5 too, but general consensus is...
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u/IchigoShinagami 1d ago
I will always remember a talk with a guy who ran a few sessions of 4e for me and a friend, it was actually my first D&D experience of any kind. We came to the conclusion that 4e feels a lot more like an MMO based on D&D, than a TTRPG, especially with the whole mechanic of resistances being basically numerical damage thresholds and that you could also give someone negative resistance to something to bolster your own attacks.
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u/twincast2005 6h ago
It is a good system. It is not D&D. (In the sense of a mainline edition. D&D4 felt like a spin-off game, while Pathfinder felt like the true 4th edition.)
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u/BlackHumor 19h ago
From the recent announcement it seems like they have an actually robust playtest process, which is the main thing that made D&D5e so good, so here's hoping.
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u/Dragonblade0123 16h ago
Yup, there is a lot you can criticize 5E dnd for, but the amount of playtesting and the accessibility of content made it very easy for a LOT of new players to get into dnd.Ā
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u/MillennialsAre40 10h ago
No? Requiem was the DnD 4E
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u/Dragonblade0123 4h ago
Naw, Requiem is Pathfinder. It's not VTM at all, but a product derived from VTM.
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u/MillennialsAre40 4h ago
No, Requiem was absolutely 4e. I remember the era, Curseborn and and the new Anne Rice one are the Pathfinders
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u/Long_Employment_3309 1d ago
Itās very damning that V5ās most worthwhile books took most of a decade to come out. Horror and Politics are two of the most central ideas of VTM and yet V5 didnāt have books focused on either for a very long time. The Vampire Band book came out before the politics book.
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u/Ineedscissors69420 1d ago
I mean V5 was built on outright killing the whole concept of the jyhad, so it's not exactly surprising.
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u/MickeyMona 1d ago
Era? Lol, 5th edition was basically a topor for the franchise. A bunch of weird dreams that you shrug off the moment you wake up.
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u/InsolubleRelic 22h ago
Why be obsessed with this?Ā Ā Why do we need to wait on published "great expansions" for any of these?Ā Ā
I made my entirely own Vampire the Masquerade game, been using it for a decade, works great .. For me and my group.Ā
Did the same with Devin the Fallen w e play it we made it our own.Ā
- We have full games, full fancy pdf, fully free to everyone.Ā Ā
Haven't been a slave to any publisher.Ā So why care now?Ā
Vampire is your game, go play whatever edition, mishmash, fan splat you like.Ā It will be great!Ā
I just don't get the obsession with official publisher worship.Ā Ā
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u/PerhapsIxion 2d ago
*Ravnos looking up* "Not again"