Post originally by woodelf at 2003-10-20 08:08:57
Converted from Phorums BB System

BlackHat Matt wrote:
> OK, that's not entirely accurate. The idea
> is to have one core book so that we can
> have different Dark Ages games that don't
> repeat the core rules, and save folks who
> buy all of the books a few bucks. Yes,
> there are pros and cons either way (and
> given the chance to do it all over again,
> we might have made the core book deal with
> mortals or something and made DA: Vampire a
> "fatsplat").

I understand that part of the decision. What i question is *which* book to base it on. Is there really more in common content-wise between Dark Ages: Vampire and Dark Ages: Werewolf than between the latter nad W:tA? Or, is there really significantly more crossover between DA:V players and DA:W players than between W:tA players and DA:W players? I'd expect you to have better knowledge of this than i do, but i've seen very little crossover between V:tM and W:tA players--most i know that like one can't stand the other, or at least haven't even looked at it. And i'd sort of expect this, given the very different tones and protagonists of the two games.

Anyway, I know i've downgraded quite a few WWGS products on my "to buy" list because they're designed to work with V:tM, and i'm just not gonna pay the $30 for a rulebook about a setting and protagonists that i have no interest in. It's not that i absolutely couldn't make use of them, but that the work to do so just went up a bunch. (Same as i've passed on some D20 games that are sufficiently incomplete to actually need a D&D3E PH to make them go--i'm not gonna buy a big rulebook for a game i don't want to play just to play a game i do want to play.) Dark Ages: Werewolf, Dark Ages: Mage (IIRC), the latest version of Mummy, the whole Kindred of the East line--all of these i'd likely have bought, if they weren't predicated on me owning a copy of V:tM (or at least being familiar with it)--i really got peeved when i picked up the original WoD: Mummy, assuming a "World of Darkness" book about a completely new type of protagonist would work with any of the WoD games, and it turned out that it assumed the specific details of the V:tM character definition--which included some stuff that W:tA just didn't have in it (and i had to borrow a copy of V:tM to make sense of).

I understand not wanting to duplicate tons of content, and i understand why, if you're gonna choose an existing book, V:tM is it for the pseudo-vamps of KotE. But it doesn't make me happy. And it doesn't, for me, excuse Mummy. Oh well...I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that i simply don't reflect the general WoD market: vampires of any flavor have no interest to me, and Camarilla-/Anne Rice-style vampires actively disinterest me. I just don't "get" the vampire trope. So, the more you tie it into vampires, the less interested i am, and the more your sales probably go up.