Paizo's Pathfinder 2e is getting a remaster that changes some stuff, updates some stuff to remove all the OGL connections and just does a general balance patch on tons of stuff (mostly buffs to underperforming features) and they have Archive of Nethys, which is entirely free, and retains all the Legacy content. So, unlike WotC, it turns out you can keep the previous stuff available even as you move to a new variation of the current edition....
In the optional bit of the survey I told them that they need to stop being afraid of theyre own IP and focus more on the lore, that they needed to bring back more things from older editions I genuinely think that if they do that then things like the Werewolf 5th edition corebook will never happen again
As someone who has played V5 and was a storyteller for V20 DA I get what older players miss in the new edition and what new players find…off putting…in the older editions. But I like parts of both, would love to combine the Bloodpool with the Hunger-System. And in my opinion, you can’t really compare the two, they are like apples and oranges, or as the guys over at Black Lodge Games put it in one of their videos: ‘…it’s a product of its time…’ V20 lives in the Zeitgeist of the 80’s and V5 doesn’t. It is not possible to transport or insert the feelings of another time and generation into the older or the newer game. A good comparison could be: V20 is a big rock that falls from a mountain into the river of time and V5 are all the little pebbles that wash into the ocean of eternity. The rock has weight, history, sharp edges, texture and it will crush you if you are not careful. All the pebbles are smooth in your hand, shiny, easy to carry and you can decorate your sandcastle with them. They all come from the rock, but you can’t make a rock out of them again. But I really hate the non-existent layout of the V5 core rule book. Did they hit ‘shuffle’ when the designed the pages? I am a DM for Shadowrun so I have a high tolerance but wtf?!? 🤣
Also, 5.5 ed DnD is basically a lot of "whatever." They absolutely will make a 6th edition, with wildly different rules. 5.5 is essentially an officially produced homebrew/fanfiction of itself. Soooooo.... play something different. Lotta games out there.
Might have something to do with WotC hiring people from the tech industry and White Wolf being owned by Paradox. In tech: old = outdated which means it's bad. So things have to be new. it's entirely how they pitch things.
This new corporate entitlement nonsense is just insane. They are more worried about how I play the game with my friends then about making an actual game we would want to play. I don't think V5 is a bad game at all, and we're currently in the midst of a W5 Chronicle and we're enjoying ourselves with it. But it has to go and make the misstake of burning the past. But that past is the only reason that WoD brand means anything to begin with! You can't have your cake and eat it. I'm kinda glad that Paradox has stopped paying attention to Chronicles of Darkness. I love what Onyx Path has done with the second edition, and I enjoy running it. I'm looking forward to what they are going to do with Curseborne. I read the Ashcan and I'm in into it. I have more confidence in Onyx Path to put decent care and attention into their games then Paradox, so I hope they can set up an interesting, deep and imaginative horror world that would provide years of good games!
I would say its always best to add a little homebrew and take what rules you like and toss the ones you dont. That said all I really do is barrow a few from V5th and go back to V20th anyways. As far as "legacy" is some people think that the old matierial was toxic or not inclusive enough because the young always want to devide themselves from those who came before them and condemning what came before in effort to make room for what is new in hopes that people en mass will pefcieve the new as superior and give the upstarts a pat on the back. Also doesnt help that most of the origianl creators are dead and the living ones just want a paycheck. Love me some of the older books.
This is not just a matter of ttrpg’s. You see this kind of attack on legacy increasingly throughout nerd culture. I think that a good idea of why it happens can be seen in what happened with Star Wars. Basically, the kind of people that made these properties were nerds and they were making products for other nerds (like myself). Now, those nerds are no longer in charge, and the people who are want to “fix” what has been done. They want to make it less “nerdy,” and more of what they want/what they think the mass market wants. It is weird to me to see the change in this kind of content throughout my lifetime. I was regularly bullied and actually beaten as kid for liking the kinds of things that are just considered normal now. And I wonder how much of this backlash against legacy is just a continuation of that. I wonder how much of this backlash is really just a backlash against the nerd that they see as still existing in these properties.
The toxicity goes hard at times, but it ain't new either. When I was a wee kid in my first WoD introduction, there was the infamous Mage Flame Wars between 2nd Edition and Revised. What people said about the NWoD when that thing showed up. But that has *always* been the problem with WoD fanbase. It's an entire fanbase based of tribalism, and no matter the problem, there was someone with the opposite opinion that they would dramallama with. I might have thicker skin, but having a bunch of people be verbally toxic is preferable to the time where you got dragged your name through newsletters or got into a fistfight with a drunk Justin Achilli at the WW GenCon bar if you said something online about his changes to Revised Vampire. Don't think that there's ever going to be a good solution, because the output of books can NEVER be the same as the 90ies, at at times, there is a need for a change or a cleanup. Hence why we get sweeping changes or fixes that will cause more issues. And if you keep doing the same, you lock yourself into a creative deathspiral where deviations and new ideas are scrutinized to death, which can be a serious problem elsewhere. D&D gets around that with multiple settings. That... well, that ain't exactly possible with WoD as it is. What Chaosium is doing is pretty cool, but at times, it feels like the Chaosium customer being catered to has longer and whiter beard than you do, Lore. Chaosium is chasing their older, resource-heavy audience, but if new blood enters it is just a perk. However, Chaosium games has some serious gatekeeping issues when the games are running through almost 50 years of worldbuilding or even longer literary tradtions. Talsorian is kinda doing a bit better with CyberPunk Red, and it does have the advantage of having sold their franchise to a corp that allowed them to do whatever they wanted in the TTRPG space as long as they did not cross 2077.
Yeah I'm newish to the scene but grognards seem to be a trend that's almost as old as tabletop itself. As soon as new editions were released there were people saying the previous one was better. and I don't think those people are dishonest, they very well may prefer those editions, the problem is when they think other people are "wrong" to prefer another edition.
The edition warring in this community is insane. Anyone who likes one system over another is having wrong-fun in the eyes of the other side. Each system has positives and negatives. None of them are perfect. Hell, none of them are particularly good, mechanically speaking, in the grand scheme of TTRPGs. The worst part of it is that the most vocal detractors of any edition sound like they didn't even play, let alone read, the edition they complain about. And these vocal detractors gain traction among others who hate something they also haven't played or likely even read primarily because it's different. And we see this from all sides. V20 and earlier players who hate that the game has moved on from them. V5 players who think anything published before 2010 must be garbage. At this point in time Chronicles of all things is getting the best treatment. Being largely ignored in the heat of the V20 vs V5 war is a blessing. Maybe even a slight positive reception from the people that used to hate it for killing their game in the eary 2000s because now "at least it's not V5"
V5 has many strengths and weaknesses and so does V20. I've seen this viewpoint more often but I like to see it more. I feel like too much of the arguing around it is weirdly politically motivated (and I say this as a far left person). that's not to say people aren't genuine about their likes or dislikes, but people saying they dislike v5 due to "virtue signalling" need to deal with their cynicism stat.
I have thoughts on this that are going to be all over the place a bit. Regarding D&D, WotC had done an okay job in the past of re-embracing their older editions and selling them on DTRPG with some PoD options. Regarding any edition changes, that's a whole other topic that I think a Matt Colville video is going to have to cover. The nature of D&D's change from 3rd edition forward was going to cause nothing but schisms from there on out is all I am going to say. The custodians of the WoD/CoD stuff in the past have done an okay job with bringing about the older material with advent of V20. V5 and all its contentions from which I've read are just understandable. There's things I'm okay with, things I'm really not okay with, and I have mixed opinions on. What I do think is kicking the franchise at the moment is the simple decision to tie its system so heavily to a lot of other setting changes such that it becomes very difficult to reasonably homebrew in older material without any reasonable guidance. The only way the issues of V5 wouldn't have happened is if they just didn't release it and instead just kept going with V20A for a while longer, because as it stands V5 is such a dramatic shift in how the game is played, and a stronger opinion on intended play (which I admire a bit as a very lost storyteller) Unfortunately, we're here now. The potential solution in my mind would simply cause another schism (probably) as creating an edition that is itself like V20 in that it perfectly distills the VtM setting to its core and then releasing supplemental setting books that moves the meta plot in whatever direction, establishing new clans, combining others, and more. I don't think anyone really has the ideal answer in all of this. I was already in a camp burned by WotC with DnD5e prior to the OGL scandal because I just didn't find the rules conducive to the games I run. I was not gonna go back to 3.5e/PF1e (rose tinted glasses do little for me), and I like PF2e but it's definitely a system that burns you out. On the OSR side of things, you have games like WWN that does a pretty good job I feel of distilling down a lot of that core D&D feeling while also giving players an assortment of customization while also giving GM's advice to empower them in their games. At the end of the day, all I can say is like Vampire the Masquerade, I will stick with V20 as much as I can. If I find it suddenly impossible to ever put groups together just because of edition warring then fuck it. Vampire was already an unfortunate beast of a game where most of my enjoyment came from reading these books, finding typos, and realizing how poor some of the advice is in hindsight. I spent nearly a decade fantasizing about running the game, I can spend another millenia while I'm at it.
Please watch "Aliens" - theres so much setting, coolness & detail. Its a very special movie. 🙏🏼 Regarding your video topic: You would think ..wouldn't you .. that a game publisher would want to provide character generation tools for free. Since it supports & adds value to their product. A lot of RPGs do this, but not WotC, they cripple the free version & ransom the rest. Its not like you can use the char without the game. For me this shows how they care less about the product & more about arm-twisting a few extra coins.
Personally I got so fed up with Paradox and how they handle the WoD, especially VtM, that I started to work on my own urban fantasy vampire politics ttrpg.
From politics, to tabletop, to any part of life, people who are accustomed to doing things a certain way don't like it when someone comes in and changes it. Someone's it's a good thing, bad in others. But it's a human thing at the end of the day.
What do you think about the recent survey made by WoD? To me it looks like Paradox have no idea on how to manage an IP like the WoD and it's just asking people "what will you give us your money for?"
I don’t like the new lore very much, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing if you do. You like what you like, I would never say someone is “wrong” for liking something.
People don't handle change well. Certainly not till they are ready. There were editions I wasn't into and so I didn't buy. WoD made those editions to bring new people in. Like D&D, I'm not the biggest fan of it. I enjoyed 4th, I haven't bothered with 5th as no one around me is playing 5th. When it comes to old fans and getting new ones. Change can be a good thing.
Homebrew is the only edition people play anyway. These edition war a useless since every table pick and choose their canon and mechanics. But there's a capitalistic push to fuel the edition wars to sell new stuff and throw away the old. Gotta resist that and appreciate diversity of play.
Keep in mind I think a lot of this mentality is from people who're no different than those that will make fun of you for having last years iPhone model. Sadly this franchise is pretty full of gatekeepers and such. The best we can really do honestly is to keep calling them out for their idiocy. Which they adore, btw, lol (sarcasm).
From a brand perspective telling new fans to play catch up with 30+ years of VtM histories isn't the best marketing move. Then there is the headache of trying to square nonsense like the whole Oblivion construction with Obtenebration and the whole set of Necromancy powers from before that. That and the aspect that they might be afraid that they might get hold accountable for the more .. flawed .. aspects of the legacy. As for edition wars, it isn't like D&D fans are peaceful around editions like 1st, AD&D, 3.5. 4 or 5. One won't be better or worse.
Paizo's Pathfinder 2e is getting a remaster that changes some stuff, updates some stuff to remove all the OGL connections and just does a general balance patch on tons of stuff (mostly buffs to underperforming features) and they have Archive of Nethys, which is entirely free, and retains all the Legacy content.
So, unlike WotC, it turns out you can keep the previous stuff available even as you move to a new variation of the current edition....
Aside from some fuckups Paizo has been the GOAT recently ngl.
What a time to be a PF Fan
In the optional bit of the survey I told them that they need to stop being afraid of theyre own IP and focus more on the lore, that they needed to bring back more things from older editions
I genuinely think that if they do that then things like the Werewolf 5th edition corebook will never happen again
As someone who has played V5 and was a storyteller for V20 DA I get what older players miss in the new edition and what new players find…off putting…in the older editions.
But I like parts of both, would love to combine the Bloodpool with the Hunger-System.
And in my opinion, you can’t really compare the two, they are like apples and oranges, or as the guys over at Black Lodge Games put it in one of their videos: ‘…it’s a product of its time…’
V20 lives in the Zeitgeist of the 80’s and V5 doesn’t. It is not possible to transport or insert the feelings of another time and generation into the older or the newer game.
A good comparison could be: V20 is a big rock that falls from a mountain into the river of time and V5 are all the little pebbles that wash into the ocean of eternity.
The rock has weight, history, sharp edges, texture and it will crush you if you are not careful.
All the pebbles are smooth in your hand, shiny, easy to carry and you can decorate your sandcastle with them. They all come from the rock, but you can’t make a rock out of them again.
But I really hate the non-existent layout of the V5 core rule book. Did they hit ‘shuffle’ when the designed the pages? I am a DM for Shadowrun so I have a high tolerance but wtf?!?
🤣
Hasbro seems terrified of scaring off new customers while assuming they have the old customers by the balls.
Lore by Night has entered his Tom Bombadil phase. Im half expecting him to save four hobbits from a willow tree.
Buy more product. Dont think about it. Just open wallet and purchase mass consumables!
Also, 5.5 ed DnD is basically a lot of "whatever." They absolutely will make a 6th edition, with wildly different rules. 5.5 is essentially an officially produced homebrew/fanfiction of itself. Soooooo.... play something different. Lotta games out there.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Might have something to do with WotC hiring people from the tech industry and White Wolf being owned by Paradox. In tech: old = outdated which means it's bad. So things have to be new.
it's entirely how they pitch things.
Alien and Aliens are considered the absolute peak of the franchise. Both are amazing, and it really comes down to what your in the mood for.
This new corporate entitlement nonsense is just insane. They are more worried about how I play the game with my friends then about making an actual game we would want to play. I don't think V5 is a bad game at all, and we're currently in the midst of a W5 Chronicle and we're enjoying ourselves with it. But it has to go and make the misstake of burning the past. But that past is the only reason that WoD brand means anything to begin with! You can't have your cake and eat it.
I'm kinda glad that Paradox has stopped paying attention to Chronicles of Darkness. I love what Onyx Path has done with the second edition, and I enjoy running it. I'm looking forward to what they are going to do with Curseborne. I read the Ashcan and I'm in into it. I have more confidence in Onyx Path to put decent care and attention into their games then Paradox, so I hope they can set up an interesting, deep and imaginative horror world that would provide years of good games!
Rotten corpos ruining gaming? Nothing new...
Good thing i jumped the 5e ship loooooong ago.
I would say its always best to add a little homebrew and take what rules you like and toss the ones you dont. That said all I really do is barrow a few from V5th and go back to V20th anyways.
As far as "legacy" is some people think that the old matierial was toxic or not inclusive enough because the young always want to devide themselves from those who came before them and condemning what came before in effort to make room for what is new in hopes that people en mass will pefcieve the new as superior and give the upstarts a pat on the back.
Also doesnt help that most of the origianl creators are dead and the living ones just want a paycheck.
Love me some of the older books.
When you talk about dead original creators, you mean Gary Gygax?
This is not just a matter of ttrpg’s. You see this kind of attack on legacy increasingly throughout nerd culture. I think that a good idea of why it happens can be seen in what happened with Star Wars. Basically, the kind of people that made these properties were nerds and they were making products for other nerds (like myself). Now, those nerds are no longer in charge, and the people who are want to “fix” what has been done. They want to make it less “nerdy,” and more of what they want/what they think the mass market wants. It is weird to me to see the change in this kind of content throughout my lifetime. I was regularly bullied and actually beaten as kid for liking the kinds of things that are just considered normal now. And I wonder how much of this backlash against legacy is just a continuation of that. I wonder how much of this backlash is really just a backlash against the nerd that they see as still existing in these properties.
The toxicity goes hard at times, but it ain't new either. When I was a wee kid in my first WoD introduction, there was the infamous Mage Flame Wars between 2nd Edition and Revised. What people said about the NWoD when that thing showed up.
But that has *always* been the problem with WoD fanbase. It's an entire fanbase based of tribalism, and no matter the problem, there was someone with the opposite opinion that they would dramallama with. I might have thicker skin, but having a bunch of people be verbally toxic is preferable to the time where you got dragged your name through newsletters or got into a fistfight with a drunk Justin Achilli at the WW GenCon bar if you said something online about his changes to Revised Vampire.
Don't think that there's ever going to be a good solution, because the output of books can NEVER be the same as the 90ies, at at times, there is a need for a change or a cleanup. Hence why we get sweeping changes or fixes that will cause more issues. And if you keep doing the same, you lock yourself into a creative deathspiral where deviations and new ideas are scrutinized to death, which can be a serious problem elsewhere.
D&D gets around that with multiple settings. That... well, that ain't exactly possible with WoD as it is.
What Chaosium is doing is pretty cool, but at times, it feels like the Chaosium customer being catered to has longer and whiter beard than you do, Lore. Chaosium is chasing their older, resource-heavy audience, but if new blood enters it is just a perk. However, Chaosium games has some serious gatekeeping issues when the games are running through almost 50 years of worldbuilding or even longer literary tradtions.
Talsorian is kinda doing a bit better with CyberPunk Red, and it does have the advantage of having sold their franchise to a corp that allowed them to do whatever they wanted in the TTRPG space as long as they did not cross 2077.
Yeah I'm newish to the scene but grognards seem to be a trend that's almost as old as tabletop itself. As soon as new editions were released there were people saying the previous one was better. and I don't think those people are dishonest, they very well may prefer those editions, the problem is when they think other people are "wrong" to prefer another edition.
The reason that they (Corpos) hate Legacy is that they can't have future monetization on older printed stuff. That's all that's to it.
Thank you for the link.
The edition warring in this community is insane. Anyone who likes one system over another is having wrong-fun in the eyes of the other side. Each system has positives and negatives. None of them are perfect. Hell, none of them are particularly good, mechanically speaking, in the grand scheme of TTRPGs. The worst part of it is that the most vocal detractors of any edition sound like they didn't even play, let alone read, the edition they complain about. And these vocal detractors gain traction among others who hate something they also haven't played or likely even read primarily because it's different. And we see this from all sides. V20 and earlier players who hate that the game has moved on from them. V5 players who think anything published before 2010 must be garbage. At this point in time Chronicles of all things is getting the best treatment. Being largely ignored in the heat of the V20 vs V5 war is a blessing. Maybe even a slight positive reception from the people that used to hate it for killing their game in the eary 2000s because now "at least it's not V5"
V5 has many strengths and weaknesses and so does V20. I've seen this viewpoint more often but I like to see it more. I feel like too much of the arguing around it is weirdly politically motivated (and I say this as a far left person). that's not to say people aren't genuine about their likes or dislikes, but people saying they dislike v5 due to "virtue signalling" need to deal with their cynicism stat.
Preach LBN!! Preach it!! Agree completely!! 🧛♂️
Here I am, still running moldvay, can't improve perfection
I have thoughts on this that are going to be all over the place a bit.
Regarding D&D, WotC had done an okay job in the past of re-embracing their older editions and selling them on DTRPG with some PoD options. Regarding any edition changes, that's a whole other topic that I think a Matt Colville video is going to have to cover. The nature of D&D's change from 3rd edition forward was going to cause nothing but schisms from there on out is all I am going to say.
The custodians of the WoD/CoD stuff in the past have done an okay job with bringing about the older material with advent of V20. V5 and all its contentions from which I've read are just understandable. There's things I'm okay with, things I'm really not okay with, and I have mixed opinions on.
What I do think is kicking the franchise at the moment is the simple decision to tie its system so heavily to a lot of other setting changes such that it becomes very difficult to reasonably homebrew in older material without any reasonable guidance.
The only way the issues of V5 wouldn't have happened is if they just didn't release it and instead just kept going with V20A for a while longer, because as it stands V5 is such a dramatic shift in how the game is played, and a stronger opinion on intended play (which I admire a bit as a very lost storyteller)
Unfortunately, we're here now. The potential solution in my mind would simply cause another schism (probably) as creating an edition that is itself like V20 in that it perfectly distills the VtM setting to its core and then releasing supplemental setting books that moves the meta plot in whatever direction, establishing new clans, combining others, and more.
I don't think anyone really has the ideal answer in all of this. I was already in a camp burned by WotC with DnD5e prior to the OGL scandal because I just didn't find the rules conducive to the games I run. I was not gonna go back to 3.5e/PF1e (rose tinted glasses do little for me), and I like PF2e but it's definitely a system that burns you out. On the OSR side of things, you have games like WWN that does a pretty good job I feel of distilling down a lot of that core D&D feeling while also giving players an assortment of customization while also giving GM's advice to empower them in their games.
At the end of the day, all I can say is like Vampire the Masquerade, I will stick with V20 as much as I can. If I find it suddenly impossible to ever put groups together just because of edition warring then fuck it. Vampire was already an unfortunate beast of a game where most of my enjoyment came from reading these books, finding typos, and realizing how poor some of the advice is in hindsight.
I spent nearly a decade fantasizing about running the game, I can spend another millenia while I'm at it.
Yeah, this is all a cash grab on the parent company’s behalf. I say take your physical media and play however you want.
Please watch "Aliens" - theres so much setting, coolness & detail. Its a very special movie. 🙏🏼
Regarding your video topic: You would think ..wouldn't you .. that a game publisher would want to provide character generation tools for free. Since it supports & adds value to their product.
A lot of RPGs do this, but not WotC, they cripple the free version & ransom the rest. Its not like you can use the char without the game. For me this shows how they care less about the product & more about arm-twisting a few extra coins.
it's the hardest part of getting my friends to try V5 they would rather play V20. not giving us playable sabbat did not help
I really like the hunger dice mechanic
@@Cointelpronounmostly yes. Hunger dice stops math hammering the bloodpool… messy crit successes though….
Personally I got so fed up with Paradox and how they handle the WoD, especially VtM, that I started to work on my own urban fantasy vampire politics ttrpg.
From politics, to tabletop, to any part of life, people who are accustomed to doing things a certain way don't like it when someone comes in and changes it. Someone's it's a good thing, bad in others. But it's a human thing at the end of the day.
What do you think about the recent survey made by WoD? To me it looks like Paradox have no idea on how to manage an IP like the WoD and it's just asking people "what will you give us your money for?"
Sounds pretty apt to me. WoD (to me) clearly have no idea what they're doing
The way folks ( fans and officials) on certain X5 Discords refer to Legacy content and fans with a curled lip annoys me no end.
I don’t like the new lore very much, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing if you do. You like what you like, I would never say someone is “wrong” for liking something.
The sense of lore continuation from v20 to 5e is a reason why I'd like a playable Sabbat in 5e, although I know you disagree on this take.
People don't handle change well. Certainly not till they are ready. There were editions I wasn't into and so I didn't buy. WoD made those editions to bring new people in. Like D&D, I'm not the biggest fan of it. I enjoyed 4th, I haven't bothered with 5th as no one around me is playing 5th. When it comes to old fans and getting new ones. Change can be a good thing.
Homebrew is the only edition people play anyway. These edition war a useless since every table pick and choose their canon and mechanics. But there's a capitalistic push to fuel the edition wars to sell new stuff and throw away the old. Gotta resist that and appreciate diversity of play.
Keep in mind I think a lot of this mentality is from people who're no different than those that will make fun of you for having last years iPhone model. Sadly this franchise is pretty full of gatekeepers and such. The best we can really do honestly is to keep calling them out for their idiocy. Which they adore, btw, lol (sarcasm).
Dnd 5e, l5r 5e, any wod 5th edition, they should really stop at 4.
From a brand perspective telling new fans to play catch up with 30+ years of VtM histories isn't the best marketing move.
Then there is the headache of trying to square nonsense like the whole Oblivion construction with Obtenebration and the whole set of Necromancy powers from before that.
That and the aspect that they might be afraid that they might get hold accountable for the more .. flawed .. aspects of the legacy.
As for edition wars, it isn't like D&D fans are peaceful around editions like 1st, AD&D, 3.5. 4 or 5. One won't be better or worse.