Recently White Wolf Publishing, now a part of Paradox Interactive, opened the Storytellers Vault in co-operation with Drivethurpg.com. Storytellers and independent content creators can create and post their content on Storytellers Vault and sell it, like in the D&D DMs Guild.
It is with great excitement and pride that we announce the Storytellers Vault is now available! We know that fans of the World of Darkness have long aspired to bring your own unique World of Darkness creations to the masses, and now you can as part of the Storytellers Vault, White Wolf’s new creator content program.
White Wolf Publishing was one of the great American RPG publishers and owned many great roleplaying brands, e.g. Vampire the Masquerade, World of Darkness, Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension. In 2004, White Wolf published a new set of rules for its main games and The World of Darkness, often abbreviated as nWoD, was well received and won the Origins Gamers’ Choice awards the same year. Following The World of Darkness came new rulebooks with new editions for the games related to The World of Darkness, i.e. Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Changeling the Lost and Mage the Awakening.
Late 2006, White Wolf Publishing and CCP Games, a MMO development company based in Iceland and creators of EVE online, announced a merger between the two companies. At the same time, it was announced that an MMO based on the World of Darkness setting was in development.
White Wolf continued to publish rulebooks for its systems, though as time passed new releases got fewer and fewer. World of Darkness got a second edition in the God-Machine Chronicle in 2013 and to set it apart from the older version of World of Darkness, White Wolf relabeled the latest version as Chronicles of Darkness in January 2016.
The World of Darkness MMO was canceled after nine years in development and in October 2015 CCP announced that Paradox Interactive in Sweden had purchased White Wolf and all its brands and intellectual properties.
Back to the past
White Wolf Publishing is being revived and opening the Storyteller’s Vault is probably only the first step. There’s not much to see on White Wolf’s homepage other than that the company is “fully set on securing World of Darkness as the most respected and impactful monster universe in the world as it so naturally deserves.“
What’s more interesting is to investigate what games the company displays as part of White Wolf Publishing. Gone is every game that was published as a part of the nWod rules set. The older versions are back!
It’s alive… or is it undead?
There has been an awakening in the rpg industry of late. With D&D 5E, Wizards of the Coast seem hell-bent on squeezing as much juice out of tried and tested modules and storylines, e.g. Curse of Strahd. By reinstating oWod, it seems as if White Wolf is following similar path as Wizards. Will we soon see Transylvania Chronicles republished?
As much as I love the fact that White Wolf publishing is back on the move and eager to bring World of Darkness back, I can’t help but wonder why they decided to revert to oWoD. For me it’s a bit strange, a travel back in time. Are the nWoD versions still tight into an agreement with The Onyx Path Publishing? Will OPP be the main publisher for Chronicles of Darkness and all sub-settings?
There are probably thousands of roleplayers out there that disagree with me, after all Vampire the Masquerade was by many considered a better Vampire setting than Vampire the Requiem.
Back to the future
I think that White Wolf Publishing can do great things. They’ve done so in the past and they have some great brands and awesome roleplaying games. But you can’t see what the future will hold for you if you keep staring in the rearview mirror. You must keep your eyes on the road, right?
Vampire the Masquerade was a great game and I played it a lot. But years have passed and I want something new, something fresh for the Vampire setting. Just as I like to play 5E rather than AD&D.
Hopefully the Storyteller’s Vault is simply the first step towards a new version of the World of Darkness settings. Hopefully White Wolf Publishing has something more in store for us.
The system will get a complete overhaul (alpha-tested at GenCon) and the setting will move forward with the new 5th edition, not frozen in time, so it’s absolutely not “gazing in the rearview mirror”. They wrote about why they have chose WoD over CofD for their future plans and basically it’s the same why D&D 5e has Forgotten Realms as the default setting: it’s just the most successful setting, with the largest fanbase and better to use for cross-media products.
NWoD/CofD will continue to be under Onyx Path’s nurturing completely, at least everybody from both companies are saying that.