There’s a thread over on RPG.net with the topic, “When Did White Wolf Jump The Shark?” Some wag said that, given it was White Wolf, the question should read, “When Did White Wolf Jump the Rokea?” (Rokeas are were-sharks in the original World of Darkness).
Jokes aside, it’s a good question. And like any “shark-jumping” moment in television, the answer varies from player to player.
I’ve been a World of Darkness junkie since Vampire: the Masquerade was released in 1990. For my money, the original World of Darkness (also know as the oWoD) setting was one of the most innovative settings to be introduced to role-playing, and the Storyteller system demonstrated that rules don’t have to get in the way of the tale being told. And to show I’m not just about the WoD, I like what I’ve read of Exalted (although I’ve only played a one-shot).
The oWoD had it’s flaws, though, and from where I sit it jumped the shark quite a few times, as the different games in the line changed over the years.
For me, ther first jump came with the release of The Player’s Guide to the Sabbat for V:tM. Prior to that, V:tM 1st edition focused on the struggle to remain human, indeed conscious, and not give in to the raging blood hunger that would truly turn you into a monster. The Sabbat served not only as antagonists but as a warning to the PCs: this is what you can become if you give in to the Beast. After the PGttS came out, suddenly the Sabbat weren’t monsters consumed into near-mindlessness by their hunger for blood, but “differently ethoed”. With munchkin powers and no worries about their Humanity scores, they immediately became a magnet for all the power gamers out there. And as any experience gamemaster knows, no matter how many times you tell some players “no”, they just came up with some idiotic backwards way to accomplish it. I consider The Player’s Guide to the Sabbat a bigger ‘fuck-you’ to the Vampire fans out there than even Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand, which is so universally hated that most fans refuse to consider it canon.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse jumped the instant someone at White Wolf approved the Abomination’s inclusion in the Vampire books. I don’t recall which book gave us the Abomination (I think it was V:tM 1st edition, but I could be wrong), but I remember reading that and thinking, “Oh, thanks. Just give the Storyteller a headache.” It was like when Drow were first introduced in D&D–everyone was going to want to play one, regardless of how rare or statistically unlikely they were, and Storytellers all over the country had to fend off power gamers.
Mage: the Ascension was poised to jump several times. There was the “Pentex-has-secretly-taken-over-the-Syndicate” plot proposal from The Syndicate sourcebook. There was the “The-Void-Engineers-are-prepping-to-defect-to-the-Nephandi” idiocy from the Void Engineers sourcebook. There were the first editions of the Celestial Chorus and Virtual Adepts sourcebooks, which displayed a case of hatred for Christianity in the former, and a case of hatred for computer geeks in the latter.
But the true Olympic-level leap that cleared the shark like Bruce Jenner was the release of Mage: the Ascension Revised, which dramtically changed the setting by taking metaplot events from Wraith: the Oblivion (a line that was ending) and letting them affect not the just the metaplot but the entire setting of the game.
If you were a M:tA Storyteller in the middle of a campaign, Mage Revised was like a kick in the teeth. When White Wolf transitioned from 1st to 2nd edition in Mage (or, for that matter, in Vampire or Werewolf), it was primarily a rule clean-up/setting clarification sort of thing. With minimal work, a Storyteller and players could easily convert their 1st ed. game to a 2nd ed. game with hardly any fuss. As White Wolf began to move the WoD from 2nd ed. to revised, we saw the Vampire and Werewolf transitions be a little more bumpy–VtM got rid of Clan Gangrel, W:tA got rid of the Silent Striders Tribe. But by and large, the settings remained the same. When Mage players got MRev, they were told, “The Ascension War is over, and nobody won.”
This was like being in the middle of a World War II game and suddenly being told, “The war was fought to a draw. The Allies have recognized the rights of the Axis over their conquered territories, and the Axis has agreed to disengage from combat. You’ve signed treaties and are now on the same side.”
The new setting forced a lot of rules changes. The power level of the game was dramatically decreased (much to the glee of certain Vampire fans). Instead of a dimension-spanning RPG where control for reality was fought across different universes, the game was re-focused to Earth with penalties for attempts to leave. Instead of a brilliant antagonist who inspired fear while you marveled at his achievements, you got a half-assed government bureaucracy that made you wonder how they ever managed to take over reality. Instead of fighting to free humanity, you had a humanity that didn’t care whether or not it was saved.
As breathtaking as all of that was, it might, repeat, MIGHT have been bearable if there had been some guidance, ANY guidance, from the Mage: Revised developer on how to take your existing Mage game and transition it to the new setting. But there was none. Let me repeat: there was NONE.
I had it luckier than most. I’d long ago made the decision to ignore the metaplot and just use what might be entertaining for my players. But other Storytellers weren’t at all lucky, and were left holding the proverbial bag. Even if you did ignore metaplot like me, there were still such huge differences between Revised and previous editi0ns that you were forced to make a choice–either drop everything and switch to Mage: Revised, or stick with 2nd edition Mage and hope you could still use future supplements.
Eventually–after a lot of bad feeling had been expressed in online gaming forums and at conventions–we got the Mage: Revised Storyteller’s Guide, which had the support 2nd ed. players needed to make the transition. But by that time those players had turned their backs. They kept playing pre-Revised edition, or they abandoned it for games like Witchcraft, GURPS Cabal, and Unknown Armies.
Many players who didn’t like Mage: the Ascension‘s setting–many found it too esoteric, or thought it was “anti-science” (and accusation that made no sense whatsoever if you actually stopped to read the book)–liked the new rules and the new setting. But the players who’d made Mage successful in the first place were left out in the cold.
I’ve been role-playing for twenty years. I’ve never seen a role-playing game inspire this amount of hard feeling. The transition from 2nd editon AD&D to D&D 3.0 was as nothing compared to this. Jess Henig, the developer who responsible for this fiasco, said that he even got a couple of death threats over it–from gamers with mental problems, no doubt, but still that’s way too many death threats for a game.
For those reasons, I say that Mage jumped with Mage: the Ascension Revised.
I’ll post more musings on rokea-jumping later.
