(OOC) Rising from the Dead...

Well, it would seem that there is a reprieve in the air for this journal. templar_rose has indicated that game will be starting back up. It will be a smaller crowd, but it will be there. He's given me my invite and other invites will be going out. No more out-of-control games of doom.

So far, I'm bringing back Lisa Stall and Deirdra Smith/Morrighan. I will probably bring back Miranda, but I'm not sure. Bei-Ling and Arishayar are on hold for now.


White Wolf released Gehenna this week. I am going to The Underworld in Ann Arbor to see if they have it today. Thus begins the "End of the World" as we know it. We (satyr_mi and myself) will complete our World of Darkness collections and see where things go from there. I'm not sure I will care to continue purchasing WoD material with the revamp they are doing. Just from reading excerpts on White Wolf's official website I can see that they are continuing their trend of steamrolling a storyline over their customers. If this were graphic novels or plain old fiction I wouldn't care, but when you pull this shit in an RPG it pisses me off.

It's something that has been avoided, although not completely eliminated, in Dungeons & Dragons products. Then again, they have story changes when they change game editions. Seeing as how Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is just now on 3.5 (which did not contain major story changes in all reality) after how many years? White Wolf has a bad habit of making major game-world changes with every book, or at least every hard-cover, that comes out.

Now, you might (and I know some of you will) say, "Oh you don't have to use it if you don't like it" to which I respond "Bull-fucking-shit!" What, I'm allowed to ignore such ass-backwards things as the Avatar Storm, which while having a perfectly valid "story line" reason for existing was put in purely to break Mages in a way that they cannot recover from. You destroy the usefulness of the Spirit sphere (because any power which crosses the Gauntlet, even in a sensory fashion, subjects the Mage to damage from the storm) and thereby cripple 1/9th of theme and tone of the game-line. And how 'bout that Ravnos bit, which, by the way, I'm guessing is how ALL the Vampire Clans are going to get it shortly. Go read the previews on White Wolf's website if you don't believe me. It's spelled out in neat little black and white letters. Of course, this portion of my rant may be amended upon reading the book, but who knows.

The kicker is that the stuff in Gehenna happens regardless of the players actions. It even says in the book that the players cannot prevent it from occuring, so let them spend all the XP they have and, basically, "put their affairs in order". You lose the tone of a horror game when you tell the players "there is no way for you to survive or win or stop this". All good horror has a "ray of hope" regardless of the eventual outcome. Really good horror plays it to the fullest before destroying the characters.

So. Now we get to see how everything falls into place. Only time will tell if it was worth it.

Oh, look. A sappy splash page on White Wolf's website. Excuse me while I vomit.


Cross-Posted, with minor edits, to jdotmi