Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

The World of Darkness Steps Back Out of the Darkness

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 30, 2015

Mage20thCoverAs a fan of White Wolf’s old World of Darkness RPG series, this is a significant thing for me:

Paradox Interactive Acquires White Wolf Publishing from CCP Games

The new / old White Wolf Publishing company will run as an independent subsidiary, and will primarily deal with licensing the brands.

To me, this means hope that maybe… MAYBE… we could actually see a video game version of Mage: The Ascension. Or more likely, Werewolf.  Or more Vampire titles. Honestly, all of their games were pretty fascinating. The challenge came about in that they were really geared towards human interaction and storytelling, which didn’t translate to computer games all that well. That would be my fear of basing a game on their role-playing system.

But the settings – were incredible. I’m one of those weirdos who actually really enjoyed Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. And Bloodlines – well, its reach exceeded its development team’s grasp, sadly, but even in its broken state at release it had some amazing things going for it.

One of the cool things is that Paradox Interactive is not a “big” publisher. They publish mid-tier games by smaller, independent studios. Will this translate to some games being made by “big indies” that are willing to be a little experimental? Maybe!

Incidentally, the 20th anniversary editions of the first dice-and-paper games have been recently released by some of the same development teams that worked at White Wolf in the old days.  I’ve got the one for Mage: The Ascension, which is something like three times the size of any of the previous editions. They are being made by Onyx Path Publishing, and are available via Drive Thru RPG and other sites (as well as crowdfunding campaigns).


Filed Under: Biz, Dice & Paper - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



  • C.J.Geringer said,

    I wish soemone would make a game with the “Scarred Lands” campaign setting.

    maybe something dark souls-ish

  • Xian said,

    I have some grand strategy playing friends that are huge fans of Paradox and have nothing bur praise for the company. I have received Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV as part of bundles, but barely made it through the tutorials. Strategy isn’t really a huge draw for me, and both of these have very steep learning curves, though my friends say it is worth spending the time doing so. Maybe one of these days.

    It will be interesting to see what the do with the White Wolf acquisition. I was also fans of both VTM: Redemption and Bloodlines, so would like to see another title in that setting.

  • Maklak said,

    My best RPG sessions were Vampire the Masquerade.

    Paradox games are pretty awesome. Hearts of Iron 3 really conveys the sense of scale with millions of troops. The smallest unit on the map is a Division and it has 2-5 Brigades. A brigade is around 3k troops. And you have swarms of them. These games also teach a very Machiavellian view of history. Things are often most efficiently done through what is later considered unethical. It also lets you see how encirclement, cutting off supplies and air support can win the battle. One downside is Paradox policy on “no historical genocides”, “no swastikas” and no other controversial things, so you need mods to improove historical accurracy.

  • Burt said,

    I remember liking VTM: Redemption also. I never played Bloodlines, but I think I have it on Steam maybe, along with a billion other games I have yet to get around to.

    I also like CCP’s Eve Online. It’s a shame they botched things up so bad with White Wolf.

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