Tim Bradstreet is one of the quintessential V:tM artists
Dear Mina,
Finally, the wait is over.
V.
There will be a White Wolf/ CCP Vampire MMO, and it is due out in 2012 (at the earliest). The announcement was made at White Wolf’s Grand Masquerade event, as predicted, and is all over twitter on #grandmasquerade. There is not as yet a formal announcement on CCP or White Wolf’s website, but that surely to follow next week.
The big surprise for Vampire fans is that the game and lore will be based on White Wolf’s old Vampire: The Masquerade game, rather than the current reimagining which is called Requiem. This is great news for those who fondly remember the older game, who possibly outnumber current players. The setting will also be familiar to anyone who has played Bloodlines.
Another quote relayed from a convention goer reads:
WoDO going to focus on mystery, power, romance, danger. Three types of play: sandbox, theme park, coffee shop.
V:tM features a noirish, modern day setting in which vampires and their clans play a byzantine political game of cat and mouse for power and prestige, whilst at the same time battling to keep their own humanity alive. (In other words, this isn’t Twilight.) WW coined the word ‘gothicpunk’ to describe the genre and peppered the first edition with quotes from ‘edgy’ indie bands.
If you are curious to read more about the setting itself, White Wolf did produce a free introduction. If you’re not interested in the roleplaying rules just skip to the parts about the setting, the clans, and the story ideas and sample adventure.
Apparently the old V:tM books will also be back in print and available from White Wolf on a print on demand (PoD) basis.
Arb and I will be aiming to write up some more information about Vampire, and if you’d like to share your experiences with the game, or your favourite character or clan as a guest post, get in touch! The more the merrier!
Welcome to Spinksville! 
Can you be something other than a vampire? *wonders*
Something to really look forward to….
Huge commentry on the current set of Pen and Paper games if they’re choosing to use the older setting.
Which is a plus point in my book by the way. 🙂
That’s the first thing I thought of when I heard the news. It’s obvious that the new system just isn’t working out.
I loved the old World of Darkness; my friends mostly played Werewolf, though. Although they complained that the old setting had the ever-present apocalypses foretold that never happened and that there was too much “meta-plot”, we managed to work with it just fine. In fact, we mostly ignored the featured characters, etc.
The only thing I really liked about the new setting was the character creation. I liked the idea of building a human then applying a “template” to make the supernatural. It gave your character a bit more instant background, which was cool.
Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on this. Sounds like it could be cool. 😉
Oh man… I really liked the pants I was wearing when I read this too, but I messed them a bit due to this announcement 😦
I love that they’re using Masquerade. I’m not sure it’s a commentary on the new system, as in CCP doesn’t care for Requiem, but looking objectively at both systems, Masquerade is just more conducive to a video game setting. Requiem has it’s ups, but ease of translation is not one of them.
It’ll be interesting to see a different setting in an MMO. I have no history with Vampire: The Masquerade, but since it’s a change from the standard fantasy setting I’ll definitely keep my eye on it.
It still amazes me how many MMOs choose to be set in a fantasy world when there are so many other interesting settings to pick from. Anything that deviates from the norm will grab an MMO player’s attention at this point.
Perhaps this game will take a bite out of WoW…
A lot of things could happen between now and 2012 🙂
Yes, I agree with you Spinks. But I just couldn’t resist that terribad pun. 🙂
“focus will be on politics and social activity” and its wod… And it seems to be old WoD.
I am off to run down the street to hug everyone i meet, I have two years of doing this!
/leaves
I didn’t play the RPG but I played some of the video games and enjoyed them immensely plus the TV series was quite fun too 😉 If CCP can capture the feel of the world then I think I’m going to enjoy the game a lot.
I think this is pretty key to the game being based on Masquerade. A lot of gamers who vaguely know the setting will only know it from the computer games and maybe the TV series (which I have on DVD 🙂 ).
I know what you mean about the distinctive feel of the game. It wasn’t quite ‘oo shiny vampires’ in the same way that Twilight is, there was a noirish edge and that’s one of the things that makes it cool (to me).
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Malkavian…
We still play the old V:tM as well as Bloodlines..
We can’t wait..