Taboo to follow White Wolf?
First Oni:
Here's my question and i'd like the honest opinions of those also in game publishing:
Is it taboo to do design, develop, and publish a game that is similar to a game White Wolf has released in the past?
The example of this come from my recent brainstorming about designing a game for modern day children of gods, using the DGS system that i wrote for Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. (see my link). I've pitched the idea to a couple of my play testers and the first thing that pops out is "Oh, like Scion?" Now, i really wanted to like scion, but in retrospect, it was poorly designed and poorly written. Plus, i've run many successful forum games on these ideas YEARS before Scion was even thought about.
I guess it kinda gets to me that one company should have a monopoly on any idea that they write. Then it is forever "a game like the one white wolf did".
-Oni
(PS: this is not a knock at white wolf writers or them as a publisher. I really do like white wolf that their writers personally. This is more a note on the public view of them.)
Kevin Vito:
Nothing is truly original. Everything is essentially something else regurgitated. What matters is that you leave your mark on it.
I say go for it. Who knows? Maybe as you work on this you might make so many twists on it that it evolves into something completely different from what White Wolf did?
First Oni:
That's the advice i always give people as well and am definitely going to still write my game, as it has an interesting take on the idea (IMO). the only thing similar is "modern gods" and that's it. The themes and stories are completely different. I think my topic had a double purpose.
It's A) a rant for me, and B) i'm just talking about the perception of people that if there's a vampire in your game, you're either ripping off WW or Buffy. If there's modern gods, you must be ripping off WW. If it's fantasy, you must be ripping off D&D.
But it was mostly A.
-Oni
Ron Edwards:
I think that the rant-part leads somewhere interesting, though, so to me, what you've said is not just a rant.
First, let's deal with something for clarity: "taboo" isn't the issue, which I think you've acknowledged anyway. Who cares what people think? And in publishing or legal terms, the relevant point's been made above, and we can follow up in the Publishing forum if anyone's interested.
So where does that lead? As I see it, to the reason one might want to design some role-playing, with a (say) vampire in it. Notice, I said, "design," not play. Whatever the reason is for wanting that in play, well, it's whatever it might be. But design? Why, when one has Vampire? I presume that's the flip side of the attitude that gets up your nose, right? Not only the idea that WW somehow owns the concept of vampires, but also that "vampire" as a concept is expressed fully by whatever WW happens to have done with it.
The answer can only lie with each given author, but here's mine: because my interest in vampires (admittedly minor compared to people who were 15 in 1990) lies in something older, more varied, and as I see it more core to the human experience than what White Wolf has done with it. So were I to write a vampire-centric game, it would basically ... forget White Wolf, much as I basically forgot D&D and all related role-playing games when I wrote Trollbabe. I don't mean "forget" in a dismissive or slang way, but rather as a creative act - to start with vampires as they imprinted upon me when I was much younger, when they scared me or attracted me in the first place. (Disclaimer: this was a minor thing for me, as opposed to a lot of my friends for whom vampires were a primary personal image at one point or another.)
It's the same with D&D and fantasy, which lies at the core of my essays about Heartbreakers - if one wants to play D&D fantasy (a thing of its own), then there is no reason on this earth not to use D&D to do it, perhaps tweaked to one's heart's desire. The thing to avoid is to try to play fantasy (a thing of one's own, however informed by folklore or older fiction) and forcing D&D to conform to it or vice versa.
What do you think? I ask because I may be seeing, under the rant, the desire to bring what vampires were to you to the fore, instead of slamming what WW did with vampires into the socket upon the very mention of the word. I could be wrong, so let me know. But if I'm right, I'd like to know what they were to you which you think might be a good core for a game.
Best, Ron
First Oni:
You are very very close to the ideas that i was trying to express and i'm glad that someone picked up on my actual point, cause for a while there i really just felt like i was whining. Which i kinda was, but i digress.
But yes, my problem is more a matter of perception versus anything else. If you wanted to play a vampire, who not just play Vampire... seems crazy to me. Yes, WW is a great company and they put out great work (for some of their lines), but they shouldn't hold the very idea of a vampire or a werewolf or a ghost in the palm of their hand. Remember the whole Underworld legal battle... where white wolf was suing because the movie had vampires versus werewolves. That's been a horror movie staple since way before my time, and yet i had to argue with people saying that they were "stealing from WW".
Not to mention that there are hundred of different vampires in all of literature and cinema, from Bram Stokers, to the Lost Boys, to the Buffy vampires, to those in the Forsaken, or those in My Best Friend's a Vampire.
I do happen to have vampires in Apocalypse Prevention, Inc., which takes some classic horro elements and brings them modern with a few quirks, and they have things in common with WW vampires, just like ALL vampires do, but there are also stark differences. But i guess the thing about it is, if i was to say "I have vampires in my game", people will automatically compare them to WW, as if there weren't a million different ways to interpret the idea.
So, you are partially correct. Although, i'm trying to portray less of what i thought they were when i was kid, but how they are in my own crazy mixed up brain as an adult writer and developer. And its hard to do so with the idea that a single company has a gambit on the lot of horror.
-Oni
PS: I actually have gotten over my hang up about this so i can actually talk about in a calmer manner than when i wrote the original post. Now, its annoying, but i plan to just look past it and write my games as they appeal to me and hope others will do the same. :-)
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