Bloodlines is a cult classic because it had a story with characters that was good. You could strip away the lore and replace it with something original (as Troika intended before Activision told them to use the license), and Mitsoda’s skill as a writer would still show through.
I will continue to claim that the way Troika integrated the lore is the true masterpiece here. A microcosm of the setting within a single city. If you cannot admire that, you have no soul.
I don't accept
RaggleFraggle 's premise at all, personally. Classic WoD & VTM has some of the best lore & background ever devised for a tabletop game. It's truly ridiculous to me to see someone badmouthing it in generic terms. Like, seriously, I'm supposed to take it sitting down that VTM lore is bad compared to... what... Forgotten fucking Realms?
Yeah, sure, there are silly aberrations like ecoterrorist werewolves, but even the dumb parts have their fun aspects. Pentex & Technocracy are
cool, and the scheming and nested mysteries of the Jyhad is far more interesting a premise and deep setting to dig into than most tabletop games manage. I'm honestly not sure what people are comparing it to to say it is
bad, and certainly the notion that Mitsoda is a better writer than the sum total of classic VTM is a total fucking lie.
I've always thought of VTM as a great tapestry for telling stories, with some pretty bland game mechanics. It's far more fun to dick around thinking up ideas and plotlines for the game than it is to actually play it. Kind of the opposite of D&D's non-planescape/2e golden age era, boring d&d settings like Eberron or Greyhawk where you have great, fun game mechanics with absolutely atrociously generic story you have to overlook or toss aside.
I imagine that must be quite easy to say when the ttrpg market is so stagnant and dead that nobody else was ever able to make another comparable urban fantasy rpg. Every ttrpg genre has just one game that dominates 99%, preventing anything else from breaking into the market. It’s hard to make a fair comparison when there’s nothing to compare to in the same genre space. If the only fantasy novel we had was
Eragon, then I’m sure fantasy readers would think it’s amazing and devise elaborate justifications and headcanons.
Also, I think Greyhawk fans would strongly disagree with you and I’m guessing you never read Eberron because it’s far from generic. It’s entire shtick is that it’s a reinvention of the fantasy genre that discards D&Disms and introduces magitech and stuff. I at least spend years in WW fandom, read multiple editions of books at length, and was actually a fan for some time before I got burned out by the edition wars and became a staunch critic. What D&D background do you have that makes you think you can dismiss a niche dungeonpunk setting like Eberron as atrociously generic? It’s basically the same genre as
Arcanum and the cameos from standard fantasy races are the only thing keeping from becoming unrecognizable like anything by Monte Cook.
I disagree. Strongly. Look at Harry Potter: it gives recognition to Hogwarts Legacy. Anything with Star Wars in name will gain recognition. Same goes for DnD. Or Warhammer (both Dark Fantasy and 40,000). There is a symbiotic nature between the setting and the work. A game can gain recognition from the brand (by the virtue of familiarity, if nothing else), while the brand has its recognition strengthened if said game happens to be good.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. For the most part those were wildly successful franchises with broader audiences
before their video games were made. WoD is an obscure ttrpg (every ttrpg except D&D is obscure to a general audience) that was already seeing declining profits in the mid-late 90s and the two video games probably did the most to inject any longevity. White Wolf sold 7 million items total by 2005-6 or so according to the last public figure on their website before it got taken down. We don’t have sales figures given for any later dates, but the fact that their output has hugely shrunk and they relied kickstarters in the 2010s are not a good sign. I remember when they used to sell board games, card games and promotional knickknacks on their website, as well as publishing ttrpgs from other devs like Sword & Sorcery, BESM or Pimp: The Backhanding. Then they got bought out and dissolved
twice. It’s quite telling that Paradox has been trying to cash-in on
Bloodlines’ name recognition specifically despite none of their video game products being linked to its plot or characters.
This isn’t an isolated case. I imagine Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners did more to help the ttrpg’s visibility and profitability than anything Talsorian did on their own since they first started in 1989.
No shit ttrpgs make chump change compared to any mass market. The market isn’t a growth sector. It has a ridiculous first mover advantage that outright prevents any competition, like a communist economy. It’s been steadily declining as a result of competition with video games and collectible card games that are actually subject to capitalist market forces. It crashed in the late 90s (especially in Europe, where virtually all ttrpg companies at the time went bankrupt) and aside from D&D has never recovered. And D&D’s success this decade was entirely down to free advertising by Stranger Things and Critical Role and most of that player influx isn’t going to last anyway.
But I digress.
Anyway, aside from Potter the corpos are trying their best to erode their name brand recognition by chasing woke audiences. And once the damage to their image is done, you can’t undo it. So brand recognition is unreliable as shit. Anyone who relies on it, corpo or customer, is in for a rude awakening. I see general media channels like Clownfish TV reporting on WotC alienating their audiences by refusing to publish
Barsoom Dark Sun because it’s “problematic”. Btw Pulp is a really underexploited market at present.
