The design of the vampire clans is much better for the simple reason that they're based on the traditional vampire abilities depicted in vampire fiction and folklore: hypnosis, shapeshifting into animal form, mist form, super strength, etc. The way those traditional vampire abilities are splintered into various disciplines that have to be mastered also reinforces the 'punk' aspect of the setting wherein modern vampires are diminished compared to earlier generations, as opposed to a more romantic depiction of vampires.
Mark and friends exhausted that well pretty quickly and then immediately went into essentially original territory. After they wrote splats closely based on
Dracula,
Interview with the Vampire,
The Lost Boys,
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and
Necroscope, then they went for stuff like arbitrary mental illness (this might've been inspired by that Nicholas Cage movie but I can't be sure), importing wizards from their prior work on
Ars Magica, the historical assassins, a
Sazan Eyes pastiche, thieving Romani stereotypes, etc.
I get the general impression that these writers grasped for straws after running out of primary sources, whether it be for vampires or werewolves alike. I don't get the impression that the thieving romani vampires are "much better" than the romani werewolves literally cursed to wander: it's the same picture meme.
A lot of the problems stem from trying to expand highly specific shticks into major splats, not that such ideas were used in the first place.
as opposed to a more romantic depiction of vampires.
*glances over at art depicting voluptuous vampiresses* Could've fooled me.
Unlike the wealth of vampire lore that exists, there is no deep well of werewolf lore the creators of WtA could have drawn from.
There actually isn't a lot of vampire lore, not much that they drew from anyhow. The writers made up most of their stuff wholesale with only a handful of original pop culture influences to start with (basically
Dracula,
Interview with the Vampire,
The Lost Boys,
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and
Necroscope). With werewolves, there are actually several research books that they could've used. The works of Sabine Baring-Gould and Montague Summers come to mind. Even so, that's really no excuse for the silliness of the ideas they came up with and they had the same problem with the vampire splats after they exhausted their pop culture sources.
If you want a comparison, there's
GURPS Blood Types and
GURPS Shapeshifters. There's not a whole lot of lore in either, certainly not enough for the work done by WW, but there are ideas here and there that they could've used. I don't get the impression that WW consulted folklore research tho. Their splats are very eurocentric compared to, idk,
The Everlasting that was published by an ex-freelancer of theirs a few years later.
Also, there's a surprising amount of 19th and 20th century
werewolf fiction that they could've drawn from but clearly didn't. It does get repetitive fast but there are a few gems here and there. Robert E. Howard's "Wolfshead" has lycanthropy spread to a werewolf killer simply because he killed a werewolf and its spirit possessed him... which did inspire C.J. Carella's work on
WitchCraft anyhow.
I don't get the impression that WW suffered from a lack of existing lore. I don't get the impression they really did much academic research anyway. I get the impression that they simply weren't very good at coming with ideas on their own, regardless of what they were working on.
For comparison, here's the list of vamp bloodlines from
Everlasting: (this isn't an exhaustive list, the setting has no fixed number because founders pop into existence every so often)
Bathora : Descended from Elizabeth Bathory. “They are among the most hip and seductive of the vampires.” They’re sunlight immune and know blood magic, but have no fangs.
Cihuateteo : They’re descended from the Peruvian Moche god, Ai Apaec, a seriously scary motherfucker who was usually depicted as a spider or a dude cutting people’s heads off. Go look it up. Anyway, they have spider-powers and illusion-powers, and prefer bleeding victims with their knives. They get a free Magickal Path.
Dakinis : From the Indian god Kali, most of them are assassins who can shapeshift into an eight-armed form resembling their progenitor.
Dracul : Dracula’s descendants share his array of powers, and they were responsible for the Age of Lamentations, the Blood Wars among vampirekind. (Goddammit, why does every fucking thing in this game have two names?)
Kingu : Descendants of the Babylonian god, these guys are either grotesque carnival freaks or incredibly beautiful. (Mechanically, they all get a physical deformity or a mental illness.) They’re really good wizards.
Lamiae : Descended from an ancient Libyan queen, most of them are female and they can transform into, you guessed it, great white worms.
Lilim : Possibly the oldest bloodline. They can command spirits and birds of prey, and have demonic features like strange eyes, tails, little horns, and bat wings. They go as “slutty devil” for Halloween every year.
Nosferatu : Spawn of Czarnobog, the Black God of Slavonic myth, these fuckers look like, y’know, Orlok from Nosferatu. They’re immune to disease, masters of vermin, and have a power to make their face temporarily human.
Obayifo : North African zombie-masters who wear metal mouthpieces since they don’t have fangs. Is that cool? I think that’s cool. Like HHH in Blade: Trinity, but black.
Penanggalans : Malaysian wizards who can detach their heads and limbs and send them flying around. Other vampires consider them insane, because they are jealous.
Tantalusi : Greek vampires descended from the mythical Tantalus, they are honor-bound peacekeepers of the vampire world.
Xiang Shi : Descended from a Chinese warrior-king, they’re immune to many traditional vampire weaknesses. They also get a bonus to Martial Arts. Seriously. Because they’re Asian. Seriously.
Bathory is a real historical figure, Dracula and Nosferatu are fictional characters, Kali, Tantalus and Qingu are mythological figures (Kali is the only one who immediately makes sense in a vampire context), cihuateteo, lamias, lilitu, obayifo, penanggalans and jiangshi are folklore vampires that are all listed in most vampire encyclopedias you'd find at the library. Compared to WW's list of classes, I get the distinct impression that the writer consulted one of those vampire encyclopedias at the library rather than just consulting some vampire novels and movies available at the time. Anyone could do that and it's doesn't scream originality, but what are you gonna do?
Ripoff WW while lying that you aren't?
I think WW could totally have done better for both vampires and werewolves. Then and now. Even if they didn't have a plethora of primary sources (which I don't buy, considering how easily
Everlasting did it), that's no excuse for their random dart throwing once they ran out. And they didn't exactly make it easy for themselves, since they made all the vampires one species and all the werewolves one species, limited to 13, and I think that really limited what they could do with them compared to more diversity in that regard.
but even if they can't change history, they can certainly improve
now. They have all these editions to give them hindsight.
Requiem has a bazillion additional bloodlines they could mine, to say nothing of the other CoD splats. They've thrown enough ideas out there by now. Some of the ones I've found the most interesting are those with highly specific shticks that aren't forced to be expanded into major splats, like one bloodline that needs to feed on drug blood and this naturally forces them to become drug lords without needing to do ridiculous things like give them 10,000 years of history and three splats with their own unique superpowers.
