White Wolf Publishing

Back in 2006, Dark Ages: Vampire became my first real tabletop game (even though I played online at the time). My Storyteller sometimes regaled me with tales of the community from back in the day when everything was new and mysterious, when White Wolf was the second largest game publisher, and the game lines were closest to the culture that first spawned them. Since then, I've met other gamers who likewise played the games as the books were coming out month after month, or remember the old WoD chat servers, the 200+ player LARPs, and the old forums. If the nostalgia glasses aren't very thick, I missed out on a really interesting era of White Wolf's history.

So, story-time if you please. What was the WW gaming culture like between 1991 and 2004? How did it start? How did things change over time? How are they different now? Disabuse me of, or confirm, the stories.

Did it all start out with creepy tales of personal horror?
Was there a major backlash moving between 1st and 2nd edition edition, and then again with the move to Revised?
Was there really a "gothic-punk" crowd that the games appealed to?
What were players like back then (if you can draw broad categories of player types); were there a lot more people into the personal horror thing, more LARPers, more elitist, more open?
Did every game have a werewolf, a vampire, and a mage; or did people keep the lines separate?
Was the Aeonverse a blip for most people, or did people talk about it in the same conversations as they did with VtM and such?
Were there poster boards three layers thick with advertisements for WW games?
What did people argue about?
Were there clubs other than the Camarilla Fan Club?
Did people think it was a fad? That it was going to last forever?
Were there writers, fan-writers, and community members who really stood out back then, but have disappeared into the sands of time?
Were the forums like they are now, or were there thousands of people? What were the forum communities like?
What kind of memorabilia did they used to sell, hand out, or give away as prizes (collector's edition books, special storyteller screens, etc.)?
What was it like reading the White Wolf magazine (and what did you think when it switched style)?
What promises were made by the designers, but never kept? What came out of left field?
How has the community or the feel of the company changed? If the community from today met the community from 20 years ago, would they be on the same page?
And don't even limit yourself to these questions; these are just some sample questions. Just - tell me about it. Tell me what that time period (or periods, if you want to go edition-to-edition) was like.
What exactly did it mean to be “gothic-punk” (or just goth or punk; was there really a fusion of the two)? Is it something that can be summarized in a Wikipedia article, or was it more than that? What got people into it and why did it fade?
What aspects of the game used to be mysterious? What did people think of them before the questions were answered? Stuff like the Sabbat, the Black Spiral Dancers, the Technocracy.
Are there any awesome fan supplements lost to the sands of time, complete or incomplete? The "Wraith: Revised" sounds interesting.
Because the forums were more densely populated, and each forum had its own culture, does that mean you would rarely see the same posters in any given thread? I mean, nowadays, if I make a topic here, mostly the same people hop on (you guys are awesome, by the way).

Again, these are just sample questions. If you want to talk about something else on the subject, please go right ahead. I'll read whatever it is, whether it's a sentence or a page (or longer).

If nothing else, tell me what it was like for you, picking it up back then. I've heard, for example, that the thing that really sold WW as a company was the green marble background with the rose - that it was just so different.

In short, I just want to hear your stories of what it was like to play the games back then.

By the way, if you bring up a person, place, or thing, or event, I would appreciate it if you explained who or what it is.

Wow, this is a big, broad topic. I first got into WoD in the late 1990s while in college.

Yes, absolutely. I was part of it at the time. Myself and a number of friends actually did dress the part, attend goth clubs, and listen to the genre-defining music. The esthetic of the WoD resonated very strongly for me because of this.

Not in my experience. I played lots of VtM. There was a weekly LARP in the area, and it wasn't uncommon for people to run extra little scenes and plot threads mid-week as well. That's a lot of Vampire. Some of the same folks got a Werewolf LARP started. I was in a short-live Wraith table-top game, and some of my friends were running all of Giovanni Chronicles after it came out. People were running Mage, Mummy and Changeling as well. Despite all of these different lines being played, we really didn't tend to do crossovers. If you wanted to play a Mage, you just got people together to play Mage, rather than trying to cram one into a Vampire game.

Frankly, until I started reading this board a couple years ago, I had no idea that crossover WoD games were so popular. I've never played in one, or felt much motivation to do so.

If you haven't participated in a discussion about vampires and lawn-chairs, you haven't lived

Ari Marmell used to be a prolific poster on the old WW Forums.

The Chronicles of Michelle were an awesome thing to behold.

There was the Great Banning, where Conrad Hubbard (one time Admin of the forums) banned something like 30 users in a single week. Many of them for simply disagreeing with him (on the banning of other users).

Epic Mage flame wars about 2nd edition vs. Revised edition.

-Matt

I kind of missed the rousing convos on the old W:tA mailing list. It often kept Ethan Skemp on his toes (or ripping his hair out, one or the other ...)

Where Mage Revised was concerned it was volatile. I knew that the game was something special when I saw how so many people genuinely cared about that game, even though most of the arguments about it degenerated into flame wars.

Okay, I’ll bite; what’s so fascinating about both those things?

[/quote]

Oh just in the un-moded html chats you saw about one every other day, i think when i was 14 i might had even had one. there were so many red headed winged lesbian princesses around it would have made disney sick lol

Vincent? Purple shirt? O.o

His online handle is Mousferau, you may have read a few things he has written or co-written, such as:

Vampire: the Requiem
Gehenna - The Final Night
Blood Sacrifice
Archons & Tamplars
The Conqueror's Shadow
Agents of Artifice
The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos
Tomb of Horrors 4E

-Matt

The setting of the World of Darkness is one of Gothic Punk. For me, it meant a rebellious against-the-norms personification that took place in a layer of a greater acceptance of death, brutality and overshadowing distopia of oppressive power. You literally sort of take the Gothic and Punk movement of the 80s and throw them together stylistically in a world set in that mindset.


They were the Bogey Men. They were the fodder. They were the most devious, dangerous, Evil things in the game systems, and it was the fact that they were just "Evil" that made them mysterious--there was no "humanizing" them, there were no "insightful motivations" that made you think "Hmmm, maybe these guys have a point." They were Evil, and it was your job to kill them. It was like watching a magic show run in front of you, and you really wanted to see the magic of how it all happened behind the stage, but once you knew how the tricks were done, the performance was never quite the same again, and you had to look for new things to investigate--which could often lead to deeper RP and characters, but also took that "innocence" out of the game too because now you knew that the bad guys had motivations, and perhaps some insight/good points too.



Oh, the number of 3rd Generation vampires running around, the over-sexed Toreadors, the multitude of Rank 6 Garou, the 6am Black Spiral Dancer attack on the Caern each morning, the Appearance 7 lesbian Satyr sex orgies, the characters who had last names like "Knight", or "Black", or whatnot. Everyone was immune to mental control, and everyone had the power to do so. It really was more like a chat room than any sort of real setting, but it was free-form, and for the griefing and frustration it caused when someone would come in just to disrupt your scene, it did have a community, a scene, a character of its own that was fun in most ways.
To this day I still look back and wonder where some of the old folks from those chat rooms wandered off to...


Hah. Well, you see, back in the days of Gen Con, around 1996-97 in Milwaukee Wisconsin, TSR had a large "Castle" at Gen Con... walls made of styrofoam and such, that encompassed most of their floor space. It was about 20 feet tall. (I still have a piece of the Styrofoam from when they tore it down the last time.)

(The above picture is of the TSR castle circa 1992, it seems.)

White Wolf had a pretty large floor space back in the day too, and so they had built a smaller Gothic-style Castle for themselves. It was black with vertical spires, and the likes (I think, it may have even been painted to look like black marble in places?) It was both a back-drop, and a divider for different areas (signing area, demo area, the shopping area, etc.) and at the time I think they probably took up about 6-8 squares of floor-space (each one being about 10'x10'). I don't remember necessarily seeing it once they moved to Indianapolis, but I could be wrong.


The Succubus Club comes from one of the Vampire: the Masquerade books, and is a vampire-run club in Chicago (though, apparently other locations too.)
However, it was also the name given to the parties that White Wolf is/was famous for putting on at every Gen Con (and likely any other convention) they went to. They used to be by invite-only (Brian Glass was perhaps a bit too kind to allow me into one at my first Gen Con, and I was terribly out-of-place, and I want to give him a HUGE thanks nonetheless for keeping his word and letting me have a ticket.) The first one I attended was in the Hyatt hotel in Wisconsin. It was really a sectioned off ball room, and they had a bar, a dance floor, and a DJ booth. One of the White Wolf guys even did some magic tricks while we listened to stuff like "Tainted Love" and the likes. The Succubus Club was really more of a "We're White Wolf, let's get drunk, have a good time with industry folks and friends we've made this con." White Wolf was known for partying like rock stars. ;)
Eventually, they opened it up to anyone who wanted to join, and they would rent out other locations (even running LARPs in the middle of it that "took place at a club.") Somewhere I have a matchbook with The Succubus Club logo on it that I kept.
So, basically, while The Succubus Club started as a VIP/Invite Only thing, it eventually (and usually remains) something more open to the public to be a "We're White Wolf, Let's Party!" sort of thing with music, booze, (occasionally dancers), and promotions/releases involved too, depending on the year, the budget, and interest.
Lately, though, with White Wolf's "The Grand Masquerade", White Wolf's presence at Gen Con has become little more than a notice of "we're still here" (which I'm terribly sad about), but I think I remember they still had something last year, but it may have gone back to "invite only" status.

[/quote]
I would definitely think so. I mean, if you were in your late-teens, and/or had influence from the gothic-punk movements then it was probably something very easy to step into. But being that many folks got into the game because it was one of the only games out there that took place in an era we "understood" and yet held fantasy elements to it, it allowed us to enjoy escapism as characters from the "now". We didn't have to think about the game in a fantasy-European setting, or in the future, or whatnot... the World of Darkness was based on OUR world (though, tweaked.) There wasn't any confusion that "Vampires exist!", but the mechanics were about using guns we were "familiar" with, cities and things we could see, or were more familiar with. To us, the "World of Darkness" didn't have the depth and mood that the developers had been inspired by.
And I think that's one of the things that probably frustrates and frees the STs and players of WoD--Even though we know that the books take place in a powerfully oppressive, darkened, sickened world with some REALLY heavy themes, most of that can be cleared away and still yield a pretty great game even without all of that moodiness--it all depends on the game YOU want to play.
So, yeah, while the game was likely inspired by, and meant for people really into the Gothic Punk scene, and meant to be kept there, a lot of us just didn't have that same connection and were influenced by other sources and shared that with others who were like-minded, and eventually it mingled and became a rather colorful mix of different communities becoming one through a mutual interest.

Back in the old days of the chats, Brian Glass (el tigre) and a few others would pop up on the chats (OOCly, of course), usually in the mornings and chat with folks there. It was cool that not only were they willing to converse, but that they would literally drop into the live chat rooms and converse with folks and answer questions we head.

There are two main reasons, in my observation, why it faded. The first is the one I was expecting to happen eventually, back in the 90s. All cultures, including subcultures, grow and change over time. Goth and punk aren't dead, and I doubt they'll go away anytime soon, but they are smaller and less prominent groups than they once were.

The second reason was the ignorant backlash after the Columbine shooting and the chilling effect it had on "darker" youth subcultures. Basically, because the shooters were known among their peers for wearing black trenchcoats they got lumped in goths. Overnight, goth kids in highschool were sent home to change, sent to mandatory counseling sessions and faced other draconian treatment because parents, teachers and school administrators feared that their dark clothes were a warning sign of impending violence. To read more about this, including numerous first-hand accounts from the victimized kids, google "Voices from the Hellmouth".

From the 80s up through 1999 there was a steady stream of new people finding their way to gothdom, many of them getting into it in their teen years. As of 1999, a majority of those teens stopped coming. Goth subculture didn't curl up and die overnight, and new people still embraced in college or later, or in communities that weren't so draconian. In fact, it wasn't noticeable until a couple years later when natural attrition caught up with the slack in growth.

I am getting the impression that the Zanzibar site was some kind of fan site that featured links to various fan resources that were popping up across the web. Is that right?


Looks cool. I prefer black backgrounds like that, although the side bars might have been annoying.


Visual chat room? Like everybody had sprites walking around and talking?


What is "eljay"?


Looking forward to it.


What is that quotation in reference to?


What is SCAR art?

GogoPartDuex wrote:
hating on SCAR art

What is SCAR art?

---

Some of the most godawful drawings to ever disgrace a gaming book.

LOL this. It was just dreadful. White Wolf was one of the first rpgs where the art work put me in the proper mindset for a game. It had some awful parts but man....Bradstreet's early vampire work, the clan write up art in the original Vampire:the Dark Ages. The Albrecht/Mari Cabrah fight artwork in the 2nd edition Werewolf book.

One of the things I definitely miss is the signature characters. the aforementioned Albrecht, Cabrah/Evan Heals the Past. The crazy Pentex board with the Malkavian and BSD. The Green Lady from Wraith,etc

And the novels! Pomegranates Full and Fine, Breath Deeply, the Clan novels, the random WoD books, even the one set in Vegas with the White Howler kid, the insane mage,etc. Masquerade of the Red Death. I still want the trilogy that was a Vampire/Wraith/Hunter/Mummy and I don't remember what else crossover novels.

And on stuff that were in the works but didn't pan out. A Werewolf the Apocalypse video game was in production, some screenshots out,etc. But was canceled.

At the end of Werewolf: the Apocalypse Revised, there was an advertisement.
Here's a web site that sort of explains that a little bit.


SCAR are actually two Australian artists ( Steve Carter & Antoinette Rydyr) who had/have a very underground comic style that was very... "unique", even among the rest of the styles within Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Even today, their style hasn't changed much from the early days. Werewolf: the Apocalypse's artwork (especially the 1st edition) was very comic-book influenced, so it's little wonder SCAR's more graphic/underground style would it in with the Gothic Punk/Trippy world of Werewolf: the Apocalypse. However, when set next to the likes of the early Timbrook, Bridges, LAW and Spencer pieces, the style looked very out-of-place. Yes, it gave that jarring, surreal appearance that was intended, but it wasn't necessarily accepted by the fans.



Yeah... sorta. "Werewolf: the Apocalypse - The Heart of Gaia" was in production, but then the company went belly-up. I was always surprised that it was just given up on completely, but that made me think that there might have been other issues behind the scenes, or with the game itself.
You can find YouTube vids of the opening, Ending, and promotion cinematics.


Heehee. Check out the Way Back Machine for a snapshot of the 1996 page. This'll take you back!


Holy crap. I'd forgotten about The Palace. To be honest, it was was like a pre-cursor to the walk-through environments of 2nd Life and was pretty advanced for its time. I remember the rooms all looking different, and you could literally move your icon around on the screen, and the text boxes were real-time...



I was kinda sad that the Exile game didn't ever really take off, but then again it wasn't anything similar to WoD/Storyteller mechanics when we did a "playtest*" at Gen Con '96. I think the Null Cosm fell through, but the seed was planted for Æon/Trinity that came out instead.

*our Playtest included standing in line for a half our, getting to the bench and being given an Alpha version of the rules to make characters with on our own for a half hour, and then being told no one was running demos the rest of the day, but we could take a copy of the rules if we wanted to.

Also, from what we were told, at the time, the plan for the Null system wasn't just the game, but it was supposed to be a whole multi-media thing with other companies creating video games, animated series (this was at a time when SPAWN, Æon Flux, The Maxx and the likes were doing relatively well), but it all sorta fell apart and, like I said, Æon came out and filled that "Future/Space" idea instead.

Ah man. 21 year old me looking at that for a half second, living at home in college, no girlfriend. OK, maybe I miss some of that more then others. ;) (miss 21 and being in college sure, living at home and no GF not so much)




The Palace was a good community while it lasted. It went down from time to time and one day never came back up. I know we never got as many as WW wanted, but Charles Baily worked hard to get the word out and keep interest high. Whatever happened to him anyway, he seemed a nice fellow.

Were any of you on Usenet at either IC thread? I remember Rick's Cafe and Wolves Glen Pub, and that several people at those were part of a larp togather we sort of seeped into.

Not only that, but the first edition of Exalted featured "Before there was a World of Darkness, there was an age of savage adventure" on its back cover. I used to have links to threads discussing the early ads on the old RPGnet forums, but those haven't worked in a while.

The FAQ in the 1e Storyteller's Companion had this to say:

"Q: Is Exalted the ancient past of the World of Darkness?

A: As much as you want it to be, yes. Exalted is a game about adventure in the Second Age of Man, not about the cosmology of the World of Darkness. It is a world that can take many directions, and certainly one of them -- a near-victory of the Wyld that drives the Weaver insane -- leads to the creation of the World of Darkness. But it could also become a golden age, an age of brutal Solar despots, a world-sized necropolis ruled by the victorious Deathlords, or any of a dozen other possibilities. You should let the actions of your players and the goals of your series shape the future of your world, not the need for the cosmology to eventually transform into the modern game lines."


Incidentally, someone tried in vain to revive those about a year ago, as seen here.

Interesting.

With so many chat rooms people seem to have lost a lot of interest in IC threads. IIRC those were slowing down anyway when WW started Java chats, but Java chats pretty much killed them.

I'm more interested in seeing where folks from there are now then doing the IC thread thing myself. I tried to start an IC thread as a message board on Geist, but it did not go far.

There was a Cheesebeast.

The biggest thing I remember is that the forums just had a different "feel" to them. Since there wasn't an OT forum, but rather just forums for each of the games, most people, on the whole, stuck to one forum giving each one a sort of feel and culture. There were quite a few characters with large personalities, so they certainly felt quite lively.

The Vampire Forum had something of a Wild West attitude to it, in my mind. You never quite knew how the Admins might react to anything and people weren't afraid to speak their mind. It wasn't aggressive or anything, but there was definitely some of that White Wolf attitude amongst a fair portion of the posters. It could be quite unforgiving for people who didn't fit in, but that did at least create a shared forum culture of sorts.

The IC threads as well are definitely something that's changed.

SCAR stands for: Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr
They have a website at weirdwildart.com

There are very few pieces by them that I didn't mind: Just as long as they weren't drawing anything human or humanoid. Some of their worst work is in the Black Dog Fomori book.

Am I the only one who remembers the invasion on the forums by Penny Arcade fanboys and Underworld representatives that went to war with us because White Wolf sued Sony Pictures over that film?
I remember that many tried to defuse them and send them on their way, but Hubbard and Stewart would go directly for their throats.



So true. I was around the Werewolf forum mostly in the DNA days and Stewart Wilson, the alpha dog, pretty much was the guy you didn't want to be mad at you for any reason. If you were dumb enough to post about wanting White Wolf to come out with a Black Spiral Dancer Tribebook or posted a new changing breed without much thought: Instant dogpile by all the angry Werewolf forum members.
I remember visiting and checking out the Mage forum and felt like they were talking in another language. Changeling forum was goofy, etc.

Random response to the original post (I'm usually in Exalted now):

Browser: Excite! Chat
I remember playing online with a browser/program/chat hybrid called "Excite! Chat". It was a web-browser with a chat bar on the bottom & avatars on screen, with a list of members on the side. So I could go to any page, normally - but if I went to a page (and a friend or whoever was there), we'd see each other.

Geocities! Angelfire!
This was useful for RP. How? We'd make free websites on Geo or Angel.

Each page had 1 main photo (for the scene), followed by a more traditional description, a few optional bonus pics and links to nearby locations (or a "fast travel" which took you to a list of all possible spots). Going to Elysium? There was a page there, describing it 24/7, available for you to play.

Huge Groups
Why all the trouble? Because our game had like 80+ people in it.

It was like multiple gamers got together - but they obviously couldn't all drive to each others house or whatever - but online, everyone could meet whenever they wanted (and since there were so many players, you always found people online). We had multiple STs, who could run stories - but for sanity, each one had a "sphere" in which they held authority.

Want some cool weapons? Go to ST "XYZ", he has all the combat books that WW puts out & knew what was currently in the game.
Want to play Sabbat? Cool. Go to ST "YZH", she keeps track of all the Sabbat players and handles their sheets.
Want to... you get the idea.

With so many people, we had a ton of STs. People often entertained themselves (PvP was popular, physically and socially) until the STs got online and had their various plots (and played us against each other). It was great. You seriously felt like a political pawn (and gradually began making moves of your own).

Culture
I lost touch with the club-people I knew back then. I remember one goth who had never played the game though, just looked at my book collection, and I somehow got "cred" for that (in the sense of being invited to sexy occasions and hanging out with friends).

And stuff.

I'm not the oldest here. But I've been long enough to use half a dozen names on this forum alone (my current is an amagalmation of my top 3). The old days were fun.

Specific Questions
Actually, it was often tales of us being the horrors. Different groups, different tastes, the crime & club culture in my city... I dunno, I never saw the horror. But we had fun with the political-social angle, getting people to backstab each other or outsmarting people.

As aforementioned, I got laid thanks to it. So yes. They didn't necessarily play, but if they didn't, they knew someone. I knew a guy who was tattooed & pierced, split-tongue & other stuff... I was intrigued. Then I saw his Tzimisce clan tattoo behind his neck. I'm a Tzimisce nut, so you can guess my reaction. =^___^=

Two varieties I was familiar with:

One, online, didn't go out for whatever reason. They were like, the pre-MMOers of the time, at home and bored. They often favored more drama, more politics, more pretentious stuff. Camarilla usually. A few were Sabbat, but I always felt they were like mischievous elders (as players, they'd secretly nod or smirk if we did something stupid to fuck with the snobs, even if they were mingling with them).

The other, which I hung with, were more social. The kids who dressed up rocker/goth at school. We were - specifically - pleased to not be D&D nerds. Ever go to a Con? I've seen them like potatoes, sitting in rows, aging and old. We liked Vampire because the archetypes were more "real". Specifically:
--- Toreador-player? She was a beauty IRL. I'd see gay guys go straight to hit on her & straight girls reconsider a 'fling'. Always stunning. Sexy parties too. I loved hanging out with her.
--- Lasombra-player? Guy was nice - but strong - and you never saw where he was sneaking from. A couple times he went berserk (against assholes) and he wasn't a geek, he fucking pummeled them solo. Then he dusted himself off, calmed down, glared at someone and commanded them to shut up, move on. They did.
--- Tzimisce (moi)?

Point is, we could be geeky but not overboard. Felt awesome. It tickled me pink to go to a party, dress right, look right, and we wouldn't be talking about "nerd stuff". Nope. The Toreador did art, I did bodymodification or crazy tranhumanist subcultures, er... we had other topics besides "my character, in this game, is this awesome lvl...". The Revised Splats were very good as starting-points for further reading.

Separate. Usually. Mixed groups didn't make sense, for me at least, but we'd mix it for story. Like, our Vampire-Combat monkeys were becoming a pain in the ass and we had an ST who loved Werewolves and normally handled weapons & stuff.

So he let a few build starting-Werewolves and taught us how to build good ones. :3 Dealt with the Vampire-Combat-Monkey problem fast. Beyond that, not enough overlap.

Wha?

Lack of rules. For example, Vicissitude - the combat monkeys wanted to basically turn into Crinos (Werewolf) or Deadly Beastman Transformation (Exalted) - but that's not what Fleshcraft & Bonecraft do easily. There's a very "hands on", "you better know what the fuck you're doing" angle when you manipulate your own muscle-structure & bones like that (which is why we had Abilities for Vicissitude rolls).
So eventually I came up with a system that allowed the combat-monkeys weaker superficial mutations (because they lacked abilities and the knowledge for rewiring their muscular system) while still rewarding the scholar-freaks (who had invested so much XP into Bodycraft, Medicine, Science, etc).

Shit like that.

Oh and Sabbat vs Camarilla. Camarilla hated getting beat. Sabbat rocked despite the casualty rate. Camarilla players often bitched and moaned. We once had a Sabbat ghoul "Stunt" (Exalted term) like hell and manipulate 6 players, all Elders, into killing each other with side-effects of their own actions. I mean, everything they did only helped him kill each other. It was brilliant.

The Camarilla ST was so frustrated that he then declared "GOD STRIKES (him) for 25 AGGRAVATED DAMAGE". Instead, everyone who died conceded it was fairly done, and rolled new Sabbat characters. The ghoul-player became our new ST.

Sexy clubs. ;) If you're ever in Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, you should look up the Fetish Factory parties. You'd blend right in.

I remember swearing and cursing a lot more back then. It was the Wild West (and I liked it that way). Eventually, though, I just remember at some point feeling like I had to move on. All the joy in adversity was to be found elsewhere (this is an Exalted pun). People became too polite, and if you don't feel comfortable enough to insult me, then I don't feel you're being honest with me.

I prefer a rude asshole over a polite or silent diplomat. At least the asshole is honest (and if the insult is inspired, I can use it myself in a game or whatever). It's an open invitation too - I will never ask a moderator to deal with someone. I find twits who brag about the "censor" button more offensive (since they devalue you to the point of bragging you're a non-person, incapable of producing worth).

But that's a tangent - and I'm sure I wrote my view in my signature, so I'll just cut and run back to my den.

Ah, the "good old days," heh. Yes, those times, before my long torpor. Hmm. Wow. Let's see if I can recall....

I discovered V:tR in a game store in Rockville, Maryland in 1991 when my roommate and I decided to get into some kind of tabletop gaming again after so many years of being away from it (we had graduated HS in the mid '80s and been out of touch). When I saw the V:tM core book I was immediately smitten. The more I perused it, the more I liked it. The art was a punch in the face. The writing evocative. And I had been a major Vaclev Havel fan, so I dug the dedication. Within a few days we were playing.

This was when there was effectively no Internet. I had no computer, no email address, no anything. Just the books, some dice, and more books. And more books. And more books. We fucking loved the World of Darkness and its incredibly rich atmosphere. Very "The Crow"-ish. Awesome. We bought every single thing White Wolf produced. Everything. We played with a few friends that we introduced and it rocked.

I should note that neither I nor my friends were even *remotely* goth or anything like that. We were college educated, white-collar shirt-n-tie guys with jobs in technology, lobbying, and Congressional politics. Hell, we didn't know any "black trench coat" or "gothic punk" types at all and had never had friends like that. We just fucking loved the atmosphere. Yeah, we were probably pretty arrogant and felt we understood Mark Rein*Hagen's vision better than the goth kids, as we embraced it from what we felt was a literary and philosophical perspective rather than one of shared rebellion or a desire to be undead. It was fucking fiction, but it was the perfect vehicle for very personal and very fun storytelling, and being as we were in Washington, DC, its political/conspiracy elements were exactly what we craved.

I never really got into the IRC/chats, but I was very active on an early WW mailing list where I mostly used the pseudonym Aurelius Verdigris or something like that. The people on that list discussed everything, but mostly we created stuff and showed off stuff so that it became a great place for sharing and for "making sense" of things that were controversial or not fully understood. For example, when Wraith came out a great deal of time was spent discussing what the Shadowlands were actually like, as in what things looked like, sounded like, etc. Same with Mage, with LOTS of discussions focused on the philosophical splits between just what Coincidental Magick was (i.e., did the Mage choose the precise form the magic would take, or did "the universe" decide, while the mage simply "requested" and outcome). There were LOTS of conversations like that, which ultimately helped everyone create more satisfying chronicles and, I like to think, influenced what the WoD really *was* for everyone.

I did check out a LARP group one evening, but I honestly found the people so unlike myself that I chose to stick to tabletop with my good friends.

I wrote a lot of WoD shit. LOTS. Literally hundreds of thousands of pages, most of which I typed up while at work at a boring lobbying job.

I began my very first ventures into the Internet—I am a very experienced professional UX/UI design guy today—as a way of creating a forum/portal/resource library for WW stuff. I created a new website for each chronicle, with one, DC By Night, having been quite successful and having gained as many as 20-40 online players joining my tabletop buddies. I kept writing...a lot.

Apparently, one day in 2004 someone at WW noticed my stuff and Justin Achilli dropped me an email asking me to do some writing for them. I, uh, accepted.

Ten books or so later, including being given the honor by El Bastardo of penning the first official "Ending" in Gehenna (Wormwood), I moved on. Vampire had changed. White Wolf had changed. I had changed. My friends had changed. It was all good.

It has been just over five years since the last time I wrote for WW (The Blood). In that time, truth be told, I've missed it A LOT. I missed the discussions online. I missed the minuscule celebrity. I missed the writing. I missed the friends. I missed the weekend late-night gaming sessions. I missed being a Storyteller. I missed just imagining the World of Darkness and everything it meant for me, which amounts to more than a decade of constant, nearly hourly consideration of a universe that I had come to love.

I saw the WoD in everything around me: every dark alley, club, skyscraper, forest, everywhere. And then, it just sort of faded. I stopped seeing it everywhere. I stopped thinking about it. I stopped *translating* everything in the real world into its WoD counterpart. And, like a child who grows up, it was okay. But I did miss it. I missed the fire of imagination and creation. I missed people enjoying what I came up with. I missed the WoD.

A few days ago the long-silent Bat Phone rang. El Bastardo and the world needed me again. Wow. It didn't take long to think about it. I answered the call. I dusted off my mental archives and have now begun to go through it, to mine it, to create again. Very cool. Should be fun.

Ultimately, the "good old days" were just that, though they were mostly nights.

I think what bothers me the most is realizing I was posting on alt.games.whitewolf and alt.games.vampire.the.masquerade 19 years ago. That is more then half my entire lifetime ago
. It's doubly scary because it feels like I will blink again and be 50? 60? 80?

It bothers me because it was when I started college, and that means I started college that long ago.
It's odd because High School feels like forever ago, and College feels like just the other day despite the fact that technically I started college right when I graduated High School. Probably because I still identify with college me and and remember the time fondly while High School I basically see that me as a child and don't. But I see High School me as no longer the person I am, but College Me as the same me, just earlier in the timeline.