White Wolf Withdraws Pay-To-Play Policy

WorselWorsel writes "After almost two weeks of fan outrage White Wolf has canceled plans to implement their Pay-to-Play policy. In a forum post, Philippe R. Boulle writes 'Based on all your feedback, it's obvious that the policy as currently worded is not going to accomplish these goals. So, we are pulling it off the table as a blanket policy. I realize that the proverbial genie can't be shoved back in the bottle, but the guidelines I handed to a few people at ORIGINS and posted here last week clearly need to be reworked and rethought, so please consider them withdrawn.' The withdrawal of the policy can be read in full on the forums."

Comments

Summary

[hobotron]

From: The Collective Internet
To: White Wolf


told u so, kthxbai

p.s. i r0ll 20's

Like candy from a baby.

[Seumas]

The jokes about half-naked fugly chicks and annorexic retarded looking pasty boys pretending to be vampires at your local WOC/WW LARP Shari's event at 2am practically write themselves

Seriously, D&D nerds make fun of LARPers... Do you realize how lame you have to be for a D&D nerd to make fun of you?!

(Former minor-D&D nerd)

Re:Like candy from a baby.

[WorselWorsel]

Like D&D nerds have any taste. Come on, they play D&D.

Re:Like candy from a baby.

[damiangerous]

Well, yeah, gamist. I look for that in a game. White Wolf has some good fiction, but as game rules it leaves an awful lot to be desired. Pretty much everything beyond the most basic concepts is left to the Storyteller to deal with. Thanks...if I wanted to write my own game system I would.

WoD is a bit of a paradox to me. It seems to be targeted at people who like storytelling and drama, yet generally those are fairly creative people to begin with. WoD goes to great lengths to provide its own built in story, history and rich world, yet what's the one thing creative types are weakest at? Solid and balanced game mechanics. WoD's failure is that it's designed by right-brainers AND targeted at right-brain gamers. There's no left-brain in there to give them some logical base. It's far easier to put a pretty world on solid rules than to try to backport rules hacks onto an existing game, and that's where WoD falls down.

The beauty of (current) D&D is its relative straightforwardness. It scales well from beer & pretzels up to moderately simulationist. It caters mostly to the gamist crowd, sure, but you can leave out so much that it covers without sacrificing anything. Nearly any situation can be resolved with a single d20 roll...or you can choose not to roll any dice without damaging the intergrity of the system. I don't think most dramatist gamers realize that because it's cool to hate d20. You claim that D&D is gamist, but what you're not seeing is that that's what dramatist gamers need. d20 provides a solid, fairly well balanced structure for right-brain gamers to do what they do best: create a rich, well developed world that already has a rules structure to be hung on. D&D isn't perfect, but it has very little in common with the 1st and 2nd editions everyone loves to hate.

Mentioned in today's Something Positive

[BinaryOpty]

This policy was touched upon by today's Something Positive: http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp07142005.shtml

The headline seems a bit premature

[cpt kangarooski]

They've said they're going to go back and "hammer out license terms" anew. So it's not as though they've abandoned their stupid idea; they're going to try again.

Frankly, I'd find the idea that game developers are trying to impose a license on players (particularly given that it doesn't appear to be even vaguely necessary from anyone's perspective) to be unacceptable all by itself. The terms of the license, whatever they are, are not the part that's objectionable.

Poor business model

[kyndig]

This is just poor business modeling. The current solution to alleviate the concerns of the outraged players is to now get with larger organisations charging a fee to seek out contracts or licensing terms. It is clear the developers intentions is to wreap some spending capitable benefits off their products, and rightly so. Doing so in this manner though will lead to a loss in users and community support (IMHO). There are other methods to capitalise on a product. Im not a big LARP fan, but basic business management and a little ingenuity should put some copper in their pocket.

Re:What is it?

[kafka47]

..and if they get their way, they never will! :-) /K

Re:Ha... interesting

[FLEB]

I actually think that is fair, if people are using White Wolf IP to make a profit, White Wolf deserves the right to ask for a cut. Whether they will make some cash or not is a different question.

They got their profit. People buy the books... the product they chose to produce and sell... in order to run the game. They got what is rightfully theirs.

If White Wolf wants to profit from running games, they have the full right to go ahead and start running their own games. They choose to profit from selling books, and that's what profit they get and should be happy with.

Should Igloo get a buck for every cold can of soda I might sell out of one of their coolers? Should Mack get mileage payments from people who haul with their trucks? Should Gateway or Dell get residuals from the graphics I create on my computer? Craftsman get royalties from repair shops? White Wolf *sells* *tools*. By paying for that tool at the asking price of the seller, I am buying the right to use that tool for whatever uses I may need it for.

From the gaming table...

[GrnArmadillo]

White Wolf: Alright, we need some quick cash, so let's charge people for using the books we've already sold them. We should at least make some effort to pretend we have justification for this. Let's say that all the volunteers spending their time and effort to write and run the games that make our product worth owning should either eat the costs out of pocket or join our "fan club" along with all their players to get a "license".
Storyteller: You're going to need to make a diplomacy check to get the players to agree to that.
WW: Why? We own this stuff.
Storyteller: Roll the dice.
WW: Oh, alright. *rolls die* Uh... what does "critical fumble" mean?