What Next?!?!

[rob]

For everyone....

We're currently mapping out the sequence in which new stuff will be developed for White Wolf's product line. What directions are you most interested in seeing us pursue next?

Would you rather we flesh out VtR more fully with all the material from the various covenants and bloodlines?

Would you rather we add new WoD settings like Mage, Changeling, Werewolf, and Promethean? If so, which ones are most important?

Or would you rather we focus on Exalted or Scion next?

Please chime in with your recommendations. Your feedback will be helpful in our discussions with White Wolf to best prioritize our development plans.

Thanks!!!!

[dartnet]

Scion please.

[resplendenthawk]

1) Since it doesnt seem like the full authoring tool will be out anytime soon, id really like for the implementation of the 4 new skills in the Requiem for Rome book.
2) Mage Please!
3) Than Exalted
4) Than Werewolf
5) Than Scion
6) Others

Both personal preference but also with the popularity of those games in mind (Exalted and Mage get far more releases than werewolf, which indicates they sell better and have more players). Also those two games have a lot of resource management type stuff going on which would make this tool helpful.

[FifthWanderer]

Core books for the other WoD lines first, then additional material for games.

[DMG]

I agree with the core rules first.

I'd say release them in order of publication: Werewolf, Mage, Promethean, Changeling.

[Caligo]

I can see why it would be good to get the core rules done for each game before doing anything else but at the same time a complete tool is better than 4 incomplete tools.

I suppose the big question is time and money. If it takes you twice as long to add an new game compared to adding complete contents then I'd say finish one before you move on to the next. On the money front what's really important is are you more likely to sell more copies if you support more than one game at a basic level or if you cover the most popular game completly so it's a one stop shop for character creation. Almost certainly worth asking if White Wolf sell more vampire add ons on other game core books.

[rob]

At 04:19 AM 12/20/2007, you wrote:

I can see why it would be good to get the core rules done for each game before doing anything else but at the same time a complete tool is better than 4 incomplete tools.

I suppose the big question is time and money. If it takes you twice as long to add an new game compared to adding complete contents then I'd say finish one before you move on to the next. On the money front what's really important is are you more likely to sell more copies if you support more than one game at a basic level or if you cover the most popular game completly so it's a one stop shop for character creation. Almost certainly worth asking if White Wolf sell more vampire add ons on other game core books.

Those are exactly the issues we're discussing right now. Unfortunately, this is uncharted territory, so nobody has any concrete idea. There are valid arguments for both directions: new setting vs. supplements for VtR.

Nobody has any solid data we can reliably base decisions on, so we're going to be taking our best guess based on sketchy data. For example, how many VtR players use large portions of the *mechanics* from the supplement books? The VtR supplements are typically 75+% non-mechanics. If most gaming groups just cherry-pick a handful of mechanics they like, then it would be better to just let those groups easily add that handful via the Editor and encourage gaming groups to share their homemade data files with each other. On the flipside, if the bulk of the supplement *mechanics* are widely used, then a lack of that material will stunt the sales of the VtR core files (i.e. it's an incomplete tool).

White Wolf has sales data on the number of books sold, but they have no concrete data on how their players are using the contents of those books. And the anecdotal data they have is heavily skewed to a tiny subset of the overall VtR player base. So that data is of minimal value, at best.

One of the reasons behind my soliciting feedback directly from users is that you're going to provide us with better data than what we currently have to go on. The big unknown at this point is whether we'll be able to cull together statistically meaningful data from users in a relatively short time window. My fingers are crossed that we will.... :-)

[Tashtego]

Let's see, I'd rather you support the core WoD games first before anything else, including Exalted or Scion. It's easy to go into the editor to churn out a new bloodline or merit once the structure is in place, but new systems can't be defined by the user.

For my own purposes (based on my current game), I'd be interested in:
1) Mage
2) Second Sight characters
3) Werewolf
4) Changing Breeds/or some sort of facility to use the werewolf dataset to create customised were-critters.

[pazuzu]

I'd vote to flesh out VtR with the bloodlines and other materials before moving on to other games.

[sppeterson]

I'd like other core rules supported soon too -- for me Mage is the one I'm really looking for. I'd also like Scion and Exalted sometime.