BOOM! Swedish Paradox acquires White Wolf

I suspect Paradox has other plans with WoD and will consider everything else merchandise and promotional on their products, but thats not a bad thing. Rebooting VTES however will still require all the other parties owning IP, perhaps this becomes easier for other parties if paradox backs them up politically.

BenPeal wrote: Is there a way to remake V:TES that would make this community happy?

I feel the community is hooked to all the intricacies and quirks of VTES and since it's out of print for some time now, many people have invested a lot to get cards, so they could feel pot committed with lack of a better term. If a remake would mean incompatibility with their current collection, I suspect a lot will quit.

I don't believe it's possible to remake a backwards compatible VTES if one of the goals is to circumvent IP. VTES should continue on, with PDF expansions if need be.

However if VTES trudges on with PDF expansions, there still can be an alternative, but should involve people with domain knowledge in VTES who could translate all the intricacies of VTES into a new game format and perhaps make it better. So over time people will move on without causing major trauma to the community (unlike herds, communities are quite fragile due to the unavoidable individualism).

Some suggestions for a new format:
- Ditch predator/prey relation (last man standing wins)
- Rename 'pool' to influence
- Ditch term "bleeding", everything is an attack on influence
- Ditch tapping (circumvent IP)
- An action always costs at least 1 counter, be it influence of life
- All actors (vampires,imbued, etc) have life (or essence?), no distinction (makes mechanics easier)
- Keep disciplines, rename to skills, new symbols (circumvent IP).
- Ditch allies (introduce werewolfs, mages and whatnot as first class citizens)
- Less in-depth focus on vampire world, vamps vs mages vs werewolfs vs mummies etc.
- Keep politics system, change stuff around to avoid IP
- Introduce new and cool means of destroying influence
- Introduce an influence ceiling as another means of winning (get 60 influence or kill the rest to win the game).

So the new format encompasses whole of WoD, not just vampires, should have a faster pace and can live side by side with the out of print VTES. And VTES players can maintain hope VTES will see a reboot.

Heck, start a thread "Let's make a new WoD game" and let the community join in

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Not planning to derail everything the VEKN have done, but maybe a new system would circumvent the problems of dealing with Hasbro.

Again, what is it that has to be delt with Hasbro about? Except the "Deckmaster" logo on the cards?

Do you know who owns the Discipline Logos? They aren't in the WoD books by default. They do appear in the computer games but NOT in exactly the same form.

Do you know who owns the background pictures on existing VTES cards?

Do you know who owns the 'back of the card' images on existing VTES cards?

Do you know if the logo "Vampire: The Eternal Struggle" is Hasbro owned or not?

Do you know if the 'core rulebook' is Hasbro owned or not?

Do you know which vampire names might be owned by WW and Hasbro?

Do you know if Hasbro will make a claim on the names of cards?

...

It would seem that after around 5 transactions on the VTES IP (WW -> Wizards -> WW, Wizards -> Hasbro & WW -> CCP, WW -> Paradox) and in recent times nobody seems to have quite been sure exactly what IP belongs to who.

Ankha wrote:

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Do you know

Who are you asking?

I guess anyone who knows are free to answer. The VEKN board hopefully knows

The answar I´ve noticed on several similar questions is that Paradox now owns EVERYTHING. Ie they have all rights that WW had when they made VTES themselfs. And that weird WotC "patent" has expired, if that mattered. The only thing I´m not sure of is the brand name "Deckmaster", but I guess that´s not very important.

But again: Anyone who know more, please enlighten us.

Ashur wrote:

Ankha wrote:

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Do you know

Who are you asking?

I guess anyone who knows are free to answer. The VEKN board hopefully knows

The V:EKN ICs, to my knowledge, do not know. I even asked Steve Wieck about it in person and received a partial answer.

The answar I´ve noticed on several similar questions is that Paradox now owns EVERYTHING. Ie they have all rights that WW had when they made VTES themselfs. And that weird WotC "patent" has expired, if that mattered.

Do you have confirmation that the patent expired and that Wizards did not renew it?

But again: Anyone who know more, please enlighten us.

To what end? Do you think there's some magical way of making V:TES without involving Wizards that nobody has thought of in the past five years?