Welcome to My Game World, an Introduction

    Back in the mid to late 90s, I was having a hard time with my life.  I couldn't get a job.  I hate no social life, didn't even know how to have one.  I decided to try and re-invent myself in an effort to perk me up.  I took up weightlifting at home.  I upgraded my wardrobe.  I tried to go deeper into video games.  However, the one thing that made me feel better was deciding to get into roleplaying games (RPGs or TTRPRGs for 'tabletop' as many are calling them now to differentiate them from video game versions).  Specifically, "World of Darkness," or WOD.  I know that there have been a lot of controversies over the years about this system, but for some reason its take on modern horror-fantasy just clicked with me in ways that the high-fantasy worlds of "Dungeons and Dragons" just didn't hit. When I bought my first book, about twenty-seven years ago this week, I just knew I found my calling.  I read that first book cover to cover, even the index, just about.  I was so enthralled by the line, that I bought a second book just a few days later.  I'm not sure what the plan initially was, maybe learn as much as I could before finding a group to join to actually play or something.  I would go out to find core books that appealed to me, before also moving on to new ones as soon as they came out.  I the height of my collecting, as was averaging at least two books per month, possibly closer to three. Frequently more than that when I could.  I never felt confident enough to look for a playgroup to join, but I did start getting ideas for games.  In fact, barely a year after I first started with the WOD, I had the first inklings for a game line set in the same world.  For years, I wavered on what I could do for a career, since I couldn't get a job and I didn't like that business I was forced to start.  One of my options was trying to get into game design.  I lacked the confidence, but I decided to finally choose something just after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out in June of 2003. Just before I could make a decision, a huge flood came and devastated my life.  At the time, I had over 150 books in my WOD collection, including the new "Exalted" line set in a forerunner high fantasy setting.  Over 85% of my collection was affected.  I was able to replace some of the books, including most of the core rule books.  I managed to temporarily save most of the rest, and I painstakingly salvaged as much information from them as I could.  I was tricky work and took many years, and I probably missed a lot of information I should've kept.  To add insult to injury, White Wolf, the publisher, announced that August that they were going to end the original WOD in 2004 and replace it with a new version.  I was reeling, my dreams put on hold again.  I would go on to collect the last books of the original line, and I waited until the following August to get the first books in the new World of Darkness, nWOD which was renamed the Chronicles of Darkness or COD many years later.  Some of the terms and systems were the same, but there were enough differences to make me be unsure if I really liked it or not.  For one thing, all of the books would be hardcover, and therefore more expensive.  Another thing, my own game might fit this new world a little better.  I waited until more games were introduced to see where they were going, making plans for my own game. However, when the fifth game in the new line was introduced in 2007, I started to have doubts about my own ideas.  I quickly pivoted on remaking a one of the old lines into something that would work in the nWOD.  I worked with the few bits I had from my old collection, and I even printed out some material online so that I could a better working on the idea.  It took me a year, but when I finally finished my rough draft of notes, I felt hollow.  Turns out that the publisher announced a new game to release in 2009 that would have made my second game idea irrelevant.   New books started to come out less frequently after that until 2010/2011 when the company changed its publishing model.  They were going to a digital download/print on demand model, PDF and POD. Since I didn't own a computer at the time, I was out of luck.  I would check on them now and again, seeing what books were planned, but I basically gave up on them for a few years.  By 2018, my life I changed. I had started looking for the books online again, finding out that the original White Wolf line had been folded by the company's current owner, Paradox, the third Scandinavian video company in row to own it.  Some of the original talent formed their own company, Onyx Path Publishing (OPP)  to publish both Exalted and COD through an agreement, as well as new WOD material connected to the original game line's twentieth anniversary.  Many of these new books were funded through crowdsourcing.  Not only that, but Paradox was putting out a new fifth edition of the WOD books, without the direct help of much of the original talent. Well, not only did I now have a computer, but a credit card as well.  I would wind up downloading many of the new WOD products (I didn't like the other two lines enough to bother with their latest products), as well as helping fund some of the new books.  I would pick up the new Fifth Edition material, although I am in the group of older fans that think the new stuff is highly flawed.  I mean, some of the missteps are quite bad.  I'm not sure if I will be getting any more of it.  Now, I'm just waiting to see if the current owner will put an end to allowing the older material to still be available before I can finish buying it whenever I have the extra funds.  I have multiple ideas, not just for that old game line, but other new products.  However, I feel that the time has passed on becoming a game designer. Sure, I could earn a few bucks making fan products, but I don't have the computer expertise to handle it.  It is still a pipe dream to do something with my ideas, even if I have yet to play an actual game with a group. For the month of October, I will be doing a special series of post about my love for the WOD, similar to what I did with comic books earlier this year.  There will be differences, as I have twenty fewer years of collecting with a six year gap, but this means I can go deeper into how this has affected my life.  This will include expanding on some of the details I glossed over in this post.  Welcome to my game world.  Not everything is as dark as it seems.