Wraeththu Paleowank Courtesy of RPG.net
For the purposes of full disclosure: In my real life, I am a roleplaying game freelance writer, and thus I am not bias-free with regard to my reportage on RPG-related issues.

For the delectation of the list, an oldie but a goodie.

The first thing you must keep in mind is this: RPG.net is a website devoted to the fannish obsessions of assorted gamer geeks (there are fora on the site for video games and miniatures war-gaming and fantasy/sci-fi fiction and conversations tangentially related thereto, etc.), but it mostly revolves around the interests of table top, pen-and-paper-and-dice roleplayers. And gamer geeks are some of the wankiest fen to walk the Earth, whether or not they believe it. They will wank about anything. Anything. They wank about White Wolf Game Studios using feminine pronouns in its books, for fuck’s sake, and when a new edition of a beloved game comes out? Oh, yes, that’s the sort of thing that brings all the wankers (in the pejorative sense) to the yard.

The second thing you must keep in mind is this: the regular denizens of RPG.net’s Table Top Open Forum do not believe themselves to have been raised by hyenas. They were but they do not believe it. They think Tangency is the most uncivilized forum on the site. Paradoxically, they also pride themselves on flinging (lawn) darts at the egos of the roleplaying game company flacks who occasionally show up on TT Open to make announcements and defend the besmirched honor of their games.

This is an example of one such wankapalooza.



It all started (relatively) innocently enough. A thread bearing the following title was posted to the Table Top Open (hereafter abbreviated TTO) Forum:

Most Pretentious and Artsy RPG Ever Created?: Wraeththu

Okay, to let you decide, here's the Press Release:

Note: By "pretentious" I mean "makes spurious claims of greatness" not whatever the heck it is most gamers mean by the word, apparently.

"Coming 2004 from Immanion Press, this game uses the new and unique 'Storm' storytelling system which has been developed in house by highly experienced role-players who have been playing for over 20 years. The setting has been developed by Storm Constantine, internationally renowned genre author, Gabriel Strange and Lydia Wood, Project Directors for the Wraeththu Mythos collaborative works. The game will be published in full colour containing artwork by Anne Sudworth* (critically acclaimed fantasy artist), Ruby (up and coming digital artist) and Brom* (award winning and internationally renowned dark fantasy artist).

The Wraeththu RPG Project has a multi book plan to create a new and realistic world for Storytelling. This world will be complete and cover every aspect of Wraeththu society, enabling players to partake in a multitude of different game styles, such as Dark Horror, Spy Thriller, Military Campaigns, Generic Adventuring and many more styles. The only limit is your imagination. Drawing on background material from the original Wraeththu novels, and new material written by Storm Constantine for her latest Wraeththu trilogy, 'Wraeththu from Enchantment to Fulfilment' will add more depth to this wondrous fantasy world. It will appeal to both existing fans of the books and keen role-players eager to investigate new realms.

The system is developed with no limit, boasting a unique and highly customizable magic system, as well as many ground breaking features never approached by many other games. The 'Storm' system will introduce players to many new and previously neglected areas of gaming.

Though the game is still in development, a comprehensive web site has been established which will expand as the game world grows at http://www.immanionpress.wox.org/storm/"

And from the website:

"The Wraeththu

In the near future, humanity is in decline, ravaged by insanity, conflict, disease and infertility. A new hermaphrodite race has risen mysteriously from the ghettos and ruins of the northern cities: humanity has evolved into a new species, which is stronger, sharper and more beautiful than any that have come before. They possess psychic powers and the ability, through a process called inception, to transform humans into creatures like themselves. They are the Wraeththu..."

cheers!
Colin

Here’s the thread:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=71093

[Note: All threads on fora labeled “Open” on RPG.net are just that: public and you don’t have to register at the site to read them.]

It should be noted, at this point, that ‘Colin’ is Colin Chapman, a relatively sane and level-headed regular at the forum. It should also be noted that “pretentious” and “artsy” are terms of the utmost derision when used by most gamerfen but nothing gets ‘em going like promising to deliver a revolutionary new gaming experience through an artily named “new” mechanical system. Nothing. The thread unspools in the usual way with snark bandied back and for until Post #8, when Bogie makes a discovery on the Immanion Press website’s FAQ about the Wraeththu RPG and decides to bring it to TTO’s attention:

Shouldn't that be Lucyfre Nyghtchylde? It's not pretentious until you change the spelling and replace "I"'s with "Y"'s

I'm not convinced it isn't some sort of elaborate internet hoax. It looks too pretentious and too much of a "White Wolf" parody to be real.

I mean, clans of hermaphroditic superbeings running around in ghettos?

Here is from the FAQ though

Originally posted in crazy talk website

Q: Aren’t you just copying White Wolf with the use of tribes and some of their other ideas?

A: Well let’s reverse this question to get the truth. Many of the aspects of ‘Vampire the Masquerade’ (VtM) and other ‘World of Darkness’ books, used ideas from the works of ‘Storm Constantine’. Indeed, anyone who has the first edition of VtM can find evidence of this by turning to the front of the book and reading the ‘thanks to’ acknowledgements.

Wraeththu started life way back in 1973, when Storm wrote her first short story based in their world. Some thirteen years later, in 1986, the first Wraeththu novel was published. This book influenced a lot of people, including apparently some of the writers who created the White Wolf worlds. (As a side note: You might be interested to know that Storm has also written material for White Wolf with ‘Phil Brucato’.)

Technically, World of Darkness can be seen as a lesser cousin of the Wraeththu Mythos, which was created some years beforehand. We cannot be accused of plagiarizing White Wolf’s game when Wraeththu appears to have been part of the source material for VtM. We just waited for the right time, circumstances and experience to produce the richly colored world of the Wraeththu as a game. With the sad demise of the World of Darkness range, we hope that many of you will try and enjoy the Wraeththu RPG.
- gabby2600

It should be noted at this point that, in terms of “artsy and pretentious,” White Wolf Game Studios won the lifetime award many a year before and could not release a new book without someone jumping online long enough to call it “artsy and pretentious.” White Wolf could have published a book consisting of nothing but lists of equipment and their point-costs and somebody would have bitched about the “artsy and pretentious” qualities of the interior art or the cover. In fact, the whole “artsy and pretentious” angle became the initial source of wank on this thread, around Post #22 when Brad Elliott of Eos Press chimes in with:

... I consider it pretty poor form to denigrate and belittle another company's product as less than or somehow derivative of their own.

"Technically, World of Darkness can be seen as a lesser cousin of the Wraeththu Mythos, which was created some years beforehand. "

Just doesn't sit right with me. Doesn't matter if their stuff is wonderful, peeing on somebody else's work makes it a lot less likely I would pick up their stuff.

Way I see it, I may not LOVE all rpgs (how could I? tastes differ), I sure as hell am not going to go around saying how much other companies' product sucks.

…a sentiment to which Gentleman Highwayman eventually replied with:

Chill out people. The FAQ entry is not dismissive of WoD, but is just pointing out that Wraeththu predates Vampire and that the later borrowed elements of the former. It also points out that Storm Constantine wrote for WW. The last part of the FAQ is basically, "if you are sad that the WoD is coming to an end then you should check out our game".

Someone who writes a press release more pretentious than White Wolf? No way!

And remember on RPG.net pretentious is defined as more fluff than crunch.

D&D Player: "Vampire: The Masquerade is to pretentious for me too play."

V:tM Plater: "Wraeththu is too pretentious for me to play."

…which was rebutted by Colin Chapman with:

Right, so if you, for example, wrote something slightly derived from something I wrote, and I described your work (regardless of its own merit) as a "lesser cousin" of my own work, you wouldn't take that as being at all denigrating? You don't describe anything as "lesser" unless you're somehow inferring that whatever it is compared to is somehow "greater."

As for "pretentious" I always thought it meant "making possibly spurious claims to greatness" (which the publisher certainly seems to be doing).

And, thereafter, it was on, with the honor of assorted “pretentious” games and game companies besmirched, “genderqueer” gaming concerns and issues discussed in manners extremely insulting to assorted posters of other-than-arrow-straight orientation, and TTO making assorted traumatic discoveries about the contents of the Wraeththu Mythos and having reactions…very similar to that of Fandom Wank, actually. For 50+ pages and 500+ comments. Highlights include:

Wraeththu RPG? Let the Straight Boys whine away about this one as much as they like. It will be on almost every gaymer's "buy" list. Finally, some equal time in gaming.

‘….humanity has evolved into a new species, which is stronger, sharper and more beautiful than any that have come before.’
Oooh okay... FINALLY! A game that cuts through the implied pretense that "pretty is best". At long last, it really IS best! Huzzah! Excuse me while I go vomit and kick kittens.

I think, if I played this game, I'd treat it like the WoD...I'd probably play a crazed militia man with a sniper rifle. These 'Ray-fool-oos' sound pretty identifiable, even at range...
*blam*
"Take that, ya pretty boy varmint!"
*blam*
"Deviants! Git offa my land!"

This is true. I don't know of any other currently published setting that simulates hard-core flower-penis erotica.

Wraeththu as an RPG? %#$@! Wat a mindbender, man. "Come to me, my beautiful child, for I am the tomorrow . . .the new, the transformed, beyond mere questions of male and female . . .". . .and besides, I'm hung like a freakin' sea anenome. ::drops pants, wriggle-wriggle-wriggle:: ure beats hell outta the same ole' crusty cavern crawl, huh . . .

What does any of this have to do with kill-crazy hermaphrodites from the future...?

I can finally play a strangely androgynous hermaphrodite with a flower for a penis. WITH cool magic powers! And all plots will be magically resolved by acts of tantric sex! n order to really play Wraeththu right, most of the adventure should revolve around angsting around your sexuality, while making up your mind about whether you really want to go throuhg with the world changing sex that will resolve all the problems brought up in the plot (rival kingdoms bent on conquest, environmentally damaged earth, you name it).And oh yeah, you're forbidden to fall in love, too, which might be why it gets a vote of confidence from Ms. Borgstrom.

On Post #175, Justin Achilli, then the head line developer for Vampire the Masquerade and the forthcoming Vampire the Requiem dropped in to comment with his trademark snark:

http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=1358878&postcount=175


It should be noted here that ‘Ms. Borgstrom’ is R. Sean Borgstrom, creator of the “game most likely to be cited as the definition of artily pretentious not published by White Wolf,” Nobilis. She also catches a lot of flack for making the Fair Folk of Exalted…pretty much the epitome of the “artily pretentious” villainous race that certain classes of gamefen would have preferred to be much less mythic in tone. She also made the mistake of suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the denizens of TTO ought to engage with the text of the actual game before deciding it was an unworkable mess, rather than just making that assumption on the basis of the press release and the FAQ. Ms. Borgstrom, I am afraid, has far too much faith in humanity, even after being game developer and writer for many years.

As things are wont to do, the thread settled down and people drifted off as they lost interest. Then, however, new blood hit the water in the form of Gabby2600, who posted the following thread:

Wraeththu: Bring on the Clowns.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=71476

Gabby2600, you see, is one Gabriel Strange, the Immanion Press flack responsible for posting the Wraeththu RPG FAQ that got so many people going and assorted other poorly worded remarks on the company’s own BBS in which he slagged on White Wolf Game Studios and its games while simultaneously trying to woo White Wolf’s fans over to the worship of the Wraeththu RPG. While TTO generally has plenty of mockery for White Wolf in general, this strategy was generally considered to be the height of dumbassery. For his very first post on RPG.net, he quotes remarks made in the original thread, rebuts them in a manner that can charitably be described as, “LOLUNPROFESSIONAL,” and then concludes with the following:

Anyway enough waffle! If any of you have any serious questions about any of the content or aspects of the Wraeththu RPG, just post them here and I will try to answer them the best I can. Any stupid or just plain pointless questions stand a chance of being highly ridiculed.

He also had the poor judgment to sign his post:

Gabriel Strange
Production Director
Immanion Press

Whole post here: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=1363636&postcount=1

The thread does not immediately turn into a wankfest, probably because the original responders are not familiar with the comments he references or the prior discussion. In Post #11, some arrives who was, Topher, and he brings with him sage advice which is promptly ignored:

Welcome to RPGnet.

I wish you luck with getting this game to sell, it seems very niche-y to me - based on a license a lot of gamers won't be familiar with, it will really need to have something else going for it - great system/mechanics, fabulous art, amazing writing - if you want it to succeed.

I do think you should perhaps take your press release writer off the caffeine, or whatever it is that's making him or her so hyperbolic. ^_^

I'd also recommend a revision of your FAQ. As has been pointed out here, there's no reference to Ms Constantine or her work in Vampire 1st edition, as it claims. And really, talking about what a failure WoD is/was is really not a great way to attract customers who are WoD fans, as you seem to wish to do.

Again, good luck, and welcome to RPGnet. Speak softly and wear a flame-retardent sweater. ^_^

Topher

The posts immediately below show Gabby2600 to be a bit of a name-dropping wanker inasmuch as he keeps trying to invoke the quite strong gamer geek cred of having Phil Brucato, an extremely well-thought-of developer/editor/writer among fen, on his design staff and suggesting around the edges that he’d been in contact with Bruce Baugh, another extremely well-thought-of developer/editor/writer, both of whom had worked for White Wolf Game Studios and occasionally still do. Things stay polite until someone requests an overview of the “revolutionary” new game system that’s been developed for the Wraeththu RPG; the result is a tl;dr post from Gabby (here: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=1363906&postcount=18). This causes more than one person to hope someone else is in charge of editing this opus and causing at least one “Raven McCracken” moment. It should be noted that Raven McCracken is the near-legendary creator of quite possibly the hyperbolically overblown table top RPG in the history of the known world – The World of Synnabar – a game that can best be described as “everything plus the kitchen sink plus bears that shoot lasers out their eyes” with a game system whose…unique qualities…cause people who look for elegance and functionality in their systems to voluntarily spork out their own eyes. For the record: I own a copy of this book and I am not exaggerating, I have no eyes. Raven McCracken made a splash in the gaming world by issuing press releases approximately ten thousand times more overblown and badly spelled than even Gabby2600’s own.

Very shortly, the real Bruce Baugh wanders along to comment on the whole mess:


The problem I see with a Wraeththu game is that while Storm Constantine's pretty successful overall, there's a peculiar gap in her popular among gamers in particular, except perhaps with LARPers. (At least, virtually all the regular Constantine readers I know are LARPers. This could be sampling error, of course.)

I'm also not encouraged at all by the generally illiteracy of the press release and followups. This isn't a demand for excellence in preparation, just basic spelling checking, punctuation, and avoiding of a few obvious pitfalls. There are some fine creators whose personal traffic is pretty sloppy while their professional work is excellent, but on the whole I feel safe betting against that combo.

In short: you’re not going to sell a game about anal-sex-magic using hermaphrodites with flower penises to the average gamer. Also, spellcheck is your friend, n00b. Following this, things remain on the topic of the game system, with people making remarks about how Gabby2006 put his foot down wrong but they wish him well, and asking specific system-related questions, as per his request:

Sword combat seems to be very important in the game system. I haven't read the books that the game system is based on, so I don't know myself. Are the books filled with interesting sword fights? Like every ten to twenty pages?

…to which Gabby responds:


Not really but the system was developed about 10 years ago, and just needed a few tweaks to get finished. I just picked on sword combat because it was one of the more fun things we developed.

However it is quite important in the setting as their are no plants to manufacture ammunition so one of the best ways to defend yourself is with sword combat. So I may as well use the ideas I had rather than developing new ones for this setting. At least the system can be used in any way now. Even though it's not that important I still get the attention to detail as all the other parts of the game.

Remember what I said about gamers loving to wank about nothing more than the promise of revolutionary new gaming systems? This is where the thread starts rolling downhill…fast. In a structural-rationalist gamer kind of way where people tend to observe that sword-making and sword-using are not exactly every-day sort of skills in theoretically post-apocalyptic future settings and that the fundaments of industrialized life are more likely to survive than random medieval skill-sets and WAIT, DIDN’T SOMEBODY GET SHOT IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE FIRST WRAETHTHU TRILOGY AND WEREN’T GUNS PRETTY READILY AVAILABLE? The thread continues for 50+ pages and 500+ comments, with Gabs digging himself deeper…and deeper…and deeper…with every effort to convince TTO that this game is really, truly, utterly revolutionary and that the whole sea anemone buttsecks thing isn’t really a turnoff. Or shouldn’t be to anyone secure in their sexuality. Or something. Highlights include:

Didn't McCracken also post under painfully obvious sockpuppet accounts, then come up with a string of equally painful excuses when he got called on it? I find this whole thing really annoying because I'm a Storm Constantine fan -- I dislike the idea that the Second Coming of SenZar is representing her interests here. :P

So you just came on a message board to counter statements about your company being pretentious and hinted at unsubstantiated, negative rumors about a rival company coupled with grandiose claims at industry wide effects. Does anyone at your company know the first thing about public relations? And that "under three different names" comment made without actually listing any of the different names reeks so much of a falsehood that I'm suprised you could type it without gagging.

Effeminate, perverted, regenerative... why am I getting the bad feeling that someone just wanted to play Ard from the Den series and Heavy Metal movie?

Isn't that big of a deal. I appreciate the goal of being exacting with your system (at least the stated goal, I have not been convinced this goal is being acted on) perhaps you should be just as rigorous with your detailing of firearms. I find the reasons you list -- especially regarding injury -- to be less based in reality and more based in a desire for people to run around with swords. Which is fine by me, but frankly, if there's a buch of hermaphrodites looking to sodomize me with flowers, I'm braking out the auto shotgun and having at it! After all, no means no.

Oh, come on. Who couldn't resist alien mecha-ninja cyborged sword-wielding psychic mutants with flower shaped genitals in space?

As long as it's not a tentpeg and I don't end up as a lisping, spelling-impaired, hermaphroditic refugee from a WoD game, I'm happy.

Your thoughts as presented thus far are as clear as a cup of mud that badgers with kidney infections have been pissing in. Bend your supreme grasp of the english language toward further elucidation, that we may sit admiringly at your feet and learn further fascinating things about this game of which you speak. Because, y'know, it's either this or watching nude midget mud wrestling on TV.

Needless to say, the rest of the thread did not go well for poor Gabby. It also resulted in that most terrible of all terrible promises: that Darren MacLennan and Jason Sartin – RPG.net Regulars and reviewers of all the most toxic splooge every shot out upon the gamerfen populace of the world – would actually purchase and review this game. It should be noted here that MacLennan and Sartin have made a fannish career of writing viciously accurate reviews takedowns of some of the worst games ever published (SenZar, F.A.T.A.L, RaHoWa, just to name three) and the promise of their Wraeththu review was greeted with cries of joy and armfuls of rose-petals from TTO. And, lo, they did it:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=244590

And so did Belphanior:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=208403



And the Circle of Wank was complete. Also rather sticky.