Some News We Lost

WHITE WOLF NEWS YOU BEEN WAITING FOR!
Well, maybe not... I discovered this piece of news sitting on my hard drive, unpublished as far as I can tell, at least within totem. I don't know how I forgot it... If you have already received it, just move along; if you have not, however there might still be something or other in here you missed. Or maybe you just enjoy collecting news pieces like this?

Date:         Fri, 12 Mar 1999 21:27:00 -0500
From:         "White Wolf News" <News@list.white-wolf.com>
To:         news@list.white-wolf.com

What the Hell! Where have you been?

I know your wondering why you haven't gotten a letter from me in a
while -well - I've been passed out in a dark alley for about the last six
weeks. I tell you, the things I saw in between bouts of unconciousness would
make your skin crawl. I still gag at the smell of sterno....

Anyway, I have returned and I'm sicker than ever! However, since you
hate junk mail and I've realized I won't be able to do this as much as I
thought, you should only expect to see these letters about once a month. So,
let's get on with business, shall we? This one is kinda long cause I put in a
buncha shi.....er, stuff I should have sent a while ago.

You can also expect to diligently continue to get once a month warnings
on how to unsubscribe. This message is simply to let you know I'm still
alive. You should not unsubscribe unless you hate me as much as my parents do.

Chris McDonough
White Wolf Webdude
 

>>>>>>HEARD ABOUT OUR NEW GAME ABERRANT YET?<<<<<<<<<<<
(These arrows mean a change of subject and interesting crap to follow)

With Great Power Comesˇ

How does it feel to be a god? Find out in Aberrant, the sequel
(actually, prequel) to White Wolf¹s Trinity. In this game set in the early 21st
century, you play one of the legendary lords of the golden age before
the great Aberrant War. Though born human, you are possessed of the
Mazarin-Rashoud node, a genetic legacy that unlocks the gates to
absolute power. The M-R node enables you to control quantum energies, the
fundamental forces of the universe. With these powers at your command, there is
little you can¹t accomplish and few who can hinder you.

ˇA Really Big Ego!
You¹re one in a million, a living titan. But you have titanic tasks to
accomplish. You and the others of your kind seek to shape the very
nature of the worldˇ for better or worse. You operate at the highest echelons of
power and the fates of entire nations rest in your hands. Will you join the
Aeon Society and its Project Utopia to make the world a better place? Do you
give credence to the rumors that permeate your societyˇ claims that Utopia
is actually a scheme to enslave Aberrants themselves? Or do you simply go
your own way, trusting in your vast power to fulfill your capricious whims?
Whatever you choose, somebody is affected. The deeds of the 21st
century inevitably shape the society of the 22nd. You are an icon to millions
and a shaper of destinyˇ whether you want to be or not. Welcome to godhood.
Hope you can handle it.

Aberrant is available in July, 1999.

>>>>>>>>SPECIAL OFFER JUST FOR YOU! NO, NOT YOU...THE STUPID GUY NEXT TO
YOU!<<<<<<<<

Clan Novel:Toreador has become White Wolf's fastest selling World of
Darkness novel to date! Since we always like to make a special offer or two to the maillist, I
have cooked up this deal. To trick....I mean convince you to get it, we will
give it to you for free! That's right, if you buy the Toreador t-shirt, you
can have the Clan Novel for free! That's right, for only $16.95 you get the
full-color Toreador T-shirt, and the Clan Novel! This offer is only
being made to this mail list so go get it fast!

[Editor's Note: This offer is gone as far as I know.]

Here's something old, but I thought you might wanna see it anyway....
>>>>>>>TAKE IT AWAY ROB HATCH<<<<<<<

The Goth ¹n¹ Rasslin¹ Connection
by Rob "The Eviscerator" Hatch
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all agesˇ

It has come to the attention of the White Wolf staff that a wrestler
from the World Wrestling Federation has procured the use of the name
"Gangrel" and implemented a vampire/gothic motif as his "gimmick." Now, as a
representative of a publishing house long devoted to mature themes,
high-end storytelling artistry, and the elevation of the gaming industry, what
are my thoughts on thisˇ ahem, unorthodox permutation of White Wolf¹s
intellectual property?

OH, HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been a rasslin¹ goob for 18 years, about the same length of time
I¹ve been a gamer goob. Friends, family, beloveds and coworkers know that to
call or visit me during Monday nights from 8 to 11 PM, when Monday Nitro and
RAW IS WAR go head to head in a Nielsen ratings death match, is to invite a
bitch-out and curb-stomping of Cyclopean proportions.

The similarities between the World of Darkness and the World of
Rasslin¹ are greater than fans of either pastime might care to admit. Both are
story- and character-driven, with larger-than-life heroes, antiheroes and villains
in a world similar to our own, but slightly skewed toward the insane. ("No,
the Sabbat attack didn¹t break the Masquerade!" "No, the ref didn¹t see
it!") Both are essentially bubblegum entertainment, despite vociferous
protests to the contrary from over-analytical blowhards (and yes, wrestling has its
elitist, armchair-critic, insider-wannabe fringe, just like gaming).
Both can be very stupid or surprisingly insightful, and the better
storylines in wrestling certainly blow away the "pick up treasure and kill stuff"
wankfests that constitute all too many RPG sessions/stories/what-have-you.
And yes, well-adjusted fans of either genre know it¹s not real, and
they enjoy it anyway.

So, yeah, I¹m all for seeing a childe of the eternal night leave a
bloody trail through the WWF. Especially when the boy can back up the Curse of
Caine with a kick-ass double-underhook release suplex, a vicious tiger
driver, and a too-swee-e-e-e-e-e-eet front chancery DDT, if ya smell
what The Rob¹s cookin¹. Now can U dig it, sucka?!? BA-A-A-A-A-A-AANG!!!!

Oh, and for those poncey, pseudo-intellectual, self-important "gaming
is ART" drama-queens whose delicate sensibilities are appalled by this
"debasement of our storytelling world"ˇ well, I got two words for ya:

SUCK IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don¹t mind Rob Hatch. He¹s such a geek that one Halloween, he actually
constructed and wore a fairly accurate replica of the ring attire of
his favorite rassler, Booker T. of the Harlem Heatˇ despite being
considerably moreˇ umm, muscle- and melanin-challenged than his idol.

>>>>>>>>BACK TO ME NOW<<<<<<<<<
(See how these arrow things work!)

Ummm...whatever. So, yes it's true, White Wolf does sponsor a wrestler.
An opportunity presented itself and we took it. We now own the entire WWF
and all of Turner Enterprises as well. As soon as our merger with Disney is
complete, our power will be supreme!!!! HA HA HA...cough..ha....cough,
cough (By the way, for those of you who don't have clue....THAT WAS A
JOKE!!!! We're not merging with Disney or WOTC or anything, we do however own
Jane Fonda)

>>>>>>>>>>SEEN THE ACTVISION SITE FOR THE NEW VAMPIRE REDEMPTION
GAME?<<<<<<<<<<

Oooooohhh.....screenshots and stuff!
http://www4.activision.com/games/vampire/

>>>>>>>>>>THE NEW CAMARILLA AND SABBAT GUIDES ARE OUT!<<<<<<<<<

Here's some stuff from each of the Developers!

The battle for the night fought between the Camarilla and the Sabbat
has raged in Vampire books for years, but it has remained in the background
so far. Following the revision of Vampire, we decided it was time to give
the sect war its due. Now, after several years, here are the Guide to the
Camarilla and the Guide to the Sabbat … the final words on who reigns
the Final Nights.

Confessions from a Dead Guy
by Rich Dansky, Developer of Guide to the Camarilla

I have a confession to make: I used to run a weekly Vampire game. Every
Sunday night for three years, the forces of darkness would gather at my
apartment, don their robes of nighted vampiric splendorˇ and order
takeout Chinese before getting in the mood to play.

Once all the crumbs were cleared away, we settled in to play. At that
point, my entire Vampire library consisted of one copy of the rulebook,
Chicago by Night (1st edition), Hunters Hunted and a water-damaged copy of
Clanbook: Nosferatu. That paucity of source material offered a certain amount of
freedom in my storytelling style … I wasn¹t forever contradicted by
players who told me that I couldn¹t use Count Igor von Fruitbat in the game
because he¹d been knocked off in Dirty Secrets of the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop
by Night.

At the same time, I was left with a lot of questions. What did the
Camarilla actually do? If the Sabbat was so all-fired scary, how come I didn¹t
see any material on trying to deal with it? Yeah, the Blood Hunt was horrific,
but I couldn¹t find word-one on how the heck you actually set one up. The
list of questions went on and on, and with my batch of players (who were very
much the sort to push the envelope), the lack of material left me
floundering. That wasn¹t much fun for me, and I decided that if God leaned down and
presented me with the reins to Vampire, even for a moment, I was going
to set things straight.
Fast forward to 1998. I¹d been working at White Wolf for a few years
when they suddenly invited me to develop Guide to the Camarilla. Somewhere,
my former players experienced an inexplicable frisson of fear.

And me? I went home, hauled out the sheaf of notes I took way back when
(the fat pile of papers marked "Stuff That Needs Fixing") and got to work.
So that¹s what the book is … all the answers I found missing when I was
asking questions, long ago and far away. Oh sure, you still have your
high-level Disciplines, Merits, Flaws and Character Creation … but woven in
between all of that gamespeak are the answers to the questions that relate
specifically to the Camarilla. How does it work? What motivates anyone to be a part
of it? Is Tzimisce really pronounced "See Me Ski," "Shaman-Say" or
"Goldfarb"? You get the idea.

These Are My People
by Justin R. Achilli, Developer of Guide to the Sabbat

When I sat down to plan out (and later develop) the Guide to the
Sabbat, I knew I had a daunting task before me. My goal: To take a sect of
psychotic Marilyn Manson-video extras and turn them into an elite force of
counter-Gehenna religious extremists.

Steve Brown did some stunning work on the first pair of Sabbat books
but, like Vampire¹s second edition, those ideas needed some cleaning-up and
updating. The format needed to be polished. The sect needed to make
sense in a game context and have a reason for not being completely destroyed by
Society of Leopold flunkies and angry mortals (which … if you run
through shopping malls with blue hair wearing a Slayer T-shirt, slashing
shoppers with razor blades and drinking their blood … is difficult).

The first step was to cull the goofy stuff. Ahrimanes? Gone. Page after
page about infernalism and demons? So long. Paths of Enlightenment that let
you do whatever you want and reward you for it? See ya.

Step two involved playing up the cool stuff. The book features
extensive material on the ritae that are so integral to the Sabbat¹s being (see
the excerpt in this Night Edition). The new guide makes it clear that the
Sabbat practices a variation on the Masquerade in its own cities, breaking it
only in Camarilla cities to put those vampires on edge. The clans got
write-ups detailing what they do both as clans and as Sabbat.

The final planning stage demanded an update on the Sabbat¹s efforts …
stuff has happened in the past six years, and that had to come through. Like
what? Like the Sabbat¹s conquest of the American East Coast. Like the
appearance of the Harbingers of Skulls. Like the conversion of some Salubri to the
sect.

In the end, I think the new guide to the Sabbat turns the sect from
mindless thugs into devout Cainites embroiled in a holy war. It¹s more sublime
than the first two Sabbat books, and it gives more roleplaying opportunities
to individual troupes. Check it out; I think you¹ll like it.

Guide to the Camarilla  and Guide to the Sabbat  are available now!

>>>>>>>>>MARCH RELEASES<<<<<<<<<

VAMPIRE
Guide to the Sabbat
This hardcover companion to the Guide to the Camarilla examines the
Sabbat exhaustively from the antitribu, or "anti-clans," that populate its
ranks, to the terrifying Disciplines they use, to their methods of waging war
on the Camarilla and Antediluvians alike.
Stock #2303, ISBN 1-56504-263-8, $25.95 U.S.

Vampire Signet Rings
Camarilla (Stock #5208, $14.95 U.S.) and Sabbat (Stock #5207, $14.95
U.S.)

DARK AGES
The Cainite Heresy (Year of the Reckoning)(Black Dog)
Stock #2819, ISBN 1-56504-296-4, $15.95 U.S.

WEREWOLF
Umbra: The Velvet Shadow (Rerelease of the Classic Book)
Stock #3204, ISBN 1-56504-076-7, $15.00 U.S.

WORLD OF DARKNESS
World of Darkness: Blood-Dimmed Tides
Stock #3350, ISBN 1-56504-354-5, $17.95 U.S.

MIND'S EYE THEATER
Mind¹s Eye Theatre Journal #1
Stock #5401, ISBN 1-56504-777-X, $7.95 U.S.

BOREALIS LEGENDS
Edgeworks #1: Over the Edge & An Edge in My Voice
Stock #12191, ISBN 1-56504-829-6, $16.99 U.S. (trade edition)

Farewell to Lankhmar
Stock #12015, ISBN 1-56504-897-0, $5.99 U.S. (paperback)
 

>>>>>>>>>ALRIGHT, ENOUGH ALREADY!<<<<<<<<<<<
See ya next time, can't be more than a few months away!
Chris