White Wolf, publishers of Vampire: The Masquerade–a tabletop role-playing game that gained massive popularity in the 90s–has succumbed to an SJW outrage mob.
Sales and printing of the V5 Camarilla and Anarch books will be temporarily suspended. The section on Chechnya will be removed in both the print and PDF versions of the Camarilla book. We anticipate that this will require about three weeks. This means shipping will be delayed; if you have pre-ordered a copy of Camarilla or Anarchs, further information will follow via e-mail.
In practical terms, White Wolf will no longer function as a separate entity. The White Wolf team will be restructured and integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and I will be temporarily managing things during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.
Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.
The moral panic began over the summer, when a game blogger with nothing better to do than root through RPG sourcebooks for instances of badthink accused White Wolf of marketing their upcoming fifth edition of Vampire to neo-Nazis.
Here’s the excerpt that ran afoul of the thought police:
Common perception place punks, gang-members, maladjusted immigrants rejected by the society that should protect them, and placard-carrying and Molotov wielding rioters among the Brujah. While the clan definitely includes substantial numbers of vocal and visible outsiders, their desire for rebellion reaches as deep as the fraudster ripping off his own company, the lawyer representing the poor pro bono, the neo-Nazi claiming to be “alt-right,” and the basement-dweller downloading thousands of movies illegally for redistribution on streaming sites. Fledglings Embraced to fight and protest are commonly known as rabble.
You’re probably wondering what an SJW soy boy could possibly find objectionable in that wall of flavor text. The neo-Nazis are mentioned in the same breath as corporate con men and IP thieves. There’s even a nod to the open borders crowd. What’s the appeal for literal Nazis?
The meddling scold who stirred up the hate swarm “explains”:
“The game’s in-universe antagonists share many traits that nazis and fascists associate with their real-world enemies,” The Dice Dog argued, “meaning that readers who share that ideology will be able to easily see it as representing themselves.”
You read that right. Dice Douche is beside himself with worry that Vampire fifth edition might allow people he disagrees with to generate self-insert wish fulfillment characters.
Editor’s note: The entire point of role-playing games as a genre is enabling players to immerse themselves in a fictional world where they can act out wish fulfillment fantasies. Purging the rule books of trigger words won’t thwart players who deviate from your lockstep CommiePuritanism. The only way to do that is either a) Ban non-Leftoids from purchasing the game or b) intimidate White Wolf into making concession after concession to your hysterical cult until the game itself is destroyed.
Looks like they chose option b.
To show you just how shiveringly demented the RPG SJWs’ claims are, check out this quote from Vampire’s 1992 second edition:
Brujah tend to dress in whatever style is the most outrageous of the period, though some dress in a way that conflicts with the rest of the clan so as to be the “most” rebellious. Leather coats, spiked hair, chains and black boots are common today, as are the various garbs of antiquity, especially those of the Renaissance. They may also dress and assume the attitudes of street hoods, neo-Nazis, or even Deadheads.
If we grant Dog Dick’s premise that the offending language in Vampire fifth ed. means the game was “…purposefully marketed to ‘the alt-right’…” that means White Wolf has been pandering to the alt-right since 1992–decades before the movement existed! WW should’ve used their crystal ball to play the lotto instead of courting a group with little spare cash for RPG books since payment processors are busy kicking them out of the economy.
Not that White Wolf themselves didn’t line up to denounce Emmanuel Goldstein.
White Wolf is a very diverse team, and we feel that we are a global company and that we have a global community and that everybody is welcome in that community. Unless you are a Nazi or a neo-Nazi, or a member of any other hate group that uses these disgusting philosophies to advance your hateful agendas. If you are a member of one of those groups or support those agendas we don’t want you in our community. You aren’t welcome, and if we find you spreading your hate in our community you will be shown the door. We don’t want your money. You can keep it.
Disavowal issued. Dissolution and absorption by parent company follows.
Nice try, White Wolf. Your one miscalculation was forgetting that the tackle-faced freaks haranguing you define 60% of the population as “Nazis”. Get woke, go broke.
Parting meditation: Consider the poetic symmetry of Vampire falling victim to a witch hunt.