Category: Gaming

It’s document time in the ongoing White Wolf v. Sony saga. First off, here’s Mike Tinney’s deposition as described here. At no extra charge, we’ll include Andrew Zaffron’s declaration. It covers more or less the same ground as did Mike Tinney, with a little additional commentary. Paragraph 8 is amusing.

Moving on to new material, we have declarations from Len Wiseman and Kevin Grevioux, two of the three guys who wrote the screenplay. (And of course Wiseman directed it.) Both note explicitly that “I had never heard of any of the Plaintiffs’ works before early in 2003, after the movie Underworld had been shot.”

I should grab Danny McBride’s declaration — he’s the other screenwriter — and I will at some point, but I don’t expect it to much differ. Thanks to Chris S. for hosting these PDFs.

Mike Tinney’s deposition in the White Wolf v. Sony case is mildly interesting, if only for the following paragraph:

White Wolf has been in discussions with Sony Online about it creating a massively multi-player Internet game based on White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and World of Darkness.

It also sets out the course of events which led to the lawsuit. On April 21st, 2003, Tinney sent Andy Zaffron (a contact of his over at Sony, presumably for the EverQuest pen and paper adaptation) email asking for help getting in touch with Sony Pictures:

“I’ve taken a look at a trailer for an upcoming film called Underworld that is to be distributed by Sony Pictures this coming Fall. It looks (from the trailer) as though it borrows fairly heavily from our World of Darkness IP.”

In a subsequent email on the same day, Tinney said:

“When a film like the Underworld comes across our radar, detailing Vampires and Werewolves, who live in secret societies and fight each other, we immediately begin looking for IP similarities. At an initial glance we’re not excited about what were [sic] seeing. Our initial concerns are that the movie looks like it uses themes and elements from our world, character concepts, points of conflict. We’ve crafted a unique and distinctive IP, one that’s a rich blend of old world monster legends with a modern, gen X updated feel and cosmology.”

Which, I suppose, tells us how high the bar for White Wolf IP concern is.

Tinney got a call from Sony, and on May 8th he sent another email to Zaffron thanking him for his help. He never heard back from Sony Pictures after that.

I’m ready to reassert my position as the foremost White Wolf v. Sony blogger, if it please the court.

I got myself a login for the federal court system, and soon thereafter procured a copy of Sony’s response to the complaint. (Thanks to Chris for hosting.) I don’t speak lawyer, but I think it mostly says “We have no idea what your game says vampires and werewolves do, and we did not copy our ideas from you.”

Some fun excerpts:

61. Defendants are without information and knowledge sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the averments in the first sentence of Paragraph 61 of the Complaint. Defendants admit the second sentence of Paragraph 61. Defendants state further that to the extent any colorable similarity exists between Plaintiffs’ works and the Underworld movie in this respect, any such similarity concerns material that is not original, not protectable expression, lies within the public domain, and/or constitutes unprotectable ideas or scenes a faire.

Paragraph 61 in the original complaint deals with vampires awakening from extended sleep in a mummified condition. “Scenes a faire,” as I understand it, are ideas that are inherent to the conventional telling of a given sort of story.

67. Defendants are without information and knowledge sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the averments in the first sentence of Paragraph 67 of the Complaint. Defendants deny the second sentence of the Paragraph 67 of the Complaint in the form and manner averred and state that the Underworld movie contains no character named “Vee.” Defendants state further that one scene in an early version of an Underworld script contained one extremely minor character named “Vee.”

There’s a fair amount of stuff like that; if I had to guess, I’d say that Sony is trying to make a case that White Wolf was working from a very early and irrelevant copy of the script.

116. Defendants deny the first sentence of Paragraph 116 of the Complaint in the form and manner averred and state that Plaintiff Collins’ work The Love of Monsters speaks for itself. Defendants deny the second sentence of Paragaph 116 of the Complaint in the form and manner averred and state that one werewolf character at one point in the Underworld movie refers to vampires as “Bloods.”

And so on.

It’s Chris’s fault, really. After a pulse-pounding conclusion to his Morrisonian supers campaign, I have a yen to run Champions. Maybe it’ll pass. I’m probably safe, since I don’t think anyone in my current gaming group is a Hero fan. (“The chargen! It burns my eyes!”)

(The UNTIL Superpowers Database makes it easy! Really!)

Champions Universe? Maybe. Millenium City is a nice piece of work, and there’s a ton of background available. Or I could do my own universe and just reuse all the interesting super writeups from the CU; with novice Hero players, it wouldn’t matter.

I do have a little stock of campaign ideas, to wit:

Infectious

In 1957, the first superhuman came into his powers. He, unlike those who would follow him, had only one ability: by drinking the blood of a human and giving that human his own blood in return, he could grant that human unpredictable powers of his or her own. The only common thread? All superhumans can grant powers to others, just like the long-dead originator of the line. Superhuman powers are infectious.

Bloodlines

The seven Great Familes of metahumans have never been inclined to let the normals know that superpowers are hereditary, and the big lie has held up for centuries. Behind the scenes, the non-powered members of the families plot for position and arrange marriages between just the right superhero teams. Dynastic royalty, hidden from the world.

Man, that’d take a ton of setting work. But it’d be fun.

College Days

By the twenty-first century, college athletics are passe. There’s only one college activity that matters: the superhuman studies program. Where else would young superheros learn their trade? There’s not a superhero team on earth that would accept a non-graduate, so best to take your studies seriously. But hey — when the recruiter gave your family all BMWs as an under the table signing bonus, how serious are you going to be about exams?

And then I have the one where the PCs play non-supers, who’re the minders for the only four superheros in the world. But that one’s just dark and I kinda wanna do four-color.

Phil Brucato turned up at Gen Con this year with a game called Deleria, which was pretty clearly his vision of what Changeling should have been. And I’m a mark for shiny things, so you can tell where this is going. I pre-ordered.

The book came in the other day. It’s a big hardcover with really shoddy binding. The inside is glossy and full cover and more or less a design mishmash that actually works fairly well. It’s got a hodge-podge feel to it that makes sense given the subject matter, and the art (lots of Photoshop manipulations) is OK.

There’s a ton of setting fluff. The tone of the writing — well, it didn’t work for me, but it wasn’t awful. It’s written from the point of view of an elder in a youth culture, if you see what I mean. Gentle yet hip, and pointedly so in both ways. I didn’t dislike it, I just didn’t like it.

The fluff does get the setting across, and the setting has the right feel. It’s an attempt at Faerie done De Lint style, with the changes that have come with the modern world reflecting into myth. It’s not as smooth as De Lint, though. For example, Brucato has the Internet manifesting in Faerie as a kind of kudzu, and faeries can’t deal with technology. Except when they can. Brucato’s trying to move beyond the nostalgia factor, but he can’t quite bring himself to make that final break.

I’d talk more about the rules, but the book is sufficiently baroque that I’m having trouble extracting actual game mechanics. You have stats, and you have a difficulty number, and you draw a card and add or subtract it from your stat depending on the suit. There’s also a big magic system thingie which looks to be mostly freeform.

Summary: forgettable.

How to send literally dozens of fans into a tizzy in one easy step:

"Sword & Sorcery Studios Announces d20 Versions of Adventure!, Aberrant and Trinity."

I think D20 will probably work out just fine — it certainly isn’t any more of a handicap than the Storyteller system. I think Aberrant will have trouble getting past Mutants and Masterminds, but that’s White Wolf’s problem to worry about. It’ll be good to see Trinity back in print.

I hope we’ll see some sourcebooks.