The Escapist Issue #112 Now Available

The latest issue of Escapist Magazine features five new articles, including “World of New Darkness”, “The Good, The Bad, and the Sadistic”, and “No Humor in Heaven”, all of which discuss the concept of good and evil in such franchises as Vampire: The Masquerade, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Overlord. A bit about White Wolf’s antagonist direction:

White Wolf’s games derived immense power and huge sales from their adolescent concerns, as well as their crazed originality – incoherent, sprawling, uneven yet infused with energy. The company emphasized a more personal, artistic approach than in the majority of earlier RPG lines; each support line bore the strong personal stamp of its line developer. Pretensions soared, shown by the books’ litter of epigraphs, Incorrectly Capitalized Words and exhortations to the Storyteller to throw aside rules when they interfered with drama. For employees at Gen Con 1994, the company made buttons: F— YOU, MORTAL, I’M WITH WHITE WOLF.

Designers couldn’t use the term “villains,” and never, ever “bad guys.” Not even embodiments of pure cosmic evil were “bad guys.” No, the term was “antagonists.” The Storyteller antagonists, as much as anything else, showed the lines’ originality.