I'm so looking forward to it I liked Werewolf even though I never had a chance to actually play it and the only LARP I ever went to I was one of eight werewolves in a crowd of 80 vampires. That wasn't fun.

The history and story behind the first 3 editions that lead to the Time of Judgement won't really be found in the W20, W20 Changing Breeds, W20 Rage Across the World, or W20 Book of the Wyrm. These books will mainly be setting and rules. There will be plenty within it, and it would be interesting to see what someone who's never played/heard of W:tA would think of it, vs. someone who got into it through an earlier edition today.

I hope you can still find great fun with W20 and share that love with others. :D

...interesting. Never played OWoD; only recently gotten into NWoD. Kind of wondered about the future of these games, almost no new product, and little support. Hopefully it'll get better under Onyx Path.

The reason CWoD had no support is because it came to an end in 2004. The world literally came to an end during their "Time of Judgement"... in fact, they gave daily/weekly news releases on their web site that gave folks an idea of how the world was coming to an end too.

Their "Dark Ages" line survived a little longer, but even that came to an end.

The 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade was intended to just be a one-time "Thanks for staying fans!" book, but its reception showed them there was money in reviving the old world.
V20 and W20 do not really fit into the continuous timeline of the previous versions. Instead, they are more "celebrations of what was their hayday" and have some updated rules and for a contemporary setting. :)

The CWoD was about a global story with deep history and had its own little "quirks". But NWoD is more about personal horror in a localized world.
Werewolves of "Werewolf: the Apocalypse" are born into an altruistic war to save the world from a force of nature that is trying to destroy the world. There are some similar themes and ideas, but they are very different games. :)

I have an old copy of Werewolf the Apocalypse. I bought it about a month before they ended the game. :-P I've read enough of it to get the gist of it. I just jumped on the bandwagon too late. I doubt I'll ever be able to get a group together for an OWoD game. I thought the entire WoD line was dead until a couple of months ago when some friends invited me to play a NWoD game, Ruins of Ur.

I think I like WoD better than Werewolf or Vampire. I think it's easier to get a group together if they can play any supernatural creature. My storyteller is currently working on another game for us. It's a published module from DTRPG. ...something about Babylon, but I don't remember. I had enough fun with my first game, that I'm going back to play the next one. Besides, my character is still human!

I'm an old D&D/Pathfinder player. RPGs aren't new to me, but the WoD is.

^.^ Well, that would be "Revised", or "Third Edition" Werewolf: the Apocalypse. There was a bit of an evolution between 1st and 3rd. By the time you came in, Revised was setting itself up for the end of the line. I'd highly suggest getting your hands on 2nd Edition too.

Even if the CWoD came to an end in 2004, it's never really died. Plenty of games out there still continue to be played to this day. :)

While the NWoD allows for the more personal horror and thus you can mix and match because of that, CWoD had larger, more epic, international if not inter-dimensional storylines that were possible. (In Mage: the Ascension, for instance, there have been space explorers for centuries, and there is another man-made planet opposite Earth on the other side of the Sun... the Werewolves are dealing with elements of the Universe that can tear it down by its very natures, and the Vampires are wrapped up in a war involving God, his Angels and the Demons he expelled... just to name a few.)

As for "groups working together", it's not exactly canon, but most of our White Wolf games in the 90s were mixed games that our ST just went along with--Vampires, Werewolves, Werecats, Satyrs and whatever else folks wanted to play. My Storyteller was good with coming up with crazy stuff and we all just sorta ran with it. :D

I didn't realize there were different editions of Apocalypse... I probably won't be buying any more OWoD/CWoD books, though. They are so expensive, and I don't know anyone that still plays. I've got four OWoD books that I bought way back when, V:tM, W:tA, Changing Breeds, and Bastet. I never actually got to play the games, I just read the books. I really wanted to play a werelion. I also wish I would have gotten the old Vampire & Werewolf dice sets. They're out of production, and impossible to find now.

Since I actually started playing, about six months ago, I've only gotten three NWoD books, but I did get the new Vampire & Werewolf dice sets. I still don't have W:tF, but it's the next book on my list. Like I say, the books are just SO expensive. Don't you play NWoD/Forsaken?

The whole WoD system is still new to me. I've been playing a gnoll in D&D/Pathfinder for years, though. I think I like gnolls better than werewolves. :-P

Basically, 1st Edition came out in 1992. 2nd Edition came out in 1994, and Revised (3rd) came out in 2000.
Continuity-wise, they follow one another... the world literally changed in the setting during those 8 years, and the focus/idea of W:tA also changed (Bill Bridges was the original line developer, and he was much more about the mysticism and spiritual side, while Ethan Skemp who came in around 1996 was much more about the viceral "let's be fuckin' werewolves!", and so you feel that difference.

Breed Book: Bastet was part of 2nd Edition, but the "Player's Guide to Changing Breeds" was Revised, so you probably noticed that the Ceilican (Apparently the BSDs ambushed them in Scottland one year, and that was the end of the Fay cats), all of the Bastet Pyrio were missing in the PGtCB, and the Ajaba are considered Bastet in the "Bastet" book, while they're their own genre in the PGtCB. Also, in the timeline, Black Tooth was taken down and the Ajaba sorta became the main players in Africa. *chuckle*

Also, if you're looking for CWoD Werewolf: the Apocalypse dice, check these out: Reproductions of the original 1-0 dice http://www.furnation.com/torakhan/werewolfdice/ $5+s/h for a set of 10 dice.

I have the WoD and W:tF book (as well as the WoD Changing Breeds book, which sort of gives back some of that CWoD feel), but I just didn't care much for the setting, or the lack of a character who's purpose was to fight for a cause (besides personal survival.) It just felt... un-fun. *shrugs*

The PoD books likely won't make your checkbook feel any better... the Deluxe/Prestige edition of W20 will run about $110 for the book and PDF. The PoD versions will be pretty darn expensive too, if you use V20 as a guide, with the PDF being the cheapest at about $30.