Brussels By Night on Halt

Disclaimer : There is passion in this text, not aggressivity

I was 14 years old when a friend of mine gave me a cracked version of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines on PC (thanks, Kevin). It quickly turned into a love story. I think I played that game with every single clan and explored every possible dialogue line. Even the bugs—especially the ones at Leopold’s place—were frustrating but memorable. This game motivated me to push my computer skills further just so I could finish it.

Years later, I discovered the TTRPG through the 20th Anniversary Edition. I immediately wanted to infuse My City with the World of Darkness vibe. After all, a lot of shady things were happening in Brussels, and it was a perfect opportunity to play with those elements and imagine why these dark events might be unfolding in My City.

I’ve always seen World of Darkness as a powerful critique of the darker sides of modern society. It allows us to take those real-world issues, place them in a fictional universe, exaggerate them, and explore them in a playful way. It was a blast. I’ve always been inclined to understand and even stare into the abyss of our world—sometimes to the extreme. I gazed into it, and that gave me endless inspiration to create stories around it.

Learning or gaming—what’s the difference?

When V5 was about to be released, I was incredibly excited. There are only a few projects I follow continuously during development, but World of Darkness was one of them. Before that, when CCP announced they were creating an MMORPG for the franchise, I was ecstatic. EVE Online was already a great game, and I was curious to see what they could achieve with this universe. But that was also when I realized that this license might be cursed.

In 2018, I threw myself into the unknown and left My City to live for a year in Montreal, Canada. Part of what motivated me was the fact that Montreal was considered the “French city” of World of Darkness. Ironically, I never actually got into LARP there—it wasn’t exactly easy or inviting to join.

Then came 2018 and the official release of V5. Peak excitement. My roommate—whom I met through an online Vampire: The Masquerade game and who had invited me to move in with him when I was still in Brussels (this game really is a cornerstone of my early life)—and I were hyped. But something shifted when V5 came out. Cancel culture? Ideology? I’m not entirely sure, and I don’t have a firm stance on it. What I do know is that the license changed from being a political and personal horror game to something more personal, action-focused, and, frankly, weird—not really horror anymore.

I won’t go into lore issues here. I want to focus on the macro of the license.

The game narrowed its focus to a single ideological lens, trying to depict the world’s problems through that lens, and it was a disaster. There’s even a disclaimer in the core rulebook about fascism, Nazism, authoritarianism, or far-right characters (even though some people seem to ignore—or pretend not to know—that Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism share roots in socialism—but that’s beside the point).

You’re playing VAMPIRES, for God’s sake.
Creatures who can be thousands of years old. Beasts with no humanity left. They treat mortals as food or entertainment. They dominate entire societies through brute force or subtle manipulation. They rule over the human world from the top of the food chain—the apex predators. If dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, a T-Rex would panic at their scent. These aren’t fragile creatures who need an X-card to feel safe. Come on.

I understand that the world is full of real tragedies. But avoiding them won’t help us overcome them—or ourselves. We need to confront them. Fix them. Fight them. These events are part of our history, our roots, our collective consciousness. We must learn and understand them so we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

That, to me, is the greatest loss in this license. Even the original concept was brilliant—a small twist on the Bible’s mythology. Everything from the real world could be used in the game. How grandiose is that? Huge. And then V5 came along and slapped it all down.

Now, to be clear, I don’t need to rely on the official direction of the game. I can still create my own World of Darkness, craft my own setting with my group, and tell the stories I want. But even that comes with frustration.

I’d been working on Brussels by Night for a long time—since around 2016. I ran two campaigns to test and refine the setting. When AI imagery emerged, it gave me the last missing piece: illustrations. I didn’t have the budget to commission the artwork I envisioned, so this was a game changer. I finally felt like I was reaching cruising speed.

And then…

Yes. They did. In the wake of a technological revolution, they decided not to embrace it—despite the large number of people using it responsibly. By “responsibly,” I mean paying rights to a company that says, “If you think your work has been stolen, contact us and we’ll settle it,” and, most importantly, using AI as a tool, then reworking the result. Treating it as raw material—like a stock image—before applying photomontage or matte painting to create something new.

But no.

No nuance. No subtlety. No individual consideration. Just a blanket ban on AI imagery. Luddism at its peak.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in this situation: a hardcore fan to the bone, ready to pour my most precious time and energy into contributing to this universe—to give our real world a dark mirror we could gaze into, play through, and emerge victorious over our own shadows. To explore scenarios in what was already a safe space. (You don’t need to create a safe space within a safe space—what kind of dumb shit is that?)

The potential of this license was enormous… and they totally wasted it.

Still, I held on to the idea that, despite all this mess and the inability to publish on the Storytellers Vault, I could grind my way up and aim for an official license.

And then… that hit.

(Special mention to memeslich, who can be funny AF sometimes)

The Brand Marketing Manager is against free speech and freedom. Not good.

He has taken a political stance that is very dangerous, not welcoming “white supremacists” and “neo-Nazis” but welcoming commies. They backpedaled following the 2018 “scandal” of a few frustrated people, who I’m sure didn’t even play the game? Is it Paradox Interactive that tightened its grip after that weak shouting? And I feel like Jason Carl is not culturally, politically and/or economically educated and I hope that he will see the light and come back from that cloud of propaganda. He is a great storyteller and I learned a lot from him. I just hope he is not doing this to keep his job in fear of losing his position if he doesn’t apply the orders from above. Because, if true, if things get ugly, the usual “I was doing my job” will hit hard. Hard to live in conscience after that.

I don’t think we will go as far as in the 20th century in centrally planned authoritative regimes, because most humans LEARNED from it. But even if some places do, know that the ones that censor are never the good guys. The ones that share fake news propaganda like this are never the good guys. You can like him or not but you have to be objective, Musk is saluting the crowd, ffs. Watch at least the 2-min clips before posting something like that. It’s embarrassing.

AND MOST OF ALL… Because it’s the most hilarious part:

NAZIS, national SOCIALIST = BIG GOVERNMENT. COMMIES = BIG GOVERNMENT. FASCIST = BIG GOVERNMENT. IT IS WRITTEN THEY ARE TAKING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT. HOW IS IT NAZI? IT’S THE OPPOSITE. LEARN YOUR HISTORY. LEARN ECONOMICS.

So anyway, this part was dedicated to Jason Carl and I hope that he will read it so it can speak some sense into him. I like what you do as a storyteller but please stop that shit.

So after thinking for a long time and going around in circles in my head, I made the hard choice: I will put this project on hold. I will not ask for licensing. Because I don’t want to feed that beast. I don’t want to give my time and energy to what World of Darkness has become. I will either buy the WoD license when it has plunged or re-embrace it when I see radical change in the path that WoD has taken.

And I think Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 will be a big reveal of where things are going. It will be hilarious or great; I don’t see middle ground possible at this point. But right now I cannot say that it’s taking the great path.

Stop the ideological bullshit. Stop the Luddism bullshit. Stop the fake reflection. Our world is living a shift in technology that is reshaping society and the role of World of Darkness is to mirror that and put it to the extreme—the dark side of things—so we can extract the light and put it onto this world.

In a Gothic, dark, and sexy manner.

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