Streets of Bedlam is a pen-and-paper roleplaying game in which you play characters with histories, who’ve done bad things, who may do a few more, but who have a code they stick to, fuzzy though it may be, that guides them through life and allows them to make a difference. Everybody in this town wants something but your characters are aiming higher than most and maybe, just maybe, they’ll do some good. At the very least, maybe they’ll stop some bad from happening.

Written and designed by critically-acclaimed game writer Jason L Blair, the man behind Little Fears, Streets of Bedlam will be built around the award-winning Savage Worlds ruleset published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

In this interview I ask Jason for details about the inspirations he drew from and the characters that you play in Streets of Bedlam.

What is this game about?

Ultimately, Streets of Bedlam is about desperation. It’s about what people do when they’re backed into a corner, how they fight their way out, how they overcome the impulse to sin in a world where everything is permitted (at least implicitly). It’s about crime and corruption.

It’s also about big dudes ramming their fists through some punk’s face, and S&M vigilantes who keep the citizens safe from scumbags.

What were your sources of inspiration?

Frank Miller’s Sin City graphic novels, definitely. The Boondock Saints films, Pulp Fiction, Miller’s Crossing, the Max Payne video games, every film noir I’ve ever seen. I’m pulling from a lot but not to make this a kitchen sink-setting. I’m editing to make sure things are cohesive.

What makes it a good fit for Savage Worlds?

Looking through what was available, I didn’t see anything like Streets of Bedlam available for Savage Worlds. That, and my personal affection for the system, pushed me to see what I could do with the Savage Worlds system to make it fit an ultraviolent neo-noir setting.

The two came together very well. I like Savage Worlds’ level of abstraction, the quick and easy flow of gameplay. Also, the system is very inspiring so it’s easy to write for. I love it.

One big thing though was finding ways to inject more story-focused bits into Savage Worlds, which was designed around combat. I wanted a system that could handle a street fight or highway shoot-out easily but also a system perfect for interrogation, following a trail of clues, and other detective/crime-focused systems. Savage Worlds Deluxe touches on those systems and Streets of Bedlam adds to them.

What types of characters will be in this game?

This is a neo-noir crime setting about people who do bad things. What makes the player characters different from the bad guys is the PCs do bad things for good reasons. Well, at least with good intentions.

You play criminals, ex-criminals, cops, ex-cops, ex-cops who are currently criminals. You play those marginalized by society: veterans who come home only good at war; streetwalkers who have to do whatever they can to survive; people who have been thrown out and have to carve their own way. But you also play people in power, people honestly trying to do good even if they work for a corrupt and unjust system.

Are there any heroes in this setting?

Absolutely, though they’re not your typical heroes. I’m hesitant to use the term “anti-hero” but those trying to do good in Streets of Bedlam are far from Boy Scouts. Everybody in Streets of Bedlam has a past, some darker than others, and part of the drama comes from overcoming that past.

The way I like to explain it is, the good guys and bad guys have different goals but use a lot of the same methods.

What can you tell us about the new character types?

The archetypes each explore some facet of crime and/or corruption. You have Monsters who are just brutal justice-getting machines. These are the guys who walk through doors and a storm of bullets to get their man or rescue a child from the clutches of her heinous kidnapper. Vigilantes patrol the streets, watching out for murderers, rapists, muggers, and all the other scum who prey on the innocent. Dogfaces are fixers, know-it-alls, who are go-tos if you need to find out about deals going down or some two-bit jagoff who just made bail and is walking free on the streets. You can play as cops, private dicks, reporters, anyone who is sets out on a trail to unearth corruption and expose the city’s dark underbelly.

What can you tell us about Four-Story Drop?

Four-Story Drop is the first supplement for Streets of Bedlam and it’ll include four standalone episodes that groups can use to get up and running through the setting right away. They’ll be structured similar to the Campfire Tales supplements for Little Fears Nightmare Edition. Each will be broken into scenes and will include all the major NPCs for that story.

Now that the Kickstarter is funded, why should people back this project?

Exclusives! Everyone who pledges gets thanked in the corebook and those who pledge $5 or more get turned into NPCs as well. I have a whole city to populate!

Backers at certain levels can influence future episodes, get turned into a major player in the world, get character archetypes exclusive to Kickstarter pledges, get some free dice, and more.

If the Kickstarter continues to do well, I have ideas for more backer exclusives as well so the more funds that are raised, the more things get unlocked.

Where can people find out more?

I have the basics up on the Kickstarter page along with ways gamers can secure their own copies of Streets of Bedlam, get some exclusive goods, and even help shape the world. They can also check out StreetsOfBedlam.com for updates, previews, and more as we get closer to the April 2012 release date.

Related posts:

1. Streets of Bedlam: One Day Left, New Milestone, Soundtrack?
2. Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption Kickstarter

Flames Rising is pleased to present you with a special interview, just in time for Sweetest Day! Earlier, we asked you to help us come up with interview questions for White Wolf Publishing developers Russell Bailey and Eddy Webb. We’re happy to share their responses as they dive into your burning questions about Strange, Dead Love, the new paranormal romance sourcebook for Vampire: the Requiem that debuts in early December. Thanks to everyone who commented and shared their thoughts on this sourcebook. The questions below were pulled from your feedback!

White Wolf Developer Interview about Strange, Dead Love

1 ) What are the inspirations behind Strange, Dead Love? Were you also influenced by television and film?

Russell Bailey: Our inspirations were primarily literary – we looked more at what you find in the fantasy section at Barnes & Noble than anything on TV. However, Dark Shadows gets a brief but very deep nod.

2 ) The concept of mimetic desire, coined by Rene Girard, seems very apropro for vampires in love. Did this theory influence this book?

Eddy Webb: Honestly, neither Russell nor I knew anything about Rene Girard until we got this question. So it wasn’t a conscious influence (although it’s possible we might have been thinking about things that this theory touches on).

3 ) Is Strange, Dead Love a book geared primarily for women? What will other types of players get out of this?

RB: There are a lot of female World of Darkness gamers, a lot of whom are romance fans, and this book’s for them. That said, I don’t think the appeal of paranormal romance is restricted to women. You don’t get a genre this big without a diverse audience, and male gamers who want to tell romantic stories will find lots to love in this book.

EW: I completely agree — I dislike the idea that a book has to be “just for women” or “just for men.” Statistically, there are a lot of women who read paranormal romance, and there were a lot of women (four, in fact) who worked on this book. That doesn’t make it a “book for chicks,” however.

4 ) Will the book cover how vampires can feel love and how that’s different from humans?

RB: For purposes of this book, I think we can assume that most Kindred experienced enough love during life to be able to recall it in death. As for Requiem in general, vampiric emotions may be echoes, but you listen to echoes real hard when you can’t hear the original sound. Vampires are capable of being driven by emotions, even though those emotions repeat the ones they had in life.

5 ) What kinds of relationships are possible in Strange, Dead Love? Mortals and vampires? Vampires and vampires? Vampires and supernatural creatures?

RB: The emphasis is primarily on romance between Kindred, and romance between Kindred and mortals. We wanted to keep a strong focus on Vampire, rather than do World of Darkness: Romance. That said, there’s a little bit about romance between vampires and werewolves.

6 ) Some paranormal romances touch on obsessed vampires who in love as a human. Will they be able to bring their dead lover back? Force an Embrace on them?

RB: We don’t talk about post-mortem Embraces specifically. However, we deal with the idea of giving up everything for love, and how that can end tragically. We also have a scenario that involves a reincarnated lover.

7 ) Will there be mechanics that prohibit clans or covenants from mating? An example would be what you did in Forsaken Chronicler’s Guide with the Uratha.

EW: Not for specific clans or covenants, although we do touch on a potential Fourth Tradition of “You Shall Not Embrace For Love,” and the political and emotional conflict that comes from that.

8 ) Can Kindred have or create half-mortal children?

EW: We didn’t touch on this, because we really wanted the focus to be on the romantic elements, not making a family. In straight-up Requiem I don’t believe this is possible, but with some of the shards we present, who can say?

9) What happens when a vampire breeds against all odds? Will multiple aftershocks be explored?

EW: Depending on which props and themes and world shards the group decides to explore with this book, that is certainly something that might be explored. However, as previously mentioned, Kindred procreation isn’t something we explicitly explore.

10 ) What inspired the project and why is White Wolf publishing this book?

RB: This is a book I’ve wanted to do for years. Simply put, I enjoy paranormal romance. I also wanted to do a different kind of Vampire book. Most of the time, we take a subject and talk about how it plays out in the World of Darkness. In this book, we take the World of Darkness and talk about how it plays out in a specific genre. I also got a chance to step away from my usual focus on vampire relationships as exploitative, and look at them in terms of other kinds of dysfunction.

It was a really fun and different way to work, and it makes for a really fun and different book.

11 ) What is sex to a vampire? Is it just foreplay for a Kiss?

EW: That’s how I’ve always seen it. Vampire can have sex, and Requiem vampire can even enjoy sex, but it’s nothing compared to the Kiss.

12 ) Will you cover how Kindred with low Humanity can love either in the text or with new mechanics?

RB: As I said above, we’ve downplayed the exploitative nature of vampiric relationships in this book in favor of somewhat more two-sided dysfunction. Instead of being about broken people, like most Vampire books, it’s about people so swept up in the experience of another person that they make questionable decisions, and feel good doing it. Next book after this, though, we’re back to horrible lizard-brain boyfriends.

13 ) How does the age of a vampire in Requiem factor into intimacy? Is there a difference between a centuries-old Kindred and one that’s only been around for a few decades?

EW: We didn’t get into that, because I don’t think it is a factor in most romantic fiction. Stories in which the centuries-old vampire suddenly falls in love with a mortal are common, and drawing a line in the sand one way or another seemed to rule out a lot of potential story opportunities.

14 ) Will Strange, Dead Love reinforce the Requiem setting and explore its bleak tone? Or, because it’s romance, will it depart from the World of Darkness?

RB: Actual, loving relationships involving vampires are definitely possible – even in the regular Vampire line. The difference is that in most books, we’d be covering the downsides of true love, the way love can make you more of a monster. There are a couple of stories in the clan books that get into that. You’ve got “Witches, Kisses and Bombs” in Savage and Macabre, the story in The Beast that Haunts the Blood about the girl in the locked room, the relationship between Ayesha and Cat in Kiss of the Succubus, and others.

I wouldn’t call it a reversal, but it’s definitely a wholly different approach.

EW: And to be fair, this book is specifically about providing different experiences that are not quite like Requiem. These are world shards, each with a slightly different take on Requiem, similar to what we did in World of Darkness: Mirrors. It’s still a Requiem book, and Russell and I had a lot of talks to make sure that it didn’t become a generic book about vampires in love, but due to the nature of the product, it’s going to feel a bit different from other Requiem books.

15 ) How deeply are the consequences of a vampire-and-mortal relationship explored?

RB: In Strange, Dead Love, we focus more on the explosive potential of love. We talk about the kind of big drama that erupts when people defy Kindred culture and the very idea of damnation in order to have a chance at love. Some of those relationships will end well, some of them badly. The uncertainty of whether a relationship will create bliss or disaster is at the center of the book.

16 ) What can we expect to see for new mechanics? Alternate rules on blood bonds, vinculums, blood sympathy? What about neonate summonings and Vitae orgasms?

EW: There are a few rules hacks in the book, but we don’t spend a lot of time on them. Relationships are complex, messy things (especially the kinds of relationships we explore in this book), and you can’t boil them down to a roll where you achieve orgasm after five successes. We do devote a fair amount of space to Storytellers, though, and give them some mechanical support to help them portray this kind of material more effectively.

17 ) Can ghouls and vampires love? Will there be coverage of what happens between the two?

RB: Unfortunately, I didn’t have space for ghouls. I adore ghoul characters, though, and I think we’ve given them short shrift in Requiem as a whole. As we do new books, I’m definitely looking for places where we can explore ghouls as people. Sexy, broken people.

Related posts:

1. Strange Dead Love Now Available For Vampire: the Requiem!
2. Help Us Interview White Wolf for Strange, Dead Love
3. Author Interview for White Wolf’s Paths of Storytelling

As part of our continuing coverage for Steve Jackson Games Week, FlamesRising.com is happy to offer you an interview with the President of Steve Jackson Games, Steve Jackson himself. Today, Steve shares his thoughts on game design, his company and his secret role with the Illuminati.

How long has Steve Jackson Games been in business?

More than 30 years now. Before that, starting in 1976, I was a regular freelancer for Metagaming. Before that I was gaming a lot but not professionally.

If you had to pick just one, what’s your favorite game?

I don’t have to pick just one! *smiles* I like lots and lots of games, which is one reason I have been doing this for so long.

In your opinion, what elements are crucial to great game design?

Replay value (which you can get a lot of ways). Clarity of rules. Easy enough to learn/teach that a beginner can enjoy himself quickly.

Describe your typical day.

Get up. Hate the world. Drink coffee. Feel the hate recede. Read e-mail. Go to work, whether it’s at the office or home. Meetings and/or more e-mail. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get to talk about actual game design, and if I’m very very lucky, I get to play something. Go home. Read, or fool with Lego. Go to bed too late.

Where do you feel Steve Jackson Games will be in five years? Ten?

Probably right here . . . Or maybe someplace with a cooler climate. I’d really like to keep growing our sales without compromising quality. Boy, I sound like a marketroid, don’t I? In all honesty, the insistence on quality, as **I** view it, has absolutely been the biggest brake on our growth year to year, but I thnk it’s also a big reason why after 30 years we’re still around. It means a lot to me not to disappoint the gamers.

What was the first game you ever worked on?

“Monsters! Monsters!” RPG by Ken St. Andre, a T&T variant in which you play monsters who come out of the dungeon and head toward the city to slay humans and take their stuff.

When did you know you wanted to sell and design games professionally?

Sometime in 1976. Though it was undoubtedy a while after that when I figured out that I wanted to do it for several decades.

Are you a member of the Illuminati?

The Illuminati do not exist. I hold a moderately senior position.

How has Munchkin evolved since it first debuted?

Tighter rules in general. Lots more card types. Balance between Races, Classes, etc. is entirely based on their own powers (in the first edition, for instance, Elves were way stronger than Halflings but there were a lot more elf-hating monsters). By doing this, we make it easier to combine different sets – which itself was a later development, because when I first did Munchkin, I had no inkling either that it would be so popular or that there would be different themes.

What game are you the most proud of? Least?

Most proud? Possibly Illuminati, in terms of original game mechanics.

Least? Hm. That would obviously be one I don’t think about as much. Hm. Okay, there was an in-magazine game in Fantasy Gamer that I could not even remember the name of, so I must not be especially proud of that one. But I don’t feel any actual shame for anything I have ever let ship . . .

What’s your favorite Munchkin card (or game)?

Favorite Munchkin card? Hee. That is hard. There are so MANY . . . How about we pretend you asked about my favorite Illuminati: New World Order card, because I definitely have one for that game: “I Lied.”

That’s the one that lets you walk away from a deal, with the illustration of the guy in a trenchcoat, shrugging and grinning and holding out his hands . . .

How often do you get to play games for fun?

Not nearly enough! And often it’s at conventions. Now, playtests are fun – or if they are not, that in itself is a problem – but I know what you mean, and the answer is definitely Not Enough.

How does it feel to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Munchkin?

I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the idea that it’s been ten years!

Can you share some advice to aspiring game designers? Artists?

Game designers: Playtest, and listen to your playtesters. You don’t have to do everything they say, but LISTEN until you understand what they’re really saying and why.

Artists: What you do is a deep mystery to me. I can critique individual illustrations – and I do, just ask John Kovalic! – but the process of illustration awes me, and “how to be a good artist” is a question way beyond my pay grade. How to be a SUCCESSFUL artist? I can answer that, because I hire artists. Work hard at what you do; learn from others but don’t imitate; and if you are doing art for a client, meet your deadlines, meet your deadlines, and meet your deadlines.

Do you have a message for your fans?

Braaaaaiiiiinnnnns!

Interview by Monica Valentinelli

Related posts:

1. Steve Jackson Games To Digitally Release Five Classic GURPS Conan Titles!
2. SJGames Week: GURPS Monster Hunters Review
3. SJGames Week: Kenneth Hite talks about GURPS Horror 4th Edition

Flames Rising is pleased to present an in-depth interview with author and game designer Robin Laws. An industry veteran, Laws has published role-playing games, supplements, novels and fiction for several companies. His works range from The Esoterroists, produced by Pelgrane Press, to his upcoming Pathfinder novel, which will be released through Paizo this spring.

Today, we sit down with Robin to discuss horror in role-playing games, his work on the GUMSHOE system, and his endeavors as an editor and novelist.

How do you feel GUMSHOE fits into the horror genre?

Did you have specific elements you wanted to avoid in Gumshoe?

The Trail of Cthulhu game line also uses the GUMSHOE system. Can you elaborate?

What’s so horrifying about a game like Mutant City Blues?

Do you have any horror gaming experiences that stand out in your mind?

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Any other recent games stand out in your mind?

Besides your work as a game designer, you’re also a novelist and have penned short stories. Can you tell us about your works?

Earlier, you announced you’re the Creative Director for Stone Skin Press. Can you tell us about it?

You’ve also written screenplays and comics. Can you describe those experiences?

There’s a lot of talk these days about the future of gaming. Where do you think it will go?

Related posts:

1. Interview with Author Gabrielle Faust
2. Cthulhu Week: Inmates by Robin D. Laws
3. Interview with Joe R Lansdale

Zombie Week continues here at Flames Rising with a new interview about zombies…and pirates!

In this interview, FlamesRising.com got the chance to sit down with Daniel Davis. Daniel is a hobby games designer who has worked with Eden Studios on the game line All Flesh Must Be Eaten. Today we talk to Daniel about his experiences with this zombie survival horror game and his work producing the Arrgh! Thar Be Zombies game supplement. Be sure to check out the Arrgh! Thar Be Zombies! Preview we posted earlier this year.

How did you get started with All Flesh Must Be Eaten?

What can you tell us about your other Eden Studios material?

What were some of your inspirations for Arrgh! Thar Be Zombies?

What were some of the challenges putting this book together?

How many new Qualities and Drawbacks can we find in this book?

How well does this book cross-over with other AFMBE supplements?

What can you tell us about the new Deadworlds in this book?

Well, I wanted to try and keep the dark feel to as many of them as possible, keeping with the survival horror roots of the game line. I knew that I wanted Vodou to play a role in at least one of the Deadworlds and that ended up being Voodoo Queen of the Shrouded Isle, which I think is also the bleakest setting. I’d actually written another setting, but it wasn’t quite enough of a true Deadworld, so I cut it and I think it was Voodoo Queen that I ended up replacing it with.

FlamesRising.com would like to extend our thanks to Daniel for the informative interview…

ARRGH! Thar Be Zombies is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Related posts:

1. Zombie Week: Genesis of the Living Dead
2. Zombie Week: Interview With Author David Moody
3. Zombie Week: Zombie Tramp Comic Review

Flames Rising recently had the chance to talk to Editor & Developer Cam Banks from Margaret Weis Productions about the Supernatural RPG, as well as upcoming games like Leverage and Smallville. Cam told us about some of the recent products like Supernatural’s Guide to the Hunted and we talked a little about some of the more interested elements of working on licensed properties as RPGs.

What can Supernatural fans find in Guide to the Hunted?

GTTH is packed with monsters and other threats that the hunters in any Supernatural game might run into. We tried to cover as much of the monsters and creatures from the show as possible, including a lot of named demons and ghosts, because the corebook only included a number of basic monster write ups.

We also added in lots of other creatures from folklore and urban legend, like the Jersey Devil and Mothman, neither of which have appeared on the show. Fans had been asking us for rules for playing monsters and rules for making their own monsters, so I made sure to include that in the book too.

What is next for the Supernatural RPG?

Our next product, scheduled for late summer/early fall, is the Supernatural Road Atlas. This book does for spooky places and haunted houses what the Guide to the Hunted does for monsters. Every State in the Union is described in Supernatural terms, with maps and those location-style stat blocks like you see in the Supernatural core book. And as a bonus, the Roadhouse, with Ash, Jo, and Ellen, is included as an appendix.

What seasons do the Supernatural supplements cover?

Supernatural Adventures is season-neutral, although it’s probably best to play it prior to Season 5′s apocalyptic events. The Guide to the Hunted is specifically intended to cover up to Season 4, but it also includes a number of Season 5 spoilers. The Road Atlas is going to be current as of the end of Season 5, more or less.

Do the supplements reveal anything new about the main storyline?

There’s nothing you wouldn’t have seen or implied from the show. We try very hard to be consistent and canonical, and Warner Bros. are very good at helping us line it all up. This doesn’t mean we can’t add things like the Jersey Devil or Mothman to the Supernatural world, but we won’t be revealing anything the show hasn’t already revealed.

MWP recently released Leverage: The Quickstart Job, what can you tell us about the Leverage RPG?

Leverage is a great show produced by Electric Entertainment and airing for 2 seasons on the TNT network. It stars Timothy Hutton as Nate Ford, a former insurance investigator whose son dies because the insurance company he works for refused to cover the medical fees. So, he recruits a bunch of criminals and con-artists, people he used to chase down, to get back at the corrupt CEO of this company.

Every week, they use their skills to out-bad guy the bad guys, and so it’s a perfect license for gaming. Show creator John Rogers is himself a gamer and threw his support in for us doing this game, which uses a version of the Cortex System tweaked to handle capers, cons, and flashbacks. It’s going to be really bad-ass.

Who is working on the Leverage RPG?

The Leverage Design Crew that I’m heading up includes writer/designers Rob & Deborah Donoghue, Clark Valentine, and our recent addition Matt Forbeck. Editor Ryan Macklin and graphic designer/layout artist Fred Hicks round out the crew. Many of these folks worked on the upcoming Dresden Files RPG from Evil Hat, and I’ve known them all for many years. It’s a pleasure to work with such a talented group.

What are the biggest challenges when working on licensed properties like Supernatural and Leverage?

Obviously the most important thing is to make the game meet the expectations of the license and its fans. We are fortunate to have such passionate and discerning fans out there, and it makes us work hard to give them the sort of game they want. With Supernatural, our Cortex System was ideal, with only a few minor tweaks from its incarnation in the Cortex System RPG. Leverage and Smallville (our other new license for this year) both require some new and fresh takes on Cortex’s classic systems, and so I used the opportunity to do a little revision of Cortex at the same time. You can see a little of that in the Quickstart Job.

Ultimately, I love working on licensed projects. In some ways it’s like standing on the shoulders of giants, but the appeal is strong, and the chance to play characters in the worlds you love is always a good thing.

Can you tells us a little about your role at Margaret Weis Productions?

Right now, my official title at MWP is line developer. I wear a lot of hats, though: writer, designer, editor, representative, community liaison, and so on. I manage the Supernatural, Smallville, and Leverage product lines, and oversee our older lines like Serenity and Battlestar Galactica, although there’s no new product slated for those.

MWP is a small company, and relies a lot on freelancers, so in many ways my main job is keeping all of that in motion and making sure the fans get take care of, whether it’s with the release of new books or information in social media.

How can fans and gamers interact with Margaret Weis Productions online?

Folks can find us at www.margaretweis.com. You can also follow us on Twitter (@MargaretWeisPro).

Fans of our games and the Cortex System can go to cortexsystemrpg.org and find hundreds of discussions, house rules, downloads, and fellow fans, and I try to visit there regularly as well as RPG.net.

Related posts:

1. Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. Hunts the Supernatural

City in the Sand is a new Mind’s Eye Theatre product from White Wolf using the Storytelling Adventure System. This is the first MET product using the SAS format and I was immediately curious about how the format would work in a live-action environment.

Let’s just say I was impressed with the overall quality of City in the Sand and at the amount of cool stuff that was included in this product. I contacted the folks at White Wolf and had the chance to talk to the authors (Eddy Webb, Kelley Barnes and Jess Hartley) about the design of the product and a bit about Mind’s Eye Theatre in general.

Q: How did City in the Sand come about?

Kelley: In the Summer of 2004, myself and a group of Camarilla members (the Camarilla being White Wolf’s official Fan club) had agreed to write and run a three day LARP session at Gencon SoCal – much as we had historically done for Gencon Indy for some years. Because that summer was the launch of the New World of Darkness, it was a fairly open landscape of story opportunities. I had just read an article about the excavations being done of Cecil B DeMille’s set from the 1923 version of “The Ten Commandments” and it sparked an idea. Instead of a story playing out over three nights in sequence, a story arc told over multiple decades would help explore one of the key elements of the Vampiric condition in the Requiem – the fog of ages – where a vampire who goes to sleep for a time will wake up with memories missing or jumbled about. Vampires in this setting can never be sure that what they think they did or saw decades ago is truth or lies.

The original plan then was to have the first night set at the wrap party for the film in 1923, the second night taking place in the 1950′s on the night of DeMille’s Funeral, and for the last night – a fundraiser in 1988 to aid in the excavation. The central thread going through the three nights dealt with a vampire buried in the set on the night of the party, and the fears of the kindred who took part in that deed that their enemy would be rescued and returned to power. Other sub-plots dealt with political, social and covenant strife, with each group looking to accomplish goals that placed them in opposition with other characters in play.

Eddy: Fast forward to 2007. I was asked on short notice (four weeks) to put together a live-action game for some of our Icelandic co-workers, to get them acquainted with our products. Kelley had all the notes from the original City in the Sand game, but I was only running a game for one night set in the modern day. I had to do a lot of rewriting while still touching on a lot of key aspects of the World of Darkness and Requiem.

Everyone had a good time at the game, and I realized that this is the kind of product that would help people start or get sold on a MET: Requiem game. I wasn’t happy with the hasty revisions I had done, so I decided to rebuild the story from the ground up, using the SAS format. I asked Kelley to help out (since she was heavily involved in the original scenario), and I brought Jess in to give a fresh perspective on the dozens of characters – they were, frankly, a mess, and both Kelley and I were so wrapped up in the original interpretations that we just needed someone new and with good MET experience to come in and whip those characters into shape.

Jess: I was thrilled (and honored) when Eddy asked me to be a part of the transition process – taking the characters that they’d done for the original LARP and helping mold them into something more concise and cohesive. It shows a lot of trust to hand your “baby” over to someone else, and it’s a real challenge to pick up someone else’s ideas and run with them.

Hopefully, I did alright with it – Eddy and Kelley are still talking to me, so I must not have butchered their darlings too badly!

Since this is the first story using the Storytelling Adventure System for Mind’s Eye Theatre I was curious how difficult the transition would be when writing the adventure.

Q: What challenges are there when writing an adventure for live-action play when
compared to a tabletop adventure?

Eddy: It’s very different. The amount of Storyteller characters you can rely on goes way, way down – I developed CitS so that you only need to portray one (and rarely), but it’s easier if you have two Narrators to portray Storyteller characters. Also, the amount of scene-changing events also goes way down, since most of the event takes place in one space in a traditional WoD LARP. So, a lot of the stories move from the Storyteller’s briefing into the character writeups. For example, one guy doesn’t know who his sire is, so another player has to play his sire, and the story comes from how the two play off that dynamic. What’s awesome about this kind of design is that we have no idea how that dynamic will play out – it’s totally up the players – and that’s amazingly exciting. But on the other hand, it’s very difficult to balance all of those subplots and smaller stories, which made writing this a real challenge.

Jess: For me, the biggest challenges was mapping out how all of the 50+ characters inter-related to one another. I remember, at one point, literally having my entire dining room table covered with piles of character sheets, note cards and Post-Its. I used paperclips, color coding and any other way I could think of to show connectivity between the different individuals and groups, so that I could make sure that each one not only had some sort of personal goal, but that they were in a relationship of some sort with others in the game. Rivals, lovers, relations, enemies – something above and beyond the storyline (which is awesome, by the way) that would allow the players to pursue their character’s goals and motivations, even if they didn’t ever interact with the main plotline.

Kelley: To echo a bit of what Eddy said -Live-action play differs from 5-6 players struggling against the world as defined by the ST to a world defined by all the other players in the game. It requires in some measure a more reactive Storyteller – who can adapt and change the flow of the game to reflect the actions of the characters -you need the ability to observe and analyze the preferred play-styles of a number of individuals . The write up can only take you so far, but our goal was to provide a solid framework and suggestions that come from our collective experience to aid the Storyteller in making the game fun and intriguing for everyone involved.

Q: How does the Storytelling Adventure System specifically come into play as part of City in the Sand?

Eddy: The goal of the SAS is to encapsulate scenes into discrete units that can be modified and moved around as needed. One thing I realized in designing my own LARP scenarios is that there are usually similar units, and it seemed natural to try to apply it to the existing Storytelling Adventure System. For example, there’s a scene where the Prince calls the Kindred together to hold court — a very common scene in Requiem — but when and how it happens (and how many times it happens) depends on how the scenario plays out for each group, so it makes sense to put all that information into a portable scene instead of saying “The Prince will say X and Y at 8pm.”

In addition to the SAS scenes and background details on the Kindred of Los Angeles City in the Sand contains a short “introductory packet” for new players. I thought was an excellent addition to the main book.

Q: What can you tell us about the New Player Booklet?

Eddy: It’s an idea that was first developed in the Camarilla, which I expanded on when I was running a number of demo LARPs while promoting MET: Awakening. I didn’t want new players to look at two 400-page books and think they needed to know all that to play, so we broke it down into a smaller, 16-page book that covered the basics very succinctly. However, it still assumed some familiarity with the WoD property, which wasn’t the case for the game I ran at the office, so I had to revise that again to talk about the basics of being a vampire, let alone the core rules. It ended up working out pretty well, so I didn’t have to do much revision when I reworked that for the final release of CitS.

Q: Is the New Player Booklet something that other Mind’s Eye Theatre troupes will find useful beyond City in the Sand?

Eddy: To a limited extent. There are some specifics for City in the Sand in the New Player Booklet, but most of it is a very top-level explanation of Mind’s Eye Theatre: The Requiem as a whole. With a bit of “ignore this bit on these pages,” it’s still very useful beyond this scenario.

Just about all World of Darkness products have both a Theme and a Mood listed with notes for the Storyteller to make use of, City in the Sand was no exception. I was curious as to what the Theme of “Dangerous Secrets” meant to the authors when creating this story.

Q: The Theme of City in the Sand is Dangerous Secrets. What makes that Theme particularly fitting for a Requiem story?

Eddy: I love mysteries, and Requiem is, to me, just one big noir mystery. In a LARP, it’s actually much easier to seed secrets, because all you have to do is write a story and then break it up into pieces and scatter them amongst the characters – one guy is a killer, say, so another one is an investigator and a third is a person who saw the murder. Give them all conflicting goals, and throw them together.

Interestingly, I’ve found that you don’t have to work a lot of red herrings into the mix – usually if you tell a group of players that they need to keep secrets and then give a few of them legitimate secrets, the players will weave a complex web of lies and deception that even Raymond Chandler couldn’t unravel.

Jess: Knowledge is power. When you have the possibility of living for hundreds – even thousands – of years, it’s really the one thing that has value in the long run. So keeping information to yourself – hiding it or using misdirection to foul your rivals’ knowledge stores – that’s at the heart of Requiem, I think.

Kelley: Again, I am drawn to the Fog of Ages. Not only as a vampire do you question who you can trust, but you have to question yourself. That’s where I think the element of personal horror that is such a part of the World of Darkness comes into play with Vampire: The Requiem.

City in the Sand includes over 50 pre-generated characters for Storytellers to hand out to their Players. Almost all of them are either gender-neutral or include dual names (such as Robert/Roberta), a detail I found quite useful since you never know exactly how many Players you’ll get or who they will want to play.

Q: City in the Sand is designed as stand-alone story that includes a ton of pre-generated characters. Were convention games the initial goal of this product?

Eddy: The game evolved from a convention game, and that’s certainly one application, but really I was trying to emulate “How To Host A Murder Mystery” more than, say, GenCon. I realized that MET was very intimidating to a lot of new players and Storytellers, and I’ve certainly found writing LARP scenarios to be the most challenging Storytelling I’ve done, so I wanted to find a way that people would run a LARP with a minimum amount of time and set-up. Of course, conventions are an easy way to get 50 people together in one space, but with Internet meet-ups, flash raves and other ways of getting spontaneous groups together, it’s certainly not the only way, or even the main one.

Kelley: There is a side benefit to this product that should appeal to Storytellers – that “ton of pre-generated characters” you mentioned. Between the character backgrounds and the coteries built to work together, acquiring City in the Sand gives you the option of having groups ready drop into your table-top game, or repurpose as NPC’s to be played by Narrators in your LARP chronicle. While not a primary goal of this product, speaking as a storyteller myself, I think that is a nice bonus.

Q: What can you tell us about the list of pre-generated characters? Any particular favorites among them?

Eddy: Although we gave Jess a stack of broken characters and asked her to fix them, I think they’re really more her babies now than mine or Kelley’s. I personally think Prince Danton is fun – she strikes a nice balance in my head between a “traditional” WoD vampire Prince and some new ideas that haven’t been explored much – but then again in my playtest the Prince was played by my wife, Michelle Webb, and I’m always a sucker for how she plays insane characters…

Jess: That’s so hard to say, because I tried to really make them all into someone that either I’d love to play, or that I could picture one of my friends loving to play. Fenton, the snarky gossip columnist would be a blast to try for an evening, or Jordan, the gruff ol’ wolfish Gangrel. But I would say there’s probably 40 characters (out of the more than 50 we included) that I’d like to have a chance to try out for myself!

Q: What if none of those characters work for someone wanting to join the game? How easy is it to bring other characters into the story?

Eddy: We tried really hard to cover a lot of the various kinds of play that people bring to Requiem, but it’s certainly possible to bring other characters in. There are a few Kindred that are specifically visitors to the Los Angeles area (where City in the Sand is set), so it’s very simple to bring even more visiting Kindred into the game. There are also ways to expand on the existing coteries.

I’m a big fan of live-action games, even if I don’t get to run them as often as I used to. So far White has three Mind’s Eye Theatre books currently available. The core Mind’s Eye Theatre book along with core books for both Requiem and Awakening.

Q: This is the first non core book for Mind’s Eye Theatre. Are we going to see more support material for live-action games?

Eddy: We’ll have to see. I’m still passionate about live-action roleplay, and I feel very strongly that MET needs more than just rulebooks if it’s going to grow and prosper as a line, but right now everything’s an experiment – first MET: Awakening, and now City in the Sand. Each time we look at how the MET product does and plan accordingly. So, for now, it’s “wait and see.”

Q: Speaking of MET: Awakening, what will Storytellers running an Awakening game or even a mortals game using the Mind’s Eye Theatre core book find useful in City in the Sand?

Eddy: Probably not — the game is really based around Requiem ideas and concepts. That being said, I’ve heard of people taking our regular Vampire tabletop SAS products and converting them to, of all things, Exalted, so anything is possible!

Early we talked a bit about convention games and City in the Sand seems like an excellent introduction to Mind’s Eye Theatre: Requiem (and possibly even the Camarilla).

Q: Is White Wolf planning on running City in the Sand or other Mind’s Theatre games at GenCon this year?

Eddy: We are running three interconnected Requiem LARPs at GenCon, all based in Mexico City. Two are traditional Requiem LARPs, and one is actually based around Belial’s Brood. The traditional ones are Thursday and Friday evening, and the Belial’s Brood game is Friday afternoon. The games are all being run by David Bounds, a very experienced and creative LARP Storyteller with years of experience. Kelley and I will be playing a little as well when we have a chance, so come check it out and game along with us!

I wanted to thank Eddy, Kelley and Jess for taking the time to tell us a bit more about this new product. I hope you get the chance to explore some of those Dangerous Secrets in your own Mind’s Eye Theatre games.

City in the Sand is currently available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Eddy Webb is the Alternative Publishing Developer at White Wolf. Kelley Barnes is the Marketing Director at White Wolf. Jess Hartley is a prolific freelance writer, and you can find her website at www.jesshartley.com.

To find out more information on the Storytelling Adventure System visit the SAS Website:www.white-wolf.com/sas. For more information on the Camarilla Fan Club visit the Camarilla website: camarilla.white-wolf.com.

Related posts:

1. City of the Damned: New Orleans Review
2. City in the Sand LARP Review

Recently, we had the chance to sit down with industry veteran Kenneth Hite, who is a horror game designer, author and columnist. You may have read some of Ken Hite’s columns through Weird Tales or Out of the Box at Indie Press Revolution. In this interview, we talk a little bit about the Origins-award winning title Tour de Lovecraft and the recent release of The Day After Ragnarok, horror as a genre versus mood, the Windy City, his upcoming projects and much, much more!

How did the idea for Tour de Lovecraft come about?

When Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press hired me to write Trail of Cthulhu, I decided to re-read all of Lovecraft, to soak myself in the mood and the material, and to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I was using the new Penguin Classics versions — with S.T. Joshi’s careful, scholarly edits and annotations — and inspired by that, decided to blog each story on my Livejournal as I read it. It was really nothing more than that at first, but as I kept reading, I kept finding more ways to approach the material — some conventional “gamer ways” like imagining a secret history behind Houdini and Lovecraft’s partnership, and some straightforward lit-crit stuff like identifying the Burkean sublime in “The Call of Cthulhu.” So the project “jest growed,” and eventually, readers started asking for a book collecting the posts. Since one of those readers was Hal Mangold, who was looking for a first book for his Atomic Overmind Press, the result was Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales, which just won an Origins Award, he bragged.

Can you tell us a little bit about your column in Weird Tales?

Well, another of the readers of my “Tour de Lovecraft” blog posts was Stephen Segal, one of the editors of Weird Tales. (Let me just say that again. Weird Tales. Home of Lovecraft, Howard, Smith … and me.) He wanted something like that for Weird Tales, and riffing on the notion of the “tour,” we worked out the idea of approaching Lovecraft via the settings of Lovecraft’s stories. He named the column “Lost in Lovecraft,” which besides triggering atavistic Air Supply terrors in readers of a certain age is a pretty good description of what the column is. Like a Lovecraft protagonist, we find ourselves in some strange country — Antarctica, or Arkham, or the Woods — and kind of explore our way around it using Lovecraft as our guide. It’s still literary criticism, not travelogue, but given Lovecraft’s absolute insistence on setting, it’s odd that I haven’t seen it done more often.

The question whether or not horror is a “mood” or a “genre” often comes up in entertainment. What’s your take and how does that apply to your work?

I like to say that horror is both intent and content: if you intend to horrify, you’re committing horror, whether you’re Shakespeare on the blasted heath or Tolkien in Mirkwood. That said, we all sense that vampires, and serial killers, and crumbling cemeteries, “belong to” horror in a way that kings and elves don’t. We call that sense “genre,” and it’s a term of art used by marketers and academics. There is a horror “genre” in both senses, and I try to pay attention to both marketing and academia, but as a reader or a writer you have to be first concerned with mood. “Is it scary?” is a far more important question than “Where will it be shelved in Borders?” All that said, when I’m writing a book like GURPS Horror, I have to think about genre questions (what monsters should I stat out? what character templates need to be available?) while providing plenty of advice and guidance on mood.

What’s the story behind the children’s book Where the Deep Ones Are?

That’s one of those “someone should do this” projects that a bunch of us, including myself and John Nephew of Atlas Games, have been kicking around for years over drinks at various conventions. Finally, it got to the point that I just did it, and John agreed to publish it and the next book in the series, The Antarctic Express (which is The Polar Express out of “Mountains of Madness”). The most surprising element of the whole project, in both cases, was how easy the fit was. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” really is about a young man who visits a dangerous place and discovers he belongs there; “Mountains of Madness” really is about a magical voyage to the Pole, and getting a gift you can’t share or prove. Once you start looking at the tales that way, there’s almost no limit to how many of these I could write. If they sell, of course. Fortunately, Atlas Games got really great artists on both books, which was absolutely essential, but I had nothing to do with that part.

How does writing Lovecraft for a game differ from writing fiction?

Well, I haven’t written very much fiction, except for the short story “Ring Around the Sun,” which was the intro fiction for a game book, Secrets of the Ruined Temple for the Mage: the Awakening. So, I’m not sure that I’m the best person to ask about this … but the big difference between writing anything for a game and writing any kind of narrative art (prose, comics, drama, film, whatever) is that game writing is not fundamentally about character or plot, but setting. There can be “supporting cast” characters, and plot hooks or story opportunities aplenty — wars, evil cults, cute anthropologists, what have you — but the game writer isn’t in charge of the characters or the plot. That’s the players and the GM’s job, for the most part. Some games do more to constrain those choices, and direct the plot toward a given feel or mood: Trail of Cthulhu, for example, assumes that the characters are investigators of occult mysteries, and that the stories will horrify. But at the end of the day, if your idea of a game is to try and make strangers act out the novel in your head, you’re doing everyone (and the novel in your head) a disservice.

Did you find working on the post-apocalyptic game, The Day After Ragnarok, easier or harder compared with your other, mythos-inspired work?

Every game — and I assume every writing project — has that stretch about three-quarters of the way in where it just becomes agonizing labor. Some get there sooner, and stay there longer, but they all get there. The best projects are the ones that keep dangling that carrot at the end, or keep providing little pieces of magic amid the sweat and toil. Trail of Cthulhu and The Day After Ragnarok were those kinds of projects; they both kept throwing up little nuggets of joy even when by all rights they should have been utter misery. H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard are very different (and occasionally difficult) writers to try to inhabit, even though I’m comfortable in both outfits — but after spending a year or so mentally dressed as HPL, putting on the Two-Gun Bob hat was more like a vacation than it might otherwise have been. Plus, I have to admit that there’s a certain toddler joy in smashing things up; everyone who predicts or plots an apocalypse, from the prophet Jeremiah to Al Gore to me, is probably half-rooting for it in their inmost heart. It’s the reason we go see disaster movies.

In your published works, the city of Chicago appears to be one of your favorite locales. What inspires you to write about the windy city?

I like to say that I’m a lifelong Chicagoan, and have been one ever since I moved here in 1988. If you’re an architecture buff, it’s like living in the Louvre; Chicago’s history is a perfect microcosm of secrecy and madness; its literary tradition is perhaps second only to New York’s in the hemisphere. There’s just no bottom to the well, whether you wander around Chicago in person or in books. While “write what you know” is a distinctly overrated maxim that has resulted in far too many novels about failed novelists, I do think that to know about Chicago is to want to write about it.

Of all your works, which one was the most fun to work on and why?

Probably the most fun project I’ve ever done, soup to nuts, was the original-series Star Trek RPG for Last Unicorn. I was in charge, I had an all-star cast of writers, we had a top-notch graphic design all ready to go, and my job was to make everything more like Captain Kirk would want it. It was the kind of project where I could ask Robin Laws for old-school TREK vignettes, and get them back in three days, and be the first person to read such wonderful things. The misery stretch of that project really only lasted a week — it was the last week, and I got no sleep, and every crisis in the book detonated all at once — but then it was done, and it looked fabulous. I don’t know that it’s my absolute best book — that’s probably GURPS Cabal or Trail of Cthulhu — but it was the most fun day in, day out.

More recently, Will Hindmarch asked me to write the introduction to Requiem for Rome, saying “just be Ken Hite on Roman vampires for 2,000 words.” I had so much fun with that that I turned in 5,000 words. On a slightly more disciplined level, my “Lost in Lovecraft” and “Suppressed Transmission” columns are that kind of fun, too — something about that 2K-5K length is just all sweet spot.

What’s next for you?

Well, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated comes out this week, so that’s technically “next.” I wrote the script for it — the amazing Shepherd Hendrix (of Stagger Lee fame) did the art. The Antarctic Express, Rough Magicks (for Trail of Cthulhu), and Cthulhu 101 (an “intro to the Big Green Guy” for newbies) will all be out at GenCon. I have Book-Hounds of London (another Trail of Cthulhu sourcebook) to write, and a “vampire spy thriller” GUMSHOE game that needs a good title. I’m developing two products for Adamant Entertainment’s Call of Cthulhu line: one in Elizabethan England, and one in gangland Chicago. I’m revising GURPS HORROR for Fourth Edition, and writing three or four PDF supplements for that. We have more Day After Ragnarok stuff planned and in the pipe — a Russia sourcebook, probably with a Plot Point campaign in it, for starters, along with some shorter things. I’ve got plans for a narrativist “indie game,” and some microgames. And more stuff along those sorts of lines.

If you could work on any project, what would it be and why?

Well, ruling out things like “write and direct a big-budget Bollywood version of Carmilla,” or “be lead developer on an MMORPG based on H. Beam Piper’s Paratime series,” and restricting ourselves to the more likely universe, I still have hopes of doing a Hell-Fire Club book for Call of Cthulhu, doing for Georgian England what Delta Green did for fin-de-siecle America. I probably need to take one more swing at a time-travel game of some sort before I’m completely satisfied, too. It would be fun to write a novel if I turned out to be any good at it. Same thing with comics. And of course, there’s a list of people I’ve worked with — Christian Moore, Steve Kenson, Robin Laws, Jim Cambias, to name a few — whose involvement in a project would automatically make it a project I want to work on.

Visit Ken’s LiveJournal for updates on current projects, conventions appearances and more. Check out his Out of the Box column at IPR for game reviews and industry news.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Author and Game Designer Robin Laws
2. Ken Hite’s Dubious Shards Revised
3. Kenneth Hite joins Dresden Files RPG team

Agents of Artifice is your first Magic: the Gathering novel. How did you get introduced to the Magic setting?

Well, I knew a tiny bit from the couple of times I’d played the game, and from picking stuff up here and there. But when I was first approached to write the book, I essentially undertook a crash course. The folks at Wizards sent me a lot of background material to read, and they also flew me up to Seattle where I spent an entire day in a meeting with the editorial and Magic staff. Between those two sources, and additional materials they sent me early in the writing process, I worked up a pretty solid foundation of basic knowledge.

What do you like the most about Magic: the Gathering?

I like the variety inherent to the basic conceits of the game’s setting–or settings, really. The fact that it’s based around the notion of planeswalking, traveling to and summoning from an endless variety of worlds, means that the game, and stories set within the game’s multiverse, can draw on just about any sort of setting, and thus any sort of fantasy.

What were the biggest challenges while writing Agents of Artifice?

Simple creative differences. Wizards put a lot of effort into this novel, and the new Planeswalkers line, and that meant that a lot of people had a stake in how the book turned out. A few creative differences with my editor and/or with the Magic staff, combined with the fact that I was still learning some details of the setting as I went along, meant that I had to do a lot more rewriting than I’m normally accustomed to.

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not saying anyone did anything inappropriate. Creative differences are all but inevitable in a case like this, and a lot of the changes my editor asked for wound up making for a better book.

Did any particular cards inspire you while working on the book?

Well, in terms of some of the details, yes. Some locations (such as the Rubblefield) and many of the specific spells and creatures, were inspired by extant Magic cards. But in terms of the overall story, not so much.

Can you tell us a little more about Jace Beleren?

Hmm… I’m not sure I can tell you much more than what’s revealed in the novel itself. He’s a Planeswalker, and a man naturally skilled with magics of the mind and with illusion. At the start of his story, he’s not really a very good person–selfish, interested only in advancing his own position.

Without offering spoilers, I’ll say that I like to think that he’s grown somewhat over the course of the book, and he certainly thinks about more than just himself. But as far as giving anything more in the way of details about the character? I think I’ll leave that for future books, whether written by me or someone else.

You also have a Ravenloft novel called Black Crusade currently available on the Wizards of the Coast website, what can you tell us about it?

Black Crusade was originally written to be the first in the Ravenloft: Dominion fiction line. The idea was to do a new Ravenloft series that drew characters from various points of Earth history, rather than drawing from different D&D worlds. Unfortunately, the book was delayed for various marketing reasons, and then the line itself was canceled. I was afraid Black Crusade would never see the light of day, until it appeared as a web-based weekly serial. (available now at Wizards.com)

In short, Black Crusade focuses on Diederic de Wyndt, a knight of the First Crusade. From the bloody sack of Jerusalem, we see Diederic get involved in the schemes of a priest by the name of Lambrecht Raes. Lambrecht’s dabbling with the occult leads to a series of horrific events–first in Jerusalem, and then in the nascent Ravenloft domain of Malosia, as Diederic attempts to pursue the heretic even through his peculiar, supernatural escape. Over the course of the novel, we follow Diederic as he tries to adapt to his new situation and continue his hunt for Lambrecht–despite the dangers to not only body, but soul, as he allows his lust for vengeance to threaten his sense of morality.

Ravenloft is a very different setting than Magic: the Gathering, do you have a preference between the two? Why or why not?

Well, at the moment I’m more fond of the gothic horror-fantasy, and the in-depth history of Ravenloft than I am of the more overt, high-magic and high-fantasy feel of Magic. But as I said above, Magic’s strength lies in its variety, so given the right world in the Magic multiverse and the right characters to work with, that preference could certainly change.

What can you tell us about The Plane Below and your other upcoming Dungeons & Dragons work?

Obviously, I can’t go into any specific details on upcoming D&D books. I can say that “The Plane Below” is my first stint as the lead designer on a WotC book. That means that, while of course there was guidance and oversight from above, the overall outline of the book, and the decisions of what sort of materials to include and focus on, were mine. I’m quite happy with how the book came out, and I think DMs will find it a great inspiration, but I can hardly claim to be an unbiased source.

How is working on novels different from working on game material and which do you find more challenging?

While there’s substantial overlap in terms of the required skills, they’re actually two very different beasts. The prose in a game book should (in a perfect world, anyway) be just as evocative and flavorful as that of a novel, but with a very different purpose. The novel is meant to tell a story, to immerse the reader in the surroundings and actions of the characters; the game book has to be equally immersive, but instead inspire others to tell their own stories. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of including too much of one’s own story in game writing; but by the same token, an insufficient amount of flavor means that the book isn’t going to inspire the imagination. And of course, there are the mechanical aspects to consider, something that never even enters the equation when writing a novel.

As to which is more challenging? I’m not sure there’s a real answer to that. I think that game writing probably involves more of a fine balancing act between the two extremes mentioned above. On the other hand, because the mechanics do so much of the heavy lifting in a game book, there’s more of a safety net; if the narrative isn’t as strong as it could be, the book’s not automatically a failure. Maintaining a strong narrative and tone throughout a novel is far more important.

I’d say that adequate game writing is probably easier in the long run than adequate novel writing, because there’s usually multiple writers on a given book, which means that Author A can pick up Author B’s slack in one area, while B picks up A’s in another; and because someone who’s good at mechanics but not prose, or certain types of prose but not others, can still meaningfully contribute. But good writing is probably equally difficult for both.

About Ari Marmell
Ari Marmell was born in New York, moved to Houston when he was a year old, moved to Austin when he was 27, but has spent most of his life living in other worlds through a combination of writing and roleplaying games. He is the author of multiple roleplaying game supplements including work on Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire: the Requiem. Ari lives in Austin with his wife, George, and two cats. Visit his website Mouseferatu.com for more information.

Special Note:
If you’re a fan of Magic: the Gathering, you might be interested in our current contest. When you Send a Friend to GenCon for 2009, your friend will also receive a prize pack with goodies from Magic: the Gathering, too!

Related posts:

1. An excerpt from The Conqueror’s Shadow by Ari Marmell
2. Interview with Forgotten Realms author Jaleigh Johnson
3. James Lowder Interview, Author & Editor

Writer and editor Jess Hartley had just finished the novel Exalted: In Northern Twilight when she got the call from White Wolf to help write what would become the game supplement Predators.

Hartley will tell you that she got the gaming gig because she knew werewolves from the as of yet-unpublished novel she’d been hired to write. But, certainly, it had as much to do with her clear, straightforward prose, her professionalism, and her eye for evil.

Since White Wolf’s invitation, Hartley’s continued to diversify, writing fiction, developing and editing games, and doing magazine work.

Hartley’s prose is buoyant and flexible; her characters are rich and dark; and her sense of story is matched only by her dynamic sense of pacing.

“One of the nicest things about Jess Hartley’s work,” said game-designer and novelist Monica Valentinelli, author of The Violet War and “Twin Design,” (from Tales of the Seven Dogs Society) “is that Jess understands what it takes to run with the big, white dog and small-press publishers alike. If you’ve read ‘Changeling: the Lost,’ then you know what I’m talking about.”

Hartley and I spoke in mid-July 2008, while she was preparing for the August 14 GenCon debut of Hunter: the Vigil from White Wolf.

Jones: Games, fiction, magazine work… in what ways do these types of writing inform each other?

Hartley: I think many of the basic skills and talents that make one a good freelance writer (or professional writer in general) are constant no matter what medium you’re working in. Certain traits (dependability, organizational skills, writing and editing skills, the ability to adapt to your target readership, creativity, etc.) are going to serve you well, whether your end product is a magazine article on 14th century European wedding customs or a mechanic for how a particular supernatural power affects Changelings.

On a more specific basis, I think that knowledge is the one thing that does transfer. I’ve used research that I did for SCA (The Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group) Arts and Science projects on a novel several years later, or data I collected when researching one of my novels for a Vampire: the Requiem project that wasn’t conceptualized until years after the novel was finished. Everything you learn and know remains in the back of your brain as a writer, just waiting for the right project to come along to fit it in. You start looking at the world like a big box of puzzle pieces, and you never know where you’re going to find the right one to fit into your next article, game or book.

Jones: What do you enjoy about writing games in general?

Hartley: Writing games is unique in that you’re not just providing passive entertainment – you’re providing the building blocks with which others are going to build a million different stories. You’re providing them everything from the basic mechanics and setting to pre-generated characters and story arcs, and everything you write will be used in a myriad of different fashions, depending on the players involved. That’s absolutely amazing. It’s like giving someone imagination seeds and knowing that what they grow from them will be totally unique and entertaining in ways you never thought of when you were making them.

As for what specific element I get the biggest kick out of? That would have to be making monsters and watching storytellers and players have fun encountering and overcoming the challenges they present. I have had the pleasure of having a plethora of gamers come to me and say, “You made [Helions, Wyrdmites, Jacob Mosley, Patches, Bog Stalkers]? Damn you! Those almost killed my character! I had so much FUNfun!” That’s just a joy.

Recently my own Changeling character encountered Border Reavers for the first time, and it was an ironic pleasure to be the one to say, at the end of the session: “Wow! My monsters almost killed my own character this time!”

Jones: What for you is at the heart of a good game?

Hartley: Providing for its players’ entertainment desires. I know this sounds like a cop-out answer, but even for one player (me) different games provide different things. I love roleplaying games for political machinations, social roleplay and good old fashioned supernatural power fun. When that’s what I’m looking for, I head towards the World of Darkness games, or Exalted or Scion. However, there’s times when I want something I can chat with my friends over the top of without it affecting the game (Apples to Apples/Suitors) or focus on strategy (Dark Influences/Settlers of Catan) or just be silly (Once Upon A Time/Munchkin).

A good game gives its players what they’re looking for at that time, with as much or little complexity as they’re interested in, and has the flexibility to appeal to enough players’ desires at the same time to make the game work well.

Jones: How has your RPG work changed over the years? Or, put differently, how has your understanding of writing for RPGs changed over time?

Hartley: I came into writing for RPGs totally by accident. I started with writing novels for White Wolf, then was asked to step in and help with my first RPG project (Predators) because I had a good working knowledge of the new Werewolf from my novel work. I really had no idea how the whole process worked, what to expect or how to interpret the various bits of feedback (or lack thereof) that I received. Because I’ve learned more over the years I’ve been working for (and asking questions of) White Wolf and other RPG companies, I always try to be very generous with the little bits and pieces of information I have picked up, especially with new or aspiring RPG writers. I’ve been in the dark, and I really want to do everything I can to make sure that other folks don’t have to spend long there.

Jones: Where does building a world begin for you?

Hartley: I usually start with “how is it the same as or different from the real world”. People do best (and I do best building) when they have some recognizable anchors. After that, I add a few twists that I think will make it “still understandable but interesting” and then put some characters into it and flesh it out as they explore, trying to create something new and interesting for them around every corner.

Some things get built chronologically – This town is here because the raiders who used it as an outpost eventually settled into a less-risky and more financially profitable trading business. Others start with a cool idea and build out from that. A hotel might have a few interesting guests and a couple of employees/staff people who seem on the surface to be normal, but have a layer of interest if the players dig deeper.

Jones: What for you is at the heart of a good world for you?

Hartley: The opportunity for players to explore and find or create building blocks with which to make their own interesting stories, whether that “world” is a single room or an entire universe. Gaming is all about overcoming challenges of one sort or another, so a good world should have plenty of opportunities to do so, in a wide variety of types and power levels, and with a limitless number of potential ways to overcome them.

Jones: What role does collaboration play in your writing? And what position do you usually find yourself in when collaborating?

Hartley: I’ve done both solo-projects (and sections of group projects with very little collaboration) and work that was heavy on collaboration. Both have their up- and downsides. Collaboration is great, if you’re working with people whose communication styles and end-vision for the project are compatible with yours. If not, it can really be challenging. At its best, collaborative projects take the best skills and capabilities of every team member and spin them up into an outcome that’s exponentially better than any one of the members could have created alone. At its worse, it’s a schizophrenic mess, hampered by egos, differences of vision and every potential delay multiplied tenfold.

Luckily, most of the projects I’ve worked on have been of the former, not the latter! I’ve had the honor to be on some fabulous teams, and working with more experienced game creators has taught me a lot that I wouldn’t have learned on solo projects.

Jones: Game-writing 101: Whatever you do, don’t…?

Hartley: …tell your players what they have to do with the game. Give them the foundation, and enough tools to build what they want out of your world.

Jones: Whatever you do, be sure to…?

Hartley: …say yes! Unless there’s an absolutely irrevocable reason not to, give your players the right to spin the game into what they want out of it. If they want something and you’re afraid it will cause negative results, give them some ways to counteract those results if you can, or at the very least point out the possible affects but encourage them to run with what will be fun for them. Game writing isn’t about what I want to do with the game. It’s about giving players the tools to do what they want with it.

Visit www.jesshartley.com for he latest news, product excerpts and other updates on Jess’ work in the industry.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

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1. Author Interview for White Wolf’s Paths of Storytelling
2. Interview with Hunter: the Vigil Developer, Chuck Wendig
3. Interview with author Kelley Armstrong

The Dictionary of Mu, a pulp setting for The Sorceror RPG, was published in 2006 and became and instant hit among the indie games community for its blending of pulp, horror, low-fantasy and science fiction.

I recently contacted author and game designer Judd Karlman about the Dictionary, and he graciously agreed to answer my questions about this unique and imaginative book.

Give me your elevator pitch for Dictionary of Mu.

It is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom meets Robert Howard’s Conan meets the Bible.

How did you come up with the concept and characters?

Through much of the writing, I was working a late night twelve hour shift driving a taxi cabs. I would write the setting when I got back from work in a chair at the foot of my bed at around dawn while my lady-friend slept.

Because of that, I don’t remember writing a whole lot of it. Many of the ideas came from reading the King James Bible and reading through a ton of books mentioned in the Bibliography of Sorcerer & Sword that I could dig up at a local Friends of the Library Book Sale and local used book stores.

Why use Sorcerer RPG as the system for your setting? What does Sorcerer bring to Mu that is unique?

The seed of the setting was originally posted on the Adept Press forum on the Forge after reading Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword straight on through. I thought to myself, “What would I do with these books at the game table?” The Dictionary of Mu was born.

It never occurred to me to bring the setting to another system because it was really born out of reading Sorcerer, its supplements and the books mentioned in Sorcerer & Sword’s pulp fantasy bibliography.

Sorcerer allowed me to bring the ideas of this lost world where dead pieces of history can be summoned and players can either be the world’s damnation or salvation and highlight all of the pieces I wanted shining brightly in play.

You say the Bible was an influence. How so?

Gamers love playing with myth but when many of us do, we play with Norse, Egyptian or with Lovecraft’s unspeakable toys. I wanted to toy with the Old and New Testament and such in a similiar way that Marvel Comics plays with Asgard.

Once I realized how much the Bible’s wonderful and power stories were creeping in, I went back and re-read the King James Bible. Moses, Jesus, Nimrod the Hunter, maybe even some David and Goliath found their way in there. Once the book came out, people were seeing stuff that I didn’t even consciously write to be Biblical, which is fine with me.

The Dictionary, being an actual dictionary, is filled with these seemingly random entries on different places, concepts and people, but as you read this very cool story unfolds. Why did you decide to create the Dictionary of Mu in this fashion? Why not just present it as a straight-out sourcebook?

The dictionary format was great for me as a new game setting writer because it gave me a structure to work with. I had the red sand of the setting under my fingernails but what do you share and what do you leave out?

Putting the setting in a dictionary format allowed me to let the dictionary and the alphabet dictate a bit of what I needed to put in the book. “I need another -m- word…hmmm.”

I like setting books that inspire rather than inform and the dictionary worked well for that.

Tell me a little more about Ohgma and how he became the voice of the Dictionary of Mu. Was it hard writing from the point of view of a madman?

I really don’t remember where Oghma came from, I only knew I wanted to really think about where this otherworldly artifact came from and who wrote it. I re-watched Conan the Barbarian to get into the swords & sorcery mood and fell in love all over again with the late Mako’s performance. After that, it was always his voice dictating the words in the Dictionary of Mu.

This made it so very easy to write. It often honestly felt like it was coming from a source outside of me, which made writing a whole lot of fun.

Are you, too, possessed by the Demon of Words?

I wish I was possessed more lately. I am currently making a real effort to carve out time in my day, every day, to writing. Storn A. Cook is a friend of mine and a co-host on Sons of Kryos and the way he works on his art, the way he is always striving to improve is a huge inspiration to me. I really look up to him in that regard.

So, I’m possessed but I’d love to do a new ritual and get myself an even bigger demon.

The Demons in Mu are incredibly creepy. Tell me a little bit about why you made them the way you did and how you envision the demons working in an actual game of Mu.

Dead, angry pieces of history tend to be pretty creepy, it turns out. Looking at the demons in the book, they are a laundry list of things that upset me: head trauma, genocide and spiders, oh my. But there are also demons that represent things I just think are cool: dinosaurs, magical mirrors and Moorcockian swords.

The demons in Mu tend to be fairly epic and over the top and I credit Scott Knipe’s wonderful mini-supplement, Charnel Gods, for showing me how epic and apocalyptic Sorcerer demons can be. If you like Mu, you will likely love Charnel Gods. Check it out.

Tell me about the “kickers” you gave to the different people in the dictionary and why you made them fully playable characters.

I think that was Luke’s contribution. He mentioned that we needed the named folks statted out and I was thinking about how to do that and realized they could be viable starting player characters. The more I toyed with it the more I liked it.

When I playtested the setting at cons, I had player characters ready-made and baked into the setting, which was nice. The playtesting period allowed me to tinker with the quasi-kickers too.

They aren’t really-really real kickers because their players didn’t author them.

The artwork and layout for Dictionary of Mu are incredible. Tell me a little bit about how the art and feel of the book came about.

I have to credit all of that to Luke Crane and Jennifer Rodgers. Luke and Jennifer really took the text and ran with it, finding readings of the text and thoughts on how to present it all that I would have never dreamed of. Thanks to them, I still pick up the book, years after it was released and I smile when I open it.

When Luke read it, he wanted the book to be an artifact from Marr’d, like some kind of found thing. If it was up to him, I think the book would have been bound in mantischora leather and written in gray blood. He really held my hand and patted my belly throughout the process.

And Jennifer really did amazing work. I can’t say enough about what a pleasure it was to work with her. She really pushed the boundaries past what I had ever imagined. The saddest part of being done with this project was not getting pictures from Jennifer e-mailed to me every few days. I still miss that.

Are there any plans to expand on the setting presented in the Dictionary?

I get asked this quite a bit and really, the only way to expand is for people to play and through play, to create their own entries, as the rules dictate. To present a sequel would really go against everything the Dictionary is about. This is a setting book all about how the written word is not as important as the spoken word when it comes to gaming at the table. That is what the whole damned thing is, a love letter to the worlds we verbally create with our friends and a big middle-finger to the written words that seek to constrain us.

Short answer, no, I won’t be publishing any sequels or city books.

I am tempted to publish a blank book with the same interior as the dictionary, only without any words. Keith Senkowski dropped that idea on me and I think its a gem.

I am also sometimes tempted to write short stories set in that world but it hasn’t happened in earnest. If it does, I’d think about rounding up the posse again and publishing it but that project is so far on the back-burner that its not even tepid at this point.

Is there anything you would do differently with the Dictionary of Mu if you were working on the project now?

Funny, I was on Rob Bohl’s podcast, The Independent Insurgency and he asked me the same thing.

I might make the Descriptors and through the Descriptors, the player characters, slightly more heroic. Maybe.

Maybe not.

It is done and I feel like the narrator, Oghma son of Oghma would get angry with me if I changed a word as written.

Do you have any other projects you are working on?

I am currently working on 1st Quest, an RPG of young adult fantasy fiction, based on the Solar System that powers Clinton R. Nixon’s wonderful sex, drugs and rock and roll fantasy, The Shadow of Yesterday.

I should have an ashcan out by Gen Con, I hope and get the final project out this year or the next. I don’t rush anything. I’d rather get it done right and late than put out a game that isn’t solid.

You are co-host of the Sons of Kryos Podcast. Tell me a little bit about that.

Jeff and I were doing a podcast about our experiences of play and what was happening with us at the table. Storn moved to Ithaca and went from listener and fan to co-host and treasured contributor.

We love talking about play and we are all really passionate about it; when we go some time without recording I really miss being behind the mic with those guys. It is really fun but it is fun work.

I couldn’t mention the show without mentioning how hard Jeff works on it. He does all of the technical hoo-ha, from editing to actually posting it all up on the internet. It is amazing what Jeff can teach himself to do.

Short answer, Sons of Kryos is a podcast about RPG play hosted be Jeff Lower, Storn A. Cook and me.

If people are wanting to learn more about the Dictionary of Mu or the Sons of Kryos Podcast, where should they go?

Sons of Kryos is at www.sonsofkryos.com and Dictionary of Mu’s site with a pdf of an entry and a character sheet can be found at: www.conspiracyofshadows.com/mu.

– Interview by Michael Erb

I wanted to thank Judd for doing this interview with me, and I hope to have my review of The Dictionary of Mu posted soon. For those of you going to GenCon, you can find Judd and the Dictionary at the Playcollective, booth #2039.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Hunter: the Vigil Developer, Chuck Wendig
2. Interview with Ed Wetterman and Preston DuBose at 12 to Midnight
3. Interview with Fantasy author Paul S. Kemp

The dead are walking and hungry for brains. Shutter the windows, barricade the door and load your shotgun.

Oh, and this round draw three and play two.

“Zombie Fluxx,” a card game from the appropriately-named Looney Labs, is based off the popular and zany “Fluxx,” an ever changing card game that begins simple and ends up insane.

“Zombie Fluxx” takes the base game one shuffling step forward, adding in iconic images from zombie and horror movies and a new kind of card to liven (pardon the pun) up the mix.

“Zombie Fluxx” was named “Best Card Game” at this year’s Origins Game Fair and has been a top seller for Looney Labs since it was released in 2007.

The basic game of “Zombie Fluxx” is the same as regular “Fluxx.” Players have four main kinds of cards – Rules, Goals, Actions and Keepers. Actions force players to do things; Rules change or add to the rules of the game, such as hand size or the number of cards played and drawn each turn; Keepers are items placed in front of a player; and Goals determine what a player has to do to win the game, usually based on the Keepers in-play or out-of-play.

But Andy Looney, owner of Looney Labs and creator of “Fluxx,” said a game based on zombies needed something extra, some sort of mechanic to represent the threat of the undead.

“Originally zombies were going to be Keepers, but that didn’t really fit with the theme,” he said. “At the end of the day, zombies are not Keepers because you really don’t want them. I had to create a whole new kind of card for the game.”

Enter the Creeper. Creeper cards can move between players, and there are certain ways to “kill” zombies in the game, but for the most part a player gets stuck with a Creeper. Most Goals of the game don’t allow the player possessing the Creeper card to win, reflecting those unfortunate enough to be turned into or pinned down by zombies, Looney said.

“The Creeper cards really change how the game is played. There is a whole new level of strategy we really weren’t expecting when we first came up with the idea,” he said.

So why take a relatively light and carefree game like “Fluxx” and turn it into a game about zombies?

“I don’t like zombies,” Looney said. “I’ve never been much of a horror fan myself. It was the people around me who kept saying ‘We’ve got to do zombies!’ So I did.”

Looney said he didn’t do much research to prepare for the game, but did refer to a few classics of the zombie genre.

“I sat down and watched ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ ” he said. “A lot of my design was based off that.”

Afterwards, “Zombie Fluxx” seemed to take on an un-life of its own, he said.

“It was a very rapid production,” Looney said. “The actual production of the game probably took around 3-4 months.”

The addition of the Creeper cards also has become a feature of some new “Fluxx” variants, and likely will be a part of any new “Fluxx” games in the future, he said.

“Our upcoming ‘Mony Python Fluxx’ also will use the Creeper cards,” Looney said. “Generally they prevent you from winning unless the Goal says you need them to win. It just adds an extra twist to the game.”

“Zombie Fluxx” contains 100 cards and retails for about $16. For more information on “Zombie Fluxx” or other Looney Labs games, visit www.looneylabs.com.

Written by Michael Erb
Staff Writer – The Parkersburg News and Sentinel – www.newsandsentinel.com

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2. Zombie Mosh Tramples Boredom!
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Chuck Wendig has contributed to over sixty books for White Wolf Game Studios. His short fiction has infiltrated Whispers From the Shattered Forum, Not One of Us, and an upcoming Carnifex Press anthology.

In this interview Chuck tells us about how got his start at White Wolf Game Studios. He also tells us a bit about working on the previous World of Darkness, Requiem for Rome and, of course, Hunter: the Vigil.

How did you get your start at White Wolf?

Way back when, in the Summer of Nineteen Dickety-Two, Ken Cliffe and Bruce Baugh put out a “writer’s all-call” for Hunter. Write ‘em a cool thousand words on the subject of Hunter, and bam, catch some freelance work. I did it (a little piece about external and internal loci of control), and I guess it did the trick, or they were drunk or something. Because, boom, freelance word count feel in my lap. First Wayward, then the Storytellers’ Handbook.

You also had the chance to work on other game lines a bit before the Time of Judgment and the launch of the new World of Darkness, what can you tell us about that?

Good times all around. I have particular love in my heart for both Hunter: The Reckoning and Demon: The Fallen, still. Though, I met Ethan Skemp when he graciously allowed me to work on the Revised Stargazer Tribebook all by my lonesome. The first White Wolf game I ever ran was Werewolf: The Apocalypse (and ran countless games of it afterward), so it was nice to get some work in on that line before it all went kablooey.

What are your favorite elements of the World of Darkness?

I assume we’re talking the current iteration? I was a wee bit younger when the “old” World of Darkness was around, but then, you know, as life would have it, I started to grow up. The current iteration of the World of Darkness feels like it grew up with me. The horror is a bit more mature, and not in a “This Mutant Vagina Has Teeth!” way, but in that it’s more subtle, more sinister, more occulted. I also like that I have seemingly limitless options. Getting together at the gaming table is way more fun this go-around because the story possibilities are basically endless.

What were some of your inspirations for “Dust to Dust” in World of Darkness: Ghost Stories?

That is a fine, fine question. Let’s see if I can actually remember that one (I write so much and so often that stuff will come up in books and I’ll wonder if I wrote it or if someone else did that part). Dust to Dust, if I recall, was in part because I’d spent a little time out West, and also had used that general set-up for a combination Hunter-Demon game I ran at the time (one hunter was extremist, and it bound to a demon known as Lamashtu, a demon that shows up in one of the Dark Ages books, I think…). A lot of the stuff I write comes from some game or another; I don’t really understand how people can write these games without playing them semi-regularly.

What can you tell us about working on Requiem for Rome?

For both that book and Fall of the Camarilla, I got the cake-walk work in that I was to supply the fiction for both books, and tie them together somewhat. Rome was a grand experiment with a great deal of committed people, and it turned out beautifully. One person who probably doesn’t get enough credit (we know that Will and Ray developed them, and developed them well) is Wood (Howard Wood Ingham, of the Welsh Inghams). The guy pretty much eats Roman History for breakfast, so it was the perfect time for him to regurgitate all he’s consumed onto the page for all of you to read.

As a Chronicle book, Fall of the Camarilla is a huge project. What were the challenges of putting that book together?

The challenges? Too many to name, really. Russell Bailey was involved, and he’s pretty much goofed up on PCP for 20 hours of the day, so he’s notoriously difficult to work with. Then you have Wood, who’s the smartest person you’ve ever met, except he’s just full of unrivaled hate. Every day or two, we’d all get emails from him, and he’d tell us how much he loathed us, how he despised our very mothers and our mothers’ mothers and our mothers’ mothers’ dogs, and it all got very troublesome. We eventually had to stage an intervention. Tasers were involved. But then we had cake, which is inferior to pie, but superior to most cookies. Other than that, no real challenges. Just pure, unmitigated fun.

We should probably stop tormenting folks now…

Oh, let’s not be hasty.

Hunter: the Vigil, how ’bout a teaser?

Okay, you run the risk of getting me killed. Seriously. I’ve got people watching my house. Dark sunglasses. Little earpieces. I heard one of them mutter something about something called “VALKYRIE?” No idea. I assume it’s some kind of NDA-thing.

Let’s see. What can I tell you that’ll only get me waterboarded, not executed?

I’ll just throw out some terms. You can do with these as you’d like.

“Children of the Seventh Generation.”

“The Secret Frequency.”

“Aves Minerva.”

“Field Projects Division.”

“Aegis Kai Doru.”

“Dentistry.”

What can you tell us about the creative team working on Hunter: the Vigil?

Well, we had Russell Bailey and Wood Ingham again, so, back to the PCP binges and hate-spew. Beyond those two, everybody else was on their best behavior. The writers really dug deep, embraced the spirit of the game and brought a lot of stuff to the table that wasn’t in the core bible and outline.

You get names like McFarland, Lee, Hartley, Stout, and people are going to be happy with what they see. Plus, newer writers came on board, too — Alex Greene, Marty Henley. All great. Eager. Fun to work with.

What sets Hunter: the Vigil apart from previous “hunter” products like Hunter: the Reckoning and Dark Ages: Inquisitor?

Both of those products were great, solid products. So was Hunters Hunted. Each committed its own flavor to the idea of “hunters” in the World of Darkness, and we borrowed a lot of those flavors. As a result, Vigil is certainly its own creature. The World of Darkness these days is very much about an open approach with lots of options, and Vigil doesn’t stray from that.

What was the most challenging element of developing Hunter: the Vigil?

Probably that I’d only developed one book prior to this (Tribes of the Moon — go buy!), and that suddenly I was responsible for getting an entire gameline up and running. It was sink or swim. It seems that I swam (swum? swimmed?), or, at least, floated about, buoyed by the genius of the writers.

How did the idea of making Endowments a new category of Merit, instead of a new Trait, come about in the design process of the game?

Inspiration for that came to us while dosing on Ibogaine with Pygmy archers in the Congo. An angel made of Pure Experience Points descended from a cloud of Morality and handed it to us on a gleaming pewter tray.

Or maybe I’m misremembering. Actually, I think it was in Justin Achilli’s original bible for the game. When Justin Achilli says something, you do it. Or he’ll throw a bottle at your head.

Can you tell us anything about Witchfinder, the first Hunter supplement?

Not much, or they’ll break my legs and use my kneecaps as candy dishes. I can tell you some cool people worked on it: Howard Wood Ingham (who worked on all the Hunter supplements, actually), Jess Hartley, Rick Chillot, Travis Stout, Stew Wilson. All corebook writers. Plus, Witchfinder is when we got John Newman on board, who continued to supply solid word count for other supplements. I can tell you that you do not need Awakening to use this book, and owning Awakening does not invalidate this book.

What games are you currently playing?

Table-top? Changeling, actually.

I’ve been running a non-stop Changeling game since playtesting on that book (the playtest that yielded the Fear-Maker’s Promise SAS, by the by), with periodic segues into Hunter. Two stories converging, I hope.

Outside of that, I’m playing some Grand Theft Auto IV like the rest of America.

What’s next for you?

With White Wolf, I’m booked until like, next year. Writing and developing. I do other writing, too. Have an option on a screenplay about to expire come August, so we’ll start to shop that around again, and hopefully make some more pitches for some other films, too. Work, work, more work. But good work. Advice to everybody: do what you love, because life can be unmercifully short.

- – -

In addition to his work at White Wolf Game Studios Chuck tells me He mentored with screenwriter Stephen Susco, and is currently working on more screenplays. He lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with two dogs and a recently captured wife. Find out more at his website www.terribleminds.com.

Related posts:

1. Hunter: the Vigil “From the Authors”
2. Hunter: the Vigil “Endowments”
3. Hunter: the Vigil “Professions”

How did 12 to Midnight get started?

Ed Wetterman: My best friend, Jerry Blakemore, and I got involved with the RPGA writing adventure modules and interactives for the Bandit Kingdoms region. With a few modules under our belts, we asked ourselves why we were working so hard for free when we could be writing modules for sale instead. We designed a huge war-game based on D&D 3.0. It was huge and fun, but after realizing how much it would cost to take to market we set it aside.

At this point another old friend, Mark Ramsey, joined and we decided to focus our efforts on the PDF market and specifically the modern horror area. At the time, there were only a few companies were producing material for that genre. Later we were joined by Preston DuBose and Craig Largent. Preston has extensive skills in layout, art direction, and marketing.

Preston DuBose: I met these guys at a convention and played in a game Jerry wrote called Weekend Warriors. It was a cool military horror game, and I’d just written a big modern horror adventure. I started stalking them in hopes that they would publish my adventure, and after a month or so they asked me to join the company. That’s when I realized it was all an elaborate ploy! They immediately put me to work as their layout guy, and one month after my son was born 12 to Midnight released its first title—Last Rites of the Black Guard.

Pretty soon after that, we invited a professional engineer and designer named Craig to join us as our in-house cartographer. In the past year we have also added Neal Hyde for his great writing skills and Brendan Quinn as our chief technology officer.

12 to Midnight is the distributor for three imprints. What can you tell us about them?

Ed Wetterman: Our first was Dirty Unicorn Games, owned by Jeff Varnes. His 3-D tokens and tiles are the best and I rarely sit down to GM without his stuff. The next to join us was Fabled Environments, owned by Charles and Krista White. They have an awesome line of modern maps called Modern Floorplans. These maps come in several types, with furniture, without furniture, with grid lines, without gridlines, etc. These maps can be used in ANY modern game. Finally we have Silven Crossroads. This is our official fantasy line of products based on the original Silven Publishing products and now including our own, such as Steamworks.

Preston DuBose: We’ve really enjoyed working with Jeff, Charles, and Krista, and we are pretty sure they’ve enjoyed working with us. They’re like extended members of our 12 to Midnight family (or cult, depending on who you ask–such as my wife). We’re always on the lookout for new imprints, but the number one criterion is demonstrated quality.

What can you tell us about the Pinebox Adventures line-up?

Ed Wetterman: My first idea was to create a website full of paranormal articles both real and fictional. One of the articles I wrote was about a Nazi whose mummified remains were found in his home in Rosetta, Texas. The story was cool and the adventure Last Rites sprang from that. While Last Rites was still in development though, we decided that we really needed our own campaign setting. Pinebox was born out of many legends and stories from East Texas, which came easily since I grew up in the region.

Preston DuBose: When I first met Ed, Jerry, and Mark, they explained that they had this fictional campaign setting called Pinebox, Texas. As they filled me in about the various details, they had the habit of talking about Pinebox like it was a real place. I remember at one point being on the phone with Ed and stopping him in mid-explanation to confirm that there wasn’t really a place called Pinebox that they were simply fictionalizing. Even that early in 12 to Midnight’s history, Pinebox had a way of grabbing you. It wasn’t long before I started talking about it as it were a real place too. Today I can tell you as much about Pinebox as my own hometown. Actually, probably more.

What may surprise people who don’t know 12 to Midnight is that there is no Pinebox campaign setting book. We’ve posted some campaign setting basics on our website for free—a city map, some travel destination-type information, and enough information to give you a sense of Pinebox’s flavor. Beyond that, we’ve grown Pinebox incrementally through a series of adventures. Each one adds new locations, new people, and new slices of Pinebox’s history. We have five full-length Pinebox adventures, plus adventures and setting material in about a dozen and a half issues of an e-zine called Modern Dispatch.

How much playtesting goes into your adventures?

Ed Wetterman: Lots! I run it for my local group first, then usually two or three more times with extended group of gamers. Once we feel it’s ready for a big playtest, we contact folks from around the world that are active on our forums and ask them to playtest for us. This usually leads to another big series of edits, but makes for a better game.

Preston DuBose: Ironically, when I wrote Brainwashed, Ed got to test it before I did. He ran it several times while I was living out of town and away from my gaming group. He passed back the playtest results and I made the changes, but I didn’t get to play it until close to a year after its release.

So, are we ever going to see a Pinebox campaign setting book? Why or why not?

Ed Wetterman: Yes. The first one is a plot point book called ETU: Degrees of Horror that takes place on the East Texas University campus, though there is lots of information on Pinebox and Golan County, Texas. There is enough here for several campaigns, but we also hope to add lots of fun stuff as well. Things like an official East Texas University website, more Bites of Midnight, music, a Google-style interactive map, and both a Whitepages and a Yellowpages for Pinebox with active links for many of the folks and places listed. When this is released, gamers are gonna get more support than they have ever seen from an Indie company.

Then….we might do another book that is more about Pinebox and less the University. We have discussed the possibility of releasing a d20 (modern or 4th edition Modern) version of the campaign setting as well.

Preston DuBose: If you’re asking whether we’ll ever publish a generic book about Pinebox, probably not. We prefer filling out the campaign setting more obliquely. Ed has already spilled the beans on our intentions for web enhancements. While those are ostensibly in support of ETU, most of those pieces are just as useful for Pinebox as a whole.

Ultimately, we enjoy expanding Pinebox by going narrow but deep. For example, East Texas University is only one part of Pinebox, but when we’re done with ETU: Degrees of Horror you’ll have everything you could possibly want or need to play a college-horror campaign. We’ve talked about taking the same approach for the Pinebox Police Department. We have more fun going deep and developing rich campaigns than we would putting out a generic Pinebox almanac.

What makes for a good night of horror gaming?

Ed Wetterman: Memories, good characterization, and surprises! I’m a story gamer. I love tossing handfuls of dice as much as the next guy, but if there is no plot or story, it rarely holds my interest long.

Preston DuBose: Yeah. Horror gaming is heavy on roleplay. A good night of horror gaming is a night when all the players are in the zone and resist distractions that break the mood. You know it’s a good night when you give yourself or someone else at the table goosebumps.

What are your thoughts on the Savage Worlds system?

Ed Wetterman: I personally love Savage Worlds. It’s my personal system of choice. I still play d20, but I no longer write my adventures for it. We hire d20 gurus to convert my adventures from Savage Worlds to d20. There is nothing more I hate about writing adventures than creating stat blocks. I believe Savage Worlds is the perfect game system in that it’s easy to understand but has lots of depth and nuances that can only be learned by playing the game. It truly is Fast, Fun, and Furious.

Preston DuBose: Yeah!

What challenges are there when writing a Savage Worlds adventure?

Ed Wetterman: I like writing for SW the best. It’s simply an easier system to write for, design for, and requires much less preparation as a GM than the other systems out there. I guess the biggest issue is making certain that encounters are balanced for the adventurers.

Preston DuBose: I agree with Ed. I’ll just add that we have to challenge one another to outperform ourselves for every title, because the quality of Savage Worlds material is just amazing and keeps getting better. The creativity coming from Pinnacle and the Savage Worlds licensees is inspiring.

How did Steamworks come about? What can you tell us about it?

Preston DuBose: Steamworks is a fantasy d20 System supplement. It gives gamers and GMs rules for bringing steampunk-type technology into a fantasy campaign. It is a big book—almost 175 pages—and includes character classes, prestige classes, item creation rules, and devices. Lots and lots of devices. Honestly, as far as I’m concerned the chapter on devices alone is worth price the book’s price. Who wouldn’t want to have a bag full of self-propelled caltrops? Or a mind control helm? Or a rust grenade? Or a clockwork steed? A clockwork steed! That just rocks!

Ed Wetterman: We were contacted by the author, Korey MacVittie, with the idea. I thought it was a great idea that really fills a nitch, so I campaigned hard within the company to accept it. It was big book though. It took a long time for Korey to write, and even longer for us to edit. Unfortunately by the time we finished, 4th edition was announced. I wish we could have released it a year ago.

Is Steamworks going to be available for Savage Worlds?

Preston DuBose: No. Steamworks relies on classes, while Savage Worlds is a classless system. It would require such massive rewrites that we can’t justify the resources.

What can you tell us about the Midnight Charity project?

Ed Wetterman: My son is a high functioning Autistic and we were wanting to give something back to society. We chose to give to Autism Research. One in 150 births are now recognized as Autistic, and this is up from one in 10,000 in the late 1970s. It’s an epidemic and the causes remain unknown. With these kind of numbers everyone should be aware of Autism and I’m certain most people know of at least one autistic person.

Preston DuBose: In early November I decided that it was time we use our powers for good instead of only evil (adventures). I suggested to the guys that we look at starting a charity project that we could run in December. We were already working on ETU at that point, so I knew we could auction off a NPC role in ETU without much difficulty. We tossed around a few ideas for charities, but with Autism research being so personal to us it was an easy decision. From there it snowballed, really. The guys started offering to donate their December royalties, and eventually we decided to dedicate the sales of certain titles to the charity. We even opened it up to other publishers and had Second World Simulations donate some of their sales as well. In all, we raised $245. In the great scheme of things it may not seem like much, but for a last-minute charity by one small RPG publisher I think it turned out pretty fair. I hope that this year with more advance notice we can get even more publishers on board and raise even more.

What is next for 12 to Midnight?

Preston DuBose: We’ve already mentioned ETU: Degrees of Horror. It’s a self-contained modern horror campaign that takes characters from incoming college freshmen all the way through graduating seniors. The characters start off as little better than mooks, but throughout the challenges and dangers (both mundane and supernatural) presented by college they are forced to grow into the heroes they were destined to become. Well, either that or they’ll die and serve as object lessons for the next incoming freshmen class. We’re pretty close to a complete first draft, so we’ll be playtesting and editing over the rest of the year. We expect ETU to hit game stores in the second half of 2009.

Ed Wetterman: ETU is our number 1 priority, but that’s not all we’ve got in the works. Last year I wrote a serialized adventure in 12 parts, called 12 Hours to Midnight. Like the TV show 24, each installment represents one hour of adventure time. After ETU is turned over to the editors, I’d like to go back and finish that. We also have a ghost-related adventures called The Prodigal that just needs art and layout. I wrote another haunted house adventure, House on Dale Island, two years ago. I pushed it back to focus on 12 Hours to Midnight, which in turn was pushed back because of ETU. I’m gonna get that adventure released somehow, come hell or high water.

Visit 12toMidnight.com for all the latest news on upcoming products, including Pinebox Adventures and Steamworks. You can also find 12 to Midnight eBooks at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Related posts:

1. 12 to Midnight Halloween Sale!
2. The Great 12 to Midnight Buried Tales Treasure Contest!
3. Ed’s Midnight Tales RPG Review

How long has Talisman Studios been in business? Can you tell us a little bit about how your company got started?

MMK: Hi there . I’m Martin, the Publisher at Talisman Studios, which is in its fifth year and was started as an art and design studio by two of the most talented artists around – Aaron Acevedo and Jason Engle. And I’m not just saying that because Aaron’s reading this; check out their portfolios and you’ll see what I mean (aaronace.deviantart.com and jasonengle.deviantart.com).

How do I fit in? I’m the Brit who adopted these guys in the old days… or was it the other way round? Anyway, in 2007 they asked me to join them and help turn Talisman into a full publisher… which is what we’ve done. In the last few months we released over fifty books and game accessories through our site at www.talisman-studios.com and launched three entire game lines.

Gamescapes are game accessories like map tiles for tabletop gaming. Shaintar is a wonderfully detailed fantasy world. Suzerain is a complete game system that allows people to roleplay in any setting, any world.

When you get right down to it we’re really just a cooperative of creative people looking to make an honest living doing the best games, art prints, graphic novels, and anything else that takes our fancy. And we’re only getting started. Some of the stuff for the rest of this year is… just exceptional.

Aaron, you want to talk about where we all got started, that freezing weekend at Holiday Inn Schenectady, scribbling mad ideas into the evening, trying not to get distracted while the women in the bar hit on Jason? It was your idea, after all. Not the women, but the weekend.

AAA: Thanks, Martin. I’m happy to. Truth is, there was serious talk about closing the studio before Martin got involved last year. Jason and I were both really busy with our freelance careers, and neither of us had the time or savvy to take Talisman to the next level. I went to Martin for some advise and after talking, we decided to keep the studio open with Martin at the helm and it’s made all the difference in the world.

That long, cold weekend in Schenectady started things off. We got together to talk about becoming a full-fledged publisher, which game lines we’d develop, and who’d be involved. It was controlled and chaotic all at once, with creative ideas flying as fast as the Mountain Dew went down. At the end we had a gameplan laid out. That’s where Gamescapes came from, as well as the plan to bring back Suzerain, Martin’s gorgeous RPG from his days running Treehouse Ltd.

What has been the most rewarding (and the most) disappointing part of working at a small press game studio?

MMK: Most rewarding? All of it. Most disappointing? None of it. Seriously.

Okay, it’s like this. We work really hard, long hours at odd times of day and night. Sometimes I get tired, and we insist on only making the highest quality stuff… which at three in the morning could frustrate any man. A few hours later the feeling’s gone, I look up from my work and see all the wonderful things we’re making and the people I’m working with. There’s nothing to compare. I’m lucky enough to work with my friends, and as we expand the Talisman family with new people, they’re a great bunch too. This is what I do. I hope it’s what I always get to do. No commute. No boss. You earn what people will pay you for making great books that the fans like. It’s not a lot of money, but that’s never why you’d do this.

AAA: I agree, the long hours can be pretty tough, it’s not unheard of for me to work 12 hour days for weeks on end, but I think that shows how engrossing the work can be. Working with such talented folks is incredibly satisfying. I just don’t want to stop. Ever!

Thankfully, my wife Jeannine is just as enthused, or I’d be in serious trouble .

MMK: And I’m going to be a father in the next few weeks. If my good lady wasn’t a very understanding sort, that would be seriously bad news. We’re both really lucky like that.

Why did you decide to use the Savage Worlds system for Shaintar, and how do you feel the system enhances the game’s fantasy feel?

AAA: Sean Fannon, Shaintar’s creator, had a few incarnations of Shaintar over the years (Fantasy Hero, Fuzion, d20, and more). He’s good friends with us, and all the time we’ve been watching him search for a system that would handle the epic scope of the stories he wanted to tell. None were quite right. It wasn’t until Shane [Hensely] showed him Savage Worlds that he finally found what he was looking for.

MMK: Savage Worlds really fits Shaintar. It’s fantasy gaming on an epic scale. You need to be able to have hordes of Ratzin charge into the scene, the characters squaring off against a couple of frenzied Minotaurs, and all that happening at a pace that gets across the intense adrenalin-rush of the situation.

AAA: Yeah. The system is very flexible, handles fast-paced action like no other, and doesn’t bog down with massive amounts of troops on the map; a perfect fit for the epic battles taking place in Shaintar. If you’re wading through a dozen 300 page books to find some appendix where it tells you what the rule is for fighting against a large opponent with a small weapon… forget it! Game over.

MMK: Savage Worlds keeps it down to what’s needed. A varied combat system to accommodate different fighting styles without crushing the game under a ton of unneeded rules. Enough social stats to help gauge a negotiation or diplomatic effort. Nothing extra. Perfect for epic fantasy, and Shaintar is definitely that. Oh, and Savage Worlds has tricks. They allow all manner of wonderful improvisation. We love tricks.

Do you game together regularly? Any stories to share?

MMK: We’re just starting up a Shaintar campaign using Fantasy Grounds (a great virtual gaming table), just for us guys. It’s our Monday gaming fix together. That’s the only practical way since we’re spread out all over the world.

However I will warn people about gaming with Aaron and Jason. We played in a Deadlands game a while back where we made some kick-ass characters and we were really proud of them. In the very first session we faced down the biggest wimp of a vampire in the world, some exotic dancer woman who’d only become a vampire the night before.

One character ended up cowering in the corner from the start, the second took a neck wound on the first round, and the third one just managed to bundle him out of the window where the two of them fell one floor into the street and the Doc (my character) broke his arm. Aaron’s prizefighter became a vampire snack, Jason’s sharpshooter bled out on the street, and the Doc couldn’t practice medicine again thanks to his busted arm. You’ve never seen so many 1’s rolled in such a short space of time!

AAA: Oh man, why’d you have to remind me of THAT game. Wow, not our finest moment. I seriously thought we had the situation handled when we got started… .

Martin and I actually got to know each other across the table of a Shaintar game back in 1999, when I was developing Shards of the Stone with Sean and Jason at Obsidian Studios.

MMK: In that shack of an office just off the beach.

AAA: That’s the one. Martin was playing an over-the-hill ex-general and I was playing a former Cardinal for the Prelacy of Camon in a massive battle against agents of Darkness. I think we had over a dozen people at the table that night, and it fell to the two of us to coordinate the battle from the back ranks.

MMK: Sean just loooooves a big game with some major carnage. Twelve people, and it hung together really well. He’s a master.

AAA: Martin’s character had some serious physical issues, so he wasn’t effective in battle any more, but he had all kinds useful military knowledge and my character was a scholar and diplomat with incredible charisma and no fighting skills at all (Sean couldn’t believe it when he saw my character, and ended up having to write new command and leadership rules to cover the things I wanted to do). We made a great team, and ultimately led our band to victory. It was a great time, and I’m hoping we get a chance to go back to those characters at some point… maybe we’ll get the chance with our new Fantasy Grounds campaign.

MMK: I’d love to dust off General Gunther Olar, if he hasn’t yet died of old age. That was a good game.

What made you decide to offer a unique game that could cross genres, but wasn’t too overly generic?

MMK: Ah, Suzerain. Well I tell you, one of the reasons was that nobody had done it before. There are game systems like GURPS but you nailed it – GURPS is generic. Too sterile for a lot of gamers. We got a bunch of people telling us that they wanted to do something that allowed them to play in any setting, any genre, but to have it feel alive. I first released Suzerain on an unsuspecting world as a limited edition art print book eight years ago. A thousand copies just disappeared overnight and we had none left.

We planned to expand on it, to show people a hundred mesmerizing worlds. We had the financial backing, but it all went horribly wrong (very horribly, in fact) on 9/11. We regrouped and spent years developing it in the background. 2007 was the first time that we had the stars align again, and it was an opportunity nobody wanted to pass by. Suzerain is a huge concept, a universe that has some truly amazing twists and turns coming up. More than anything else, we wanted to develop something we could be passionate about.

And Suzerain is worth being passionate about.

AAA: I’d never been a big fan of multi-genre systems. I played a bunch, but never found one that was truly satisfying. Something always seemed to be lost in the attempt to cover all the bases. Suzerain changed that for me. In a big way. It has an incredibly rich universe with in-game reasons for being multi-genre, and I couldn’t be happier with it. Like Martin says, it feels alive. Keep watching our site for announcements and you’ll see a lot more in the weeks and months to come.

Can you tell us a little bit more about Suzerain and what made you decide to mix pirates with monsters?

MMK: Gladly. Suzerain handles anything you throw at it. It’s the fallout shelter of roleplaying games. Where other systems explode under too much pressure, unable to adjust when you want to take them outside of their tidy little genre box, Suzerain just shrugs and takes it all. Come inside, folks. Your gaming’s safe in here, no matter what off-the-wall ideas you have.

Our view is that imagination doesn’t come in tidy little boxes. Your roleplaying shouldn’t be limited. Suzerain never gets in the way, unlike most games. If you want the characters in a modern game to suddenly go down a sewer and find a society of subterranean lizard wizards… go for it.

We mixed pirates and monsters because we’d been playing that world (Untamed Empires is its name) for a while and wanted to share it. It’s a way for players to see that Suzerain’s genre-mixing works. That, and pirates are cool. And sea monsters are cool. And we can lead straight into our horr… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

AAA: Suzerain is ‘a universe in gaming’. That’s our tagline and Suzerain really lives up to it. It has a big, sprawling story that crosses genres in a massively satisfying way, with layers and layers of depth across assorted media. Games, comics, illustrated fiction, and even music; we’ve got all that and more coming down the line. Each product reveals a bit more of the big picture, and we’re pretty sure that you folks are going to enjoy the ride.

How does Talisman Studios select artists for their projects? How soon do artists get involved in the process for publishing a game?

AAA: Well, to start, we have two leads: Jason for Shaintar and myself for Suzerain. We set the visual identity for each game line, then add new artists to develop them further. With Gamescapes, we open things up a bit, so you’re most likely to see new artists starting off there. Alida Saxon’s excellent work on our Pirate character cards is a great example. Her colored pencil on heavily textured paper is quite a leap from my digital painting but I think it worked really well for the material, so I invited her to work on a set of upcoming Suzerain cards.

We also encourage our contributors to collaborate and let us know what they’re passionate about, and then try to develop products around those passions. Alida and Michelle Klein are currently working on another set of Gamescapes character cards based around a Dark Carnival (see accompanying illustration), a project they came up with and pitched to me. It’s a fluid process to be sure, but I think it really works because our contributors are working on projects that really interest them and it shows in their work.

MMK: Exactly. We don’t see our projects as being a simple linear process. Art isn’t a sausage factory, not the words, not the illustration. We’re looking to bring people together who all love the project they’re doing and will give it the passion that sets it out from the crowd. That shines through in all our books and gaming accessories.

Of course, it means having illustrators and writers, an editor and designer all thinking about the project at the same time. You get some exceptional ideas that way. And with every month we’re doing more and more of that. Give it another few months and all of our projects will be team developed from the initial concept to the moment a customer buys that first copy.

What made you decide to offer gaming aids in addition to RPGs? Is the design process different?

AAA: Well, I’ve always been a fan of visual aids (go figure) and don’t think there are enough out there. Our players (for both in-house and convention games) have always responded extremely well to visual aids, so we thought it was a logical step to offer them as a product line.

MMK: The two work really well together for Talisman Studios. We have a great pedigree with people who’ve done many years of this kind of thing, both RPG books and accessories. When you have such a high-octane creative atmosphere it’s easy to bring the two sides together. Scenario books spark ideas for map tiles and character card sets inspire entire adventure arcs.

AAA: It also mixes the work up, so people can stay fresh by working on a Gamescapes set and then a Suzerain book, for instance. The two might be linked, but it’s a different type of thing.

MMK: I don’t want us to come across as arrogant but we’re pretty sure we have the best looking gaming accessories being made. We’re really proud of them, and they inspire our own people with some of the best ideas.

Okay, example time.

SPOILER ALERT
We were doing The Great Below, our Suzerain book about sea monsters and submersibles in a ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’ type of environment. Jason had just done this amazing set of pirate ship map tiles. Stunning. Just a great set of tiles for any gaming table. We were all fired up. And the text for The Great Below was being put together at that time. We talked – Zach (the writer), Aaron (as illustrator and designer), and me. The story morphed as we talked and finally it turned out that the ship made it into the adventure. If you play the adventure and find that your characters start with a free ship, thank Jason. We loved the idea that players could use the ship tiles to run part of their adventure.

But that was only the start of it. The conversation kept evolving as the text took shape. What if there were twin ships, and one was sunken? Sunken ships are just the best location. Hey, what if we had a sea monster right there, living in the ship? Which is where Aaron took up the challenge and put together the sunken ship map tiles in two days flat. Astonishing.

Including the sea monster.

And then Zach saw the sunken ship and his mind went off the scale. What if the creature was a pet, and its owner had died in the battle that sank the ship? And was still there, as a ghost? We’d talked about featuring the spirit world and shamanism as a major theme of the book, but that was the icing on the cake.

The nautilus and sub-sea base came later, complete with mad scientist.

That’s pretty much how it works. Game accessories are actually a vital part of our creative process.
SPOILER ENDS

What are your favorite horror or dark fantasy RPGs?

MMK: Call Of Cthulhu will always have a place in my heart as the first horror RPG I ever played, about twenty years ago. Having sanity as a stat… genius decision.

AAA: I’m a Cthulhu fan too and I worked extensively on Fantasy Flight’s CCG.

MMK: But the first edition Vampire was pretty darn scary if you played it the way it originally started. I remember someone sitting me down at a gaming table in Sydney, Australia while I was living there in ’92 and he ran this game. He wouldn’t even tell us its name. And we only found out we’d been turned into vampires in the middle of the first session.

But it scared the heck out of all of us, even on a hot, blaringly bright Australian summer’s afternoon. To be the evil that stalks men – that’s horror. And you know you’ve been scared when you need to go outside into the sun to get rid of the cold creepy demon who’s crawling up and down your spine.

AAA: My favorite has to be Deadlands. I was a fanboy from the moment I saw Brom’s undead gunslinger and it was a dream come true to help develop Deadlands Reloaded with the guys at Pinnacle. Hey, the book got us an Origins Award, so the rest of the industry obviously thought it was pretty good too.

Do you have anything dark and lurking in your upcoming releases?

MMK: Just so happens that I’m doing the final edit on The Best Little Hellhouse In Texas, which is a mean and creepy take on the Wild West set in another corner of Suzerain’s Untamed Empires. That means you can face off against sea monsters and ships crewed by drowned men, then change scene to be in the parched desert of mutated skittering beasties and damned prospectors. It’s called Hellhouse for a reason, and we’re recommending it for mature audiences.

The book’s lurking in the dark at the moment, but it’s about to pounce on an unsuspecting public (before the end of February – keep checking our site for a release notice).

Know what I said about Suzerain having the flexibility to take your characters to different settings without collapsing? Well, Hellhouse and The Great Below are examples of just that. Sea monster piracy to horror western without breaking a sweat. Yes, it’s good clean game design, but it’s also the contents of all manner of mad genius minds bubbling away in their laboratories, coming up with these ideas. That’s the Talisman difference.

AAA: And don’t forget we’ve also got a bit of dark fantasy in the pipeline with Relic, another branch of the Suzerain universe. One of our first two adventures is set in the corrupt prison city of Isirion, which sits on top of a giant desert mesa and has a huge dungeon below it. Think of a fantasy Gangs of New York crossed with Gladiator and add The Thing working its way up through the prison dungeons. That’s what we’re doing there.

MMK: Oh yeah… that’s going to be great. I’m so proud to be the Publisher at Talisman Studios. Did I tell you how much I love my job?

Okay Aaron, time to go before they release the wimp vampire chick to kick our butts again.

Visit www.talisman-studios.com for more information on Shaintar, Suzerain and other upcoming projects.

Stop by the Flames Rising eBook Shop to download all of the great Talisman Studios products.

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2. Talisman’s Festive Cheer
3. Talsiman Studios – Get Your Roleplay Free

What can you tell us about your part in the Camarilla?

I’ve been a member of the Camarilla for over a decade now, although it never seems like it’s been that long. I’ve held a variety of positions, mostly as a Storyteller, and last year I was named International Member of the Year, which was a surprising honor. I’ve been running various Awakening LARPs for the past year with the Camarilla, but most of my time nowadays is focused on my freelance career.

Can you give us a little more about being named international Member of the Year?

It was a total surprise to me. Someone nominated me behind my back, and the decision was made at our international convention (ICC) in October 2006. I was actually one of two members named that year, but it totally came out of the blue. I was stunned and pleased that the members of the Camarilla thought me worthy of such an honor.

What makes for a successful LARP session?

There’s a variety of things — logistics, setting the mood, quick and concise rules arbitration, and so on. However, I think the most important thing is to establish a sense of joint ownership between the players and the Storytellers. Due to the nature of live-action gaming, a lot more of the world-building and role-play development moves to the players, and if the players and Storytellers aren’t on the same page, it can lead to a lot of frustration on both sides.

Can you tell us a little about the development process that went into Mind’s Eye Theatre: The Awakening?

When I first got the assignment, I sat down with Bill Bridges and talk about some of the core aspects of Mage: The Awakening, but otherwise I was getting a pretty free hand in how it developed. We exchanged some emails talking over some finer points of the world, and from there I started compiling a list of concerns — not only errata from the original material, but also aspects that needed to be changed or tweaked to assist in live-action roleplay.

The biggest concern for development that I had is best explained by stealing a term from online gaming: most World of Darkness chronicles default to player vs. environment (PvE), while most Mind’s Eye Theatre chronicles default to player vs. player (PvP). This changes the emphasis of the rules, and it was a challenge to go through such an intricate system like Mage and analyze every element of it. I also tried to make the book smaller than the original M:tA, so while I was revising and developing new rules, I also had to trim material where I could while keeping as much of the original flavor and nuance of the game as I could, as well as making sure that my own voice was present in the text. On top of all of that, I wanted to give players and Storytellers a chance to develop their chronicle the way they wanted to, whether it was through a variety of optional rules to the ability to use material from the original Mage line.

It was a complicated balancing act, and I’m my own worst critic. I’m always thinking “I should have kept that” or “Why did I leave that in there? I could have used that space to write up more on that section over there.” In the end, though, I put out the best book I could. While we were running a demo of the game and after the book got published, there have been a few people who weren’t at all interested in Mage now excited about starting or playing in their own chronicles. I’m always extremely flattered when I hear that. I really couldn’t ask for a better compliment.

How “crossover-friendly” will the MET: Awakening book be with other Mind’s Eye Theatre games?

I admit we didn’t do any specific playtesting regarding crossover, but I did put in a variety of references to combining it with MET: Requiem play, and even a few references to Werewolf, even though there isn’t an MET version of that game. Luckily the original material was written with other World of Darkness games in mind, and I was lucky enough to have access to some material in the Tome of Mysteries that went into further detail about crossover rules, which I was able to reference and helped influence some of my decisions.

Which elements from Mage were the most challenging to convert to the Mind’s Eye Theatre system?

I think the time frame was probably the most challenging. In a Storytelling game, time is extremely fluid, and a story that takes you several weeks to play can last a day inside the game. In a LARP, several weeks are really several weeks, and a lot of the assumptions of the game rules have to change to accommodate that. Luckily the core Mind’s Eye Theatre rules already had some work done on so-called “narrative time” as opposed to literal time, so I was able to draw on that and convert a lot of the references to days and weeks to more flexible time units that could work for the troupe’s schedule.

Can you tell us about the playtesting that went into MET: Awakening?

One thing I knew I wanted to do right away was to keep the playtests from being as Camarilla-centric as possible. It’s easy to do that when you have so many eager LARP players and Storytellers on hand, but the Camarilla has a completely unique chronicle, and the needs it has aren’t the same as the needs of other LARP chronicles. I specifically went to a variety of online forums to try to get people who were running their own non-Camarilla games, and ran over a dozen different groups through two rounds of playtesting. I also wrote up a small document detailing what I considered to be good and useful playtesting that gave me information I needed — so often I’ve seen playtesters generate reports that aren’t very useful to the developers at all, and I wanted to make sure that with such a large playtest base I was getting as much information as I could.

In the end, it worked out well. The list of playtesters in MET: Awakening is very long, and the product simply wouldn’t be as good as it is without their hard work.

Mind’s Eye Theatre: The Awakening is White Wolf’s first Print on Demand product, can tell us how that came about?

Initially the book was intended as an ebook or PDF release exclusively. To be honest, the Mind’s Eye Theatre line isn’t one of the best-selling lines White Wolf has, and I had some conversations with Kelley (the Marketing and Camarilla Club Director) about the future of the line back in the summer of 2006 regarding that. We came up with the idea of using alternative publishing avenues to continue the MET line, but right after the contract was signed I was an advocate of a supporting print-on-demand run. I had seen some of my indie RPG friends produce some incredible books with POD, and I thought that it was a viable and economical way to print a smaller game line like MET. Kelley and I pitched the idea during the course of Awakening’s development, and originally it was decided to do a limited print run to see how it went before committing to a regular POD run. So I was surprised when I heard right before GenCon that they negotiated with Lulu.com and got a regular POD run of Awakening and skipped the limited edition run. I’m interested to see how well it does, and how that will shape future MET and POD releases.

What’s next for you?

I just finished an Storytelling Adventure System story for Requiem called “The First Tradition” (although the title might change — I’ve never been happy with it). It’s currently slated for release in September. Beyond that, there are a lot of projects and possibilities being discussed with White Wolf, but nothing’s firm yet. I’m expecting that things might get really busy for me, so at the moment I’m enjoying the post-GenCon lull.

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How did you get your start in the RPG industry?

I answered an ad in Dragon Magazine for an illustrator for a new, little-known periodical called White Wolf Magazine. In a few issues time I was illustrating the covers and art directing the magazine. From that start other publishers like Steve Sechi for his Talislanta game and the gang at Lion Rampant for Ars Magica contacted me after seeing my work in the magazine.

What can you tell us about your work on the World of Darkness games?

Big picture: I’ve been responsible for the look of every World of Darkness product (and every other White Wolf product) since mid-way through the first year of Vampire: the Masquerade. I work with both the in-house crew of art directors and designers and our freelancers to make sure every piece of art, all the graphic design and book layouts are the coolest and most appropriate visuals we can create and put together. I art directed most of the first edition WoD books myself (and a whole lot of third edition VtM) and I’ll still do that on major releases or books that are particularly interesting to me. Small picture: I designed and created just about every symbol used in the WoD, both versions, including the Garou pictograms and the new Mage “Atlantean” alphabet.

Do you have a favorite World of Darkness RPG?

Werewolf: the Apocalypse was my favorite of the old games to work on- on a visual level there’s so much freaky stuff to illustrate- and along the same lines I dug the Dark Ages books. I really enjoy the new core World of Darkness and have had some great fun playing Vampire: the Requiem – but that might have been mostly because Will Hindmarch was running it and he’s a phenomenal GM.

Can you tell us a little about the character you have been playing in Will Hindmarch’s Vampire: the Requiem game?

This is going to sound so cliched, but bear with me for there are reasons. A Daeva of the Invictus modeled on Captain Jack Sparrow. A seemingly drunken, wispy schemer who uses his odd behavior to keep his opponents guessing and to provide a staggering and reeling center for the other PCs to play off of. The reason I went that route- and Will mocked me for it heartily, let me tell you- was that we were playing with some of the top guys from CCP- our new partners- who had little to no experience playing RPGs. And every one of our WW players wound up playing growly, brooding, tough guys. So I wanted to provide a little range to the types of characters and actions that can be played in our games as well as play a character that could mock the other PCs in character. Because they were just so seriously grim. It was a lot of fun!

What has been your most challenging project in the RPG industry?

Each time we did a new game or a new edition, it seemed the most challenging thing at the time. When we did Vampire: the Masquerade 2nd and we had to run shifts of designers (including myself) so it would go out on time, when we decided to do the Rage card game and had never done one before, when we put together the Creature Collection and got all those monsters written and illustrated and got the book to stores before the Monster Manual- those were all tough. Exalted was a challenge because we had to create the visuals for an entire fantasy world- it was the first time we really did serious concept art to that extent. So lots and lots of challenges. Currently, my biggest challenge has been becoming Creative Director for White Wolf (a position that encompasses both my previous art responsibilities and adds in working with the writers and developers as well) and keeping us moving forward during this difficult time for the RPG industry.

What challenges do you face as an artist vs. those you face as an art director?

As an artist, I’m trying to convince my hands to depict the imagery I can see so clearly in my head. A lot of times that’s a real battle, with imagination and ego and will all tied up into it. The technique and medium are all a part of that as well. As an art director, I try to do something quite different, and that’s to hire artists whose style I think will work for the subject matter and then encourage them to depict the imagery I want to see. But I really try not to over-direct, not to pretend that the artist is my hands, and to give them the freedom to create something I’d never think of. That’s the fun part of art directing for me, the collaboration and surprise. And over the years, I’ve gotten the impression that the artists appreciate that.

Can you tell us a little about the creation process you go through when putting together art for a new book?

Depends on the type of book- if it’s a core book or a new setting like Scion, then we have a much more involved process where we have many meetings of the Art Directors and myself (and often just about any interested party at WW) where we hash out things like the overall mood and tone we want to set with the art, as well as design elements like the logo and the cover and the interior elements. Suggestions will be made for artists who can match the mood and the Art Director of the project will start putting together a list of artists to contact. After that the process is pretty much the same for the core and the regular books; the Art Director and the Developer create the art notes and hire the artists- again with an eye to matching the tone of the product and the game line.

When creating art for a horror project where do you get your inspiration?

The men’s room at WW after the dreaded Shinty visits. That’s too horrible for most normal people to even comprehend. Seriously, from visuals all around us- pretty much the list of inspirations we often print in our books comes from what we’ve looked at for art as well as writing.

As the Creative Director for White Wolf, how do you select artists for the various upcoming projects?

As I indicated above, my biggest involvement is going to be suggesting artists to match the mood of the project or vetoing artists on the Art Director’s list that don’t fit into the project as I’ve envisioned it. But that’s pretty rare- we have a very experienced team of Art Directors and we’ve worked together for over a decade in some cases, and they really know how to pick the artists. I tend to be more involved in picking the artists for the covers of major releases. For example, in looking for an artist to illustrate the cover for Monte Cook’s World of Darkness, I wanted an artist who was known for his work in both the WoD and the d20 arenas and who had the ability to do fine work that bridged the sorts of visuals established for both “lines”. There are only a few artists who can do that, and Bill O’Connor was the artist I thought could capture best the look I was going for. It didn’t hurt that we hadn’t worked on a project together for a while and we always have a blast when we do.

Where do you see art in the RPG industry headed? Why?

That’s a pretty strange question really. In terms of technique and subject matter, I don’t see it changing really- maybe a tad more video-game influenced art, but I think that influence extends both ways. Maybe more manga/anime inspired art styles as more and more young artists grow up with exposure to those styles. I do think we’re going to see a lot of the more experienced artists move into other industries as opportunities open up for them.

What’s next for you?

Right now, I’m working on symbols for the new Changeling: the Lost, arranging for new Storytelling Adventure System (SAS) pdf adventures, discussing our new WoD game for 2008, getting ideas together for another Exalted board game after War for the Throne (which is available early summer I think), managing a variety of EVE projects including the RPG, and hiring concept artists for the WoDMMO. I’m hoping to do a fair bit more of that, as it’s a wonderful opportunity brought about by our merger with the Icelandic madmen of CCP. And I’m putting together a plan for a new publishing venture for WW. So just a few things on my plate in the near future really.

Visit White-Wolf.com for the latest news and updates on World of Darkness, Scion, Exalted and other projects Rich Thomas is working on…

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