As homage to one of my other favorite gaming sites, “The Dungeon Dozen,” (and as an apology for lack of updates while I do my Castles & Chemo hullaballoo), I present to you a Dungeon Dozen-style random table:

While Others Were Watching the Super Bowl

d12
1. Trying to decide who gets the +2 sword you found
2. Doing yet another job for the Hutt Cartel
3. Wondering why the werewolves spent all game doing an Abbott & Costello routine
4. Setting up an elaborate Ponzi scheme in Korvosa
5. Trying to break that damn curse on Tloques’ axe
6. Getting jumped by phase spider assassins
7. Raiding the Heart of Fear
8. Going through level 4 of Legend of Grimrock, and getting jumped… again…
9. Reading the Drizzt novels
10. TV Tropes
11. Bickering over editions with someone who is obviously wrong for liking the other edition
12. Realizing that, yes, your DM is trying to kill you

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve gotten a bit of a headstart on my Castles & Chemo planning this year.  I’ve launched an IndieGoGo campaign (Castles & Chemo Nonprofit Drive) to help turn Castles & Chemo into a standalone organization.  With requests coming in from across the country — as well as international requests coming from places like the United Kingdom & South Africa — for support in running events, I felt it was necessary that I was acting independently of other organizations.

 

Those of you who are worrying, no, this does not mean that I will no longer support the American Cancer Society; much of the work I will do will still go to benefit their efforts.  Becoming a separate nonprofit entity, however, has two direct advantages.  First, it keeps the ACS from having to deal with issues arising from organizations & events abroad — the liability will fall solely on Castles & Chemo.  Second, and probably the most exciting (to me, at least), it allows me to expand the scope of Castles & Chemo to include other organizations (Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Breast Cancer Fund), as well as other events (like “Castles & Chemo Save Christmas,” where I help local hospitals buy gifts for children stuck there for the holidays; the title still in the works >_>).

 

But enough of the nitty gritty.  Let’s get to the meat of the post.  It’s time for…

THE CASTLES & CHEMO CHARACTER DRIVE

That’s right!  Now is the time of development where I request personal stories to turn into characters for this year’s event.  What better way to honor a loved one’s (or your own!) struggle than in the nerdiest way possible?  And this year, I have a handy dandy form to help with that process.  You’ll find that form at the bottom of this post.

 

In addition, I’m also creating an art guide to be handed out to the various artists for this year’s adventure.  It’s almost as if I know what I’m doing!

 

Talks with AdventureAWeek.com have hit a bit of a roadblock; they’ve been busy, I’ve been busy, it’s a whole big mess.  As soon as progress gets made, I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated.

 

Thank you for your support so far!  Here’s to the +4 bonus you’re helping to grant!

-Sword

 

 

In honor of the festivities (and in lieu of something a little more serious >_>), I present to you a 4e conversion of the Headless Horseman, the seasonal boss from World of Warcraft. Happy Halloween!

Click here for the stats!

Do YOU have awkward superstitions from YOUR group? Would you like to see YOUR CHARACTER appear in my comic? Would you like me to stop abusing the BOLD tags? If so, leave a comment below!

With tomorrow being my birthday, it almost seems clandestine how some things just fall into my lap. As the American Cancer Society has started their “Official Sponsor of Birthdays” campaign, I feel obligated to do something significant. And wouldn’t you know it, the opportunity for something significant just happens to come my way.

 
As some of you may know, a project on Kickstarter was funded recently that I’m very excited about; Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary. I backed the project early on, since, as you might suspect, D&D means quite a bit to me. When I made my pledge, I actually received a personal note from Anthony, James, & Andrew, thanking me for supporting the project. I responded, “I’m glad to help. Anything to support the game that I say, without irony, saved my life.” This led to a back-and-forth between me and the filmmakers, ultimately leading them to quote me in their, “Funded!” update, as well as promoting Castles & Chemo on their Facebook page.

 

What resulted from their generous support was 20 or so new likes on C&C’s page, a distraught husband looking for advice, and the guys from AdventureAWeek.com contacting me, wanting to run Castles & Chemo on their site.

 

So that brings us to now. I’m very happy to announce…

 

Castles & Chemo: Retrovirus

 

A 3.5/Pathfinder conversion of CC1: A Killer in You and CC2: Assault on Merrow Keep! But it won’t be just a simple conversion; this will be expanded with information I wanted to include for a while, but couldn’t make it fit in the condensed format I use for the live events. With such a gracious opportunity presented, I figured their audience deserves a fully-fleshed adventure. And since this is also a Castles & Chemo endeavor, any money that I receive from this will go straight to the American Cancer Society.

 

So once everything is squared away, I’ll be sure to let you know where you can pick it up. Stay tuned!

 

Granting a +4 to Saves vs. Cancer!

-Sword

A stack of cardboard and plastic is sitting in my living room. That can only mean one thing.

New Pathfinder Minis

After January’s, “Heroes & Monsters,” Paizo has now released something more specific, tying into the release of the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition. This 64 piece set (well, 65 piece, but you need to be special to buy the 65th piece, the Rune Giant) features allies and adversaries from the first adventure path, and comes in either Standard boosters (containing 1 large and 3 medium or small miniatures), or Huge boosters (containing 1 huge miniature).

(Having no real basis on which to judge these miniatures, as they relate to the adventure path, my review will regard them mostly as a standalone product).


The Good
Much like the last set, all of these minis are made of a very rigid, sturdy plastic. None of the minis suffered from any kind of lean. As well, the poses vary greatly, from calm and reserved, to, “I’m about to put a mace through your skull!” Even among the villainous minis, it’s not all ferocity and gore.

The already high bar already set by the first line has been raised when it comes to the paint. Issues like those seen on the manticore from last time is virtually nonexistent. All of the paint is immaculately applied, and all of the minis have a unique appeal to them; they each stand out in their own way.

But it’s the huge minis that really stand out. The already outstanding detail is even more evident on each of the four huge figures; you can tell that quite a lot of effort was put into each one. The Treachery Demon is probably my personal favorite of the bunch, but I think the Karzoug Statue is the real gem of the lot. Towering above the rest of the minis in the line, it’s hard to believe that something like that can be called a “mini.”

And again, I got goblins.




The Bad
Given that the set is touted as a, “huge set,” I was somewhat disappointed to find that there were only four, in total. The huge brick I bought from Battlegrounds Gaming – an awesome store local to me, that you should totally check out – came with six boosters, and when two of them contained duplicates, I felt cheated. Finding out there were only four didn’t remove that feeling; only changed it. I suppose there’s some sort of solace, from a collecting standpoint, in the fact that I have all of the huge figures. But as you might have surmised, I’m not in it for the collection.

Considering what I spent on it, however, I might as well consider these collector’s items. Steve from Battlegrounds (we’ll call him Battlegrounds Steve) cut me a deal on the bricks, and it still ended up costing me around $200 (which does work out in my favor, to be honest, since the same setup would’ve cost me about $50 more through Paizo’s site). It’s not as though I feel like I didn’t get my money’s worth; I just wish I knew on what exactly I was spending my money.

(Perhaps it’s a fault on my part, for not researching the line before doing my review, outside of, “I’m gonna review it! ^(^_^)^” But I feel the point still stands).

As you might have guessed from the intro line, there was, again, quite a fair amount of packaging that I had to work through to get at my little plastic treasures. As Sean K. Reynolds pointed out in a comment of my last review of the miniatures, it’s a circumstance of the medium. And I understand that. But it seems like there could be room to reduce the packs (pun partially intended) – especially in the standard booster (the huge boosters, to co-opt a phrase, have their packaging almost painted on).

DM’s Ruling
Don’t get me wrong. These are all well made, striking minis, fitting of any gaming table. And all in all, I feel like my money was well spent. And I really hate to speak ill of the huge minis, considering how much incredible detail went into each one. But $25 on a miniature gamble is not something I feel a lot of gamers are willing (or able!) to justify. A lot of the errors I saw in the first set were corrected, though, and I’m happy to see that.

Maybe there’s a hidden value I’m missing. Were I actually running the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, perhaps I would see them as invaluable tools, being offered for a pittance compared to their usefulness.

Bottom line: if you’re a fan of the adventure path, then these will do absolute wonders for your immersion; if you’re a casual observer, just starting out in your miniatures habit, stick to the standard boosters, and wait until the huge figure you really want goes on sale in a singles listing.

I Command You to Rise!
-Sword

Monte Cook Interview

2 September 2012

Dragon*Con, Atlanta, GA

This interview took place at the Hilton Atlanta’s Crystal Ballroom, on 2 September, 2012, the third day of Dragon*Con.  Click here for the original audio.

Sword: Greetings! This is TPK-Online.com, and I am with Monte Cook. If you don’t know who that is, then I’m not going to tell you, and you’re on the wrong website! Monte, I want to thank you for taking the time to sit down with me and talk to me about what’s going on with you, and all that.

Monte Cook: My pleasure!

Sword: So, you got the Numenera thing going on. For those who don’t know, they might be on the wrong site as well, but why don’t you tell them a little about that?

Monte: Well, so, Numenera is a far distant future, post-apocalyptic, science-fantasy game. And what I mean by that is it’s a billion years in the future; Earth is completely different, eight different great civilizations have risen and fallen. And now a ninth civilization is rising, but they live amid the remnants of all these past civilizations, and so there is weird and amazing technology all around them. So, basically, the whole thing is based on Arthur C. Clark’s statement that, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Sword: So, HE’S the one who said that quote! ‘Cause I’ve been using that quote for years, and I never knew where it came from.

Monte: *laughs* Yeah.

Sword: So, what led to the development of Numenera, and developing your own, standalone game?

Monte: Well, Numenera has a long history. The game system, itself, is something that I started working on twenty years ago, then sort of put on the shelf when I got hired by TSR to work on D&D. So, I stayed kind of with D&D for a very, very long time. But always in the back of my mind, I knew I wanted to design a game that was quite a bit different from D&D; much more story-based, character-based, and idea-based.

Sword: Cool, cool. What about the system? What is it about the system that makes it different from others? ‘Cause I’ve seen other games – I think the Dresden Files, and things of that ilk – do the notation sort of thing; where you don’t have attributes, you have traits.

Monte: Right.

Sword: What makes yours different?

Monte: Well, so, it’s a combination of things. But, for example, one of the things characters can do in Numenera is expend effort that will allow them to manipulate the mechanics that basically allows them to decide – allows players to decide – when an action is really important to them. Right? So they’ll put more effort into those kinds of things. So it gives players the ability to have more control over their own character. But at the same time, kind of backs away from really heavily-detailed mechanics, and tactical combat options, and things like that. Which can be really, really fun, but also tend to slow down play. Because for Numenera, the combat scenes are only part of the story. And so, while they’re exciting and fun, they don’t predominate the way they do in some games.

Sword: As they shouldn’t. I was just looking on the Kickstarter. You’re currently over $212,000. And you had originally went for, what? $20,000, or so?

Monte: Yeah, the original goal was $20,000 to get the book published.

Sword: I’ve seen your tweets, how you’re very excited about that. Anything you’re looking for, stretch goal-wise, that you’re looking to hit, given the recent support?

Monte: Well, I’m excited that we’ve hit a lot of our stretch goals, which has, in most cases, meant that the book is bigger, and cooler, and color art. But also that we’ve added a number of new products to the product line; we’ve added… there’s three linked adventures, a bestiary, and we’re $8,000 away from adding, basically a tech book, that I’m calling, “Sir Arthur’s Compendium.”

Sword: Is there anything else that you want to tell, or perhaps hint at, for future stretch goals?

Monte: I am looking at, y’know, if we really get way up there, we’ll probably do some kind of special edition – bound leather, slip case, cool thing – for people who are really wanting a collector’s item, coffee table kind of book. But that’s gonna be pretty far up there.

Sword: Now, this may be bordering on a bit of a touchy subject. But with Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, you are probably one of the most recognized names, as far as D&D goes. And I know that you left Wizards of the Coast during your tenure there to help with Next. Since then, what is your take on what is coming out of Next, and what is your opinion on that?

Monte: Well, so I can’t really talk a lot about that. But what I can say is that I’m in a playtest, and playing the game, and having a good time with it.

Sword: That’s good. Glad to hear it! *sheepishly* Are you looking for writers for Numenera?

Monte: *laughs* At this time, no. But who knows what the future might bring?

Sword: Very cool. Thank you very much. Thank you for meeting with me. This will be up, hopefully, sometime soon after Dragon*Con ends.

Monte: Ok, yeah. Just send me a link.

Sword: Of course! And this has been TPK-Online.com. Thank you very much!

Monte: Thanks!

Transcript

Interview with Eddy Webb & Rich Thomas

White Wolf Publishing

This interview took place on Thursday, 16 August, 2012, at Gen Con in Indianapolis.  I had the chance to speak to Eddy Webb & Rich Thomas of White Wolf Publishing, CCP Games.

Click here for the audio file.

Sword: Greetings, this is Sword from TPK-Online.com, and I am joined from two individuals from White Wolf. Why don’t we start by you two introducing yourselves?

Eddy Webb: I’m Eddy Webb.

Rich Thomas: And I’m Rich Thomas.

Sword: …And why don’t you tell us what you do?

Eddy: Right now, I’m Content Designer for the World of Darkness MMO at CCP.

Rich: And I’m Creative Director at White Wolf and Onyx Path Publishing.

Sword: So, first I’d like to talk to you guys about the New World of Darkness. You guys have Mummy coming out in September. Why don’t you guys tell me a little bit about that?

Rich: Well, Eddy, it was originally your idea. I’ll pitch that to you.

Eddy: Fair enough. Mummy, originally, was an idea that Rich & I talked about. We wanted to get back to doing new World of Darkness, new New World of Darkness lines, and one of the things we found was that people seem to gravitate to remixes of classic games that we had worked on. So…

Rich: There’s a lot of love there for, “How are we going to reimagine it?”

Eddy: Right, exactly. And that’s one of things that seems to be really exciting is that people like going, “How is this similar but different?” And so, pretty quickly, we gravitated to an idea of doing a new take on Mummy. Particularly because one thing we like doing with New World of Darkness is getting back to that classic movie monster idea of things; Werewolf is much more of a classic take on werewolves, and Mage is much more of the mythic form of mages. And so, when I first made the pitch for Mummy, I was like, “I wanna get back to movie mummies.” Because the previous version of mummies were very much not those. I want to talk, y’know, these are ancient beings waking up, and being attracted to items of power, and curses, and other elements…

*interrupted by wait staff, where Rich orders a Captain & Coke*

Eddy: …And so, when I first put the pitch together, one of the things we talked about was how we can do that within the paradigm of New World of Darkness. And during the course of that, Colin Suleiman came to us, and he had a different pitch, but a lot of the notes and ideas of that pitch were very similar to some of the stuff we talked about.

Rich: They really dovetailed nicely. That was sort of one of those, “We’re going this direction,” and in addition, Colin had these ideas that actually kept flowing in the same direction we were already going. So it was like, “This is, yeah, this is very good.”

Eddy: Right. And certainly, there were a couple points that we spent a lot of time talking through to kind of synthesize what he was bringing – a really fantastic Middle Eastern sensibility, and a kind of, “Gothic Necromancy,” as he calls it – that aesthetic & flavor that was missing from the original pitch. And so, during the course of things, as things shook out, ultimately I ended up just handing the whole line off to Colin to develop. I wasn’t able to pick it up. But everything I’ve been seeing since then really seems like he’s keen to hit those key points & ideas of the original.

Sword: Hit those original points of view on some of them.

Rich: And I think of the greatest things about it is Colin, of course, has a crack team writing professionals – writing assassins – for the book, who he can have working on each of the supplements, as well, as a complete unit. One of the things he references back to a lot is Orpheus, which was our limited series, the very first limited series we did right before we went into the, “Gehenna Mode,” & everything. And that idea of having something that you can pick up the main book and just play with it, but each supplement is giving you more, & more, & more options and ideas, and continuing, sort of, the themes all the way through. So it’s a true limited series where, y’know, it’ be much richer if you pick up everything that goes into it.

Sword: One of the other things I saw was another callback from the Old World of Darkness: Demon, that you’ve announced. Is there anything you can tell me about that?

Rich: Well, what limited things I could tell you about that, as we look at it, and as we will parse out more information as it comes up through the year, is to really look at what really makes sense in the World of Darkness, in terms of Demons. And we’ve got sort of the mythic (and I’m using it in the broadest sense) of demons in different cultures and different religions and things. Which we certainly went down a lot of that with Demon: the Fallen. But there are other places that we could be playing with, and other ways you can take those exact same themes, and really work with them within the New World of Darkness. And I don’t think it’s a… pretty sure we didn’t even mention this, already, that there’s going to be a level of continuity between the Chronicle of the God Machine for New World of Darkness, which comes out a couple, three months before Demon: the Whatever It’s Going to Be, and there’s definitely a link between those two. So, I think on a lot of levels, it’s going to be a very interesting & new – it was a very exciting pitch. Russ Bailey pitched his idea for it. And it gave me the same tingle I got when [Ethan Skemp] pitched Changeling: the Lost. “Oh, that’s how…But our stuff is there…Also! Oh, that’s a neat spin!”

Eddy: And actually, it’s been great that it came from Russell, because for year in the company, Russell’s always kind of brought back up things, like y’know, “Demon: the Fallen had these different elements in it that worked.”

Rich: It’s his second favorite game.

Eddy: Yeah, he really was a big fan of Demon: the Fallen, and he always felt that Demon: the Fallen was kind of… you could see the proto-New World of Darkness design philosophy in Demon: the Fallen.

Rich: We were definitely evolving towards it.

Eddy: And actually, he originally pitched Demon when we were talking about doing Mummy – at least the idea of floating Demon. And we ultimately decided to go with Mummy, I think it was because Mummy seemed like a more natural fit at that time (it’s hard to articulate). But certainly, it was in the back of his head, and for him to kind of write that stuff down that we’ve been vaguely talking about for years, and really see it fleshed out, ended up being really, really exciting, and I think it’s gonna be a really cool game when it’s finally done.

Sword: I’m actually really kind of looking forward to that, myself. Is there anything in the New World [of Darkness] that you want/can talk about?

Rich: Well, y’know, we have the schedule up, at least through this time next year. And I think the Chronicle of the God King, and the Chronicle of the Strix, are going to be two very interesting books, very much. Matt McFarland is developing God Machine, and Russ is developing Strix. They have very strong ideas about what they want to do with those particular things. Because in a lot of ways for them, this is their opportunity to, kind of, do a second edition for New World of Darkness, and for Requiem. So there’s going to be a lot of, “Running this story allows you to plays these rules this way, and also we’ve cleaned this up, and also there’s this thing that I always wanted to put in, but I didn’t get a chance.” I think there’s going to be great stuff in there for everybody.

Eddy: And for Russell, we talked a little about the, kind of he and I, on the side, about the Strix Chronicles, because Danse Macabre was certainly some of his attempt to try to move Requiem into its own vibe and its own channel and its own identity. And I think he wants to do even more of that with the Strix Chronicles; a key to make Vampire: the Requiem be its own unique entity in all of our properties.

Rich: And I am really looking forward to it. The intention is that these two books are just incredibly fun to read. Just like, “Yes, bring the ideas into your game. Take the whole thing and use it as your chronicle. Or take pieces of it. But really, no matter what, everybody, however they’re gonna use it, we’re gonna make sure that they just love reading through this stuff. That there’s just all kinds of rich story elements in there.

Sword: Cool. Now we’ll move onto Classic World of Darkness. I saw at your booth that you had materials for Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Why don’t you talk about that for a bit?
Rich: Just a very rough layout of where it currently is, and there’s probably a lot of things that’ll change in that layout as we fuss around with it. But just to give people an idea of how it’s coming together, particularly the tribes, because, “Everyone wants to know about their favorite tribe, and how’s it comin’.” And for the first time, combining that with the actual art that Steve Prescott did, which is so evocative. It’s really beautiful. So I think there’s – and also there’s a Ron Spencer piece, one of full pages that no one’s seen before.

Sword: Oh, really?
Eddy: Yeah, it’s really gorgeous.

Rich: So if anybody wants to come by the booth and check that out, that’d be awesome. I don’t know when this… When does this go down?

Sword: Probably the week following [Gen Con].

Rich: Oh, ok. So, too late! You weren’t able to see it.

Sword: Go to Gen Con! Then you’ll see it.

Eddy: *laugh* Right, had you been here, you would’ve seen it! And this is another one of those books, that we have been developing for, that I had started working on the development of the book, and ended up handing it off. In this case, it was really a no-brainer, because I sat down with Bill Bridges & Ethan Skemp very very early on, and I said, “You guys know this line better than anybody. You’ve lived inside the skin of it. So, help me understand what’s cool about it.” And then really, it was just me taking the stuff we had talked about from the Vampire 20^th experience and applying it to get that same kind of ethos and “picking up the book & finding everything you loved about that game in there.” So, Bill, Ethan, and I & Rich, spent a number of meetings kind of talking it through, and boiling it down to something we could parse out to freelancers. Then Ethan picked up the ball, and actually ended up developing the book fully –

Rich: And Bill…

Eddy: Yeah, Bill helped out, too. And also, Bill & I picked up some writing duties on that book. So after Ethan did development with it, Bill & I stepped back and started actually contributing word count to it, because we were both really excited about it, and wanted to have a bit of contribution to how the whole thing panned out. But that has been really interesting, because what is cool about Apocalypse is not what’s cool about Masquerade. And that’s one thing I was very adamant about when I talked to them, was that, “We should do what was cool about V20 – the core essence of it –

Rich: Distilled.

Eddy: Right. But it should not be, “We’re doing V20 again and putting Werewolf on it.” The decisions we made on V20 should not be the decisions we make for W20.

Rich: Some of them will be. Right? Because they’re good decisions across the line. But others are very specific to that line.

Eddy: And that was the thing. Y’know. The idea of making it metaplot-agnostic. That was something that carried through. The idea that any point that you loved Apocalypse, you should be able to pick up this book and play that. Things like the Silent Striders are now back in this book, making sure they’re available. The Lost Tribes; there’s like bits and references to them. But on the flip side, some the rules that were decided on and what not, the rules specific to V20. If they make sense for Werewolf, that’s fantastic. But if not, take the rules that were the really the best thing to give you the optimal Apocalypse experience, and apply those. Don’t feel like you’re beholden to decisions that we (Justin & I) made for Masquerade.

Rich: And much like V20, it is all about recreating the love for whatever stage of Apocalypse that you came in on – y’know, 1^st, 2^nd, or Revised Edition – and just immersing yourself in that all over again. Kind of the distilled essence of what Apocalypse is. It looks great to me.

Eddy: Yeah, I mean, I’m really liking how it’s shaping up, so far.

Sword: I’ve got some friends who will just eat that up.

Rich: We’re hoping that probably, fingers crossed, by the time you hear this, folks out there in Hearing Land, that the Kickstarter should’ve started up for it. It should be a lot of fun.

Sword: Is there any news on Mage20?

Eddy: Well, Ryan Macklin is actually working on the missing Technocracy convention books. There were three books that were scheduled that never got done. So Ryan Macklin of “Dresden Files” fame –

Rich: Four. There were four books.

Eddy: Ok, “X Number” of convention books –

Rich: I mean, there’s literally four. There are five conventions, and one of them was published. So there’s four.

Eddy: I don’t keep track of this shit! *laugh*

Rich: “Math, man! It’s math! I’m a writer!”

Eddy: I don’t do numbers!

Sword: Math are hard.

Eddy: Fair enough. There were four convention books, and something that, I know, Rich had talked about very early on when we started doing Classic World of Darkness books, and we realized that V20 was a big thing, was finishing some of those obligations, and so the convention books quickly rose to the top. And finding the right person to shepherd those and make sure they were the highest quality they could be. And right around the same time, Ryan Macklin had been posting on his blog various entries about, “This is how the Technocracy would look today.” And kind of free wheeling his ideas. And Rich goes, “This is amazing stuff. We really need to bring him onto the project.” And so we talked to him, and clearly he’s done a lot of work on his own. So we ultimately gave him a shot, developing those books, and getting those out the door. So, certainly there are new Ascension materials coming out.

Rich: That’s Eddy’s way of obfuscating the question.

Eddy: Right. *laugh* Technically speaking, there are Mage support materials, and they’re new… it may or may not represent the 20^th anniversary.

Rich: So, again, as we’ve said, depending on if we continue the audience response that we had through V20 through Werewolf20, then we will definitely do Mage20. If, on the other hand, everyone who’s told me that they love Werewolf, and will buy multiple copies of Werewolf20, were liars, and instead, people just go, “Ugh! We don’t even want this!” Then it starts to sound like maybe there’s seven guys who really love Mage.

Eddy: Certainly

Sword: So it’s on the readers and the listeners; their integrity is on the line whether this comes to fruition.

Eddy: That’s exactly it. And I mean, certainly, one thing that’s been interesting is that a lot of people have been talking to me and to Rich about, “Hey, we really want Mage 20^th.” And it’s been awesome. And I know we would both love to do it.

Rich: Absolutely.

Eddy: We’ve talked to a lot of writers and developers and artists who are like, “Yes, we would love to do Mage 20^th.” But the reality come down to it, it’s a financial decision.

Rich: Those are big, expensive books to do. And you really do need a minimum number of books, which is one of the conundrums we illustrated with the Kickstarters; we have to have a certain amount of this, we have to be able to pay for this giant, deluxe books, because they’re fancy. Fancy cover treatments, the whole deal. It’s not just, “Hey, just make a book.”

Eddy: Exactly. And so, when we did Vampire 20^th, very much it was a case where we’re doing one book and that’s it. And then it’s like, “Oh, ok. That did really well. So we’ll do a few more things.” And right before Gen Con last year, we got the go ahead to do Werewolf20 because we saw the strength of interest.

Rich: The night before I left for Gen Con.

Eddy: Yeah. We were adding slides to our Power presentation at the last minute.

Rich: “Eddy! We got the Ok! Put this in there!” And he’s like, “Ok, I’m getting it! I’m getting it!” *while imitating typing on a keyboard*

Eddy: Exactly. Like Rich says, if the fan response continues as it has been, and it continues to make financial sense, odds are really good for a Mage20. But I’ve been very coy about saying we’re doing it, because I don’t want to disappoint people. I don’t want to set false expectations. That’s why I’ve never said we’re doing it. I’ve been very careful even saying we’re likely to do it. I’ve always been saying, “We’d love to if we could.” And same as with, say for example, Mind’s Eye Theatre 20^th, as people have been talking about it as well. If that makes sense, if that’s something that can happen, that’d be fantastic. But I don’t want to say we’re totally doing that until it makes business sense.

Sword: Right. So one of the things you and I [Eddy] talked about earlier, and wanted to get your [Rich] perspective, as well. From my perspective, I couldn’t really tell much of a difference between how Masquerade feels and how Requiem feels. So, V20 was something that I was intrigued by, but in a skeptical kind of way.

Rich: Are you now a believer?

Sword: Well, I have my own reasons, and I can get into those in a second. But what is the difference, both from a play style and from a design style, between Masquerade and Requiem?

Rich: Well, I think the difference, and I think this is one of the huge success reasons for Masquerade, is that you have this incredibly rich and detailed world that just, layers & layers of secrets and things that were piled on over the years that it takes a particular kind of genius to keep track of at this point –

Eddy: Or a really good PDF search function. *laugh* There’s a lot!

Rich: Right, but certainly way beyond our capacity as guys who are making this stuff to keep track of it.

Sword: Ain’t technology grand?

Eddy: Seriously! I would not have made that book had it not been for PDF.

Rich: It’s so rich. It’s so immersive. And it’s such a storytelling… it’s designed to tell these stories. Where New World of Darkness was created by some very, very experienced game designers to be a much better engine, if possible. Right. I mean, that was the goal. And then to allow the players to make these storylines their own by taking whatever parts of the things; the sandbox approach. So there’s two very separate design philosophies. There were guys who wanted to tinker with the Classic World of Darkness & Masquerade. But that was not the primary thing. The primary thing was like, “Oh, this is an amazing character, and this story!” Whereas with Requiem, lot of interest and a lot of love in telling really cool stories. But, the primary thing is, “What does the player get to do, or the Storyteller get to do, with this book?” So, one was very much trying to be a really great game, one was trying to present this really cool world. And that would be the two design difference philosophies. And it’s not absolute, obviously.

Eddy: And one of the things I noticed while I was working on V20, because I had worked on Requiem for a few years, and had gotten under the skin of that, Masquerade’s very much about what’s happening around you. You’re the prince of your city, but there are other princes around. There’s the Camarilla’s Ivory Tower. There’s a sabat on your doorstep. There’s lots of other vampire factions and groups and people that are around you that you have to interact with.

Rich: And they definitely are there. It’s a consistent.

Eddy: Right. Whereas in Requiem, you’re the prince of your fiefdom, and no one else matters. And certainly, that was part of the design, as Rich points out, because if you have a toolbox approach, we’re going to focus on the city base, and then whatever’s outside of that is completely up to whatever your chronicle needs. But that isn’t telling that world perception of it. And similarly, the idea of having a matrix style of character creation of Clan & Covenant versus just Clan means that there’s a part of the political structure you’re opting into, and have the characters and players react to you, based on that political choice. Which is something that’s really missing in Masquerade. And that’s another way of it; it’s a good game design decision, because it gives you multiple character options, but it does change how the game plays out. And a lot of my thoughts come from watching the two different live action groups come out of it, because I played Masquerade live action for a long time, and then watching that group try to adapt to Requiem, applying old Masquerade muscles for a number of years – because they spent 15 years playing this particular style – and going, “This game doesn’t seem to work right.” And so, they spent a lot of time thinking about how is this game different, and how is this game similar. And over time, it’s been interesting because a lot of the time, it felt like the players are trying to play Masquerade through the same game. But then when Mind’s Eye Society, the Camarilla, then decided to run Masquerade again simultaneous with Requiem, there has been a really distinct split. About half the population seems to enjoy Requiem, as they now understand it and play it; half of them really like Masquerade. And while there are people who play both, the amount of overlap is pretty small. And certainly, there’s actually been heated discussions about the relative merits of both games.

Sword: I’ve actually had a couple of those myself. And I remember you had mentioned at one point from one of the Grand Masquerades, either last year or the year before, that it was pretty much an even split of attendance in support of both games.

Eddy: Absolutely. And one thing that’s been interesting is that when, the whole time we were supporting Requiem exclusively, we’d get this steady stream of people who were like, “I really love Masquerade. You should really bring Masquerade back. You should really bring Masquerade back.” And then we did Vampire 20^th, there was a brief period where people were concerned that we were going to stop doing Requiem and start doing Masquerade. And immediately saw at that Grand Masquerade, “We really love Requiem. Please don’t get rid of Requiem.”

Rich: *in mock response* “We’re not going to. It’s cool.”

Eddy: Right. And now that we have the Print-on-Demand technology, and we have the fact that we put a book out, and it’s around forever, we could support both games, and each game can become its own unique identity. But it’s only something that, both creatively and also from a community perspective, that everyone’s gotta understand that because, ok, this is how these things differ, and how there’s familiarity between both, but certainly, they’re their own distinct games. And I’ve always kind of envisioned it to more split between Pathfinder and D&D 4e, in that they’re both game about a bunch of adventurers, dressing up in armor, and beating up monsters, but they play it very differently, and they both have very passionate fanbases. But when you sit down and look at where distinctions are, it’s sometimes really hard to put your finger on exactly what it is. I mean, you could say, “Well, I don’t really like healing surges.” But what does that really mean? How does that really change the experience? I think it’s a similar distinction there.

Sword: Right. Back to my point before. The way that I came into World of Darkness, at least from a running standpoint, was in my D&D group, I had a bunch of people who were talking about Old World of Darkness and their experiences. Some people who loved playing Mage. They loved their Technocrat. One person loved her werewolf, and somebody else who loved Vampire. And my girlfriend who was like, really into Hunter at the time. They pretty much all said simultaneously to me, “You should run that!”

Rich: “Who me?” *laugh*

Sword: So me, with my only prior experience being a Vampire LARP that I did in Tech School for two or three weeks, I had no basis for comparison. So I took New World of Darkness and just loved how it was all… I could bring the two mages, the werewolf, the vampire, and the hunter, all together under the same system. It just became an issue of making it make sense in the story.

Rich: Very good point. It was one of the things that was one of the major design philosophies was, also, while we’re doing this, each of these game lines –

Eddy: It needs to be an actual World of Darkness, not, “These different games lines that make references to each other.”

Rich: And the fact that, really, like Mage: The Ascension was never design to work with Hunter: The Reckoning. I mean, we would just make it; we would make the game, and we would make it as cool as we could make it. And actually, more back to what you were saying about Werewolf20.

Eddy: Right. Exactly. The intention with the 20^th Anniversary Editions is that it needs to be its own unique experience, because that’s what they were before. So rather than try, because people have asked, “Are they going to be compatible?” There may be a PDF later shows you, how to help you with that. But they’re not going to be designed like that, because they were never designed like that. So let’s go back to that kind of core aesthetic of, “The Werewolf game is the Werewolf game, and it does Werewolf things.” Whereas New World of Darkness does this thing well. Why do what this other game is doing really well? Let Werewolf: the Apocalypse be its own thing, and not try to make it into that New World of Darkness aesthetic.

Sword: Yeah, they’d all brought stories like, “Yeah, somebody had tried to meld the games in previous editions, and it never worked well.” I would say that my experience with it has worked surprisingly well, so that’s always good.

Eddy: Fantastic! I’m glad to hear that.

Rich: Cool!

Sword: So I want to move onto Exalted. I saw Exalted 3^rd Edtion.

Rich: THREE!

Sword: So what can you tell me about that?

Rich: So, yeah, there’s gonna be this third edition. *laugh* No, it’s actually really exciting. For a really long time, [we've] been concerned about Exalted, and where it had evolved to, and evolved in a sort of mutational level of evolution, and had things it didn’t need, and stuff that was working against itself, and things were hammered on to try and help it.

Eddy: Like “game design Promethean.”

Sword: Promethean is silly, I think. Just thought you ought to know.

Rich: And really when you look back on Exalted to begin with, a lot of what the original design intentions were had kind of naturally shifted or moved away from things. So, everybody who was talking about, “This is broken, we have to fix it,” looked at it and said, “You’re right, but there’s no real – I don’t believe there’s any way to fix it without another edition.” So what we basically tried to do for a while was just let it kind of roll for a little bit, and we lucked into, “The ink monkeys,” (and I say that in air quotes, because they don’t necessarily need to be labeled that way, but everybody knows what I’m talking about).

Sword: And also, they’re not monkeys.

Eddy & Rich: Well, that’s not true.

Sword: Well, then!

Rich: Yeah, I’m pretty sure Holden has a tail. He’s a New World monkey, and John’s an Old World monkey. Anyway, they were able to come on and try to do as many fixes that they possibly could, which was phenomenal with the scroll of errata and everything, in an attempt to at least make it so that there were…things were being addressed. But we know that, end of the day, we really needed a new edition. And it just, it was the right combination of what we’re doing with the new schedule and the business model, and these guys being ready to dive right into it. So like it was at Grand Masquerade last year, we said, “Hey, guys! You wouldn’t be interested in doing another edition?” And after they got up off the floor and put their tongues back in their mouths with lust and joy, we started talking about what we could possibly do. And weirdly enough, around the same period (I don’t know if it was shortly before or shortly after), I reached out to Geoff Garbowski on Facebook. He happened to come up in one of those Facebook things, yknow, where they tell you, “Hey, you should talk to this guy!” Well, I really should!

Eddy: Thank you, Facebook!

Sword: Facebook actually worked, for once?!

Eddy: Yes! It can go away now, it’s done. *this statement was awkwardly timed, as at that moment, a waitress came over to our table, heard that, and walked away*

Rich: And he just happened to mention in passing that he wasn’t up on where it has gotten, but his understanding was that there should be some changes, and he’s had some ideas for another edition in his head. It was just like, alright, this seems to be, kind of, synchronistically coming together, so let’s see if these guys can all work together. And fortunately, they seem to be really enjoying the repartee, and going back and forth with ideas. So, yeah. The writing team’s are together. They’ve done preliminary – ’cause they were already thinking about how we do the combat differently. I mean, they’ve identified what needed to get new work done to it. So they were already in playtesting with a bunch of that stuff. I think it’s gonna be great. We have reached out, for an art director, to Maria Cabarto, who was the art director at Mayfair Games, at Wizards of the Coast, at Vertigo, and who art directed and laid out the Halo graphic novel, which won a whole breadth load of awards. She’s a phenomenal professional, and she’s going to be art directing and laying out the book. Oh, and Cthulhutech she did. So, we’re not going to turn our back on a lot of things that everybody really love about Exalted, but we really want to get back to those things, and kind of give it the tone and the feel was the intention a few years ago.

*one final interruption, where I pay for drinks. Protip: if I interview you, I’ll likely buy your drink*

Rich: So, yeah. So that’s the intention. I hesitate to get into any like, “Oh, we’re definitely gonna be doing this,” because this is such a thing in motion right now, that anything I say right now probably wouldn’t be true.

Sword: Could be wrong tomorrow.

Rich: But I’m going to be sketching up some signature characters when I get back.

Eddy: Oh, nice!

Rich: I got the descriptions for those, and we hit those descriptions with hammers.

Eddy: They tell you how wrong you are.

Rich: Eh, they try, but I’m drawing it.

Eddy: *laugh* I didn’t say they were going to succeed. I just said they’re going to tell you how wrong you are.

Rich: But, no, I think it’ll be a lot of fun.

Sword: So, one of the things that, by your job title answers, but World of Darkness Online. Is that still on?

Eddy: It’s absolutely still on. It never stopped being on. Certainly, CCP’s gone through a number of challenges the past year, especially in October. But it’s still going forward. We still have a great team of people that we moved to a new office, and we’re going full speed ahead. And we’re gonna be doing a release of our latest demo to just the whole company and a couple of, “Friends & Family,” type of thing later on this month. Beyond that, I can’t say, but it’s been really exciting to work on it, and I’ve been really enjoying my experience the past few years helping to build that.

Sword: That’s great to hear! Is there anything else that either of you would like to mention, like to talk about?

Rich: I don’t think so. I think we’re rolling along pretty well. There should be some interesting panels tomorrow (we’re talking today, this is Thursday, the first Thursday of Gen Con). And Friday will be a couple panels; “What’s Up With White Wolf?” and, “What is the Onyx Path?” And I think you may enjoy those as well.

Eddy: And certainly, I think we’ll probably do what we did last year, was to get those presentations up on DriveThruRPG, so that way, you can download the Power Point presentations and read those as well.

Rich: And if you wanted to reach back to us after this, and maybe ask a couple additional questions or something, please feel free.

Sword: And how can they get in touch with you?

Rich: They can get it touch with me: RichT@TheOnyxPath.com

Eddy: And I’m Eddy@CCPGames.com

Sword: Thank you very much. Thank you for meeting with me. And I hope you have fun with the rest of the con.

Rich: Thanks. You, too, man.