Enlightenment in Blood (EiB) was a Nordic style live action roleplaying (larp) game set in Berlin on the 12th of May, 2017, using the World of Darkness setting. It was a pervasive game, blending the real (RAW Gelände area) and the fictional (pretend vampires pretending to be hiding from mortals), with players moving in the streets of the city between ten different locations. Think of it like an augmented reality game where, instead of trying to catch monsters in the crowd, you would roleplay one (with other players).
The game designers delivered a range of character concepts (via Larpweaver, a Incognita Limited software). The one I picked was the Serial Entrepreneur: he would create a business, sell it, then create another one, etc. It was up to me to flesh it up a bit. I decided "Marc Laurentes" would be all about social entrepreneurship: trying to do business in a socially responsible fashion and using it as a key selling point with both mortals and vampires. Did this concern for the impact of his business ventures spring from a sincere, deep-rooted need to help and contribute? Only on the surface. Rather, it was a way for him to have something to sell, to grandstand, to be able to gain legitimacy from a new secular and fashionable religion. It was also a way for him to fight the emptiness in his heart and life, to cope with the Beast inside. He was a vampire, and every little shred of humanity was precious.
The design of the game included open groups and groups with secret membership. Marc Laurentes was part of the Hope Foundation, a coterie of like-minded "philanthropists" that, when you looked at the numbers, was about gentrification with a profit. This social dimension reminded me of the plight of dreary and forlorn Gary, Indiana, in 1st edition Vampire: The Masquerade. Full circle, back to the roots of vampire prosperity amid mortal misery! What we did with this basic setup was up to ourselves, and indeed the Hope Foundation did profit from the upheaval. Its members survived, associated themselves with the fall of the Prince and kept at range from the most violent elements. We arranged an alliance with the Ethics Committee. To get a broader sense of how the evening unfolded, check the Nordic larp article by Sarah Lynne Bowman.
So, I had a few questions and Juhanna Pettersson, the designer of the game (one among many persons who conspired to make this event a success) was kind enough to answer them.
Designing the Berlin of Darkness
The events which took place in Enlightenment in Blood give us an insight into the evolution of the World of Darkness setting post-2004. It means you have been implementing and taking part into the design of a broader vision for where the World of Darkness is heading. Indeed, White Wolf told us that events unfolding in this larp may have consequences on the metaplot, that player characters could become part of books, etc. This is one of the first manifestations of a new ethos of grounding the story of the World of Darkness in the actions of the fan communities. Obviously White Wolf needs to find the right balance in how they use the feedback from the larp.
Q: What is your take on this "contributive design" method, was there a lot of back and forth with WW, how much of the design was your own take on things, and how is the feedback phase going along please?
Juhanna Pettersson: Enlightenment in Blood and World of Darkness Berlin were produced by the company Participation Design Agency, and the arrangement was similar as when White Wolf makes license deals with videogame companies for videogames or By Night Studios for Mind Eye Theater -style larp materials.
As the person responsible for the design of Enlightenment in Blood, I had a lot of back and forth with Martin Ericsson and especially Karim Muammar from White Wolf. I found the process very fruitful, especially because this way the new ideas and directions White Wolf is planning for the World of Darkness could be reflected in the larp. When Martin made his presentation about the future direction of Vampire at the Berlin event, you could see almost every single new idea also represented in the larp.
Martin and Karim provided the White Wolf perspective on the content of the larp, but it was also fun and useful to spitball with them about possible ideas, concepts and cool things we could do. In this sense, they also had a creative contribution to the larp's design going beyond just the big ideas affecting every World of Darkness product now coming out.
Social unrest as the main thematic
The larp, in a nutshell, was about the night of the Anarch Revolution. Specifically, I felt that it was about the revolt of a social underclass rather than about a Generation-based Jyhad. There were a character group with a Marxist background, the one-percenters of the Camarilla, a group focusing on gentrification... And you could sense, in game, how many power-hungry groups were just intent on exploiting the demise of the Camarilla for personal gain rather than for any common good. You can sense similar social fault lines in the real world. The gentrification is a real thing in Berlin or in Paris where I live; and the sense of being oppressed by enforcers of the powers that be has sparked conflict in countries such as Tunisia or, more recently, Morocco. There are other important issues of the day, of course (refugees...), but I guess many players of the game could relate to this main thematic of an ignored underclass rising up.
Q: How do you think the larp can help us apprehend or cope with the larger inequalities in the world? Did any player tell you it was a learning experience, or an occasion to vent, to cathartically strike down the Man? Is this issue something you care about, that inspires you?
Personally, I believe that larp can change the world, that it can have a positive effect on the people playing the game. I believe it can be used for political purposes. For example, I was the producer of the Palestinian-Finnish joint larp production Halat hisar (2013 and 2016) which attempted to create an experience of Palestinian political reality.
I don't necessarily see Enlightenment in Blood primarily as a political larp in that sense, but it was definitely informed by what's going on in the real world. White Wolf has used the slogan: "A game of personal and political horror" for Vampire recently, and I felt that idea should also be reflected in the larp. Because of this, supernatural factions where tied to real world political groups and ideologies. The central framework of the revolution in the larp was inspired by the revolution in Iran against the Shah, where the fight for the control of the revolution is at least as important as the revolution itself.
Every problem just needs a kill list
In real life, social change demands involvement on a massive scale, including lots of building common ground and long-term planning; in the context of micro-societies of murderous bloodsuckers, social change merely requires a few murders. With EiB being a one-shot larp and only the last hour being deadly, the survival of the characters was not the main point, in effect encouraging a high level of aggression. After the Anarchs killed the Prince and a few lackeys, the oppressive social structure that revolved around them falls apart. Simple and fun.
Q: Were you happy with the violence? Do you have stats or an educated guess about the numbers of dead characters?
The game had a lot of violence, more than we expected. The combat mechanics were designed so that the ability of a character to fight deteriorated quite fast, so a single character couldn't participate in very many fights. However, we sheer excitement and adrenaline of the revolution more than compensated and created a larp with a lot of fighting.
Unfortunately, we're still working with documenting the larp so I don't have death statistics at this time.
Lights in the darkness
My experience of the game was one of a thrilling evening (I skipped the "angst part" of roleplaying a vampire). Optimism was in the air (next to fear). Why? In part, the cosmopolitan choice of scope vs depth (the crossover touch with the dancing changelings, etc.). Mostly, I think it resulted from the pitch. The writing was on the wall from the very beginning: the Camarilla was going to fall and something new would emerge from the Anarch community. It sounded like a good outcome, a better deal than what I heard some larps can be like and of course than the last few real world revolutions. Perhaps it does just reflect the timing -revolutions are merry the first night, and the follow-up never lives up to the expectations.
Q: Did you purposefully intend for your game to deliver higher concentrations of "change" than the ones found in the real world, and that it would feel liberating? Do you try to design emotions?
We most definitely try to design emotions. I see this as one of the core things we do as larp designers, creating a certain kind of an emotional experience.
We pushed the idea of "the first night of the Anarch revolution" really hard, because we wanted exactly this sense of optimism, chaos and change. It's a powerful feeling, and suitable for a larp lasting for one night. For a more grounded view of revolution, I think we would have needed a different kind of design, with more time for players to experience the changes in the environment.
The Dark Father
Another facet of the Berlin shadow society was imaginary religion. The Church of Caine was one of the main groups and held one of the three largest play spaces. It is a toned-down Sabbat, or a cousin of the Lancea Sanctum covenant from Vampire: The Requiem. Its militancy felt out of sync with dechristianized real world Europe, but vampiric mythology is core to the Masquerade setting and no end times revolution would be complete without a preacher trying to convert everybody and their werewolf cousin. The vampire faith was really creepy (to be honest, the main European religion has faithfuls drinking the blood of their god), to the extent that the Church, from an outsider perspective, looked more like a prison than a haven, with "I am having second thoughts" being one of the patterns, a behaviour kickstarted by the sacrifice-oh-wait-nooo of the Shepherd character played by Martin Ericsson in the starting ceremony.
Q: What are your ideas about religion as a gaming device? What else can you tell us about the genesis of the Church of Caine as an organisation?
Religion is one of the most powerful human concepts present in our culture, so obviously it's also a wonderful subject for a larp. It also often involves rituals and protocols for behavior, something that works very well in larps.
The Church of Caine is one of the new ideas White Wolf is introducing to the World of Darkness, and to my knowledge this larp was the first time it was present in any kind of a World of Darkness product. Because of this, working with the Church was different than working with any other element of the world, because we needed to explain it more, but we also had more freedom to make it into our own thing. I worked closely with White Wolf's Karim Muammar to make the Church interesting, but they also gave us a lot of leeway to make it our own.
Memories
My best memory was barking at the Prince in his final moments. Remember your Dogs!
Second one was being afraid to enter the Church, after being first told that it was a haven, and then being told by the same character, after asking him to remember he really really liked me (a magical power), that he was not so sure about the safe part.
Third one was watching Jannes Hoffnung, a fellow Hope Foundation member, suck the blood from the hand of the Prince. It was really funny, the Prince was down and there were maybe ten Brujah-type Anarchs trying to suck him dry, only his hand was visible at this point and here comes this artsy opportunist who takes a bite at one finger.
Q: What is your best memory of the game?
I didn't play, and in fact I was at our backstage organizer room the whole larp. Because of this, my best memory is coming to the afterparty after the larp had ended, and just seeing all the energy people had, the feeling you can sense in a larp crowd of people sharing a common, intense experience.
Future memories
Q: What's next?
We're still evaluating and unpacking the event in Berlin, the con and all the larps. Because of this, I can't reveal future projects now. However, I can say that there are things cooking, with us and with other larp makers as well. Stay tuned!
Showing posts with label World of Darkness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World of Darkness. Show all posts
Worlds of Darkness 10: Then We Took Berlin
After Tenebrae Noctis, back to Germany for a new city/convention trip: World of Darkness Berlin 2017.
Wednesday 10th of May
On a five hour budget, I walk. I take the 100 bus line from Zoologischer Garten, get a view of the park and embassies with fancy architecture before reaching Brandenburger Tor, where I experience the Snake Plissken effect (smaller than what I expected). I walk around and see more embassies. I end up on Charlottenstrasse, in the Rausch store. There I get to meet the spirit running the city. He blesses me and gives me clearance to visit his kingdom, provided I agree to praise his fighting stance.
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| Don't try to stare him down. |
Then I walk to Museum Island and visit the Pergamon. I am afraid I will not have time to see everything but the Louvre has spoiled me, normal museums don't take more than a couple of hours to visit. The Babylon Gate of Ishtar and Roman-era Milet market are impressive. Some of the monumental guardians still have some of this je ne sais quoi that made the people in Ashur shiver with fear. They know who I am, of course, but the chocolate protects me from their withering stare.
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| Sphinx-like sentinels eat hippopotamuses for breakfast. |
I also enjoy the floor dedicated to Islamic art and culture. I wonder if some of the museum attendants I see originate from Syria or Iraq.
I then walk some more among Berliners taking a nap and a beer next to the river and in the parks around.
Having somehow missed the memorial for the victims of the Shoah (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), I return there and spend a dozen minutes in contemplation. The way I experience it, it feels like some family-friendly modern art installation dropped there without an explanation. Some tourists are taking pictures of themselves on top of the columns, there is nothing solemn at first. And then, as you walk down towards the center of the memorial, the columns grow taller and the alleys become darker and the mood gets more introspective, a sense of something else sets in. When you walk back and up into the light, maybe something remains.
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| You can always escape to the light. |
I spend the evening with my contact in Berlin. Véronique K is a super special agent with high proficiency in German. Her cover is being my cool cousin and having a whole nice teacher family set up in a huge apartment. We discuss in coded language, pretending to be talking about the mundane things of life, politics, music and how cute their children are.
Thursday 11th of May
In the morning, I head to the convention venue, the Mercure Hotel MOA, for a breakfast meeting with Mathieu S and Fabien M, the Arkhane Asylum crew. They are the French licensees for the 20th Anniversary line. Unfortunately, part of the reason they are good at what they do is their dedication to their tasks, and an incoming deadline prevents them from enjoying the convention. Thanks for the brunch, mates!
Beer •••
At 1PM, tabletop roleplaying with the nominees of the scenario competition! I am glad to play The Last Boat out of Barcelona by Pablo Valcárcel, my first choice. This V20 game is set in 1939 in Barcelona, hours before the city falls to the rebels. In the 20's and 30's, fascists toppled democracies either through violence and intimidation (Italy), insinuating themselves into the political landscape and using elections as a path to power (Stefan Zweig believed Hitler would be a fluke and that it would be safe to allow him to fail), or mass murders and a full scale civil war against a legitimate government (Spain). If the First World War starts the 20th century and the Shoah is its nadir, the Spanish civil war, to me, symbolizes the global battle for the soul of the world. And the good side lost. It's where we first learned what the future would look like (a boot stamping on your face, forever).
So, the setting is pretty desperate. The characters start as Anarchs in a city run by Communists, which means that their enemies are both internal and external, and both mortals (the sieging fascists and the local government - communists don't like to share power with other worker organizations, ask Andrés Nin) and undead (the usual suspects: Camarilla, Sabbat). The pitch of the scenario is that one boat is going to evacuate a few lucky people, and we all have mortal allies we would like to take with us. Difficult choices ahead...
Crew: Nils (great Storyteller), Andreas (the doctor), Jennifer (the pasionaria), Craig (Josh, plus the depressed poet), me (a German-Jewish girl who came here to crush fascism). 3 Germans, 1 Australian, 1 Frenchman, 0 correctly pronounced Spanish names.
At 7PM, we watch the World of Darkness documentary at the Delphi theater (one of those at the very least, supposedly the one where Murnau's Nosferatu premiered). Somewhere on rpg.net there is a huge thread of people arguing about the self-aggrandizing chutzpah of those White Wolf poseurs. I did not actually read the posts, but I think the film does show individual journeys and the way they reflect on the human condition. Among the interviewees, not only former and new White Wolf employees, but also a selection of fans. I always disliked signature characters, one of the false good ideas of the World of Darkness, at least the way they were historically used. However, one of the best moves by White Wolf - CCP with V20 was the incarnation of signature characters by models picked among the fans of the setting and pillars of the community. The interviews of some of these 'character players' really bring the perspective the documentary needed. The WoD is gaming, yes, and art too, but the sense of shared culture is what makes it great - Vampire is about playing rejects that try to be human, and many fans stuck with it because it resonates with their teenage experience. I remember, in high school, witnessing the guy who first showed me the Vampire 1st ed book being pushed on the ground by the local rightwing bully. I bet this story repeats ever and ever.
The most important feature of the show, of course, is the open bar.
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| When did I first visit the Succubus Club? 2003? |
Beer ••••
Wine ••
Cocktail •••••
I would be remiss if I failed to mention my little adventure with a fellow from Glasgow. At 1AM the Delphi closes and some area undead and assorted White Wolf luminaries decide to pay a visit to a club on the other side of Berlin. With mechanical politeness, I let everybody into the cabs and soon enough I am the only passenger in the last cab. But wait, a gentle soul jumps out of the next to the last cab and joins us. Right off the bat, I spot that, first, the alcohol is strong in this one; let's say Joe must have fully exploited the potential of the bar; and, second, the guy is fully functional and as strong as an ox. Actually, he rips a bit of cab furniture by mistake. I ask him where he comes from, he shows me a scar on his face, a smile and a fist. Turns out he does boxing for a living, if I get it right.
The cab drops us by mistake half a mile away from the club, at a similarly named restaurant. So we start to walk our way to the club, at close to 2AM, on the mostly desert pavement. Joe then proceeds to show me how to get in boxing stance, adjusting my hand position as he prepares to demonstrate what must surely be a much deadlier punch than the one they serve at the Delphi. Very unnecessarily, I remind my sparring partner that I have a family that loves me and we resume our walk.
We arrive at the club and of course there are bouncers, a girl with the brains and two or three bodybuilding henchmen. The girl looks at my Scottish friend and suggests that we take a back step, drink a glass of water, eat something and come back in ten minutes. A few meters away, there is a Turkish food stand and I buy a sandwich and chips for Joe. He eats none of that but insists to offer me one beer. At this stage, it is clear that we will not enter into the club tonight. We make friends with students from Lexington, Kentucky, and the night gets ready to start but I decide to chicken out to the hotel. Joe is ready to follow the Americans to Kentucky, but opts instead to join me into the cab. We head back to the hotel, where the first question he asks me in the morning when I see him is "How did I came back here yesterday?".
If you read these lines, Joe, thanks again for the company!
Beer •••••
Wine ••
Cocktail •••••
Friday 12th of May
9AM Workshop for Enlightenment in Blood (see below), where we learn the rules that organizers have put in place to ensure we enjoy a safe experience.
10AM V5 Q&A panel with the White Wolf crew. Karim Muammar pitches the logic behind the design choices: A Beast I Am, Lest A Beast I Become - mechanics that create stories. Blood becomes central to the game experience, something that creates scenes. For the players it's a balancing act around Hunger and control. One-roll resolution for every situation (combat...) to speed the pace of the game. Dots and ten-sided dice still rule. "We borrowed quite heavily from Chronicles of Darkness", e.g. always the same target number (6). 90% backward compatibility. Blood - Hunger economy: "Every time you use blood, there is a risk." Hunger dice, you use them first in skill checks. Any 1's on those incur "compulsions". Possibility to spend Composure to cancel that effect, but the less Composure you have, the more likely the Beast is going to explode later on (Frenzy tests). Kenneth Hite is hard at work making a great rule system! "Lots of it come from a previous study by White Wolf about the different systems."
11AM World of Darkness and Slavic folklore. Baba Yaga should not be a Nosferatu, or even a vampire.
1PM White Wolf keynote
2PM instead of dancing disco like I should, I elect to take a nap.
8PM Enlightenment in Blood is a live action roleplaying game (larp) set in Berlin the night of an Anarch revolution. It connects to the ongoing metaplot, meaning that it both illustrates the events mentioned in the White Wolf keynotes and that it will feed in return the metaplot. For example, the way my character experiences it, the Prince dies at the Anarch bar (Jägerhütte), under the assault of a great many Anarchs, all with different reasons to hate his guts (my character's were humiliation and being robbed of his first business by the Camarilla, and he barks at the old monster in his final moments). This event might become the new canon. Another example is the way somebody at the Camarilla bar (Raumklang) let slip to members of the Technocracy that she is a vampire, and now the mage totalitarian faction is onto the local vampires including the Hope Foundation (my character's main subfaction) - which forebodes possible problems for Kindred due to something called the Second Inquisition, mentioned in the keynotes. Great stuff, being responsible for a mass hunt of your fellow player characters around the world!
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| The RAW Gelände looks like a Tim Bradstreet sketchbook. |
The organization (by Participation Design Agency) is top notch. It has to be, in order to handle ~250 players in many locations! The rules are really really easy to use, no need to care about a character sheet, all that matters is keeping track of all contacts and the Larpweaver site helps a lot. There might be a tad too many channels for information in fact, because I also need to check the emails, the faction-specific Facebook groups and the purpose-made Undernet site.
It is my first WoD larp and my lack of experience with the format makes it both extra fun, and easy to miss opportunities. I witness some excellent roleplaying, for example by Oskar G (Church of Caine creepy bigshot), by Christopher S (depraved dealer of innovative art) or by Søren AH (the werewolf). I get to play with guys like Jason Carl and Mark Rhein•Hagen, lots of fun!
Beer ••••• •• (specials: There Was An Open Bar At The Church, Beware The Bottle Deposit)
Wine ••
Cocktail •••••
Saturday 13th of May
11AM Justin Achilli keynote. Very high level game design course; the three characteristics we need to promote in our games to make them fun are mastery, autonomy and relatedness.
3:30PM V5 pre-alpha playtest: rule-wise, I suggest checking out the playtest impressions on Teylen's RPG Corner; White Wolf tells us that they will publish the quickstarter soon anyway [update: it's available]. I believe I can talk in a general fashion about the story; it is a direct continuation of the events of Enlightenment by Blood, so scheduling the test the day after is a nice touch. You play Anarch hunters the night after your usual preys destroy the local Camarilla... It plays out differently at each table, obviously. Our adventure results in a mixed bag of good news (alive!) and bad news (screwed!).
Crew: Brendan (storytelling impro master), Nikita, Daria, Heinrich and me (playing the ill-fated degenerate).
Check out this report
10PM Party at the Arena Club: the venue, a repurposed industrial building, features many discrete corners and a small dancefloor. I have a great time. I am not much into nightclubs because of the noise level and often the choice of music. The noise level is OK at first and the music is good. The party starts with a good laugh: the Brujah contestant wins the Dance With The Clans disco competition for the princedom of Berlin; all hail Brujah! -not sure this one will enter the canon, but it is really fun watching the special moves! At 11PM DJ Achilles starts his magic. Later, a performer gives a burlesque performance. I enjoy talking to the people; the first line is always "what did you play yesterday?" because the larp implies such a diversity of experiences that getting to know other aspects of it is a great way to re-explore it.
Beer ••••• •••• (specials: There Was An Open Bar At The Church, Beware The Bottle Deposit, The Line At The Bar Dates Back From Eastern Germany, Remind Me How To Talk To People Please)
Wine ••
Cocktail •••••
Sunday 14th of May
With but a few hours left in beautiful Berlin, I wander into the Käthe Kollwitz Museum near Ku'damm. It exhibits photos, drawings, woodcuts and sculptures from the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century. I am struck by the depiction of great poverty, hunger and despair in Berlin and Germany of this age and of historical revolts of poor people against their overlords (the Weavers and the Peasant War series). I direct French speakers to an in-depth analysis.
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| Bewaffnung in einem Gewölbe, Käthe Kollwitz |
What can I say? There is something. I like the city, I like Käthe Kollwitz and Ishtar, I like the community, I like the games. Intelligent, open-minded and stimulating.
I am back at home, with a bit of beautiful darkness inside me (and, in my luggage, a different kind of darkness, courtesy of the King).
Worlds of Darkness 9: Rise of the Platypus
I had the pleasure to attend Tenebrae Noctis in Kommandeursburg, a little castle in Kerpen (Germany) on the 12th of December, 2015 (thanks again Dhaunae!). Ulisses Spiele, the German licensee for White Wolf products, managed to organise this World of Darkness event in record time to help the new White Wolf team meet the European community and partners. A few weeks earlier, in October, Paradox Interactive had bought the White Wolf intellectual properties from CCP (which was sitting on them after failing to launch an MMO) and created a new subsidiary whose exclusive mission was to develop and license them. CEO Tobias Sjögren and Lead Storyteller Martin Ericsson wanted to discuss with the fans as soon as possible about the future of the World of Darkness.
The Onyx Path team was not there but their ambition to produce a fourth edition of Vampire: The Masquerade has been co-opted by White Wolf Publishing, which will develop it in-house. The editorial control the new guys in charge exert will allow them to support and nurture the IP while they try to make big bucks with TV or computer games. The pen-and-paper line defines what the World of Darkness is about.
Onyx Path will keep publishing books about the new World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem, Mummy: The Curse, etc.), which has been re-branded Chronicles of Darkness. There is now only One World of Darkness: the Samuel Haight one. ;) As you can see in the clip below, the focus is put on the first three lines (Vampire, Werewolf and Mage).
Solving the confusion around the identity of the World of Darkness after it forked ten years ago was only the first step. White Wolf will retroactively erase the word "end" and re-open the book that was closed in 2004 (with Gehenna, etc.). They aim to bring the World of Darkness into the 2010's, a daunting challenge. Vampires are everywhere nowadays but the World of Darkness is not and it will have to convince gamers again, with the right mix of old and new.
The World of Darkness is not for everybody: it is not mainstream and I don't believe it can ever be. However, it takes everybody in and I really enjoy its inclusiveness; “give me your lonely, your half-crazy” would say the Statue of Darkness. Thoughtful, willing to deal with important questions and at the same time respectful, mature. Connecting deeply with what makes us tick. I think that is one big advantage it holds against other dark contemporary settings.
The situation is far from perfect. This big family has had a history, contradictions abound, knots need to be cut sharp. But I really like where this is heading.
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| behind this gate lurks the Darkness to come |
Onyx Path will keep publishing books about the new World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem, Mummy: The Curse, etc.), which has been re-branded Chronicles of Darkness. There is now only One World of Darkness: the Samuel Haight one. ;) As you can see in the clip below, the focus is put on the first three lines (Vampire, Werewolf and Mage).
Solving the confusion around the identity of the World of Darkness after it forked ten years ago was only the first step. White Wolf will retroactively erase the word "end" and re-open the book that was closed in 2004 (with Gehenna, etc.). They aim to bring the World of Darkness into the 2010's, a daunting challenge. Vampires are everywhere nowadays but the World of Darkness is not and it will have to convince gamers again, with the right mix of old and new.
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| inside the castle |
The situation is far from perfect. This big family has had a history, contradictions abound, knots need to be cut sharp. But I really like where this is heading.
Scurmune
It is not. I repeat, it is not okay. "Scurmune" is not a fucking name. It just doesn't fucking mean anything. I'll have you give me something different or else, well... I have something against the villains who take nicknames. They believe they live in comic books. Comic books with stupid cover pictures they hope to get away with. Stuff like "What if Rick Jones had become the Hulk". And then these villains, they get mad when you forget their nickname, and you have to put them down, the righteous ton of brick in your face way, as if you were the fucking Hulk and you had managed to track down the guy who did the Rick Jones Hulk.
Know what I mean? I am not the Hulk, not a villain, and I don't fucking need nicknames. But it's all a parable, and you've got to abide by the principles. So, I have this rule and I am a man of principles, but sometimes you've got to make exceptions, and did you just shoot me? My speech was not over. Oh man, not the torpor again.
Last words of this other guy who was kind of loud and could never shut his mouth off
How you get to know her
At first, Scurmune is just a figure on the fringes of the Anarch Movement, of the city, even of her own coterie. What she does on a nightly basis is barely legal but then, no one cares about yet another paranoid weakling. She remains largely unnoticed. When Kindred first meet her, she might be part of the generic nondescript white trash surrounding some minor player. Just another no name extra.
Years pass by and Scurmune manages to survive when many of her first mates in the life after the Embrace do not. Yet no urban legend, she is at least identified and her weird ass nickname rings a bell for most regulars in Anarch hangouts.
Then she loses it. Madness? Joan of Arc syndrome? At some point, in front of most of the Anarchs of Los Angeles, she steps up on the stage and launches herself into a rant that leaves the audience half-bored and half-intrigued. What she proposes is to actually create a new sect on top of the other ones, a hidden democracy, unlike the brave Anarchs, an organization that its very secrecy would make impervious to destruction at the hands of the pigs, until the Great Night of Freedom arrives.
The neonate has no charisma and nobody jumps into her ship. But she does not give up and stays true to her words, all of a sudden possessed by a sense of destiny only a former nobody could muster.
She gives her sect a comic book name: the Republic of the Night. She drafts a Constitution and organizes it the way old school Communist cells used to do it: citizenship needs not be open and cells do not communicate between each other. Most of the energy of the undisclosed number of recruits has to be spent finding new holes to hide in at all times. Scurmune becomes the iconic figure for the Republic of the Night, its one and only spokesperson. She remains a joke for the few semi-real friends she has in the Anarch movement. However, those same rebels do not forget her phone number when the time comes to defend the city against Camarilla or Sabbat. The young City Gangrel is no great fighter in sustained combat, but she survives when others do not, always instants away from a speedy retreat.
She learns the hard way that you do not recruit Kindred into a group without opposition by those who would consider them their pawns; she loses half a dozen recruits, slaughtered in their sleep by unknown enemies. After that episod, Scurmune pushes the paranoia to 11. By then, she is utterly committed to her vow and envisions herself as one of the movers in the game, nevermind that she holds no actual influence over any mortal institution.
Modus operandi
To defend her Republic, she will pull a Jack Bauer on you and, if that proves insufficient, she will drive the Rambo road. She will crash an truck full of oil on your Haven. She will endanger the Masquerade. She has learned how to plant explosives and shows no compunction using this knowledge.
On the face of her actions, she should not survive, but she does for two reasons.
One, she knows how to flee very, very well and she will do so anytime she has not initiated the attack. She will not stay in a brawl. Faced with a modicum of opposition, she splits. She is a slippery nimble athlete, and that is before she uses Celerity and Obfuscate. You can always fight another day. Nine times out of ten, she prefers to fold.
Two, when she initiates a fight, she’s like overkill on steroids. Once she feels confident about the place, the time and the protagonists, she goes overboard with grenades and spectacular attacks. She has all the subtlety of a teenager endowed with the capacity to rip her opponents with magical claws. If she has not prevailed by round 2, she runs away.
Once again, if she believes that “shock and awe” ain’t going to work, she does not leave the protection of whatever bunkerized sewer or underwater hole she uses as her secondary or tertiary backup Haven.
How she interacts with you
Scurmune monitors the Kindred in the city and tags the most progressive ones as targets for recruitment. In the event the current body count of the Republic exceeds her own self, she can send fellow citizens do their best to convince the prospect to join their democracy. If not, she will do it herself. She can make phone calls and has been known to mail pamphlets. She is careful to use innuendo and not to breach the Masquerade blatantly. She also uses Elysium events as an opportunity to proselytize. Since she is officially nonviolent, definitely not an imposing figure and does not claim mortal influence, she can even find a place as “loyal opposition” in Camarilla cities held by lenient Princes. The Constitution of the Republic of the Night specifically authorizes membership in other sects, so Camarilla pundits who have heard about it discard it as some kind of ineffectual, hence tolerable, intellectual movement.
But then, something happens. Maybe some vampire gets killed in some crossfire, and the loss of a fellow “citizen” angers Scurmune beyond description. It’s as if the weak Marron Shed from Shadows Linger becomes Omar from The Wire, shotgun included. The worst part is, Scurmune can sometimes succeed in recruiting powerful individuals, even though the intentions of these recruits do not always match their words. And these individuals, probably bent to control this small organization, can strike behind the scenes against those who would threaten it.
And then, there is the revolution. The Republic is a revolutionary organization structured to avoid initiating any aggression, but circumstances are everything. Scurmune creates the sect, but she does control it only as long as her fellow “citizens” vote for her propositions. Some citizens belong to the Republic only for the fun, or worse, the lulz. Scurmune keeps pushing forward her vision, however deluded it might be. Her master plan includes the propagation of the Republic on all continents and the construction of James Bond-like secret bases with submarines and airplanes...
A girl from potato country
What kind of mortal was this turbo-propelled revolutionary? The end result of decades of Dunwich-grade isolation in a small settlement in some forested area of America. The kind of disturbed young girl who uses menstrual blood to write love letters. Destined to end up as an abused runaway, she is instead taken into a coven of insane Sabbat vampires. That is when she loses her mortal name, a name she does not remember to this day. The priest of the pack uses some dipshit homebrewn version of the Vaulderie ritual on the pack. Problem is, it does not function that well, a bit like cut coke flavored with random shit. Scurmune runs away, once again. First to New-York then to Los Angeles, traveling by train and treading the path of the hobo, following a bunch of desperate nobodies like her.
Appearance
Though no prom queen, Scurmune was decent enough to have been an abuser magnet when she was a teenager. She seems to be about 20 and wears the kind of nonsexual clothes girls from the projects use when they just want to be invisible. That is a disguise; back when she had a real name, Scurmune looked more like a country girl and she did enjoy dresses.
Now, however, what with all the frenzies she underwent after mishandling fire, she looks like a freak cousin of Catwoman meets Chewbacca.
Mostly though, you do not get to check on Scurmune, because she is nowhere to be seen. You can post a message to an Internet board, or leave a message in the crack of a pavement under a specific lamppost, or speak to a friend who knows a friend who knows how to get in touch with the Republic, etc. And when she first contacts you, nowadays, she also uses technology and intermediaries to protect herself the best she can.
The characteristics below reflect the power level of Scurmune when she transitions from “known Anarch” to “this chick with the crazy ideas” and before she graduates to “full-blown lunatic, please hand me the straitjacket”.
Clan: City Gangrel
Generation: 13th
Sire: Unknown
Nature: Survivor
Demeanor: Architect
Concept: deluded revolutionary
Embrace: 1988
Apparent Age: early 20s
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 4
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 3, Athletics 4 (Acrobatics), Brawl 3, Empathy 3, Leadership 3, Streetwise 2, Subterfuge 2
Skills: Crafts 1 (Traps), Etiquette 1, Drive 1, Firearms 2, Melee 2, Stealth 5, Survival 4
Knowledges: Computers 3, Medicine 1, Politics 2, Science 1 (Chemistry)
Disciples: Auspex 1, Celerity 5, Dominate 4, Fortitude 3, Obfuscate 4, Potence 1, Protean 4
Backgrounds: Allies 3, Contacts 2, Resources 3
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 5
Humanity 5
Willpower 9
Merits: Acute Sense (hearing and smell), Catlike Balance, Language (Spanish), Sabbat Survivor
[I toned down the characteristics from my veteran character, could be toned down more. Also, I have 40K+ words of history and notes about this character.]
Written in 2012.
Know what I mean? I am not the Hulk, not a villain, and I don't fucking need nicknames. But it's all a parable, and you've got to abide by the principles. So, I have this rule and I am a man of principles, but sometimes you've got to make exceptions, and did you just shoot me? My speech was not over. Oh man, not the torpor again.
Last words of this other guy who was kind of loud and could never shut his mouth off
How you get to know her
At first, Scurmune is just a figure on the fringes of the Anarch Movement, of the city, even of her own coterie. What she does on a nightly basis is barely legal but then, no one cares about yet another paranoid weakling. She remains largely unnoticed. When Kindred first meet her, she might be part of the generic nondescript white trash surrounding some minor player. Just another no name extra.
Years pass by and Scurmune manages to survive when many of her first mates in the life after the Embrace do not. Yet no urban legend, she is at least identified and her weird ass nickname rings a bell for most regulars in Anarch hangouts.
Then she loses it. Madness? Joan of Arc syndrome? At some point, in front of most of the Anarchs of Los Angeles, she steps up on the stage and launches herself into a rant that leaves the audience half-bored and half-intrigued. What she proposes is to actually create a new sect on top of the other ones, a hidden democracy, unlike the brave Anarchs, an organization that its very secrecy would make impervious to destruction at the hands of the pigs, until the Great Night of Freedom arrives.
The neonate has no charisma and nobody jumps into her ship. But she does not give up and stays true to her words, all of a sudden possessed by a sense of destiny only a former nobody could muster.
She gives her sect a comic book name: the Republic of the Night. She drafts a Constitution and organizes it the way old school Communist cells used to do it: citizenship needs not be open and cells do not communicate between each other. Most of the energy of the undisclosed number of recruits has to be spent finding new holes to hide in at all times. Scurmune becomes the iconic figure for the Republic of the Night, its one and only spokesperson. She remains a joke for the few semi-real friends she has in the Anarch movement. However, those same rebels do not forget her phone number when the time comes to defend the city against Camarilla or Sabbat. The young City Gangrel is no great fighter in sustained combat, but she survives when others do not, always instants away from a speedy retreat.
She learns the hard way that you do not recruit Kindred into a group without opposition by those who would consider them their pawns; she loses half a dozen recruits, slaughtered in their sleep by unknown enemies. After that episod, Scurmune pushes the paranoia to 11. By then, she is utterly committed to her vow and envisions herself as one of the movers in the game, nevermind that she holds no actual influence over any mortal institution.
Modus operandi
To defend her Republic, she will pull a Jack Bauer on you and, if that proves insufficient, she will drive the Rambo road. She will crash an truck full of oil on your Haven. She will endanger the Masquerade. She has learned how to plant explosives and shows no compunction using this knowledge.
On the face of her actions, she should not survive, but she does for two reasons.
One, she knows how to flee very, very well and she will do so anytime she has not initiated the attack. She will not stay in a brawl. Faced with a modicum of opposition, she splits. She is a slippery nimble athlete, and that is before she uses Celerity and Obfuscate. You can always fight another day. Nine times out of ten, she prefers to fold.
Two, when she initiates a fight, she’s like overkill on steroids. Once she feels confident about the place, the time and the protagonists, she goes overboard with grenades and spectacular attacks. She has all the subtlety of a teenager endowed with the capacity to rip her opponents with magical claws. If she has not prevailed by round 2, she runs away.
Once again, if she believes that “shock and awe” ain’t going to work, she does not leave the protection of whatever bunkerized sewer or underwater hole she uses as her secondary or tertiary backup Haven.
How she interacts with you
Scurmune monitors the Kindred in the city and tags the most progressive ones as targets for recruitment. In the event the current body count of the Republic exceeds her own self, she can send fellow citizens do their best to convince the prospect to join their democracy. If not, she will do it herself. She can make phone calls and has been known to mail pamphlets. She is careful to use innuendo and not to breach the Masquerade blatantly. She also uses Elysium events as an opportunity to proselytize. Since she is officially nonviolent, definitely not an imposing figure and does not claim mortal influence, she can even find a place as “loyal opposition” in Camarilla cities held by lenient Princes. The Constitution of the Republic of the Night specifically authorizes membership in other sects, so Camarilla pundits who have heard about it discard it as some kind of ineffectual, hence tolerable, intellectual movement.
But then, something happens. Maybe some vampire gets killed in some crossfire, and the loss of a fellow “citizen” angers Scurmune beyond description. It’s as if the weak Marron Shed from Shadows Linger becomes Omar from The Wire, shotgun included. The worst part is, Scurmune can sometimes succeed in recruiting powerful individuals, even though the intentions of these recruits do not always match their words. And these individuals, probably bent to control this small organization, can strike behind the scenes against those who would threaten it.
And then, there is the revolution. The Republic is a revolutionary organization structured to avoid initiating any aggression, but circumstances are everything. Scurmune creates the sect, but she does control it only as long as her fellow “citizens” vote for her propositions. Some citizens belong to the Republic only for the fun, or worse, the lulz. Scurmune keeps pushing forward her vision, however deluded it might be. Her master plan includes the propagation of the Republic on all continents and the construction of James Bond-like secret bases with submarines and airplanes...
A girl from potato country
What kind of mortal was this turbo-propelled revolutionary? The end result of decades of Dunwich-grade isolation in a small settlement in some forested area of America. The kind of disturbed young girl who uses menstrual blood to write love letters. Destined to end up as an abused runaway, she is instead taken into a coven of insane Sabbat vampires. That is when she loses her mortal name, a name she does not remember to this day. The priest of the pack uses some dipshit homebrewn version of the Vaulderie ritual on the pack. Problem is, it does not function that well, a bit like cut coke flavored with random shit. Scurmune runs away, once again. First to New-York then to Los Angeles, traveling by train and treading the path of the hobo, following a bunch of desperate nobodies like her.
Appearance
Though no prom queen, Scurmune was decent enough to have been an abuser magnet when she was a teenager. She seems to be about 20 and wears the kind of nonsexual clothes girls from the projects use when they just want to be invisible. That is a disguise; back when she had a real name, Scurmune looked more like a country girl and she did enjoy dresses.
Now, however, what with all the frenzies she underwent after mishandling fire, she looks like a freak cousin of Catwoman meets Chewbacca.
Mostly though, you do not get to check on Scurmune, because she is nowhere to be seen. You can post a message to an Internet board, or leave a message in the crack of a pavement under a specific lamppost, or speak to a friend who knows a friend who knows how to get in touch with the Republic, etc. And when she first contacts you, nowadays, she also uses technology and intermediaries to protect herself the best she can.
The characteristics below reflect the power level of Scurmune when she transitions from “known Anarch” to “this chick with the crazy ideas” and before she graduates to “full-blown lunatic, please hand me the straitjacket”.
Clan: City Gangrel
Generation: 13th
Sire: Unknown
Nature: Survivor
Demeanor: Architect
Concept: deluded revolutionary
Embrace: 1988
Apparent Age: early 20s
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 4
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 3, Athletics 4 (Acrobatics), Brawl 3, Empathy 3, Leadership 3, Streetwise 2, Subterfuge 2
Skills: Crafts 1 (Traps), Etiquette 1, Drive 1, Firearms 2, Melee 2, Stealth 5, Survival 4
Knowledges: Computers 3, Medicine 1, Politics 2, Science 1 (Chemistry)
Disciples: Auspex 1, Celerity 5, Dominate 4, Fortitude 3, Obfuscate 4, Potence 1, Protean 4
Backgrounds: Allies 3, Contacts 2, Resources 3
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 5
Humanity 5
Willpower 9
Merits: Acute Sense (hearing and smell), Catlike Balance, Language (Spanish), Sabbat Survivor
[I toned down the characteristics from my veteran character, could be toned down more. Also, I have 40K+ words of history and notes about this character.]
Written in 2012.
Demimonde: interview with Justin Achilli
Demimonde is an urban fantasy novel by Justin Achilli, a game designer best known for his contributions to the Vampire roleplaying games by White Wolf. I read some time ago the Clan Novel Saga, a series of intertwined stories by a collective of authors using the setting of Vampire: The Masquerade. I did like Justin Achilli's style in the parts about the Giovanni and I decided to give his latter, completely unrelated novel a try. After reading Demimonde, I wished to better understand what the author had had in mind and he was gracious enough to reply to the questions below. For better and more recent information about the novel, please direct yourself to Justin's blog.
Beware: spoilers.
We don’t learn what the demimonde factions are about until quite late in the story, and many elements are left in the dark (e.g. of a possible interpretation, is it about reincarnation of archetypal figures?). I guess you did it to build a sense of mystery and prevent readers from getting comfortable, blasé and dismissive (oh, that is some Arthurian myth cult). I understand this is a story, not a sourcebook, but did you consciously draw a line between what you wanted to include (e.g. the religion) and what you wanted to leave out in the dark (who are these people)?
Beware: spoilers.
We don’t learn what the demimonde factions are about until quite late in the story, and many elements are left in the dark (e.g. of a possible interpretation, is it about reincarnation of archetypal figures?). I guess you did it to build a sense of mystery and prevent readers from getting comfortable, blasé and dismissive (oh, that is some Arthurian myth cult). I understand this is a story, not a sourcebook, but did you consciously draw a line between what you wanted to include (e.g. the religion) and what you wanted to leave out in the dark (who are these people)?
J.A.: I specifically wanted to leave some groups in the dark because in horror and fantasy, it's an effective way to achieve horror and wonder by not explaining everything and letting the reader's mind fill in the blanks or create his own details. For a long time, it's been difficult to get a sense of true horror from the World of Darkness because we have so many sourcebooks that give so many answers, it's easy for a play to say, "Oh, I know what that is," like you mention. As well, I think readers feel a sense of ownership over a world when they invest it with their own imagination, as opposed to having the author dictate everything to them.
About the religion. The two factions are quite evocative of the Circle of the Crone and Lancea Sanctum covenants in Vampire: The Requiem, a book you co-authored. Do you think that religious practices are the most successful tools leaders can use to rally and factionalize people in this day and age? Or that the focus on religious frontlines is perhaps a by-product of the sheer longevity of the unvisible feuds, in the same way the Catholic Church is one of the oldest institutions in the world?
While I will certainly acknowledge the excesses of organized religion, I'm not so cynical as to see religion as purely a tool of manipulation. That's really what the book is about: Brandon's struggle with faith and his ultimate failure to be able to make the leap and trust something that he hopes is larger than himself. Vampire trades in those themes as well, and it uses religious institutions in a similar way. No matter what their names or individual dogmas, every organization in the World of Darkness, spiritual or secular, has its earnest adherents and its manipulators. Narcisse represented the worst of those manipulators and Wyckham represented the best of the faithful, and even though Brandon ultimately defeats Narcisse as a person, he fails to overcome her venality spiritually.
The narrator accumulates flaws of character: misogynist, racist, irresponsible. Even though he does not explicitly look to hurt other human beings, his excesses ultimately make at least one true innocent victim. Plus, some parallels could be drawn between the demimonde in the novel and nightlife in our world. Did you want to write a moral tale about the life of a binge drinker/partygoer?
Without getting maudlin, this was a book about things I've done and failures I've had and mistakes I've made more than once, yes. It's not necessarily about the evils of booze and partying specifically, it's about how small and myopic a life can be without the presence of something that offers a greater purpose. It doesn't have to be God or morality that fills that role, but I think everyone has a great existential question at some point, and answering that question with, "Fuck it, let's get loaded" isn't a real answer and invariably results in the abandonment of the self.
Please be the “hipster douche” (*) and tell us what music to listen to while reading the novel.
You know, for a long time, I had kept the playlist in my iTunes, but I think the time for that has gone. Music is a pretty transient thing in terms of this book, and if the story happened now, none of the songs would be the same as they were when I wrote it six years ago. I remember reading an interview with Bret Easton Ellis in which someone asked him why he made so many popular culture and brand name references in his work and wouldn't they end up making the book feel dated. His response was that that was the intent, that there was something beautiful about the book becoming progressively more obsolete as time went by, that it really lent the whole thing a sense of a moment in time. There are a few songs and bands in there called out specifically, but as much as I love music, I didn't want the book to be about music. By contrast to Bret Easton Ellis' comments, I read China Mieville's King Rat a while back and I couldn't ever get into the book itself because it felt like an evangelical pamphlet for drum & bass. Kind of like I want readers to fill in their own factions for the demimonde, I want readers to plug in a lot of their own music, too, so that every reading is different.
(*) quote from the book
Read also this older interview with Justin.
About the religion. The two factions are quite evocative of the Circle of the Crone and Lancea Sanctum covenants in Vampire: The Requiem, a book you co-authored. Do you think that religious practices are the most successful tools leaders can use to rally and factionalize people in this day and age? Or that the focus on religious frontlines is perhaps a by-product of the sheer longevity of the unvisible feuds, in the same way the Catholic Church is one of the oldest institutions in the world?
While I will certainly acknowledge the excesses of organized religion, I'm not so cynical as to see religion as purely a tool of manipulation. That's really what the book is about: Brandon's struggle with faith and his ultimate failure to be able to make the leap and trust something that he hopes is larger than himself. Vampire trades in those themes as well, and it uses religious institutions in a similar way. No matter what their names or individual dogmas, every organization in the World of Darkness, spiritual or secular, has its earnest adherents and its manipulators. Narcisse represented the worst of those manipulators and Wyckham represented the best of the faithful, and even though Brandon ultimately defeats Narcisse as a person, he fails to overcome her venality spiritually.
The narrator accumulates flaws of character: misogynist, racist, irresponsible. Even though he does not explicitly look to hurt other human beings, his excesses ultimately make at least one true innocent victim. Plus, some parallels could be drawn between the demimonde in the novel and nightlife in our world. Did you want to write a moral tale about the life of a binge drinker/partygoer?
Without getting maudlin, this was a book about things I've done and failures I've had and mistakes I've made more than once, yes. It's not necessarily about the evils of booze and partying specifically, it's about how small and myopic a life can be without the presence of something that offers a greater purpose. It doesn't have to be God or morality that fills that role, but I think everyone has a great existential question at some point, and answering that question with, "Fuck it, let's get loaded" isn't a real answer and invariably results in the abandonment of the self.
Please be the “hipster douche” (*) and tell us what music to listen to while reading the novel.
You know, for a long time, I had kept the playlist in my iTunes, but I think the time for that has gone. Music is a pretty transient thing in terms of this book, and if the story happened now, none of the songs would be the same as they were when I wrote it six years ago. I remember reading an interview with Bret Easton Ellis in which someone asked him why he made so many popular culture and brand name references in his work and wouldn't they end up making the book feel dated. His response was that that was the intent, that there was something beautiful about the book becoming progressively more obsolete as time went by, that it really lent the whole thing a sense of a moment in time. There are a few songs and bands in there called out specifically, but as much as I love music, I didn't want the book to be about music. By contrast to Bret Easton Ellis' comments, I read China Mieville's King Rat a while back and I couldn't ever get into the book itself because it felt like an evangelical pamphlet for drum & bass. Kind of like I want readers to fill in their own factions for the demimonde, I want readers to plug in a lot of their own music, too, so that every reading is different.
(*) quote from the book
Read also this older interview with Justin.
Worlds of Darkness 8: Q&A MMO panel at the Grand Masquerade 2011
I was present Saturday, September 17th at the Q&A MMO panel in the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans. Reynir Harðarson (creative director) and Chris McDonough (senior producer) gave little bits of information here and there and answered questions and queries from the assembly.
My notes, below, have been edited Saturday 24th to include my comments. I used quote marks for clarity purpose; these are not exact quotes.
- High-level design principles
"Before the advent of computer gaming, games were multiplayer. The trend is a return to that. True human interaction is most interesting."
"You can play very casually -e.g. like Magic:The Gathering."
"The game will feature external access
from the Web."
- Scope of the game
"Vampires only initially, no other critters (otherwise shallow, lack of depth). Caitiffs are not part of the original game."
CCP has confirmed that, at start, the game will only feature the seven clans from the 1991 Camarilla. Werewolves or mages may be present as part of the occult background, but only as non-playing characters. It makes sense to focus on a small part of the World of Darkness (WoD) and to do it right before expanding the scope. The pen-and-paper game started that way. The print collection provides a template for a development roadmap. While adding layers of systems to the depth of the game, CCP just needs to make sure every one is properly "corified" so as to be fully compatible with potential developments in scope.
- Game mechanics design
"Live action roleplaying (LARP) inspiration for systems."
This neatly answers my question about the core gameplay model for this game. Eve Online had Elite or Freelancer. World of Darkness, the MMO, has the Mind's Eye Theatre game line. We will gather, we will chat, we will plot. There is a model for that, and it functions well -ask the thousand or so Larpers who attended the Grand Masquerade.
"It is possible to gain influence without fighting anyone. You can fight stuff, but it is not the only way."
"You have to make friends."
"There is some metaplot, but it
unfolds differently."
Chris: "player-driven metaplot". This was an answer
to a player demanding some story.
"There are non-playing characters (NPCs)."
This was an answer to a question by Justin Achilli, former developer at CCP and currently in charge of the open development process with the V20 Companion Book. It looked like an inside joke question, however I am going to guess it might have been based on an actual discussion where Justin would have advocated the removal of non-playing characters. Only players (in two meanings of the word) might have been able to fulfill a number of functions such as dialogue and unique in-game appearance.
"The choice was difficult but the other options (like playing mortals during the day) were rejected: permanent nighttime."
The developers do not want to prevent the players from playing the characters dearest to them half of the day. Makes sense. It does not even prevent CCP from introducing daytime in the future as another shard with passageways into the nighttime shard or something like that.
"Havens."
Hopefully with a way to design them.
Perhaps CCP could try to crowdsource part of the design of some elements of what constitutes a city to the community? I can imagine people from Mexico, for example, building some Elysium in Mexico City with a housing tool otherwise used for havens. I would trust them to add more local flavor than CCP ever could.
And what about devising a program to partner with real world outlets, like nightclubs (advertising revenue for CCP, added content to the World of Darkness)?
A player requested that the use of Dementation powers could impact the interface of players of the affected characters, if I understood well. At least graphical effects. "We have systems for that."
- New player experience and character life cycle
"Everyone starts as a mortal. You cannot be Embraced against your will."
If a player tries to Embrace you, you will have the possibility to refuse. It means you can probably choose your Sire and your Clan. If I understood correctly the answer, it also implied that Embraces are player-made, with multiple consequences:
- you will have a hard time accessing the most exciting part of the game if you like to play MMOs without ever talking to other players; the socialization incentive this system provides will help form the first social structures;
- there can be systems using genealogy, both in and out of game.
- Player versus player combat (PvP)
"Attacking other players lowers your Humanity and a low Humanity allows other players to attack you."
This control mechanism might naturally entice players to segregate themselves according to their Humanity rating.
"PvP is very different (from what I don't remember), smoother and more restrictive."
"You can die permanently – including vampires."
Like for the Embrace, permadeath appears to be a matter of choice. It would make sense to carefully craft a set of guarantees around it. Just ask any Eve Online player who lost his shiny ship to a wave of lag. You do want the players to be able to evade permadeath by following specified courses of action.
Permadeath does not need to mean the loss will hurt you as much as would, for example, the loss of your character in Eve Online. There are ways to make it more palatable to players, as I previously pointed out. If the player can come back as another vampire, possibly even of lower Generation, it can offset the loss of all his contacts, wealth, boons and other assets. After all, CCP does want to kill characters, not to lose customers.
"Diablerie and Generation under discussion."
Generation is more troublesome than Diablerie if the playerbase Embraces itself, if you wish to stick with the canon. You would probably need to renounce the limit on Fifteenth Generation.
Plus, a system with player-run Embraces set in the Old World of Darkness would put new players at a heavier and heavier disadvantage as time goes by. Blood Potency, as a replacement or a complement to Generation, could solve this issue.
EDIT: Chris says a little bit more in an interview with Machinima.com. Generation could end up being the result of your in-game activies, like levels in Diku-type MMOs.
- Roleplaying and maturity
"This is not forced roleplaying game but emergent. The interests of player and character converge: that is roleplaying."
I hope they entirely remove static quests, using other devices to retain players who like to farm.
Good luck to them for that.
There will be tons of abuse in the game, if only because betrayals and character assassinations are part of the eternal war vampires wage against each other, and accepting with good grace the loss of a character in a contemporary world, who looks like a cooler version of yourself, will not come easily to many players. I think that, like in Eve Online, reputation will be everything.
- System requirements
"World events: in."
- Game objects and world setting"There are non-playing characters (NPCs)."
This was an answer to a question by Justin Achilli, former developer at CCP and currently in charge of the open development process with the V20 Companion Book. It looked like an inside joke question, however I am going to guess it might have been based on an actual discussion where Justin would have advocated the removal of non-playing characters. Only players (in two meanings of the word) might have been able to fulfill a number of functions such as dialogue and unique in-game appearance.
"The choice was difficult but the other options (like playing mortals during the day) were rejected: permanent nighttime."
The developers do not want to prevent the players from playing the characters dearest to them half of the day. Makes sense. It does not even prevent CCP from introducing daytime in the future as another shard with passageways into the nighttime shard or something like that.
"Havens."
Hopefully with a way to design them.
"One big huge community, multiple cities."
"No duplicates, there are differences between each city."
If I understood well (really not sure about this one), you can start the game in the WoD reflection of your real life city and try to plot your way to Princedom there (or elsewhere).Perhaps CCP could try to crowdsource part of the design of some elements of what constitutes a city to the community? I can imagine people from Mexico, for example, building some Elysium in Mexico City with a housing tool otherwise used for havens. I would trust them to add more local flavor than CCP ever could.
And what about devising a program to partner with real world outlets, like nightclubs (advertising revenue for CCP, added content to the World of Darkness)?
A player requested that the use of Dementation powers could impact the interface of players of the affected characters, if I understood well. At least graphical effects. "We have systems for that."
- New player experience and character life cycle
"Everyone starts as a mortal. You cannot be Embraced against your will."
If a player tries to Embrace you, you will have the possibility to refuse. It means you can probably choose your Sire and your Clan. If I understood correctly the answer, it also implied that Embraces are player-made, with multiple consequences:
- you will have a hard time accessing the most exciting part of the game if you like to play MMOs without ever talking to other players; the socialization incentive this system provides will help form the first social structures;
- there can be systems using genealogy, both in and out of game.
"Unique characters."
Already the case in Eve Online, graphically speaking.
Already the case in Eve Online, graphically speaking.
"The standard character sheet is similar to the one in the RPG."
Five-dot skills fit nicely with Eve Online's five-level skill system.- Player versus player combat (PvP)
"You should never be totally safe."
Like in Eve Online. You can attack everybody everywhere, but there are consequences. "Attacking other players lowers your Humanity and a low Humanity allows other players to attack you."
This control mechanism might naturally entice players to segregate themselves according to their Humanity rating.
"PvP is very different (from what I don't remember), smoother and more restrictive."
"You can die permanently – including vampires."
Like for the Embrace, permadeath appears to be a matter of choice. It would make sense to carefully craft a set of guarantees around it. Just ask any Eve Online player who lost his shiny ship to a wave of lag. You do want the players to be able to evade permadeath by following specified courses of action.
Permadeath does not need to mean the loss will hurt you as much as would, for example, the loss of your character in Eve Online. There are ways to make it more palatable to players, as I previously pointed out. If the player can come back as another vampire, possibly even of lower Generation, it can offset the loss of all his contacts, wealth, boons and other assets. After all, CCP does want to kill characters, not to lose customers.
"Diablerie and Generation under discussion."
Generation is more troublesome than Diablerie if the playerbase Embraces itself, if you wish to stick with the canon. You would probably need to renounce the limit on Fifteenth Generation.
Plus, a system with player-run Embraces set in the Old World of Darkness would put new players at a heavier and heavier disadvantage as time goes by. Blood Potency, as a replacement or a complement to Generation, could solve this issue.
EDIT: Chris says a little bit more in an interview with Machinima.com. Generation could end up being the result of your in-game activies, like levels in Diku-type MMOs.
- Roleplaying and maturity
"This is not forced roleplaying game but emergent. The interests of player and character converge: that is roleplaying."
I hope they entirely remove static quests, using other devices to retain players who like to farm.
"A staff lawyer is looking into the
implications of adult content. Characters in underwear are not allowed
in public spaces, you can do it in havens. Opening the possibility for
full nudity risks lowering the maturity of the game by opening venues of
abuse by kids, trolls, etc."
"Inappropriate character names can be reported, there will be bans on that ground."Good luck to them for that.
There will be tons of abuse in the game, if only because betrayals and character assassinations are part of the eternal war vampires wage against each other, and accepting with good grace the loss of a character in a contemporary world, who looks like a cooler version of yourself, will not come easily to many players. I think that, like in Eve Online, reputation will be everything.
- System requirements
Query about keeping minimum system requirements low.
Chris jokes "The game is done, we wait for machines to become powerful enough to run it."
"It's gonna run on the laptop."
Common sense. When World of Warcraft came out, the average machine was able to deal with cartoonish graphics. In two years time, even smartphones may be able to handle realistic graphics.
Also, not entirely untrue. Some Eve Online players reported losing their graphic card to the Incarna expansion (which uses the graphic engine common with WoD).
- Localization
"Epic localization system" called Cerberus... Same for Eve Online. (French version on the way!)
They also said:
"It's gonna run on the laptop."
Common sense. When World of Warcraft came out, the average machine was able to deal with cartoonish graphics. In two years time, even smartphones may be able to handle realistic graphics.
Also, not entirely untrue. Some Eve Online players reported losing their graphic card to the Incarna expansion (which uses the graphic engine common with WoD).
- Localization
"Epic localization system" called Cerberus... Same for Eve Online. (French version on the way!)
They also said:
"There will be more next year,
everything is not set in stone."
I urge you to check the post on Umbral Echoes for another take on this MMO panel.
Worlds of Darkness 7: communication
"Our tweets will blot out the sun
- We will chat in the dark"
Contemporary horror takes place in the future, because the future is now
The future World of Darkness (WoD) might well have a stronger cyberpunk flavor, if only because Earth 2009 is already a cyberpunk setting.
It also meets a design constraint in this game rooted in storytelling and roleplaying: communication and information need much more emphasis in a MMO than in a pen-and-paper game. If the game does not deliver communication and information tools on a level worthy of a cyberpunk-themed Matrix, the impracticality will hurt the community and the game, and the tools will be used all the same, only not through the game client and exclusively so -out of game communication will occur, there is no way around that.
The community is the added value and a fundamental feature of any MMO; you want to make sure that the players have all the means at their disposal to communicate between each other, to reach out to strangers and to feel connected to the community. The tools need to be able to cope with the numbers involved in any group gameplay the players want to take part in.
The Internet of Darkness: ubiquitous, safe
In Eve Online, every player can access multiple chat channels (local, corp, fleet, etc.) which, along with all other communication tools, can be deemed to be in-character. Instant communication throughout a whole star cluster does not seem out of place in a science-fiction setting featuring extremely advanced technology. But do we picture the vampires and werewolves of the 21st century communicating this way? We have to, as outlined above. The communication tools we use every day online are bound to be used more and more to help MMO players interact. This is one instance where function is all that matters.
The genre of the setting does not matter, in the end. World of Warcraft, a fantasy game, already offers chat and mail capabilities to the players. It does not break immersion (with genre in mind) too much, by integrating the mailing system into the game world (a post office service using physical mail boxes) and by dissociating the chat tool from the game world. WoD might use this method: 'wodmails', like evemails, would be part of the game world and considered to be encrypted emails, while chat would not and would not materialize in the game universe. On the other hand, it is possible that user interface designers manage to find a way to make chat channels look part of the game world in a plausible way. Mobile phones are ubiquitous nowadays, and their capabilities, which include discrete ear plugs and mics, can expand into the realms of face recognition and subvocalized conferencing.
You also cannot offer the possibility to hack into channels through in-game actions, besides social engineering. In-game instant messaging and emailing needs to be 100% safe and efficient, otherwise it will not be used for any serious business (as, of course, Internet vampires are to be regarded). Plotting will be so much easier than on the tabletop version when you had to physically move to the kitchen or the corridor to whisper secrets to your fellow conspirator without risking your other half-friends half-enemies learning about them.
Speaking? Over my dead keyboard!
The most basic communication takes place in the immediate surroundings of a character: let's say another character enters the street where mine lurks. I wish to greet him. Do I type a greeting or do I actually speak in my microphone? Software can alter any voice in real time (because, doh, the disturbance in the Force caused by all those baritone chicks) -"voice fonts" are announced for Incarna. Technology could also allow the characters to pronounce text typed by the players. But all this fancy stuff is probably not in the works, as it looks cool but not necessary. Plus it had better stay optional. If speaking becomes necessary to communicate, some people will have a hard time socializing: for example, disabled players, players who need to keep quiet to respect their non-gaming entourage and players with a strong accent (besides the wonderful French accent of course).
Vampire TV is on the way
In a typical World of Darkness roleplaying game, characters feel isolated. They can work with small group of like-minded individuals but stay mostly oblivious of the earth-shattering occult events taking place in the country next door. The very definition of 'occult' precludes any concept of 'public'. Isolation and fear are rampant. For most of the characters, there is no secret TV channel broadcasting news about the occult world. Now, I bet there will be one such outlet, albeit primarily player-supported, in the MMO. Eve Online has its TV, its radios, its podcasts. "Hidden media" will become an integral part of the user-generated half of World of Darkness, making it much more different from the tabletop version we experienced.
The upcoming delivery of the New Eden communication platform for Eve Online and DUST 514 will certainly give us a first taste of what could be in store for WoD.
The fourth power
Players communicate, but what about the peculiar relationship between supernatural denizens of the World of Darkness and the media? Their continuing existence depends upon their hidden societies being kept away from the spotlights. Getting some kind of control over media outlets seems like a good if risky way to ensure secrecy.
The game might provide us with mechanics to try and become the media mafia or buy its services, something that would allow the mastermind to bend the rules of aggression to his or her advantage (ignoring transgressions of the Masquerade for example), but could also backfire in a very bloody way (some creatures frown upon the media being toyed with; other creatures could infiltrate the media organization and plot against the mastermind). The equivalent of Eve Online's high sec wars, perhaps.
In any case, in the World of Darkness, you hide from the media or you make it your weapon, but you do not ignore its baleful eyes.
- We will chat in the dark"
Contemporary horror takes place in the future, because the future is now
The future World of Darkness (WoD) might well have a stronger cyberpunk flavor, if only because Earth 2009 is already a cyberpunk setting.
It also meets a design constraint in this game rooted in storytelling and roleplaying: communication and information need much more emphasis in a MMO than in a pen-and-paper game. If the game does not deliver communication and information tools on a level worthy of a cyberpunk-themed Matrix, the impracticality will hurt the community and the game, and the tools will be used all the same, only not through the game client and exclusively so -out of game communication will occur, there is no way around that.
The community is the added value and a fundamental feature of any MMO; you want to make sure that the players have all the means at their disposal to communicate between each other, to reach out to strangers and to feel connected to the community. The tools need to be able to cope with the numbers involved in any group gameplay the players want to take part in.
The Internet of Darkness: ubiquitous, safe
In Eve Online, every player can access multiple chat channels (local, corp, fleet, etc.) which, along with all other communication tools, can be deemed to be in-character. Instant communication throughout a whole star cluster does not seem out of place in a science-fiction setting featuring extremely advanced technology. But do we picture the vampires and werewolves of the 21st century communicating this way? We have to, as outlined above. The communication tools we use every day online are bound to be used more and more to help MMO players interact. This is one instance where function is all that matters.
The genre of the setting does not matter, in the end. World of Warcraft, a fantasy game, already offers chat and mail capabilities to the players. It does not break immersion (with genre in mind) too much, by integrating the mailing system into the game world (a post office service using physical mail boxes) and by dissociating the chat tool from the game world. WoD might use this method: 'wodmails', like evemails, would be part of the game world and considered to be encrypted emails, while chat would not and would not materialize in the game universe. On the other hand, it is possible that user interface designers manage to find a way to make chat channels look part of the game world in a plausible way. Mobile phones are ubiquitous nowadays, and their capabilities, which include discrete ear plugs and mics, can expand into the realms of face recognition and subvocalized conferencing.
You also cannot offer the possibility to hack into channels through in-game actions, besides social engineering. In-game instant messaging and emailing needs to be 100% safe and efficient, otherwise it will not be used for any serious business (as, of course, Internet vampires are to be regarded). Plotting will be so much easier than on the tabletop version when you had to physically move to the kitchen or the corridor to whisper secrets to your fellow conspirator without risking your other half-friends half-enemies learning about them.
Speaking? Over my dead keyboard!
The most basic communication takes place in the immediate surroundings of a character: let's say another character enters the street where mine lurks. I wish to greet him. Do I type a greeting or do I actually speak in my microphone? Software can alter any voice in real time (because, doh, the disturbance in the Force caused by all those baritone chicks) -"voice fonts" are announced for Incarna. Technology could also allow the characters to pronounce text typed by the players. But all this fancy stuff is probably not in the works, as it looks cool but not necessary. Plus it had better stay optional. If speaking becomes necessary to communicate, some people will have a hard time socializing: for example, disabled players, players who need to keep quiet to respect their non-gaming entourage and players with a strong accent (besides the wonderful French accent of course).
Vampire TV is on the way
In a typical World of Darkness roleplaying game, characters feel isolated. They can work with small group of like-minded individuals but stay mostly oblivious of the earth-shattering occult events taking place in the country next door. The very definition of 'occult' precludes any concept of 'public'. Isolation and fear are rampant. For most of the characters, there is no secret TV channel broadcasting news about the occult world. Now, I bet there will be one such outlet, albeit primarily player-supported, in the MMO. Eve Online has its TV, its radios, its podcasts. "Hidden media" will become an integral part of the user-generated half of World of Darkness, making it much more different from the tabletop version we experienced.
The upcoming delivery of the New Eden communication platform for Eve Online and DUST 514 will certainly give us a first taste of what could be in store for WoD.
The fourth power
Players communicate, but what about the peculiar relationship between supernatural denizens of the World of Darkness and the media? Their continuing existence depends upon their hidden societies being kept away from the spotlights. Getting some kind of control over media outlets seems like a good if risky way to ensure secrecy.
The game might provide us with mechanics to try and become the media mafia or buy its services, something that would allow the mastermind to bend the rules of aggression to his or her advantage (ignoring transgressions of the Masquerade for example), but could also backfire in a very bloody way (some creatures frown upon the media being toyed with; other creatures could infiltrate the media organization and plot against the mastermind). The equivalent of Eve Online's high sec wars, perhaps.
In any case, in the World of Darkness, you hide from the media or you make it your weapon, but you do not ignore its baleful eyes.
Worlds of Darkness 6: day and night
The hard parts
There is an ongoing discussion thread in the Planet Vampire forum about how the designers of the World of Darkness MMO would deal with the "hard parts" of the setting. What elements of the pen-and-paper Vampire: The Requiem roleplaying game would be difficult to adapt into an MMO format?
Daylight makes vampires fun
The day and night cycle features in the list. The question boils down to: should the MMO include a day and night cycle with, well, both night and day, and should vampire characters be penalized during daytime at the risk of detracting from the fun of playing them?
Horror literature and tradition list sunlight as the supreme bane of vampirekind. Firstly, basking in sunlight is, for vampires, akin to taking a plunge into a pool of acid. Not something you want to try out, but these anathema creatures don't get that much of a choice in all those movies. Secondly, they feel compelled to sleep in lightproof refuges during daytime. These characteristics are part of the very definition of vampires. They serve a purpose in regard to the theme (symbols), to the story (find the coffin before the sun sets, get rescued by sunlight) and why not to the game (dynamic tension).
MMOs are open 23/7
Should this weakness significantly affect the way players can play their characters? Some argue that the "rule of fun" should prevail. The rule of fun dictates that, in a game, realism must take a back step to entertainment value. In Counter-Strike for example, a game which aims to recreate somewhat realistic ballistics, wounded characters are not incapacitated in any fashion. In Eve Online, a ship with 1% structure left is still as efficient as the one fresh out of the assembly array. In the same spirit, in World of Darkness, the rule of fun could dictate that vampire characters should not be exposed half of the day to something that would penalize and impair them in a significant way.
Some kind of compromise can always be made. The vampires of the Kindred TV series are distinctly different from the vampires of Vampire: The Masquerade. If a vampire is playable at all time, it could be for one of the reasons below or any other:
a) there is only night ("Icelandic winter")
A little suspension of disbelief goes a long way to enhance fun. If World of Darkness is exclusively about vampires, the answer would be a no-brainer: night-time all over the place. Apart from, for example, a one hour daily maintenance period, labelled as "daytime", night would reign and ensure vampire characters are not hindered.
Even if mages or werewolves are part of the plans for the MMO, they have no fear of darkness. Eternal night would be quite thematic for a game set in a World of Darkness.
b) sunlight does not affect vampires ("it never did")
What if creatures such as prometheans (though a minor component of the World of Darkness) ever become part of the playable cast? How to reconcile the Divine Fire and eternal night? The weakness to sunlight would be dismissed as another of these myths surrounding the vampire condition, like White Wolf already chose to do with garlic allergy and cannot-enter-into-your-place-uninvited in their pen-and-paper games.
c) vampires have "alts" for daytime
Vampires could use mental powers to direct the actions of an "alt" (alternate character) during daytime, when their undead bodies rest in some basement. Ghouls, mortals bound by the mystical power of a vampire's blood, make good choices. Vampire-possessed ghouls would be slightly more powerful than vanilla humans, but not as formidable as vampires.
While interesting on paper, this solution would deprive some players of the possibility to directly play vampires due to conflicting schedules, a most frustrating proposition. Also, playstyles are playstyles, and some players will just scoff at the idea of playing a ghoul.
d) daytime repels vampires to ghettos
The night belongs to vampires. If there is only night, vampires lose a part of what makes them special. What if vampires can shrug off the need to sleep and survive in daylight, but their monstrous nature becomes apparent to all (burnt skin, shrivelled flesh), forcing them to hide in the darkest of alleys to avoid breaches of the Masquerade (enforced the CONCORD way)? The mortal world would become forbidden to them half of the day, but they would still be able to find poor sustenance in the worst and most secluded slums of the city, and to congregate in subterranean places.
Vampires: capes or no capes?
Compromising to abide by the rule of fun might be necessary, but hopefully game designers will make sure the vampire theme retains the symbolic components which resonate in our reptilian brains. Vampires in the shop mall at noon? No, thanks! Getting rid of the sun vulnerability altogether would lessen the intensity of the Requiem, the vampire's journey into the endless night. For the same reason I think that "taming" werewolves would destroy part of what makes a werewolf an interesting monster: a creature with urges it cannot fully repress. Each supernatural creature has characteristics that define its very nature. Making the vampires into blood-sucking super-villains, or werewolves into shapeshifting shamans, does not add to their appeal, on the contrary.
So, even if perma-night were to become the rule in World of Darkness, I hope the threat of the sun would still be used as a reminder that the vampire's continuing existence is stolen and that the very universe frowns upon it. I hope our mortal characters will be able to search for the resting places of vampires. I hope there will be times our vampire characters will run in the streets, desperate because their refuge has been located and they need another resting place within five minutes. I hope our mage characters will be able to carry attacks on the resting places of vampires at noon, provided they managed to locate them -even if it means that the attack is not played out but carried during server maintenance, leaving the vampire to deal with the consequences when he logs back to the game. Sunlight should be embraced as a tool for exciting adventures. I am sure it could be as fun for vampire players to avoid the sun as for hunters to hurry before the sun sets down.
You would not want to miss a good ominous sunset, would you? You know monsters are going to crawl out of their basements, and you are frightened because you are running out of time. But, if the sun never goes up, then the sun never sets. And that would be a shame.
There is an ongoing discussion thread in the Planet Vampire forum about how the designers of the World of Darkness MMO would deal with the "hard parts" of the setting. What elements of the pen-and-paper Vampire: The Requiem roleplaying game would be difficult to adapt into an MMO format?
Daylight makes vampires fun
The day and night cycle features in the list. The question boils down to: should the MMO include a day and night cycle with, well, both night and day, and should vampire characters be penalized during daytime at the risk of detracting from the fun of playing them?
Horror literature and tradition list sunlight as the supreme bane of vampirekind. Firstly, basking in sunlight is, for vampires, akin to taking a plunge into a pool of acid. Not something you want to try out, but these anathema creatures don't get that much of a choice in all those movies. Secondly, they feel compelled to sleep in lightproof refuges during daytime. These characteristics are part of the very definition of vampires. They serve a purpose in regard to the theme (symbols), to the story (find the coffin before the sun sets, get rescued by sunlight) and why not to the game (dynamic tension).
MMOs are open 23/7
Should this weakness significantly affect the way players can play their characters? Some argue that the "rule of fun" should prevail. The rule of fun dictates that, in a game, realism must take a back step to entertainment value. In Counter-Strike for example, a game which aims to recreate somewhat realistic ballistics, wounded characters are not incapacitated in any fashion. In Eve Online, a ship with 1% structure left is still as efficient as the one fresh out of the assembly array. In the same spirit, in World of Darkness, the rule of fun could dictate that vampire characters should not be exposed half of the day to something that would penalize and impair them in a significant way.
Some kind of compromise can always be made. The vampires of the Kindred TV series are distinctly different from the vampires of Vampire: The Masquerade. If a vampire is playable at all time, it could be for one of the reasons below or any other:
a) there is only night ("Icelandic winter")
A little suspension of disbelief goes a long way to enhance fun. If World of Darkness is exclusively about vampires, the answer would be a no-brainer: night-time all over the place. Apart from, for example, a one hour daily maintenance period, labelled as "daytime", night would reign and ensure vampire characters are not hindered.
Even if mages or werewolves are part of the plans for the MMO, they have no fear of darkness. Eternal night would be quite thematic for a game set in a World of Darkness.
b) sunlight does not affect vampires ("it never did")
What if creatures such as prometheans (though a minor component of the World of Darkness) ever become part of the playable cast? How to reconcile the Divine Fire and eternal night? The weakness to sunlight would be dismissed as another of these myths surrounding the vampire condition, like White Wolf already chose to do with garlic allergy and cannot-enter-into-your-place-uninvited in their pen-and-paper games.
c) vampires have "alts" for daytime
Vampires could use mental powers to direct the actions of an "alt" (alternate character) during daytime, when their undead bodies rest in some basement. Ghouls, mortals bound by the mystical power of a vampire's blood, make good choices. Vampire-possessed ghouls would be slightly more powerful than vanilla humans, but not as formidable as vampires.
While interesting on paper, this solution would deprive some players of the possibility to directly play vampires due to conflicting schedules, a most frustrating proposition. Also, playstyles are playstyles, and some players will just scoff at the idea of playing a ghoul.
d) daytime repels vampires to ghettos
The night belongs to vampires. If there is only night, vampires lose a part of what makes them special. What if vampires can shrug off the need to sleep and survive in daylight, but their monstrous nature becomes apparent to all (burnt skin, shrivelled flesh), forcing them to hide in the darkest of alleys to avoid breaches of the Masquerade (enforced the CONCORD way)? The mortal world would become forbidden to them half of the day, but they would still be able to find poor sustenance in the worst and most secluded slums of the city, and to congregate in subterranean places.
Vampires: capes or no capes?
Compromising to abide by the rule of fun might be necessary, but hopefully game designers will make sure the vampire theme retains the symbolic components which resonate in our reptilian brains. Vampires in the shop mall at noon? No, thanks! Getting rid of the sun vulnerability altogether would lessen the intensity of the Requiem, the vampire's journey into the endless night. For the same reason I think that "taming" werewolves would destroy part of what makes a werewolf an interesting monster: a creature with urges it cannot fully repress. Each supernatural creature has characteristics that define its very nature. Making the vampires into blood-sucking super-villains, or werewolves into shapeshifting shamans, does not add to their appeal, on the contrary.
So, even if perma-night were to become the rule in World of Darkness, I hope the threat of the sun would still be used as a reminder that the vampire's continuing existence is stolen and that the very universe frowns upon it. I hope our mortal characters will be able to search for the resting places of vampires. I hope there will be times our vampire characters will run in the streets, desperate because their refuge has been located and they need another resting place within five minutes. I hope our mage characters will be able to carry attacks on the resting places of vampires at noon, provided they managed to locate them -even if it means that the attack is not played out but carried during server maintenance, leaving the vampire to deal with the consequences when he logs back to the game. Sunlight should be embraced as a tool for exciting adventures. I am sure it could be as fun for vampire players to avoid the sun as for hunters to hurry before the sun sets down.
You would not want to miss a good ominous sunset, would you? You know monsters are going to crawl out of their basements, and you are frightened because you are running out of time. But, if the sun never goes up, then the sun never sets. And that would be a shame.
Worlds of Darkness 5: market and currency
A market to optimise game fun
In Eve Online, like in the real world, money matters a lot. (If you don't think it does, please grab your wallet and get in touch with me asap.) It facilitates life in a big way. "Isk" provides access to ships and modules, ammo, skillbooks, clones, fuel, minerals, mercenaries, safe passage. On a strategic scale, it allows alliances to buy the materials to build titans, motherships or outposts, and to reimburse ships lost to enemies. On a personal scale, it allows dedicated players to buy plenty of shiny toys and gadgets to their characters. It even allows a player to acquire skilled characters. Isk is a measure of success and freedom and, though it does not equate with fun, it does help.
In contrast, in the pen-and-paper World of Darkness, money does not matter that much. It does not buy the truly important stuff. Elder vampires or werewolves scoff at it; they don't need to buy shiny toys, they are deadly on their own. Sure, money can come handy sometimes, but there is no way you will be able to use your cash to buy blood or to bribe a spirit. Some things are just more precious than money and, frankly, money also makes you into a target. In the context of a war between supernatural creatures, money is just an asset among many.
CCP, by all accounts, seems satisfied with the current business model of Eve Online. This system is, at its core and origin, subscription-based. You pay a subscription, you play. You can pay your subscription time with a straightforward bank debit or with game time cards. Game time cards are distributed by stores which buy them from CCP. At this point, the system strays from the dominant Western MMO subscription-based model. Game time cards can be converted into game objects (called PLEX) and sold for isk to other players, effectively introducing legit RMT (real money transactions) into the game. It allows players with a lot of time on their hands to play for free by selling their isk to players willing to spend real money on game time cards... for example, one hundred thousand dollars according to The Mittani. The system optimises income from the playerbase far more than a classic subscription model (excluding poor players and not exploiting rich ones beyond the multi-accounts phenomenon) would allow. After all, some people are very rich and only the gambling industry seems to consistently accept the challenge of entertaining them for millions. Thus, it makes sense for us to expect CCP to reuse this business model with World of Darkness, in order to cater to both the penniless students and the aluminium magnates, and every shade of wealth and free time in-between.
My kingdom for a PLEX
The question is: which currency would we use to acquire in game the WoD equivalent of a PLEX, and base an economy around? We need a system to acquire this currency, a system to trade it and, of course, we need this currency to be actually useful for both groups of players (replacing losses) and individual players (shiny toys). What is the new isk? Here are some options.
Dollar
A suggested above, dollars or euros are not something I expect a vampire or a mage to really care about. Nevertheless, money is a concept you do not need to explain to anybody.
- Acquisition: characters could grab instant cash by taking part into heists, robberies and bank attacks; they could also gain access to regular income, by investing into companies for example, provided they still have a legal existence.
- Trade: a virtual Wall Street environment will do the trick.
- Utility (replace losses): supernatural wars could be made by proxies and money could be needed to pay these proxies, mercenary thugs or corrupt politicians.
- Utility (shiny toys): cars, planes, mansions, security systems, retinue, etc.
Influence
In a social environment like the World of Darkness, what matters is sometimes not what you are but who you know.
- Acquisition: characters could earn influence points by performing the equivalent of Eve Online's missions and ratting.
- Trade: the most powerful non-playing characters could broker influence and act as notaries while people and organisations exchange favours.
- Utility (replace losses): as for money. Influence points would allow to temporarily acquire the services of pawns, the fodder of every supernatural war.
- Utility (shiny toys): earning influence points would give access to special items and services (the nature of which would be linked to your creature type and allegiances), in a fashion similar to Faction stores in Eve Online.
Essence
The physical incarnation of supernatural power can come by many names, but Essence, rather than Mana, seems to me to be a good catch-all.
- Acquisition: for example, a vampire could transform 1 Blood point into 1 Essence point by spending 1 Willpower point. Blood could be acquired by hunting mortal preys and Willpower could be acquired by fulfilling one's Virtues and Vices in story-heavy gameplay. Werewolves would get Essence out of the spirits they hunt and kill. Hunters would get it from supernatural victimes. Et cetera.
- Trade: supernatural marketplaces seem difficult to integrate in an isolationist and secrecy-shrouded environment. Strange rituals might be devised and designed to replace the market.
- Utility (replace losses): wars would result in aggravated wounds, lots of them. The only way to heal them quickly would be the use of Essence.
- Utility (shiny toys): essence would fuel powerful rituals, infuse objects with magic, create exceptional servants (such as ghouls, servant spirits or wolf-blooded), etc.
In Eve Online, like in the real world, money matters a lot. (If you don't think it does, please grab your wallet and get in touch with me asap.) It facilitates life in a big way. "Isk" provides access to ships and modules, ammo, skillbooks, clones, fuel, minerals, mercenaries, safe passage. On a strategic scale, it allows alliances to buy the materials to build titans, motherships or outposts, and to reimburse ships lost to enemies. On a personal scale, it allows dedicated players to buy plenty of shiny toys and gadgets to their characters. It even allows a player to acquire skilled characters. Isk is a measure of success and freedom and, though it does not equate with fun, it does help.
In contrast, in the pen-and-paper World of Darkness, money does not matter that much. It does not buy the truly important stuff. Elder vampires or werewolves scoff at it; they don't need to buy shiny toys, they are deadly on their own. Sure, money can come handy sometimes, but there is no way you will be able to use your cash to buy blood or to bribe a spirit. Some things are just more precious than money and, frankly, money also makes you into a target. In the context of a war between supernatural creatures, money is just an asset among many.
CCP, by all accounts, seems satisfied with the current business model of Eve Online. This system is, at its core and origin, subscription-based. You pay a subscription, you play. You can pay your subscription time with a straightforward bank debit or with game time cards. Game time cards are distributed by stores which buy them from CCP. At this point, the system strays from the dominant Western MMO subscription-based model. Game time cards can be converted into game objects (called PLEX) and sold for isk to other players, effectively introducing legit RMT (real money transactions) into the game. It allows players with a lot of time on their hands to play for free by selling their isk to players willing to spend real money on game time cards... for example, one hundred thousand dollars according to The Mittani. The system optimises income from the playerbase far more than a classic subscription model (excluding poor players and not exploiting rich ones beyond the multi-accounts phenomenon) would allow. After all, some people are very rich and only the gambling industry seems to consistently accept the challenge of entertaining them for millions. Thus, it makes sense for us to expect CCP to reuse this business model with World of Darkness, in order to cater to both the penniless students and the aluminium magnates, and every shade of wealth and free time in-between.
My kingdom for a PLEX
The question is: which currency would we use to acquire in game the WoD equivalent of a PLEX, and base an economy around? We need a system to acquire this currency, a system to trade it and, of course, we need this currency to be actually useful for both groups of players (replacing losses) and individual players (shiny toys). What is the new isk? Here are some options.
Dollar
A suggested above, dollars or euros are not something I expect a vampire or a mage to really care about. Nevertheless, money is a concept you do not need to explain to anybody.
- Acquisition: characters could grab instant cash by taking part into heists, robberies and bank attacks; they could also gain access to regular income, by investing into companies for example, provided they still have a legal existence.
- Trade: a virtual Wall Street environment will do the trick.
- Utility (replace losses): supernatural wars could be made by proxies and money could be needed to pay these proxies, mercenary thugs or corrupt politicians.
- Utility (shiny toys): cars, planes, mansions, security systems, retinue, etc.
Influence
In a social environment like the World of Darkness, what matters is sometimes not what you are but who you know.
- Acquisition: characters could earn influence points by performing the equivalent of Eve Online's missions and ratting.
- Trade: the most powerful non-playing characters could broker influence and act as notaries while people and organisations exchange favours.
- Utility (replace losses): as for money. Influence points would allow to temporarily acquire the services of pawns, the fodder of every supernatural war.
- Utility (shiny toys): earning influence points would give access to special items and services (the nature of which would be linked to your creature type and allegiances), in a fashion similar to Faction stores in Eve Online.
Essence
The physical incarnation of supernatural power can come by many names, but Essence, rather than Mana, seems to me to be a good catch-all.
- Acquisition: for example, a vampire could transform 1 Blood point into 1 Essence point by spending 1 Willpower point. Blood could be acquired by hunting mortal preys and Willpower could be acquired by fulfilling one's Virtues and Vices in story-heavy gameplay. Werewolves would get Essence out of the spirits they hunt and kill. Hunters would get it from supernatural victimes. Et cetera.
- Trade: supernatural marketplaces seem difficult to integrate in an isolationist and secrecy-shrouded environment. Strange rituals might be devised and designed to replace the market.
- Utility (replace losses): wars would result in aggravated wounds, lots of them. The only way to heal them quickly would be the use of Essence.
- Utility (shiny toys): essence would fuel powerful rituals, infuse objects with magic, create exceptional servants (such as ghouls, servant spirits or wolf-blooded), etc.
Worlds of Darkness 4: stakes of death
You die, the end?
The World of Darkness is a meanie. It kills you in a dark alley, raises you from the dead and kills you again. If fear of dying does not linger in the back of players's heads as if they were lone women at night in Whitechapel in late 1888, the whole show might look like just a big superhero party.
Before suggesting ways to make death meaningful, it is necessary to evaluate what could be at stake, especially regarding the most precious commodities such as character experience and skills. The current Eve Online format gives each player three character slots by account, one of which can passively earn experience at any given time. What about giving to three characters per account the possibility to passively and simultaneously earn experience while creating two kinds of passive experience?
The first one would be the one we know: your main character, a supernatural creature or gifted mortal, earns experience, and he can lose some amount when he is defeated in combat or dies as described below, but the accumulated value of experience (the number of skillpoints in Eve Online parlance) can be transferred to a new main character. Let's dub it the Account Experience Pool.
The second kind of experience would be entirely losable on death. Your two secondary characters, mere mortals, would earn experience this way. If they live long enough, they can grow into formidable assets... but fragile ones. Let's call what they earn Fragile Experience.
More character slots on the account could allow the use of characters with low skills and no experience gains. Those would be the 'grog' of the game -in the Ars Magica roleplaying game, 'grog' are the supporting cast -the lowly guards.
Immortality
The concept of permadeath is a mythical dead horse beaten again and again by some of the players who enjoy player-versus-player combat. Even in Eve Online and Darkfall, which position themselves on the pitiless side of multiplayer gaming, there is no way for you to lose your character. The most you can lose is his or her belongings and some values on his or her character sheet. Developers do not want to alienate their customers, and who would not feel upset and disappointed after permanently losing a beloved character to a spike of lag or an exploit-based tactic?
However, there are no clones in the World of Darkness. Not yet! Each supernatural race might conceivably be given a way to escape Final Death, especially if designers accept to alter the current canon. Here is a set of propositions for the three 'main races'.
Vampires, even hacked into tiny pieces and sunburned, do not die. They just fall into torpor and begin to regenerate. Even diablerie (soul-sucking) only diminishes their Blood Potency, without permanently killing them. Provided somebody pours blood over them, they can regenerate more quickly.
Werecreatures, on the other hand, die. Except they can instantly reincarnate by merging their soul with another creature, provided the proper ritual is performed. For example, Joe the Werewolf would reincarnate inside a wolf, which would subsequently shapechange into same old Joe.
Mages could choose among a number of methods to avoid Final Death, including regeneration (Life Arcana), reincarnation (Mind, Spirit), cheating death (Fate, Space) and, of course, clones (Matter, Time) -here they are.
Forms of death
First of all, mortals die, and for good. And when a mortal you control dies, you lose everything you possessed through him or her: information, influence, resources, assets, access. If the mortal was not your main character, you also lose with him his accumulated experience (Fragile Experience). Mortals are the victims who pay the price for the actions of reckless supernatural masters. If the mortal was your main character (hunters, for example, are mortals), he can still die, but the Account Experience Pool is made available to the next character you will put in the main character slot.
Secondly, a World of Darkness is not Grand Theft Auto with fangs. Personal horror can touch the player if he knows he can lose his or her character to the Beast or the Abyss due to degeneration. If a character behaves like a monster, he can become a slave to dark passions without recourse. When the morality score (Humanity for vampires, Harmony for werewolves, etc.) reaches 0, the final price must be paid.
The character would then be retired from the account and become a raving monster, a non-playing character that escapes into the World of Darkness, to be found or hunted down and then put to the Final Death by any other character, possibly anywhere in the game world. Such a degeneration would deprive the player of the character's identity and effective control, but not of his accumulated experience (Account Experience Pool), which could be passed along to a new main character.
(Unprovoked attacks against other characters could thus entail meaningful consequences.)
The last 'form of death' I have in mind I am a bit unsure about. I would like it to be possible for player characters to create prisons (collective endeavours) and imprison captured player characters. Player-controlled guardians would be necessary and escapes would be possible, but I can see how difficult it would be to balance the system to make sure that recovering a captured character is not too frustrating nor slow. There are a great many potential issues with captures; depriving a player of the control over his character is a big no-no. But if a player can use other characters with his one account, and if guarding a prisoner is impossible for anything but a main character, with escape being easy if unattended for...
The system would aim to promote a sense of risk: players would need to choose whether to expose their bigger guns (their main character, the only one worth being captured) in any battle, risk a mortal with some Fragile Experience (avoiding the threat of degeneration) or just use a random thug ('grog') with no experience. Interesting stories could happen about supernatural creatures acting as baits, fights between a handful of them and a throng of mortals, organisations trading prisoners of war, players burning resources and secondary characters to rescue their main character, etc. Jacob Skinner from Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners would really enjoy the feature, for sure!
The World of Darkness is a meanie. It kills you in a dark alley, raises you from the dead and kills you again. If fear of dying does not linger in the back of players's heads as if they were lone women at night in Whitechapel in late 1888, the whole show might look like just a big superhero party.
Before suggesting ways to make death meaningful, it is necessary to evaluate what could be at stake, especially regarding the most precious commodities such as character experience and skills. The current Eve Online format gives each player three character slots by account, one of which can passively earn experience at any given time. What about giving to three characters per account the possibility to passively and simultaneously earn experience while creating two kinds of passive experience?
The first one would be the one we know: your main character, a supernatural creature or gifted mortal, earns experience, and he can lose some amount when he is defeated in combat or dies as described below, but the accumulated value of experience (the number of skillpoints in Eve Online parlance) can be transferred to a new main character. Let's dub it the Account Experience Pool.
The second kind of experience would be entirely losable on death. Your two secondary characters, mere mortals, would earn experience this way. If they live long enough, they can grow into formidable assets... but fragile ones. Let's call what they earn Fragile Experience.
More character slots on the account could allow the use of characters with low skills and no experience gains. Those would be the 'grog' of the game -in the Ars Magica roleplaying game, 'grog' are the supporting cast -the lowly guards.
Immortality
The concept of permadeath is a mythical dead horse beaten again and again by some of the players who enjoy player-versus-player combat. Even in Eve Online and Darkfall, which position themselves on the pitiless side of multiplayer gaming, there is no way for you to lose your character. The most you can lose is his or her belongings and some values on his or her character sheet. Developers do not want to alienate their customers, and who would not feel upset and disappointed after permanently losing a beloved character to a spike of lag or an exploit-based tactic?
However, there are no clones in the World of Darkness. Not yet! Each supernatural race might conceivably be given a way to escape Final Death, especially if designers accept to alter the current canon. Here is a set of propositions for the three 'main races'.
Vampires, even hacked into tiny pieces and sunburned, do not die. They just fall into torpor and begin to regenerate. Even diablerie (soul-sucking) only diminishes their Blood Potency, without permanently killing them. Provided somebody pours blood over them, they can regenerate more quickly.
Werecreatures, on the other hand, die. Except they can instantly reincarnate by merging their soul with another creature, provided the proper ritual is performed. For example, Joe the Werewolf would reincarnate inside a wolf, which would subsequently shapechange into same old Joe.
Mages could choose among a number of methods to avoid Final Death, including regeneration (Life Arcana), reincarnation (Mind, Spirit), cheating death (Fate, Space) and, of course, clones (Matter, Time) -here they are.
Forms of death
First of all, mortals die, and for good. And when a mortal you control dies, you lose everything you possessed through him or her: information, influence, resources, assets, access. If the mortal was not your main character, you also lose with him his accumulated experience (Fragile Experience). Mortals are the victims who pay the price for the actions of reckless supernatural masters. If the mortal was your main character (hunters, for example, are mortals), he can still die, but the Account Experience Pool is made available to the next character you will put in the main character slot.
Secondly, a World of Darkness is not Grand Theft Auto with fangs. Personal horror can touch the player if he knows he can lose his or her character to the Beast or the Abyss due to degeneration. If a character behaves like a monster, he can become a slave to dark passions without recourse. When the morality score (Humanity for vampires, Harmony for werewolves, etc.) reaches 0, the final price must be paid.
The character would then be retired from the account and become a raving monster, a non-playing character that escapes into the World of Darkness, to be found or hunted down and then put to the Final Death by any other character, possibly anywhere in the game world. Such a degeneration would deprive the player of the character's identity and effective control, but not of his accumulated experience (Account Experience Pool), which could be passed along to a new main character.
(Unprovoked attacks against other characters could thus entail meaningful consequences.)
The last 'form of death' I have in mind I am a bit unsure about. I would like it to be possible for player characters to create prisons (collective endeavours) and imprison captured player characters. Player-controlled guardians would be necessary and escapes would be possible, but I can see how difficult it would be to balance the system to make sure that recovering a captured character is not too frustrating nor slow. There are a great many potential issues with captures; depriving a player of the control over his character is a big no-no. But if a player can use other characters with his one account, and if guarding a prisoner is impossible for anything but a main character, with escape being easy if unattended for...
The system would aim to promote a sense of risk: players would need to choose whether to expose their bigger guns (their main character, the only one worth being captured) in any battle, risk a mortal with some Fragile Experience (avoiding the threat of degeneration) or just use a random thug ('grog') with no experience. Interesting stories could happen about supernatural creatures acting as baits, fights between a handful of them and a throng of mortals, organisations trading prisoners of war, players burning resources and secondary characters to rescue their main character, etc. Jacob Skinner from Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners would really enjoy the feature, for sure!
Worlds of Darkness 3: where is it
It all lies in the back of your brain
First of all, the "World of Darkness" is not a geographic notion. It is more like a situation or a feeling, one of dereliction and life -of a sort- in the abyss. Even when your character will triple lock the door, pour hot water into the bathtub and try to relax, he will not be able to dismiss the fact that the darkness is out there, gnawing at everything. So, if the MMO tries to stick with the concept of the World of Darkness as defined in the pen-and-paper game, it will present us with a world like ours, but with shadows stretching a bit longer, something inimical lingering in the air, a hint of despair and corruption permeating every city's skyline. No zombies in the mall, no elvish enclave, no space vampires, no mind-blasting psionic mutant super-villains. Just, to begin with, Mr. Smith looking forlorn, his personal finances teetering on the edge of a repossession nightmare, and Mrs. Smith carrying really unwholesome stuff in her handbag, but no one pays attention.
At the same time, (and this is a gut feeling) this vision caters to "serious roleplayers" who are only part of the traditional audience of White Wolf games. A large part of their customers, I believe, just enjoy playing high-powered, ass-kicking, supernatural creatures with their version of the American hero guilt syndrome. Nothing wrong here, this play style, though not the principal guide to the construction of the MMO, can be accommodated with.
Dark is the new black
There are some pictures ingrained in the mind of every White Wolf fan, thanks to artists such as Leif Jones, Christopher Shy, John Bolton, Larry MacDougall, Guy Davis, Timothy Bradstreet, among others; one such image is the ugly but thematically powerful cover picture of the first version of Chicago by Night, one of the very first books of the Vampire: The Masquerade line. Clark Mitchel's artwork features a vampire staked through the heart, falling down, the Hans Gruber way, from a skyscraper. That says it all: monsters in a modern setting, timeless evil and modern-day boardroom violence. (Nowadays the challenge would be to successfully mesh secret supernatural creatures with a world of social media and ubiquitous phone cameras. Once met, it might justify and rationalise the unique flavour of a World of Darkness with fast-moving hordes of lunatics spewing "fofofo" on passers-by. The Masquerade could be retitled the Joke, or the Game; "impressive Photoshop-fu, dude"; but I digress.)
So, all kinds of pictures come to mind, and the developer's task is to create the conditions for this dark landscape to come to life. First of all to build the abandoned slaughterhouses, sound-washed nightclubs, subterranean temples, glassy casinos, art galleries, sinister precincts, unwelcoming crack houses, unexplored caves, old sewers, 24/7 supermarkets, etc. Then to arrange the props, screw the bulbs and tune the shadows. And finally to unlock the door for your character to step in, capture the limelight and look like he just sprung out of a Most Wanted line-up, so that you can look at him and sense the fear and the loathing and just quack to yourself "man, I am the shit".
The World of Darkness will be in your ear too, playing with your nerves. Hopefully, there will be sound, there will be music, and there will be pacing and silence and sudden trepidation when silence is broken.
A tale of many cities
The World of Darkness is not on Google Maps but, still, the action needs to take place somewhere: in the dungeons of our time, as implied above.
It could certainly be in a huge city, let's call it Damnation City, like the city-building toolbox of the same name for Vampire: The Requiem. Indeed, the city is the nuclear setting unit of your typical vampire chronicle. There, you can have a Prince, perhaps about to get overthrown by dissenters, enemies trying to infiltrate the local society, etc. City denizens provide enough entertainment value for a vampire to live its whole undead existence there. Plus, it makes sense as a Dunbar's number-compatible unit for social interactions.
But it would not justify the "massive" aspect of the game, which can bring so much enjoyment. First of all, in my opinion, one megalopolis cannot justify being sprawling and huge enough to host hundreds of thousands of special people with fangs and spells and unusual diets, without stretching the definition of the setting from "contemporary horror" to "cyberpunk horror", thus diminishing its emotional impact (you relate more to stories that hit close to your home). At least conceptually, the setting needs to feature multiple cities.
City life is just part of the experience the World of Darkness can provide. For the rest, you need a world. If you have a world, you can have world-spanning conspiracies; you can have occult wars on a global level; you can have madmen proclaiming themselves King of the Night and sending squads of goons to quell opposition; you can have the powers that be constituting a cartel, an Inner Circle or whatever, and giving interviews to the New York Times.
Hardcore cooking about to take place
Even if we suspect what the ingredients are, there is a whole MMO mayonnaise waiting to be prepared here and no shortage of recipes. Which one would make the perfect fit? How does the nightclub relate to the city and the city to the larger world? How do we navigate from the places where we socialize (the nightclub) to the places where we live our random lives of darkness (the street)? If you have a clue, please tell.
First of all, the "World of Darkness" is not a geographic notion. It is more like a situation or a feeling, one of dereliction and life -of a sort- in the abyss. Even when your character will triple lock the door, pour hot water into the bathtub and try to relax, he will not be able to dismiss the fact that the darkness is out there, gnawing at everything. So, if the MMO tries to stick with the concept of the World of Darkness as defined in the pen-and-paper game, it will present us with a world like ours, but with shadows stretching a bit longer, something inimical lingering in the air, a hint of despair and corruption permeating every city's skyline. No zombies in the mall, no elvish enclave, no space vampires, no mind-blasting psionic mutant super-villains. Just, to begin with, Mr. Smith looking forlorn, his personal finances teetering on the edge of a repossession nightmare, and Mrs. Smith carrying really unwholesome stuff in her handbag, but no one pays attention.
At the same time, (and this is a gut feeling) this vision caters to "serious roleplayers" who are only part of the traditional audience of White Wolf games. A large part of their customers, I believe, just enjoy playing high-powered, ass-kicking, supernatural creatures with their version of the American hero guilt syndrome. Nothing wrong here, this play style, though not the principal guide to the construction of the MMO, can be accommodated with.
Dark is the new black
There are some pictures ingrained in the mind of every White Wolf fan, thanks to artists such as Leif Jones, Christopher Shy, John Bolton, Larry MacDougall, Guy Davis, Timothy Bradstreet, among others; one such image is the ugly but thematically powerful cover picture of the first version of Chicago by Night, one of the very first books of the Vampire: The Masquerade line. Clark Mitchel's artwork features a vampire staked through the heart, falling down, the Hans Gruber way, from a skyscraper. That says it all: monsters in a modern setting, timeless evil and modern-day boardroom violence. (Nowadays the challenge would be to successfully mesh secret supernatural creatures with a world of social media and ubiquitous phone cameras. Once met, it might justify and rationalise the unique flavour of a World of Darkness with fast-moving hordes of lunatics spewing "fofofo" on passers-by. The Masquerade could be retitled the Joke, or the Game; "impressive Photoshop-fu, dude"; but I digress.)
So, all kinds of pictures come to mind, and the developer's task is to create the conditions for this dark landscape to come to life. First of all to build the abandoned slaughterhouses, sound-washed nightclubs, subterranean temples, glassy casinos, art galleries, sinister precincts, unwelcoming crack houses, unexplored caves, old sewers, 24/7 supermarkets, etc. Then to arrange the props, screw the bulbs and tune the shadows. And finally to unlock the door for your character to step in, capture the limelight and look like he just sprung out of a Most Wanted line-up, so that you can look at him and sense the fear and the loathing and just quack to yourself "man, I am the shit".
The World of Darkness will be in your ear too, playing with your nerves. Hopefully, there will be sound, there will be music, and there will be pacing and silence and sudden trepidation when silence is broken.
A tale of many cities
The World of Darkness is not on Google Maps but, still, the action needs to take place somewhere: in the dungeons of our time, as implied above.
It could certainly be in a huge city, let's call it Damnation City, like the city-building toolbox of the same name for Vampire: The Requiem. Indeed, the city is the nuclear setting unit of your typical vampire chronicle. There, you can have a Prince, perhaps about to get overthrown by dissenters, enemies trying to infiltrate the local society, etc. City denizens provide enough entertainment value for a vampire to live its whole undead existence there. Plus, it makes sense as a Dunbar's number-compatible unit for social interactions.
But it would not justify the "massive" aspect of the game, which can bring so much enjoyment. First of all, in my opinion, one megalopolis cannot justify being sprawling and huge enough to host hundreds of thousands of special people with fangs and spells and unusual diets, without stretching the definition of the setting from "contemporary horror" to "cyberpunk horror", thus diminishing its emotional impact (you relate more to stories that hit close to your home). At least conceptually, the setting needs to feature multiple cities.
City life is just part of the experience the World of Darkness can provide. For the rest, you need a world. If you have a world, you can have world-spanning conspiracies; you can have occult wars on a global level; you can have madmen proclaiming themselves King of the Night and sending squads of goons to quell opposition; you can have the powers that be constituting a cartel, an Inner Circle or whatever, and giving interviews to the New York Times.
Hardcore cooking about to take place
Even if we suspect what the ingredients are, there is a whole MMO mayonnaise waiting to be prepared here and no shortage of recipes. Which one would make the perfect fit? How does the nightclub relate to the city and the city to the larger world? How do we navigate from the places where we socialize (the nightclub) to the places where we live our random lives of darkness (the street)? If you have a clue, please tell.
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