TL;DR VERSION: VAMPIRE CLANBOOK OPEN DEV COMING SOON! WATCH THE BLOGS! DON’T BE A DICK!
Much more long-winded and rambling version:
Wow, has it been a year already? Last time I was here, I was posting on whitewolfblogs.com, talking about blood magic and all sorts of crazy things. How time flies.
Sorry, got nostalgic for a moment. Let me try again.
Hey, all. Eddy here, your friendly neighborhood Vampire: The Masquerade developer. Now that Rites of the Blood is in everyone’s hands and they’re absorbing the blood-soaked goodness (and the latent mind control instructions I had embedded in the PDF — remember, the codeword is “Integration Jesus”), it’s time to shift focus and work on Lore of the Clans, previously The Clanbook, previously Blood Diaries of the Clans.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be redlining drafts of each Clan chapter and posting them online for folks to review. (“Redlining,” for those that don’t know our lingo, means I’ll be editing the first draft primarily with a focus on content, so the freelancer in question can revise accordingly.) As in previous years, I’ll be putting them up as Google Docs that anyone can comment on. I invite everyone to dive in and read up on them, and comment as you feel you need to! Just please keep it civil. I’d appreciate if everyone could direct their civil, insightful comments to the Google docs or the blog posts. I know folks like to discuss things on Facebook or the forums or G+ or wherever they’re comfortable, but it’s hard for me to see everything. If you have a cool discussion and drop a link to it as a comment on the blog, that works just as well to make sure I see it.
I should warn folks that there will be new material here and there in these drafts. I did ask the writers to stay pretty close to the existing material, but I also encouraged them to dig in and play with things to give new ideas and twists to the Clans. Sometimes, it’ll be too far. Other times, it’ll be too conservative. I ask that you keep an open mind with the new material and not reject it out of hand just because it’s new.
Another thing is that, odds are, your favorite thing isn’t going to be there. Even if we doubled the size of the book, it would be hard to get everything in, so I have to make hard decisions with each Clan. If you absolutely think something needs to go in, go ahead and bring it up, but I’m always going to start from the position of “no, there’s no room” and work from there. (Then again, I didn’t think we could fit infernalism into Rites of the Blood, and open development was a factor in getting a whole chapter of it added, so you never know!)
All that being said, I haven’t cracked open any of the manuscripts yet. I’ve got two in my inbox right now, and I expect a few more in the next day or so. The rest should trickle in as we’re all digging into the first set, so this should (theoretically) flow nicely over the next few weeks. It’s possible this could all go off the rails, leaving our bodies as twisted and charred corpses under the watery moonlight. But I’m excited to see what’s coming up, and I hope you are too!
Room for bloodlines inside it? Or just the 13 majors? If so, references to the bloodlines inside major clans would work fine, since he have a lot of Gangrel bloodlines and other odds. And make this deluxe… RotB deserved it much more than other deluxe Ks in V20 line. Keep the good work, last book was a cool one.
A lot of those (mostly the antitribu) were labelled as “clan variants” in V20 rather than bloodlines, which is a distinction I like.
I’d also like to see some of the variants within the clans listed, but I think including bloodlines is probably a bit much.
I have idly talked to Rich about something like a “Lore of the Fallen” touching on all of the key bloodlines (Salubri, Kiasyd, Gargoyles, etc.) if this one does well, but it’s all firmly in the “wouldn’t that be cool?” discussion stage. I expect it depends on how well this book does.
I have been wanting a bloodline book since second edition. This would be the best thing. Outside of the Salubri, most of the bloodlines have never had any solid treatment beyond whatever could be crammed into a 2-4-page spread.
A bloodlines book would be fantastic. So many of the bloodlines deserve the fleshing out treatment, and I would rather see them get the space they deserve than squashed up as a footnote, a sidebar, or a quick reference.
And Blood Brothers. Bloooooooooood Brothers. The bits/ritual in Rites of the Blood were awesome, but I crave more! 😉
A bloodline book would be awesome. Have been a bit jealous on W20 getting their Changing Breeds book.
There will be a little bit on key “bloodlines” (mainly the various antitribu), but the focus will primarily be on the core 13. As for making it deluxe, that’s all on the business end to decide, but since this is such a key book, I suspect there will be some special things in mind for it. 🙂
Bloodlines and Antitribu could be stretch goals.
Well, Antitribu are part of the outline, so that’s not an issue. Other Bloodlines being added presumes a Kickstarter that may or may not occur, so I’d rather focus on making the book under the assumption that this is all I’ll get. If a Kickstarter happens and we can add new material, and bloodlines make sense for that, awesome! 🙂
I’d say keep bloodlines for a book of their own so they can get proper coverage.
I’m eagerly waiting!
Do we get spoilers of who the various authors will be?
Alan Alexander, Ree Soesbee, Andrew Peregrine, Joshua Doetsch, Robert Weiland, Christopher Wilde, Filamena Young.
I’m excited to take part in the process. I had a lot of fun on both the openings I’ve taken part in and I find it rather satisfying to see something I’ve talked to you about or suggested in the book, weather it be in my own words or fancied up by another writer.
Hi Eddy.
I just wanted to say I tend to be critical and quite telegraphic on my posts. Please don’t take that as rudeness, for I do that with all my love.
In exchange, I promise to applaude the things I like.
I don’t mind brusque. I just ask that you keep things civil and not attack other people personally or be abusive. I’ll let you know if anyone steps over a line. 🙂
Considering I absolutely loved the open dev process that took place for Rites of the Blood? To say I’m stoked is an understatement. Bring it on!
On the subject of bloodlines, one of the things I loved in the By Night Studios met : masquerade was the addition of names and a bit of flavor for a number of minor bloodlines – city gangrel into Coyotes for example. Incorporating some of that lore so that it enters the tabletop corpus would be much appreciated.
As I mentioned, bloodlines will not really be a part of this book. Plus, the By Night Studios material is theirs, so Onyx Path would have to ask permission to use that. (Odds are we could work something out, but it’s an extra barrier to consider.)
What sources will you take into consideration? Will you keep continuity with the old clanbooks? Willl you take into considerations the changes made to the clans history in DAV20?
As an example a sidebar about the way Giovani degenerated into Giovanni namewise would great.
Continuity will be the same “fuzzy metaplot” that all V20 books have, but the writers are referencing both editions of the Clanbooks. The Dark Ages stuff was being written as my writers were writing this, but if it makes sense, I’ll see about synthesizing.
Yeah, I wasn’t expecting some huge backstory infusions considering the relativity of the V20-products. But it’s always good for continuity and atmosphere if the new materials(or old for that sake) don’t contradict each other too much.
Anyways, looking forward to the final product!