One year, one month, and one day from the day the writer mailing list for Blood and Smoke opened, the book’s text was locked down and sent for editing. That was Friday the 20th.
For those of you keeping track, that means we’re still on target for PDF release in November. The two places we could end up running over are the art and the editing itself.
I’d like to do another of my recaps, then talk about the road ahead. Just over a year ago, we put up our first open development post for B&S: the revised physical Disciplines. At the time, I was keen on open development but not sure how much to commit to. Posting the first three Disciplines was an experiment. Those powers evolved rapidly as you put them to the test, and there were a number of threads of test scenarios that were pretty interesting to read. Keeping up was hard work, but ultimately made the powers really good.
The raw enthusiasm took me somewhat by surprise. I wasn’t anticipating that people would be as interested as they were in pre-release stuff… even with v20 under my belt, I was still used to White Wolf’s model of developing books quietly and then springing them almost as surprises on players. I was overjoyed to see people digging into the new material.
I decided at that point that we’d put more powers up for playtest. After the Auspex, Animalism, and Dominate discussions, I decided to put all of them up. That was a significant commitment, but the clarifications and changes that were coming out of discussion were too good to pass up. And more than that, it was great to talk to people. Again, at White Wolf, I’d only been able to share my excitement about the line with my fellow employees. With open development came the chance to geek out about the little things as well as the big ones.
Then came Protean. Just about everything we’d put up had changed through the open process. With Protean, though, our first draft wasn’t quite right. It’s always been an oddball Discipline, but also a really fun one. The Protean threads on the forums were huge and contentious. Out of that, though, we produced a second draft. A stronger, better, more playable draft. No amount of internal discussion would have gotten us as far as that did. It proved that open development was a game changer.
That’s why, in March, I was kind of sad to announce the end of the open playtest (click here for that recap). From that point forward (coinciding with me reviewing the first drafts of the actual book), we were going to be going into preview mode. Still developing in the open, but no longer changing in response to feedback.
Well, by now you know that I didn’t stick to that. As two writer illnesses pushed back our release date, I continue posting material from the book. And I couldn’t really help myself. People made good suggestions, and I tweaked the material. All the way up until editing. The result has been a year-long open process, and it’s produced a better Vampire than I could have in the old days of princess-in-a-tower development.
So, with the manuscript complete and sent to editing, what now? For me, I’m going to be spending some time on other books. I have commitments to the Hunter and Demon lines to fulfill. For Mike Chaney, it means the continuation of the art process that we began in August. Mike is contracting the book’s art, and he’ll be reviewing it as it comes in. We need this book to look as good as it reads, as it plays, and we’re going to be using a mixture of old hands and new talent to get there.
In about a month, the manuscript will come back to me, freshly laundered by our editor. I’ll give it a last pass to resolve any prose issues she found, then pass it to Mike to lay out. Then comes the proofing process, wherein Mike, Rich, and I all go over the PDF through a few drafts before sending it on to CCP for approvals.
Once it’s been approved, that’s when the PDF goes on sale. If we follow our recent pattern, we’ll have the PDF available for a few weeks while we see if readers catch any little errors and while Rich reviews the PoD physical proofs. People who buy the PDF during this period will get a coupon for the PoD version, reducing the price of print + PDF to what it would have been if they’d been purchased together.
We’re not quite at the end of the line, but we’ve already had a long, strange trip. The book that my team and I gave a year of our lives to is almost real. That’s an amazing feeling. I’m glad that I’ve been able to share.
Very much looking forward to this. The open development process really helped me get excited about non-V:tM material again and helped me at last finally seperate classic and new Vampire into distinct games I can equally enjoy.
Glad to hear you’re excited. I think both of the branches of the Vampire family have a lot to offer. Heck, v20 developer Eddy Webb’s developed Requiem books and I’ve developed Masquerade material.
I’ve followed the development process of both, as much as I can, for many years. These books are what got me interested not only in playing games and running them, but also directed me towards working in the industry as an editor.
I think I will most likely buy Blood and Smoke to run Masquerade with the most solid ruleset you’ve ever published: I fell in love with the God Machine Chronicle Rules Update as soon as you put it online.
Thank you so much for allowing us fans both a preview to the new material and an opportunity for development. I have really enjoyed playtesting the material!
My wife was never a fan of Requiem, but this morning I told her that I will be running Blood & Smoke. I gave her a five minute brief on the changes I know of and I have just sold her on it.
Open dev for the win.
Wow, it feels like this book has been orbiting my gaming hobby life since it was announced, since when you where calling it Sex Murder, which seems like forever a go. We got to playtest some rules with Dave Hill, the previews and Free RPD Day book has sparked counted conversations about with my gamer friends, we groaned when it was delayed and we’ve been lining up our ongoing games to integrate the new content when it hits.
So looking forward to this book.
Thanks for participating in the playtest.
This book completely replaces Vampire: the Requiem?
Yes.
So will you need the VtR core to play? (I know it’s probably a dense question, but I’ve not been following)
No. You will not need the VtR or WoD cores to play.
This saddens me –
so you discarded the great idea of NOT repeating all attribute / skill descriptions / combat rules / etc ?
I was very happy that with the nWOD this waste of word count was a thing of the past – and now it’s back 🙁
No word count is wasted. The book’s word count was actually expanded specifically to fit this material in.
God i Hope that different Storylines are compatible. Else we have the same situation as with VtM years ago…
Charley: All games will use identical rules, whether reprinted or not.
… but now I have to buy the “what is an attribute” section for every line again.
One of the big improvements in the nWoD was the “one general source book for the basic stuff” approach – and now you go back to the endless repetition of basic rules in every central rule book.
Even if the word count was not wasted because it was planed the senseless repetition increases the price of the book and decreases the reading flow as now I have to skip over the pages I already read a dozen times before.
Please just think for a second how many pages will be repeated within every new chronicle book – don’t you think that they could have been used in a better way ?
Sorry to be so negative here, but this was really sad news for me.
I think repeating them once isn’t that bad. After all, if they don’t do this, once you want to look something up you’ll have to juggle two books instead of one. After all they will be compiled rules from nWoD and GMC.. several people already asked for such compilations,
I heartedly agree. Including the GMC update and basic rules gives B&S a pick up and play aspect. I found running GMC after masquerade and other, non-wod games difficult with flipping back and forth between that and the blue book. I actually found running the Demon and B&S quickstarts easy because of the condensed rules – and honestly they don’t take up much space, and as has been said they have not taken up the word count that other things could have used. I would only be slightly dissapointed if the other Chronicle books didn’t follow suite.
I just want to say that, despite making no comments on the book to this point (at least not here…), I am really pleased with how Open Development has worked for this book. I did add a decent amount of input to a couple of V20 books, but I’ve just lurked around in regards to Blood & Smoke. That said, the process for this has really been wonderful. Thanks for using the process to its fullest, Rose, and thanks to your whole team for making what is sure to be an awesome addition to the World of Darkness!
Thanks!
Strix are going to be so mad you gave away their secrets. Oh well, can’t wait to get my hands on it. 😀
I really like the ‘release on pdf first and give a coupon’ plan. Will definitely be doing it.
I just introduced the Vampires in my Mage Campaign and got Disciples working. Now i read the “Reap the Whirlwind” Preview and find all Disciples changed… woaaaa 😀
Hopefully i have only Mages in my Group. This gives me some time to wait for B&S. And when its availible i just have to translate it to german…. Christmas Holydays i wait for you
Hej Charley, if you’d like to add forces in translating just give me a note; just started a GMC-translation for my own use. I’m AGS on quite some RPG-related german forums and over here, too.
So cannot wait to get my hands on this new piece of the night!
Has there been talk of a conversion guide? Something to help currently existing VtR games transition into B&S? There was a translation guide released a while back to help integrate elements of Masquerade into Requiem or vice versa. While something on that scale isn’t called for here, I don’t think, a guide to character conversion at least would be very useful for existing VtR chronicles.
Conversion shouldn’t be so difficult as to require a guide. There are a few different approaches you can take.
The first is to calculate the number of Experiences required to buy each character’s current traits. (This will vary, so you might want to average the number for the whole coterie.) Create each character from scratch, then spend that many Experiences.
The second approach is to do a more direct, if not quite as clean, conversion.
– Each player picks a Mask and Dirge for their character.
– Each player selects a Touchstone for their character, or plans to discover one in play in the next few sessions.
– Each player decides whether to keep their character’s existing derangements as persistent Conditions or discard them.
– The Attribute, Skill, Discipline, Blood Potency, and Humanity dots for each character transfer over directly.
– If the new Discipline ladders lack an equivalent for an old power which a character possessed (like Summoning), give any characters that had it the equivalent Devotion or Merit for free.
– For each tier of a Coil possessed, give each character two dots which can be spent on either Coils or Scales.
– Total each character’s Merit dots, add three, and let the player re-buy that many dots of Merits. Between GMC and B&S, you’ll probably want a different set of Merits for each character than under the earlier system, though direct equivalents are available. (The additional three dots are because each character gets 10 dots at character creation.)
– Total each character’s Devotion dots, and let the player re-buy that many dots of Devotions.
At any point in this process, a player should be allowed to “cash out” a trait into Experiences, and spend those Experiences at the end.
Overall, this latter process is going to bump up the power of characters some, but I’d personally rather go that route than take things away.