I want to be a society vampire, you see.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald
First, news around the non-existent office. The Exalted <Kickstarter> cleared its goal in an amazing 18 minutes, then quadrupled it within twenty-four hours. Huge congratulations to John, Geoff, and Holden, as well as their writers and everyone involved on the art and production side. Our players are amazing and good to us, and I’m sure Rich’ll have more to say about it soon.
(By the way, no one can ever see my links on this blog, so I’ve couched them in < > marks.)
Second, <The God-Machine Chronicle> was released last week and is topping the charts on DriveThruRPG. GMC provides fleshed out stories, game-building advice, and Storyteller characters, all centered around the mythology of the God-Machine. It’s cosmic horror from a distinctly World of Darkness angle. Demon will further expand this mythology, introducing the Machine’s rogue agents.
It also introduces the <revised World of Darkness rules>, which you can check out for free. These rules will be the foundation for future World of Darkness books, particularly if the Chronicle books are successful.
As for Vampire…
The final drafts of Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle are starting to roll in. You can see the ad accompanying this post, furnished by Onyx Path art direction manchine Mike Chaney.
Because of the <unique nature of the chronicle books>, we’ve done this one in three stages rather than the usual two. The first was the discussion and open development phase, the second the rules and antagonists phase, and finally, we’re in the setting phase. Each of these has featured more incremental drafts than usual, allowing us to work more collaboratively. It’s been a monumental undertaking, but I’m thrilled with the book that’s forming from it.
I thought for tonight’s update, I’d give you a bit of a look at the book piece by piece. Note that there’s still room for some significant changes, as I haven’t finished my development pass. Likely there’ll at least be a little restructuring. That in mind, here’s the breakdown.
Fiction is spread throughout the book, and tells the story of Edie and Thao — two “sisters” traveling the southwest as everything possible goes wrong.
Chapter One introduces the tentpoles of our setting, the five clans and .. covenants. Everybody flips to these first anyway, so we’re putting them at the front of the book. A few pages are also devoted to lost clans and broken covenants, vampires whose ashes are scattered across mortal history.
We’re writing this right now. For a lot of reasons, it made sense to do the final character writeups after all of the pieces that support them were in place. I just got the first draft for the broken covenants today; they join the Circle of the Crone and the Lancea et Sanctum on my pile of drafts to work with.
Chapter Two builds our setting, follows the all night society through both their individual Requiems and their grand Danse Macabre. The Cacophony, the underground literature and communication of the Kindred, is detailed. We’re also introducing some new concepts: welcome to conclaves, the loose networks that link domains together, and be sure to watch your step in cloisters, cities entirely off the Kindred grid.
This chapter came in remarkably solid on the first draft, with some unique ideas and a great perspective on what it’s like to be one of the Kindred. It’s being finished along with the clans as I write this.
Chapter Three walks you through character creation, and describes the rules and powers unique to the Damned. This is probably the part of the book we’ve shown you the most of so far, but there are still some really neat bits we haven’t yet unveiled.
Chapter Four is a short presentation of the World of Darkness core rules, with the updates from The God-Machine Chronicle. It’s not a comprehensive rules manual, but it’s everything you need to play Vampire.
Chapter Five describes the book’s big guest stars: the Strix, blood-drinking spirits who corrupt and enslave the Damned. You’ll get the core rules and lore for the Owls, and then 20 fully-fleshed out examples ready to dig their claws into your chronicle.
I didn’t want to do a boilerplate antagonists chapter, with a bunch of passive characters the players have to be steered towards. Each of these characters has a distinct modus operandi that will create conflict from the moment you put them into play in your city.
Meanwhile, the rules give you the same amount of flexibility with the Strix that The God-Machine Chronicle gives you for ghosts and angels. The rules are also generally compatible, so you can mix and match some very unique horrors.
This chapter’s very nearly done, the latest draft being mainly polish and consistency work.
Chapter Six covers the wider setting, with Kindred domains from around the world. You’ll walk the streets of the Mission for the first time since the clanbooks, and find out about the city where a society of blood-drinking half-ghosts is recognized as a clan.
This is really exciting to me: 30,000 words of the kind of concrete worldbuilding that we’ve very rarely done in Requiem, all ready for players to paint red.
Chapter Seven is a short Storytelling toolkit, providing a process to generate the people and places of your chronicle. One of the criticisms that’s been legitimately leveled against Requiem and to a lesser extent Masquerade is that it’s hard to get a game started. So for this book we have strong antagonists in chapter five, a rich setting in chapter six, and finally tools to jumpstart your game in this chapter.
We’re working on the first draft of this chapter right now.
The Appendix provides hooks, advice, and Merits for ghouls and mortals. Vampire fiction is full of mortal allies and lovers, and this section provides resources to not only include them in your game, but make them player characters.
We had a strong first draft for this, full of interesting character concepts and bits that give humans unique roles in a Vampire group. It’s back with the writer to be brushed and combed a bit, and to reflect some late-breaking changes to other parts of the book. Combined with the mortal resources released in The God-Machine Chronicle, you’ll have plenty of material to play that prying detective, tragic junkie, or quirky confidante.
And that’s the book. It’s a bear — we’re looking at a bit over 200,000 words, all told, and I’m very aware of the responsibility of building a “default chronicle” like this one.
So, after the writers are done, where to?
First, I do my polish pass on it. This is me doing a little preliminary editing and making changes so that all of the pieces fit together. I’ll be picking out pretentious quotes, writing the introduction, and rearranging things so that the whole book’s as smooth and easy to use as I can make it.
I’ll also be doing the art notes. This is a really big book, so there are a lot of art pieces to go into it. I basically send Mike a list of images my puny writer-brain thinks sound cool, and then he works with the artists to turn them into pictures that actually are cool.
Then the book goes off to editing and the editor gets to tear her hair out about how I let the writers start sentences with conjunctions. It comes back, Mike lays it out, and then Mike and Rich and I go through a lot of detail-tweaking to make sure it looks beautiful.
I’m not sure how much of the art and layout process it’ll be practical to share, but I’ll try and give you some insight into it as it happens. I’ll also be previewing more pieces of the book as we move ever forwards towards release. Just gotta keep my eyes on that light.
Comments
25 responses to “The Red Light at the End of the Dock”
Sounds fantastic. I am really looking forward to seeing more then snippets (like in the clanbooks) of what is going on New Orleans these days. Chapter Seven and the Appendix sound great, I was curious how much of ghouls (and hopefully gargoyles as well?) we would see in B&S. Chapter Seven especially I will find useful, I am the worse at figuring out good reasons to get PCs together.
No bloodlines? This concept is gone or just not covered in the book? Do we need normal requiem book to play blood and smoke chronicle?
You won’t need the core book: Blood and Smoke is fully standalone. Rules for bloodlines are included, but no individual bloodlines are.
Really looking forward to the Broken Clans and Covenants stuff…
Also, is that “..” preceding the word Covenants meaningful?
Looks like we’re getting more then 5.
Awesome. Very excited for this.
I am guessing that they are altering the number, or it is not yet fixed.
Thanks!
So much to be excited about! I’m really interested in the broken clans and covenants, conclaves, cloisters, the kindred domains and crucibles! Seems there will be a lot of new ideas! Can’t wait to see this book. 🙂
200,000 words is great. When you started breaking down the chapters I was starting to worry that everything was going to have to be extremely clipped to get it all into the book.
I have an old vampire game just waiting to be kicked back into action by the new rules and setting so I’m really looking forward to this book.
Rich has been very generous in taking my word for how many words I need. 🙂
Are Covenants still as relevant as they were?
Covenants occupy very much the same place in the setting that they did before. They’re the biggest organizations in Kindred society, both in that they dominate city politics and in that the major covenants are found in many places. The last page of each covenant writeup describes what the covenant’s like when they’re in power and what they’re like when they’re the rebels.
Nice. I’m curious about how they’ll deviate from Requiem’s core.
Looking forward to this book. I’ll be running a game at The Grey Ghost Masquerade in September and at future cons, call Sex, Murder, Blood and Smoke, focusing on the new stuff from this book.
How will the coverage of the Strix in this book fit into or contradict the coverage of the Strix in the Night Horrors book and the Rome books?
The Strix are similar to their previous appearance, but they’ve been expanded, going back some to Will Hindmarch’s original concept from Requiem for Rome. There’s now a range of Strix powers and potency, and they need to feed… but not quite like Kindred. They’re also very individual. In The Wicked Dead, every one was a sensation junkie, wanting nothing more than to experience the pleasures of possessing hosts. Now, more like in Fall of the Camarilla, they have plans and grudges… though those plans may only make sense from the perspective of their bizarre existence.
Mechanically, they’re created very much like the various Ephemerals from The God-Machine Chronicle. The same writer, Dave Brookshaw, designed the rules.
Will the Appendix include advice for mortals as antagonists, including as Hunters?
The advice is for using them as player characters and allies. The Merits are mostly focused on providing points of interaction with Kindred, rather than exploiting their weaknesses from the outside. Hunters wouldn’t get much use out of them.
Vigil Hunters do appear in a very short bit of the book, but no stats or anything.
If you need hunter antagonists, I’d recommend kitting them out using the GMC rules update.
Also, here’s an example from the Free RPG Day Vampire quickstart, if it’s useful to you:
Vampire Hunter
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 4, Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 4,
Presence 2, Manipulation 4, Composure 3
Skills: Occult 3, Athletics 2, Brawl 1, Firearms 2, Weaponry 4, Stealth 3
Attacks:
• Stake: 6 (Strength 3, Weaponry 4); Damage +0L; Initiative -2
• Pistol: 4 (Dexterity 2, Firearms 2); Damage +1L; Initiative -2
• Improvised Flamethrower: 3 (Dexterity 2, Firearms 2, Penalty -1); Damage
+1L; Initiative -6
Defense: 4
Armor: 3/5 (Riot Gear)
Merits:
• Staking Specialty: Hunters train in the tactical application of the wooden
stake, if they score at least three successes on an attack they may forgo their
normal damage to stab the vampire through the heart, paralyzing them.
• Hardened: The hunter’s resolve and composure are considered two dots
higher when used to resist or contest vampiric Disciplines.
Tactics: Vampire hunters’ greatest advantage is also their greatest weakness:
paranoia. They know vampires exist and thus they see them around every corner.
Hunters are good a picking up on the telltale signs of Discipline usage, they avoid
eye contact, stay close to crowds and don’t blunder around at night. In combat this
is especially evident, hunters rarely fight fair. They attack during the day, use fire,
and will attempt to draw attention to monsters when ambushed hoping that the fear
of discovery with dissuade a vampiric attacker. Most importantly, however, a good
hunter is a cautious one, they know what they are up against and won’t be as easily
goaded into traps as most other foes.
This sounds so good. Just please get the covenants right this time. I so much WANT to like them. It scares me that these parts will cot get community feedback before becoming implemented. Everything else looks really solid already but like you said: Convenants and clans are the tentpoles of the game.
Wow. I was about to kick off a new campaign in New Orleans but I might hold off until this comes out. Can you give us an approximate number of pages? And I love the idea behind chapters 5 through 7. I racked my brain for ideas on how to start a game in Vampire and then I read Damnation City, which helped immensely. God, I love that book.
I haven’t played a VTR game in years. I bought the God Machine a week ago and have downloaded the Reaping the Wind. I am waiting for the new book but I’m not very good at waiting. I’m checking every day to see if its out. I’m going crazy. I’m in love with this book and have read only the previews. I can’t believe how excited I am. Please please come out soon.
Nice to see a new wod book with some worldbuilding in it. I was waiting for that for years. I always found something was missing in those setting and that is the worldbuilding aspect.
What was actually the reason for finally including worldbuilding into the setting?
How many pages will it be? Around 50 pages?
This looks interesting. Kind of like a Sin-Eaters 1.1 for V:tR. What I’m wondering is if a FAQ will be released that reworks disciplines introduced in the various V:tR supplements (like the Bloodlines series) or if they will be compatible as is. I don’t want to re-purchase supplements I already own. I might not be adverse to purchasing an omnibus that includes their reworked content though and, of course, new supplements would be welcome.