Of Mages and Mirrors, Woundgate and Worlds of Darkness

I contributed to two recent White Wolf releases: World of Darkness: Mirrors and the Mage Chronicler’s Guide. They’re both big books of optional systems and ideas. But since I hate toolkits, why the hell did they let me join the party? I think gamers are smart enough to “hack” things without our help, and have said so to fans, developers and possibly random passers by while rocking a bottle of Muadite. But I still got contracted.

I know why it happened for the Chronicler’s Guide (I submitted a proposal without knowing it was already on the schedule) and I suppose some good prior work with Chuck helped with Mirrors. But even with two of the best folks to work with around, I still think these “odds and ends” books need to overcome an inherent suck factor lest they end up about as useful as all those lame-ass “Setting Riff: Thing I’m never gonna fucking play” productions that waste Internet.

I think my doubts helped me produce good stuff. I wanted to beat those flaws. I wanted my stuff to engage instead of look all shifty and indecisive. There’s a reason the best restaurants have the smallest menus. They know what’s good.

So I had to build whole restaurants.

Gamers already excel at modular modifications, so I concentrated on wholesale rebuilds: integrated systems that aren’t so easy for a smart audience to get through catch-as-catch can “hacking.” That’s  why my Chronicler’s Guide stuff features heavily modified systems. “White Wolf Comics Presents: The Cabal” and “Action Horror” featured a number of systems that not only stand on their own, but “talk to each other” in ways I’ve either mentioned in the text (Action Pool + Extras + Critical Hits) or left to be discovered in play.

Beyond integration, I wanted to also deal with the weak tone that I think plagues optional systems, and make them something other than pie in the sky outlines (“Setting Riff: Who Gives a Shit?”). Woundgate is very much a product of that. Chuck gave me Fantasy. As he said over at Terribleminds, he let me indulge myself as long as it hit the section objective and didn’t suck.

This led to the following process:

1. “What the fuck does fantasy mean? It’s only a genre when it sucks.”
2. “I’m not writing elf rules.”
3. “Reproducing old weapons and straight up magic systems sure would be a ripoff for the average WoDer.”
4. “If it’s not recognizably WoD then it’s a stupid waste of time.”
5. “Fuck, I’m reading Aeternal Legends again.”

That last part may be handy self-promotion but it’s also true. Stew brought Big Modern Fantasy to town with postmodern fey gateways — open ended weirdness (and taxes!) from anywhere to anything. I didn’t want elves or Big Time Spirituality (well, I wanted to leave that unstated, but my Woundgate has it) but I wanted strange little kingdoms. Thanks to that structure I could present one setting  without having to choose a particular type of fantasy. They made perfect “genre zones” so that Conan can tool around the Great Lakes while magitech unions picket along the Mississippi.

(And yes, I created fantasy folk. Not elves. Not “races.” No, they aren’t templates, so you can have a Wargaz mage if you like. Anybody notice the Wargaz are the smartest of the fantasy peoples? Intentional, and very much inspired by the introduction of Guns, Germs and Steel, where Diamond talks about the smartest guy he knows. People can treat it like a callback to Conan’s intelligence in the Howard stories, I guess.)

Best of all, I could fill this stew with chunks of the World of Darkness, providing cool hooks for anyone who knew the games well enough to use them. Like I said, I didn’t want to just make a fantasy port of the system. Any smart gamer could give a dude pointy ears, a sword and infravision. The challenge is to provide something that isn’t so easy. I want too give fans value, and something concrete they can play and share immediately, with a minimum of fuss over ground rules.

Matt McFarland’s development style features friendly cautions when he thinks something is crossing the line. He still gave me a great deal of freedom, to the point where I think I underutilized the potential there. The Cabal (comic-booky) chronicle is already a bit of an unusual sell to an RPG audience though, so maybe that’s for the best. It’s supers, but not big on point builds and highly specific powers. You don’t even make your own characters! Again, I wanted to get a sense of mythology and cohesiveness out of it that short treatments have trouble with, and I wanted it to be all Mage, even as it paid serious homage to comic classics.

Are we going to get any more of this stuff? I know Mirrors’ science fiction section was finished, fun to read and good to go. What about the postscripts in each book? What’s happening? Good question. I’d love to write something big about Woundgate, for instance, or work on that Mage archmastery book people have wanted for ages, but even though I know the World of Darkness isn’t shutting down and more electronic products are on the way, I don’t know what they’ll be, or how they fit into the larger plans CCP has for the brand. I write, and don’t plan on stopping.