Vampire:
the Requiem
Nomads
Rites of the Dragon
Lancea Sanctum
Ordo Dracul
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Vampire:
the Requiem
I didn’t get to work on this main book directly, which is
a shame because White Wolf gives you a pay bump for core rule writing.
However, while it was being composed, its first couple supplements
(Nomads and Rites of the Dragon) were in simultaneous
development. I wrote Rites and, to my delight, Justin included qu
otes from it in the main book.
The whole V:tM/V:tR transition was just an interesting phenomenon,
albeit one with some unreasoning passion on both sides. My impression
is that if you played the old game, the new one excises whatever
you liked best and whatever you hated most. For instance,
extra-movement Celerity is gone, prompting howls of disgust from
those who loved doing three or four times as many things as everyone
else, and cries of ecstasy from players who hated feeling like they
needed to buy up Celerity or resign themselves to never getting
any spotlight time. Same thing with the dreaded metaplot, or the
free successes of Potence, or the unpronounceable Tzimisce. (Did
I spell that right?)
Nomads
I did the clans section of this, and the fiction, and some other
bits. The fiction is okay, but since this was coterminously developed
with the main book, there was still some upheaval over how stuff
like Predator’s Taint and being staked actually worked.
I think it came out all right in the end, but there are still some
rough edges. Also, in hindsight, I really wished I’d proposed
structuring it like this: First, a discussion of how awful
terrible bad dangerous yucky it is to travel outside cities. That
could serve anyone’s game, by giving the Storyteller lots
of conflict-fodder when the characters decide “We’ll
just move to Denver ‘til the heat dies down”. Then,
after that, you give all the strategies that experienced nomads
use to avoid that crap, and then the clan and covenant-specific
stuff. But oh well. Hindsight is 20/20.
My other regret about Nomads is that my bloodline of traveling
Daeva megalomaniacs (the Asnâm) got cut out, but maybe I can
recycle them into the Circle of the Crone book.
Rites of the Dragon
Wow, was this ever fun to write! I keep thinking about what Jack
Nicholson said about playing the Joker in Batman: “When
you’re wearing a purple suit and have green hair, it’s
impossible to overact.” Similarly, I think writing from the
perspective of Count Dracula is pretty much carte bla
nche to carry
on in the most overblown fashion imaginable. Apparently the developers
agreed, since the back cover quote – “I saw in the abbot’s
mirror my twisted countenance and I knew the hell-wolf I had become”
– is, if you ask me, pretty ripe. But in a good way.
The secret bit of Rites is iconography hidden on pages 69, 89,
90, 94, explained in the Ordo Dracul book.
Lancea Sanctum
I only wrote the intro fiction for this, but I’m pretty darn
pleased with it. Solomon Birch is as much fun to write about as
Dracula was in Rites, or Lucifer in Days of Fire.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I take such giddy
delight in examining the perspective of supremely self-confident
evil monsters. I hope it says something good, but it doesn’t
seem likely.
Ordo Dracul
I wrote a bigger chunk of this, including the Paths of Fate section
that allows a character to, more or less, gain the self-knowledge
to consciously invoke his Virtue and Vice. Maybe I’m just
a sorry game-wonk, but I think it’s neat that there are solid
benefits for (1) staying in character and that (2) I built in a
way for character self-knowledge to play into those benefits. I
also had a lot of fun with “three versions of Dracula,”
though I wish they’d kept it as “people pretending to
be Dracula” instead of “Kindred pretending to be Dracula.”
VII
From the way Will Hindmarch powered-down Praestantia and Ahranite
Sorcery, I’m getting the impression that I should rein myself
in when I write up funky powers. From my perspective, Praestantia
should be a little more buff than it is, but I’ll
survive.
Party of me wishes I’d gotten my chance to write up two lost
clans who fused themselves with desperate spirits. The idea there
was that there are only something like 500 Sevenites globally, and
they can’t Embrace another until one of their current number
has been killed. However, whenever a Sevenite is killed, his memories
and spirit and personality aren’t lost. They just impose themselves
on the person who gets a Sevenite embrace. Thus, those 500 Sevenites
have all been killed and reincarnated, with their complete memories
and skills, dozens of times. The only way to permanently
put one down is diablerie, which is a touch job since they can usually
kill themselves before the diablerist can get the job done.
It’s a neat notion, since you keep killing this guy without
getting rid of him, but maybe the origin story was a little twee.
The Gomorrah and Irem narrative was plenty of fun too.
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