Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Russell Bailey

I sat down with Eddy for another White Wolf Roundtable. We talked about developing v20, the process of getting feedback from fans, and some of the fun of revisiting Masquerade bloodlines.

I’ll be doing a live conference/interview about Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary, starting in just a few minutes. From Eddy:

For the past month or so, I’ve been talking with the team about V20 and the process of working on it through my podcast.

Now it’s your turn.

On Sunday, June 5th, at 3pm EST until 4pm (or longer, if we’re having a good time), we’re going to host a call-in show on Talkshoe.com. This means that you can call in to talk to me, Rich, Russell, and Shane and ask questions or just talk about Vampire. There may be drinking, there may be profanity, there may even be answers to your questions, but there will definitely be a lot of love (and some tears) about Vampire.

This is the first time we’ve tried something like this, so there are bound to be some bumps. If you’re interested, I highly suggest you go to Talkshoe.com, make an account, and test the site out for yourself to help ease things as we’re trying this new idea out. If you’ve never even looked at Talkshoe, here are the highlights:

• The call itself is titled the “White Wolf Roundtable” (not V20, in case I want to do this again sometime). You can go right to it here and listen or call in: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/98297
• You call in with any touch-tone phone (although you can use Skype and any other software that can call out to a phone). The number and codes you need to get into the call should be at the website link above.
• If you don’t want to sign up for Talkshoe.com just to call in, you don’t have to (although you should at least go to the site to confirm what you need to call in with). Details are here:http://www.talkshoe.com/blog/index.php/features/non-member-calling
• If you want to use Facebook, you can (but I haven’t tried it):http://www.talkshoe.com/blog/index.php/features/talkshoe-on-facebook
• If you want to use an iPhone app, you can do that too (but again, haven’t tried it):http://www.talkshoe.com/blog/index.php/features/talkshoe-iphone-app

No matter what, once its done I’ll download the recording, edit it a little bit, and make it available for everyone to hear when they have time.

So let’s do this. It’ll be awesome.

Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition

One of the reasons I’ve been quiet the last couple of weeks is my work on Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition. As part of that, I did a v20 interview with Eddy Webb.

The Danse Macabre

I had a chat about The Danse Macabre with the Atomic Array crew. After tearing up sales at the White Wolf Store and DriveThruRPG, the book hits most outlets this week, so it’s a great chance to hear us talk about this massive compendium.

If you’d like a peek at the book itself, check back on my unboxing video. (I bounce.)

Got our advance copies of The Danse Macabre today. This book’s been a long time coming, and I was pretty much bouncing off the walls at having it in print at last. Thought it would be fun to tape the team and me opening the box and getting our first look.

The Danse Macabre Unboxing

I’ll probably do a post or two about the making of the book, but I wanted to share this now. Sheer joy.

I recently did an interview with RPGamer about Bleeding Edge and some other general topics. I talk a bit about personal stuff, a bit about work routine, and a bit about CCP design philosophy.

Daeva: Kiss of the Succubus

I recently did an e-mail interview with Louis Garcia of the Dead Gamer’s Society on meetup.com. I really had fun talking about creating the clanbooks and the process of relaunching Vampire: The Requiem in 2007. I also shared part of the outline for The Danse Macabre.

Vampires, families, and dirty dansing. Go check it out.

By the way, one of the questions references an earlier interview with RPG Review.

Lev Lafayette’s RPG Review interviewed me recently, in my capacity as Vampire: The Requiem developer. The interview has some tidbits about the creative process behind the clan books and Rome series that I don’t think have been dropped before.

Me, younger and better dressed

It’s odd to reflect that most of the work I was interviewed about, I did at least three years ago. The rate at which time passes seems to change as you near Carousel. Growing up, maybe, I don’t know.

Speaking of which, I’m flatteringly referred to as “young and prolific,” though reading it, you might think I’m a little younger than I actually am.

I let them have the pick of photos off my Facebook page. Amusingly, the one they used is about seven years old. It’s kind of like an old yearbook photo or something, except that it actually means something to me.

That particular photo was taken in the University of Maryland Performing Arts Center after a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer game I ran. The PAC was great for a lot of things: being divided into four large sections with a massive central area, it kicked ass for lazer tag.

The upper lounge, though, was a great gaming space. Big couches, large, low tables. That particular game was a bit of an odd one; I was running for three women who’d never done traditional tabletop gaming before. Since they were all really experienced with freeform online RP and LARP, I’d planned my end of the session to let them do what they did best (in-character scenes) and showcase what a live GM does best (create a living environment).

Okay, yes, I milked it

The game was fun, but not really what I was expecting. I’d been figuring the players would want to direct a lot of the plot themselves, since that’s what they did in their other games. In fact… I found them waiting on me to introduce the plot, and being very afraid of messing up my (presumed) carefully planned script for the game.

We played for a couple of hours, and got to maybe half of the stuff I figured we would. The mystery, such as it was, revolved around spontaneous student combustion. Again, the players all assumed I had some deep, complex agenda here, which would require them to adhere carefully to a planned sequence of actions.

Really, it was just a story about a funeral, and coke cut with vampire blood. Regardless, it was a lot of fun, though not as fun as when I dipped into their Harry Potter by way of Wuthering Heights game.

Anyhow, the picture was taken right before we went to dinner, and features me more or less dressed as Spike. That circle were always wanting me to dress as Spike… or Draco Malfoy. I think I pretended to be naive about why.

I think the ultimate result of that was the Mary Sue Buffy Fan Film, the footage for which is still languishing on someone’s desk somewhere. I both fear and hope for its eventual appearance on YouTube.