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on Writing a Nice Letter to Paradox about V5
I've been sitting on your "tell me what you think of what WW is doing" request for weeks because, hey, I'm an academic, I sit on ideas for weeks until they're properly cooked (and old news, irrelevant, opportunity lost, position already filled etc.). And because I didn't want to go off about aspects of the content - I imagine you've heard more than enough of that and I don't actually think it's the biggest deal with V5 and the brand's future direction. Here's what I think is more important.
1. Marshal your information. V5's core book fails. It fails as a game manual because it can't be read at a glance - it's impenetrable, information sprawls to and fro across many pages, it leads with a clutter of in-universe text that doesn't start with What This Game Is About and How It Works. It fails as a coffee table book because it's so wildly inconsistent in its internal style, because the art assets don't necessarily illustrate what's on on the same page, because the super stylish Ventrue-type dude sat in the Dominate throne isn't wearing his suit properly and has his flies undone. It looks like a collection of art assets thrown together by a sixth form media class, rather than a coherent aesthetic project. And it fails as a setting bible because it relies on you having at least some familiarity with who these canonical characters are, or some willingness to read between the lines and guess. If you're using this book to pitch White Wolf IP to time-poor media execs, they're not going to read it.
How do you fix that? Readable at a glance needs to be written on the inside of your designers' eyes. Ditch the traditional column layout, stop having text break across columns and pages in the middle of words, focus on corralling each concept onto a two-page spread. Two pages should be more than enough to outline eight Predator types (look at how Warhammer Fantasy Role Play does careers) or the basic process of character creation (look at how Call of Cthulhu walks you around the sheet with those little sideboxes that give you the basics and a page reference for the deets) or all the rules for a Discipline if you exercise some discipline in the writing. If an infographic will get your point across, use it: that's a fat sight more innovative than the white on black graphic-design-is-my-passion stuff. And I know there's probably a drive to use those art assets from this project or that and get some value out of them, but use them to illustrate (as in 'serve an example of' rather than 'adorn with pictures') a point.
2. Be more meta. You're trying to court a new audience - people who watch the LA By Night streams or another actual play and then come into running an RPG for what might be the first time. That means you have to tell them how. Vampire used to be good at this (on Justin Achilli's watch, with early Revised edition, it was great at this), but I think the new team have gone for a sort of cryptic, mysterious, "make your own fun" kind of deal - nah. People want to be assured that they're doing it right. It's a game. Provide clear instructions for playing it. And people want transparency, too - in my day job I'm a content marketer and I'm forever hearing and saying "be transparent, state your values and show how you abide by them, show your working, set terms for success and smash them". Transparency is honest and clear and it reassures people.
And I think that reassurance is important, because you're working with a divided audience here. You've got the grognards on the one hand, who've played V20 and are banging on the desk demanding to know when the Baali are back and whether Tzimisce will have Protean. But you've also got a more interesting and vibrant and forward-looking audience, the kids I write and storytell for. They're in their late teens and early twenties, most of them are bisexual, a lot of them are trans, and they've only ever played VTM Bloodlines and maybe some dodgy text-only V20 over Discord. They hate themselves, they hate being alive, their entire culture is a series of excuses for self-deprecation and lust filtered through desperate loneliness. The number one compliment they pay each other is "you are valid" - they want to be told they are doing it right. And they're so goddamn creative, and they love Vampire, even if they don't wallow in the same kind of "but this is the world of DARKNESS!!!1!" that the 4chan edgelords do. Their world is dark. It's hopeless. They work three jobs, they go to college, and there's no guarantee that they'll be free at the end of it, so they dress up like punk mimes and fuck each other because they need that performative defiance to stay sane. And in doing that, they find some hope. They're Carmilla, they're Only Lovers Left Alive, they're What We Do In The Shadows... Revised edition used to say "here are some recommended media for our game" and I think you could go further than that, say "hey, the coterie domains are engineered for playing vampire couples or vampire flatmates like in that thing you watched". Reassure people. Tell them they're valid. They don't get to hear that enough.
I know - because I can read between lines - that the thinbloods in V5 are perfect vehicles for the kind of Darkness these kids bring to the World. Someone you've had on the WW team knows that, that's why the thinbloods have gender-swapping alchemy and why the Anarch book has characters who could be from this generation. But the kids don't know that, because they're not being told that. The book isn't telling them that, the marketing isn't telling them that: WW only speaks up when it's saying "um actually we're not Nazis", doing brand control, and these kids are suspicious. They have to be to survive. To get them on board properly you need to be open and honest and state "this game is safe for you, these characters are there for you, we made them because we recognise the vampire metaphor and the cultural landscape have changed in the last thirty years and this is our crack at making that a part of our World of Darkness." That's all they want. To be told this game is for them, and not just against the people who hate them (but who still seem to hang around the Facebook pages...)
3. Stick to your guns. Let's end on a positive. Mechanically, and thematically, V5 is great. It's the best the game has ever been; it's finally tearing away from some baseline ideas about what a roleplaying game needs to do, by bringing in abstract combat instead of blow by blow simulationism, and by the Hunger/Resonance/Dyscracia mechanics that put the act of feeding front and centre and say "actually you can farm XP if you put the effort into cultivating the prey that you want", because that's what vampires do. They do vampirism. This is the first edition of Vampire where I've actually felt like my character is a vampire rather than an RPG protagonist who happens to drink blood sometimes. Recentring on the Camarilla clans in the core, bringing the Independents into the sects, that's all good stuff, it gives the 'indies' a broader purpose and fleshes out the Ashirra and the Anarchs and it feels like Bloodlines Plus Extras, which is after all how a lot of newbies understand Vampire. Losing the stupid "elder Disciplines" was great - elders are scary because they've had shitloads of XP to spend and they have more Blood Potency than you, not because of some mysterious 'epic spells' that you can only get at 'level seven', which is how Generation used to feel, especially when players learned how diablerie works.
But please, for the love of all that's holy, stick to your guns. You will get people stamping their feet demanding the return of comprehensive "but this gun should work differently to that gun" combat, and crying out for their favourite niche bloodline that does nothing but steal design space from a more rounded and fulfilling concept that's in the core of the game, and demanding more books like Chicago By Night that sound off all the old lore and talks about all the old characters and puts loads of fifth and sixth generation characters back into play - because what they want is V20 all over again, another edition of that thing they already own three editions of. V20 was great, but it was about Vampire's past. V5 needs to be about the future.
And yes, obviously, I'd like to be involved. This is a pitch as well as a series of opinions. I'd sell someone else's kidneys to get near the Hecata and finally do Venice By Night (properly, without a stupid invisible skyscraper in the middle of the city), and I could bring a couple of talented illustrators in with me. I've done the academic work on Vampire (my entire academic career started because Victorian Age Vampire came out when I was at an impressionable age and hit me between the eyes with its "this is a literary storytelling game" premise). I'm currently writing the definitive "Vampire and its Gothic" chapter for a cornerstone academic publisher. I know Vampire - not in the same way that people like Matthew do, where they've memorised facts and joined the dots and hoarded the books and laid down the canon, but in terms of theme and tone and context and what it's about and what it can do - and I love Vampire and I want it to thrive and grow.
Which, I'd hope, makes two of us.
