Q: Eddy, for those not familiar with you can you tell the readers a bit about yourself, where you grew up and how you got into RPGs?
EW> I grew up in Lorain, Ohio, a tiny little down west of Cleveland that has been dying slowing for decades. I got into RPGs when I sold enough magazine subscriptions to get a copy of the red box D&D set when I was 8. Over the next twenty-seven years, I’ve played a wide variety of games, but around 1991 I played Vampire, and it’s been a huge part of my life since.
Q: What is your most fond table top RPG memory?
EW> Meeting my future wife at a Vampire LARP. I was playing a Toreador, and gave her a rose that I happened to be carrying. Best prop I ever used in a game. :)
Q: How did you end up in White Wolf, what projects have you worked on their past and present?
EW> I worked as a freelancer on Mind’s Eye Theatre: The Awakening in 2006, and at the time I was just happy to finally write for the company that I have enjoyed for so many years. In 2007 I applied for a job position at White Wolf/CCP, and was hired at the Alternative Publishing developer. I got promoted to World of Darkness Developer last August, and there are days when I still don’t quite believe it all. It’s been an amazing ride.
Q: If you were turned in the V:tM universe what clan would you prefer to be a part of and why?
EW> The most obvious clan would be Toreador, because I spend so much of my time writing and creating, but in temperament I’d probably make a better Brujah. ;)
Q: Do you currently play any Vampire table top or are you just burned out from working on it? If you do what kind of character and setting are you playing with/in?
EW> I still play actively in a local Sabbat LARP that my wife runs. There’s also another Masquerade LARP that I have a character for, but it seems I’m always working or ill when those games come around. My roommate has talked about running the Giovanni Chronicles at some point, too. I’m still a huge fan of the game.
White Wolf Questions
Q: Is the WW Podcast going to come off hiatus anytime soon, what is its current status?
EW> Man, I hope so. The short version is that my current podcast host has just gotten steadily worse over the months, and now I can’t even upload episodes. I’m working with our website team to see if I can move the podcast onto white-wolf.com instead of using an outside source, but that’s a fair number of meetings and work and doing HTML and CSS and other acronyms I don’t know shit about. If that doesn’t work I have some other backup solutions, but I’d really like to take the extra time and get it all on our website if I can, which is why it’s taking longer than I would like.
Q: Now that the Camarilla (LARP) is not an official part of White Wolf any more, what kind of support are we going to see for MET in the future?
EW> The Camarilla being a part of the company or not never really had any impact on our interest in doing more Mind’s Eye Theatre products. I’d love to put more out, but the past few products haven’t sold up to our expectations for a lot of reasons. I’m continuing to try new things, and depending on how things pan out MET might make a return. However, there are a lot of things going on, and right now I have ideas to make LARP a component of bigger things rather than a separate line. But that’s all theoretical “pie in the sky” shit – a million things may change between the time I type this and the time someone reads it.
Q: Now that we have the Translation Guide, what other plans are there to bridge the gap between OWoD players and NWoD players?
EW> The Translation Guide was an experiment, and from everything I’ve seen a well-received one. We’re hearing good things, but we still want to see how much it’s used, so for the moment we’re putting more focus on getting the classic World of Darkness books back into some form of circulation through print-on-demand before really looking at any further bridging products like the Translation Guide.
Q: Can we look forward to White-Wolf being more involved in social networking; by encouraging discussion between players and developers, keeping the fans current with the latest news, helping players connect, or releasing social games such as Farmville?
EW> I am reliably informed that we are looking at a new website which will focus on community support over selling products. Our current website has always been frustrating to us and to fans, and we’re glad that our super-busy web team has finally gotten the go-ahead to update white-wolf.com. Beyond that, there are other things in the works that I can’t talk a lot about, but they also have social networking as a focus as well.
Q: My local game store owner thinks White Wolf is "cutting him out" with the new Print On Demand, but he also has copies of New Wave Requiem on his shelf. Can you please reassure him that you guys still love him and plan on keeping books on his shelves for the hungry masses?
EW> I think this kind of answers itself – New Wave Requiem is out in print-on-demand and also in stores. Our business partner, DriveThruRPG.com, does want to look at a more robust retail component to their print-on-demand options, and we want to work with them on that as much as we can, but that’s really more their side of the house than mine.
Q: What's coming out for Vampire: the Requiem after Danse Macabre?
EW> A novel. A highly political adventure. Beyond that, I cannot say – it isn’t time yet to do our schedule planning just yet.
Q: Has the time of Limited Game Lines (Promethean, Changeling, Hunter, Geist) come to an end? For good?
EW> Nothing is done for good, as I’ve learned over the years. We’re always trying new things, and always looking back at previous things that we could potentially do better or expand on. The limited game line model is a good one, and probably one we’ll go back to in future.
Q: What other settings are you planning to visit after those that were given with Mirrors? Victorian, Renaissance?
EW> We have two science-fiction releases coming out in the next few weeks – one space opera setting by Chuck Wendig, and one cyberpunk setting by Russell Bailey. There’s also a 1940s sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening coming out in a couple of months.
Q: Is the plan to simply continue publishing for the existing major lines, or is there another major splat in the works.
EW> I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.
Q: There are a lot of Unofficial Erratas out now, for instance Mage: The Awakening, I was wondering if they were ever going to post the official Erratas for the rest of these books.
EW> It’s possible, but honestly it’s pretty unlikely. Compiling and updating errata is a lot of work, and as we put out more books and more games, the work just gets more and more complex and difficult to keep track of. We do try to think about errata when we do core book reprints, and I have updated some of the PDFs when major errors have come to light, but we’re all really focused in some way or fashion on the World of Darkness MMO, so unfortunately things like errata are put on the back burner in favor of video game work or putting out more products.
Q: White Wolf has talked about a movie based on their Vampire property since 2003 yet nothing seems to have come to light. Is this still a active project or consideration at WW?
EW> That’s the first I’ve heard of it, so I’m guessing there’s no real progress on that. However, a movie would be awesome!
Q: What do you think the odds are of a new V:tM based TV show like Kindred the Embraced happening?
EW> About the same as a movie, probably.
Q: Does Chuck Wendig eat babies for breakfast?
EW> Oh god, no. Babies are a dinner food.
CRPG/Design Questions
Q: In a recent blog you talked about Bloodlines the CRPG, what is your opinion on their translation of the V:tM game mechanics to that CRPG?
EW> One of the things I’ve been learning as I work on a video game myself is that there’s a tricky balance between faithfully reproducing mechanics that worked well in a tabletop game but perhaps not for a video game, and changing key parts of the experience of Vampire that end up making the game not feel like the original product anymore. I think Bloodlines was a good balance between those two extremes, overall.
Q: Did you feel they captured the essence of the clans and their disciplines in Bloodlines? Why or why not?
EW> More or less. I feel that certain clans got a little more focus than others, but really it’s hard to spread engaging content and design across seven different archetypes. Some of the fan mods, like the Clan Quest mod, do a great job in addressing stuff like that, though. However, like I said before, changing a property between mediums means that some things are just going to be lost. Mind’s Eye Theatre disciplines, for example, aren’t quite the same beast as their tabletop analogs, and powers that are great in tabletop just don’t work well in LARP (or vice versa). I think the same is true for video games, and Bloodlines did a pretty good job in making the core of the disciplines feel accurate, even if individual powers weren’t the same.
Q: Do you feel another Bloodlines type CRPG will ever be produced or started within the next several years?
EW> Honestly, single-player computer RPGs just aren’t as common as they were a few years ago – many companies are converting their IPs into other genres or moving into the MMO space. It’s possible we might explore that space, sure, but certainly not in the next several years. We have this other Vampire computer game to make first. ;)
Q: If you could hop in your time machine and go back and make any one game change to Bloodlines what would it be, and what would you defiantly not want to change about it?
EW> I would give Troika more money so they could have put out a few more patches to fix the bugs in the game. But I wouldn’t touch the music – I think the Bloodlines soundtrack is highly underrated.
The Dangerous Questions!
Q: What kind of steps are you taking to ensure that the overall feel of the horror genre will be preserved from the PnP game into a digital format?
EW> We sacrifice an intern every week to the Dark God of Horror. Or Justin. You know, whoever is available.
Q: When can you talk about the MMO?
EW> When Marketing says I can. Hang on, let me ask.
…
…
… They said “eventually.” They also waved a gun at me, so I probably shouldn’t say anything more.
(Sned hepl.)
Q: What can we expect at this year's Grand Masquerade?
EW> Awesomeness! Alcohol! Cajuns!
Honestly, I don’t know – Shane and his crew are handling a lot of that, and I’m trusting that they’ll do a great job. In the meantime, I’m just keeping my head down and trying to keep from working too many nights and weekends to stay on top of everything.
Q: Thank you so much Eddy from everyone here at WoD News!
EW> Glad to help!