Umbral Echoes Blog

The following notes were taken from the World of Darkness Q&A/suggestion panel at the Grand Masquerade 2011, lead by Reynir Harðarson and Chris McDonough.

Also see this post for my thoughts on some of this.

* Wants social interactions to “have some meaning” (perhaps implied mechanical consequences to social interactions?)
   – Yes, that will be a part of it.

* Microtransactions    – wants transparency, wants more info
   – Blame Chris McDonough; will release more info next year.
   – Chris says, “Pay attention to EVE Incarna.”

* Play as mortal from “scratch” vs playing “sleeper”; toggle sort of like pvp for being embrace-able
   – Everyone starts as mortal, but can never be embraced against your will.
   – Vampires can die permanently under some circumstances. (See item toward the bottom.)

* Gaining titles within own real life city, interact with higher-ups from other cities and travel to other cities
   – That’s exactly how it works.

* Have tiered dev system for brand new vs old players?
   – Game is as deep as you want it to be.
   – External access to game through web. (Editor’s note: no specifics were given, but I highly doubt you’ll be able to actually play the game from the web.)
   – You can gain Influence without ever fighting someone.

* Plan for caitiff? “Deck of many things”
   – Caitiff not part of original release, unlikely at this point.

* Day/night cycle?
   – When server goes down that’s when day breaks (in other words, it’s always night)
   – Looked at options like playing own ghoul, but this game is about playing a vampire, so you should be able to play a vampire at any time.

* Dementation suggestion    – screen goes crazy/dark, friend looks like monster
   – There is some stuff like that in the game.
   – Powers will work the same on humans, NPCs, and PCs.

* Majesty    – combat (you can’t attack me) and out of combat (you have selection of options to say)
   – Something like that but [social] PvP is more about breaking down your opponent’s will.

* Filter control to keep scrotemaster griefers out
   – Attacking other players lowers humanity, when goes low enough you are open for others to attack you.
   – As far as trolling, you can ignore someone.
   – “You will have ways of dealing with it through actual gameplay. You will have to behave in this world. But we also need enemies, assholes, someone to hate. But there is a ratio there.”
   – The game will have havens.

* Role-play is secondary in other mmos
   – Lot of game design around this, like political system. See EVE; wanted role-play to emerge naturally. “When your character’s goals align with your goals as a player, then roleplaying is natural.”

* Concerns: pvp, some people want to roleplay without getting fucked with. Guy jumping around in thong. Masquerade enforcement. Malks need extra tlc because of their uniqueness. Age of Conan adult scale-back, don’t want that to happen here last-minute.
   – Have staff lawyer looking into legal implications of adult stuff in all countries. Some countries will just shut you off if you break policies/laws on adult content.
   – It’s about doing it tastefully, not gratuitously.
   – Gotta be careful about giving players ability to be nude. Might be a more adult game without that. Possibly nudity in own haven but not public.
   – More similar to LARP than EVE.
   – PVP is very different than in other games. Both more free and more restrictive. Want the world to feel real; it’s a dangerous place. Have to make friends. If you go out of line we want the community to be able to punish you.

* Will Sabbat vs Camarilla PvP be player driven?
   – More structured than EVE but not as structured as the Masquerade.
   – Power structures are player run, like Princes and Primogen.

* Alternative paths? Like paths of enlightenment?
   – Right now no, but every intent of releasing that in expansions.

* V20 Europe wants game that is adult, with story, unique character that is not a clone (can tell on sight), and will run on lots of hardware.
* Planning on promoting in Europe, like at GamesCon next year?
   – Story is tangential to the game. There won’t be a story that drives the game
   – Unique characters are extremely important in this game design.
   – Reynir: “Does not run on iPad yet.” Mindful of required specs though, like laptop. Will have multiple visual settings/levels, but want it to look good no matter what setting. “It’s going to run on a laptop.”
   * Clarification: Story meaning background.
   – Editor’s note: There was no official answer — it was sort of lost in the shuffle — but I will go ahead and say yes to this.

* Actions should have consequences, including true death
   – True/permanent death can occur.
   – Chris: “Should players be able to duel each other with an option for permadeath?” Loud applause.

* Planning on incorporating other genres?
   – Stick to vampire initially.

* CoH veteran rewards style of opening up other WoD races?
   – Just focusing on vampires now, don’t want to even talk about other character types at this point.

* Overhead names in UI? Way to keep notes if not?
   – There will be an option to have names overhead, but it we be off by default (presumably to make the game more immersive).

* Standard char sheet?
   – Yes, and it looks very similar to the pen and paper RPG.

* Metaplot not solely driven by PCs
   – Yes metaplot, but hard to do that without disempowering players.
   – Again more similar to LARP.
   – Metaplot through expansions.
* This guy apparently absolutely hates PC-driven metaplot. Perhaps this is not the game for him, and he should instead simply read a book.

* Permanent consequences like blow up a building and it stays that way
   – Big in MMO world now. Phased instancing etc. It’s not about the graphics though. It’s about what happens in the world. See EVE as example.
   – Things open up and close down.
   – Reynir doesn’t like phased instancing. “We don’t want the game to lie to you.”

* Will there be a generation system, and cap? Will there be diablerie?
   – This is under heavy discussion now.

* Dynamically generated content? A la Guild Wars, e.g. garou attacking a part of the city, if you don’t defend it then they now have control over it.
   – Yes. And there will be world events.

* Single server?
   – Multiple cities that you can travel between, but all one world. So, sort of a single shard.

* How to determine how one player has praxis of something? Mechanical locking?
   – Yes there is a mechanism, but requires lots of human interaction.

* Different sized cities? Population controlled?
   – Populations can vary, but all cities will be large.
   – There will be differences between each city. Player controlled/originated differences. (Hint, hint.)

* Does your game have NPCs?
   – Yes.

* Justin Achilli asks: If you’re not lying to players, then why have fake people (i.e. NPCs)?
   – Essence of response: STFU, Justin

* Translation? E.g. Latin American?
   – Yes, via a newly developed “Cerberus” system.

* Will there be a system for torpor, like cool-down period?
   – Not in traditional sense. [Torpor] is an excuse for why your PC doesn’t die.

Permadeath. Permanent death in an MMO. Why in the world would you want such a thing? Simple:  emotion. The more you're risking, the greater the emotion — the greater the fear when you're risking it, the greater the sorrow if you lose it, and the greater the joy if you succeed. The World of Darkness Online will naturally have a horror element, which means sometimes you should be afraid in the game.  Also, "danger" is one of the four descriptors of what the game is trying to evoke (power, danger, mystery, romance).

Permanent death is something that just isn't done in MMOs. But it is explicitly on the table for (most) tabletop games. Why are people comfortable with it in the latter, but not in the former? And would it be possible to have permadeath done in a good way in MMOs?

I think the answer to the first question is, "Control." In a tabletop setting, the game master has control over the game, and if you're sitting down spending several hours with your group, you presumably trust the game master not to just gak your character willy-nilly. In an MMO there is no such control. In PvP games there are definitely griefers. But, I think such control could be added to MMOs. Which brings us to the second question.

To answer the second question, I do believe it could be done well in an MMO. I think that permanent death should only be able to happen under certain circumstances. In a tabletop game, your character generally only dies under a few circumstances:

1. You have really bad luck. And even then a good game master will give you an out.
2. You do something really dumb. Again, a good game master will generally try and give you some hints that this might not be the best plan of action.
3. You want your character to die. It does happen.
4. Your game master is a dick.

I think that these could be translated to MMOs quite nicely. So for each of the points above, here's how I would address it in an MMO.

1. Mechanics can be put in place to eliminate "bad luck" as a cause for permanent character death.
2. This is the area that has the most potential. Maybe if you kill and loot other characters enough, it flags you for permanent death.
3. No brainer, but again there's potential here. In most MMOs you just delete your character if you want them gone. But what if there were some way to go out that had a cool story, or that set up the story for your next character coming in?
4. In this case it would be the game mechanics themselves being the dick. Make it so that certain circumstances, which are within the player's control, must occur before a character can die permanently. As one example, maybe if you go on this certain storyline/quest, you risk permanent death — with great reward comes great risk.

To put this in terms of the World of Darkness MMO, I think permadeath is assuredly feasible. I would do it thusly:

• Overall, anyone can permanently kill anyone else, at any time. This requires not just putting them into torpor, but making a choice to take it one step further.
• If you permanently kill someone else who isn't the subject of a blood hunt, you yourself become subject of a blood hunt. Congratulations, now everyone is gunning for you because they'll gain prestige by killing you, and they won't have any negative consequences for it.
• In certain areas, have NPCs come to the aid of any character being attacked by another. Maybe a cop comes to arrest the offender. Maybe some gang bangers decide they don't want other people bringing attention to their area.

As a possible alternative to permanent death (or better yet, something that could be added on), perhaps the "fog of ages" from Requiem can be tweaked. This is the effect that causes vampires to forget things (and lose blood potency) as they grow ancient. Well perhaps when one is killed really good, they don't actually die but it puts this process into fast-forward, and you lose some blood potency, which could also cause you to lose some abilities. The only thing I don't like about this route is that it smacks of the bronze age of MMO days wherein you lost XP if you get killed. However, I think Vampire has a great built-in mechanic for this and it makes sense to use it.

So after the fiasco of the previous night, you'd think I would stay in and sleep it off, right? Fucking wrong. 4 hours of sleep, then up, shower, and down to the registration area, and shortly thereafter to a Changeling the Lost game run by The Wrecking Crew. I feel the need to put in a few notes here.

First, I was on the design team for the CtL corebook. However, I had never actually played the game or even managed to read all the way through the book, as ironic as that is. So I was interested to see what the final product ended up being like.

Second, The Wrecking Crew is awesome. They run tabletop games for White Wolf products at all sorts of conventions. Back in the day they used to help White Wolf with the setup and breakdown of their booths at said conventions, too. They are not only rabid fans, but they are very good at what they do. So I was doubly excited to play in this game.

Third, I was still vaguely nauseas, hadn't eaten since 3pm the previous day, and hadn't even had any water that morning. But I am not a little bitch, and I was determined to get my game on. So instead of doing the intelligent thing and saying, "Hey guys, give me 5 minutes to go get a bottle of water," I toughed through it. HTFU.

–Begin geeky game reminiscing–

The game had pregens, I was the last to the table but I found a great character: an Autumn Court librarian. Autumn Court changelings are the creepy ones. The girl running the game left the specifics to us, so I described him as a spindly man in his late 40s with straight, almost dead-looking black hair that was about chin-length, who had the musty smell of old books. He had sunken eyes, wore a moth-ridden tweed jacket, ivory button-down shirt, and brown corduroy pants. Also, from time to time a spider or two would skitter out from the hair hanging at his neck, scamper across his neck or face, and disappear on the other side.

His mein (how he looks to other changelings) was much the same, except instead of eyes he had black pits that seemed to suck in the light, features even more gaunt to the point of looking skeletal, and elongated teeth that were all sharp canines.

The basic plot was that the group of us "came to" on a dock with a wooden crate in front of us, and a person, with no memories of the previous 24 hours. The person was contractually bound not to tell us anything. My character snooped and sniffed around, and figured that there was most likely a dead body in there. Around that time, a car drove up and we were shot at. My character, not being a fighter, hid and used his powers to freak out the gunmen — or at least one of them.

We gain control of the situation, find out who hired them, then go up the chain to find out who hired that person to hire them, find out who that person was working for. It was basically a big court plot to make it look like the Autumn Court queen was abducting/killing the other three courts' queens, the plot lead by someone who hoped to take her place, and was working with the True Fae (bad, bad news) to do so. We blew up the would-be queen, I did some research on the fae and found her weakness (she is known as the Weeping Willow, and can't attack anyone that's crying), and the local changelings banded together to smack her down.

Behind the scenes, apparently we were hired by the current Autumn queen to investigate the disappearances.  I'd thought maybe we were the ones that had caused them, since we did "wake up" in front of a box with a dead body in it that I was pretty sure was one of the other queens, after all.

–End geeky game reminiscing–

After that, Lauren, Charles Bailey, and I went to grab brunch. I wanted some gumbo (it's New Orleans after all, and I love me some cajun food), so on the advice of friends we went to Gumbo Shop. Yes, it's a gumbo place called Gumbo Shop. It was pretty good, except that they put a crab claw in mine and there were little bits of it in the gumbo itself that I had to spit out from time to time. I found them, of course, by crunching down on them with my teeth, which was none too pleasant.

Then we went to a gelato place right around the corner, and it was divine. Lauren and I got some horchata gelato. They had some single malt Glenlivet gelato that I really wanted, but thought might be a bad idea after the previous night's debacle.

We helped Charles find a geocaching thing, then I caught the tail end of an artist panel and we went out to eat again.

What? I have a tapeworm to feed, you know. Or a hollow leg to fill. Or both.

We really wanted to check out The Green Goddess, since it seems to have great Yelp reviews and some of our friends raved about it. By "we wanted to go" I mostly mean that I did, and Lauren grumbled about it. Turns out, it was too packed anyway — it is but a tiny place, not capable of handling even the runoff of the crowds that the convention brought. So we ended up at House of Blues, where I had some shrimp and catfish creole. Though we had to wait a long time to get our food, it was very tasty, and the waitress was awesomely nice as well. I will definitely go back there whenever I'm next in the area.

Damnit, even writing about this is making me hungry. Maybe if I lived in New Orleans I'd actually gain a few pounds.

That night there was a… well, cocktail party is the best way I can think to describe it, at the Blue Room downstairs. CCP was giving the fans a chance to talk to some of the game developers, and have some nice snacks and free booze while they were at it.

This seemed to translate to "OMGfreebooze!!!!" and instead of talking to the developers, everyone seemed to go straight for the two bars, resulting in about a 45 minute wait to get drinks. I chatted some with Rich Thomas, Bill Bridges, and others before deciding to move along to bed.

Thus ended day 2. Not terribly exciting, but it involved good food, and the next day was the birthday party, so I knew adventure awaited. And indeed it did, but more on that in the next installment.

I decided to spend my 30th birthday with the White Wolf/CCP crew at The Grand Masquerade in New Orleans this year. And man was it a blast.  I had planned to do this in one post, but realized that would be a gargantuan post, so I'll do this piecemeal. So…

Day 1: Wednesday

Lauren and I drove down, got stuck behind a wreck on I-10 for over an hour, and checked in to The Roosevelt around 11. The early day was busy with work and I didn't think to eat, so the only meal I had was an Arby's meal around 3pm. This will be important in a little bit.

The hotel was… well, "fucking amazing" doesn't cover it. Opulent, gorgeous, refined, luxurious, and then some. I booked a suite, and I'm damn glad I did — not because the normal rooms are bad (they're also amazing), but the suites are that fucking sweet. Yeah, I just said that. A picture of the foyer is above, and the main bedroom is below.After having been cooped up in the car for so long, I was ready to explore. Lauren, having had to get up at 3am that morning, understandably wanted some sleep.  So, off I went to Bourbon Street alone.

Are you starting to see where that "only ate once that day" might come into play?

So I wander down Bourbon St. and find that it's pretty much exactly as I'd expected: every single establishment is either a bar, a bar with food (for some reason, they seem to think that margaritas and pizza go together as well as peanut butter and chocolate), or a strip club. None seemed to stand out until I saw a place that purported to have the most beers on Bourbon St. So I sat down and had myself an Arrogant Bastard (shut up, just shut up — it's a tasty beer!)… which ended up being $10.50. Leave it to me to find the only expensive alcohol on Bourbon St.

As I was finishing my tres-expensive beer, I got texts from some of the White Wolf crew telling me to join them at karaoke. I had a hard time figuring it out, since most of them were too drunk to correctly relay the name, but eventually figured it out to be the Cat's Meow. So I head that way, already tipsy from my one pint of high-grav beer.

I arrive to what I expect: lots of drunken White Wolf people, having pretty much taken over the place. Craig recommends the Hurricanes, I go get one. It is a $7.50 bucket of rum. Sweet, sweet rum. I take one sip and know this is dangerous. I go do the social butterfly thing, and after talking to Chris McDonough and giving him some completely heterosexual man-hugs, I look over to find my drink… stolen. For the first time in my life, I had my drink stolen. I felt robbed, I felt raped, I felt… okay well seriously I was only slightly annoyed.

"What the fuck?! Son of a…. well fuck it, they're only $7.50."

I should have taken the drink being stolen as a sign to stop. But I was only halfway through it, and I'm not a quitter. So I manned up and got another Huge Bucket of Rum^TM.  Remember how I said I'd only eaten once?  Yeah.

I don't remember a lot after that, other than stumbling home, buying Lauren a hot dog and having a bite of it myself, and then a few hours worshiping the porcelain goddess. At one point I was seriously wondering if I had alcohol poisoning. But I made it through, and around 5am went into restful slumber. Or to put it another way, I passed the fuck out.

Thus ended Day 1 of my grand adventure in New Orleans.

This post is in relation to the World of Darkness Online MMO that was recently announced at The Grand Masquerade. I've heard a few gripes that seem to come up a lot in various forms and forums, and I would like to address them here. Most of my thoughts boil down to: stop making assumptions, and have patience.

They aren't adding in X supernatural type, so I'm not going to play this game!

So what have they said?

The top-level points below have been outright stated (mostly at The Grand Masquerade), sub-points are logical extensions that others have drawn.

• It will be a player-driven game with lots of social and political elements.
  • Giving power to the players is a double-edged sword. So while they might not have mechanics to stop someone from talking in netspeak and being a douche, other players will presumably have the power to smack that bitch down¹.
• The themes that the game explores will be: Mystery, Romance, Power, Danger.
• It will be an adult game, that aims to invoke emotion in you.
• Vampires will be the only supernatural player characters, but stuff from the other games will be present in some form. Also, there will be the option to play a human, though no specifics on that were given.
  •  Other supernaturals will most likely be environmental content, NPCs, that sort of thing.
  •  Humans will likely be ghouls or blood dolls, but maybe we could see some human vampire hunter PCs too.
• Character customizability and aesthetics will be big in this game. They have even hired a fashion consultant.
• They want to make the game as accessible as possible, and this is one of their criteria for success. So they want it to be fun for both hardcore and casual gamers.
• They also want to cater to an array of players by having three ways you can play the game: sandbox (open-ended like EVE), theme park (traditional MMOs like WoW), and coffee shop (social). These playstyles will be interconnected, with each one feeding to and from one of the others.
• The game will not be combat-intensive, unless you choose to play it that way.
  •  Being the biggest social/political mover and shaker will garner you far more power than being the strongest fighter.
• Factions and territories will be a big part of the game.
• The game will have gay clubs.
• The game will be fully PvP, but that's not to say that you can be attacked anywhere. If you don't want to get attacked, you might want to hang around Elysium a lot.
  • This will probably be like any LARP. If you go down a dark alleyway, you might get jumped by your enemies, or even some random person. On the other hand, if the person jumping you breaks the Masquerade, they're in for trouble.
• Some Disciplines will not be included because they're impossible to have in an MMO, like Temporis.

There are some other things, mostly other nitty-gritty stuff like they are using Scrum development methodologies, have already spent like 314 man-years (which equals one Shane DeFreest year)  in development, etc. But that's the core of what is publicly known about the game so far.