WickedThought

I needed to prove something to myself. Not anybody else, just me.

In 1995, I joined AEG and started writing articles for Shadis magazine. A few months after joining, I was approached by David Williams, the CCG editor, about a card game tentatively called Bushido. It was supposed to be based on the Bushido RPG. AEG was negotiating buying the property. Just before I came aboard, that acquisition was in flux. Me joining up, knowing and understanding Japanese history and culture and suggesting we should develop our own property, pushed the rest of the office over the fence. We would do our own thing.

I spent the next four years designing and developing Legend of the Five Rings with some of the most talented people I’ve ever known. We were doing it ourselves, doing it for ourselves. We were the new kids, upstarts, all of us under 30, all of us working 80 hour weeks with no sleep, little food, and nothing to sustain us but our comraderie. We fought the industry, the distribution system, and ourselves. I still remember the post-Origins Award party when we won for Best Roleplaying Game and a person I admired and respected said, “Well, looks like a CCG finally won the best RPG award.”

I had little to do with the actual mechanical design of the CCG, but the RPG was my baby. I took advice from a lot of people, but I was a tyrant on that book. I was inspired by the James Bond RPG (as was Dave Williams) and we crafted something that some people are still calling one of the best RPG systems out there. We worked hard and we were rewarded with the appreciation of the greatest fans in the industry. No fans are as fun, loving, and devoted as L5R fans.

(I was sitting on the plane and a guy in a Phoenix Clan jersey was sitting on the other side of the aisle. The guy sitting next to me–who knew my history with the game–asked, “Are you going to say anything?” I didn’t. I didn’t know how to.)

After designing and developing 7th Sea with my then-wife, I spent another two years at AEG, working just as hard with people who didn’t quite understand the property. I think many of them thought, “European fantasy = D&D” and when they saw 7th Sea, they didn’t exactly know what to do with it. That’s my perception on it, anyway. I could be wrong.

Frustrations inside the company drove Jennifer to quit. I left a month later. Since then, I’ve worked in the video game industry, at Neopets, Upper Deck, and even spent a long time working with orphans. Rewarding work that made me forget about the petty bullshit that went on in my gaming past. But a leopard can’t change his spots. Game design is what I do. I think it is what I do best.

(That and something else that is too sensitive to talk about in front of such refined company.)

Then, in 2001, I met Jared Sorensen. I met him at Kubla-Con (The King of Cons!) on a panel talking about game design. We talked, laughed, and went our seperate ways. It wasn’t until months later that Jennifer and I bumped into him at a food court in Marin County. We exchanged phone numbers and started hanging out on a regular basis. He showed me octaNe and my whole view of roleplaying games changed.

Back in 2001, Jared was doing what everybody else is doing now. Fucking with narrative control, fucking with the notion of “who is the GM?”, fucking with every assumption I had about RPGs. Hell, fucking with every single assumption everyone had about roleplaying games. He was young, brilliant, and looked exactly like Percival.

I was infected with the God. Enthused.

For the next four years (five, really), I spent time in the trenches of “the indie movement,”  a torrent of ideas, disagreements and delusions. In that place, there were people who agreed with me on many design philosophies, but at the same time, disagreed with others. I looked at myself, redefined who I was–who “John Wick” was–and crashed head first into all those assumptions Jared had been dancing around.

I designed Enemy Gods, Cat, Thirty and Discordia with Jared’s inspiration, and with the encouragement of others. Ron Edwards, Clinton Nixon, Thrymm… they all pushed my head under the water and wouldn’t let me come back up until I had a different answer. I saw other designers like Luke Crane doing design his own mad way. I admired them, considered them allies.

This Gen Con, there was something in the air. I do not believe in destiny, fate, or kharma, but something was about to happen. This Gen Con, something did happen. Two things, actually. Neither of these things I can talk about just yet, but they both forced me to re-evaluate my path. Seeing Burning Empires did something to me. It reminded me of something. A feeling I had a long time ago when I first held the L5R RPG in my hands. Luke did something amazing with that book. He…

… I remember an angry voice. Someone shouting. Someone saying something about “raising the bar…”

Luke did it. Go out and compare Burning Empires with D&D 3.0. I dare you. I double dare you. But only do it if you are willing to be afraid.

Luke hit me with that book, harder than Monte could ever hit me with his. (And I deserve a swat for what I said about Monte’s book.) And he made me realize something.

Not yet. Almost, but not yet. Still more cryptic mentions, still more hints. More to come. But until then, go check out Burning Empires.

It’s Big.

Like the games I used to do.

The games people keep asking me to do.

Membership Class
As most everyone who’s come into contact with the Camarilla club knows, Membership Class (MC) is a touchy subject. In short, MC is an OOC ranking system that encourages participation in the club. New members start at MC 1. If a new member participates in the club as an officer (a storyteller or coordinator), he is awarded a monthly sum of Prestige. Members who devote time and energy to the club are rewarded with “Prestige,” which is kind of like experience points: the more Prestige you get, the more benefits you get out of the club.  Member Class goes from 1 to 15 (an honorary rank) and the amount of Prestige necessary to move up in the club ranks in the thousands.

The most prominent reward of MC and Prestige is the bonus experience points you get to make a character within the club. For every “level” of MC you have, you gain an additional 20 xp to add to your primary character in the club, one character per venue. In other words, one Vampire character, one Werewolf character, and one Mage character. (I believe this has changed recently, but I haven’t kept track. I think you can now have two primary characters, as you did in the last incarnation of the club.)

This means that high-ranking members of the club have very powerful characters. Members with MC 10 or higher literally have hundreds of experience points to add to their characters. This accomplishes another goal in the club: the presence of older and/or more powerful characters. Because an important part of the Vampire genre is “elder vampires” who move and shake the world from behind the scenes, the MC system rewards players who participate in the club by allowing them to play these elder characters.

The MC system, it has been argued to me, is necessary for the club to work, and I mean “necessary” in a philosophical sense: it is impossible for the club to exist without it. Without a reward, it has been argued, the club would simply cease to exist: nobody would volunteer for the vital officer positions that make the club go. Without the MC reward of bonus xp, players would not volunteer to be storytellers or coordinators.

Well, let’s start with that little claim. Remember, the claim is “Without a tangible reward like bonus experience points, the club would not exist.”

Now, to refute that claim, I could use an example of another club that operates in a very similar manner, providing the same benefits as the Camarilla, but without an MC system. If such a club existed, and existed on the same level as the Camarilla, the claim of “necessity” would be proven false.

I could do that by pointing to the One World by Night organization. One World by Night (OWBN) provides the exact same environment as the Camarilla club without the use of any system of reward. The game is a global game: there are members world-wide participating in a single chronicle. My first night at a OWBN game, I watched a player contact the Prince of Orlando, Florida by celphone. OWBN’s membership rivals the Camarilla’s membership numbers (if you believe either or both of their claims of “active members”) and having participated in both organizations, I can safely make the claim that I saw no discernable difference in player quality. In fact, I had more fun playing in OWBN than I did in the Camarilla.

Now, a quick rebuttal of this argument will be something along the lines of “OWBN has it’s own organizational problems…” and that claim would be true: but it would not refute the argument that a club exists with officers, storytellers and coordinators without an MC system. These people volunteer their own time because they believe in the organization. I was a Storyteller in OWBN not because it gave my characters better powers but because I enjoy running games and wanted to run games for my friends.

I was an ST in both organizations, earned Prestige in only one of them, and felt no obligation to “perform better” in the Camarilla because I was getting a reward. I am an ST because I love running games.

Now, let me ask you a loaded question: Which would you prefer? The ST who runs games because he loves running games, or the ST who is running the game because he wants Prestige? It’s an unfair question, a false dilemma, but I’m up for that every once in a while.

I will also point out another organization that exists without any tangible reward to encourage its members to participate. It is a little bit older than the Camarilla or OWBN, but I think you may have heard of it. It’s called The Freemasons.

I’ve been a Mason for almost a year. I have received no material benefit from joining the organization. Sadly, I do not receive checks from the United Nations, nor do I get escorted flights in black helicopters. I have gained no “insider trading” knowledge, nor have I made contacts that will propel me to the top of the social order. Instead, all the “benefits” of Freemasonry have been entirely intangible: knowledge and fraternity.

The Masons do not reward their members: they challenge their members. I’ve been pushed both mentally and spiritually. And I pay dues. And I keep going back because of the reward of being with men who believe an unreflective life is not worth living. I don’t do it for MC or extra experience points; I do it because I want to learn one of the most beautiful symbol systems in the world. Something that will not help me in any “real” way in the “real” world.

So, I believe I have effectively refuted the “the club will fail if there is no MC system” argument. As to the other part–the “providing elder characters” argument–I think I have an effective solution. A lottery. Here’s how it works.

When a player makes a new character, he draws from a bowl. In the bowl are 4 chits. One says, “Neonate,” the second says, “Ancillae,” the third says “Elder,” and the fourth says “Choose.” Make a draw. Now, once you make a draw, that particular draw comes out of the pot. You continue to make draws for each new character, but each time you draw, the lot you chose comes out of the pot, thus eliminating that lot from future draws. Once you’ve chosen “Neonate,” that lot is not available at your next draw.

This way, everyone gets the opportunity to play an Elder, a Neonate and an Ancillae. It’s random. This creates an alternative system. It creates the presence of vampires of varrying age in the chronicle and does it fairly. Because, you see, that’s one of the problems with the MC system: it discourages new players.

Like friends of mine have said over at Sheldon’s journal, I have also been told that “new players have to earn their fun.” And I’ve been told it by multiple members (some of which asssumed that because I was an industry professional, my MC was much higher than it was). If the Camarilla club is interested in attracting new members, it will reward them for joining. This is a simple principle that I feel many members of the Camarilla club do not understand. So, let me use an analogy (otherwise known as “the worst form of argument”).

Think of the Camarilla club as a college frat house. Now, use the same kind of language in reference to the “new members.” I think you’ll see my point. A bit of an unfair statement here: the fact that 99% of the Camarilla membership would never make it into a frat house should be figured into your evaluation.

In closing, I feel the MC system in the Camarilla is a) unnecessary, b) provides biased and unfair rewards to its membership, and c) discourages new membership. All of these can be fixed and I have provided alternatives and examples for each.

Thank you for your time.