Lore of the Clans: Thank You

Vampire: The Masquerade

Yesterday I sent off the last redlines to the writers for Lore of the Clans, thus closing the open development process for the book. Because of the staggered nature of open development, I’ve already gotten a few drafts back, but I’m expecting to get the majority of them in October. From there, I’ll revise, kick the drafts over to the teams working on V20 Dark Ages and Ghouls to make sure the material is connecting (or at least disconnecting in interesting and intentional ways), and then the usual editing/layout/art/book phases. There may be a Kickstarter in there somewhere, and I already have some ideas of interesting goals for that. To keep the book on track, though, I don’t anticipate any more drafts being posted online.

I did want to take a moment to thank everyone to participated. Some folks were a little more aggressive than others, and a few seemed very eager to add random numbers and spaces into the text for some reason. It was stressful, chaotic, and intense, but in the end it was worth it. Many of the conversations reaffirmed my instincts, but a few were very surprising, and helped me reassess my assumptions on some parts of the material. There was also a lot of small details from some of the more obscure books that I think will make the whole product feel much richer. Without going into a full changelog (there’s a few more rounds of revisions to go through, so I don’t want to say something’s definitely changing at this stage), I can say that every single Clan was shaped by the discussion provided, and in every chapter there was at least one noteworthy shift in the material that came directly from this process.

So, thank you for continuing to be the passionate, engaged, dynamic community that has kept this game aloft for so many years. Each open development process is a new experiment, a new way of baring our souls, but each time you’ve been collectively very positive and productive. I know Rites of the Blood was dramatically improved because of you, and I hope the same will be true of Lore of the Clans.