Open Development – World of Darkness: Hurt Locker

Chronicles of Darkness, Open Development

Lots and lots of spinning plates right now.

I’m in charge of a few projects at the moment, V20 Tal’Mahe’Ra, Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition, and some things I can’t talk about yet. But I’m in the preliminary discussion stage of World of Darkness: Hurt Locker. One thing I’ve really wanted to do with Hurt Locker is start SUPER early in the development cycle, and both start and maintain a public, open development presence the entire time. This just just about the earliest I can start, because I haven’t even begun my outline, vision statement, or anything like that yet. Violence in games is a huge thing for me. I have very personal experiences with real world violence, and I think it has an important place in fiction. I think in particular, it has an important place in horror fiction.

So I want to poke and prod. What do you want out of a book about violence in the World of Darkness? Do you want to see how violence is used in fiction, and thus in the fiction of games? Storytelling advice for how to make violence resonate? A variety of organizations and people, and both how and why they use violence? Systems to reflect the horror of violent encounters with normal people? Conditions for permanent effects from injury? Conditions for the trauma caused by both committing and being victim of violence?

I expect to include numerous Merits. I’ve been asked a lot about Fighting Styles for World of Darkness Second Edition. So that’ll happen. I know we want to hit on expanded equipment lists. That’ll happen. I also think we need to hit on some of the interesting topics raised in The God-Machine Chronicle, like Beaten Down and Down and Dirty Combat. We might talk about violence as a coercive action in Social Maneuvering.

There’s a million options, but only about one hundred thousand words to explore them. What do you want to see?