The Dark Darkens, Darkeningly. [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting

First off, many thanks to all of you who expressed your enjoyment of this blog so far, and your many great ideas for what you’d enjoy seeing me talk about each week in the future!

I’m going to get right to the conversation Fast Eddy Webb and I had at lunch today about putting together teams for projects, but first I want to point your attention to the Blurbs! section right above the Updates section below. I decided that while I personally was feeling a bit like all my writings here were heading a too much towards sales info, there were still obviously folks who were looking for those reminders of sales and Kickstarters. And, they could actually use that info to be set off from my blathering instead of being stuck inside them; hence, the Blurbs! section.

Go ahead, scroll down and check it out. I’ll wait.

Dum, dee dumm…the lord, the loooord of the riiiings…dum, dee dum, dum dum dum duuum!

Back? OK.

Eddy and I talked at lunch today a fair bit about processes, partly about whether email or voice or google docs was the best ongoing communication between creative teams, but mostly more conceptually on how to create different consulting “brain trusts” that can come together at different phases at the start of a project and when and how these should evolve into the working groups of writers for the project. I likened into to how SNL has had both performers and more rarely performer/writers, while other comedy troupes tend to be made up of performer/writers, like Monty Python, SCTV, or Kids in the Hall.

We have folks with great knowledge and interest in our White Wolf games, either because they were the original creators or are fans of these long-lived games. They have ideas based on experience that can be drawn on to get a rough skeleton of what we want in a game. It’s not important that they are also writers, but them knowing at least a bit how these ideas they are presenting will eventually need to be written can be helpful. And if they really feel like they can run with their idea, and actually are the kind of writers we want, then they maybe should be given the assignment to make their idea work in the project itself. But at that point they would transition into the writing team. How to maximize the knowledge of the brain trust(‘s because sometimes different groups with different skill sets and experiences can be part of all this) to map out the features of the project, and then how and when to transition to a writing team in a way that enables that team to get the best guidance in their assignments from the ideas put together by the brain trust was pretty much the meat of what we talked about today.

But, since I promised to touch on this in today’s blog, I did go over with Eddy some of my research relating comedy troupes on tv with our creative teams. I started looking into this during my years managing and leading the Production and Design Department at old White Wolf. I was mostly concerned, at the time, with trying to discover how to enable a team to create high quality work while under unending deadlines and the scrutiny of fans, other departments in the company, and the bosses. It seemed to me that drama required a certain set of creative sensibilities that were certainly part of what we did (and still do) with gamebooks, but didn’t cover all of it.

Comedy, though, is more complicated to do really well, so it seemed a better conceptual model to look at. The idea of doing a show really well, week after week, and maintaining the creative energy to be funny, well that seemed to map well to my team needing to bring the creative magic to every project week after week. Anyway, it was an excuse to really research those troupes, too. I won’t say that I achieved any sort of master list of how to keep creative teams going, but I did get an overall better feeling for the environments that foster good ongoing work, and a few general trends.

As an example, I noted that being able to form creative groupings, often two person partnerships, was something these comedians gravitated towards and seemed to value, even if the groups sometimes fell or exploded apart. Belushi and Ackroyd in the original SNL troupe; Palin and Jones, and Chapman and Cleese in Monty Python; these were strong writing and often performing teams that also strengthened each other and served to create a united creative front. For my part, as manager, I would assign senior and junior designers, or different art directors with different designers, until it seemed something clicked. Later, I’d match art directors with line developers as partners for the game lines. Sometimes the people clicked and really created stronger projects because of it, sometime they didn’t and we’d reconfigure- I never really wanted anybody to be forced to work with someone they couldn’t stand. In any of the cases, either having that other person to relate to, to drive ideas to and know they’d be improved, or even just to say something stunk, it seemed like the creative spark was kept going by having that other person involved.

The other side of the coin, were the lone wolves, creators who seemed strongest when they could work something out on their own. Eric Idle functioned this way with Monty Python, as did SNL‘s Molly Shannon who famously would explain characters just with a sound and a gesture, and then run amok on stage with them. For me, I just made sure for our lone creative types that the structure was there of the larger group and that they never felt isolated, or more important than the team.

There’s a lot more there, but that’s an example of how I tried to apply ideas garnered from those troupes.

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And now, the BLURBS!

This week we are wrapping up the nWoD Dark Eras Prestige Edition Kickstarter, and what a fascinating and exciting trip it has been as backers are suggesting Dark Eras and then voting them into the book. The artwork at the top of the page is the full-page Elizabethan Requiem piece by Cathy Wilkins that we just got in. We’re 4 days from the end, $1200 away from the next Stretch Goal achievement of adding a new Dark Era chapter, which may be Werewolf: the Forsaken in the Viking Era, although Hunter: the Vigil during the time of the Biblical Book of Judges sounds pretty cool too, or Geist: Wild West! If you haven’t checked it out yet, and are itching to help decide what is actually in this book when it’s done, c’mon!

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DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (Projects in bold have changed listings)

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition) (Going for open development soon.)

M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition) – In Open Development

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Demon Storytellers’ Guide (Demon: the Descent) Extension to writers was given.

Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition) (Preview post last night.)

M20 Anthology (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Demon Translation Guide (Demon: the Fallen and Demon: the Descent)

Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

nWoD Hurt Locker (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)

Pugmire (Be a Good Dog.)

CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

WoD nWoD 2e core (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)

Redlines

Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)

Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening) – In Open Development

Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition

W20 Changing Ways (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)

Second Draft

Beast: the Primordial core book (Beast: The Primordial)

V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

W20 Novel by Mike Lee (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

“Sardonyx” System Rules (Base rules set for Scion and the Trinity Continuum)

Development

V20 Red List (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created) Being playtested.

Dreams of Avarice (Mummy: the Curse)

Editing

M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Development (post-editing)

Sothis Ascends (Mummy: the Curse)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE