Gehenna [Vampire Open Development]

Open Development, Vampire: The Masquerade

For those that missed Gen Con, Onyx Path announced that I was the line developer for Vampire: The Masquerade 4th Edition. This has led to a lot of… spirited… discussion online, and Rich has since posted what we mentioned at the show. We didn’t give much information at the time, because right now I’m working with my team to hammer things out — it’s still pretty early in the design process. However, Rich and I agreed that we wanted to let all of you know despite that, because I think open development made the V20 products I worked on better, and I’d like to get some community feedback as early as possible. I also saw how Justin Achilli and Matt McElroy got a lot of mileage out of early brainstorming for the Anarchs Unbound and Ghouls books, and I think a version of those could work for Vampire.

However, I have to approach this differently than I have before. I can’t just toss documents up and let people tear them apart (although I may do some of that down the road). Instead, I’m going to bring up specific points for feedback here on the blog, and then sit back and listen. I love to hear discussions about Vampire, and just about every con I’ve gone to has lead to me talking with people in the community about what they love about Vampire, what they wish they could see more of, and their concerns about the future of the game. That’s what I’d like to do with this series of open development blogs: replicate that experience of you telling me your loves and concerns as much as possible.

So this isn’t a blog where you ask me questions and I answer them. Rather, this is the blog where I ask you a question, and I listen to your polite, civil answers. (People being jerks will be ignored and/or tossed in the comment oubliette. Let’s be classy about this.)

One of the things we mentioned at Gen Con was that, unlike V20, this edition stems directly from Revised. Which means, on some level, Gehenna happened. This isn’t a post-apocalyptic scenario, however. For reasons that will be hinted at and eluded to in the material, something happened in Gehenna that changed things, something that wasn’t supposed to happen. So, while some of the prophesied events did come to pass, others didn’t. In the end, the Kindred weren’t destroyed, but they were certainly changed. (Feel free to politely speculate if you like — I won’t confirm or deny anything, though.)

The actual Gehenna book was very explicitly designed to be customized for individual chronicles, which means there isn’t really a “canonical” Gehenna to choose from (although certainly some scenarios get referenced more than others, such as the Wormwood scenario). Similarly, some of the signs of Gehenna referenced in books like the Book of Nod could be interpreted a variety of ways, and a few never seem to show up. I’ve pulled on many of these sources to construct a Gehenna scenario that I feel strikes a balance between fidelity to the original lore and my design needs for a new edition, but there’s a lot to choose from. There might be a really cool bit I’m missing that was lurking somewhere, or something that came from someone’s chronicle that was just amazing.

That’s my question to all of you: Assuming Gehenna came and went, leaving the Kindred changed but not eradicated, what events are interesting or exciting enough to reference in this new edition?

I look forward to reading your thoughts!