Dark Ages: Peeling Back the Curtain

Vampire: The Masquerade

If you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably read at least a few Onyx Path/White Wolf books in the past. You’ve seen the end result of a process. Usually, this process looks something like so:

1) Developer pitches a book.

2) Publisher accepts the pitch.

3) Developer crafts an outline and hires writers.

4) Writers scribble down a first draft version of the book.

5) The developer “red lines” the first draft, hands it back to writers.

6) Meanwhile, the art director starts contracting illustrators based on notes provided by the writers and developer.

7) The writers rewrite and elaborate depending on red lines.

8) The developer does another pass of the text, and hands it to an editor.

9) The editor goes over the text to make sure it’s readable to the outside eye.

10) The art director has someone put the text and illustrations to a layout.

11) Everyone takes a final look at the book, and then it goes to publication.

This is the long way of saying, what you hold in your hands (or read on your screen, if you’re savvy to that) has seen a lot of eyes, and has gone through a lot of molding, shaping, curing, pruning, and fixing.

Sometimes, with our Open Development process, we’ve shared early drafts or even outlines (like I did in our last entry). Tonight, I wanted to share with you something different. This isn’t even a zero draft; this is a series of notes from one of my writing staff (the supercoolawesome Renee Knipe).

I have every writer drafting “voice characters” for the sample quotations and splat art throughout the book. However, these characters might come up at other times, in introductory fiction, in examples of play, or maybe even in a future fiction anthology if the stars align. This means that we need points of reference for each one of these characters. Typically, I encourage writers to give a few sentences to define the character, and tell me who she is, so anyone can pick up the character and run with her.

Sometimes, however, writers will go above and beyond, and provide extensive history notes for these characters. Renee’s working on the Tzimisce clan writeup (and the Road of Metamorphosis, Vicissitude, and a few other related things), and gave me these notes for Cal?una, her voice character. I thought they were kind of cool, and wanted to share.

A few things to note:

1) This is brain spew. This is not a working draft. This is not made for publication. It’s just notes.

2) Most of this probably won’t see print, it’s just for perspective and context. If we ever get to expand upon her, it’ll come into play. But we’ll see.

3) Being notes, there’s no editing. There won’t be any editing. Usually, this would see only a handful of eyes. Keep that in mind.

4) Isn’t she kind of awesome?

5) It’s a live Google Doc. So if you want to reference it, reference it by link, or link to this particular entry.

Here you go.