Praise for Twisted Tales Events

'In the past few years Twisted Tales has become a major force in the promotion and appreciation of horror fiction. As well as putting on author readings and signings at bookshops it has expanded into organising larger events, bringing authors and critics together for discussions of the field. I've been involved in quite a few of both and have found them hugely enjoyable and stimulating - I believe the audiences did as well. May Twisted Tales continue to grow and prosper! If you love the field, support them! I do.' - Ramsey Campbell

‘Twisted Tales consistently produce well-organised events for writers and readers of horror. What really distinguishes Twisted Tales for me is the intelligent themes and investigations they pursue, and the high quality of the discussions they always stimulate. As an author I've been invited to three of their events and have been pleasantly startled, to near shocked, by the attendance levels - two out of three were even sold out. I salute anyone who contributes so much to the literary and cultural life of horror fiction.’- Adam Nevill

'Twisted Tales events are wonderful... a great way of promoting 21st century horror fiction. Supported by Waterstone's Liverpool One and really well organised, Twisted Tales brings together established names in the genre as well as new voices and of course readers. Looking forward to much more to come...' - Alison J. Littlewood

Monday 23 June 2014

Richard Dansky interviewed by David McWilliam about 'Wraith: The Oblivion'

Writer, game designer and cad, Richard Dansky was named one of the Top 20 videogame writers in the world in 2009 by Gamasutra. His work includes bestselling games such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: 3, Outland, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. His writing has appeared in magazines ranging from The Escapist to Lovecraft Studies, as well as numerous anthologies. He was a major contributor to White Wolf’s World of Darkness setting, with credits on over a hundred RPG supplements, and will be developing the upcoming 20th Anniversary Edition of Wraith: The Oblivion. His most recent novel, Vaporware, is available from JournalStone, and was nominated for the inaugural Manly Wade Wellman award. Richard lives in North Carolina with his wife, statistician and blogger Dr. Melinda Thielbar, and their amorphously large collections of books and single malt whiskys.

For more information, visit Richard’s website.

DM: As a GM and/or player, what horror games do you most admire? Can you name any that influenced the way you approach game design?
RD: I think the best horror games - and there are a great many of them - remember that horror is about the response to the monster, not the monster. What that response is can vary - it’s a very different approach in Call of Cthulhu than it is in Don’t Rest Your Head than it is in Vampire - but as long as it’s about the character, not the critter and its stats and treasure type and percent in lair, then you’ve got the makings of good horror. And I’m very happy to see the ongoing trend in making interesting, challenging horror games that picks up the torch from classics like CoC and Chill - a world where we’re constantly seeing new games like Night’s Black Agents is one where it’s good to be a fan of horror games.

DM: What would your pitch be to convince someone who has never played a World of Darkness game to try Wraith: The Oblivion?
RD: “How’d you like to bust the Ghostbusters?” More seriously, during the years I was developing Wraith, there was something that would happen at every convention I went to. Someone would walk up to the booth, explain how they loved Wraith but couldn’t find anyone to play it with, and then walk off. Fifteen minutes later, the same thing would happen, and so on, all weekend. So I think the idea that Wraith is this distant, untouchable star of a game is wrong and it always has been wrong - it’s a question of getting the people who want to play in touch with people who are willing to give it a shot. Which brings us around to the original question. To that, I say it’s a game where you’re taking care of unfinished business from life while learning how to survive in the lands of death, where your dark side is your own worst enemy and an empire of the dead stands against monsters from before the dawn of time.

DM: How did you first become involved with Wraith? What drew you to the line?
RD: I got involved with Wraith pretty much toward the beginning. I'd known Jennifer Hartshorn, the original developer, in college and she was well aware of my penchant for horror. So when she had some openings in the Haunts book, she was generous enough to ask me to write a couple of chapters, which became The Hanging Gardens Casino and the Tillinghast Mansion, respectively.  After that, I freelanced pretty extensively until Jen moved over to Vampire, at which point I was asked to take over Wraith. And that was that, apart from a small hiatus where the estimable Edward Hall stepped in for Wraith: The Great War and World of Darkness: Tokyo.

As for what drew me to the line, well, I did a thesis on H.P. Lovecraft. My first published writing was in Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, respectively. I have a collection of rare and antique horror novels, and I have multiple statues of Cthulhu in my office. So I felt a certain resonance with the material, you might say. And, looking around at the art from various Wraith books that adorns my office, I still do.

DM: It is interesting that you mention Cthulhu as, unlike most other World of Darkness lines, Wraith is not set predominantly in the world of the living. The idea of a whole other reality overlaying Earth, with the alien threat of ravenous Oblivion rising up from the darkest depths feels very Lovecraftian. Do you consider Wraith, at least in part, to be a game of cosmic horror?
RD: The defining character of cosmic horror as I understand it is the focus on the uncaring, mechanistic universe (that just happens to be populated by giant squid-faced entities from beyond space and time because that’s how evolution rolls across the endless aeons and folded dimensions). It’s the fact that there is no agency to the universe that’s so frightening, and that underpins all the tentacles and n-dimensional angles and whatnot. Wraith, on the other hand, focuses on the individual wraith’s struggle - against Oblivion and against themself. It’s a deeply personal game, and that personal conflict is what’s at the heart of things - even when that conflict is thrown into the middle of a fight against a shape-shifting malevolent entity from Oblivion’s doorstep. So, ultimately, while Wraith may be inspired by cosmic horror and may use elements familiar to fans of cosmic horror, it is not itself cosmic because even in the face of Oblivion, it always returns to the human.

DM: What difficulties did you face when writing something so melancholic with such experimental rules?
RD: Wraith was and is a fantastic challenge because so much of the interesting design happens away from combat. It’s one of the very rare games where roleplaying and mechanics are inextricably intertwined: Passions and Fetters and Pathos generation, just for starters, and who your character is, are more important in many ways than what. So any difficulties are really the meat and the fun of the job - I wouldn’t call them difficulties so much as “challenges”, and very satisfying challenges to resolve, at that.

As for the melancholy, I’ll have to disagree with you there. Yes, there is an obvious dark tone to the game, but at the same time, it’s really the most hopeful of the original WoD titles. Transcendence is real, and there is something you can do instead of fighting hopelessly against the inevitable. Wraiths get a second chance to fix what they did wrong in life, and there’s something incredibly powerful about that which really doesn’t match the doom’n’gloom stereotype. Can you tell depressing stories in Wraith? Sure. But you can also tell stories of high adventure in the Tempest, or dungeon crawls in the Labyrinth, or political stories in Stygia, or any number of other stories that are colored by emotions beyond despair.
   
DM: What can fans of Wraith: The Oblivion Second Edition expect from the 20th Anniversary Edition? Are there elements that you feel must be included for it to feel authentic?
RD: At the risk of sounding slightly obsessive, I’ve been mulling over Wraith in the back of my mind for nigh on 15 years now. That’s a lot of time to be pondering design and creative decisions, and to be thinking about what went right and what could have been done better. And any game designer will tell you, looking back on their work they always see things that they could have done better. Am I amazingly proud of Wraith Second Edition and all of the work that the writers, artists and other folks involved did? Absolutely. I think it’s a great game that did some wonderful things, and if you look at the list of creative folks who worked on it, it’s mind-boggling. So, there’s a lot there that I think is worth hanging onto and building on, because it’s damned good, original work. Stuff that Geoff Grabowski and Bruce Baugh did with the Labyrinth, for example. A ton of work people did with the Guilds. I could go on and on. A fan of Second Edition is absolutely going to feel comfortable in the setting, and hopefully the changes that are being made are ones that they’ll feel positive about - in part because a lot of the ones we’re looking at were sparked by feedback from and conversation with fans.

DM: Conversely, how much creative freedom do you have to alter the setting and update it for 2014?
RD: Rich Thomas has pretty much given me tremendous creative freedom to make changes, though I’ve discussed every proposed change with him. I think he and I are on the same page when it comes to what’s the real essence of Wraith and where we can make changes that will make it even better. So, no, there’s not going to be rules for all-singing, all-dancing ghost musical extravaganzas. But you will see a broader universe in the main book, and more of an emphasis on bringing players into the world cleanly.

DM: I have been impressed by your engagement with fans of Wraith on the Onyx Path forums, taking on suggestions that work for you and explaining why you reject others. How does this level of interaction during the design process shape your overall vision for the project?
RD: It’s always great to hear what the people who play the game are thinking - what they like, what they don’t like, what they want to see more of, you name it. That’s incredibly valuable feedback to have, and it serves as a great gut check. And really, why wouldn’t I want to talk to the folks who are most excited to see the game coming back? I mean, as Pollyanna as this sounds, we all share a love of the game. Maybe I’m coming at it from a slightly different angle than they are because I made the metaphorical sausage, but to be part of a community that loves you work, well, that’s a wonderful feeling. Without them we wouldn’t be doing this; it’s a pleasure to take the time to talk with them, answer whatever questions I can, and hopefully make them feel that the game they love is in good hands.

DM: What are your hopes for the Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter? If it is really successful, do you envision expanding on the core book with various supplements?
RD: First things first - let’s do the 20th Anniversary Edition, because that’s where all of my focus is right now. It’s such a pleasure to come back to this world, and, just as importantly, to come back to the people I worked with back in the day, that I’m just enjoying this project right now. Obviously, I’d hope it would be a tremendously successful Kickstarter, and I’d hope that people who perhaps didn’t get to play Wraith before - because they came along after Ends of Empire, or because they couldn’t find a group to play it with - would get a chance to find something they could enjoy. Beyond that, it’s all details - I just want to do something that lives up to - OK, surpasses - the expectations of the folks who’ve been loyal Wraith fans over the years, that does right by the world, and that hopefully opens things up to a whole new generation of players. If I can do that, then we’ll talk about what comes next. But let me climb the first mountain before we even start thinking about the second.

Thursday 19 June 2014

Stew Wilson interviewed by David McWilliam about 'Werewolf: The Apocalypse'

A freelance writer and game designer, Stew got his start with White Wolf on Lore of the Forsaken. He has worked on most of the new World of Darkness games, but finally got to sink his teeth into his first love with Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition. In addition to being a writer on the core book, he took up the developer’s mantle for supplemental books like Changing Breeds 20, Rage Across the World, and Book of the Wyrm 20. Werewolf has given him more opportunities to branch out into new fields, including the comic for Changing Breeds, and the W20 Cookbook.

In addition to his work for White Wolf and Onyx Path Publishing, Stew has contributed to EVE Online, Maschine Zeit, and the upcoming setting anthology for Apotheosis Drive X. He has also self-published a number of games including BLACK SEVEN, the stealth-action RPG, and Æternal Legends, the game of modern fantasy heroes.

For more information, visit Stew's website.


DM: How did you become a World of Darkness games designer?
SW: I was a regular on the old, old White Wolf forums, starting back in 1999. It’s through them that I met existing freelance designers like Matt McFarland and Aaron Dembski-Bowden, and got to know Ethan Skemp. I expressed a desire to work on Werewolf, but as the line was drawing to a close that didn't happen. In 2004, Ethan offered me a chance to work on Lore of the Forsaken. I didn’t look back.

After we finished writing Werewolf 20, Ethan passed the developer’s hat to me. I never thought I’d get a chance to develop Werewolf: The Apocalypse when I started writing professionally; by then the Time of Judgment had hit and the classic World of Darkness ended. The 20th Anniversary Edition let me work on Werewolf again, and taking on the developer’s role really lets me put my mark on the game.

DM: What are the core concepts behind Werewolf: The Apocalypse? What can players expect from the game?
SW: Werewolf is a game about getting mad at the state of the world and having the power to do something about it. You know the truth of the world — that the three great cosmological forces of Wyld, Weaver, and Wyrm are massively out of balance. The Weaver wants to cocoon the universe in a calcified web where nothing changes. The Wyrm wants to corrupt all that is, poisoning its very soul. They've forced the Wyld, the wellspring of creation, onto the back foot. Now, they're coming for Gaia ― She who is the world and the soul of the world. If the Weaver or the Wyrm is victorious, it's the end of everything.

Gaia isn't defenseless. Æons ago, She made shapeshifting warriors to defend Her. Chief among them are the Garou, werewolves with the holy duty of defending the world. Empowered by Luna, spirit of the Moon, and driven by rage at the state of the world, they may not survive the Wyrm's assault, but they'll tear it apart from the inside to save Gaia.

DM: How do the Garou differ from other werewolves?
SW: At the time Werewolf: The Apocalypse was published, werewolves in fiction were monsters. Inspired by Hollywood, werewolves changed under the full moon into ravening beasts that had to be killed with a silver bullet.

The Garou go beyond that, redefining the werewolf as we know it. The Garou don't change under the full moon, but can shapeshift whenever they like into any of five forms ― including a bulked out human, normal and monstrous wolves, and the terrifying Crinos war-form, a hybrid of wolf and human. They're born, rather than being made into monsters with a bite, and organize into tribes based around their attitudes to how best to confront the Apocalypse. Their shapeshifting blessings come from Luna, the spirit of the moon, who also gives each one an Auspice ― a role in werewolf society dependent on the moon-phase in which the werewolf was born.

The Garou are also half-spirit, and thus keenly aware of the animistic nature of the world. They can step into the Umbra, the spiritual reflection of the world, and gain power from those spirits that serve Gaia. They can try to strike at Her enemies long before they manifest in the physical world. Others use spiritual short-cuts to travel between different places in the physical world, fighting battles at flashpoints around the globe.

DM: The Deluxe W20 Book of the Wyrm, which is being Kickstarted at the moment, details the forces of the principle antagonist in the game. What is the Wyrm and why do so many choose to serve it?
SW: The Wyrm is one part of the Triat, the three cosmological forces that underpin reality. Long ago, the Weaver ― another part of the Triat ― wanted to control everything. Though she was not successful, she snared the Wyrm in her web and drove it insane. Far from being the cosmological force of destruction, it is now the force of corruption. Destroying the world would be easy; the Wyrm wants to turn it into a twisted hellhole; a reflection of its own perverted nature, where the only things that live worship it.

The Wyrm isn't behind every evil act ― saying that every abusive spouse or drug pusher is being manipulated by a force of corruption implicitly absolves them of their crimes. Instead, it feeds on the negative spiritual resonance produced by their actions. In the case of prolific serial killers, torturers, and other monsters who feed it repeatedly, the Wyrm may reward them with signs of its favor. While frequently disturbing or disgusting, these blessings grant supernatural power.

Other creatures serve the Corruptor. While many spirits come from Gaia herself, each of the Triat has spirit-servants of their own. These Banes are formidable enemies on their own, but some go one further by possessing people to create the twisted fomori. A whole tribe of werewolves took it upon themselves to try to kill the Wyrm in its lair two thousand years ago. Now, they serve it as the Black Spiral Dancers. Some people join cults or organizations that worship the Wyrm, hoping for rewards in exchange for furthering its agenda.

For creatures with free will like humans, serving the Wyrm is putting short-term interests ahead of long-term. In ten years' time, the Wyrm will rise and devour the world, leaving a radioactive wasteland where only twisted fomori can survive. But until then, you've got both money and power ― and all the trappings that come with them.

DM: What is Malfeas and will the Book of the Wyrm expand on it as a playable setting?
SW: The spirit world of Werewolf: The Apocalypse isn’t just a reflection of our own world. It also contains Realms, self-contained places that don’t correspond to a location on Earth. Malfeas is one of those Realms, and is the Wyrm’s foothold in the spiritual world. You can’t destroy it — a Realm is a cosmological constant — but you can travel to Malfeas to beard the Wyrm in its lair.

Malfeas is the home of the Maeljin Incarna, immensely powerful spirit-servants of the Wyrm that reflect hatred, anger, despair, and the Wyrm’s twisted forms of the elements. The majority of Malfeas is made up of a vast cityscape containing the nightmarish factories that produce everything from horrific poisons to Pentex’s stranger products. It’s also home to the Labyrinth where Black Spiral Dancers perform their most blasphemous rites.

Malfeas isn’t easy to get in to and is even harder to survive in. That said, while it looks impossible we’ve left ways for clever players to infiltrate the Wyrm’s lair. If they’re lucky or powerful enough, they can destroy factories, seal off the Black Spiral Labyrinth, or even kill one of the Maeljin Incarna, reducing the influence of cruelty, hatred, or despair throughout the whole world. Attacking the Wyrm’s forces like that is very hard, but doing so would weaken the Wyrm immensely.

DM: Given the increasing anxieties about climate change, deforestation and pollution of natural habitats, do you think that Werewolf: The Apocalypse has become more relevant over 20 years since it was first released?
SW: Definitely. At the time it was first released, Werewolf: The Apocalypse presented a world that was darker than our own. Since then, the world has changed in ways that nobody could have predicted. An environmental message that was seen as doom-saying twenty years ago looks naive in light of modern developments. We're seeing the beginning of the effects of climate change now. Events like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill show that we're just as capable of creating environmental disasters now as we were then. The increased use of fracking to extract shale gas is both environmentally destructive, and propagates dependency on fossil fuels.

While people have become more aware of environmental issues over the last twenty years, humanity hasn't done enough to address them on a sufficiently large scale to make an impact. As individuals, we don't have much that we can do beyond trying to lobby politicians. As Garou, these problems are made manifest in the world, and we can take out our anger on them directly.

DM: The shadowy Pentex corporation is one of the Wyrm's most potent servants in the game, with tendrils of control reaching across the globe and hastening the corruption of all life. Bands like Rage Against the Machine were warning the public about corporate greed in the early nineties. Do you think that countercultural alt-rock had an impact on Werewolf: The Apocalypse when it was first conceived? Or were they both simply responding to the growth of corporate might in the wake of the neoliberal revolutions of Thatcher and Reagan?
SW: While I can’t say for certain what influenced the original design team, personally I think that they spring from the same source. Neoliberal economics enshrined the idea that greed is good; that if you make more by breaking the law and paying a fine, your only moral duty is to break the law. It encouraged a whole new wave of corporate malfeasance that we’re still seeing today. People see that, and get angry. Anger leads to artistic expression, whether that's in the form of music or games. Different kinds of art complement one another when they come from the same source ― Rage Against the Machine and Holy Bible-era Manic Street Preachers make for a fitting soundtrack to Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

DM: It seems as though the Kickstarter campaign will actually affect the content of Book of the Wyrm. How does this change the design process?
SW: Sometimes, it means that we can do things with the book that we couldn’t otherwise. For example, in Changing Breeds we were able to provide an introductory comic as a stretch goal. Other times, it means we can include material that we otherwise wouldn’t have room for. Especially with Book of the Wyrm, we’re letting people vote on what some of the stretch goals open up. This way, we can see what makes people excited and give them more of that.

We can’t start off designing around stretch goals. If something goes wrong and the book isn’t Kickstarted, then we don’t hit any stretch goals. What I tend to do is identify places in the book that could benefit from more information. It’s a tricky process — everything in the book could benefit from more ideas, more examples, and more story hooks — but it’s easier to identify “packages” of enhancements around some topics. With Book of the Wyrm, we wanted to add more on the Fallen Changing Breeds, more information on how normally Gaian Garou fall and become Black Spiral Dancers, and more information on the humans and fomori that make up First Teams — anti-werewolf hit squads. We have more of these “packets” in the pipeline.

Each stretch goal is part-designed before it goes out — I have an idea of what’s going in to the section. Once we hit it, I start working on the design process proper, and when the Kickstarter wraps we’re in a position to get the new material into the book with as few delays as possible. That said, creating new stuff for the book does take time to write, edit, and lay out, but we’ve factored that in to our deadlines where we can.

DM: What other projects are you working on at the moment?
SW: Lots of them! When this Kickstarter wraps I should be in a position to send the next Werewolf: The Apocalypse book to editing. For the new World of Darkness I’m designing the Idigam Chronicle, a chronicle book that does for Werewolf: The Forsaken what Blood & Smoke: The Strix Chronicle did for Vampire: The Requiem. I’m also involved in upcoming books for Mage: The Awakening and Promethean: The Created, and I’m part of the system design team for Trinity and Scion. Finally, I’m hopeful that I can get another self-published game out at some point this year, but that depends how busy I get.

Friday 6 June 2014

Rich Thomas interviewed by David McWilliam about the World of Darkness

Since 1986, when he began illustrating and art directing for White Wolf Magazine, Rich has been responsible for the look and feel of every White Wolf product ever created — ranging from RPG books, fiction, board/card games and everything in between. Assuming the role of Creative Director in 2006, Rich became responsible for White Wolf’s writing and development as well. His administration included the launch of multiple Ennie-award winning product lines: Scion and Changeling: The Lost. Rich was one of the driving forces behind the Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, and has returned to the world of traditional RPGs from his stint as the Director of Game Design and Content on the World of Darkness MMO, with a renewed focus on the continued Classic World of Darkness line and as the force behind Onyx Path Publishing.

Along the way, Rich contributed to the unique style and presentation of White Wolf’s products by creating the many clan, tribe, tradition, and other groups’ symbols and the alphabets of Werewolf and Exalted. But as an illustrator, Rich is best known for his work on collectible card games: Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Doomtown, RAGE, Netrunner, Shadowfist, and he is regarded as a classic Magic: The Gathering artist where his creation the “Stuffy Doll” first appeared on the original Black Vise artwork.


DM: What is the World of Darkness and how does it differ from other horror roleplaying settings?
RT: Well, to begin with, there are two of them. There is the classic World of Darkness which was the name given to the shared RPG setting for such games as Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension. This was a world like ours, but worse in every way. Those shadows in the alley behind the club not only concealed muggers, but vampires. That howl you heard hiking wasn't just a mad dog, it was a werewolf. And the darkness under your bed... well, there really was something horrific lurking there. Part of what made the setting so compelling was that all these creatures had their own societies, their own histories, and politics, and conspiracies. And they all labored under the constant threat of the much prophesied end of the world- which lent this incredible dramatic and thematic weight to their nightly activities. Then there is the new World of Darkness, which we at White Wolf created after we actually brought those doomsday prophesies to fruition and destroyed the classic World of Darkness. The new World of Darkness adjusts some of the themes, tone, and assumptions of the classic: the world-wide conspiracies have been de-emphasized in favor of local, more personal, horror, and there is a greater effort on maintaining the feeling that there are many weird and terrifying things in the world that can't be classified. In both cases, the World of Darkness tends to bring out highly emotional and personal roleplaying and stories from its readers and players.

DM: How do you see your stewardship of this property through Onyx Path Publishing?
RT: In many ways, it’s a continuation of my years and years with White Wolf, so there's certainly a happy familiarity there. At the same time, oddly enough, I actually feel like the strictures of our license from CCP (the company that owns the rights to WW's games) enable us to be more creative and to try more new things than ever before. My goal with the WW properties we are licensed for- nWoD, cWoD, and Exalted, as well as with the settings we bought outright (Scion, the Trinity Continuum, and Scarred Lands), is to refresh the games and reinvigorate the community. All of these lines have fans, wonderful, devoted, fans, but they haven't had much to get excited about for years. So the first thing we needed to do, and are still doing, is to let the community know who we are and that we're going to revive the great games they love. A 3rd Edition for Exalted helmed by the most absolutely devoted to Exalted guys I know. 20th Anniversary Editions and then continuing new releases for the classic, "we're never publishing stuff for them again", World of Darkness. And retooling the entire nWoD set of game lines with the Chronicle books. Kickstarter was an unexpected huge bonus venue for getting the word out and generating excitement, so that was nice, and I pretty much hear every day from a past fan who is thrilled to discover that their favorite game is either already getting new, improved, books, or will soon.

DM: Your shift to digital releases and print-on-demand is a response to the changing nature of the publishing industry. Has this given you greater creative freedom than back in the glory years of White Wolf?
RT: Absolutely. As much as we at White Wolf snarled and snapped and tried to push the boundaries of art in roleplaying while still being a functioning company, we were faced with limitations because of the traditional distribution set up and needing to function within it. And the bigger we got, the tighter those constraints bound us. Because if you lose a distributor when you're small because they object to your content, you're losing orders for maybe a dozen books. But lose one at our 1998 size, let's say, and that'd be hundreds or even thousands of orders. So we had to pump out the books at a pace we all agreed was brutal, and had to hit the delivery dates or we'd be hit with a penalty reduction in orders. Or books had to be this size, or this format, or they wouldn't get the same push into stores. I think Ethan Skemp coined the phrase "Production Treadmill" and that was what we were on. And our insanely dedicated and just plain crazy WW crew did it and did it and still were able to make some incredibly awesome books. But if you had to choose between adding more time to make something even better, or hitting the deadline- well, the book went to press. Which is not to say that we never held anything back to improve it, we did time and again, but it was with the idea that we were squeezing blood from a stone to do it. That all just wears creative people down.

With digital and PoD publishing (and with our Kickstarter efforts too, actually), we are now directly delivering our projects into the hands of the fans. This gives us the creative freedom to experiment and the direct feedback to know if the people we are creating for like what we're doing. There are limitations to some of what we can do, because of the still evolving nature of digital and PoD publishing, but those downsides keep getting removed as that form of publishing keeps growing and maturing. We have even managed to create a beta-program to provide discounts for PoD books for retailers, and retailer tiers on our Kickstarters, so we're even finding ways to get our books back into stores. But in ways that actually don't disrupt the business of getting cool projects out to fans.

DM: Are there any challenges presented by publishing classic and new World of Darkness lines concurrently in terms of design space?
RT: There are, but not as many as you'd think. What we've found, actually, is the rebirth of cWoD enabled our writers to allow Vampire: The Requiem, for example, to become much more its own setting with its own themes to explore and stories to tell. Rather than having to be WW's vampire game, now that Masquerade is back, it can be one of the ways you can play vampires in one version of the WoD. The toolbox nature of nWoD can now be the asset it was always supposed to be for players who love that sort of thing, and the stories that we use to immerse you in nWoD can be far more appropriate to that setting without needing to sort of feel like cWoD. And the flipside of that is that classic WoD can really explore what has happened in the deep background and setting that fans have loved for over 20 years. Having both has actually allowed us to truly focus on what makes them individually compelling.

DM: Are there works of contemporary horror in any medium outside of gaming that inspire and/or help you to keep finding new aspects of the genre?
RT: For me personally, I actually try really hard not to get too caught up in chasing genre-specific works, but to try out things as I become aware of them. That way, when a developer or writer  has a horror-specific idea, I can look at it from the broader perspective of how this one idea fits into the bigger setting. I'll dip into Hannibal, or American Horror Story, but also into Sharknado- just to get the cultural touchstones of how we're consuming our scary stuff. That being said, I've strangely found a lot of horror in anime recently, even when I wasn't looking for it. I have no idea of how to get across the "feel" of the besieged humans in Attack on Titan in the WoD, but there's something very disturbing there.

DM: Of the game lines that Onyx Path has released, which are you most pleased with?
RT: Oh that killer question. Which of your kids do you love more? I'm pleased with pretty much everything we've done in the past two and a bit years, all for wildly different reasons. Mummy: The Curse really evoked the dusty tomb, Universal films Mummy for me, while Demon: The Descent took a very strange mash-up of classical demons, the God-Machine, and LeCarre spy novels, and delivered a very different way to think about and play demons than anything else out there. The 20th Anniversary classic WoD books have been very satisfying to get out to the community who has loved them for so long and I rejoice every time I can reconnect with a classic artist and work with them again, so anytime we can create a new cWoD book is a delight. EX3 is going to blow people away when we get it out there, and I also have a sneaky glimmer of happiness every time we get a new fiction book or t-shirt ready for ordering. To be honest, I really just keep moving forward- and right now, the best is yet to come.

DM: Do you have plans to revisit and expand some of the smaller games from nWoD, such as Promethean: The Created and Geist: The Sin-Eaters?
RT: Promethean was very much a niche line, we knew that going in and were really exploring the limited series idea at that point, and Geist just never got the emphasis it deserved as it fell right into a very confused period at WW. Which I say just to kind of emphasize that I don't see them as smaller in a bad way. So long as folks continue to support the Chronicle concept, we will do new editions of all of the nWoD game lines. Even Changeling: The Lost has elements that can be tweaked now after people have been playing for years.

DM: Speculation is rife about the new game line hinted at for 2015, which has enigmatically been described as 'subversive'. Demon: The Descent introduced science fictional elements and Mummy: The Curse has presented players with fascinating new roleplaying opportunities by offsetting their declining power from awakening with their returning memory. Are you looking to introduce an even bigger challenge to concepts of what the World of Darkness is and how the Storyteller system functions?
RT: Part of the process of getting the ideas for a new game together is looking at the new ideas and arranging and re-arranging them in order to judge which ones best work together to explain the game. We run those ideas past quite a few of our dedicated developers and writers, and then pitch the game to CCP as they have to approve any book we choose to make. It was during this process as Matt McFarland (the initial proposer of the new game) and I went back and forth on his write-up, that he mentioned how "subversive" he found the whole thing. I just grabbed that quote and threw it out there, and apparently that one word is just fascinating to our community. I can't say, though, whether it was the overall concepts behind the game, or a specific aspect he was referring to, but I can say that we don't start out usually thinking about deliberately challenging assumptions. Challenging or non-challenging, what I'm looking for is an idea that tries to explore something new for the setting, and has a reason for folks to check it out.

We go through a ton of ideas during "pitch season", and it is really hard, for nWoD in particular, to find fresh ideas that can also fit into the themes of the setting. A lot of times there's an idea for a good new supernatural to play, but that "creature" is very much a niche idea because otherwise it is really already covered by previous games. One-armed red-heads with second sight! Or the supernatural idea is just fine, and fresh, but the themes along with it stretch the modern horror feel of nWoD. For example, over the years we have heard fans ask for an Aliens game line, and frankly the closest we could come to that without going way into science fiction territory was Changeling: The Lost and the abductions in there. So, we are really careful about going too far out of the expectations the community (and CCP) have as to "What is the World of Darkness?", but we do try and stretch the bounds like with Demon: The Descent- which is about as far into science fiction as we're going right now, so that's another clue as to what the new game could be like.