Way back in '90 or '91, White Wolf managed to make one heck of a name for itself in the industry with a pretty neat green book. There were a lot of things that went right with that book. For one, its cover was very compelling and evocative, standing out dramatically amidst all the other RPG books with dramatic Parkinson or Elmore or Caldwell covers. For another, it was interesting-looking on the inside, with neat touches like a serial story told in art along the bottom, and some notable Tim Bradstreet art. It was certainly an argument that good graphic design will get people to look at your game, one we've never forgotten.

But the thing that gave Vampire staying power was that people actually played the game. A lot. Its mechanics were imperfect (though not so flawed as to be unforgivable), but it hooked people. The promise of the World of Darkness was that you would get to play the monster, a monster that was so familiar that people felt instantly at home with it, yet that was sufficiently different that it offered new things to learn, new lore to uncover. In short, it wasn't just that you got to play vampires — it was our spin on them. That spin, that singular take — that was at the heart of the appeal.

Now, the concept of spin — of your individual take on a theme — is pretty important in roleplaying, and throughout all sorts of art and media, for that matter. You've heard the aphorisms like "there are only X number of plots in the world"; I think the most reductive number is two, "Boy Meets Girl" and "A Man Learns a Lesson." Everything else is an individual take on the details, be it "Boy Meets Boy" or "A Man Refuses to Learn a Lesson." I don't know that I agree with there are only two; the last book I read was The Count of Monte Cristo, and you have to jump through a few hoops to make a revenge drama solidly about either one of those themes. Perhaps you can construct retribution as a "those who have done wrong learn their lesson", but I digress.

Speaking as a developer, the ability to put a distinctive spin on an idea is critical. That's because — and here I may be a bit controversial — there is really only a very small audience for things that are absolutely, completely new and distinct. For the vast majority of us, and I include myself here, there needs to be something familiar at the core of a setting or a game that you can relate to. Certainly this is Reason Number One that most RPGs out there feature characters that are humans, things that used to be human, or things that are basically human with a bit of special effects makeup and a quick culture stereotype. When you deal with character types that are farther from human, the most successful are still those that we can relate to a familiar idea. Fantasy beastmen, for example. We all are able to relate some sort of personality to a given animal. Sometimes that's us projecting our own cultural associations on them (lions are noble, bats are lucky, snakes are treacherous), sometimes they're based on a more in-depth understanding of the animal's behavior (dogs like a clear hierarchy, hyenas are matriarchal, Cape Buffalo are pretty damn aggressive).

Familiarity is at the core of communication. One of the benefits of having elves be pretty much the same among various fantasy setting is that you can say "You can play an elf" and a player will understand what you mean. When you say "You can play an elf, only different," then you need to figure out the right amount of differences. Too few, and your elves aren't really notably different from anyone else's; this is generally fine, but it won't make your game stand out. Too many, and you doom your players to having to internalize a whole lot of exposition and detail to play their elves "right," which isn't terribly fun. Particularly if what you end up with was something they're not interested in, even if they showed some interest when you said "you can play an elf."

So that's another of the things that we think about. A lot. I mean, a lot a lot. In order for a game to sell — and yes, we would like our games to sell — you want to provide some familiar core that people can easily relate to, and a spin on that material that is both distinctively evocative and simple enough to be described in a few sentences or so. So, for instance, "werewolves, but they control when they change, draw on spiritual powers, and are engaged in a running cold war against hideous things that lurk in the shadows." There's a hell of a lot more detail to both of our Werewolf games than that, but that core spin was enough to make werewolves that are recognizable yet distinctly their own thing.

This can make things difficult on us, of course. Is this latest idea too predictable? Or is it so far from the core material that it should be thrown out? For some fans, many of our decisions won't go far enough. For others, they might go too far. But generally there is a fairly broad swathe of target material where you can allow people to customize their own diversity. So, for instance, the concept of vampire clans is a new spin on things, but many of the clans are also useful setting tools for people to build the vampire types they're familiar with. Or they can come up with something really outrageous.

You still have to provide lots of color on your own, though. After all, you should have examples to show the way: characters and settings and situations that show you just how the spin is applied, giving you something fresh but still relatable. And as I said before, that's a lot of work. Thankfully, it is also one of the most fun and entertaining aspects of this job. It's essentially like running a game or creating a character, only played up into salaried professional levels.

Does it disappoint us if our particular spin on a game seems to be unappreciated? To some extent, yeah. They're all our babies. But it also counts as a learning experience. Even if the latest take on an archetype goes too far or not far enough, we can gather ideas for what to do next time. And we hope to keep on pumping out lots of new ideas for you as long as we can.