So, here we are in beautiful Rejkyavik, having our usual Monday meeting in an unusual location: the dining room of CCP headquarters. We've got to hurry, though, so that we can finish up and put the tables back before the on-staff chef here serves lunch. (Seriously.)



Before we move further ahead, though, let's move back for just one second and take a look at a piece of White Wolf history. This morning, a bunch of the CCP folks and us were laughing over this video of a bunch of idiots (e.g. Chad and Justin), which has now made it to youtube.com. These people get us.



Okay. Moving on. Our regular pre-meeting tomfoolery continues unchanged. Right now, it sounds like Oscar's lost his passport again, in the finest tradition of Bax Baxsson.

John's working on grinding the final chapters of Scion through development, while accelerating art notes so matt can get a head start on them. While Rich and John and matt are discussing just how many of the game's weapons should be illustrated (and in what matter), Bill is doing... something with his travel mouse's retractable cord, but I'm not sure what. All I know is that Brian and Oscar [Who shouldn't even be in this meeting!] find it hilarious, and that spells trouble.

Bax looks left out. He wishes he was working on Scion now, I think, and he gets all fidgety when matt and John start talking about it without his input. I think he's going to peel the whole bunny logo off his EVE shirt. (Bax lost his passport like a month ago and didn't think it'd be important to replace it until two days before we were meant to leave the States, so he got here about a day after the rest of us. His luggage got here something like four days after the rest of us. So he's been wearing mostly t-shirts stolen from the CCP offices. At the EVE Fan Fest this weekend I think he got mistaken for a CCP employee maybe five or a million times. Even since his luggage got here, I don't think he's been wearing his own clothes.)

Brian says that since people on the internet have reported the game line is done, he's firing all of his Exalted artists. But of course, since the internet doesn't know what it's talking about, he has to rehire all of them and keep the line moving. That is to say, Exalted continues along just like it has been (meaning with a total dose of mega-awesome). Just what it is Brian is working on this week, though, I didn't catch, because I was busy laughing and writing this paragraph. All I know is that I saw a sketch of something called a razor-boar today. The other day I saw some dude riding on what appeared to be a crystalline stag (and it wasn't even George Washington!), but that's Exalted for you.

Ethan has contracts and outlines circulating for the first Changeling supplement, to be called Autumn Nightmares. He's also starting to dole out development time to spirit-type stuff for the World of Darkness.

Aileen is waiting on me to move forward with the art direction on Free Council for Mage. Everything I've read on that book thus far has been rad, by the way.

Craig has printer's proofs waiting for him on his desk, we hope, for Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss. It should've been sitting there all this week, while we were drinking in Iceland. I'll bet it feels all left out.

Chaney's got art notes in now from Luke Johnson for World of Darkness: Urban Legends, so that book's getting closer to happening. (I'm psyched, 'cause I wrote part of it and the competition in there is stiff -- the rest of that book is pretty terrific, from what I've seen.) Chaney's also working on some printer snafus surrounding Sword of Cain.

Aaron has sample materials for Monster Mayhem coming here -- here to Iceland! -- so he and Rich and Chaney can move forward with more of the production process on that. (Have I not mentioned Monster Mayhem yet? Well, you've got all you're getting out of me about that today.) Aaron's also dealing with the volume of questions and congratulations coming in from our licensers and the like regarding this weekend's big merger news.

Petur, our Icelandic soon-to-be-import is getting the EVE CCG lined up for a renewed retail and organized play push in the States this winter, and he's already lining up the first expansion, too. We've been working with Petur a lot lately, and since he's been driving EVE: Second Genesis for months now, he and his family are coming to live and work with us in the Atlanta office where most of the paper gaming work will be done. We'll get you a better introduction to Petur in a future Peter-centric post, but suffice to say that he's one bad-ass perpetrator and he's here to stay.[1]

This afternoon, Rich and Bill and a cast of thousands will be meeting to talk about the likes of EVE novels and graphic novels and other such things, which we've talked about a lot lately, but can't say much to you about just now. Except for this: Rock! (Oh, yes.)

Rich is going to continue to be in a ton of meetings. Then he will talk to people on the phone about these meetings. He's had a lot of his creative time taken up by merger business lately (and I've been covering for it here in the Monday Meeting reports for quite some time -- only Jesse Scoble noticed the weirdness of all his "administrative" work), but soon he'll finally be able to get back to working on the stuff he loves (and that we love him working on) which is the pictures and the fire and the sexy graphics and the bat wings and all that noise.

This afternoon, we had a meeting about some of the upcoming Vampire books, including our forthcoming book on ancient Rome, about which I will say no more for now other than to confirm that, yes, I am speaking about a whole book (at least), and not just a chapter or a sidebar or something.

This evening I'm running a Vampire game set in Reykjavik for a bunch of the CCP guys here. I'm psyched about this story I'm running, too. When it's done I may write it up as a full-on adventure for purchase. We'll see how it goes.

For those of who you've read about the Alpha version of the EVE RPG we played a while ago, I was lucky enough to run that session and it was a genuine good time. I'm thinking about starting up a regular EVE test chronicle at home when I get back. If I do, you know I'll tease you about it relentlessly.

All right, then. I've got to go get ready for my game tonight. It's 4:30pm here in Iceland.

So we're off.

1 This Die Hard reference is a gift for Mike Chaney.