Okay, so let's ease into talking about development with some context.

What goes into being a developer? Well, our responsibilities are pretty straightforward, but there's a lot of nuances to the job. We have a lot of creative control, but we also have a responsibility to put out the best stuff we can. It's our obligation to create stuff that will find an audience and genuinely enrich each game and make it easier and more fun to play, not just vanity projects that are what we'd want to do anyway. Optimally, there will be overlap: you will want to do projects that will also be useful to the majority of players, Storytellers and fans. If there isn't overlap, then either you're going to burn out doing projects you don't enjoy, or you'll put out niche products that are of great value only to people who like exactly what you like. Neither is good at all. That's why it's actually a challenging job, not just a hobby we get paid for. (But it is a good job, and we do enjoy it.)

I could devote an entire post to the pitch process. I probably will, though this won't be it. Most of our day-to-day work is the shepherding of projects from a basic idea that has been laid onto the schedule into reality. For now, it's just important to know that pitching projects and picking projects is something that a lot of people participate in. Everyone in the company has a voice, and every book we put out has at the very least been conceptually mulled over by the whole crew at IPD&D in a meeting, even if that process is as quick and simple as Rich saying "This looks like it'll be an awesome supplement, I'd like to see you do it" and a general chorus of "Yeah, absolutely." More often, new ideas are added and a developer gets an even better feel for how the book can succeed. For example, an order book like Adamantine Arrow usually requires little extra discussion if we've already done a few and they're successful. On the other hand, Rich wanted to see five Changeling supplements where I'd conservatively planned for four, and subsequent discussion revealed a neat way to divvy things up so that we had five fully-fleshed ideas where four were. So basically, your pitch may not look quite the same when you've run it past all those people you see mentioned every Monday Meeting, but it comes out better for it. It's kind of like being part of a movie studio, only everyone here really likes good games more than everyone out at Hollywood likes good movies. And in no small part thanks to the recent merger and the reorganization of IPD&D under Rich, this is more true than ever. We're mercifully not governed by "suit-think," and I think the overall level of love and desire for quality shows in the books.

So it's time to get a book started. Therefore, you start out with an outline. If it's a new RPG (like, say, Scion or Changeling), this is a very involved process, involving game bibles, proposed mechanics, weekly or bi-weekly meetings, an ever-evolving document, initial rules testing, and the like. If it's a supplement, the developer can write it on their own. This can be a bit of a complicated process, depending on how high-concept the supplement is. The outline for Changeling: The Lost was over 7500 words; the actual Changeling bible was over 16,000! To put that in perspective, that's about the same number of words that went into the first few Vampire clanbooks back in the day (yet the actual final product was almost 10 times as many words). Thankfully, a supplement outline usually runs only 2000-3000 words. Let's focus on supplements for now, as they make up the majority of our projects, and therefore a more accurate view of a developer's average day-to-day work.

Roughly about the same time as you're finalizing the outline, you're wrangling authors: calling up regular freelancers, maybe trying out new ones, seeing who will be available and for how many "K". (Which of course means "thousand words," but we speak of it as if it were a unit of currency. Which it actually is, technically speaking.) The average Changeling supplement is about 105K; a fatty like Silver Ladder, more like 143K. Way back in the day, as I said above, a pre-Revised Tribebook might run around 25-30K. Author selection can involve other developers as well, as you see who's available, who's working on other stuff, and how this one guy you haven't tried before worked out for somebody else. It is not quite like sports team owners trading players. But close.

Once you have your authors, you plug them into the outline, send it around, draw up contracts, and send them around, too. Usually at this point we like to encourage email discussion between authors, so that they can compare ideas and make sure to avoid duplication. Also, the conversation is usually jazzy and uplifting, as you would expect from a bunch of clever and literate people working new ideas over. (There are also fewer swears than at the average Monday meeting.) At this point, the book is technically out of your hands for a bit, though you need to ride herd and be available to answer questions and the like. Don't relax, though. After all, you're working on the outline for another and the text for a third at the same time. More on that later.

The text comes in! Hooray! Pay schedules are submitted, redlines begin, there is rejoicing! Maybe. Sometimes text doesn't come in on time. Sometimes it doesn't come in at all, which is thankfully rare but boy howdy is it memorable. You may have some negotiating with authors here. You may have to utter dire threats, the worst of which may involve Rich. (We invoke Rich when things are getting so bad that the entire schedule may be affected. Rich has so much to do that he likes it when things can resolve themselves without him. He does not like it when he must be called in to "fix things." Kaiju noises are heard.)

When redlining a first draft for revision, you may put a lot of red in the text. Authors should not be alarmed if a text drips with virtual blood. This is not abnormal, though obviously things are going great if there isn't as much need: the outline was clear, the author is in tune with your intent and is writing what you want, and they're writing it well. This is great when it happens. If not, well, you can offer corrective advice. This is good. An author who isn't told that they shouldn't be capitalizing "willworker" in a Mage context will probably continue to capitalize it. I should note that although there are some serious egos in the business, many more are deflated by the process of writing something that a developer turns out to say "I can't use this as is" or even "I can't use this at all." It can be mortifying. I've been there, myself; I co-wrote or wrote a couple of Vampire: the Masquerade supplements for Rob Hatch way back when and he was damn blunt about his criticism. Good thing, too; the books came out better for it.

(Side note: Development is a lot like being required to make the trains run on time. Make of that what you will.)

Okay, so final draft comes in. (Or doesn't; see above. Dire threats may ensue again, as might last-minute write-it-yourself. Fun.) Now it's time to fix everything that didn't get fixed by redlining, as well as to get everything in the proper format via style tags. The mechanics get the hairy eyeball here again, worse than before. You assemble all the drafts into a series of files that can be sent to editing and to Production, and in order: title page, fiction, opening credits (are they correct? Did you list all the books mentioned in the text in the credits page's legal text?), contents, and then chapters in order. If anything needs to be written by this point, be it a missing fiction fullpage or 15K of text, you better write it yourself. (Side note: You can plan in advance to write sections of a book. Usually you don't get paid for this sort of thing, it's just part of your job. I think. Maybe I screwed myself out of a payment somewhere...)

Do you need quotes to open the chapters? Authors can supply them, but we don't insist on it. If a couple are missing, dig out the Bartlett's, go trolling the Internet, dig out one of your books to go looking for this quote you remembered reading last year that might be applicable, or open a file where you might have saved interesting pull-quotes for later. You'll need back-cover text, too, with the ISBN and stock numbers. This is the most intensive part of the process, and usually is allotted about a month. After all, this is where you need to get it right (though you have one final chance).

Also, when the final text is due to editing, art notes are also due to your art director. In the case of core rulebooks, it may have been even sooner for part of them; you probably had to contract out some of the art well beforehand, for marketing purposes, for the sake of the bible, and to make sure cover art for the first supplement will come in on time. The art notes process involves a document in which you outline the book by word count and chapter (so they know how many pieces to contract and where), provide a list of how many portraits, symbols or "template art" figures you'll need, and generally offer some advice on the book's tone and what would be good to illustrate. It also involves creating is a set of the final text files, with passages underlined for the artists' use. Need a portrait? Underline that "Description:" section of the text. Want to drive Rich crazy? Devise a need for a lot more symbols or glyphs to draw, like for bloodlines or lodges or Legacies or Entitlements or Courts. (There were about twenty or so for him to do over the holidays break for Lords of Summer. Merry Christmas!)

The book is at editing and art notes are away! Hooray, it's out of your hands! But you're not done. There's still the proofing stage when the book is mostly through Production, in which you should go over the laid-out text and make corrections as necessary. Like fixing those page XXs. Not too hard these days, since you can just search for them, but it can be time-consuming, particularly if you have one of those authors that really likes to refer elsewhere. You can tell they like to put in "see pg. XX" a lot if you find yourself changing a "see pg. XX" to "see below" because the material referenced is so close by, it's on the same page. You get two passes at this level of correction, too; one before the typesetter makes changes, one after the initial run.

The book goes to the printer. After this, you will get a physical proof back, that you also need to look over and approve (alongside Production, who are freaking workhorses and deserve some attention in one of these LJ posts themselves). Once it's back from the printer, it's time for any "on publication" pay schedules to be submitted, and then warehouse requests for author copies to be sent out.

And you're done! At this point, you start watching out for feedback, posting errata as need be, and generally taking some satisfaction that you have in your hands another printed book that you can call "yours," at least to some extent. Total elapsed time: Probably about a year from outline to shelf date, plus however long it was between initial pitch and outline. We do this six to eight times a year, staggered appropriately; one book at the authors while another's being outlined and another is in development.

This isn't the end of developer duties, of course. There are other obligations, from supplying one-sheet text and participating in the process for other developers' core books or even board games, to fan contact, which may include things like… uh… writing a livejournal post. We don't work in a vacuum, as you've already noted. But as the books we make go, that is generally the developer's part, and it's the core of the job. It's a lot of work, particularly when you're juggling several books (and possibly even multiple lines) at once. But it is definitely rewarding, and every developer here (to be fair, everyone at White Wolf) is immensely grateful that you and people like you allow us to do this kind of work to make books for a living. Thank you, and I hope we do right by you in the process.

Now that you know what we're doing, next time we'll talk some more about the how. If any of what you read above prompts more questions, awesome; let us know. Next week: either we'll talk about the math and the fudging and the ratio of each, or the how and why of pitching ideas. Tune in to find out which!

— Ethan


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Ring Name: “Bad Ass” Brian Glass
Hails From: James Madison University, VA
Angle: Tweener; can be talked into either side
Style: Técnico/high-flyer
Entrance Music: “Make the Logo Bigger,” Burn Back
Working the Crowd: Throws savory bacon into the crowd
Foreign Object: A busted up hockey stick
Finishing Move: Broken Glass (top-turnbuckle falling fireman’s carry)