Jason Carl is the Brand Marketing Manager for World of Darkness, the Paradox universe where Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Wraith: The Oblivion, Mage, Changeling, Demon and Mummy live. Carl is also responsible for the metaplot from which the World of Darkness draws, including upcoming game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.
CBR talked with Carl by phone about the World of Darkness and the company's approach to brand management, metaplot, lore, Bloodlines 2 and more.
CBR: Are you trying to do something similar in the World of Darkness to the Lucasfilm Story Group? Is Brand Management a central hub, where you have all the elements of this universe and you pull them out depending on what the different stories or the different creators require, or does it work the other way around?
Jason Carl: Do creators come to us and say, "We have an idea"? It is sometimes both. I'm going to try to answer the question I think you're asking.
Yes, there is a meta plot. There is a story in the World of Darkness, and the brand team is responsible for creating and maintaining that story. I think that it's safe to say though that we are always open to new ideas that, maybe, are outside of our metaplot vision.
So when a partner approaches us and says “I got a great idea for a Mummy game, or a great idea for virtual reality game,” if they bring us an idea and it falls outside of our established metaplot, we will revisit it and take a look to see if it can be fit into the story and the cosmology that we have already decided on.
Sometimes the answer is yes. Like with Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife, which is the virtual reality game that our partners Fast Travel Games just recently announced. That was very easy to work into our vision of World of Darkness. Sometimes it's not so easy, we have to say “No, that falls outside the story that we have established for these reasons.” When we have to say no, we still try to work with a partner to find something that will fit.
That's fair. So how do you decide which ideas and characters you're going to incorporate into the larger meta plot? For instance, certain characters from Bloodlines 1, Jeanette and Therese Voerman, are still alive and kicking. Damsel is returning in Bloodlines 2 and Mr. Damp, whose first appearance will be in Bloodlines 2, is also going to be in Chapters as a playable character. How did you decide which characters are going to survive the jump from one property to the other?
Well, there's no spreadsheet and there is no mathematical formula. I think that creating a good story is equal parts skill and alchemy. Sometimes there is a need to tell a particular story.
I think you can look at the Voerman sisters -- Jeanette and Therese are an example of that. They represent very certain ideas in the World of Darkness and they are very important to Los Angeles and the story of that city and the Kindred who live in that city. So, I decided to keep them in LA by Night to help us tell that story. Sometimes, however, it's a case where a character is just so perfect that it needs to be… the World of Darkness needs to expand, to find room for it.
And that would be Mr. Damp?
I can neither confirm nor deny.
When V5 was released, it looked like the Apocalyptic meta plot of the end of days was over, and that the World of Darkness was shifting to a different kind of storytelling, much more personal, without the cosmic horror aspect looming over the characters. However, the Gehenna wars are still going on, taking much of the Sabbat’s time and energy. The upcoming Werewolf video game is called "Apocalypse," although that might be a legacy name. And the trailer of Bloodlines 2 has very apocalyptic imagery with that big red wave about to engulf Seattle – although that might be a metaphor for something, and not a literal wave of blood. So, is the End of Days metaplot still going on in the background at some level?
So, I'm going to answer your question with a question. What makes you think the first End of Days hasn't happened yet?
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My theory is that the Mayan sculptor was dyslexic and is going to happen in one year. So, it wasn’t in 2012, but it's going to be in 2021.
The world certainly seems like that could be true, doesn't it?
Yes. It always seems like it can be true.
Have you read Beckett's Jihad Diary?
Yes.
So one of the ideas that Beckett has, of course, is that Gehenna or the Apocalypse, the End of Days, was not what everybody thought it was.
There are hints in Beckett's Jihad Diary that maybe all these clues, the hints, the mysteries of the Apocrypha have been misinterpreted. And maybe Gehenna hasn't happened yet. Or maybe it's cyclical. Maybe again, it doesn't look like what we all thought it looked like and maybe it used to happen on a regular cycle or even an irregular cycle. The fact that it didn't happen the way everybody said it would is significant.
So in Vampire: The Masquerade, there are still getting Gehenna Cults. And you'll see them popping up here and then with new interpretations of the Book of Nod, with new ideas about Gehenna and the Antediluvians and what that all means. The fact that there is no Millennial fervor about it the way there was in the late 1990s doesn't mean that it's not a threat.
Going back to history, Vampire has always been inspired by real-life history and politics and society, and religion. The first Vampire: The Masquerade was set in a time and place that was very, it was a break from everything that had come before. It was inspired by the erosion of American society in the 70s and 80s.
Yes.
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Bloodlines had many reflections of the Bush administration within the video game, and Bloodlines 2 and Werewolf: The Apocalypse seem to be inspired by the same reflections. So, what would you say that are the main themes of our time, this time, 2020 that will permeate the background of the World of Darkness?
I think that what you see in the World of Darkness reflected now are some of the bigger questions that we all grapple with as people around the world right now. Things like the question of privacy, what is private? What is "secret"? What can be known and what can never be known? The idea of truth as an empirical pursuit versus truth as a shaped reality or a shared consensus is very, very important.
Consciousness about the environment that we live in the world and its state of being is definitely a driving force behind the World of Darkness stories, just like it always has been. And I think that contemporary social issues and issues of cultural significance are part of it as well. You might say that the World of Darkness hasn't changed in its vision or mission, but the world around us has changed. And the World of Darkness is always trying to reflect what is happening today through that lens of what it is to be a monster in this time. And by exploring these ideas as monsters, we hope that two things happen: one, we learn not to be monsters ourselves, and two, we learn to recognize the monsters in our world and oppose them.
I think themes of justice versus injustice grab at the World of Darkness, but also the idea of hope and the idea of redemption are critically important to World of Darkness stories. I know that it may not seem that way, but Vampire especially has always been a redemptive story: that struggle to retain humanity against the influence of the Beast is, in some ways, the most human story possible. And that certainly hasn't changed in the last 30 years.
Do you think that the weaknesses of each Vampire clan arise from the same strength? For instance, the Ventrue are very powerful, they have this imperviousness to them. But they're also really, really proud and they don't usually see what is going on around them and they tend to have this tunnel vision that prevents them from seeing other perspectives.
They are often ignorant of what is going on around them to their own detriment. But none of these things are why I love the Ventrue. The reason I love the Ventrue is because they have a story that’s really failed “noblesse oblige.” They are, despite all their flaws, the clan most willing to try to lead and to try to, for better or for worse, protect the Kindred culture protect the Kindred society.
It's easy to criticize them because of course, their methods are sometimes despicable and reprehensible. And sometimes, as you say, they make critical mistakes because they cannot see the forest for the trees. But that story of fallen nobility and the willingness to try, despite the flaws, is what really is appealing to me about the Ventrue. It's probably not the answer you were looking for.
You mentioned technology as one of the themes -- how are the Lasombra going to deal with this world?
It’s very difficult for the Lasombra right now. We live in a world in which we are surveyed, sometimes from the moment we leave our homes until the moment we return; maybe we're even surveyed in our homes, according to some people. We live in a world where everyone has a computer and a camera in their pocket. It's very difficult to commit an act in public that is truly unseen by anybody, as we have seen very recently in the media, so the Lasombra do have a difficult time.
Now, their Clan Bane, their "clan weakness" in V5, is slightly different than we had noted in previous editions. They don't necessarily cast no reflection: they cast a reflection that is distorted and strange. They appear to be glitched or imperfect in electronic media. And sometimes technology fails to work properly when they try to use it.
Those flaws, this bane, isn't as obvious as the simple "casting no reflection" and "not showing up in recording mediums." But it's difficult enough in a world in which we are all being recorded all the time. So, the Lasombra had to develop a special caution, and arguably become much more secretive and even more protective of the Masquerade than ever before just to survive.
Maybe that's one of the reasons that so many of them have decided to leave the Sabbat and join the Camarilla.
Because they feel safe in the Camarilla?
I don't know that I would go that far. I think that I would say that they feel that there are advantages that Camarilla offers them tonight that the Sabbat no longer offers, and one of those might be the ability to be more secretive and to hide from technology more effectively. Or maybe they have a completely different purpose.
Maybe they want to use technology and they are going to hire intern Camarilla Nosferatu to do their bidding.
All I can say about that is, you will have to wait to find out like everybody else.
Will you be addressing the theme of racial discrimination in the World of Darkness? You are growing so fast, so how are you going to make sure that your stories remain relevant for everyone, regardless of race, nationality, gender and culture?
Sure, I think that I think the answer is the fact that we are working with partners all over the globe, we work with partners in, in nearly every continent and we hope to you know, we hope to include partners and more continents and countries that we don't work with yet. They bring a level of awareness and expertise about their cultures and their homes that our small team, you know, located where we are, you know, can't possibly hope to achieve on our own without help.
So when we work with our translation and localization partners in Brazil, and in Poland, and in Spain and France and Canada, and hopefully in more countries soon, they bring a level of knowledge and awareness about their, their particular cultures to the games, and to the stories that we tell.
Some of the great examples that I can think of are The Heart of the Forest, which is we just announced – or, I should say, our partners at Different Games just announced. That story takes place in Poland. We have stories that take place in many different parts of the world, but that story is informed by the knowledge of Polish culture and the Polish way of life, that our partners located over there bring to it.
I think it's also fair to say that the World of Darkness has always strived to be an inclusive brand. It's been very, very important for us to tell stories about many different types of people in many different countries, in many different situations. I think that's critically important. And I don't see that changing in the future.
Does everybody has the potential to become a monster?
Yes, but also to learn from that experience as well.
Every company in the world is bound to make mistakes and their ability to correct course is usually related to their size -- a giant moves more slowly than a fly. So, with World of Darkness growing as fast as it is, and putting out so many products in such little time, how would you rate your capacity to prevent, avoid and fix these bumps in the road? You've done a great job of listening to fans so far.
I think it might surprise our community to learn how small we really are.
My colleague, Martina Zych, who is our community developer, recently hosted a World of Darkness news stream, and she introduced each member of the Worlds of Darkness Brand Team in the stream and explain what our different roles are. There are about a half a dozen of us so even though, you know, we work for Paradox Interactive, which is an extraordinary company, a really incredible company with so many wonderful features to it, we are a smaller team within this larger company. So… we are pretty quick. And at least two of my colleagues have Celerity.
For movement, or does that apply also to typing really fast?
Well, I think both. If you've ever seen them at the keyboard, you would agree.
This is the first part in a two-part interview with Jason Carl.