[HELP] History of the VEKN

Get ahold of Goudie. He invented the whole thing (IIRC) and organized everything for a long time.

Damnans wrote:

In the meantime, could you tell us about your job as Clan Newsletter Editor and member of the Inner Circle? When did you take that position? For how long?

Oh. Sure. I forgot I did that for them

The VEKN organized Clan Newsletters being posted on the usenet newsgroup starting in, apparently, 1998. I was the main organizer of this effort, which meant mostly that I encouraged people to do this, wrote and published the Newsletter FAQ and juggled who did what newslettter, mostly to avoid people stepping on other people's toes. By checking Jeff's archive, here were three published in March of '98 and the high water mark looks like 20 published in December '01. Some newsletters were very consistent, being published monthly (give or take) for years on end, some were very infrequent, some happened once or twice. We kept this going until about 2010--I personally wrote 60 total newsletters between '98 and '07, and it looks like '07 was about the point where things started dribbling off in general, which coincides conveniently with the rise of easily published personal blog pages, which resulted in folks making VTES blogs all over the place which meant the usenet newsletters ceased to be necessary, mostly. All the ones posted on the newsgroup have been archived on the Jeff/The Lasombra's page.

The usenet newsletter idea grew out of the original VEKN paper newsletter that we put together in the mid '90's. There were 2 or 3 (?) hard copy issues that were put together by the VEKN and mailed out to folks. I have a couple issues saved somewhere--they contained rulings, strategy articles, deck design, card errata, and a shoddily drawn comic for a couple issues (shoddily drawn by yours truly...). That is probably archived on the web somewhere too.

Where is this web comic, shoddily drawn by an art teacher? I must see it.

Thanks for posting the link to this old websites:

This probably the most information with regards to the VEKN history you can get from the website. Ironically it's from the News section.

January 7, 1998

• The V:EKN Inner Circle has been finalized and plans are in full swing for Praxis Seizure: World. A rating system has also been finalized and a web-based calculator will be available by week's end.

December 15, 1997

• I think Robert Goudie just became the Chair of the V:EKN. I received a few recommendations and no one complained so I think that's about as offical as we've gotten. Let's get down to business!

December 8, 1997

• Vampire: Elder Kindred Network is chosen as the name for the official V:tES Players' Org.

December 4, 1997

• Voting begins on VTES-L to determine a name for the V:tES player's organization.

Oh, and the first VEKN charter:

Vampire: Elder Kindred Network Charter
Last Updated 12/15/97

Vampire: Elder Kindred Network (also known as V:EKN) is composed of an Administrative Board, Regional Directors, City Managers, City Representatives, and General Members.

The Administrative board is called the Inner Circle. The Inner Circle consists of a Chair, a Wizards of the Coast(tm) Representative, and any members appointed to the board by the Chair to fill specific needs (such as membership). The Chair is responsible for the direction and focus of the organization. That person appoints members on an as-needed basis to do the work of the organization and works with them, aiding in accomplishing goals and providing support. The Chair may delegate responsibility for actions to individuals of the organization. Support from Wizards of the Coast(tm) will be through the Chair, who is also the Wizards of the Coast(tm) contact. The Chair will make use of the support as he or she sees fit. The Chair is in no way required to do anything requested by Wizards of the Coast(tm), or by the Wizards of the Coast(tm) representative.

The Wizards of the Coast(tm) Representative, or Rep, works hand-in-hand with the Chair. Through the Chair, the Rep makes known the position of Wizards of the Coast(tm) on all V:EKN activities. Wizards of the Coast(tm) support for the V:EKN is via the Rep. This includes all physical items, such as product, as well as abstracts, like ideas. The position of the Rep is not necessary, and may be done away with. The Rep has no say in decisions of the V:EKN, and has no veto power. However, it is within the authority of the Rep to withdraw Wizards of the Coast(tm) support at any time. The withdrawal of support also removes the official status granted by Wizards of the Coast(tm) to Vampire: Elder Kindred Network.

Regional Directors, called Justicars, may be appointed to work with the Princes within their region. The Justicar will provide support and guidance to the Princes to accomplish the specific goals of the region.

City Directors, called Princes, may be appointed to support and guide the activities within the city. The Prince will have contact with the groups of players (or coteries) within his Domain. A representative within each group of players may be given the title of Primogen. The Primogen will relay the concerns of the coterie to the Prince. The Prince, Primogen, and the Coterie members are dedicated members willing to invest time and effort into organizing demonstrations, tournaments, and whatever else they accept from the Chair.

Kindred are V:tES players that haven't joined V:EKN. While not part of V:EKN, they play the game, attend demonstrations and tournaments, and hopefully tell their friends about the game. They buy V:tES and support the game by playing. Kindred become General Members of V:EKN by joining a coterie.

(c) 1997 Vampire: Elder Kindred Network
Vampire: the Eternal Struggle is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and White Wolf, Inc.

KevinM wrote:

Where is this web comic, shoddily drawn by an art teacher? I must see it.

Well, to be fair, an art teacher who isn't really a trained illustrator.

It is archived *somewhere*; I remember it being on the web, but I don't remember where or who had it. Goudie probably knows.

If I remember correctly...

In late 1997 player discussion was taking place on Wizards of the Coast's VTES-L mailing list. Though no new cards were planned the game was being nominally supported by Wizards of the Coast. The Sabbat had been re-printed and we were still hoping for a new expansion someday.

We, as an organization, really owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Netrunner player's organization, the Top Runner's Conference or TRC. I contacted their founder and discussed the situation. I reported back to the VTES-L mailing list and the community agreed that a similar structure might work for us. Their "grids" became our "cities" and their "sysops" became our "Princes". I think we probably even borrowed their org's Charter. Our thinking was that if we could encourage more people to participate in tournaments that it might help show WotC that they could make money on a new V:TES expansion.

We chose the V:EKN name with a vote of people active on that mailing list. Shortly thereafter, I became the first V:TES chairman mostly because there was a short list of people interested and I was probably one of the few people with the time to do it. At this time I think I was organizing 12 tournaments a year in Los Angeles and was maintaining the madnessnetwork V:TES website.

We moved quickly. We formalized our "Inner Circle" and LSJ created a web-based calculator for player-ratings (pre-Archon!). Excitement grew and we gained a ton of momentum quickly. One of the common things happening was that V:TES players were destroying NetReps on the usenet group. The casual play of the WotC V:TES players just didn't give them the understanding necessary to be NetRep. LSJ was especially adept at showing how wrong-headed the Netreps' thinking was. We were thrilled when WotC allowed LSJ to be the official NetRep.

Truthfully, they gave us an inch and we took a mile. They intended for me and/or Scott to have control of the V:TES tournament rules and for Scott to essentially regurgitate existing, established rulings. Scott launched into wholesale errata. I think this is where the 6/28 and 7/7 rulings came in. I think we may have all had a conference call after that. Anyway, there was no stopping us at that point. The player's had a foothold and we were in control now.

We continued to grow our coordinated events and player ratings, etc. Things were looking up! Which is why we were stunned when we heard V:TES was not going to be supported any longer.

We were fairly sure it had to do with Ryan Dancey, the new brand manager, and his belief that vampire's were immoral, etc. etc. Ryan said that V:TES didn't make enough money to be printed again but also confirmed that he wouldn't print it because of the content--even if its sales numbers were sufficient. This enraged V:TES players and I learned first hand that there were a number of big shots at WotC who were unhappy with Ryan as well. Anyway, one of the things that Ryan pointed out were that games need players loyal to specific factions within the game. We had Clans in our game so I suggested the Newsletters as a way to show that. Ryan's complaints about V:TES were unfounded so we did our best to highlight everything that he said we didn't have. We were more driven than ever.

We continued to put the pressure on WotC and were either in the middle of or had just completed a massive letter-writing campaign. Very suddenly, Ryan was no longer Brand Manager and WotC announced that they would print a handful of new cards for all of their dormant CCGs. Behind the scenes we were expecting there to be a single sheet to be shared among all of their inactive games--so many 10-20 cards for V:TES or something like that. This is when WotC reached out to White Wolf to renew the license so they could do the little print run. We had thought we'd won! It was over...we were going to get a few new cards. What could be better than that?

Lucky for us our efforts to build the player community were quickly rewarded when White Wolf proposed to WotC that they flip the license and allow V:TES to be printed at White Wolf. Steve Wieck at White Wolf became a great friend to V:TES and later a personal friend. Steve praised the V:EKN and pointed its strength out as one of the great things that made V:TES attractive as a business. After WW started printing again, they decided to keep the V:EKN in place since it was already doing such a great job of promoting the game.

Okay, that's all for now. Maybe more another time or corrections or responses if I see anybody pointing anything out that I missed or screwed up.

-Robert