Some of you may already know me for my work in supporting the play of VTES in the UK, or from my attendance at international VEKN events. Some of you may also know of my past work for White Wolf in designing the Vampire: Prince of the City board game.

What is much less well known is that I have been a Storyteller of Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop games since 1991 when the first edition of the game was published. I own pretty much every single original Vampire book (along with many other White Wolf books) and I have regularly enjoyed roleplaying in the World of Darkness over the last 21 years.

On the subject of common knowledge it's also now a pretty open secret that I have been helping Ben Peal with the design of the VEKN's first official card set. In fact it is this work which led to the invitation by Johannes and the IC to take a more active role in the Storyline side of things.

In regards to the organisation of Storyline VTES events after some discussion we have decided to change things up a little bit. We know that there are a lot of players out there who would like the opportunity to influence the story associated with the game, but they can't necessarily get enough people together for a proper multi-round tournament.

We have therefore proposed a new way for handling Storyline: single pickup games which can be played by any group of any size any number of times. As long as every deck used is Storyline legal (in the established fashion) and the results of the game are submitted using the appropriate form then they will be included in the final tally.

The results will be used to plot the course of future Storyline games, cards and short stories. In fact, with the advent of the Onyx Path there may even be an opportunity to work closely again with the guys behind the RPG and cross over between the two games once more.

We plan to use the European Championship in Budapest as the first opportunity to try this new format out. Any pickup VTES games played by anyone with Storyline legal decks during the week of the event will be eligible for inclusion. We'll conjure up a little fiction for people to read and hand out forms and cards for people to use.

If it works out well the we hope to present similar limited, geographically themed games at other national and international events in the future.

I hope you enjoy it - and see you in Budapest!

Mike Nudd
Storyline Coordinator

Dear fellow Metusalehs,

I am happy to present you the new marketing team we have formed within the V:EKN: Michal Kazmierczak (Migalart) and Radoslaw Staszewski (Szewski), both from Poland.

While Szweski will formally hold the position of the Marketing Director, they will act as a team with the goal to turn up the publicity on V:TES. They both have real life expertise in this regard and are part of the successful V:TES scene in Poland, which is contradicting the downwards trend we have seen in other nations.

They are currently forming a strategy on how to do this, of course, depending on how the long term plans of having V:TES in print turn out. Feedback and contributions from the community are appreciated by them, and I think they will soon turn to you with relevant questions and discussions.

Once the strategy is in place and specific actions and programs are due, they will trickle this down the existing network of volunteers, the National Coordinators and Princes.

Johannes Walch
Chairman of the V:EKN

Hello fellow Methuselahs,

With great help from Vincent Ripoll, the version 1.4 of our beloved Archon file is now available.

You will find it here: www.vekn.net/index.php/downloads

The Archon 1.4 includes:
- bug fix for the number of Rating Points awarded to the winner of an event who didn't get a GW in the finals (he was missing 8 points)
- bug fix for the number of rounds in which a player has played
- bug fix for the number of Rating Points a finalist gets (the formula wasn't properly applied to all rows of the Methuselah sheet)

but it also includes:
- 2R+F seating chart, supported in the Rounds sheets (currently available for 20 or less players)

I will spend some of my week-end working on adding more lines for a support of 2R+F of attendance of more than 20 people.

Many thanks to David Tatu and Kevin Mergen for working on the seating chart.
They respected the seating rules that were established previously.

The Archon 1.4

With respect to transparancy and openness in the design process, we've maintained a policy of keeping a barrier between the playtesters and the Design Team members. We don't want to interfere with the playtesters or bias the playtest process, nor do we want the playtesters to interfere with the designers or bias design. Part of the reason for the policy is simply to leave each other alone so we can do our respective jobs. We've also found that maintaining playtester anonymity encourages unfiltered, honest opinions and feedback. We have definitely been able to tell that in the playtest notes. Sometimes the comments are harsh, but we appreciate those comments and don't take them personally as they're honest, insightful, and helpful.

We decided to take a poll of the playtesters to see if they wanted direct contact with the designers and if they wanted the designers to participate in dialog in the playtest forum. Interestingly, opinions were very mixed. Some wanted that direct contact and participation. Some wanted the designers to have read-only access to the playtest forum. Some wanted no contact and no visibility into the playtest forum at all. Without a strong indication in the direction of more access to or participation in the playtest forum, we opted to maintain the policy of separation and anonymity.

Heh...and then at Origins we had a meeting with myself, Hugh the Playtest Coordinator, and the North American playtesters in attendance. It was pretty much a big chat and Q&A session, where various issues were discussed, including questions and issues about the playtest process, design and direction of the set, abstract design issues, and so on. One of the discussions that sticks in my head was about city titles, and to what extent contestable titles are desirable and to what extent uncontestable titles are acceptable. Opinions ranged surprisingly widely. Some felt that contestable city titles are a key element of the game and that only contestable titles should be used. Some questioned the value that contestable titles add to the game, feeling that they just result in randomly turning someone's deck off.

From the Design Team's perspective, it's a conflict between canon and metagame. Since the first Sabbat expansion, there's been a theme in V:TES of having pairs of contestable titles. However, the World of Darkness canon doesn't match that symmetry. The Sabbat are relatively few in number compared to the Camarilla in the World of Darkness, but in V:TES the numbers are roughly equivalent. There very typically isn't a matching Archbishop from the canon to go with every Prince. Over the course of the development of V:TES, the canon-sourced Sabbat titles that match Camarilla cities have nearly all been used up. The other remaining canon-sourced Archbishops would be uncontestable. Once all of the canon-sourced matching titles are used, there are three options. First is using the canon-sourced uncontestable titles. Second is finding appropriate un-titled, canon-sourced vampires to whom you could stretch the canon a bit and assign contesting titles to them. Third is creating brand-new vampires with contesting titles. In the end, the Design Team has chosen to use all three options, sticking to contestable titles where possible as the primary option, and using the other options sparingly.

- Ben Peal and the V:EKN Design Team