Darkness Emergent Dev Blog 5

Hello, friends!

I've been reading the reactions to the preview materials for Las Vegas, and enjoying everyone's comments. Props to all who correctly guessed we'd debut Theo Bell. He's such a provocative character who I've been wanting to feature for a long time. I originally envisioned Chicago as Theo Bell meeting Prince Jackson, but realized that would make 95% of the game an icy standoff between the two. It might happen someday, though...

Right now, we're about 40% through our development process for DE Las Vegas, and we have the primary storylines conceptualized. Each of our featured guests have been fantastic to work with so far. Alex and I recently sat down for an interview with Outstar on the WoD channel - you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBh2ju7G9oM. We have another one coming up with Cynthia and Kelley which should air pretty soon.


I'm also delighted to share we plan on debuting two new factions for Las Vegas, bringing our total up to 12. Expect the previews for those in the coming weeks. My current plan is that 12 will be the maximum number of factions, as it gets a little too hard to choose if there's too many. We may remove, replace, or remodel factions in the future.

A few people have also talked about switching their factions for the next event, which is totally fine. We understand that as this is our third event, some people have come to identify themselves as core members of the faction, and informal leaders have started to emerge. One of our design choices has been to not create official or named leaders for factions, as we want direction to come from the players, and for the agendas we write to be fully optional. For that to work, we need for factions to embrace new members openly and not to be overly skeptical if someone wants t change things up and try a new group.


I also wanted to talk about something we did a quiet alpha test of in Chicago that not too many people found. If you checked the link for Jack's Flick Shack the Saturday of Darkness Emergent, we had an AI chatbot that we trained to RP as Smiling Jack. I found it to be startlingly capable. We trained it with a database of 200+ WoD NPCs, and it was able to form opinions on them. It regarded Prince Jackson as worthy authoritarian foe, and Inyanga as a wise councilor who he may actually find common ground with. We gave it some plot information as well, and if asked, it would offer to sell access to his personal video library of Masquerade Breaches which could fulfil one of the Digital Collective's requirements.

As the Red QRestion plot remains one of the most discussed things we've done, we're working on a story that can be discovered and solved with WoD-trained chatbots we've prepared. We hope this will give people who might want a break from direct social interaction something to pursue. All of this content will be fully optional; it's a self-contained story for those who want it, and if it proves popular, we may try it again under the same self-contained parameters.

I should also mention that our policy with AI is that we do not use artist-replacing AI on any commercial product. I do not allow any AI-written materials in our development process, and we've canceled contracts with artists whose art we've suspected of being AI-generated. That said, using chatbots that we've trained with our own data strikes us as a benign use of technology which we hope will reduce social barriers to RP, and lets our less social community members know we value their experience too.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again in Las Vegas!