Hi, gang,
So, not only is this my first WWblogs post, but it’s my first WordPress… well, anything of any kind, so I hope you’ll indulge me while I figure this interface out. In the meantime, it’s great to be here.
For those who don’t know me, my name’s C.A. Suleiman and I’m developing a Storytelling system RPG called Mummy: The Curse. It’s been a little while since the World of Darkness got itself a new core offering, and I couldn’t be happier to be shepherding this undead puppy through the process.
Fans of the classic World of Darkness might recall a game entitled Mummy: The Resurrection. That was the banner offering of the Year of the Scarab, and its core concepts revolved heavily around the metaplot that was spiraling itself toward the conclusion of all those classic game lines (a period called the Time of Judgment). I was the developer on those supplements, too, and that game remains pretty special to me, even a decade on.
That said, one thing I can tell you about this new vision of a mummy-focused roleplaying game is that it’s very, very different from the previous iteration. Resurrection was one of the few “bright spots” in the classic WoD, with protagonists who, while just as flawed as any other denizens of the setting, were the keepers of a special flame, and as such, fundamentally driven to act heroically.
Mummy: The Curse invokes a different set of aesthetics, themes, and motivations. Like the other new World of Darkness games, it’s about a return to the Gothic form of its archetype — a roleplaying experience that focuses on occult horror and dark pulp-fantasy. You play a mummy, just like you did in the archetype’s prior game iterations, but one unlike you’ve ever played before.
I’ll be posting more here as we get closer to the core set’s release later this summer, but I wanted to introduce myself and the game I’ve been dying to design since the new World of Darkness came out. This is a pretty exciting time for me, and I’m glad you all will be here to join me for the ride.
In the meantime, I leave you with a picture of a sketch an artist friend did on my arm a few days after I got confirmation from above that Mummy: The Curse would finally make the transition from a long-standing personal dream to the head-on reality of an exciting new game line.
Senebti!
Fresh ink, yo
Being completely unfamiliar with the old ways of MtR, I’m really curious what archetypes and themes we’ll be playing with.
In fact, next post, themes please and thank you!
Occult horror and dark pulp fantasy! I like the sound of that.
As a fan of all things egyptian from the CWoD days. I am VERY excited to see this come to NWoD.Particularly because as you mentioned. CWoD Mummy was so heavily predicated on the canon. Add in the open development and it’s sounds like a blast.
Did you mean to post this in the Monday Meetings area, or were you trying for something more like whitewolfblogs.com/mummy/ ?
This blog isn’t just for Monday Meetings, even if they’re the most prolific topic. Note the Exalted tab at the top.
Hmm. True, the blogs should be multipurpose, but somehow it’s also posted in the “Monday Meetings” topic. (click on the Monday Meetings tab, next to Exalted to check it out.) Perhaps Mummy can have its own tab too.
I have never used WordPress, so I don’t have specific suggestions on how to do it (even Rich accidentally posted a post to a tab, rather than to a blog posting in the W20 once, and that’s why one of the Ron Spencer sketches post is at the top and doesn’t show up in the normal blog log.)
Wonderful! I look forward towards the Undead respin of the line. One thing I hope remains in some variation is Mummy’s Immortality (in some variation). One of the major appeals I had with the original Mummy was that they were the only True Immortals in CWoD, even if it did take some of them decades or centuries to return.
If not, then I understand and look forward to the ride.
Hi, Alonso. Well, I can tell you this: I’m of a similar mind regarding immortality being, you know, immortality.
Stay tuned to the proper Mummy blog for more.
CAS
This reminds me of how, after Hunter the Vigil was announced, the White Wolf staff kept talking about Hunter the Reckoning until the volume of complaints finally made it plain that describing a new game solely in comparison to an old game your current customers hadn’t played was a bad idea. Talk about the old game if you must. But please, please, stop describing Mummy the Curse solely in comparison to Resurrection.
It’s not as if we can pretend WW never ever made a game like Mummy before.
One thing that y’all can get out of your mind, though, is the idea that this game is meant to “fix” or otherwise address previous games called Mummy beyond the kind of shoutouts and intertextual associations you can’t escape in our wacky PoPoMo age. Working on this thing, we never went, “Remember that thing in Mummy 2nd that really sucked?” or anything like that, because this game uses a classic monster “type” for entirely its own purposes.
In addition to what Malcolm said, this is CAS’ first post about Mummy.
I am pretty confident that the comparison between Curse and Resurrection won’t be the only thing they will talk about. Comparing the two is a logical first step, since they have thematic overlap.
I really liked MtR back in the day and still have both hardcovers, so it’s wonderful to see a new Mummy game with the mighty CAS at the helm. Eager to see what concepts the new game entails.
Woo! Happy to see some more information about Mummy. I’ll be keeping an eye here more often.
Hi, guys. The WordPress problem seems to have worked itself out, so the Mummy-specific page should be up and running now. Thanks for the interest!
http://whitewolfblogs.com/mummy/2012/04/24/mummy-arisen/
Honestly, this sounds a thousand times better than M:tR.
So what themes can this game explore that aren’t already explored by the other nWoD games? What compelling attraction does it have to make it worth playing? Why are mummies an attractive prospect for new players? How do you sell this to a gaming community that isn’t already heavily invested in World of Darkness, and specifically, how do you get people interested who haven’t already played the old Mummy?
Is this going to follow the “Changing Breeds” path, and be “Look, mummies are awesome! They have all the cool things that the other World of Darkness game lines have, but they’re better and special! Fuck yeah, mummies!” or do you have something truly spectacular that’ll blow us all away?
What can you do with a game about mummies that you can’t do with vampires or, god forbid, prometheans? Especially since the latter specifically have an entire lineage based around revivification and named after an Egyptian god?
Basically, can you explain why this is at all a good idea, and how on earth it’s going to make money for the company? Seriously. I’m struggling to conceive of this as anything other than a vanity project, but I’m willing to hear the pitch.
I’m sure CAS will get into the specifics in future postings. I can only say that nMummy *has* a hook. A very strong one.
Hi, Ether. Those are just the sorts of questions I’ll be looking to answer as the process goes on and we get closer to the game’s release this summer. Stay tuned; I think you’ll be intrigued.
Also, see Malcolm’s comment (above). He’s one of my go-to guys on MtC, and he makes a very good point right out of the gate, I think.
CAS: First off, it’s awesome to get some news on this line, as it is the one I’ve been hoping for since I started following nWoD. I really loved the feel of old Mummy, and I’m really excited to see what you come up with.
Second, I seem to remember reading in the schedules and such that Mummy would be subject to the same Open Development that the two 20th anniversary books have undergone. Is that still in the cards, or is the new plan to go a more closed, traditional route for the book’s development? The mention of not really talking about it until close to release makes me think it’s the latter.
Fair enough: I’m tentatively intrigued. Thank you for answering, and good luck with the project!
I am so looking forward to this game. The old MtR was one of my favorites. Something about the Mummy ideal is just awesome.
@Belial- That’s a great question and a fair one. We like to think of the Open Dev process as something that can be used as we tried to do with V20- the developer posts just about everything, folks engage, and we all get a cooler, stronger book from it. Certainly V20 and W20 and other products have really benefited from following that path. But doing that sort of dev process is not easy and it’s not how many developers and writers have trained themselves to work effectively. And it requires a lot of internal book creation steps to come together behind the scenes so that the devs can process all the info flying at them from our blogs, Twitter, FB, etc.
In Mummy’s case, Colin and company had a strong vision for the direction that dove-tailed neatly with Eddy and my own ideas, but by the time we sorted out those concepts and got everyone settled into their roles it was decided to come at the Open Dev process a bit further in than on V20 just because of the time frame. The book is now in a state that CAS can get feedback from you folks discuss and incorporate it, but we’re not all cramming the basic writing together at the last moment. Hence, the blogging begins!
So why this and not Demon: the Fallen revamped for nWoD? Seriously, I’d pay $20 for a pdf of that. Hell, I’d drop $10-15 on a translation guide. I want Possessed as a major splat, not an afterthought chapter in a general WoD book.
/DtF fanboyism
Because I got the very cool pitch for Mummy before the very cool pitch for Demon.
So you’re saying there’s a very cool pitch for Demon, eh? Demon was the first game I ever ran.
Mummy, on the other hand, I never ran – but I always loved it. I’m extremely interested to see the sarcophagus.
Rich,
That sounds fantastic, and was exactly the information I was looking for. Looking back at my post I realize that the way I wrote it sounds a bit like “So are you going OpenDev or the old, crappy way?” but really, I would’ve been equally pleased with either option, because they both have their merits from our perspective too, I think.
What you’re describing sound fantastic, and I can’t wait to hear more
I am a HUGE fan of everything egypt-themed in the WoD (be it ‘n’ or ‘o’),
so I’m really looking forward to this book (and probably even a series of books … ?)
The ‘purified immortals’ from the ‘Immortals’ book give you already the possibility to play ‘kinda M:tR style’ characters, as well as some characters you could create with Geist.
The one topic I really hope that gets some attention is religion as a driving force for a character. The egyptian background is so full of gods that influenced the daily life of every egyptian – I just hope that this gets a mechanical influence in the game.
“gods that influenced the daily life of every egyptian”
Yes and no. Depending on the era in egyptian history, the religion was personal to varying degrees. Specifically, it gets less personal the further back you go. So in the late dynasties of Kemet,, what you’re saying is exactly right: the common folk prayed to the gods and believed the gods had a stake in their lives.
In earlier eras, though, it was…different. The gods were a distant force and as a peasant you had no truck with them. Talking to and knowing about the gods was the business of the pharaoh and the priests, and it was up to them to look out for your interests.
It’s part of the reason egyptian immortals have some really interesting issues. Kemet, as a civilization, lasted something like 3500 years in some form or another, which is *completely absurd* by the standards of most of the civilizations we’re familiar with in the modern age. An immortal from the old kingdom and one from the new kingdom or even the roman occupation are going to start further apart from each other temporally than the new kingdom immortal from *us*. Unless the old kingdom immortal has been keeping current, the two aren’t going to have a lot to say to each other.
/egyptgeekery
I really enjoyed MtR. I’m excited to hear you are on this project CAS. When I saw Promethean (which I liked in itself) I was certain there would be no actual Mummy setting for NWoD. I’m glad I was wrong. I’ll be following your posts with great anticipation.
I hear that a lot, but I’ve never quite understood it. Mummy and Promethean never seemed to have much to do with each other, thematically. I was more concerned when I saw Geist (humans dead before their time, revived by pieces of much older souls, existing vividly on both sides of the divide between life and death). Much as I adore that game, I was pretty sure it was a sign that mummy was never happening. Like you, I’m glad to be wrong.
Dear Mr. CAS, Im thrilled & excited you are heading this project. Will this game touch on strictly Aegyptian mummies or will it also cover mummies from other parts of the world? Either way, Im thrilled to see your name at the helm, your printed words have been missed
I have to say that while I’m highly excited, I’m also a bit… nervous? That’s not the right word, but the best I can come up with. Let me explain.
Aside from Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mummy: The Resurrection was easily my favorite of the old WoD games, in no small part due to their surprisingly noble goals. Traditionally, mummies have always been antagonists of some kind, so to have a “good” mummy was both entertaining to play and a breath of fresh air.
When Werewolf: The Forsaken proved to be a far cry from the glories of Apocalypse, I had begun desperately hoping that Mummy might make an appearance and manage to redeem the new WoD. Thus far, Geist has been the only new WoD game that has truly engaged me, but despite it’s brilliance, it’s popularity seems rather low, leaving me almost no one to play it with.
I don’t mean to sound like a negative Nancy, here… I’m heartened that a team member of Resurrection is on-board, keeping the game entertaining, but I’m just afraid that, as with Forsaken, the new WoD Mummy will fail to be true to its roots. When you’re making a sequel, as it were, you can’t just make a great game – you have to make one that is similar enough to its predecessor that fans of the previous one won’t be disappointed.
I don’t know if “Sequel” is really the right word for anything that has come out of the New World of Darkness.
The New World of Darkness is not a sequel to the old one, just as the old one in its cosmology wasn’t supposed to be a sequel to the Exalted “Age of Man”. It is a re-imagination of a World of Darkness. If they were sequels, there wouldn’t be a Geist, the Werewolf wouldn’t be W:tF, it would be W:tA2.
The World of Darkness as it stands now is very dark, and that is part of the reason it was reimagined, the franchise needed some sort of refresh, and this allowed them to refresh everything and allow them to not only mature the world in terms of genre and system, but also move away from the tropes that they felt didn’t work for their new vision. That being said, W:tA was a mindless slogfest attempting to uphold a Litany with enough contradictions in it that a Nuwisha would have a field day, and in fact did, many times. The concept of W:tA was flawed from the start, and tragically so, based almost solely on the effects of Rage. I am glad that it is not the same game.
That being said, I am glad that they have chosen to go darker with their ressurrection of Mummy (punny right?). I admit I need to read more into the game, and avidly looking forward to it, but it reminds me of how Setites were kind of supposed to be played in cWoD.
Can we get some sort of compiled list of information that has been leaked so far, like official announcements of the Guilds and the like? I have been looking so far and I can’t find that information…
Hi, Jack. You’re right; as of now, there’s no compilation of leaked/spoiled game info, aside from the totality of this blog. It’s our intent to put something of that nature together, but right now we’re focused on getting the core set finished and released in the next few weeks here, so that of course will be the best “compilation” one could ask for.
In the meantime, if you have a specific question, and don’t feel like digging through the previous blog posts, you can post it here (or on any other blog post).