Discolor Online

The Gamestas have put up a podcast interview with Sam Chupp during which he talks about his earliest days at White Wolf and some of his experiences with the various people and projects there.

Sam joined White Wolf as I was on my way out. He came in to take my job and though I was ready to leave when I did it was still a rough transition for numerous reasons. I was young, barely 21, and had already put four years in with the Lion Rampant/White Wolf crew. I was homesick, burned out, disillusioned, and exhausted. I'd moved three times in eighteen months to follow the company around and had been caught up in all sorts of teenage/young adult drama in the process. I was really, really ready to go and at the same time was broken-hearted to be leaving. In walked Sam, into the middle of all of that, and to his everlasting credit his first words to me were, "So, can I get you some coffee?"

Listening to the early portion of the podcast, I was reminded of how similar my experience at White Wolf was to his. There have been four or five or more generations of Wolfies since then. Very few remember the days of working in the rental house... most of those who do remember didn't actually live there like Mark, Lisa, John and I did in the earliest days. Everything else was so much the same, though. The warehouse in the garage... everyone being rousted carry boxes of product up the hill because the trucks couldn't get close enough to the house... the tremendous, youthful, creative energy of the place... the inevitable realities of needing to pay attention to accounting practices and profits and the tensions that arose over credits and projects without "heart".

I've long since forgotten many of the slights I was sure were going to be grudges I held to my dying day, I no longer care about uncredited work or broken promises of being paid back in shares of the company. We were kids; we're grown ups now. It's been 15 years since I left White Wolf and we've all managed to settle into our lives pretty well. Stewart Wieck, bless his heart, has made sure I've gotten a copy of the new editions of Vampire whenever they've come out. I look back on those days and I wouldn't want to repeat them but I'm not sorry I lived them, either. In hindsight, I wish I could have been a better person, handled myself with more maturity, had the benefits my middle-age now affords me but that's the point of it. White Wolf was a learning experience for us all. I've done everything else in my life because I learned the lessons I learned there.

Sounds like Sam's settled into Life After White Wolf, too. The rest of the podcast is some talk about game theory and the many projects Sam has going on. I've burned out on game theory personally (and have no desire to continue conversations with the intense game theory devotees who, for example, honestly believe I've perpetrated brain damage on innocent gamers through my life's work in the game industry...) but more power to him and everyone else who enjoys keeping at it.