More information about all of this, including video from ICC 2009 that includes the Vampire Developers Panel and the Closing Ceremonies themselves, can be found at our YouTube page.

At the closing ceremonies of the 2009 International Camarilla Conclave in Atlanta, GA, White Wolf presented its outlook for both the Camarilla (its long standing official fan club) and the future of its engagement with the fans of its products.

Before we get to the presentation, White Wolf would like to applaud all of the work that went into ICC 2009. It was a resounding success--from the incredible volunteer staff to the storytellers to the individuals making their own costumes…truly amazing. There was an astounding amount of money raised for charity that bested every previous year. From our cold, unloving hearts we thank all involved. The professionalism and sacrifice that went into putting it on was well worth it by all accounts.

It was just, plain fun.

That brings us to the upcoming changes we outlined for you during the closing ceremonies.  Consider them the first steps in what will be a long, complicated and beneficial effort. Please also consider it a promise and a pledge. An apology and an embrace. The sweetest first glimpse of a whole unknown world just past the horizon.

The main message is this: you enjoy playing our games and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to do that.

As we’re evolving our business and figuring out the best way to explore the deepest shadows of the World of Darkness, we’ve come to realize that we can better serve you, the fan. You breathe life into the pages of our books.  You are the pulsing hearts that animate our board games and card games and the Machiavellian surprise behind the latest Mind’s Eye power struggle.

To that end, we’ve got some changes coming.

A new suite of digital tools to help manage your chronicles. Along with Lone Wolf Development, the creators of Hero Lab, we have been developing some amazing, utilitarian, approachable tools to help you create, run and maintain your chronicles.  Think of it as part automatic wiki and part storyteller dream.  It’s still in the formative stages right now, but even at the earliest stages they are amazing.

A drastic easing of Fansite Rules under the Dark Pack. We’re taking a step back from overseeing what you, as the fans, want to celebrate on your own websites. Of course, we’ve still got to protect our brand identity as creators, but you’ll find the new fansite rules to be more open, accepting and helpful.

We’re continuing to explore more ways to deliver content to you. We’ve been investigating digital distribution and have found a lot of success and flexibility in doing so.  With the advent of cheaper PDF-native digital book readers, those are becoming a real possibility. However, we’ll never lock into one form of delivering our books to you—so you don’t have to worry about that.

White-Wolf.com will be getting a new content management system. That should allow us to serve you information better, quicker and more reliable. Time to pull our website into the present..

The Gathering in New Orleans.  We announced that we’ll be holding a massive convention/meetup for all the fans of our products, whether that’s Mind’s Eye Theatre, oWoD or nWoD, VTES or anything World of Darkness inspired.

For the Camarilla specifically:
No more pyramid. We’ve drifted a bit away from you all and have come to realize what a really horrible mistake it was to let that happen.  We want to reintroduce ourselves as people, individuals even, who care about what you decide to do with our games, because we truly do. There has just been too much bureaucracy and it needs to end. We’ll keep liaisons on staff here, but this is less about us selling you books and more about you enjoying them.

But how?  We’re giving the reigns back to you. You will remain the official World of Darkness fan club, but we’re not going to tell you which of our games to LARP or how to do it. Some of you will undoubtedly return to the Old World of Darkness. That is awesome.

What’s next?  A lot of introspection and elbow grease.  We urge you to take the coming months to really audit the entire Camarilla structure. How much of the original roots will you salvage? How will you balance the dynamic between old, new and future members? Do there need to be structural changes, rules changes or even cultural changes to reflect the new Camarilla going forward?  What is the Cam to you and how would you have it run ideally? This is the perfect opportunity to reforge the Camarilla.

Why change?  We want this to be just plain fun again, like the ICC itself. No barriers in the way of your expression in the World of Darkness. Tools to help you organize yourselves, find eachother, and regain that sense of creeping, suspenseful dread together. Bear with us and help guide us, as this is going to be an open dialogue.

Again, we urge you to watch our YouTube page, which has the announcements themselves, tapings of the various panels, and interviews of both CCP staff and the fans. Additionally, we will have more videos and other event highlights up as soon as we can prepare them.