Dark Reign is once again lucky enough to have Ross Watson and Sam Stewart, game designers for Fantasy Flight Games and the 40k RPG line, able to spend some time with us on the Dark Reign IRChat and answer our questions about Dark Heresy and other 40k games and supplements. At present we are still finding out some of the details, but we will post them to this thread as soon as we learn them.

Date of Chat: April 10th (Saturday)

Time of Chat: 20:00 UTC/GMT

Since we have not at the moment determined the direction of the chat, why not your questions into the following thread:

Dark Reign Forum Link

What is UTC/GMT?
This has caused us some problems before, so if you don't know how your timezone is adrift of GMT/UTC, then check out the following link:

World Time Server

Note that on the right hand side of the web page is a list of countries/statesyour country/state to determine what the local time is and, a little bit of math, and you can find out when to show up in the Dark Reign IRChat channel. Cheesy

So, for example, as I check that site now it tells me that it is 19:27 UTC/GMT. Clicking on the United Kingdom link (since I live in the UK) shows that the local time is 8:27 p.m. That's a difference of one (1) hour. This means that I will have to show up at 9 p.m. (my time) to be there for the interview...

What is the format of the chat?
For the duration of the interview, the channel will be moderated. This means that you're not going to be able to speak on the channel, and only the moderators, Ross and Sam are going to be able to do so. During the interview, one of the moderators will act as the interviewer, asking either pre-established questions or questions that have been fed to them by the people on the channel (see later).

If you come up with a question as a result of the interview, feel free to pass the question along to the facilitator, a second moderator who will have private channels open with the interview, Ross, and Sam. Note that Ross and Sam will be "immune" to receiving PMs for the duration of the chat. Even if this is not the case, we hope that you would respect their privacy by not PMing them during the interview.

Errr... What's this IRChat thing?
To get access to the Dark Reign IRC channel, you can either use your own IRC client (in which case, go to the irc.sorcery.net server, and join the #DarkReign40k channel, or use the Dark Reign browser chat access, available through this link:

Dark Reign IRChat Link!

On the login page that the link takes you to, just enter whatever nickname you want, and you don't need to enter a password (unless you already have your name registered on our channel).

Look forward to seeing you all there!

Remember, the interview is at 8pm GMT tonight, so 9pm for those in the UK, 10pm for the majority of Europe, and starting at 4pm on the US East Coast.

The interview is now in progress, should you wish to join us.

Can we expect to see a transcript out in the near future?

Indeed, we're editing the log-file down to be more clear for you all. Should be up in the next day or so.

Any news on the chat log from the interview? I have been dying to read it!!!

Yep, sorry, I ended up being away from home for a few days, and so didn't have the interview files with me to put up.

However, now, the Dark Reign interview with Ross Watson and Sam Stewert is now avaiable on the Dark Reign main site, accessable through this link:

www.darkreign40k.com/latest/ross-watson-and-sam-stewerts-dark-reign-interview-log.html

A whole interview of " Sorry w e can't tell you " and " We're so excited about what we're doing! ".

Useful.

I get they have NDA's and licensing and things like that to concern that they don't want to bore us with, but what's the point in having an interview where most of the answers amount to " Yeah, it's going to be awesome... just can't tell you what it is! ". It's almost as annoying as the way GW does things, which is to tell you nothing about anything.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

Well, given that those are the answers to the questions being asked to them - which they don't know about in advance. When 90% of the questions being asked are about things covered by the NDA, which are asked without prior notice, then you're going to get lots of "we can't talk about it yet".

Though in many cases the "we can't talk about it" says more than any straight answer would. Such as being told to "keep an eye on the site" in regards to player-character Xenos suggests they are coming, and soon, and the statement that the Vehicle's Apocrypha isn't going to be put up on the site suggests, as was alluded to before, it's going to make it's way into one of the books.

You just have to read the subtext

Though yea, being told exactly what we could ask about would have been useful, since otherwise the majority of questions, given how everything that has been announced has now been released (other than Deathwatch), are going to be about the future of the line.

MILLANDSON said:

Subtext my bottom . I am with H.B.M.C on this one. There is no point in having "interviews" like this. So yes, please take this as a learning experience and next time pre-arrange some relevant questions that they can actually answer.

I'm sure if people had submited a wider variety of questions, as we asked people to, we'd have had more to ask them. If people don't bother telling us what they want us to ask, it makes our job harder to do to get the info you want out of them.

And yea, since almost all the questions people wanted asking were about the future of the game lines, then there are going to be problems. People wanted to know about what was in store for Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch. We asked those questions, it's not our problem if FFG can't/won't answer the questions that everyone was asking.

Still, no need to insult us. There was some decent info, and yes, there was subtext there. If you can't read between the lines of what they were saying, such as player-character xenos and the like, then that is hardly our fault.

Either way, it's done now. Take it or leave it, it's up to you. I know a lot of people there during the interview were appreciative of their time, so at least some people were 1) happy with it, and 2) knew what to expect from an interview almost solely based around what the future held. At the moment, with the number of NDAs, etc, in place around FFG concerning future products, we should be happy with any little ***-bits we can get.

Aajav-Khan said:

I don't think that is entirely fair criticism, as I'm sure that you might conclude if you thought about the permutations.

Situation A

Questions are pre-written, sent off to the interviewee and come back with a "What we cannot answer list" and perhaps even a "Stay away from these topics" list. Result: The interview is a PR event for FFG, and the questions that the fans want to get at aren't going to be answered anyway.

Situation B

Questions are off-the-cuff, and are what the fans want to hear about. Result: You run into the NDA wall and the fans don't get to hear what they want.

***

The result of both situations is that the fans don't ultimately get to hear what they want. Situation A just means that the interview is a media push, little different than a slightly more dynamic Designer's Diary. Situation B means that the fans get frustrated because the stuff that they really want to hear about is covered by the NDA.

The common thread? The NDA. All that happens with a set of pre-arranged questions is that you screen the readers from the, "I'm sorry, I cannot answer that." It has little to do with having preparation except if the questions can be forwarded to someone that can actually make decisions about what can and cannot be said without violating the dictates, seemingly overbearing dictates, of the NDA. (In fact, the majority of the questions were available for days before the event, so identifying the whys and wherefores of the stone-walling might be difficult.)

With that said, the criticism is taken constructively and has, I believe, been noted. The next interview, should one occur, will not follow the format of the one (partially an experiment), and a number of issues that have been identified will be addressed.

The slightly defensive comment that I will allow myself is this: If you were going to blame someone for a child's poor education, do you blame the child for asking questions, or the teacher for not answering them? You can only deflect so much blame by talking about a "curriculum," even if it is a reasonable excuse.

Just food for thought. I shall return to lurking, but thanks for listening.

Kage

Thank you for posting the interview log. I didn't know about the interview until a few days after (I spend more time in the DW forums these days), and was sorry I missed it. I appreciate you taking the time to host the interview, and post it for those who couldn't come.

Well, I don't see why not getting any info from FFG on what's being developed should be any less infuriating than FFG not being able to meet its deadlines but I may not be the most adequate person to get PR tips from, as I refuse to have anything to do with people.

Aajav-Khan said:

If they didn't ask the questions then people would be complaining about that. "Why didn't you ask them about xenos? Why all the soft questions? Nobody cares about any of the stuff in that interview!!! There is no point in having "interviews" like this." Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Exactly. We had two choices, either go with the questions the community asked us to ask, and get stuck with the NDA, or go with pre-arranged questions, where half the ones people want to have asked don't get asked because they were vetoed ahead of time. Either way, the NDA gets in the way.

Ultimately, I think it's the fault of the legal departments involved (though given that FFG are usually open about their products, I get the sense that most of the NDA pressure comes from GW), rather than the faults of us as interviewers or Ross and Sam as interviewees. From what they said, they obviously wanted to tell us more, but when it comes down to it, sticking to an NDA they have to sign to work as devs is ultimately more important to them over getting a bollocking from management and possible sacking (you can get sacked for breaking an NDA) just to give us a scoop. They have to live under the same restrictions as all of us, and it came across that they were as annoyed about the NDAs getting in the way as anyone was.

A great and useful interview. Thank you, DarkReign!