Profile: White Wolf author Jess Hartley

The first time I met Jess Hartley was at the Ides of Gaming 1st anniversary event on March 15, 2008. We were both in a game of Long Live the King, where I played the Archbishop and she was the Queen. I had no idea who she was, but she did a wonderful job and really got into the role and helped make the overall experience a lot of fun. It was only much later that I learned she was a prolific contributor to White Wolf's World of Darkness games. She's also very active in Live-Action Role Play (LARPing).

Jess originally hails from the soggy Pacific Northwest, but has been drying out with us here in the Arizona sunshine for two years.

Berin Kinsman: Let's get the obligatory questions out of the way: When did you start in live action roleplaying, how did you get started, and what was the first game you played?

Jess Hartley: My first RPG was D&D (not even AD&D). I'd picked it up in the infamous "red box set" at Toys-R-Us of all places, and tried (rather unsuccessfully) to teach myself and some similarly inexperienced friends to play. My first successful RPG experience was an AD&D session which was much more enjoyable, especially as I was playing with Gary and Brian, two experienced and talented roleplayers. Of course, my first real "roll" of that session was a critical miss, and I banked a crossbow bolt off the back of the helmet of one of my party members, but... they forgave me. I didn't discover the World of Darkness until years later, but it quickly became my game of choice, in part because of the LARP aspect. A friend dragged me to one Vampire: The Masquerade LARP in Corvallis, Oregon back in the early 90s, and I loved it, but soon after that we moved to Central Oregon and lost track of the LARP community. We rediscovered it at a recruitment drive at Orycon (a fantastic NW convention) and I've been playing pretty steadily with the Camarilla since 1997 or so.

BK: How did you get into writing roleplaying games? What was this first thing you wrote?

JH: Back in 2003, I had pitched a novel trilogy to White Wolf just before they announced the Year of Fire and the end of the original World of Darkness game lines. Since the entire premise for the trilogy was firmly focussed on a concept that wasn't carrying over to the new game line (Kinfolk to the Garou in Werewolf: The Apocalypse) it wasn't something that could be pursued, but a few weeks later they encouraged me to submit a proposal for a novel trilogy (at the time) that they wanted to publish for the Exalted game line. I did, and to my surprise, they wrote me a few weeks later and said that they wanted to hire me to write the book that would become In Northern Twilight, my first published RPG product.

BK: What do you do when you're not playing games?

JH: Write. Lots and lots of writing. Outside of writing, I do a lot of family things. I enjoy spending time with my family and pets, cooking and working on and around the house, as well as traveling and doing other recreational activities with the family. But a lot of my recreational activities are game focused, whether it's playing LARP with my Camarilla friends, playing board and card games with the family, playing video games online or playing Mahjong with the ladies in the neighborhood once a week.

BK: Tell us about your favorite player character?

JH: Oh, that's not fair. That's like asking me to choose my favorite child!  I have a lot of favorites, for different reasons. One of my favorites, from the past, however, was Brianna Hyland, the Fianna kinfolk who inspired the trilogy I pitched to White Wolf. Not only was she a blast to play (slightly snarky, rebellious, but with a good heart) but I was blessed to have an abundance of high-quality roleplay with her over the years I played her. Whether antagonistic or friendly, interactions that Brianna had with folks were almost always interesting and intense!

BK: What's next for you? Any upcoming books on the horizon?

JH: The next print product to release that I was a part of the creative team for is Swords at Dawn, a hard-bound Changeling: The Lost supplement, which should be releasing in June, I believe. Also, I've had the pleasure to have worked on several electronic projects recently, including City in the Sand, a LARP SAS product; Collection of Horrors, an electronic anthology that compliments the recently released Horror Recognition Guide; and Goblin Markets, a pdf product for Changeling: The Lost.  And, of course, Geist: The Sin-Eaters which should be making its formal debut at GenCon in August of 2009.