An Interview with Jim Comer
Creator of the Mokole

This month we are pleased to say that we have been granted an interview with James Comer, one of White Wolf's talented writers. Jim is the writer responsible for creating the Mokole (werealligators) for Werewolf the Apocalypse, the Bata'a (voodoo craft) for Mage the Ascension, and one of the Freak Legions (fomori cult) for the Black Dog Game book of the same name.

Foray: I understand that you are currently working on expanding and revising the Mokole for Werewolf the Apocalypse. I really want to ask you all about your plans for them, but I guess first I should ask about you, the writer. When did you begin roleplaying? 

James Comer:In 1978. I was in junior high school and my lab partner got me into a D&D game using the three little books. A year later, I first ran into Empire of the Petal Throne, which despite its many troubles is the game world I've liked the most for the longest time. 

P:What attracted you to gaming? 

JC:The chance to make our own worlds-our own realities. The sociability-you never know someone until you've lived with them or roleplayed with them, as the old saying goes about card games. I've always loved settings that are worked out in detail, settings that work logically but are original. Endless rehashes of D&D's 1960s fantasy-novel worlds leave me cold. And the art of roleplaying. My favorite game settings are Tekumel (the World of the Petal Throne), the World of Darkness, and anything handmade and worthwhile. You remember how when we role played together, it was more fun to build a game world and play in it than to buy some prepackaged junk that we didn't have the money for anyway. 

P: How did you manage to become a writer for White Wolf?

JC:I knew the Bridges, the Greenbergs and Phil Brucato. We've known each other since 1984. John was working in the Book Gallery in Gayton Crossing near where I was living, and he and I chattered about Bill and what was going on. He told me about the Book of the Wyrm and what they needed. I typed up five crawlies and sent them in: Bill took two. Bingo. I was in.

P:Had you done much writing before? 

JC:Novels worth, most of it crap. You haven't asked me what to do to become a writer. I'll tell you anyway. Read voraciously, omnivorously. Look for the best, or what wins awards, in mainstream fiction, science fiction, fantasy, science writing, anything. Read what critics think is the good stuff (they have their reaons). Read what you like to read. Read the classics. Authenticity: research what you do. Attitude: can you comprehend the vision that the editor wants to convey? Can you fit in? Appropriateness: a roleplaying game of savage horror has no place for were-skunks. Look for what an editor wants, not what you 'want' to write. Ask them. I came in through Book of the Wyrm, which was a book for which Bill needed a lot of little things. Last of all, be very careful with mechanics: spelling, punctuation, grammar, ideas. 

P:You created the Mokole for the first edition Werewolf Players Guide. Were they a concept you were assigned, or were you asked to come up with a Changing Breed? How much, if any, of the bare initial concept came from the Werewolf developer? 

JC: Bill said that he wanted werealligators. The one word 'werealligators' was all he gave me. The rest is mine.

P: The Mokole are quite alien from the other Changing Breeds. 

JC: Thank you.

P: What inspired the great differences between the 'gators and other werecreatures?

JC: Well, I don't see them as a lot stranger than the Ananasi. And Ethan gets a lot of mail about them. I was looking for a concept to use for them, struggling with the battle form. A werewolf's in-between form is logically the manwolf that you see in movies. But what is halfway between a human and an alligator? It all came to me at once. Their halfway forms weren't lizard men, they were dragons, dinosaurs. The Mokole's function was obvious from that: they were the memory of Gaia. Though a lot of Mokole fans out on the net see them as power characters, they weren't built for that and using them that way is a mistake. The animosity between the Garou and the Mokole comes from three sources. One, wolves and crocodilians have ranges that don't intersect. So their understanding of one another would be sketchy at best. Two, the Garou's great foe is the Wyrm. No one knows what the Wyrm 'looks like', but obviously dragons and long snaky reptiles are associated with the idea of a 'wyrm', and a 'wyrm' is a dragon in early English texts. The idea of hereditary memories of the dinosaurs, as Sagan suggests in Dragons of Eden, fits in here. Of course, the idea of race memory is scientifically not valid. But as a fantastic notion, it works pretty well for a fantasy role-playing game. Three, Bill built up the Wars of Rage as the great slaughter of the Bete by the Garou. Phil Brucato didn't take this too seriously and made the Bastet more common and more approachable than the Mokole. I couldn't realistically do this: all of the giant reptiles, including saltwater crocodiles, American alligators and Komodo dragons, are maneaters. Reptiles are not seen as nice and cuddly by mammals like us. Sagan might not be right about the reason, but there has to be one, even if it's just mammalian chauvinism. 

P: Mnesis, which is the Mokole memory, seems to make sense when referenced with the Dinosaur Kings, but what is the significance of the Dragon?

JC: Well, you and I came from a long acquaintance with the Runequest World of Glorantha, where dragons are the awesome creatures that they deserve to be. Dragon in World of Darkness terms is a powerful totem incarna, who represents "dragons" just as Lion represents lions. Dragons are extinct on the World of Darkness and so are dinosaurs. But Dragon exists in the Umbra and in Mnesis. Mokole remember the dragons of the Mythic Age as well as the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous. Ethan and I interpret Mnesis somewhat differently, and this is worth mentioning. He sees Mokole as able to tap into the fossil memory of the planet itself, and doesn't think that actual Mokole lived on Earth in the time of the dinosaurs. This view would have Mokole created by Gaia in the First Times of Garou legend, and would make the debate over who the First Changer was somewhat more meaningful. I see Mokole as having existed in the Mesozoic and as having had a saurid form before there were humans. There's room for both ideas: we may both be right.

P:While they have never achieved the widespread favor that the Bastet and the Garou have, I would say that the Mokole are still well known amongst Werewolf players. Do you get feedback? 

JC: Ethan and Bill have, over the years. Lots of it. The Mokole are more popular than I ever thought they would be, and there are some Mokole pages on the net. Dennis Payne and Chris Hooker are two of the many Mokole fans that I have corresponded with over the years.

P: Do fans of the weregators bombard you with questions? 

JC: No. My name wasn't linked with them and White Wolf has asked me to answer only one question over all these years: what was the 'Decorated Sun'? (It's the sun with rings or sundogs, which are optical phenomena created by ice crystals.) 

P: You did not write the Werewolf novel featuring Mokole, but have you read it? 

JC: (Breathe Deeply, by Don Bassingthwaite, published by White Wolf) Yes, when Sharon Edwards recommended it to me. 

P:What did you think of the book?

JC: I was pleased. Most game-based books aren't very good, because they must be written to a strict format and must be cluttered with expository prose detailing the imaginary world of the game. But Don has not only dealt fairly with the Mokole, but has added some useful ideas to the whole mythos. His Garou hero, Peter, is coming back (we hope) for the Second Edition Players Guide. Other ideas that he introduced are going to become canonical. 

P: Are you happy with the way other writers have treated your creation?

JC: Professional writers? I didn't create the Mokole characters for Rage Across the Amazon, but the treatment of the Mokole there was in keeping with the nature of the Mokole. Net-writers? The quality of this kind of stuff is usually pretty poor. Artists? I loved the Mokole Rage cards! 

P:Okay, you are working on a second edition version of the Mokole. What will be different? Is this a facelift, or a total reworking of the werelizards? 

JC: The Mokole are being reworked: most of what is in the book is new text. This isn't true for the Gurahl: they were fine the way they were. But the Rokea will be completely different. The Mokole will be better *defined*, with more emphasis on roleplaying, more Archid-form characteristics, more explanation of how Mnesis works. There will be stats for non-crocodile Mokole such as the Komodo dragon Mokole. The game mechanics of the Mokole have been more or less completely reworked. The sun auspices are also better defined.

P: Can we expect a deep look into Mokole culture? 

JC: A little. I have said a lot about what everyone in a Mokole clutch actually does, what roles they play in Mokole society. 

P: Will there be a separate Mokole book? 

JC: Yes. No timetable yet. 

P: Something I have always wanted from White Wolf writers is a stronger impression of their personal vision of their creations and their place within the World of Darkness setting. For example, how many Mokole are there?

JC: How many or how many above the mud? Well, there are 33 in the Amazon, two in the Great Dismal Swamp, four on Komodo Island, seven on the Torres Strait islands north of Australia. There are about 50,000 shapeshifters all told. There should be at least a thousand Mokole. But many elders are buried in the Sleep of the Dragon, some not to wake until the Apocalypse.

P: Is 50,000 shapeshifters official?

JC: The 50k figure follows from the rule of thumb (in Vampire the Masquerade). I've never seen an official figure.

P: How much of a Mokole's experiences deal with the mundane world? 

JC: More than Garou: Mokole don't tend to spend lots of time in the Umbra. But the concerns even of homid Mokole are local. How much time do Mokole spend tending their gardens or nailing roofs on their houses? Some. They certainly aren't numerous or wealthy enough to use their Kin as a labor force, as the Garou sometimes do. To get mundane tasks done it's more common to see a huge workforce coordinated by a Decorated Sun. Most homid Mokole are traditional rural peasants in their tropical homelands, and they dislike city life. But some do manage to get by there. I've wanted to do something with Mokole on the streets of Detroit: kind of a Bone Gnawer story about hard times. 

P: In true White Wolf style,can you suggest further reading that would give your readers a deeper view of the Mokole? 

JC: Well, there aren't many books about people who change into dinosaurs, though Anthony Boucher mentions a Mascarene werediplodocus in "The Complete Werewolf". Anything by John C. McLoughlin: the novel Toolmaker Koan and the nonfiction work Archiosauria are good starting points. Desmond's The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs and Robert Bakker's work on reclassifying the dinosaurs. Peter Wellnhofer's pterosaur book has wonderful art, as does Leonard Rue's book on alligators. Read everything by Stephen Jay Gould, especially Wonderful Life, to get a sense of how evolution works. This is essential for understanding Mokole. Harrison's West of Eden trilogy is pretty well known, but not as many have read the Quintaglio Ascension trilogy by Robert Sawyer. Oscar Lewis's anthropology books aren't common reading for gamers, but they convey the beauty and tragedy of life in Mexico; Gilberto Freyre and Nancy Scherer-Hughes have done the same for Brazil. James Gurney's Dinotopia books are a treat for the eye. Get a decent book like Lambert's The Ultimate Dinosaur Book for the art. Dragons? Dickinson's The Flight of Dragons, presented as a pseudo-serious scientific theory, is a rich source of weird ancient lore.

P: People often say a writer's work is a reflection of himself. Tell us, is there a little Mokole lurking in Jim Comer?

JC: I have always been interested in dinosaurs, birds, and lizards, and I have always read extensively in a lot of subject areas. And I did a lot of research into black history that has resulted in the creation of the Mokole, the Bata'a, and of my personal webpage, which I believe you still offer your readers a link to. I have an eidetic memory and am fascinated by memory and mnemonics throughout human history. This was the inspiration for the Mokole's Mnesis power. And I love swimming, boating, hot tubs, anything water-related.

I am not a Mokole. Nor do I claim that there is some grand overarching goal behind my creation of the Mokole. Mark Rein*Hagen has said a lot about why he wrote Werewolf, but I don't have goals as lofty and far-reaching as his. If I get Mokole fans out there thinking and talking about evolution and mass extinctions, about the fact that a species disappears every day, about the slave trade and the fact that whites still profit from black people's misery, then I'll be more than satisfied. For heaven's sake, one percent of this nation's people own 30% of its property: so much poverty and squalor arises from the fact that corporations like Nestle can exploit people without any government intervention. This isn't an exercise in liberal guilt or political correctness. It's about facing the facts.

P: You have also done a fomori cult for the Freak Legions book and the Bata'a voodoo mages for the Book of Crafts. Do you think you will get to write more about them?

JC: I'm not sure I *want* to write more about the Serpent Brotherhood! We'll see. The Bata'a were an almost endless hassle. 

P: Do you have plans for them? 

JC: Not really. It would be nice to do a book for the Bata'a, and drag in the Wraith angle on the slave trade. 

P: People have called the Gypsy book by White Wolf racist, and similar claims have been leveled against the Followers of Set work. Were you worried in writing the Bata'a material that it would subject you to criticism? 

JC: Well, on that book both of our names (Jim Comer and Phil Brucato) were on the chapter, so I wasn't anonymous. My response to this is complex. Rage Across New York is in its own way a profoundly more irritating work to a lot more people, because of Bill and Andrew's treatment of satanic ritual abuse, which doesn't really exist in the real world, as a real problem when children who are abused and killed are usually abused and killed by their parents, and because of a politically moderate stance that led to some fans complaining that the Wyrm and the Republican Party were equated in that book. They got a lot of complaints about Necropolis: Atlanta because the Confederates were bad guys. So White Wolf has gotten lots of hate mail about 'reverse discrimination' and 'political correctness' and this will continue. The funnier letters get passed round the office. The Rom book was criticized because a Rom antidiscrimination group said that White Wolf would never have done "The Book of the Negro" or "The Book of the Jew", and that it portrayed Gypsies as tricksters and vagabonds. The Followers of Set book portrayed the Followers of Set, many of whom are black, as vampires, villains and drug dealers. Well, the World of Darkness is our own world with slight alterations. This is an attractive proposition for two reasons. One, it allows players to understand the world more easily than, say, Tekumel. Two, it allows the legends and lore of the real world to have a place. There are games ostensibly set in the real world that don't deal with 'real' supernatural lore and substitute made-up spells and monsters. I have no interest in them and am not likely to. Gypsies(Rom) are outcasts and victims of persecution to the point that even today many won't admit to gypsy status. A million and a half of them died for it in the concentration camps. I have not read the Rom book, but it's obvious that the Irish in Werewolf are perpetual drunks, the Indians noble savages with magic powers and the Orientals mysterious martial artists. Why should White Wolf use legends about Indians and ignore legends about Rom and black people? Why indeed, when the Miami police fish headless goats out of the river all the time? You can approach this other ways. You could omit all references to ethnic status. Some game! Or you can whitewash all the prejudices and make everyone nicey-nice suburban white people (the Barney The Dinosaur approach). This is crap. White Wolf's approach to ethnic lore and beliefs is to present them more or less as they come and make it clear that THIS IS ONLY A GAME. 

P: What is your favorite from your own work? Tell me what makes you the most proud to say, "I wrote that." 

JC: The Vietnam Cthulhu chronicle that Chaosium never published. Of my published game work, the Mokole still.

P: Could you tell us a little about the Vietnam chronicle?

JC: Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, the Vietnam Cthulhu chronicle, was a nine-part Call of Cthulhu adventure set in Southeast Asia in 1969-1970. In its character development, its depth of lore and connection to the real world, and its immense popularity with two groups of players (there were too many to run it just once) it's one of the best things I've done. It was the Cthulhu world tournament at Origins 1991 (I also wrote the Stormbringer/Hawkmoon world championship match).

P: Can we look forward to more new stuff? You must have some dream project. What else would you like to see White Wolf let you sneak into the World of Darkness? 

JC: We'll see. It would be great to write about the Dinosaur Kings and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event.

P: Well, I guess that's it. I think that's all of my questions. Thanks for helping out.