Every so often, I like to reiterate a few points relating to who Onyx Path Publishing is and what we strive for and believe in. The mere fact that we can believe in things other than “sell lots of books” (although we do believe in that too), should let folks know we are not a big corporate structure, but it helps to restate these things again. Plus, these five things are all related to discussions which we talked about in our weekly Monday Onyx Path meetings today:
1) Onyx Path products start with a PDF version. That first PDF is an electronic file, so we can change it and fix it if it needs that kind of care. A PDF = easy to change, a printed book…not so much. Because of that we have started waiting for feedback from our Kickstarter backers on KS’d books before we go to press. In fact, we also now put out Advance PDFs of non-Kickstarted books so that we have time to get feedback on those PDFs as well. We want these projects to ultimately get into your hands with the least amount of glitches as possible. And we want them to get into your hands in the ways that enable you to play the way you like to. PDF and physical books, posters, cards via Print on Demand from DTRPG, with a program for getting those PoD products into brick and mortar stores. Fiction in PDF and PoD as well, but also in ePub and Mobi formats. T-Shirts from our RedBubble site. And more options to come.
2) There are lots of ways to talk with Onyx Path. We want to hear about your character. Or anything else you want to talk about, including letting us know about errors in the books. So we’ve provided you a lot of options. That might even get confusing, so I always suggest you try and communicate through the venue you started dealing with. Like if you saw a tweet you want to reply to, go ahead and send us a tweet. If you saw a post on one of our Facebook pages, go ahead and comment there. If you have an issue with one of our Kickstarters, send me a message via the Contact Me button next to my picture on the KS page you are referring to. If you zero-in on the most directly related way to get a message to us as per your problem or interest, you’ll have a lot better chance of getting a response in return. We really do want to hear from you, and if the option is that you go elsewhere and write a scathing 42 page essay on why we suck, we really, really want to hear from you.
3) We love all the game lines we have here to work on. That’s the White Wolf IPs we have the license for: classic World of Darkness, new World of Darkness, and Exalted; and our own Scion, Trinity Continuum, and Scarred Lands lines; and creator-owned lines like Cavaliers of Mars and Pugmire. We want all of them to do well, and grow, and evolve into the sorts of games that you want to play and read about now, today, without losing the magic that you responded to originally. Every once in a while we get accused on not loving a particular line, usually because there hasn’t been anything new out for it lately. That’s not love or the lack thereof, that’s just us hitting the limit of how fast we can redo, reinvigorate, or re-imagine all these game lines and maintain the high quality we constantly strive for.
4) Our Schedule is a suggestion, not a rule. Same thing applies to estimated dates. That’s not a lack of caring about getting you your anticipated game when you expect it. No, we do actually care about trying not to let you down. It is, however, an enlargement of that caring zone to also include ourselves. This might sound kind of “mmmmm-OK?”, but many of us are veterans of the days when that shipping deadline date ruled our lives. And I say veterans for a reason. The stress of delivering those White Wolf books when that schedule said it had to happen affected each and every one of us who dealt with those deadlines with physical and/or mental disorders including chronic back issues, to ulcers, to depression and PTSD. Some might say that we should get better resource management and these things won’t happen. Well, my response to that is that I am managing our greatest resource: our amazing creative folks. And, if you have no sympathy for our woes, since we were getting to work in the greatest and most creative business in the world, it also resulted in us putting out books that just needed more time to get right. At Onyx Path, we want them to be right.
5) We are going to make mistakes. We are pretty much all human, and we’re going to fuck up. In fact, it is a necessity that we do. Because only in an environment that allows mistakes can truly awesome experiments happen that lead to really great work. A situation where the tolerance for mistakes is so tight that they are punished, or are so feared that there are a thousand procedures to prevent them, leads to stale projects and no risk taking. That’s the opposite of what we are about. We allow the possibility of mistakes, and for technical ones we provide editing backup, developmental oversight, and encourage your feedback. For creative moments that somehow don’t turn out as cool as we thought, we try and learn from them, and provide you all with options and new directions. There’s a difference in making a mistake and making that same mistake over and over again, and we really do try and learn and improve.
And here’s a 6th one, that’s kind of something I just want to say out loud:
6) We love what we do! Despite some of our hard-won lessons like I mention above, we love this industry, this business, this hobby of ours. There is so much creativity and art in making our worlds into games ready for you to expand on and run with. You are interactive with the stuff we create, and make it so much more personal to you: there’s no other kind of entertainment that does that.
And also, this weekend I got to draw dogs in fantasy clothing and armor, and reviewed several gorgeous proofs of books, and played in Justin Achilli’s Pathfinder game and could call it research. What a company!
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And now, the BLURBS!
Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition‘s Advance PDF is still available at DTRPG although the time to submit errata for official review is over. In fact, Stew Wilson got us the compiled changes today! Figure a bit of time to make those tweaks, and time for the index to be pulled together, and in around a month the physical copy PoD versions will be ready for sale. They’ll look not unlike these mock-ups below:
The Deluxe V20 Lore of the Clans Kickstarter is being put together right now and we hope to have it ready to go live between now and next week. We have a plethora of Clan-focused Achievements that we hope will add to the fun for backers along with the Stretch Goals and Rewards.
If our proofs get here before Weds., expect to see a batch of new posters go up on DriveThru! Perfectly sized to fill that one place on the wall that just screams for an awesome full color illustrated masterwork!
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And now, new project status updates!:
DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (Projects in bold have changed listings)
First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)
- W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition) (Going for open development soon.)
- M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition) – In Open Development
- Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- M20 Anthology (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Demon Translation Guide (Demon: the Fallen and Demon: the Descent)
- Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)
- nWoD Hurt Locker (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)
- Pugmire (Be a Good Dog.)
- CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)
- WoD nWoD 2e core (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)
Redlines
- Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)
- Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening) – In Open Development
- Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition
- W20 Changing Ways (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)
- Demon Storytellers’ Guide (Demon: the Descent)
- Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition) (Preview post last night.)
Second Draft
- V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- W20 Shattered Dreams (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- W20 Novel by Mike Lee (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Development
- V20 Red List (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created) Being playtested.
- Beast: the Primordial core book (Beast: The Primordial)
- “Sardonyx” System Rules (Base rules set for Scion and the Trinity Continuum)
Editing
- M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- MtC Dreams of Avarice
Development (post-editing)
ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE
In Art Direction
- M20 How Do You Do That – Notes out to artists.
- Wraith 20 – Continuing to get new Guild titles in from Cobb.
- Dreams of Avarice – Figuring out the art buy. Kinda complicated, so it might take me a couple of days to figure out what we need. Got Sam lined up for the color stuff.
In Layout
- V20 Lore of the Clans – Layout continueth. KS graphics and teaser video done.
- M20 Screen – Will put the back together once I get corrections into the main book.
- Art of CB – Still working on it. Didn’t get much of a chance to work on it other than firming up some of the earlier sections.
- April Fools – Art is in, just need text to start layout.
In Proofing
- M20 – Proofing notes from Phil are in. Going to start on those… no idea on timeline as I’m sure there are tons of typo/editing changes that need to be made.
- WtF 2 – Errata is in today from Stew.
- VDA20 – Awaiting errata from David.
- VDA 20 Screen – I can finish this once the errata is done for Dark Ages.
- Sothis Ascends – In proofing. Should probably get corrections back from Colin this week.
- BotW 20 – Should be seeing some cover samples on Tuesday.
Special
- Dark Eras – Holding pattern.
- Exalted 3rd Edition – Developer text changes to Maria today.
- Gen Con Stuff – Working on the shirt and putting together the banner/cover texture for everything else.
Other Stuff
- Shirts – Gonna do up some CtD shirts this week time permitting.
- Posters – Have to order samples.
REASON TO DRINK: Exalted Anthology Out To Backers.
Comments
62 responses to “5 Useful Facts About Onyx Path [Monday Meeting Notes]”
OPP being the bane of Technocrats and their adherence to a time schedule since back in the day 🙂
We are not numbers! We are free men! (Men as in humans).
book of the wyrm isn’t in dev satus list, so is it ready to be shipped to backers?
Look further down in Art Direction. Expecting a cover proof today.
I think it is under “At Press”? Waiting on cover proofs or some such….
Changeling: The Dreaming shirts! My wallet is dreading this development, but I can’t wait! 😀
Cool.
Ya know, you reeeeally should do an Onyx Path tshirt with the Onyx Path logo and the phrase “You down wit OPP?”right below it. I would where the hell out of it!
Could be something that shows up- we’re making them as often as Mirthful Mike and Impish Ian have time.
Awesome! It could only be better if you wore one and sang the song at a convention, letting the crowd sing the “You Know Me!” part. You can even turn it into the company motto!
Sothis very advanced in layout!
Dreams of Avarice already in editing!
Mummy overdose 🙂
Get him five cc’s of Curse! Stat!
Exalted progress!!
Yep!
[quote]MM: Exalted 3rd Edition – Developer text changes to Maria today.[/quote]
I assume from this that all text in the core book has been replaced by the word “Maria” repeated over and over.
Could have been “All work and no play makes John and Holden dull boys”.
“Exalted 3rd Edition – Developer text changes to Maria today.”
Does this mean only final layout remains? If so, that would be very exciting!
I have yet to crack open the anthology. I typically buy anthologies as soon as they’re available, and don’t download/read them until they’re available in epub. The Exalted stuff has been a long time in coming, and I hope it was worth the wait!
I picked up Werewolf the Forsaken Second Edition too. I think I’ve finally found and RPG that has interested my fiancee.
Now I just need to find time to read and run all these games…
As regards the Exalted Anthology, you should be aware going in that the stories were “inspired by” the Exalted setting and do not necessarily represent factual information regarding Creation, the Exalted, etc.
There were some people who didn’t realize that going in and were rather annoyed when they found out, so I feel like it’s best to be aware of that going in.
Yes, that is a fair warning. Plus, the Anthology will have some tweaks by the time it in in ePub or PoD.
That’s alright, the greatest game I’ve ever run was a 4 year epic inspired by Exalted. I used some of the core concepts and build my own world basically from the ground up.
Excellent! That’s great to hear- it really ties into my comment about us just providing the framework or the starting level and you running with it.
It’s the first layout with this text. We are back at the same stage, but this time Maria can progress with it.
You mentioned in the M20 backer email that you would try and make up time on the manufacturing end. What does that mean exactly?
We haven’t done an X20 book since W20, and I’m expecting it will go a lot smoother than that since we’ve pre-planned most of the process based on the W20 printing.
Thank you for all the years and energy you have put into these products. You guys are great!
Thank YOU.
Thanks to everyone involved in getting Mummy back on track. It’s great to know we’ve got Sothis AND Avarice coming in the near future. Also nice to see that the first Mummy era got a 10k expansion. (Thank you, unknown backer!) Still holding out hope for that Mage/Mummy crossover era, whether it’s sooner or later.
One of the ears that was saved was the Kingdom of Mutapa in South Africa, which has been pitched as a Mummy/Mage crossover. It should be in the Companion book.
On a similar note, do we have any idea when we’ll hear about what final content of the companion book will be? Everyone who expanded an era, myself included, has chimed in on the forums. I know that the aforementioned Mummy/Mage Mutapa was pitched, as was the Vampire/Promethean Black Death, but no one seems to know what the Create-An-Era person decided to do with their pledge.
Not true. I know. 🙂
(Soon.)
Curse you McFarland!
*shakes fist*
Good to hear that we’ll be getting more info soon. I’m psyched to see what you guys are going to do with the extra eras, as well as the expansion that I tossed at Doubting Souls.
We are doing what we can, and thanks.
…Oooh. Exalted Progress. I look forwards to next week’s update.
Dunno if we’ll be saying much beyond EX3 in layout, but you never know.
Two Mummy books coming soon? I’m drooling.
Is there any chance we coukd ever see Wraith Legion and Mummy Decree shirts? I’d buy plenty of both.
Always a chance as Mirthful Mike and Impish Ian work through all the lines.
I was interested in reading about your business model/plans – especially with regard to getting your books back into brick and mortar retail shops again.
It is a notable point over the last five years or that White Wolf products have lost a lot of shelf presence in game shops. Of course, The Onyx Path isn’t White Wolf, but my feeling is that regardless of the merits of pdf/pod the real money in rpgs still lies in the physical sales of books in shops. White Wolf was a perennial leader of sales behind Wizards (D&D) for many a year, and I wonder whether TOP have any strategy to getting their presence back up to that level? Having seen the recent 2nd Editions, I think the quality of the games is good enough to.
Well, based on my business model, you are incorrect. There is value in having books in shops, yes, but I am very happy in the way our projects sell online and how we have pretty direct responsiveness to our fans that way.
Also, White Wolf and Onyx Path chose to leave the traditionally printed, three tier distribution channels, over five years ago, so that’s why you see fewer and fewer products in stores- we haven’t been making those books nor shipping them.
I actually heard a comment recently about us struggling to get books into stores, as if Retailers were resisting us coming back into traditional channels, which your comment reminds me of.
We aren’t having trouble getting into stores. Most Retailers would love us to get the books back into the distribution network. WE don’t want or intend to march blindly back into a system that is bad for us, which the traditional distribution set up is. I had two decades of watching how that broken thing got between us and you, and am not going to base Onyx’s business model on it.
We WILL look at alternatives, like our PoD Retailer Program, or adding Retailer Tiers to our KSs, or maybe even doing a KS that is for a traditionally printed run for Retailers specifically. I love a good game store, and don’t want to deprive Retailers of the chance to sell our books and stuff, but if the options are to exert a ton of extra effort and overhead with warehousing and reships and all that, or to keep building a direct sales relationship with all of you that keeps growing, then it seems obvious to me that anything we do with stores has to work as well as our direct sales efforts.
It seems to me that a potential issue with being out of stores with white wolf products is the out of sight, out of mind problem. Less persistent rpg gamers may think white wolf stopped publishing because they don’t see it on the shelves and no real exposure to new rpg gamers outside word of mouth. Perhaps it might make sense once a few more 2nd edition new wod core books come out and a few more 20th anniversary classic wod products come out that you might create introductory books/panthlets either 32 or 64 pages for 5 or 10 bucks in the style you did for the previous editions you put out on free rpg days. Might be a fairly inexpensive way to both advertise and create a buzz for the onyx path publishing imprint.
I know it’s somewhat on the back-burners, and that’s cool…
But I’m still waiting for the revamp of Scion. It was a hella-good concept and storyline.. just flawed in “crunch”. I -WANT- to run it again, hoping the revamped rules get done at least semi-quickly so I can do this.
We’re getting there. The base rules system is under review right now by our internal team and some guest systems-heads, and Scion has a couple of developer and writer types chomping at the bit to take the base system and apply it to Scion’s additional rules.
It only just now occurred to me that Promethean lapped Mage in the 2nd Edition circuit. Only now does that seem odd to me. Not a problem though, I’m excited for both products.
Looking forward to seeing the booth at GenCon 2015.
It didn’t, really, it just had development time built into different points in the schedule.
Can you please give us some news on the Exalted Wiki? Players and STs really relied on it and it’s been gone for a couple years now. Once we were told that restoring it would be moved up in priority… what has happened? We really miss the Wiki.
Ian?
So I heard here and there that MtAw 2e got slowed down by unavoidable RL stuff, but do we have any idea on how soon visible progress will resume?
We don’t do estimates on stages of creation that are listed in the Updates, sorry.
Where can I find Beckett’s Jyhad Diary Preview Post?
I do not believe there has been a blog post yet. Not seeing it myself-
I’m busy. Busy doing things for Rich! Blame him.
So far we have 10 chapters in nWOD (let’s forget about fact that BtP isn’t released yet).
Demon and Beast already released in 2e.
Vampire and Werewolf already get their updates as well as fancy new corebooks.
New 2e corebooks for Mage, Promethean and Changeling are coming next.
Hunter already received his update in Mortal Remains book. I believe that Mummy is going to update in this manner as well (if it already updated, please tell me in which book exactly new rules for 2e is).
But… what about Geist? So far i haven’t heard any news about it. Will it update? Geist even hasn’t any books except his own core. Maybe this part of nWOD is far from perfect, but it needs damn progress.
Delays meant that this plan wasn’t necessarily followed as intended, but consider:
2013: God-Machine Chronicle & Vampire: The Requiem 2e
2014: Werewolf: The Forsaken 2e & Mage: The Awakening 2e
2015: Promethean: The Created 2e & Changeling: The Lost 2e
So… it would be reasonable to assume that 2016 would probably include Hunter: The Vigil 2e and Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e.
Mortal Remains was a “patch” and not a full second edition treatment. Mummy hasn’t received a second edition either.
We confirmed CtL2 for 2015, and haven’t said what might happen in 2016. But as Ian says, if we follow our current set up we’ll be looking at a Hunter the Vigil 2nd and then a Geist 2nd after that. Whether that’s all 2016 or not remains to be seen.
I tried commenting on matters brought up here, but they were deleted.
If you post things here that seem to me to have been discussed and covered on the forums and only being posted here to start an argument, I will delete them.
Then don’t be surprised if people write scathing 42 page essays elsewhere. I thought you wanted this list to be a place where people could be free to criticize.
As for being discussed, previously on here the writer of “Doubtful Souls” admitted that the history was bad because of deadline pressure. If your policy is that you’d rather ignore deadlines to get things just right, it’s a legitimate question to ask if the additional time to write will also be used to revise the previously written ones.
You’re going to need to give me a quote that shows them saying that deadline pressures caused bad history. Criticize, yes, but so far, all I’m seeing you do is beat a dead horse. Which is not what this blog is for.
“As game designers with a deadline, our purpose at Onyx Path is not to write historically-accurate books that will be studied at University.” Blaming the Inquisition for events in Salem, where Catholics were considered in league with the anti-Christ and banned, is like blaming France for the American Civil War. There’s better history, with actual characters such as the Putnams, Samuel Parrish, Tituaba etc. is in the Mage: the Awakening appendix.
Explaining that they are professional designers who are writing games, not history books, is not saying that they are unable to write “accurate” historical sections because they ran out of time. Nobody chooses to write that section as they did because of deadlines. But even reading it the way you did, my point is that they already have stated that their intention with that chapter is what they wrote. You want “better history”, they want and wrote a WoD history that suggests, as WoD should, that what is in the history books isn’t necessarily the truth. Twists and turns and shadowy depths to what we think we know.
Actually, why do I have to produce a quote? It’s a simple question: will Dark Ages be further developed from the Kickstarter draft or not?
You didn’t have to do anything. I asked you to show me the comment so I would know what you were referring to because knowing the creators and our process, there was no way that they had written what they had written because of their deadline. As for your question: some chapters that have been expanded will have more work done to them overall. The Doubtful Souls one will in order to include Native American info, but the creative team have not indicated they’ll be changing the parts you have issues with.
Well, I have one thing to say: thank you! WW and OPP have provided the basis of amazing Chronicles over the years for my group and I, from Mage (both new and Old) to Scion.I know it will all be worth the wait. Keep up to good work guys!
Thanks so much!