Because, as we’ve learned from WoD: History lies sometimes. A lot.
Eddy is back, and that gave us a great chance to catch up on the many approvals he’s overseeing for us with CCP. Actually, considering that our cousins in blood, By Night Studios, have submitted the text of their VtM: MET book for approval too, the approval gang are doing a great job getting back to us. Some projects are just a tad delayed because of the gap in timing, but not to any deadly amount of time. We did talk a fair bit in a continuation of our great chats in LA about keeping close and positive communications going between Onyx and By Night as we work on shepherding our respective parts of the WW legacy.
We also talked about Eddy’s blog about “Elementary” and how he’ll be doing an episode by episode analysis as the second season develops. http://eddyfate.com/2013/10/12/elementary-201-step-nine/ Basically, I let him know that I’ll be following the show with him as my proxy, because I still can’t get into it. Mostly, I’m just not able to empathize with SH as portrayed. He’s too jumpy, if that makes any sense. Eddy thought that might be because the entire show has been using the “addict” aspect of Holmes as its main motif, and that focus, for me at least, doesn’t deliver the fuller portrait of SH that I enjoy. Conceptually I respect the choice, if that is what they’re doing, but the depiction still stops me from engaging. We talked a bit about how hyper-focusing on a particular aspect of a project can cut off interest from fans who were into that project because of other themes and motifs that appealed to them. Certainly a concern with Onyx Path‘s many 20th Anniversary books and other gamelines with rich histories that we are expanding on or re-imagining. We’ve all seen how new editions can splinter a fan-base, and we’re working very hard to avoid that particular problem. The 20th Anniversary cWoD books are designed to take a reader back to the first time they opened that core book that fascinated them, while projects like Exalted 3rd Edition, Scion, and the Trinity Continuum have different challenges of updating, and very often correcting rules systems issues, while still “feeling” like the game and game world.
So, speaking of classic White Wolf game lines that we’d like to work on again, I’m fantastically thrilled to announce that Onyx Path Publishing and Nocturnal Media have joined forces to purchase the Scarred Lands fantasy setting from CCP. The Scarred Lands game setting was WW‘s acclaimed “house setting” during the D20 craze, with both a specific setting game-line detailing a dark fantasy world torn apart by the wars between Titans and Gods, and projects such as the Creature Collections and Relics & Rituals books that provided cool new fantasy gaming material for any setting. Nocturnal is owned by the man who got me into this business, and my good friend, Stewart Wieck (who founded White Wolf Magazine and co-founded WWGS), and we have wanted to join forces on a project for a while. Since we both loved helping to create the Scarred Lands, this seemed like a great chance to do just that. With everything that Onyx Path has on its plate for the next year or so, this isn’t something we’re going to be rushing out this year- or the next- but we do expect that we can preview things as we go along. Here’s the press release: https://theonyxpath.com/scarred-lands-finds-new-home-with-onyx-path-publishing-and-nocturnal-media
One final bit of news: after speaking with Demon: the Descent developers Rockin’ Rose Bailey and Black Hat Matt McFarland as well as V20: Anarchs Unbound developer Justin (if you give me a nickname I’ll stab your eye) Achilli, we’ve agreed to swap their respective Kickstarters and plan to have Demon‘s KS ready before the end of this month. There are a bunch of good reasons for doing this, the primary one, in my mind, being the desire to time these KS campaigns in such a way as to add to the enjoyment and excitement everyone feels for the new book or game-line. The process of creating a Deluxe version has a lot of phases that Onyx has less direct control over, which is why I’ve been trying to decouple the game release from the KS. But we’re aware that there absolutely will be some overlap. We’re still working on the best way for us to do that (see last week’s Monday Meeting Notes), but in the end it came down to really wanting to get Demon PDF and PoD versions out to folks this year (because it is, like, you know, our new game for 2012) and this seems the best way to make that happen.
Yes, These Updates Right Here:
– Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) In Editing. Art is all contracted. Mirthful Mike has contracted several new artists, including a couple from IlluxCon.
– Mummy the Curse – Deluxe and Screen: Books and Screens are all shipped out- as a backer in the US or Canada, check the last Backer Update from KS as to how to contact me about getting your copies if you haven’t yet. Backers outside the US and Canada should sit tight a couple weeks more to give time for the packages to wend their way to you. The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is in for approvals from CCP (this is one of the approvals we’re waiting for). Cursed Necropolis DC is being red-lined by CAS and then back for second drafts from the writers.
– Exalted 3rd Edition: While John hunkers down to rewrite the Charms chapter, the rest of the team is working on a couple of EX3 chapters that continue to be finalized for Editing: Dawn Caste Charms are still being wrapped up, and I’m told that the Melee tree is tight, with nothing obsolete or “speed bumpy”. Martial Arts are being compared with the Dawn set for compatibility. The Social Engine is in Editing. Both EX3 novels as well as Zub’s EX3 Comic are in progress, in fact we were just looking at a cover idea, and the EX3 Music Suites are being scoped out.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Deluxe being assembled. PoD and PDF versions on sale at DTRPG. HH2 Fiction Anthology text is in editing.
– V20 Anarchs Unbound is in layout and we are still putting the pieces together for its KS, but that’s been delayed until after the Demon KS (see above).
– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Regular Deluxe is being laser cut. Heavy Metal Deluxe is being worked up now as a prototype with their new press- I’m told I get one Weds/Thursday this week. Mike Lee is submitting chapters of the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel to Bill for dev review. The Storyteller Screen files are done and ready for W20. Bill has the W20 Anthology stories in layout. Jess Hartley has submitted the White Howlers Tribe Book to Stew Wilson for development notes, and the W20 Cookbook is almost done in editing
– Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato mostly developing now like a maniac and most of the book has been written and we are prepping an editor for this big ol’ thing. Check out our continuing M20 art blog by Mirthful Mike Chaney: https://theonyxpath.com/mirthful-mikes-art-blog-mage-20th-anniversary-preview-3/
– W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter expanded material has been put into the new layout and we are still waiting for CCP approval on the new stuff, and for the opening comic, and the Changing Breeds Fiction Anthology is being contracted by developer Jess Hartley.
– W20 Rage Across the World: In layout.
– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) the PDF is live on DTRPG. There is a thread on the Mummy forum on the WW Forums for any mistakes or tweaks you want to suggest before we correct the PDF and create the PoD file. This has worked really great- can anyone who has the inclination to post errata please do so this week?
– Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is being final proofed.
– W20 Book of the Wyrm is coming out of editing.
– V20 Rites of the Blood: is in editing, being art directed.
– Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): In editing.
– Trinity Continuum: We now have a whopping big Aeon outline and a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline and writers are writing. Talking systems with the gang.
– Scion: Joe’s team is hammering systems- big time. Reviewing the first system doc this week- need combat example right now. Right now. No really, now.
– Demon: The Descent: In layout. Demon Quickstart PDF is free on DTRPG and the PoD version is Now LIVE. As mentioned above, we are going to get the Demon: the Descent Kickstarter campaign live before the end of October.
– Hunter: The Something About Monsters: Writers are writing. Many first drafts are getting red-lined.
– nWoD: Dark Eras: Writers are writing.
– V20 Dark Ages: Scribes are scribing.
– DtD Players Guide: Flowers Of Hell?: Being written in in a steam bath outside of Dresden.
Reason to Drink: The mules of Moscow.
Comments
38 responses to “Happy Bartolomé Day!”
“Some projects are just a tad delayed because of the gap in timing,”
I think we agree to disagree on what the above comment meant.
Regardless, I’m absolutely looking forward to my deluxe HH2 and W20 editions finally arriving, Trinity Continuum, V20 the Dark Ages, V20: Darkening Sky, NWOD Dark Eras, and others.
VERY upset that Anarchs Unbound KS was delayed. I’ve been looking forward to that since it was first announced and thought I read somewhere that the KS was just about ready to go up.
It means that CCP approvals have only slightly delayed projects because they’re a bit backed up.
Sorry you’re so upset, but sometimes we have to make these calls in order to do what’s best overall. Anarchs is coming, fear not.
One week for errata on Guildhalls! I’m only half way done fine tooth combing and adding to the thread…
Gonna have to read quicker.
Faster! Faster!
Already appreciate how thorough a review you’re giving it!
For every person upset about the delay of Anarchs Unbound, there will be someone over joyed about the demon ks being done sooner. I am one of those, been saving my pennies for a long time for a demon deluxe book.
Very true. And glad to hear you’re up for it!
I’m one of those too. If it’s anywhere near as interesting a read as the old Demon corebook was, this is going to be fantastic.
I was really hoping we’d get to see Demon the Descent next, even though I’m a little sad that Mage20 is probably not going to launch its KS until end of December.
Definitely need to get a tablet so I can run the game with just the PDF, though, since the shiny deluxe edition probably won’t be out for a good long while.
*I meant to put that I’m glad Demon: the Descent is next since the quickstart was so very amazing. 🙂
Thanks!
I can see decoupling the Kickstarters and the book release dates working very well or failing catastrophically. There are a lot of things to consider.
– The biggest problem I can foresee is that if the Kickstarter overlaps with the PoD release, you would be competing against yourself for dead tree copies and that never ends well (see: the electric car).
– The second problem is that it would significantly limit your ability to expand books. Once the PoD version is on sale, adding content to the book becomes impossible. Decoupling Kickstarter and release date would then become most advantageous for limited lines, which, based on Mummy, are used to fund new books rather than expand on the book’s content. Limited lines, however, are also the rarest Onyx Path Kickstarters from what I understand.
– The third problem is that, if you want to do this deliberately rather than incidentally, you’d probably need to start planning the Kickstarter early in the book’s development. I don’t know enough about the process to tell if spreading the amount of work over a longer period of time would make things easier or harder.
– The sale of PDFs through Kickstarter campaigns would likely decrease, which would also decrease the amount of funds raised through Kickstarter. Business-wise, I don’t think this would be much of a problem.
– If the Kickstarter is ongoing after the book is released, you can push the Deluxe edition of a book instead of pushing the book itself. People can read the PDFs and decide if they want the PoD or the deluxe edition. I imagine this would make things a lot easier for you from a management perspective. I think you did something similar with… Hunters Hunted 2? Or whichever book had all its text posted online during its Kickstarter.
– The amount of effort needed for post-Kickstarter maintenance would likely decrease. You’d need to post regular updates about the printing process, but you wouldn’t need to post book excerpts to show how the work is going along. This would probably also make things easier for you.
– Kickstarting a book that is essentially complete builds confidence in the campaign. Unless the North American printing industry collapses overnight, the book is guaranteed to be completed. If the North American printing industry does collapse overnight, we’ll all probably have more important things to worry about.
– It seems that the ideal approach would be to launch the Kickstarter campaign on the same day that the book is released on PDF or shortly thereafter, run it for a month and then release the book on PoD through DriveThruRPG a day or two after the Kickstarter is over. That wouldn’t solve the problem of how to use Kickstarter to expand book content though. It also wouldn’t actually decouple the Kickstarter from the release date, now that I think about it.
It’s probably the sort of thing you’ll have to figure out on a case by case basis, so… no change to the current way of doing things, really.
Also very true- there isn’t a set formula right now that would cover all the things we could do with any given KS. Which is sort of the right and better way for us to treat these. If KS becomes a routine “pre-order” system then it loses a lot of the value of really focusing on a release as an event. That’s really what’s great about KSing a supplement like HH2 or Changing Breeds: having such fun and transformative KSs where all the backers can get into the mix and share ideas and push for certain additions to the project.
Yeah, Kickstarters are definitely more than just a normal pre-order, but pre-ordering is still part of the motivation folks have to participate, especially for those who opt for a PDF only reward tier.
This wouldn’t entirely decouple the PDF/POD release from the Kickstarter, but it might help. My thought is to have the PDF ready to go in its pre-Kickstarter form when the Kickstarter launches (or make sure it’s going to be ready to go during the Kickstarter period). As soon as the Kickstarter ends, put the PDF only up for sale on DriveThru. When you get all the Kickstarter additions to the book finished, update the PDF and put the POD available for sale. That way, there is less perception that the book depends on the Kickstarter, but you still have the folks who are in it for the PDF pre-order function able to contribute to the Kickstarter along with those of us who want to help fund a fancy version of the book.
One of the things I would dislike about a delay between the PDF release and the KS would be having to wait for the KS to get the PDF (because usually a PDF copy comes with most tier levels). I feel like I would be buying it twice…but that would also depend on how the tiers for the KS were set up. Bit of a personal issue I guess, would just be too impatient to wait.
Depends on the timing. Right now, we’re only possibly exploring what would happen if we did the PDF/PoD version and then did a Deluxe. Check out the points raised in the long post above. Some concerns there that we share.
The Werewolf Cookbook has been in editing since July 15th (it was ready for editing two weeks before that.) Surely it can’t take 3 months to make sure metrics and imperial rule are correct for 13 recipes. :-/ Is there a story behind its taking so long, or has it figuratively and literally been put on a back-burner for some reason?
[…] of freelance work, Onyx Path announced today that the Kickstarter for Demon: The Descent (on which I did quite a lot of work and continue to do […]
Yep- hard to prioritize when both the editor and Dev are swamped with other projects. It’s getting there. They’re doing pieces at a time. when they can.
The title isn’t based on that dumb article in The Oatmeal, “based on history by Howard Zinn and Sean Wilenz”? Talk about history lying, Zinn whitewashed Stalin. From Instapundit:
Huh, a book written in 1946 has a much more complimentary view of Columbus than modern scholarship does? This is my shocked and astonished face. Next you’ll be telling me they thought more highly of George Armstrong Custer back then, too.
Ooh, snark. “Modern scholarship” usually means simplistic anti-western prejudice. Even the left wing Dissent magazine calls Zinn more of a propagandist than a historian. Did his book even have an index? Morison doesn’t whitewash Columbus, he calls the treatment of the natives “genocide” and has a chapter entitled “Hell in Hispaniola”. What he doesn’t do is subscribe to the ridiculous Manichean fable about Columbus being the devil in the New World or make up crap about him being responsible for the slave trade. For his book (which won the Pulitzer in 1942), Morison actually recreated Columbus’s voyage in similar boats using the original logs, which puts him as a historian head and shoulders above hacks like Zinn and Wilenz.
The myth of the “noble savage” was one of the failings of the original Werewolf (“Only western civilization is tainted by the Wyrm”) and I hope it isn’t being resurrected.
An irony is that according to one commentator, Bartolome de la Casas practically worshipped Columbus.
That’s not an irony; de la Casas edited Columbus’ logs. It was only after he traveled to the Americas that he actually discovered how broken the pedestal his hero sat upon actually was.
Also, you derided snark, and then immediately complained about the lack of an index?
Bartolome arrived in Hispaniola in 1502, two years after Columbus had been removed as governor. He participated in slave raids himself and defended the system when the Dominican friars condemned it. He only turned against it after the Spanish campaign in Cuba, long after Columbus had gone. He still tried to do what he admired Columbus for, converting the natives to Christianity.
An even bigger irony: the article inspiring this post tried to pin the Trans-Atlantic slave trade on Columbus, but the one who suggested replacing Indian slaves with African ones was Bartolome de la Casas. He repented of that suggestion later on, but he was much more the cause of it than Columbus.
Pointing out Zinn deficiencies as a historian isn’t snark. (I probably should have said footnotes.) Zinn et al don’t do modern scholarship, they do post-modern scholarship where the facts are subordinate to the narrative.
As someone as myself who is a descendant of the Native Americans from California: I’ve always hated Christopher Columbus day and being “forced” to celebrate that day in school as a kid.
I also hated that we had to also build mini-Missions and not even talk about the Chumash revolt that happened from building them. It was, “Everyone was hunky-dory to do what the Spanish said or else!”.
It’s not “fierce originality” and “intellectual independence” to condemn a lot of things that spawned out from after the Spanish Reconquista. Yes, that includes Columbus. I take it that the Natives from the Bahamas that survived have been condemning Columbus for a very, very long time.
You do know that was sarcasm? Directed at the facile black armband history demonstrated by the article inspiring the post here (I notice the xed out picture of Columbus has been removed.) It seems to be a way for white liberals to feel superior, not anything to do with the natives of the Bhamans (who were all shipped out after Columbus was removed).
Whoooo @ EX3 updates. With the social engine in editing maybe we’ll be able to see a snippet of it in the KS updates soon. Maybe. 😀
Happy Bartolome Day!
Do you plan to release Scarred Lands for other systems such as Savage Worlds, too?
A Lot of people prefer nowadays rule light & easy to prepare game systems.
I doubt that they’ll do that, although being very familiar with SW for my non Onyx Path fix, I like the idea of that myself too.
We’re examining a lot of options for how to deliver the setting- so you never can tell.
Awesome awesome. So glad to hear that Demon and Anarchs got swapped. I cannot wait for DtD KS to go live, got to play this game at LA By Night with the Wrecking Crew and it is going to be a hit!!
S’as all Im sayin 🙂
– Scion: Joe’s team is hammering systems- big time. Reviewing the first system doc this week- need combat example right now. Right now. No really, now.
–Low damage characters being useful? (I used a variation of ping to keep them ‘relevant’ in combat).
–making sure hardness works from Legend 2 all the way to Legend 12? (Old Scion had an issue that if your dice pool was too small, your character could not rip off a blast door, but you could throw the Empire State Building into orbit)
–Poisons that don’t become 100% useless by Epic Stamina 5? (ie. Scaling up to Legend 12 for Thor dying from Jormingundir poisonous bite?)
–Environmental hazards that aren’t… mostly laughable? (Bonfire and larger fires normally only do how much?)
–Ooooh. And the biggie. Making firearms damage actually scale equally to melee?
–Aggravated damage/soak is consistent (Chiron is scary-scary against even gods because he gets his full damage as aggravated for free).
Music to my hears!
*ears
Arthur’s talking about what he’d like, not what the team are doing. Wondering how relevant his assumptions are – after all, they’re using a different system, which in turn means a different combat engine, and we don’t know what said engine is geared for. For all we know, it might take influence from Exalted 3, with the focus on combat momentum rather than damage.
I am hopping that they will do the Scarred Lands rules to be compatible with Pathfinder and Savage Worlds, like Earthdawn has done. It would be cool, and useful for the most number of players.
Minor note for Exalted. You probably want to edit the schedule to push Arms of the Chosen back until February/March if the core book is flagged for December. Right now it’s listed as coming out before the core book.
On that, is there any way to cascade link releases for easier updating on the page? So that you can establish that say AotC is 2-3 months after the core release, and then WHFW is X months after AotC so that when a delay pushes back one item the rest automatically cascade update?
Hurray! I missed the news the first time around but this is a great update to come back to. Demon Kickstarter before the end of the month would be really nice.