Hey all! Now that the Realms of Pugmire Kickstarter has wrapped up, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it. Not only are some of the people backing it new to Onyx Path crowdfunding campaigns, but this is one of the rare times when both editions are produced by the same company. So I thought it might be a good idea to go over some of the questions I’ve been getting and give some answers!

Now that Realms of Pugmire is Kickstarted, when will I get my book?

I’m tackling this one first because a lot of the later answers hinge on the context of this one. Kickstarter is not a pre-order system, although it might feel like one. There isn’t a book sitting in a warehouse ready to go – we still have to make it. Officially, the Kickstarter lists the release date as March 2025. That said, Pugmire campaigns generally deliver faster (one of the advantages of having a lot of control over the property!), but it’ll be at least a year before you see anything resembling a finished book, and closer to two.

Is everything on hold until that’s done?

Nope! That’s one of the big changes in this new era of Realms of Pugmire. Previously I did one book at a time (with a few exceptions), but this time around we have lots of books planned. At the time of writing this, the jumpstart is already off to editing – it actually beat the core rulebook manuscript to editing by a day – and I’ve got writers working on the next big project, which is a collection of enemies for your Realms of Pugmire game. A manual of monsters, if you will. And soon I’ll start the outlines for the next two books, which will be announced soon.

What happens to the first edition books?

Nothing. Those books will still be available – in stores for a while, as the original stock of printed books runs out, and as PDF and print-on-demand books on DriveThruRPG for the foreseeable future. I’ve been a vocal proponent of multiple editions existing simultaneously. I think it’s one of the most exciting things about DriveThruRPG: the fact that people can purchase and play with whatever rules they want. The only reason I’d pull it down is if there was a compelling business or legal reason to.

What about the Canis Minor community content program? What changes?

For the moment, nothing. We generally don’t give people permission to make community content on books that aren’t released yet, so we have until around 2025 to answer the question. So you can still make content for the first edition of the game for the time being.

Why don’t you have all the answers now? I thought this new era was all planned out.

Having a plan isn’t the same as having all the answers. Onyx Path and I do have plans – big plans – for the future of Realms of Pugmire covering at least the next few years. However, if 2020 and beyond has taught us anything, it’s that things can radically change in this industry. The RPG industry of 2015 when Pugmire first got launched is very different from the RPG industry of 2023. It would be foolhardy to lock answers in now without knowing what things look like in 2025, or even 2035. We build our plans to be flexible, and I’d rather give a full answer once we know where things are going to land, instead of a vague “it’ll probably be this” and then have to change it because something blew up in the background.

You said I could do [X] in Realms of Pugmire, so why I can’t I do that?

I’ve tried to be as clear as I could during the campaign about what you can and can’t do with this new edition. To be blunt, a lot of things happened in January that caused me to have to rethink some things. That said, only the details changed, and I stuck to the core of what I wanted to provide. For example, I was passionate about writing something to help people convert their first edition material to the new edition. I’m still sorting out if that’ll be in the book, but probably not due to license changes, so instead we’re looking at making that free for everyone to download.

Which ties back to my answer above. I didn’t expect the radical changes that happened to the Open Game License in January 2023. That has made me more reluctant to nail down future details, because I don’t know what will happen. But I feel that, in the end, everything I said you could do in this edition is true now as it was then; only the details may have changed.

Why didn’t you include [X] material from first edition in the core rulebook?

Because part of the plan is at least seven more books, and I need to make sure those books have cool hooks in them. If I gave you all the rules for making, say, birds or reptiles or badgers, then there wouldn’t be any reason to get the book that covers birds or reptiles or badgers in more detail down the road. That said, I personally feel cats and rodents are core to the experience of Pugmire, so I made sure there was some way to portray them right out of the gate, but in the end Realms of Pugmire is a game about dogs, and I need to make sure the core rulebook is sufficiently focused on them.

So we’ll definitely see [X] material in a future book?

Probably? Again, I don’t want to commit to anything because I can’t predict the future. Something may happen where I have to cut the seven proposed books down to five, or three, or one. Or we might get even more books! I might find that some of the material is better forgotten than reworked into the new edition when it’s time to address it. In general, the major things I hit in first edition will likely have new versions in this edition. And if not – well, like I said, you have those conversion rules.

When will we get to see all the playtest changes to the manuscript?

Not for a while. At the time I’m writing this, I just sent it off to editing – we had planned to edit it before the Kickstarter, but the needed rewrite was so substantial that it was better to actually scrap that editing pass and start all over again. Then it’ll go to layout, where there’s a chance the text will change again. I don’t want to litter the place up with endless revisions of the manuscript.

So once the book is fully laid out and has all (or most) of the art in, we’ll send the PDF out to all the backers and give everyone a week to notice any errors or concerns. Then we’ll fix those, send it to the printer, make any changes from that process, and then you’ll see the final product!

That said, this isn’t my first rodeo, and Onyx Path has done over fifty of these campaigns by now. I don’t think the changes from now until then will be radical. The manuscript you have now has a few typos and some wobbly rules here and there, but I expect 95% of it will survive intact until the end of the process. So the game you’re playing now won’t be significantly different from the one you’ll play with the final book.

What if I have more questions?

The best answer is to keep an eye on the Monday Meeting blog, where Rich gives an update on Onyx Path news every week. Besides that, I’m active in the Onyx Path Discord, and I’m available on Twitter at @pugsteady. And I may keep doing blogs like this. Who knows?