The three of us representing Onyx Path, Eddy, Matt McElroy, and myself, all got in yesterday night, so we had a chance to give the rest of the Onyx team our impressions at the meeting today. The biggest thing for us at any of the “By Night” conventions is being able to talk with a group of World of Darkness fans who are there for the Live Action events and community and who aren’t really informed about Onyx‘s projects. We’re representing for the tabletop part of WoD, and there to rightfully demonstrate how the White Wolf legacy is being continued alongside our blood cousins at By Night Studios.
And speaking of BNS, another huge positive is the chance to have face to face time with their talented folks. By Night’s work process of essentially keeping a very tight team focused on one book at a time with laser focused communication with a very specific part of the World of Darkness fan-base is a perfect (and really excellent) example of the “creative teams” I talk about Onyx having for each of our projects/game lines. Which is not to say that anything we at Onyx Path are doing or have done is connected with the way BNS does their projects, just that they are a very effective creative team and we like them a lot. In a lot of ways I’m envious of their focus on one major project at a time, although Onyx‘s strategy of reinvigorating all of the WW tabletop lines together was truly the only way to make sure that our much more scattered tabletop fan-base all got the message that we were bringing their favorite games back. As it is, even with us rolling out 20th Anniversary cWoD lines, putting out 2nd Editions of nWoD, and the 3rd Edition of Exalted, I still get questions as to why we hate whatever game line is not mentioned in the brochure or in the weekly updates.
Nashville By Night was also great for checking in with our Wrecking Crew tabletop demo team friends led by Dave Martin, who is just a legend. While those of us from Onyx Path are doing panels and talking with folks, the Wrecking Crew are playing tabletop Onyx Path games with fans from 9 or 10 in the morning until after midnight every day. They are tireless in their devotion to getting folks playing, and a lot of fun at the table. This year, I was determined to sit in on a game, and did so in what started out as a Vampire: The Requiem game where we were trapped into entering Arcadia and were enslaved by Wm. Shakespeare and forced to perform Romeo and Juliet for eternity. Or until we figured out how to lead the actors in a prison break and get back through the Hedge. Where we discovered that our sojourn had transformed us into Changelings based on our actions in “Verona”. This is the sort of thing that is just right for a convention game – maybe less fun if you had spent months of play creating your vampire. But I had a blast, as it seemed did the players around the table. Which is the most important thing.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Onyx Path teams were doing this:
DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE
First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)
- Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created)
- Beast: the Primordial core book (Beast: The Primordial)
- W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Idigam Chronicle Fiction Anthology (Werewolf: the Forsaken)
- Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening)
- Fallen World Chronicle Fiction Anthology (Mage: the Awakening)
- M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)
- Sothis Ascends (Mummy: the Curse)
- Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)
- Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition
- V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- W20 Novel by Mike Lee (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Redlines blog
- V20 Lore of the Clans (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)
- Exalted 3rd Fiction Anthology (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Second Draft
Development
- Exalted 3rd Edition core book- the whole damn book is in editing or back from editing, with the exception of one piece of fiction that just wasn’t doing what we wanted, so we re-commissioned it. (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Firestorm Chronicle Fiction Anthology (Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition)
- V20 Red List (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition, featuring the Idigam Chronicle (Werewolf: the Forsaken)
- World of Darkness Dark Eras- Vampire chapter (WoD Dark Eras)
Editing
- Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition core book (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Development (post-editing)
- World of Darkness Dark Eras core book (WoD Dark Eras)
ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE
- White Howlers – First proofing pass is underway for the interior and cover. Sent the comic over for approvals (It was approved this afternoon-RT). Got the updated (or retrofitted) character sheets in as well.
- Book of the Deceived – Art directed. Trabbold is gonna do the splat pieces once he’s done with DA. I’ll probably be laying this book out with holes for art and replacing those with art as it comes in.
- DtD Seattle – PoD proof with RichT.
- DtD Demonseed collection – PoD proof with RichT.
- DtD Interface – PoD proofs ordered.
- Book of the Wyrm 20 – Second proof was sent around on Friday. Luckily, we didn’t need any additional art to make the layout work…although it’s 40 pages heavier than it was.
- DAV20 – All of Kieran’s splats are in. More sketches continue to roll in. Also looking at doing some fancy graphic things for the KS. Also trying to come up with some ideas for the screen design.
- Anarchs Unbound – Deluxe at press. Having to rethink one sticker due to size constraints. Thus far I’ve kept them simple like the slogan stickers from the 90s (which were plastered over two of my cars during the 90s). Really holding off on doing the Refuse/Resist sticker as I think that is covered in the “Why do you Obey” and “No More Princes” stickers.
- T-Shirts – 36 new shirts went up last week: http://www.redbubble.com/people/theonyxpath
- Art O’ The Changin’ Breeds – Not a lot on that one as a big chunk of the week was spent on PoD prep, sticker design, and White Howlers. Getting back on that this week.
- Umbra – Most of the art is in and approved. I have a couple of halfs I’m waiting on and the fulls are in progress. We could probably get that rolling in layout next week.
- Ready Made Characters: Geist – Looking for someone to do the art and I need to see about getting the layout files.
- VTR II – Prepping a pdf so Rose can find all the references to the B&S title and swap it out for the new title.
- EX3- Not Mike, but assembling reference material for art director Maria Cabardo and am looking at a second batch of art notes from the Devs.
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REASON TO DRINK: A toast to very good people from this last weekend: Shane, Meredith, Hollywood, Michelle, Ric, Drew, Jason (he’s a Ventrue), Jeff, Matt, Eddy, Dave, Mike, Jeff, Jason, Aussie John, Cooop, Pooka, Oubliette, Loopy, and scores of other folks I talked to.
Comments
26 responses to “The Return From Nashville (By Night)”
Great update!
Out of curiosity, is it possible that if something changes in the Development Status section that whatever is changed be bolded in the new location? It is sometimes hard to keep track of everything
Thumbs up from me! (both on the update and the above suggestion)
Agreed. It’s kinda why I preferred reading Rich’s updates(the way he used to present them). It made it easier to tell where something was in its development.
Then Rich disappeared.
Then Eddy was DH(which was fine).
Then someone suggested they preferred to just read the updates the way they appeared in the email(NO).
Then…I struggle to sort out what’s new and what’s not.
Any chance we can go back to the way the Monday Meeting updates were done before?
Appreciate it, but no, I’m not going to revert or change the format so frequently.
M20 in editing and DAV20 moving along. Exciting times!
I’m interested to see what the Deluxe edition cover of Dark Ages is going to be like.
Is it going to be a matchin ‘X20’ style cover or something completely different?
Since it is not an X20, it won’t match that look. But it’ll be cool and appropriate.
ooooh, haven’t seen this before; World of Darkness Dark Eras core book! 😀 😀 Excited!
When can we expect to see a timeline for the WoD 2 core book?
When new work gets started on it, it’ll go into the writing phases like any other book even if that work is more revision than totally new text.
Sooooo, DA-V20 Kickstarter next week, perhaps????
Rich, do you think that we’ll get the Trinity Continuum Kickstarter by the end of 2014? It’ll be nice to get the book by the end of 2015.
Looking forward to Mage20. *tremor*
We won’t do a Kickstarter for Trinity until the book is mostly complete. It isn’t. And we won’t have time in 2014 with the other Kickstarters which take precedence.
It’s still possible to have the Kickstarter in 2015 and also get the book in 2015.
OK, cool! Thanks for the update
This is good news. Clad it won’t get stuck in the same situation that Exalted 3rd Edition is in. Honestly, though, I am not sure which I am more excited over: Trinity 2nd Edition, or Changeling:the Dreaming 20th.
Nashville by Night was a whole lot of fun! It was great meeting you, Eddy, Matt, and, of course, the legendary Dave Martin! 😉
The man. The legend.
It was fun talking to you as well, thanks for coming out.
Great update buddies! 🙂
About V20-DA, any news about the KS launch?
Soon.
“Exalted 3rd Edition core book- the whole damn book is in editing or back from editing, with the exception of one piece of fiction that just wasn’t doing what we wanted, so we re-commissioned it. (Exalted 3rd Edition)”
Squee is an appropriate noise isn’t it?
Hurry up art people. Art more and art faster. 🙂
Great update – Lots of awesome projects progressing nicely it seems. 2014 will be a good year for OP!
2014 has been a great year for Onyx so far, thanks!
Out of curiosity, whats the situation with the art for M20?
Obviously the text is in editing and proper layout can’t start till that’s over. However, Mike previewed a fair few bits of art before and during the Kickstarter. Likewise, during the Kickstarter additional bits of art were shown.
So I was wondering if art notes for M20 are complete and handed out to Mike to hand out to artists?
Just occurs to me that a 700 page book is going to need a lot of art and I was wondering if you guys were multitasking the art stuff alongside the editing. Just to shorten the dev time a bit.
While we’re reserving the possibility that we might commission a few more pieces after layout to enrich the text, other than a couple of the fulls and the splats, we’ve bought all the art for M20.
I notice that the 20th anniversary edition of “Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game” is never mentioned in the brochure or weekly updates. Why do you hate it? 😉
I think I hate YOU, now.
😉
Enjoyed talking with everyone whilst there. Informative and fun. Much thanks Rich, Eddy, and Matt!
Right back atcha. Thanks for adding a different set of questions to our panel!
I have gotten so used to waiting for Exalted 3rd edition that I am not sure what my reaction will be when it is actually finished (as unbelievable as that may seem). I figure I will be totally unprepared when the link to the PDF appears in my mailbox…someday.