Nope, here in the USA it is the Memorial Day holiday, and while I normally force all of the Onyx Path crew to work on Monday holidays because I’m cruel like that, we have enough of our gang with commitments for this one that we’re postponing our meetings until later this week. But that doesn’t mean I have nothing to say, or that the updates aren’t current – I do, and they are.
First off, we have one of the beautiful full page pieces by Michael William Kaluta that grace the pages of Mage: the Ascension Twentieth Anniversary Edition. You might recall that Mike was the original full page artist for Mage first edition, and we used variations of his pieces in every edition. He was also the first legendary comic book artist I brought into White Wolf‘s books, and I was so intimidated at the time that I’m amazed I was able to convince him to work with such a babbling fan-boy. Twenty years later, that relationship is still not that much different as I still respect and adore his art, although I have stopped babbling a little bit. The Mage 2oth Backer PDF went out last week, and despite a dumb mistake on my part with mixing up the links, it is in the hands of backers. Just shy of 700 pages, M20 has received some amazing accolades, and the KS backers are sending in all sorts of comments and concerns that will help us tweak the final version so that it is even better.
We talked last week about the Onyx Path panels for Gen Con this year, and here are the details:
SEM1572611 Freelancing for Onyx Path
Thu @ 1:00 PM
Location: Crowne Plaza
SEM1572614 World of Darkness Storytelling Tips & Tricks
Thu @ 4:00 PM
Location: Crowne Plaza
SEM1572616 What’s Up with Classic World of Darkness?
Fri @ 10:00 AM
Location: Crowne Plaza
SEM1572617 What’s Up with New World of Darkness?
Fri @ 3:00 PM
Location: Crowne Plaza :: Grand Central Blrm D
SEM1572633 What’s Up with Trinity, Scion, Scarred Lands, Exalted?
Sat @ 10:00 AM
Location: Crowne Plaza
SEM1572637 Dive into Pugmire & Cavaliers of Mars
Sat @ 3:00 PM
Location: Crowne Plaza :: Pennsylvania Stn
The above should be self explanatory as to what we’ll be doing with them, but feel free to ask away in the comments if you have any questions. And here are my Gen Con Industry Insider panels, all of which should be in the Indiana Convention Center, room 210 or 211:
SEM1580477 Kickstarting for Fun & Profit
Thursday @ 3:00 PM
Discuss the finer points of developing, running & fulfilling a kickstarter. Find out the nitty gritty on what works, what not to do & why you should both participate & do one!
SEM1580455 All Art Ain’t the Same: RPG Art Directing 101
Friday @ 5:00 PM
Different game lines & even different projects within those lines require different aesthetic choices. An in-depth look at how visual styles are determined in order to deliver the world as written.
SEM1580484 Return to the Return to the Castle of Gender Diversity in RPG Art
Saturday @ 12:00 Noon
This compelling and popular Q&A panel returns for the third year to examine how diversity, focusing on but not limited to gender diversity, matters in RPG art.
All of these panels listed above are slated for one hour, although I and many of the panelists will most likely extend our conversations afterwards, either in the hallway or at the Onyx Path booth. Hope to see you there!
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And now, the BLURBS!
Fear the dark places: the Beast: the Primordial Kickstarter is coming soon… we’re planning for late this week if we get everything approved in time.
Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition KS backers: M20 PDFs went out to backers, and the response has been amazing! Thanks to all of you for your support and accolades. And also thanks to all of you intrepid eagle-eyed backers sending us notes on possible errors using the “Contact Me” button next to my picture on the M20 KS page. Your comments are great and much appreciated!
Look for the next Pugmire poster (#2 is Princess Yosha Pug) becoming available this week, and you can still get the first of the six Pugmire posters on DTRPG.com, and start spreading the Code of Man: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148516/Sister-Picassa-Collie-Pugmire-Poster-1
Sothis Ascends for Mummy: the Curse is on sale in both PDF and physical book PoD versions and thanks for the great response!
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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)
- M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- M20 Anthology (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Pugmire Gen Con Materials (Be a Good Dog.)
- CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)
- The Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Dragon-Blooded (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Dark Eras Expansions (nWod Dark Eras)
- VtM Lore of the Clans Expansions (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Pugmire Early Access
Redlines
- Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)
- Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition
- W20 Changing Ways (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)
- Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)- In Open Development
- nWoD Hurt Locker (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)- In Open Development
- W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Scarred Lands Player’s Guide: Ghelspad
Second Draft
- Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening) – In Open Development
- Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)
Development
- Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created)
- “Sardonyx” System Rules (Base rules set for Scion and the Trinity Continuum)
- V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Demon Storytellers’ Guide (Demon: the Descent)
- W20 Shattered Dreams (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- nWoD 2e core (New World of Darkness)
Editing
- M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- W20 Novel by Mike Lee (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Demon Translation Guide (Demon: the Fallen and Demon: the Descent)
Development (post-editing)
ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE
In Art Direction
- M20 How Do You Do That – Rest of Jeffe’s stuff coming in.
- Dreams of Avarice – Artnotes out to artist.
- NWoD 2 – Art is a goin’.
In Layout
- Gen Con Stuff – Yep, back on that stuff this week.
- Beast – First wave of art in, second wave by end of the month. Got edited text in Saturday evening, so layout will start at some point this week.
In Proofing
- M20 – Out to backers and I’m sure errata is collecting.
- Red List – In proofing. All of the KMJ art came in on Thursday and is approved.
- M20 Screen – Proofing with Phil.
- Ex 3 Anthology – Awaiting updated text file
- BotW 20 – Shipping this week.
- Art of Changing Breeds – Waiting for PoD proof.
Special
- Dark Eras – Holding pattern.
- VDA20 – Indexing.
- Beast Within Revised Layout – Awaiting approval, then I’ll update the PDF and add PoD and Epub.
- Wraith 20 – Awaiting art notes for the book. All the logos from Cobb are in.
- V20 Lore of the Clans – Holding pattern for appendices. I am working on the KS shirt this week.
- Exalted 3rd Edition – RT here: More chapter borders coming in from Maria. As they are OK’d she is placing them and then working with the text and illustrations within that chapter to create pages that play off the background/border design. Some art has borders, others bleed off the page, depending on the page spread design and what she thinks looks best for that spread. Today she delivered three chapters with all the design elements, text, and illustrations placed for my review. If they are basically OK for me, I’ll be sending them to the devs for their thoughts.
Other Stuff
REASON TO DRINK: Salute.
Comments
64 responses to “We’re Not Really Here, Today. [Monday Meeting Notes]”
Let me just make a ninety eighty four Reference really quick
“B!… B!…. Beast!”
Seriously i’m so in baord with this Game you have no idea,can i ask if y’all are going to talk more about beast and promethean 2ed on those Painels?
Each panel has certain subject matter built in with the name, so certainly we’ll be talking about Beast and other nWoD games at the What’s Up With the nWoD Games panel. Hope you can make it!
I’m really looking forward to Beast.
Can you tell us which chapters Maria delivered for Exalted? I’m mostly curious about if she’s doing them in page order or if she’s doing them in some other order.
I confess to being more curious how many total chapters there are.
It was a while ago (it was one of the first updates of the Kickstarter) but it was said at the time there would be ten chapters in the book : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-exalted-3rd-edition/posts/478487 (it’s a backers only update)
Since it was a long time ago, maybe some things have changed since then.
Not telling specifics, but they are not in page order. There’s more than six chapters in the book, though.
Yay progress!
I only have one question right now:
What color are the silk bookmarks going to be for the Deluxe and Orichalcum Exalted books?
Even though it’s pretty obvious that Exalted style is going through some pretty fundamental redesign, my bet would still be red for the silk bookmarks. It just goes really well with gold (or, pardon, orichalcum). And, anyway, the logo is golden red so it just works.
Overall, white/cream, red, yellow/gold are still appropriate Solar colors and Ex3 will be looking towards those. So silk ribbons for sure, and other design motifs, but we’re not limiting the cover or interior to those colors.
“White/Cream, red, and gold/yellow”
Fancy!
Now, what would the colors for Dragonblooded and Exigents be…
DB: blue,red,white,green,yellow
I like the splash image for Beast. I’m also thrilled with the news on intended commencement of the Kickstarter! I really love these Monday Meeting Notes, in general, for being a source of news like this.
Thanks! Very much appreciated.
I hope I’ll manage to pledge for Beast within the first minute. I’ll be setting my alarm clock to wake me up in the middle of the night if need be.
Reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got Beast?
You don’t need no stinkin’ reasons!
All I’ve seen of Beast indicates it’s a powergamer’s wet dream ala Demon.
I’d be curious to learn what powergamer is supposed to mean here.
Roughly, someone who wants a starting character that can flood an are with acid doing one agg per turn.
I am unclear on the nature of such motivation. Is there an ongoing contest in which highest damage character from any RPG wins (I imagine we’d need damage conversion tables between RPGs..)? Does it also extend to movies? Perhaps people who like Man of Steel are powerwatchers.
Anyway, is it possible that some people play games because of interesting themes and settings they get to explore and, in some of them, areas are filled with acid which does one agg per turn?
on the opposite side of the same coin though there are players out there who just simply want to watch the world [insert verb here including but not limited to “burn” “melt” “freeze” “smash”] for no other reason than to “see what happens”.
but I agree there are many out there who are interested in exploring the game world.
I believe im somewhere in between leaning towards the “watch the world burn” for most games.
besides breaking things if fun!* =D
*:DISCLAIMER: may not be fun for everyone.
It’s pretty clear that people sit down at the gaming table for different reasons. Lots of ways to break that down, but unless the reason is “ruin the fun for everybody else at the table”, I think that any reason for playing is a good one.
We had one player who was only, only interested in the fights. He just wanted a character who was good at fighting and could cause lots of damage and take out his opponents. Didn’t roleplay any more than he was forced to, and was generally polite and fun, but he needed to blow off steam from his real life by defeating things in a fight. Came to every game night for years.
He, as an example, would be considering how powerful his starting character could be because that determines his particular fun. And I don’t think that sort of gamer is really that rare, or can’t have fun with nWoD or Beast specifically.
It’s been a derogatory term for a couple of decades. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=powergamer
Beast sounds like playing Superman without a weakness to kryptonite. I haven’t seen any interesting settings or themes, just OTT powers. The character doesn’t explore areas filled with acid, he imposes his Lair traits on them for one scene. Not much to explore after that. The ones exploring Lairs would be the Heroes, if they could survive.
As for RichT’s player, wouldn’t the revealed information be his dream come true? At least with other games, the ST could make fights challenging, at the very least by having opponents with the same powers. V:tM had the Sabbat, W:tA had the Black Spiral Dancers, M:tA the Technocracy, Promethean the Pandorans, etc. Demon has starting characters who can freeze someone in time, trap them in an extradimensional oubliette, make firearms do aggravated damage, and their main opponents are mortal cultists and generic spirits. Describing the Heroes in Beast as like MRAs (latest object of the Two Minute Hate) sounds like a similar imbalance.
Tau neutrino, I just deleted a wall of text and am bowing out of this discussion. Suffice it to say, I am fairly certain I wouldn’t want you at my gaming table.
Oh and Rich, yeah, I think most groups get a player like that at some point of another. My group had one for a while. No problems at all, except that occasionally she would ask “can we play now?” when the role playing would last for a while and significantly delay the next fight. Which was mildly annoying but no huge deal. It kept the game moving, if nothing else. It’s certainly a lot less problematic than a player who is very interested in role playing but demands everything in the game be subservient to what he wants to do with his character.
And anyway, I don’t think I’d call a player like that a powergamer. They don’t, in my experience, go out of their way to break the game. They just go for the fighting traits.
Pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be at your gaming table either.
You have a very different understanding of the motivations of WoD players than, say, I or a lot of our writers do. You may want to bear that in mind when reading our stuff – maybe we’re just not thinking about games the same way. That doesn’t anyone’s wrong, just that we might be approaching this from different angles.
Also, if wanting to be able to flood an area with acid as a starting character is wrong, man, I don’t want to be right.
What, you mean to tell me that different games have different design considerations, and people should actually try to understand what those considerations are before they comment on them?
That’s crazy talk, Matt. Stop being crazy.
From the last three design notes, for three separate powers, the design consideration is pretty obviously to appeal to the powergamer audience.
Spoken like a true powergamer. I thought the trend was to make aggravated rare, as was done in V:tR Revised. The target’s of this power aren’t something like the Strix in Vampire or Werewolf’s Idagim or even other Beasts which would balance the powers, but Gaston form Beauty and the Beast. To quote someone, “Great power without great challenge is just crass spectacle.”
What I’ve seen is the last three updates have been about the cool powers Beasts have, such as Nightmare being able to approximate any other monster’s Disciplines, Gifts, etc or even general theme.(The exception is Demon, probably not coincidentally developed by yourself.) If you did intend for Beast to be a powergamer’s wet dream, what would be different?
What you’re doing is seeing the power in terms only of what they’re capable of in combat and judging the game based on that, and ignoring the other posts (Hunger, Family) that aren’t power related.
And, like I said, you’re approaching this whole discussion from a paradigm that sneers at “powergamers” and thinks they’re somehow doing it wrong. I don’t share that paradigm. I don’t accept that someone who wants a badass starting character is doing anything wrong, and I like writing high-powered games.
Demons in DtD are pretty tough, but the game works just fine (in my experience). Ditto Beast. It just approaches “balance” from a different stance than perhaps you’d like, and that’s fine.
Then you should embrace the “powergamer’s wet dream” label. It’s not me who’s been sneering at the term, but most of the WW/OPP fora down the years.
Hungers and Family seem designed to make the characters seem badass. (Family comes out and claims that the other monsters are the Beasts’ younger siblings, which I’m sure thrilled the other developers. I remember the outrage over the Mage supernal Arcadia even though it existed before C:tL.) As I’ve said, these are your excerpts. Infestation, Flooded, Corrosive, All Your Teeth Are Falling Out, and You Are Lost seem designed mostly for screwing up an opposing character in or out of combat, especially the Nightmares examples.
There seems to be an increasing power curve with the new games from Geist to Demon to Beast. What’s next the nWoD version of Aberrant?
I just love when people judge things before actually trying them out. It’s what my 2 year old does, and he just ate a handful of mud today.
Great insight buddy! But since I’m not 2, I’ll reserve my judgement for after I read, play and Story-tell Beast or OP’s other games. It’s worked out pretty well for me so far.
Does your 2 year old use ad hominem attacks?
As I said, this is based on their own excerpts, which are supposed to entice people to invest money in their Kickstarter.
I’ll be that one weirdo who chimes in about how excited they are for a Mummy book and two Demon releases!
Fingers crossed for Beast to win me over; it hasn’t yet.
We do different book lines because different people like different kinds of games. No weirdness in that.
Ah, man, I hope that’s not the final “color” for Beast. It’ll disappear next to my Demon books on the shelf.
Also, Matt: What’s with all the blue/gray color schemes on your books? Promethean, Demon, and now Beast?
Don’t look at me, man. I don’t looks ’em, I jut writes ’em.
Promethean was more purple I thought. that being said it might be a visual pun, cuz matt totally blues our mind holes.
Yeah, I’m hoping Beast’s colors are a bit different from that graphic. Other than that, I’m extremely excited for the KS.
I’m seeing mention of Lost in first draft, but nothing about a Changeling: the Dreaming 20th edition.
Changeling20 can be seen on our schedule page. It is not, however, in First Draft, which is the first step displayed on the Monday Meetings.
It actually *is* in first draft status now, but that’s a new development.
Yay!
Yay!
YAY!
With Matt McFarland’s ok, I ran Beast: The Primordial at Strategicon: Gamex this weekend in Los Angeles. The players really liked it and the new angle it offers in playing characters in the World of Darkness.
Thanks Matt, it was a so much fun.
I’ll be running Beast at Gen Con with The Wreaking Crew. Fun times ahead.
Great to hear! Thanks, and looking forward to seeing you at Gen Con.
I’m signed up for one of the Beast sessions at GenCon … Looking forward to trying the game!
Let’s talk about Beast and coloration.
Mike is a graphic artist; he’s working with book files, which are CMYK-based (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) for print.
The web and web graphics, on the other hand, are optimized for RGB (Red, Green, Blue). It’s additive vs. subtractive. When working in print, when you add every colour together, you get black (or at least a dark muddy colour). When working on the web, when you add every colour together, you get white.
As a result, when Mike shares a picture, it usually uses CMYK values not optimized for the web. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of CMYK vs. RGB:
As you can see, the one on the right looks more vibrant and sharper, where the one on the left tends more toward the puke yellow end of the spectrum. However, in print, the one on the left will typically end up looking more like the one on the right.
So looking at the Beast logo above, just because it’s not as punchy as you’d like it, doesn’t mean it won’t be punchy in the book. Mike has to do an extra processing step (like bumping up the saturation) in order to make a CMYK file displayed on the web look like the final print version.
Yeah.
Still looks to close to Demon for my tastes.
Sorry. That came off more harsh than I intended. I appreciate the insight into it, Ian. But I still feel it’s a bit too close to Demon for my tastes. But I guess we shall see.
And soon!
That’s a fantastic analysis, Ian. I think the logo is very fitting for the game.
Am I color blind, or does the image on the left look very, very green?
So, Art of the Changing Breeds.
I don’t remember anything about this book from the Kickstarter and can’t find mention of it on the KS pages, but apparently it is something that was sent to backers? I must assume it was only backers who pledged for a physical book or something, since I didn’t get an email.
Would somebody please explain what this book is? I’ve been confused about it for a while.
It was a reward for a specific Reward Tier that goes into the sketches an emails and such that led to the art in the W20 Changing Breeds book, all written in the inimitable style of our own Mirthful Mike Chaney, the art director.
I just thought of something else.
What’s the word on character sheets for Ex3? “We’re not at the stage to do those yet but we know who is doing it and have some ideas?”
There are a lot of things I’m curious about, but those can wait for when they become relevant.
Thanks.
First of all, i want to thank Rich T and the OP crew for their fabulous work this last 3 years, truly they’ve injected WW games with fantastic and great ideas, giving the lines exciting courses.
I have a question: Is there any project or idea for the EX3 Narrator screen?, personally i always need some tables here and there for my adventures.
Glad to see work is coming along on Exalted but… you guys aren’t waiting for GenCon for Exalted 3e, aren’t you?
We’re not waiting for Gen Con. We’re waiting for Exalted to be done. It isn’t yet.
For the record I’m okay with characters starting with at least one really dramatic, awesome “power gamer” ability. If everyone is a special broken snowflake in a unique and compelling way and there are logical reasons not to abuse it then no one is a special broken snow flake.
Pretty much every game from White Wolf / Onyx Path does a pretty good job of building in disincentives to use your 5 dot I Win Button every time someone looks at you funny whether it’s a personal toll (a Vampire risking hunger frenzy using too much black) or an external toll (a Promethean waking up every Pandoran in the area) or a mix (a Demon Going Loud, destroying it’s cover and lighting up like a nuclear test on satellite to the God Machine – basing the last example on forum information, I do not yet have the book. Correct me if incorrect.)
The action that has had the most dire consequences in any game I’ve played in was actually mortal Hunters using an entire garden department’s worth of propane cans and fertilizer to blow up a spirit infested Walmart. You better belive that one rippled outwards throughout the supernatural and mundane worlds. As storyteller I’ve been milking that for a year now.
I can sympathize with your initial fanboying when contacting Michael William Kaluta for work. I had the same experience a few years ago when I contacted an artist who’s artwork I had admired for 20 years, and somehow struck up a friendship with him that even now surprises me.
I’m glad that after all of these years, you and Mike are in touch and working together too. 🙂
Out of curiosity, not much has been said about the 2e Corebook, is it a safe assumption that it will follow the general trend of being a “Greatest Hits Album” for the general setting, taking the most compelling ideas from the various supplements and putting them up front while cleaning up systems and language?
Very interesting program. Ar you going to publish a transcript/summary (or video?) of the panels for those who could not attend the GenCon? (btw, nice to see the Scarred Lands line moving forward ^^)