The artwork above, from the W20 Book of the Wyrm, is symbolic, but not representational, of what happens in the tabletop RPG biz every year approaching Gen Con. Sure, we started discussing our presence there in January, but now everything starts to get pulled together. And as I mentioned before, this is Onyx Path‘s first time with our own booth, so there are lots of booth set-up and personnel decisions to be made. Because we are really still pretty small, every cost has to be weighed as to just what we are buying. Things that have more than one use- awesome. Things that get our logo and name out into the crowds- awesome.
Months ago, I bought our hotel rooms, and last week the nice foam flooring pieces (black, of course) so our booth is something folks- including us- want to stand in. Over a month ago we started work on the Onyx Path Brochure that we hand out with info on upcoming projects. This afternoon, Mirthful Mike Chaney and I went over other booth needs, like the Onyx logo on dark navy blue table runners that will sit on top of the black fabric we’ll put over the tables Gen Con provides. We also are looking at mini-posters that we can use both to decorate the back wall of the booth (along with our Onyx Path banner sign from last year), and as give-aways to attendees. We have an end-cap booth this year like the DriveThru one we shared last year- right next to the entrance, so that’s pretty cool. We also looked at both paper and canvas shopping bags- prosaic perhaps, but it’s pretty great seeing folks carrying your company logo through the Gen Con throngs.
We’re also working with Gen Con on our panels again this year. I’m hoping that Eddy and I will be able to continue our tradition of semi-witty repartee at our “What’s Up” panels. This year we are doing three: “What’s Up With Classic World of Darkness?“, What’s Up With New World of Darkness?“, and “What’s Up With Onyx Path?” (which will contain discussions of Exalted, Scion, The Trinity Continuum, Scarred Lands, and more). Right now, all three are scheduled for Saturday, but they keep changing the locations, so more details when we are closer to the Con.
I’m also slated for three panels as part of the Industry Guest of Honor thing I’m doing again this year. On Thursday, I’m slated to be on a “Why Art Matters” panel at noon, and then “Return to the Castle of Gender Representation” at 3pm. Both of these panels also feature my Gen Con panel buddy Jon Hodgson, art director at Cubical 7, and we generally have a great time back and forth with the audience. On Friday at 2pm, I’ll be on the “How to Run a Successful RPG Kickstarter” panel, without Jon- but I’ll be thinking of him fondly. Come by if the topics interest you, or if you want to get in on the discussions. Also, if you can’t make it to Gen Con, but have a question you’d like me to put forward for you, just put it into the comments here and I’ll try and work it in if there’s a lull in the audience questions. I’ll share any answers on a Monday Notes blog after the Con.
Talked with Eddy, and he’s got about 14 irons on various fires between job interviews and freelance projects and a couple of ideas he wants to pitch to me. He’ll be talking with CCP Tuesday about a whole bunch of things that have come up other than art and book approvals that we reviewed today, including his attendance at Gen Con, and a couple of ideas for the Con we need CCP to weigh in on before we can talk about them.
Whipping These, Whipping These Good:
– Book of the Deceived (MtC): Post writing development. Writer given a section of the text back for tweaks, and power outage ripped away several hours of dev work that need to be redone.
– Sothis Ascends (MtC): First draft heading into redlines.
– Cursed Necropolis: Rio (MtC): First draft heading into redlines.
– Exalted 3rd Edition: From Holden: “This week has seen a lot of movement on playtest feedback adjustments, both to Phase 3 packet material, and to accumulated issues with the combat Charms– Melee is getting its final-pass (barring anything that blows up badly at the last second) revisions at the moment. Evocation development is proceeding quickly, and the rest of the Panoply chapter has been reviewed and finalized. One martial arts style has been heavily revised due to changes in dual wielding.”
Zub’s EX3 Comic: PDF and physical copy PoD and PDF/PoD combo version on sale at DriveThruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/128873/Exalted-Tale-of-the-Visiting-Flare. Both EX3 novels are being worked on, and notes went back on Matt Forbeck’s synopsis. The EX3 Music Suites are at a standstill right now until our composer gets through his full time job commitments.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2: European shipper is shipping the remaining packages to Europe this week- according to the list from the shipper, this is less than a dozen packages.
– V20 Anarchs Unbound : Reward and Add-on PDFs went out last weekend. Planning on sending the links for the backer discounted PoDs, and then it’ll go live on DTRPG in PDF, ePub, PoD and PDF/PoD combos. Getting printer quotes finalized for Deluxe version.
– V20 Rites of the Blood: layout is rolling along for it. Discussing this with Eddy and we think we’ll get this out ASAP without further delay as we try to arrange a Kickstarter for it. More KS thoughts next week.
– V20 Dark Ages: Scribes are scribing 2nd Drafts and some 3rd Drafts. David Hill has delivered some art notes. Talking about the art for this continues this week, particularly the full page pieces.
– V20: Ghouls: In redlines.
– V20 Red List: In final draft stage. There may be a Dev blog coming for this this week, or that effort may go towards finishing it for editing.
– The Making of the Art of Children of the Revolution: Out to backers who pledged for it. Creating PoD files to go with PDF for sale on DTRPG.
– V20 Blood Diaries (Bloody Missive Collections) of the Clans: Writing.
– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: European shipper is shipping the remaining packages to Europe this week- according to the list from the shipper, this is less than a dozen packages. All Heavy Metal Deluxe W20 backers have been contacted via KS for address confirmation- if you didn’t get the message or still haven’t replied- run to your computer right now and get back to me through the “Contact Me” button under my photo on the W20 KS site. Mike Lee plans to deliver several new chapters this week of the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel for Bill to review. The White Howlers Tribe Book is in layout approval, and is being scripted by Bill Bridges so that John Bridges can get started on the art. W20 Wyld West: I will be ordering a second set of PoD proofs to account for cover corrections.
– W20 Changing Breeds The Deluxes are ready to go to the shipper- I’m waiting for a new quotes as I asked for an upgrade to the shipping materials. The Changing Breeds Fiction Anthology: is live on DTRPG. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/130126/Songs-of-the-Sun-and-Moon-the-Changing-Breeds-Anthology
– W20 Book of the Wyrm- We’re only half-way through and still having a lot of fun with the Pentex Board Nominees posting their schemes and campaign platforms, and have already passed several Stretch Goals including the creation of a Pentex Employee Indoctrination Manual including a section on Magadon, a Wyrm KS t-shirt discount, and added Fallen Changing Breeds to the book itself- said topic of extra text being chosen by the backers themselves.
– W20: The Umbra: In post-second draft development.
– Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition- Satyr Phil has handed all the text off to Bill. Bill is starting his “second set of eyes” developer’s pass on Tuesday. The Character Pack book and the “How Do You DO That?” book would be next on our agenda.
– Mage 20 Quickstart: Printed and shipped for Free RPG Day on Saturday, June 21st. Go to your friendly local RPG store and ask for it- if they will have it, return, return, return on that date and get it. Buy other things at the store because they gave you the M20 QS. Go…gooooo…
– Trinity Continuum: System Doc being assembled by Joltin’ Joe Carriker. He says system development is really hard and apologizes for the delay. The first new piece of art in YEARS has been commissioned. Nothing to see here, yet, move along.
– Scion: Waiting or sketches for the Scion: Origins cover. New character piece came in last week. Sweet! Who is this character, Joe? He’s not tellin’ yet.
– Demon: The Descent: Demon Seed Collection is in post-writing development. DtD Seattle is in editing and art notes going out to artists. Heirs to Hell is almost done in layout. Demon Translation Guide is being written. The Demon Fiction Anthology + Interfaces is in redlines
– DtD Players Guide: Flowers Of Hell: Is approved by CCP, but we are still missing the full page art. Mirthful Mike is expecting it in this week as inking was being done last week…
– Hunter: Mortal Remains: The PDF and physical copy PoD and PDF/PoD combo are on sale at DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/129193/Hunter-Mortal-Remains
– nWoD: Dark Eras: All but one 2nd draft is in, and Black Hat Matt expects to be able to run a focused dev pass on that to get it to editing too.
– WtF: The Idigam Chronicle: In redlines. Stew Wilson is doing a remarkably regular Friday blog that focuses on specific topics for the book- lots of good discussion happening right now: https://theonyxpath.com/category/projects/werewolftheforsaken/
– GtSE: Geist Ready Made Characters: In redlines.
Reason to Drink: Great father/son bonding on Game of Thrones last night. Happy holiday, dads!
Comments
36 responses to “Whippin’ It Up For The Summer”
Hello, I have three questions.
1. How many pages is the free MAGE 20 Quickstart? Will a free digital version be available at DriveThruRPG.com
3. The type or font of Void Engineers PDF from DriveThruRPG is kind of difficult to read. Where do I have to send a complaint or inquiry for a possible revision in that Void Engineers PDF file? The letters aren’t solid black, they have static noise quality to them.
That’s VOID ENGINEERS REVISED that I’m asking about
I’m going to guess that it’s probably a really poor scan of the book. Many of the old books are still badly scanned (Chaos Factor being one of the worst I’ve seen.) What you’re seeing isn’t the chosen font, nor the chosen color (gray), but rather how it was scanned.
A new file would have to be made by scanning each page, and/or correcting the levels of the pages so as to make the text darker and backgrounds lighter/whiter. (The other option would be to try to find the original files and create a new PDF from them… but at this point I think they’ve done that with as many files as they could find in recoverable/repairable formats and are stuck with broken files, or no files at all, for the rest.)
“Format: Scanned Image” in the column on the far right will tell you that the book’s pages were scanned as images. Sometimes they’re clean (especially if done more recently). Sometimes the files will have gone through a process where it will try to recognize the text and create an invisible text layer so that it can be searched, but… it’s not always very accurate (especially when there are background images.)
“Original Electronic” means it’s a PDF created from original computer files. These are ones where the text is actual vector-graphics and will certainly have searchable text.
Looking at the 6-page Preview on DTRPG, it looks like some pages came out better than others; the Credits page looks like it got dithered to hell, while others stayed pretty clean.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/286/Technocracy-Void-Engineers
“Technocracy Assembled 2” may have cleaner scans by the looks of it.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/281/Technocracy-Assembled-2
Damn… right… Revised… the NEW ones? Hrm. Okay. My whole long rant above is pointless then. *laughs*
Sorry about that.
HOWEVER… screen capturing from the full-size previews of the Revised versions of Progenitors and Void Engineers, and laying the same letters overtop of one another, the letters in the body copy are the same font, size, and style, right down to the same pixels in the rasterized screen-capture.
Void Engineers:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/pdf_preview_handler.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwatermark.drivethrustuff.com%2Fpdf_previews%2F120616-sample.pdf
Progenitors:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/pdf_preview_handler.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwatermark.drivethrustuff.com%2Fpdf_previews%2F113471-sample.pdf
1) 48
2) Yes.
3) Our new Void Engineers book? I just looked at my PDF and it looks crisp. If you mean the old VE Convention book, you should contact DTRPG’s customer service team.
Can we get Holden and John at gencon again? It’d be really nice to be able to talk with them on the eve of Ex3 being launched.
That would be time away from shepherding the book. Right now- its getting that completed that is their focus.
Thanks for the info regarding the Quickstart.
At 100% scaling in Adobe Reader, looking at Progenitors Revised and Void Engineers Revised side by side you can clearly see a difference. Void Engineers Revised’s type is off in some way. The letters are too thin compared to Progenitors Revised.
I’m told that in the new books, the Void Engineers have 98% horizontal scaling on the text in places, so maybe that is what your Eagle Eyes are picking up.
Yeah. That must be it.
Thank you for checking anyway.
And congratulations on such a great job for the Revised Convention Books, I’m very much looking forward to MAGE 20 and all of its companion books. 🙂
Ooooh. I’m SO wishing I could make it back to Gen Con this year. Maybe I’ll try to get there for Friday and Saturday… Mmm… Swag.
I hope among all of the stress, there’s some fun in planning your own booth this year (though, to be honest, the DTRPG/OPP booth has kinda pretty much been mostly OPP/White Wolf over the years anyways, hasn’t it? 😉 Plus, you’re still sharing the booth # with them, so you’re not completely divorced, but I’m sure the separation will be more prominently felt. 🙂 )
I’m really hoping I can get to the nearest participating RPG-Day store (an hour+ drive away) for the Mage QuickStart. Otherwise, I may have to convince someone to grab one for me somehow. :-/
Is there any way of dropping some into each M20DE when they ship?*
*This might be a great thing to add to the Wr20 (and hopefully C20) Deluxe Editions to help get folks into the less-popular lines when STs try to introduce people to the game and only have a 600-page book to throw at them otherwise. 😉
Maybe even make some updated QuickStarts for V20 and W20?
This past Gen Con, WW/OPP had about half the space, with the other half dedicated to Numenera and various other offerings like some DriveThruCards games.
While we’re sharing a booth number with DTRPG, we’re no longer intermingling the space, there’s more of a strict division, like so:
It will effectively be two different booths.
Fantastic. 🙂
Is there any thought being given to getting the Mage 20th pdf out to backers as early in the process of layout/art/indexing as makes sense? Getting started on generating errata sooner rather than later would be nice for a book that massive.
There’s a time when “crowd-proofing” can work best, and we’ll be sure that folks can view an early PDF when Satyr Phil and the team can best use those notes. Pre-indexing might be the best time.
Thanks, pre-indexing was about what I was thinking, aside from some last minute art holdup like what’s happened with the demon player’s guide.
Sounds good, looking forward to it.
General thoughts…
Nice to see M20 progressing. Despite my previous posts on past blogs about the length of development some projects have, I’m actually really happy to see M20 taking baby steps rather then leaps and bounds. With a book that big and that complex the more time spent getting it as “right” as possible even before letting the fan-errata’s inevitable deluge of corrections spills in is important.
Flowers of Hell…perfect timing for pay day on Friday hopefully. Kinda interesting that Heirs to Hell is coming to the end of its layout cycle as well. Is it possible we might see the upcoming Demon books having reasonably close (say 6 weeks) releases compared with one another?
Out of interest. With the Cursed Necropolis DC entry now gone I was wondering why the Mummy the Curse general tag has gone with it? As normally wouldn’t the next stretch goal (Cursed Necropolis Rio or Dreams of Avarice) take DC’s place under that heading.
In a related point. As a kickstarter backer for several Onyx Path Kickstarters I really appreciate the time the updates for M20 and Demon I get pretty much every month off you Rich. So I was wondering if Mummy could have another update e-mail too (last one being way back in December last year)? If its not to much trouble and such to just get a general run down of where the different books in the line are at in development (beyond Deceived and Dark Era’s which are obviously detailed on this blog).
Many Thanks,
Hawthorn
RE: Mage- we’re not rushing it, but Satyr Phil has been very much on top of getting the manuscript to Phil in a reasonable time frame.
Demon books- we’ll see, but we have a bunch that are rolling at a good pace, so let’s not jinx it. 😉
Continuing update Updates on the Mummy KS, or any KS once the KS’d books are delivered, seems like one more added unnecessary step. If you are following the line, then you can read about it in a variety of sites especially here, and I let backers know when their additional Stretch Goal projects are coming. It’s just that at some point, I can’t Update every single KS we have done and if the goal of the KS- the special book- is out, then something has to give.
I wonder if there’s a way to put a KS to slumber? Would it be worthwhile or better to post “The books are out to most people. There will be no more additional updates here. All further information can be found on http://www.theonyxpath.com in the future. Thank you for your support.” and then lock down the pages?
Bags: there is no such thing as too many bags. Many booths run out by Sunday morning, when there’s a fair bit of shopping left for the hagglers and indecisive customers, and it’s no fun to buy something and then walk away from the booth without something indicating a purchase has been made, and that same scenario makes the con staff uneasy as well (I have retail flashbacks, Rich; one day I’m gonna tackle some poor kid for the crime of having a purchase receipt e-mailed to them :p ). So yeah, get lots of bags, enough to have leftovers for 2015, please.
I’m hoping to make it to your gender in art panel on Thursday. It’s an issue that I don’t have particularly strong feelings about one way or another, but I would like some insight into why it’s such a hot topic in an environment that’s ostensibly more restrained than any given Internet forum, though I’m under the impression that passions run hot regardless.
Also, belated congratulations on your business expansion. 🙂
Love to see you there. Last years panel was emotional, but not explosive. People have very strong feelings about the topic, and we found that simply letting folks talk and interjecting with professional/artistic anecdotes when appropriate let everyone be heard. Biggest problem with that is audience members who have so much they have held in for years and it’s such a release that they can’t stop. Gentle moderation seems the best bet for nudging the conversation back to something the whole audience can contribute to.
Wow…yeah, GenCon is just around the corner. Hard to believe it is coming that quickly, just a little under 2 months. I look forward to returning this year(I missed last year due to having another vacation, and couldn’t afford both).
And, I will say: Bags are awesome for you guys to get. Catalyst Game Labs bags have been awesomely rugged for paper and cord bags(what they carried year before last? Proof that their bags are tough buggers!), and I know people who made purchases at the AEG last time I went for the SOLE purpose of getting their beautiful bags that also had great, over-the-shoulder strap for easy carrying.(Though..do not put any big, huge boxed sets filled with flying, steam-powered ships in them..that actually taxes the strap to the breaking point).
We’re looking at two types- paper with cord handles that we have some solid recommendations for sturdiness, and canvas. I think the canvas could hold your heavy ships. I hope. Come by the booth and say hi!
Several Mummy Update changes from CA Suleiman- added Sothis and Rio, and updated status on Book of the Deceived.
Sorry if this sounds dense and I’m missing something obvious but where have these updates been noted?
Just that I can’t see them on this blog post and I’ve checked the forums and current projects tab as well.
Actually scratch that. Latest refresh of the page included the updates mentioned.
The aforementioned Numenera won the Origins for best RPG Saturday, while Joseph Carriker shared one for best RPG supplement for Night’s Watch. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/15/the-2014-origins-award-winners-for-tabletop-gaming-with-a-few-surprises/
We’re all really thrilled for our various friends who won Origins awards last week- it was a very strong slate of nominees which we were proud to have Mummy be part of.
Hahahaha! I feel a little bit like the 1980-something spaceman from the Lego Movie when GenCon is brought up….
Changeling! Changeling! CHANGELING!
😀
A fancy edition Kickstarter for Changeling: The Dreaming would be epic. If such a thing happens so much Glamour would be created, the gates to Arcadia would once again open.
Could be, rabbit (Pooka). Could be…
Sounds like OP is going to really re-establish its presence in the RPG world this GenCon. I really regret not being able to attend and see it with my own eyes and talk with you folks.
I don’t know about that- mostly we’re putting together the booth and our activities ourselves this year instead of sliding in there and sharing DTRPG’s booth (and not doing any of the work to get said booth set up).
The work of arranging our own booth buys us the freedom to have fun in whatever way we think gets Onyx’s name out there best- within a new company’s set of financial limits.
Ooooh… a wee Heirs to Hell pdf delivered to my email address last night. You kept it quiet that we were so close to that coming out 🙂
That’ll do me nicely as a bit of reading material this afternoon.
It was: almost done in layout to done to approved all on Tuesday. So, ready to send backer copies Weds. Sometimes, everything clicks.