As you folks might know, we had a tradition at White Wolf where we put out a product on April Fool’s Day– usually a twisted, but playable, version of our regular stuff. The Iceland By Night supplement, the Dudes of Legend, etc. This year, we at Onyx Path continue the tradition by publishing Scion: Extras– a collection of those gods and Scions that the pantheons don’t like to talk about. I’m hesitant to do anything on April 1 that is a publicity stunt and much prefer to offer a product that can evoke a chuckle or three, and that can, maybe, if you’re that sort of gamer, be used at the table. So when Monica Valentinelli and Matt McElroy approached me with their ideas for what would turn into Scion: Extras, I liked the idea that these were the sort-of-useful hangers-on, the sort of gods and Scions that the other gods don’t invite to the important events (but might invite to a party). And once I read the Psy Sci Scion lyrics, well, I was sold. So here it is, free (for now) on DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/112967/Scion%3A-Extras-%28Supplemental-Yet-Can-Be-Somewhat-Useful-On-Occasion-Scions%29
Meanwhile, Eddy and I talked only a little bit about CCP approvals since he had mis-programmed his meeting schedule for the Approval Board last week, and so they didn’t actually review anything. These things happen- usually, it’s me who fumbles the electronic reminders, so I can’t get too uptight. We used the extra time to talk about the W20 Anthology story he’s writing, which appears to be a Garou heist story. And it’s that very cool kind of creation where the characters have taken on lives of their own that Eddy, as the creator, is excited to keep working on just to see where they lead. Being Eddy, he has been researching heist films (he shared the theory that Star Wars is a heist film), and how the kinds of characterizations you need for that sort of film or story might run counter to the expected “developing character” story arcs. This led us to the same dilemma WW faced with the signature characters we came up with for the lines years ago: we created them for the game-books as interesting examples of their “splat”, but if they were put into play for novels or other narratives, we really didn’t want to see them develop so much that they were no longer good examples. I fell back to some of the talks we had about the real value of Transmedia experiences- that each venue for your overall world would tweak the basic info of that world to be the best example of that venue. So novels would do what they needed with the characters and stories to make the best novels, a single-player computer game would pull some elements while an MMO would emphasize others, etc. I used to call it the Doctrine of Appropriateness when applying the same thinking to graphic design and art issues with our WW books, but the core concept of making your creative choices based on the core of the project still applies. Also, Elementary is growing on Eddy.
Updates here, not announcements- remember last week’s blog?:
– God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) At CCP for their review, see above.
– Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.
– Mummy the Curse – The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ll be adding separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Still waiting on a cover template from the printer as they had to go back and redo their quotes due to a mix up on their end; we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version.
– Exalted 3rd Edition: We still have everything ready except for a completed video with voice-overs from the Devs, art, graphics and cool music working together. The Devs are still in the Charms section, and have assembled most of the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and we’re getting art for them. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book. Justin is reaching out to writers for the HHII Fiction Anthology and the KS backers are suggesting a title.
– V20 Anarchs Unbound is in editing and we are getting art for it.
– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: We’ve submitted the W20 PoD files for approval this week, and I got a new revised W20 Deluxe (both regular and Heavy Metal Edition) quote and are really close to sending the files to press! Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is out of Editing and still in Art Direction. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer (the always delightful Jess Hartley) and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/
–Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has been confirmed for September-ish 2013 and Phil Brucato has started assigning writers and is churning through writing his part. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes.
– W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.
– W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.
– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.
– Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) one art tweak and into final proof.
– Mage Translation Guide is in Editing.
– W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/
– Trinity Continuum: we’re talking about the big, big picture stuff that will affect the entire Continuum as opposed to individual games/settings.
– Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. And our special file for our Scion fans (something fun but which doesn’t distract any of our creative team from Scion 2) was Scion: Extras, as you all probably guessed.
– Demon: The Frutang: some example of play commentary from Black Hat Matt McFarland’s play test will be going up on the new Demon blog. We have the blog, now we need Matt to post: http://whitewolfblogs.com/demon/
– Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores in June, I think, and is currently being put into layout.
Reason for Drinking: That Mummy drink was good, need more- c”mon W20 to press, and EX3 KS!
Comments
32 responses to “Who’s The Fool Now, April?”
“Mummy the Curse – The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ll be adding separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS.”
Will the Player’s Book will be a separate POD? It’d be the ideal loaner book for the table.
We’re looking at that as a possible additional project. Yes.
You copy/pasted last week’s Scion update without removing the reference to “the special file” which I’m assuming was the April Fools Day thing. Or is there another update early next week?
Updated- thanks!
So will backers see a pdf. of the Anthology anytime soon or in the future?
Especially those that got pledged to be in the book to make sure the name is correct?
I wonder if I’m in the heist story or not…
Can’t wait, I remember getting the Werewolf novels from B. Dalton’s in the mall back in the day.
Certainly when the stories are written and Bill is satisfied they’re what he needs. Thanks-
….*sigh.*
There’s really been no change in the Ex3 Kickstarter status?
*sigh*
“- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.”
No chance for the last, what, 7? 8? weeks? 🙁
@chris and @WuseMajor- Nope, I post the info as I have it. Writing, in particular, takes time and some developers are cool with posting excerpts, others aren’t until they have the whole thing finished. As an Update, we have one of the three vocal tracks in for the EX3 KS.
…Fair enough. Sorry for being passive aggressive.
Out of curiosity, what’s the actual process for making of Oynx Path KS videos? I don’t actually know anything about how videos are made these days, so it’s hard to have a frame of reference for how long this might take.
Previously Ian has been able to blend art, graphics, music, and sound together pretty quickly- we’ve had the videos together in a week before. Dunno about this one, though.
I’m beginning to think…that Onyx Path has placed entirely too much on its scheduling plate.
Actually, we’re in very good shape logistically in terms of Onyx itself. We have plenty of writers, editors, designers, artists, and are constantly bringing new folks onboard. The only roadblock in the company set-up is that we only can do so many Kickstarters a year and a lot of folks would like us to do more. This wasn’t the case last year, but only because we were ramping up and recontacting folks we hadn’t been working with for years, essentially.
What you’re seeing here is the creative teams working at the pace they need to in order to produce the best books they can, and that timing getting thrown off by either outside issues- a key team member gets sick, for example- or because a particular part of the project needed extra work. That might be a quality issue, or it might be a new concept that deserves to be more fully fleshed out and integrated. In either case, you’re getting a better, albeit later, product.
“and that timing getting thrown off by either outside issues- a key team member gets sick, for example- or because a particular part of the project needed extra work. That might be a quality issue, or it might be a new concept that deserves to be more fully fleshed out and integrated. In either case, you’re getting a better, albeit later, product.”
So what you’re saying is, that Onyx Path has entirely too much on its scheduling plate. : P In all seriousness, no one is arguing about the quality. The quality of recent OP products has been great. And while I do enjoy the Kickstarter process, it’s hard to argue the fact that the scheduling for it(including the actual delivery of the book) has been atrocious.
I just hope next year’s schedule goes smoother than the last two years.
Regardless, I’ll be supporting the company in every aspect. Extremely excited about the future of OP.
Getting annoyed about unforeseen issues like illness, projects morphing, etc is pretty asinine. Rich is sadly, not The Doctor, and cannot time travel to solve problems….or can he? 😉
When did I say I was annoyed?
Woah! Woah! We’re talking a lot of things for granted here. We still have yet to see the last few incarnations of The Doctor AND we know that Time Lords can put their memories into pocket watches. For all we know, Richt may very well BE The Doctor and he wouldn’t even know it himself.
:p
I’m more likely to be The Master than The Doctor. Big fan of Roger Delgado.
No, Onyx Path does not have too much on it’s plate.
Stuff gets delayed, cause stuff happens. They cannot have people sitting around twiddling their thumbs just in case someone gets sick, or needs a small break.
Would you rather they drop projects? It wouldn’t guarantee no delays though.
As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather have no release schedule announced to the fan base instead of one in which no release dates hold.
@Peter- thanks, that’s exactly the case.
@Chris- you personally might be, but we can’t do business with folks bailing because with no on-line schedule and no in-store new projects they think WW is dead. We’ve all seen enough of that in the forums to know that’s a huge issue. You’re going to see a nice group of projects hit the Schedule (revised, yes) these next couple of months as some of our internal infrastructure support starts affecting things.
I’m very excited about seeing a new Free RPG Day product. I treat that day like a national holiday (were I live it often falls on the same day as a local festival as well, with a parade and everything) and look forward to the chance to bring new people into the game and into my local gamestore who would not have been there without the event.
Is being a part of Free RPG an indication from Onyx Publishing that it wants to work with brick and mortar stores again? The owner of my local store doesn’t encourage World of Darkness games being run in his shop because there is not product for him to sell with everything being PoD. He likes World of Darkness as a game, often plays in the chronicles that I run at his shop, and periodically laments an inability to make a profit involving the game.
The two ways we’re exploring for getting books into shops are via Retailer Tiers in Kickstarters, and we’re talking with DTRPG about retailer discounts on PoD orders. The thing is that neither of these methods will provide the same profits for the Retailer as they once had, so they need to know their audience and whether they have sufficient clientele for these games to make it worth their while. I’ve met some awesome retailers over the years, and particularly in these past few months as we’ve looked at how Onyx can help support them- so I want to be able to establish a win/win strategy that’s good for everybody.
I’m sure he’d offer PoD orders through the store if that was an option (they mentioned some other companies have something similar). I think it’s great an effort is being made.
• “Making of the Art of Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition”? I’m really sorry I keep poking you with this one, but I just haven’t seen anything regarding it… ever. It was one of the first stretch goals of the W20 Deluxe KS, so it’s strange to me that there hasn’t even been so much as a comment like “It will be its own PDF, of 24 pages, provided on DTRPG both in PDF and PoD formats” or the likes.
• Onyx Path/White Wolf dice-rolling App?
– How’s the development going?
– Any chance of an Android version? Perhaps with another KickStarter stretch goal, or KickStarter of its own?
Seriously, I have have 4 players that would love an Android version. I’ve even told one of them to wait and not start just writing an app for it in case there might be…
Making of the Art of W20: Still finishing the Making of the Art of CotR. Because I have to do all of it personally, and I have to dig through all sorts of email fragments across four computers, these things take time and no real progress has occurred on the W20 one. When there is something to say, like I pulled all the pieces together, I will.
The OP Dice-Rolling App: development stalled because I wasn’t able to find the time to get notes back to the Devs. We’re back to working on it, and I’ve asked Rose to also take a look as she has a keen interest in the guts, as a programmer, whereas I pretty much could only review how it works (usability) and how it looks.
As for Android- I have heard that the whole idea that Android is the single most popular platform is a bit of a misnomer when it comes to justifying making an App for it, because unlike the Apple set-up, “Android” is an umbrella term that actually refers to a whole bunch of different venues and each of those is a different programming job. Can anybody confirm that?
Android and iOS are umbrella terms spreading across smartphones and tablets, absolutely.
The latest information focusing on smart phones has Android above iOS, a report released just this past week shows 51.7% vs. 38.9% with smartphone subscribers.*
I have seen differing opinions from developers themselves; some articles have cited polls showing Android as easier to develop for, and others have shown iOS having the majority. Off the cuff I’d say at this point it matters more on whether a developer has focused on one platform or the other; if they are not familiar than of course it will be more difficult.
Having said that and to avoid blanket statements, the Android market is admittedly “fragmented” in that Google does not mandate a screen size, so there are far more variations than the iPhone | iPad | iPad Mini selection to plan for. I am not sure how much a developer’s knowledge of handling different screen resolution sizes mitigates this; there may be other manufacturing spec factors to plan programming around. I am just musing at this point.
*Source: http://www.androidcentral.com/comscore-android-remains-top
As an Android developer, I will say that while that is true in some cases, it depends a great deal on what features of Android you intend to use exactly. I can’t imagine a dice roller app being that complicated, and would it should function just fine on the vast majority of devices.
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Well I certainly hope that you will drink for the EX3 kickstarter soon.. I’ll drink one with you!
Thanks! I hope so too- but we gotta move at the pace that works for the team right now-