So, I’m sitting here writing this up on my new tablet that I went with instead of a laptop (for those regular readers who remember my indecision on that subject a bunch of months ago) because my cable and Internet are both down and that inevitable eventuality is a big part of why I got the iPad to begin with. So we’ll see how this works.
Eddy and I kept it pretty business-focused today and the pop-culture references were few. We have a couple of things in with CCP Approvals as sort of “check out where we’re going with this” sorts of pre-emptive submissions so nobody is surprised later in the creation process. Next we talked a bit about the way rumors turn into facts- which has kind of always been the way with human conversation, but it’s now magnified by our friend Mr. Internet. Again, this was more in a business context, but it’s often really hard not to feel lousy when you’re misrepresented by somebody online. There is a necessary balance to learning how to listen and how to ignore posts if you want to be creative or run a company that relies on the Internet. At least, if you want to try and stay reasonably sane.
We did a bit of Gen Con prep and went over some of the panels we’ll be doing for Onyx Path this year. As we have for, what, five years now, we’ll be doing the What’s Up with WW/Onyx Path panel where we’ll be looking at all the cool plans we have for the next year. We’re doing an Onyx Path Q&A panel and panels specifically about nWoD and cWoD as well. And I’m one of the Industry Guests of Honor again this year ( I’m not worthy!), which was a lot of fun last year. It gives me a rare chance to meet a lot of people I’ve only heard mentioned over the years. For such a small industry, there are still a lot of professionals I never got the chance to meet being behind the scenes at WW for so long. A brief rundown of the GoH panels I’ll be on- times and locations TBD- will be Art for IPs, RPG Books Aren’t Textbooks, Running a Successful Kickstarter Q&A, Gender in RPG Art, and Working As a Pro Artist. I dunno how much I’m going to add to he mix, but I hope some of you will get a chance to sit in on a panel or two.
And now- what we’re working on now:
– Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout. We’re waiting on a single chapter’s worth of formatting fixes.
– Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) This is smashing into Rose’s work on Demon and so we re-prioritized her to push the Demon text to editing and for art notes. Still waiting on some final drafts.
– Mummy the Curse – Book and Screen are at press.
– Exalted 3rd Edition: The EX3 Kickstarter is over and was more successful than we could have imagined! The Devs are back to work on the book and I’m creating Reward and Stretch Goal lists so that we can prioritize what needs doing during this two-week period where pledges are being validated by Amazon Payments.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Preparing files for press- getting a revised quote on the cover treatment from the printer this week. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers- all but two of the final drafts are in.
– V20 Anarchs Unbound is in editing and we are getting art for it.
– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press. Mike Lee went back and revised a fair number of chapter in the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel prior to submitting to Bill for dev review. The Storyteller Screen files are at press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is waiting for PoD approval and should be available from DTRPG in a week or so. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is ready for editing- which might take a while since our regular copy editors might not be as up on translating UK measurements to US ones. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/06/03/white-howler-gifts-and-a-recipe/
–Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. 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. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Getting art notes out to a ton of classic Mage artists.
– W20 Changing Breeds Still working on getting the KS ready for Kickstarter review and approval. Need to add in the Reward Tiers and submit to KS for approval, and as before, we’ll give 24 hour notice before it goes live.
– W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but two more pieces need to come in.
– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art notes are being worked on to get out to artists.
– Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is having its first proof reviewed.
– Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is in editing.
– W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/
– V20 Rites of the Blood: is being written and is in Open Dev on the blogs: http://whitewolfblogs.com/v20/
– Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): Being outlined and teased by developer David Hill.
– Trinity Continuum: John Snead is working on his outline, Ian is now starting a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline.
– Scion: Talked to Joe Carriker about the project and broke his back with its awesomeness. When he gets up, we’ll talk about Scion: Origin. Gonna get Joe to share a call with Ian and compare Scion and Trinity notes- this week for sure.
– Demon: The Frutang: lots of example of play commentary including from Black Hat Matt McFarland’s play test are up on the new Demon blog: http://whitewolfblogs.com/demon/ Check it out, there are quite a few playtests posted now and they give a very interesting (if early) look at the game. Text is being readied for editing and Rose is trying to get art notes together. The subtitle has been agreed upon and check out Matt McFarland at Origins for info on that. We’re looking to create a Demon Quickstart to roll out before the game itself as we’re not sure the finished book will hit Gen-Con- but the Quickstart can. If we go with that strategy, we’ll delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS.
– 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 was available last weekend at FLGSs near you. Hope you had a chance to pop in and get one. Despite some odd “on sale/not on sale” moments over the weekend, this will be available on DTRPG sometime this week for reals.
Reason to Drink: OMG this tablet is awful for this.
I will contend that tablets are great for consuming information, but remain awful for those actually trying to produce it.
BTW, the Descent has been unveiled. You can probably say as much in your update for that line. 🙂
And ruin Matt’s fun? Next week.
Any estimate on when Hunters Hunted II hits DTRPG?
I don’t do estimates of release dates any more. Bad mojo.
No problemo, I’ll just wait anyway.
I’d suggest if you’re going to be doing data entry of any kind with a tablet, get yourself a bluetooth keyboard that’s a decent size.
Yep- I’m looking at the keyboard/case combos right now-
My Acer Iconia a500 has a standard-sized USB port that I can plug a hub into and run a mouse and keyboard from. It’s damned useful when I want to type long stuff. 🙂
What sort of pad did you wind up getting?
IPad- I’m an Apple fan. Can’t help myself, they’re so sexy.
I’m a big fan of the Logitech ultrathin keyboard cases. They’re weird for some people given the way the ‘A’ stretches out to the left (the space that would be caps lock) but my fingers love the keys. My iPad mini is pretty much a 7″ laptop with one.
At the risk of being the bad guy (and I know there have been many other kickstarters since) but maybe it would be best to hold off on the Changing Breeds kickstarter, at least until W20 gets into the hands of the backers.
I know I would like to back that project but would feel a whole lot better about it if I had the product from the last Kickstarter in hand. I can’t be the only one who feels that way.
“but maybe it would be best to hold off on the Changing Breeds kickstarter, at least until W20 gets into the hands of the backers.
I know I would like to back that project but would feel a whole lot better about it if I had the product from the last Kickstarter in hand. I can’t be the only one who feels that way.”
Agreed, agreed, AGREED. 100% yes! HH2 is 3 months late, W20 is 7(!) months late. Let’s wait until they reach backers before starting another CWOD KS. Please.
@Zylo and Unsilent: I totally understand where you folks are with this, and believe me that as the publisher there’s a part of me frustrated by how long some of these projects have been taking, too. If you feel like you need to hold back from backing Changing Breeds or any of our efforts, then you have to do what you think is best. In the same way, I look at the 2 KS books at press as well as the Screens, and HH2 being so very close to going to the Printer as well- and the two shipped Deluxes we have delivered to Backers- and I know the right thing for Onyx Path just can’t be to allow the issues with one project to determine the fate of another. We have to learn from W20 and do better with Changing Breeds, not delay the project that a lot of fans are waiting for.
I’m not trying to just be a complete suck-up to Rich here, but I DO see a steady improvement in the quality of the Onyx Path Kickstarters from the V20 Companion through the EX3 project. Rich’s level of communication has been higher in both terms of quality and quantity than most other KS projects I’ve backed, and the products have been top-notch… Okay, I’m MOSTLY talking about The Hunters Hunted II here, even if the finished product hasn’t arrived in ‘the hands of the backers’ yet.
The above notwithstanding, as Rich says, we each gotta do what we gotta do. I will say, though, for my money (literal and figurative), every Onyx Path KS’s been worth it for me.
But Richt, with all due respect the W20 and screen were projected for Jan 2013, I haven’t even heard a real apology out of Onyx Path (if there has been one, I have not seen it and I would love to be directed to it). Even your reply here read a bit like “well fuck you, we don’t want your support anyway” though I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way. W20 and the Screen have been “at press” for a while now. In terms of timeline I have no idea what that means, are we looking at days, weeks, months, 2014?
I’m upset about it and I think I have a right to be. It’s not just the delays, or the fact that people ordering from Drive Thru can get a copy of the book that wouldn’t exist if not for the backers, who are left waiting. Now you’re about to go live with another Kickstarter, to ask for more money. I love these games, I’ve been playing werewolf since the first edition, I was a constant on the White Wolf chats for years, I want this to work, I want it to be awesome, I want to see all manner of books.
The thing is, I also want the book I pair for, I want to know that there is an end in sight, I want to know that you guys feel bad about it and that it won’t happen again (to this extent, we live in an imperfect world) and I want to be able to say these things without being treated like I just killed a puppy.
I understand where you’re coming from. I’m still waiting on W20 and Mummy. But, when all is said and done, I trust Richt. He’s been far more transparent then pretty much any publishers would have been. It’s true, my book is delayed 7 months, but lots of others books have been delayed 7 months or more. At least this time I know why. In the past, I would have pre-ordered and my retailer would just have told me “Meh. No idea. It’s been delayed”. And we wouldn’t even be talking about a deluxe edition, just a standard one. And we wouldn’t be talking about a free novel or an awesome tribebook, just the book itself. And we wouldn’t have been able to go talk to Richt and say “So… when?”, we would have had no means to of communication.
So, and this is only my personal opinion here, I still think that even with delays KS is the way to go.
I’ll leave the rest up to those better-informed than I, but I want to clarify this:
It’s not just the delays, or the fact that people ordering from Drive Thru can get a copy of the book that wouldn’t exist if not for the backers
This is entirely untrue. We have made it clear repeatedly that our Kickstarters are for deluxe editions only, and do not affect the standard releases. These books are getting made regardless of the outcome of their Kickstarters. A good KS can help add extra content, or expand the game line, but the Kickstarters are explicitly not funding the books themselves. You are funding a deluxe edition of the book, not the book itself.
Even if this Kickstarter had failed entirely, people would still be able to buy the standard edition from DriveThruRPG.
Wow- did my attempt at showing that I honestly understand and to a large extent share your frustrations and concerns really sound like a “fuck you”? My apologies that I came across that way- it really was not my intention. And I’m equally sorry you missed the apology I made way back for being naively optimistic on the KS delivery dates. You might not feel the way you do if you’d seen it, but basically, I apologize that I personally set delivery dates that for a whole lot of reasons we have missed. I want you to have the books in your hands, the creative teams want you to have the books in your hands, and I know you all want them.
The fact is that in an operation our size there are decisions that have to be made and by and large I have made the calls that put quality first and timeliness second. That is how I want Onyx Path to function and where I want us to put our priorities. On a project as huge as W20, that means that each little delay can snowball as a delay with the text needing more polish means the art notes go out later because its the same developer who has to polish the text and write the art notes and this is not their day job- this is their extra job on weeknights and weekends. Which means the editor gets the text late, and then she gets a cold that stops her from getting out of bed so she gets the edited text to the designer later still. etc, etc, etc. And then there are the slowdowns at the companies that I have even less control over like the printer and shipper. Guess who gets priority attention- any other publisher or a RPG company making 1500 books?
So we do forge ahead, improve our internal processes (Kickstarters aside, we have been pretty good about a lot of projects this year so far), make sure we keep everyone informed as to where everything is at with various Updates, and work with these outside contractors so that we DO get a record of business that makes us a bigger and bigger client for them so we do get some greater consideration. And most importantly: keep talking with you all so you see that growth and improvement.
That doesn’t get the books you’re waiting for to you seven months ago like they were originally intended- but it means that as we get each major project finished, as late as they are, you get the best possible, highest quality, book we can deliver, and we get that much better at delivering them. That might not be important to you personally, and as I tried to say in my answer above: I understand that, respect that each person has different needs for these projects, and hope you will find one of the ways we’re delivering them to work for you. And also, that a year from now, you’ll still be checking in on whether we have improved in the areas you need us to.
Rich:
First things first, thank you for taking the time to respond and to have this dialogue with me. As I said in my last line before I wanted to be able to air my grievances without being treated as if I killed a puppy and that’s what I got with you. You listened and you’ve written a lengthy and on the level reply, I want to thank you for that.
As for the “fuck you”, I actually don’t believe that is what you intended. At the same time I got two separate phone calls from members of my current group who did read it that way, so I know that some people did take it that way hence my mentioning it at all.
Unfortunately it seems I did miss that post (do you recall roundabout when it was so I can give it a read?) but I am glad to know there was one. You see posts here and there about how “we understand” “take all the time you need” and you know I’m all for the books coming out right and if that means more time, if other matters get in the way, hey I understand. For me, this was my first Kickstarter and I don’t really know you Rich, this is to say you guys have my faith but patience has been wearing thin since mid April (which is when I stopped understanding those delays) and the trust isn’t there yet. That last bit has been the worst part of this and probably the majority of where my dissatisfaction has come from. Bringing back the Classic World of Darkness, that sounds too good to be true, W20 was my first Kickstarter and I don’t know Rich Thomas (which admittedly wouldn’t be an issue if Onyx Path were a faceless Juggernaut, the fact that it isn’t is something I very much appreciate).
I’m sure you’re a great guy Rich, you seem like one in these posts, but I’ve never shaken your hand at a con or seen the fire and passion in your eyes as you addressed a panel or whatnot. It’s been the Christmas morning that doesn’t come and sooner or later that disappointment turns to anger. If W20 doesn’t hit until 2014 (well that’s just not cool but moreover) that makes me think that Changing Breeds will share the same scheduling problems. Now I’m sure that’s the last thing you guys want, I’m sure you’re working to make sure that isn’t the case, but I don’t know that. All I have to go on is what you’re telling me, and I don’t have that history with Onyx Path yet.
You may well be right when you theorize that my reading the apology may have helped the situation, but we will never know. I will say that your speaking to me now, to be able to have that conversation without being treated like the bad guy, that does help. It makes me feel better about the future and says a great deal about you and yours on the Onyx Path.
Is the Skinner SAS still on its way?
As the notes above say:
“The Skinner is waiting for PoD approval and should be available from DTRPG in a week or so.”
While I agree with Zylo that the vigil has been a long one, it hasn’t been as long as it could have when we take into consideration that the book had to be fully written & edited before being printed.
In this regard the process has been relatively fast as it usually take anything between 6 months to 2 years for a “normal novel” to move from manuscript to publication.
PS. The longest wait for a normal book that I’ve pre-ordered in the past was about 8 months. I hope we’re not breaking that record here.
Mummy’s been an odd journey. Finally getting the book is going to feel strange since I’ve already run a whole campaign of Mummy using print outs from the PDF. I might have to do a second one to celebrate the book.
How did it go?
It was different. I used it for a group of new players, people who had never played World of Darkness before in their lives. They focused on the destructive aspects of their abilities and on the accumulation of power at the start (they all opted to get the ‘bonus’ Utterance) and as the game went on (lasted about six sessions as a campaign) and they gathered XP they suddenly altered their focus and began building Memory. With one notable exception all of them we hungry to know more about their characters and worked to build their Memory as much as they could without deviating too much from their path.
I offered them sacrifices to gain refreshes on their Pillars; one character choose to burn books containing vital clues on the nature of the groups’ enemies because of their heretical nature for an Ab refresh.
They tried to find creative uses for their abilities and find non-combative solutions to problems while also enjoying combat when it came up.
It was a fun, short campaign with only a few wrinkles and hiccups (mostly all the result of a single player).