By necessity, this will be a bit of a shorter Monday Meeting Notes offering, in that I’m headed mid-week to LA for this year’s Masquerade happening. Onyx Path and By Night Studios will be representing for the tabletop and Live Action crowds respectively, and together we’ll be letting folks know that WW‘s World of Darkness is alive and well- or undead and powerful. Your choice.
I’m looking forward to seeing Shane von Shane, Justin Achilli, Jason Carl, Jess Hartley, the divine Miss E, and lots more folks. And of course, talking about all the exciting stuff Onyx Path has lined up for the next year. Eddy and I talked a lot about this trip today, as we’ll be doing our “What’s Up w/White Wolf and Onyx Path” presentation again, we think at noon on Saturday. We also have two panels later- starting at 2pm I think- where we talk about the overall future of WW with the By Night crew. And either Friday or Saturday morning, Matt McElroy and/or Justin will be doing another live outlining of a V20 book. (I think it’s V20: Ghouls). Eddy might be in on that too, but he is definitely doing a couple of presentations of his own those two mornings, including his (in)famous “Your Game Sucks” presentation.
We also discussed some Onyx to CCP business, Eddy’s reoccurring ear problems (I suggested antennae rather than hearing aides), the careful steps you must sometimes take when working with other companies’ licenses, and my trip this weekend to fabulous IlluxCon. And by trip, I mean it was about twenty minutes from my house. It was a fantastic show dedicated to the amazing artwork of professional fantasy and science-fiction illustrators, and boy did it live up to expectations. I had worked with or knew about half of the artists there, but standing in the same room with Roger Dean, Ian Miller, Michael Whelan, Boris, and the surviving Hildebrandt Brother, Greg, was staggering. There was so much great art there I actually had to leave the galleries to give the input a chance to ease down into my brain. I sent Mirthful Mike Chaney a long email with the various contact points I picked up so that he could see what sort of new artists we could get working on illustrations for us.
So that’s it for this week- I have to cram a week’s worth of work into a couple of days before I take the long flight west- and if any of you are attending LA By Night, I’ll see you there!
Updates Of Our Artistic Creations:
– Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Final dev pass. Art is almost all contracted. Might try and get some artists from IlluxCon in on the book, though.
– Mummy the Curse – Deluxe and Screen: Books and Screens ARE SHIPPING! The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack needed some tweaks and is now back in layout and then it will be ready for approvals from CCP. Cursed Necropolis DC being red-lined by CAS and then back for second drafts from the writers. KS backers have been approached about their character info needed to go in the book. Please get that to me ASAP, folks!
– Exalted 3rd Edition: While John hunkers down to rewrite the Charms chapter, the rest of the team is working on a couple of EX3 chapters that continue to be finalized for Editing: Athletics Charms are going into internal playtestings, and Chapter3 (Character Creation) and half of Chapter5 (Traits) and the combat engine are in editing. A big issue with Hearthstones was resolved, pleasing Holden no end. Dev notes for Matt Forbeck and Jess Hartley’s EX3 novels as well as Zub’s comic are to the writers/artist and their contracts are in various stages of completion.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Deluxe is being assembled. PoD and PDF versions on sale at DTRPG. This is another book that really benefited from the PDF reviews that our community had a chance to let us know about. HH2 Fiction Anthology text is in editing.
– V20 Anarchs Unbound is in layout and we are prepping for its Kickstarter.
– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At binding. Mike Lee is submitting chapters of the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel to Bill for dev review. The Storyteller Screen files are done and ready for W20. Bill has theW20 Anthology stories done and they are in editing. Jess Hartley continues writing the White Howlers Tribe Book, and she and I will be talking about the book in LA, and the W20 Cookbook is almost done in editing
– Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato mostly developing now like a maniac and most of the book has been written and we are prepping an editor for this big ol’ thing. Still trying to get Mirthful Mike Chaney to start an art blog. Mike was laid low last week but says he’s back to “normal” and gonna get a blog up.
– W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter expanded material has been written and is now being worked into the previous text and then to an editing pass and new layout, and the Changing Breeds Fiction Anthology is being edited/developed by Jess Hartley.
– W20 Rage Across the World: In layout.
– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) being proofed by CAS, and then to CCP approvals.
– Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) PoD and PDF versions are all live. The third book we were able to get community feedback on by releasing the PDF early, and it was much strengthened as a result.
– Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is in layout.
– W20 Book of the Wyrm is in editing.
– V20 Rites of the Blood: is in editing, Eddy is preparing art notes.
– Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): One more chapter to be revised to the Dev notes, and then into editing.
– Trinity Continuum: We now have a whopping big Aeon outline and a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline and writers are writing.
– Scion: Joe’s team is hammering systems- big time. Joe is getting back up to speed.
– Demon: The Descent: In layout. Demon Quickstart PDF is free on DTRPG and the PoD version is soon to go live there too.
– Hunter: The Something About Monsters: Writers are writing. Con season has knocked a few of them back and they needed extended deadlines.
– nWoD: Dark Eras: Writers are writing.
-V20 Dark Ages: Scribes are scribing.
– DtF Players Guide: Flowers Of Hell?: Being written in the labyrinth of lies.
Reason to Drink: Justin. LA. Larry Snelly’s lawn. ‘Nuff said.
Got to say that you guys are very, very on the ball with Demon at the moment. Seeing progress on that one on a bi-weekly basis since the Quickstarter came out. Seems for once a new game line is not plagued by some sort of delay themed curse.
Speaking of delay curses. What happened with the MtC ready made character pack this time? For something so “small” it seems to have been a can-of-worms for the development process. Do you reckon it will be out in the next 2 weeks?
On a related note, any chance Guildhalls of the Deathless will be out by the end of the week? Or is it more likely to fall at the end of next week?
Sorry to be so questioning, but I am seriously jonesing for a Mummy fix at the moment.
The MtC Ready Made Characters just got started later than we should have, and ran into scheduling tie-ups with approvals being ready the same time as the approvers were on vacay and such. This last thing was a glitch noticed by our editor and required a small but unexpected rewrite. Should be fine now once CCP approves it. It’ll go first to KS backers and then be opened up for regular availability on DTRPG.
Guildhalls’ second and hopefully final proof was just created- next to CCP for approval if CAS and I don’t find any problems with it- so no sooner than next week for the PDF.
Wow, the Ex3 combat engine is in editing? I can’t wait to see it!
Other non-engine parts are also in editing now too, so its coming together.
Hope you guys have less recording issues this time around 😉
We’ll see if we can’t get somebody from LA By Night to set up a recording too.
According to these blogs, The Flowers of Hell is the Demon player’s guide. According to the schedule, it’s an “NPC and antagonist” book. What exactly is it?
Players Guides can have NPCs and antagonists in them.
(It’s a players guide.)
It’s a players guide. “Flowers of Hell” was a working title for a book that we weren’t sure what exactly we were going to do with. So, not so much with the NPCs, more “awesome new toys” and “how to subvert Infrastructure.”
What’s the Kickstarter schedule looking like on your end? Judging by the progress updates, you’re going to need to launch the Demon Kickstarter immediately after Anarchs Unbound is done unless you want to delay the Demon PDF. (Or unless something goes wrong with Demon, which is always a possibility.)
I’m trying not to connect our regular releases and the Deluxe Kickstarters for those products. KS is still ripe for experimentation, so there’s no formula for when a KS should be run vs a regular release.
See you at the HMS Queen Mary!!
Absolutely- looking forward to it!
Will nWoD: Dark Eras have new system rules (like new specifc skill and/or merits) too?
If that’s appropriate for the Era and we have the wordcount available.
I received my deluxe Mummy book! Loving it so far. Totally worth the wait. It’s trying new things and I like that.
Awesome. The books/screens have been shipping since last week and I’m always glad to hear backers have received theirs at last!