Kind of a scattered blog this week as a lot of projects keep needing a bit of nudge here and a piece of attention there. Like, I was working on getting the page for the V20: Dark Ages Kickstarter put together (the illustration by Mark Kelly, above, is one of the featured images on the page) and realized I wanted to use some of the Clan heraldry, which led to realizing I needed to design shields at least for the Bloodlines. So I’m doing those designs while emailing and texting and Skype-ing.
Our Onyx Path pallet from Gen Con finally showed up at the garage door this morning, so that was an unexpected morning’s worth of unloading and packing our booth components away until our next con.
Which brings to mind the announcement from last week that I’ll be Guest of Honor at Midwinter Gaming Convention in January. I’d been interested in Onyx Path attending since I’ve heard great things about it and I haven’t been back to Milwaukee since Gen Con left, but being asked to be GoH is just such an honor that I’m going this year for sure.
Set up a conference with Stewart Wieck and our good buddy and d20 editor back in the day, Scott Holden, to go over how we want to publish the Scarred Lands. We may have something cool going as early as a month or two from now. Similarly, last week I got two developmental messages from our reconfigured Onyx Path System team as to their direction and expected stages for the shared system for Scion 2nd Edition and the Trinity Continuum. So that’s heartening after several false starts.
In our meeting today, we started figuring out what the covers of the nWoD 2nd Editions would look like (like 1st Edition but with a few tweaks), and rolled right into resolving the cover for nWoD Dark Eras after talking about it for months. It not only makes sense for the project but for how the Kickstarter will work as well. Now that is a thrilling creative moment when all your ideas fall together and I could actually see the book right there in my mind’s-eye. Couldn’t see how thick the book would be though…we’ll have to find out later, but it’ll be a big one.
And here are the bits, pieces, and especially the odd ends that we’re working on:
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)
- Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created)
- Beast: the Primordial core book (Beast: The Primordial)
- W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening)
- Fallen World Chronicle Fiction Anthology (Mage: the Awakening)
- M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)
- Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)
- Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition
- V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- W20 Novel by Mike Lee (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- W20 Shattered Dreams (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
Redlines blog
- Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)
- Exalted 3rd Fiction Anthology (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Second Draft
- Idigam Chronicle Fiction Anthology (Werewolf: the Forsaken)
- V20 Lore of the Clans (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
Development
- Exalted 3rd Edition core book- From Holden: “We’re getting edits back and implementing them this week, while working on Arms of the Chosen”. (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Firestorm Chronicle Fiction Anthology (Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition)
- V20 Red List (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition, featuring the Idigam Chronicle (Werewolf: the Forsaken)
- World of Darkness Dark Eras- Vampire chapter (WoD Dark Eras)
- Sothis Ascends (Mummy: the Curse)
Editing
- Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition core book (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Development (post-editing)
- World of Darkness Dark Eras core book (WoD Dark Eras)
ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE
- White Howlers – Out to Backers. Errata coming in.
- Book of the Deceived – Art Directed. Final text is here, so once I have Dark Ages completely roughed in and Art o CB completed, I’ll move onto it.
- DtD Seattle – PDF and physical copy PoDs on sale at DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/134226/Splintered-City-Seattle
- DtD Demonseed collection – PDF and physical copy PoDs on sale at DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/135114/Demon-Seed-Collection
- DtD Interface – PoD proofs OK’d, should go on sale Wednesday.
- Book of the Wyrm 20 – Going to ping Aileen and see how that has progressed along. Some layout tweaks to fix.
- DAV20 – Layout continues. Spent more time than I budgeted on one chapter and it ate into Art o CB time. I think I have a chapter and two appendices to go and the book is officially roughed in. Looking at a 450+ I think. Probably going to be doing some more KS graphics for it this week so we can get it rolling, including a cool new Stretch Goal chart.
- Anarchs Unbound – Crossing my fingers that it’s all done with pre-press at the printers.
- T-Shirts – Got W20 Spencer shirts wrapped up on Friday, so this week I’m going to get the Bradstreet V20 shirts done. Once the Bradstreet ones are done, that puts us at over 150 shirts available: http://www.redbubble.com/people/theonyxpath
- Art O’ The Changin’ Breeds – Made a little progress on that one. Spent a lot of time with Dark Ages again. Once DA is all roughed in, I can put some more time into this as I want to wrap it up before M20 starts.
- Umbra – Still missing 10 halfs. One artist should be done shortly but one has gone dark on me. I’ve pinged him, so hopefully I will hear back.
- Ready Made Characters: Geist – Have an artist but have to wait until DA art is done before they can take it on. Should be a quick layout.
- VTR II – Need to start cover discussions for it (which will also determine how the covers for WTF II and MtA II and so forth). (Update: covers discussed)
- Dark Eras and Second Editions – As the artists are wrapping up DA, Umbra, and various other projects I’d like to get them onto these before the holidays. Most artists won’t take on that many pieces during the Thanksgiving and Xmas holidays and all three of those titles are big books that will require quite a bit of art.
- EX3- Not Mike, but art director Maria Cabardo is assigning art and am looking at a second and third batch of art notes from the Devs.
REASON TO DRINK: Can it possibly almost be October already?!
Is there a link to here in the email and I’m missing it? If not how about one, it would be handy.
Emails are automatically generated by certain blog posts (like Monday Meetings). There’s currently no way I’m aware of to customize them to add a return link.
I’ll chip in a similar request just in case it is possible though! It would also really help the email to avoid getting lost in my daily spam if it had Monday Morning Meeting or MMM in the subject line.
Awesome art!
So V20: Dark Ages KS is next, followed by Dark Eras KS?
Not quite- V20 DA, then Wraith 20, then Dark Eras, if possible. Kind of hate to put Dark Ages and Dark Eras back to back.
Yep, I agree. Makes sense. Looking forward to all three.
You have no idea (actually you probably do have some idea) how happy it makes me to hear how soon the Wraith20 KS finally is.
Hey Rich (or Ian – probably Ian), I was wondering if you had official packages for fan sites? Images, standard copyright disclaimers, that sort of thing. I’m setting up a blog in anticipation in Ex3 and I’d like it to be prettier than the stock themes, but I don’t want to grab images off the Internet.
We don’t currently have any packages, sorry. Generally any image we’ve placed online is fine to use as long as you have the appropriate copyright disclaimer. (CCP, hf for any of our licensed properties, Onyx Path Publishing, Inc. for our own).
All right, I suppose I’ll mine the Kickstarter for images.
Thank you.
I got the werewolf 20th and other books in pdf of the white wolf, I can say that the art of the books was awesome!
I bought some shirts and still buy the book of the wyrm and perhaps later other t shirts.
I was wondering if there would be as onyx path producing miniatures game werewolf the apocalypse, would it be possible?
Anything is possible, and Mirthful Mike would love it as he is a minis fanatic, but we’d have to see a situation that makes sense for us with our business model. Would a minis game with specially sculpted minis make enough to pay for the sculpts if there was no further use and sale of the minis, for example?
Indeed I would 🙂
I would support this project 🙂
Good to know- thanks!
There are A LOT of successful Kickstarter projects about minis – if they are of high quality.
If you use the wargame 35mm standard people can use the minis even if they don’t like the game they come with.
But I’d say a skirmish style wargame with small gangs of Werewolves against Fomori would definitely sell !
If id would be possible to use the p&p characters for this it’s a must-have for groups that have a large focus on fights in their game.
So actually you could promote it as a fight simulation for you p&p books.
With slightly modified rules that work with inches instead of yards …
Easy as pie !
“easy as pie !”
Heh, if only.
There’s a ton more moving parts to managing minis game development and production, not to mention distribution (even KS funded ones) – compared to what OPP is doing right now.
I’m not suggesting its impossible – it’d be fair to say is easier than it has ever been. That does not make it ‘easy’, far from it.
Not to mention that it absolutely doesn’t come close to a safe bet that enough sales will exist to make the up-front development and marketing costs worthwhile.
I say all this as someone who would dearly love to see Trinity:Battleground rebooted 😀
Sell ??minis I think it is easier to sell physical books today.
How many physical books are sold? I think that releasing miniature Werewolf the Apocalypse probably all be sold. For example: see the official miniatures ral partha (of poor quality) is difficult to find the quality that had relatively good- think that miniatures have too-ed to have good quality as well as ledgers buyers could choose deluxe edition, painted? If the quality of the miniatures is similar to the figures of the book will be a success!
There have been some huge mini KSs, the biggest pretty much all created by companies that make minis. We don’t. So any move into creating them has to be part of an overall strategy of shifting what we are set up to do. That’s not something solved by a KS, and, in fact, a KS can ruin you if you aren’t set up right to handle it. So that’s what I mean by saying we’d certainly consider it if we could see a way with our business model as it develops.
Just a thought, Paizo licensed Reaper to make mini’s for pathfinder. I would assume that Paizo assumed little or none of the risk in that, and that Reaper’s risk was reduced by the fact that they are a minis company and it’s their business model to make and sell physical goods.
Something like that kind of partnership would not force OPP into a different business model.
Just and idea.
Very true. I’d be glad to discuss a deal like that with a high quality minis company.
IIRC didn’t Reaper invest a crazy amount of KS money in new facilities / machinery on the back of their Bones KS’s a while back?
Sounds like they could be an interesting partner. Seems they’ve got a track record, at least. Also, I discovered those guys are only an hour or two up the road from us (pointless trivia, but hey).
Werewolf pathfiner style would be possible, in the werewolf scenario there is the amount of creatures: scrull pigs, thunderwyrms, fomoris, first team pentex, spiral dancer etc. Perhaps players could even control a pack of characters, or an entire tribe, or even the garou nation, while another player could control the wyrm … using rules adapted from books and a tray to bring the atmosphere of the scene, another board could bring the atmosphere of the umbra. Could you have more enemies than another board game.
I understood the situation, I’m cheering
Where’s the Demon Storyteller’s Guide?
You’d have to ask Rose. Its her book, and she puts together the development progress list.
(Right Browser fixed, lets try posting something again.)
Hi Rich,
Interesting bits on info as always. A couple of things occurred to me while I was reading this Monday Meeting blog. While these thoughts have taken the very rough form of questions, I kinda understand if at current you don’t have an answer to them really –
1) Onyx Path Kickstarters in the coming year.
So Onyx Path gets about 5/6 Kickstarters done a year (judging by the spacing of Kickstarter projects on Rich’s Kickstarter page). Most Kickstarters are now “core” books for “new lines” that are being launched by Onyx Path. With this in mind, theoretically one could guess that the 2015 Onyx Path Kickstarters would be something like (in no particular order):
Wraith 20
Scion
Trinity
Beast
As these books all fit the “type” that most often gets Kickstarted by Onyx Path. I was wondering if, given the increased number of lines that Onyx Path is publishing, if the remaining 1/2 slots for next years Kickstarters would be given to other possible core books e.g. Pugmire, Cavaliers of Mars, or if it would be given to more “splat” books e.g. Victorian Mage, Guide to the Tal.Mae’Ra.
2) My loosing track of things.
A couple weeks back I posted a question to Rich about Sothis Ascends and Curse Necropolis DC. As I was sure that way back in July they had been in Redlines. So I was curious why a late September Monday Meeting blog listed them as First Drafts. I brushed it off, but something kept niggling me about it.
So I checked an old July Monday Meetings posts:
https://theonyxpath.com/including-all-and-sundry/
https://theonyxpath.com/all-gen-con-all-the-time/
Seems I was not crazy after all! Sothis was in Redlines and then seemed to “reverse” into first draft. Yes, I’m kinda aware this is now pointless as its in development as of this week anyway. Rio has never technically been out of first drafts but has been on the edge of redlines for a while now obviously.
No question here really, just wanted to demonstrate I was not loosing it.
3) Current Project Page.
Just wanted to say that a few of the projects on the “Current Projects” page of the website are a bit out of date. Several that have been finished and published are still hanging about on the page.
Several others either show out-of-date status stuff (compared to these blogs posts) or don’t have status bars at all (despite their status being mentioned on these blogs). As something I point other people to (perticularly people who don’t follow the forums and blogs like I do) as a way tracking Onyx Path projects, I was just wondering if it could be updated to be inline with this blog post.
4) Dark Ages Kickstarter.
So…couple of weeks?
5) God speed Mike Chaney.
Seems from these updates that Mike is super busy (DA,then Art O CB, then Deceived, then possibly M20) at the moment. So I thought it was only right that he gets some love from the fans. As he makes all these books looks awesome and handles all the artist stuff so well. So thanks Mike, your one groovy guy. Keep up the good fight.
Sorry this rambled on…
Cheers,
Hawthorn
1) Depends on whether a KS for any particular project would have value to us- value being a nebulous term that means something different any given time we look at it. Would Pugmire benefit as a totally new game getting into the KS community? Odds are, the general interest it might have for younger audiences, and/or dog lovers, would have a wider audience by being on KS – so that would be an interesting experiment to have it KS’d.
2) No proof of being crazy…this time.
3) Ian?!
4) Hopefully before, but I am still waiting for a print quote, and until I get that I can’t do the Rewards or even some of the Add-Ons and Stretch Goals.
5) Absolutely. Mirthful Mike is the engine that keeps us rolling.
Just wanted to say that a few of the projects on the “Current Projects” page of the website are a bit out of date. Several that have been finished and published are still hanging about on the page.
Care to name any in specific? Nothing which has been released is still on that page as far as I can see.
Several others either show out-of-date status stuff (compared to these blogs posts) or don’t have status bars at all (despite their status being mentioned on these blogs). As something I point other people to (perticularly people who don’t follow the forums and blogs like I do) as a way tracking Onyx Path projects, I was just wondering if it could be updated to be inline with this blog post.
I update that page based on what’s posted in these posts, so it’ll always stagger slightly behind.
That said, as of last week, every status bar has been updated according to what’s posted here in the Monday Meeting notes, and the only progress bar I seem to be missing is for Shattered Dreams, which is new in the notes for this week anyway.
Again, if you have specific examples, I’d be happy to address them.
Hi Ian,
So I’ve checked back with the Current Projects page today and it does seem to have been updated a lot from when I looked at it last week (I checked it last Monday). So most of the books I was thinking of are not longer an issue.
Here’s some stuff I’ve spotted that still might be relevant –
V20 Dark Ages – Its progress bar has it on art direction (step 4). These notes mentioned it as being in layout (step 5).
Demon Storytellers Guide – This is lacking a progress bar, though Rose posted the outline on the site a few weeks back. Suggesting it should be at step 1 (outline) right?
Making of the Art of Children of the Revolution – This has been sitting at Step 7 for about 6 months. Is it out (I was not a Kickstarter backer so I am not sure)? If so it should probably be removed from the page.
Also two books I’m not so sure on but thought I should mention –
White Howlers – Its out to backers, I take it it will not be taken down until its had a general release? That is the general practice right?
Demon Interface – Rich mentioned it should be out on POD this week. So is that likely to be removed from the page as well before the end of the week?
Thanks Ian, I’m not trying to nit-pick, just wanted to help out a bit. Honestly my fault for not looking at the Current Projects page before I posted my last comment.
Cheers,
Hawthorn
– V20 Dark Ages: You’re correct, I’ll update.
– Demon ST Guide: I don’t get involved in how each developer chooses to do open development, so I’d rather not include projects until they’re on Rich’s list above. It may well be in the outline stage.
– Making of the Art of Children of the Revolution: Released to backers, not to the public.
– White Howlers Tribebook: Same as above. Released to backers, not to the public.
– Demon: Interface: Out today, removed from the projects page.
I like this format. Took me some time to get used to but now I like seeing things I want slowly flowing down the stages of creation.
Great to hear! Glad it us making sense to you-
isnt Exalted core in editing now, why is it under development?
Throughout its creation, EX3 has had a more fluid mix between writing, development, and editing. It us now at the stage where the text is no longer being written, but the Devs are still working with the editor, so that progress level makes sense to me.
Will we see Dark Eras, the 2014 core book, released before 2014 is over? Please don’t take the question as cynicism!
Might the book be released as pdf before the KS is begun? How much of the project is ‘on hold’ until the KS is over, since you’re theoretically going to be adding word-count to it from stretch goals? Or will things, like art direction, be put out before the KS?
I guess I just want to ask like…can ya’ll be a bit more open about its progress? I feel like I know more about Beast: the Primordial than Dark Eras at this point, although I don’t necessarily mean to refer to content. I just want to have a better idea of how the Dark Eras KS will affect its release progress.
And now it’s referred to as the Dark Eras ‘core’?
Thanks 🙂
The Dark Eras KS is integral to its release, so until we can run that we won’t be releasing the book. Because the book won’t actually be done until it runs.
Okie, thanks for the heads up!