Hello! I just flew back from Atlanta where we had a heart-felt memorial event for Stewart Wieck. It was very much a reunion of folks from all over who had worked at WW and knew, loved, and respected Stew. More on that as the pics and videos start to get sent my way, but let’s just say that there were tears and laughs and I’m all scraped up from playing 4Square on the concrete outside the bar.

So this week, we have the start of the Dark Eras 2 Kickstarter campaign, and this blog post I was going to post as last Monday’s blog. As tired as I am, it’s actually very nice that this already existed:

This time of year is always crazy for Onyx Path because we’re getting ready for Gen Con. In between figuring out cool swag, booth demos, and our panels, we are also putting the finishing touches on this year’s brochures. Every year, I write a letter to you, our community, and our freelancers in the brochure, to talk about the changes we’ve experienced as a company. This year, when I was sitting down to think about what I wanted to say, I couldn’t fit everything in.

In our brochure where I’d be letting the world know the things that are happening to Onyx, I wanted to talk about the new plans with White Wolf, our growing list of games, and how we’ve evolved the ways we do business. I think some of the changes we’ve made deserve their own blog post; and ultimately, discussions about process aren’t necessarily a good topic for a brochure about our games.

So first, let’s look back to see the roots. When I first started Onyx Path, I worked with a lot of the same people I had a relationship with from my White Wolf days. The philosophy I had was to trust the developers I had already worked with and continue with the same general process structure as we’d been using since the WW days. I gave the devs a lot of leeway to manage their own contracts, submit pay schedules, and do the business odds and ends because they already knew how to do it and were the ones talking with their writers anyway — which worked great in the beginning.

As we continued to evolve and add more freelancers and games, I realized that our process needed to change for a couple of reasons. First, our developers were not in-house. They often do more than one project and work with multiple freelancers on a contractual basis. Most of them have full-or-part time jobs in addition to working with us. Even though they had all the info to fill out the contracts, those contracts do take time to pull together, and added more to their plate.

Second, because managing contracts proved to be a lot of work, it was very easy and natural for mistakes to happen. When errors did occur, the plan was that the devs would try and fix them, or bump the problem to me. We dealt with them on a case-by-case basis and continued to encourage freelancers to contact us if they had issues. And even then, sometimes, the dev told me about an issue and I’d be the one bobbling the ball on the fix.

Which is why the solution had to be to evolve the process; and to do that, we needed an company infrastructure that could adopt and adapt to us improving our processes. Which meant we needed Rollickin’ Rose to advocate for the developers and writers and editors and field concerns and questions, we needed LisaT to build new payment systems and to do the same with writing the contracts and getting them out and signed so that the devs no longer had to, and Mighty Matt McElroy to handle comp copies.

So, I say again, if you have freelanced for us and have an issue with payment, contracts, or anything else, the best way to get your problem resolved is to email us directly. If we do not receive an email, we can’t follow up with you to get your issues sorted.

With that all that in mind, we’ve moved this year to a better way of doing contracts for the kind of company Onyx Path really is. The growth of the company enabled that change, and we feel like there will be fewer errors and less stress for the developers. We created new forms so the developers could submit contract requests to LisaT with all of the freelancer’s information for the project. The developers still get to work with the people they want to work with and submit payment requests at key stages per the contract; but now we all have a clear record and centralized record of who’s working on what project as we produce the contracts in house, and can better follow up if needed.

As we continue to ensure contract requests, production, art notes, and payment flows smoothly, there may be other changes in the future — especially as we continue to hire and train new developers to work on our games. Developing RPGs has a lot of complex, moving parts, and it is a lot of work. Developers are indeed a rare breed.

To that end, we’ve also revamped how we pay our developers, too. Now they are paid with a payment structure that adds to the amount they earn if they are working on a core book, or a Kickstarted project that requires their extra involvement. Rather than basing their payment purely on word count, we’re now structuring things based on the sorts of tasks we’re asking them to do under the “developer” umbrella.

So that’s a bit more info on how Onyx Path continues to evolve and grow and I hope it wasn’t too tedious, but I wanted to explain how the overall process is now working. And again, if you are a freelancer and need to get an issue resolved, please feel free to email me directly. Communication is key as we can’t fix problems we don’t know anything about.

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER!

Dark Eras 2 goes live Thursday, July 6th at noon Eastern US time! Once again, help us decide on which Eras and which game-lines should fill up this Prestige Edition book!

ON SALE!

ON AMAZON:

We’re delighted to announce the opening of our ebook store on Amazon! You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle. Our initial selection includes these fiction anthologies: Vampire: the Masquerade‘s Endless Ages, Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition‘s Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage 2, Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition‘s Truth Beyond Paradox, Chronicles of Darkness‘ God Machine Chronicle, Mummy: The Curse‘s Curse of the Blue Nile, and Beast: The Primordial‘s The Primordial Feast!

And here are six more fiction books:

• Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds
• Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology
• Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology
• Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology

Andand six more more:

• Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)
• Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)
• Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)
• Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)
• Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: https://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

You can now order wave 2 of our Deluxe and Prestige print overrun books, including Deluxe Mage 20th Anniversary, and Deluxe V20 Dark Ages! And Screens…so many Screens!

ON DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

Curated by Matthew McFarland, developer of Changeling: the Dreaming Twentieth Anniversary Edition and featuring authors such as Myranda Kalis, Wren Handman, and Peter Woodworth, this C20 Anthology of Dreams is on sale in electronic/PDF and physical copy PoD formats on DTRPG.com! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/209390/C20-Anthology-of-Dreams

We dream, and we tell stories. We dream of love and the sort of person who might complete us. We dream of horror and wake breathless. We dream of magic, of flying through the air, or breathing underwater. We dream of fantastic vistas and amazing monsters.

We dream, and then we wake, and we tell stories. Our dreams create the Kithain, the changelings. Our stories are sustenance.

Now on DTRPG, the EX3 Tomb of Dreams Jumpstart PDF/PoD jumps up for sale!

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/208891/Tomb-of-Dreams-an-Exalted-3rd-Edition-Jumpstart

Sailing out of the dark, the V20 Dark Ages Companion Advance PDF is now on sale on DriveThruRPG.com! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/211504/V20-Dark-Ages-Companion

Travel the long roads and deep seas in search of power and experience danger, or tackle the wilderness to hunt monsters and face death. Settlements large and small dot the black expanse with the promise of sanctuary, life, and community. These bastions of civilization present cold comfort, when playing host to vampire warlords and sadistic Cainite faiths. Whether led by a Prince, a coordinated belief, or hounded by monsters from without and within — no domain is truly the same as another.

Dark Ages Companion includes:

• Domains scattered across the world, from small fiefdoms to massive cities. Bath, Bjarkarey, Constantinople, Rome, Mogadishu, and Mangaluru each receive coverage.

• Apocrypha including plot hooks, new Paths, and mysteries to explore in your games.

• A how-to guide on building a domain within your chronicle, including events and servants necessary to make a domain as functional or dysfunctional as you wish.

• A study on warfare in the Dark Ages period, so combat in your chronicles can gain authenticity and lethality.

Bill Bridge’s new W20 novel, The Song of Unmaking, is on sale in PDF/ePub/PoD versions on DriveThruRPG.com: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/208366/W20-The-Song-of-Unmaking and in ebook form on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VM2S3D/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1494441226&sr=1-1 !

The fabric of reality is cracking. Fissures appear in thin air, glowing with balefire. Something is scratching on the other side, pressing, beginning to break through….

The Wyrm’s corruption finds its way into the hearts of humans and Garou alike. Even an ultra-rational techno-cratic scientist can fall sway to its lies. Channeling his hate and resentment through the most sophisticated machine ever created, Basil Czajka has turned a tool designed to peer deep into the heart of the quantum universe into a nursery for the hatching of a horror — a creature whose birth cry is destined to unmake Gaia’s Song of Creation.

The only ones standing in his way are One-Song, a broken-down old Theurge, and Lord Albrecht, whose heed-less anger might be the very weapon the enemy needs to crack the egg and free the Unmaker.

CONVENTIONS! Discussing GenCon plans. August 17th – 20th, Indianapolis. Every chance the booth will actually be 20? x 30? this year that we’ll be sharing with friends. We’re looking at new displays this year, like a back drop and magazine racks for the brochure(s).

In November, we’ll be at Game Hole Con in Madison, WI. More news as we have it, and here’s their website: https://www.gameholecon.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

• • Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
  • Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)
  • M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
  • M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
  • C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)
    
  • The Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Redlines

WW Manuscript Approval:

• Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)