As you can tell by the large piece of art at the head of this blog, we’re still talkin’ and squawkin’ about the crowdfunder for Pugmire Unleashed over on BackerKit! And why not? It’s a volume that has something fun for all sorts of Pugmire players, and provides a depth of options for folks new to the game, as well! New uplifted friends and foes like those previewed here in the past few weeks – and in the text of the book available to backers – including birds, turtles and other reptiles and amphibians, rabbits, and badgers and weasels and the like!
We’re in that slower phase in about the third week, so please do jump in and pledge now to get us over into the “week to go” phase this Thursday. And if you’re planning to pick the finished book up on DTRPG when it comes out, rather than backing now, I urge you to consider that you’ll be doing that then, when you could be doing the exact same thing now and getting more discounts and extra goodies with a pledge!
Oh look, here’s Eddy providing us with another preview even though he’s on vacation this week! He just loves this world he created so much! Take it away, Eddy, and thanks:
Hey all! Hope you enjoyed the peek under the bill on ducks last week. This time around, I want to show you a bit on how the world has evolved since the last edition of the game. It’s been a few years canonically (although I’m intentionally vague on how many), so a few pieces have moved around. For example, the Council of Luminaries of Waterdog Port are a bit different from what you saw in Pirates of Pugmire. Here are just a few of them!
• The newest Luminary on the Council, Bear Pyrenees is extremely popular with the citizens… if not as popular with the other Luminaries. Bear’s towering size and guardian training makes him quite an intimidating figure at first glance — until he opens his mouth, and he rapidly becomes one of the friendliest dogs you’ll ever meet. Quick to smile and quicker to laugh, Bear makes friends easily and has a knack for getting others to open up to him within minutes of meeting, a talent he uses subtly but quite effectively in his work as a private investigator. He is generous with his coin and known for foregoing his cut of the rewards when working for needy folks, which many of the other Luminaries consider nothing more than building a support base for a potential future run at Governor. Bear, however, is simply a good dog that wants to help.
• Everybody’s best friend, the charming dog Erwin Sharpei is best known as the owner of the influential Calico Trading Company. Founded by his deceased partner, Gwendolyn Manx von Cymric, the company is renowned for its willingness to employ dogs and cats in equal measure. While displaying a friendly demeanor to all publicly, Erwin is ruthless in business, willingly doing whatever it takes to guarantee greater profits. Since becoming Governor a few years ago, Erwin is torn between his desire to leverage his position into ever greater gains and his fear of enemies lurking around every corner and behind every smiling face. This had made him appear indecisive to the other Luminaries, and a few are considering if it’s time to elect a new Governor.
• The oldest member of the Council, the turtle Slymar Oteechilde embraces Waterdog Port as his culture, walking with his face uncovered to show solidarity with other species. In his youth, the alkalist traveled widely, and the yellow stripes on the box turtle’s black shell are marred with burns and scratches from adventures and experiments gone awry. His long-winded stories frequently contain kernels of wisdom or warnings of future perils, and he stands ever-willing to share one. Valuing knowledge above all else, Slymar frequently requests rare reagents for his experiments, and he’s more than willing to risk others to advance his studies. That said, his mind has been more on his research than politics, and he is considering retirement in the near future.
The good thing about being about three weeks into the campaign is that folks have had a chance to sit down and play through some games using the new material! Thus, here we have two links to Actual Plays – the first featuring Character Creation – that will give you an active example of the added stuff in the book!
We have a Pugmire Unleashed AP Session Zero up here: https://youtu.be/H4ZCQk8HT30
And Session One of the Pugmire Unleashed AP is set to go live on Monday at 10:30 AM EDT at https://youtu.be/QjLxU5UOChA
Hope you all enjoy and even get inspired by the APs and suggest them to friends who may not have realized how much fun Realms of Pugmire is!
“Jimmy Smits disease”
It was a fast and loose Monday Meeting today, where we wandered off the topic of our books’ progress and into the evolution of language in David Milch TV series such as Deadwood and NYPD Blue. On the latter, actor Jimmy Smits played a character with what started as a mysterious disease but his symptoms seemed a lot like what I was experiencing at the time (decades ago), and so I told everyone that’s what I had.
Which no one believed anyway, then, or now!
Fortunately, our digression was quickly ended and we jumped right into the meeting, got our updates in a row, and of the items we covered, here are a bunch:
With the Community Content Fiction Writing Contest fast approaching the deadline for writers to get their projects onto the appropriate CC sites – that’s July 10th btw – we touched base on how that’s going so far, and here’s Travis to sum it up for you:
We are coming up on the deadline for the OPP Con Fiction Contest! I’ve seen a lot of chatter in the discord about folks wrapping up their entries, pushing to try to meet word count, and even seen a few links for released material popping up! Remember you have until July 10th to list your entry. After the deadline has passed we will post a form for public voting to determine who will win the Grand Prize and the two Runner-Up prizes! These prizes come along with DriveThruFiction Gift cards as well as Gift cards for courses with our friends at the Storytelling Collective, and I cannot praise them highly enough! Their courses are amazing, informative, and thorough. Many creators in the community content space have benefited from these courses, and several have gone on to illustrious, award-winning careers! But, as the great LeVar Burton used to say, “don’t take my word for it!” Read up on the Storytelling Collective at https://www.storytelling-collective.com/
We also reviewed our ongoing sales in various venues, as well as those we’re involved with that are coming up, although we can’t talk about those yet.
We have the rest of July for this bundle deal that offers exceedingly great pricing for Scarred Lands books, the Scarred Lands Fantatical Bundle:
https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/scarred-lands-5th-edition-rpg-bundle
But only a few more days left on this Fantasy Grounds Summer Sale that’s ending soon:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/?search=onyx+path&pagesize=40&minDiscount=0.1&hidecore=1
They’re both a great chance to catch up on our projects while they’re on sale!
Travis also wanted to include a reminder about our monthly Onyx Path Game Weekend, so here he is doing it:
I wanted to drop a quick reminder that the final weekend of each month is the Onyx Path Game Weekend via our partners at Startplaying.Games! If you’re interested in signing up to run something, you still have time to do so! It’s a great way to meet new players and try out games you’ve been waiting to run or play! You can run free games or charge a fee to play, whatever you’re comfortable with! If you need help setting up the Startplaying onboarding process can be found at https://startplaying.games/become-a-pro-dungeon-master. I’ll be running four games myself in this month’s event including Curseborne, Dystopia Rising: Evolution, Scion: Origin, and They Came From Beneath the Sea! so, if you’ve ever wanted a chance to play with me as your Storyguide, here’s a perfect opportunity! Whether as a player or a Storyguide, I hope to see you at the July Onyx Path Game Weekend!
As you can tell, Travis is looking to provide everyone a range of our games to play, so if you’ve ever been curious about any of them, he’ll be more than happy to run you through one of his exciting and fun gaming sessions! It’s a super opportunity!
Finally I mentioned last week that one of the fun aspects of creating our games for me personally is the chance to create design elements that help define the setting. Things like seals and symbols help provide a sense of depth even to modern-day game worlds, and they really become valuable when they are worked into the heraldry of the setting itself when created for games where that’s appropriate.
Right now, they are hugely a part of our prep work for our newest Earthbane game line, Monster Kingdoms. Even though we’ve slated the crowdfunding campaign to be our next after Pugmire Unleashed, we still have time to fine tune aspects of the setting, and I’m doing that by devising things like last week’s chimera shield, and now this:
Just like last week, I’m just leaving this here without much in the way of comment. It’ll all make sense once we reveal more info, I hope!
Beyond that, here’s hoping you are also having fun with the writing and playing and GMing and talking about, and figuring out what’s happening, in our:
Many Worlds, One Path!
Blurbs!
Crowdfunding!
Currently running on Backerkit: Pugmire Unleashed!…
Funded in a day, over 200% funded now, and scampering through Stretch Goals!
Join us here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/onyx-path/pugmire-and-beyond-ttrpg-rulebook-tariff-free
Onyx Path Media!
Check out our attached media schedule for the videos on our Twitch channel this week!
On this week’s Onyx Path News Matthew discusses Pugmire Unleashed and Scion! Check it out right here: https://youtu.be/i2Dfxxv1n50
On The Gentleman Gamer‘s YouTube channel, we create a Sorcerer for Curseborne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-hZaGp1Vc
Awkward GM Corbin continues his Curseborne campaign – Accursed in Boston – right here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTQQTnW1ODiDl7tFgH-qig9tZDlJ4O_nT&si=V08vqI6I4bxFP1B5
We have a Pugmire Unleashed AP Session Zero up here: https://youtu.be/H4ZCQk8HT30
Session One of the Pugmire Unleashed AP is set to go live on Monday at 10:30 AM EDT at https://youtu.be/QjLxU5UOChA
Virtual Tabletop!
Scion Demigod Available on Roll20 NOW!
The Scion: Origin and Scion Hero Compendiums are now available on Roll20!
https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/publisher/1716/onyx-path-publishing
The first of our official Scion sheets designed for Foundry VTT are
now available! https://foundryvtt.co
They Came From Beneath the Sea! on Roll20 VTT!
https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/22308/they-came-from-beneath-the-sea
Looking for more virtual tabletop resources? We have a selection of
Tokens, Encounters, and more available now at DriveThruRPG! https://bit.ly/3SnrNJ7
Our Sales Partners!
We’re working with Studio2 to provide our traditionally printed books out into your local game stores. Game stores can order via their usual distributors, and can also contact Studio2 directly. And individuals can check out our projects via the links below!
Select Chronicles of Darkness Screens and Monarchies of Mau books,
screens, and dice 50% off at Studio 2:
https://studio2publishing.com/collections/onx-onyx-path-publishing
Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books, dice, and screens? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/
As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles in PDF and PoD versions at DriveThruRPG.com!
The first part of the print shopping experiment is live on DTRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?format=1000240-book-printed-publisher-fulfilled
This is limited to the USA only at first, but will expand later after data crunching and review.
Amazon and Barnes & Noble!
You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).
On Sale This Week!
This week we present the Advance PDF for the Exalted Essence Novella Omnibus! We’ve gathered together all three Essence novellas: A Murder in Whitewall, Scoundrelsong, and What Lies Forgotten, and combined them into a single volume for your convenience and enjoyment! Coming your way on Weds on DTRPG!
Conventions!
Here’s where you can find out more info on physical and virtual conventions we’re going to be involved with!
Envoy will be running multiple demos of Curseborne at Gen Con, Thu, Jul 31, 2025 – Sun, Aug 3, 2025 in Indy, so sign up and get to actually play the game if you’re curious (but do it as soon as you can because Curseborne has been getting a lot of attention and is sure to sell out like happened at PAX Unplugged), and we’ll have books and screens for sale at the Studio 2 booth. Here’s the signup link:
https://www.gencon.com/events?c=indy2025&host=Onyx%20Path%20Publishing
Game Night With Onyx Path Publishing at StartPlaying is the last Friday of every month! Come play some Essence that night! (But any of our game lines are welcome all day long!)
Here’s a link to give anyone $10 credit to play games on Start.Playing:
https://startplaying.games/referral/clog9y0v10006ju0968iev95m
Please spread the word about GMing games as much as possible! Details on how list a game are at the bottom of the page in the FAQ:
https://startplaying.games/event/game-night-onyx-path
Project Status Updates!
Our full list of projects will be available monthly on our blog! Check out June’s full list report here: https://theonyxpath.com/release-roundup-june-2025/
DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY!
Here are the projects that moved to the next stage of production:
FIRST DRAFT
Curseborne – Making of Curseborne
- Dixie and Travis have taken this task on to chronicle the various decisions, drafts, and swerves taken in the creation of Curseborne!
MANUSCRIPT APPROVAL
Curseborne – Curseborne Fiction Anthology
- A wide panoply of horrific stories awaits you in the forthcoming Curseborne anthology!
POST-APPROVAL DEVELOPMENT
Curseborne – Curseborne Antagonist #8 (Aug 2025 Tasty Bit)
- A weeping scar is the terrible outcome of what happens when a mortal tragedy creates a shattered space…
EDITING
Storypath – Storypath Ultra Core Manual
- Off to Editing for our big SPU manual! I’m looking forward to seeing this one polished.
Curseborne – Curseborne Jumpstart
- Kim has written a superb starter adventure for Curseborne. I can’t wait for you folks to see it!
ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!
In Art Direction
- Ex3 Alchemicals – Waiting for sketches from Navela.
- Curseborne – More revisions and finals sending around.
- SCION Dragon Companion – Awaiting finals.
- SCION Rock Gods – Awaiting finals.
- At The Gates – Getting the map contracted and other fun stuff.
- SPU Core Manual – Contracting.
- Branch Riders – Pulling in final art.
- Pugmire 2e Unleashed – Ongoing.
Layout
- TC Aether Screen – Waiting to send to press.
- Pugmire 2e Screen
- World Below Screen
- TC Aether Jumpstart
- TC Anima AR
- Mythic Shards Ref Booklet
- Ex3 Miracles of the Divine Flame – still working…
Proofing
Indexing
At Press
- Ex 3 Exigents – Quoting.
- Ex 3 Exigents Screen – At Studio 2
- Ex 3 Sidereals – Quoting.
- TC Aether – In the states… on the way to the warehouse.
- Scion: God – In the states… on the way to the warehouse.
- SCION God Storyguide Screen – Quoting.
- Ex3 Abyssals – Devs going through errata.
- Curious Cats – Out to backer for errata.
- TC Aegis
- Exalted Essence Novella Omnibus – Advance PDF on sale DTRPG this Wednesday!
Today’s Reason to Celebrate!
Ever heard the phrase “The greatest thing since sliced bread”? Well, today in 1928: Sliced bread is sold for the first time (on the inventor’s 48th birthday) by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. I guess everything before that was “The greatest thing since… uh…”.