We smashed through the Backerkit funding goal for The Curious Cats of Mau in just under 48 hours! Now let’s smash through the Stretch Goals that follow!

Thanks to all of you furious feline fans who pledged to get us there! Now we’ve got to get the word out there! Pugmire creator and all around fine fellow, Eddy Webb, has been doing his part, as he ran an actual play of Curious Cats for Red Moon Roleplaying. Episode 1 is already live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzb91_xJxSI

Eddy also talked on the GM Talks podcast to cover not only Pugmire and Curious Cats, but also some of the inspirations behind them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYiVoVjngBY

Also, The Critshow released their Patreon-exclusive actual play of the original edition of Pugmire that Eddy ran as part of their multiversal adventuring. There are three episodes which are already live, but you can start here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-critshow-pugmire-part-1/id1390944329?i=1000646476770

If you check out our Twitch, Eddy will be on Meet Your Makers on Saturday at 2pm EST, and on Thursday at 7am EST, The Curious Cats of Mau Actual Play adventure continues!

Next, we have some thoughts and a preview from co-developer Lauren Roy:

Hello, all you excellent cats!
I’ve been provided with a tricky assignment: come up with a short blurb talking about what I’m excited for in Curious Cats of Mau. I’m reminding myself (and you readers!) that both Eddy and I have appeared on the Pathcast recently, discussing lots of the cool things the writers packed into this book. So let’s see, what could I have spent another few hours gushing about?
Ah ha! One thing I was super excited to do in this book is expand on House Smilodon. When I was working on Monarchies of Mau, we touched very lightly upon who exactly the cats of the forgotten seventh house were. What happened after they went over the mountains was an intriguing mystery — one that stuck with me long after the book came out. I wanted to know what was going on! With Curious Cats, we answer some of those questions, and open up a whole lot of hooks for Guides to use in their stories. We have enemies from Smilodon for your characters to encounter, and three adventures that give you a taste of what their agents might be up to now that they’ve returned.
Here’s a little teaser for you, from our chapter about the Monarchies:

Smilodon’s loss stings so profoundly because its cats were once some of Mau’s most excellent. After all the easily-settled lands were occupied, the houses skirmished over desirable crossroads or fertile fields along their borders. And yet, thought some intrepid cats, weren’t there lands yet unclaimed at the edge of broken cliffs and salt flat? Rocky beach and tangled forest?

These bands organized under Rasmus von Smilodon, a student of Angora’s libraries and Mau’s universities, a polymath who studied natural science and practical engineering. A cat of enormous ambition, he built wind traps and cisterns further into the desert than Angora had ever dared, raised mountainside gardens and vertical towns on slopes Korat had dismissed, and even drained lands thought lost to the Acid Sea. His followers were equally impressive. Cassius von Smilodon developed soaring treehouses in western forests, while Pasha von Smilodon’s glass houses enabled the cultivation of plants in parts of Siberian territory that had never seen a harvest. It was no secret that von Smilodon and his followers planned to follow in Cymric’s mold: offer services to the monarchies and be rewarded with lands in return.

However, it was a different age than Cymric’s founding. No house was willing to give up contiguous parcels of valuable land, even with all of Smilodon’s good works. Instead, the monarchies reached a rare compromise; each would give Smilodon those lands they found difficult to cultivate — or even survive in — for surely Smilodon’s followers could make better use of them? And so House Smilodon found itself spread across the breadth of Mau. The bold, clever cats wrestled unwilling lands into submission, raising chapterhouses and mansions across wasteland, mire, and blight. This chilled relations between Smilodon the other monarchies, but still the house prospered.

House Smilodon’s works became landmarks wherever they were: the Great Desert Sundial of the Northern Dunes, the Distillation Houses of the Acid Coast, the Great Glass Dome of the frigid heights. From them, intrepid explorers issued. Cartographer Cassius von Mau charted ever more paths through the Fearful Forest. Pasha von Smilodon erected the finest pleasure gardens and heated mansions across the north. Dandan von Smilodon made contact with three different species of reptiles, parlaying access to Smilodon’s windtraps and water stores for regular visits by new traders.

Still, no matter how celebrated their works and discoveries became, House Smilodon became restless. Perhaps one-too-many scheming neighbors soured the rank and file, or perhaps the cats attracted to Smilodon’s banner were always destined to cast their gaze over the next horizon. The house’s explorers ranged further and further away, both in geographical distance and willingness to take new risks. Adventurers delivered strange devices and suspect magics to House Smilodon chapterhouses even as they shared more prosaic discoveries with all of Mau’s cats.

When explorers brought word that there were strange Old One artifacts scattered around traversable pathways through the northern mountains, Rasmus himself lead the first major expedition. At great cost of material and catpower, his expedition reached beyond the cold cliffs to find the eerie, blasted scape. From the closest foothills to the mountain’s northern edge, discolored earth sprouted unnatural weeds, stretching into blighted plains. Jagged, irregular ruins were arranged like mandalas around enormous pits that fulminated choking smoke. The presence of the Unseen loomed more heavily the closer they got to the pits, but Rasmus was determined to explore these strange findings…

Reading this gave me chills all over again, and there’s lots more intriguing information for you to discover. Even as I’m typing this, I’m thinking of a bunch of other cool things I’m excited for people to read. Maybe Rich will invite me back for more tidbits next week (hint, hint), but it’s time for me to wrap this blurb up. In the meantime, please check out the Backerkit campaign to learn more!

Thanks, Lauren! And are you kidding? Please do send me more fantastic bits like this House Smilodon material – every Monday if you can! 🙂

So c’mon and join the fun! Knock a vase off the table and come on over and back The Curious Cats of Mau: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/onyx-path/curious-cats-of-mau

Almost No Cats Here:

The Storypath Nexus Game Jam is wrapping up, and as I predicted last week, the quantity of fantastic community content material has greatly increased, while the quality remains delightfully high!

With this status report, we get a look at where the whole thing stands with the intrepid Travis Legge reporting:

As we enter the final days of the Storypath Nexus Game Jam, we have three programs you’ll want to check out on our Twitch channel! On Tuesday at 9 AM EST, Comrade Bubbles will be giving a demonstration on how to export your project from the Storypath Nexus Word Template to produce a quality PDF for distribution! This covers ground detailed in their recent release How To Use StoryPath Nexus Word Templates which is available on the Nexus! On Wednesday at 11:30 PM EST, Awkward GM Corbin returns to the channel to kick off voting in the most popular release category! Winners will be announced on Thursday at 8 PM EST on Twitch!

As of this writing there are six releases in competition, and submissions close on January 28th at 11:59 PM EST, so if you’ve got something in the works, now is the time to get it finished up and uploaded! As a reminder, your entry has to be live on the site before the deadline, so if you’ve completed an entry but not taken it live for sale yet, it is not qualified to participate! The current releases are:

Scion: Fresh Ink by Zachery Naldrett, which offers a collection of 9 new birthrights for Scion Second Edition.

The Bedwetters Foundation by Alain Giorla which presents a new Allegiance for players in Trinity Continuum:Core including Equipment, Edges, and Gifts!

Begin Again by Ryan Wheeldon which contains an introductory chronicle for Trinity Continuum: Core that is designed to slowly introduce the game’s mechanics

Psiads in 2028 by Travis Legge which provides alternate character creation rules to bring psiad characters more in line with a starting nova character’s capabilities.

These are in addition to A New Calling – Fluid from Nicolas Milioni which presents a Calling centered around constant change, and New Beginners from Mateus Luz, which is focused on playing children in the Trinity Continuum. Both were mentioned in last week’s blog, though you may notice New Beginners has a new cover! It was determined that the previous cover had AI art, unbeknownst to the author. Fortunately the Game Jam judges clued them in and they were able to put together a new cover to bring their release in line with Storypath Nexus policies!

Good luck to all entrants, and again, if you haven’t gotten your submission turned in yet you still have (a little) time!

And just to touch a bit on the whole AI art thing: when the issues with AI art first broke, I wanted to get a better idea of just what everybody was yelling about. After all, as an illustrator, I’ve been through the era where airbrush was considered a cheat by true painters, and then when Photoshop was going to destroy illustration because it made everything too easy. At the beginning, a lot of the complaints about AI sounded similar.

As things came to light, though, what seemed like something that could be another electronic tool for an illustrator to use started to sound far more like an app that stole from practicing artists and could take those pieces, even at a pixel a time, and recombine things to create “art”. And those practicing artists weren’t able to block this or bow out of it – nope, if somebody posts a pic of one of your art pieces it’s grist for the AI art mill.

And that doesn’t sit well with me.

So, Onyx Path altered our contracts multiple months ago to stipulate that no AI art was acceptable to hand in to us. We also altered the terms in other places we have control over, like our Community Content sites, also banning AI art. For now, that works for us, and if the methodology of AI art evolves further and stops taking pieces of other people’s art, we can further review the situation.

In better news, particularly for folks who want to pick up some of our game book PDFs at greatly lowered prices, the massive GM’s Day Sale starts on Thursday at DriveThruRPG. Most of our PDF catalog will be on sale, plus a special spotlight on the They Came From Beneath the Sea! PDF+Roll20 bundle deal.

Some of you who race right down to the the Project Progress report might note that Scion‘s Mythic Shards project has moved forward, and Matthew mentions in the report that he’d love to hear folks guess as to what is going to be in the book by writing into the Comments for this blog, below.

That seems like a fun thing, so Scion fans, please do give us your best guesses! If only to provide a bit of fun for poor overworked Matthew!

Following up on my note last week that I was going to appear on episode 301 of the Onyx Pathcast in an interview with some of the crew – well, we started that last week. And the whole recording had to scrapped. There were all sorts of odd noises and long silent stretches when we played it back.

We’re undaunted though, and are trying again, maybe after we all sit in circles of salt around our desks or something. You’d think my magical silver bell would help here, but so far, no such luck!

Meanwhile, this Friday is in fact episode #300, a huge milestone for the Pathcasters and it sounds like they’re playing just the sort of game many of you have wanted and wanted to know more about.

Finally, as we try and figure out all the strange, odd, weird, and unsettling occurrences lately, there’s this interesting link from The Awkward GM compiling info about one of the eerie things that a lot of folks out there are curious about:

I dunno…is this even connected to our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

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Blurbs!

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Crowdfunding!:

The Curious Cats of Mau
for Realms of Pugmire

MEOW! We funded in just under 48 hours! Now, for some stretchies!

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/onyx-path/curious-cats-of-mau

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Onyx Path Media!

This week: #300: Danielle runs a game for Matthew, Dixie, and Eddy. It’s totally not Curseborne.

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue!

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Please check out our attached media schedule for the videos on our Twitch channel this week! In particular, keep those eyes open for our Storypath Showcase, where we give an excellent profile of our various Storypath games and how to play them!

MEDIA HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK:

They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave! returns with Warriors of Legend! You can find the first couple of episodes right here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiNRTdSDh6-WpWZHHl5dCHB1fzbOm4yGm

The Onyx Path News discusses recent and upcoming releases! You can find it on our YouTube channel (click the bell to be informed when we go live!) but if you missed the last episode, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk6ggML_kyQ

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Virtual Tabletop!

They Came From Beneath the Sea! on Roll20 VTT!
https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/22308/they-came-from-beneath-the-sea

The Scion: Origin and Scion Hero Compendiums are now available on Roll20!
https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/publisher/1716/onyx-path-publishing

Scion is just the start! They Came From Beneath the Sea! and other
Onyx Path RPGs are in development for Roll20 virtual tabletop!

The first of our official Scion sheets designed for Foundry VTT are
now available! https://foundryvtt.co

Looking for more virtual tabletop resources? We have a selection of
Tokens, Encounters, and more available now at DriveThruRPG! https://bit.ly/3SnrNJ7

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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!

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books, dice, and screens? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

We have some CofD Screens on discount on IPR:

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Deals-and-Specials/

We have a fantastic Chronicles of Darkness sale over at IPR this month:

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Deals-and-Specials/

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles in PDF and PoD versions at DriveThruRPG.com!

Starting this week! The massive GM’s Day Sale starts on Thursday at DriveThruRPG. Most of our PDF catalog will be on sale, plus a special spotlight on the They Came From Beneath the Sea! PDF+Roll20 bundle deal.

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).

Check out Melody Through the Mirrorshade Lens and Facets of Truth, as well as Trinity Continuum: Terat and The Hollow Courts on Kindle in the Kindle store!

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On Sale This Week!

Pew! Pew! Pew! Aeon Tasty Bit: Large Scale Space Combat – PDF available this Weds on DTRPG!

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Conventions!

As we are slowly returning to attending conventions in person after avoiding them during the COVID-19 outbreak, keep an eye out here for more physical and virtual conventions we’re going to be involved with!

We will be repped at the upcoming GAMA Expo in March by both Studio 2 and Indie Press Revolution. We expect that there will be some…interesting…handouts for retailers at the Expo!

Matthew and Eddy and a few of our other Onyx Path creators will be attending and even running games at UK Games Expo in May.

Game Night With Onyx Path Publishing at StartPlaying will be the last Friday of every month! Come play some of our games, especially any edition of Realms of Pugmire! (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

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Project Status Updates!

Our full list of projects will be available monthly on our blog! Check out January’s full list report here:

https://theonyxpath.com/release-roundup-january-2024/embed/#?secret=AzJbD72lbX#?secret=JPHa3cvJ4n

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY

Here are the projects that moved to the next stage of production:

First Draft

Exalted – Champions of the Divine Flame (was Full Exigent Supplement)

• Danielle: Hopefully not following too far on the trails of Miracles of Divine Flame, H is getting this one off to the races. We’re doing the two backer paid Exigents: Wounds and Knives, and also a third Exigent type, a group called March Lords.

Redlines

Scion – Mythic Shards

• Matthew: What is this exciting new Scion book and what do you think it’s going to explore? Comment below with your thoughts!

Editing

Exalted – Exigents: Miracles of Divine Flame (was Companion)

• Danielle: John finished the development cycle and we’ve sent this off to editing. Excited to see it moving along.

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ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

• Ex3 Sidereals – Sending finals over to devs so we can wrap up.
• Ex Essence Tomb of Memory (Jumpstart) – Mel’s going good.
• The World Below – Getting this rolling again as part of me catching up on AD stuff.
• TC Player’s Guide – Time for this to start the AD process.
• Pugmire 2e – If Navella is done with their Sidereals stuff, then they move onto Pugmire 2e art.
• Curious Cats (KS) – Crowdfunding Continueth!
• At The Gates (KS) – KS art ADing.
• Branch Riders (KS) – KS art ADing.

In Layout

• Ex Essence Charm Cards
• DTR Clade Companion
• M20 Victorian Jumpstart 
• Squeaks in the Deep Companion
• Classified and Cyclops Screens– Once I can get around to dealing with the cards and prepping the books for PoD, this is my next thing.
• CofD Contagion Chronicles RMCs

Proofing

• Many Faced Strangers – Awaiting errata.
• TC Aether – Adding in color symbols for 2nd proof.
• CtL 2e The Hedge – All good, so off to the devs.

Indexing

• Ex 3 Exigents

At Press

• Reprints:
• Scion Origin – Book files with the printer.
• TC Core – Fixing those couple of things i missed and getting it exported out.
• TC Aeon – Working on corrections and tweaking out anything that would get flagged in Pre Press.

• W20 Apocalyptic Record – Shipping to backers.
• W20 Apocalyptic Record Screen & Booklet – Shipping to backers.
• Exalted Essence – At Press. Uploading the couple of corrections I have to the printer.
• Ex Essence Screen – At Studio 2.
• Ex3 Exigents – Indexing.
• TC Anima Terra Surge Screen
• TC Anima
• M20 Lore of the Traditions – Printing.
• They Came From CLASSIFIED! – Me and Rich are gonna work on these Tuesday… and then I can get the PoD process rolling on the books.
• They Came From the Cyclops Cave! – Me and Rich are gonna work on these Tuesday… and then I can get the PoD process rolling on the books.
• SCION God 2e – Backer PDF out to backers for errata.
• Aeon Tasty Bit: Large Scale Space Combat – PDF available this Weds on DTRPG!

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Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today in 1931 – Leonard Nimoy was born. Spaaahhhck!
And totally unrelated: Hunter: The Vigil 2e turns 2 on March 2nd!