Catch-Up Ketchup

Last week: no meeting with Eddy, who was on vacation, and then a raft of various issues in folks’ personal lives conspired to keep me from getting the various Updates I need to present to you lovely readers. So, by the time I got most of the info late Friday night, I just scrapped the whole week’s blog. In favor of THIS WEEK’S BLOG. YAY! Also, speaking of letting you all down: I’ll be on vacation next week and so expect that this blog will at best be very abbreviated- but I am reaching out to a guest poster.

Today though, we talked about CCP approvals- as you might imagine we at Onyx keep up a pretty constant stream of submissions to CCP’s Approval board with all the projects that we’re working on. And when that whole group is off on a two week holiday (I like to picture them all shoved into a cabin somewhere), we have to be careful not to crush them with a massive pile of art and book approvals. I think we did pretty well with timing it out these last two weeks and expect everyone will be able to get caught up pretty fast. We are a considerate, tender, and giving, licensing partner. 🙂

Ironically, considering that I missed my chance to communicate with ya’ll last week, we also talked a fair bit about communication and how that is the fourth part of Onyx Path’s business model (we went over these starting a few weeks ago: #1 is that Onyx Path is a small company bringing very talented creative teams together on the right projects, #2 is a commitment to quality, even over timeliness- both of these were explained further in the Monday Meeting Blog “Sliding Into Summertime”. #3 is our delivery of these projects being electronic downloads and print (PoD) from DTRPG, and Deluxe books via our Kickstarter campaigns, discussed here in ” Right Before the Fireworks”). One of the things White Wolf really didn’t have back in the day was a good two way communication with our fans and customers. It was frustrating, but the way we and a lot of RPG companies worked was to create, publish, and hope it struck a chord and sold. Obviously, we had some major successes that way, but there were additional factors than just sales, and we really could have heard and hopefully understood our fans a lot better.

The same tech that enables Onyx to work creatively with talented writers and artists all over the world and to sell our projects electronically also means we can and should have a much more vocal and responsive relationship communication-wise with our audience. In general, we continue to expand and refine our social media presence, as so many fans are so spread out through different venues, and specifically we have our Open Development Process which starts with listening to feedback as our ideas are fired off in tweets and posts, continues through the various development blogs as whole swathes of a book’s text is posted, to now issuing the PDF of a project earlier than the other versions so that we get direct feedback on the book (and have a chance to fix any slip-ups) before the printed files are uploaded.

What happens at every stage there, as well as in the entirety of our Kickstarter campaigns (here you see again how well KS works with what we’re trying to accomplish), is that we have a series of feedback loops all through the creation of a project that enable us to hear from all of you. This is incredibly valuable, not just because our audience truly does have an impact on the nature of the project before the oft-quoted “voting with your dollars” phase, but because fan feedback forces us to consider and reconsider our decisions and test them for validity. Now, remember, Onyx is committed to the creators’ vision for these projects and I personally don’t believe that design by committee works. Creative people need to be able to push the envelope in the name of their art- which is why we even have points #1 and #2 above. So sometimes, our creative teams don’t choose to change their projects based on feedback- but that doesn’t mean they haven’t heeded the comments, it means that the creator(s) considered the points and decided they were still good with their determined direction. This makes for better and tighter projects, even if it can be exhausting to try and stay on top of the ideas everyone is presenting.

How about less theory, more Updates?:

– Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in final proof/approvals.

– Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Waiting on just a very small bit of the final drafts.

– Mummy the Curse – Deluxe book and  Screen are at press- looking to be sent to the shipper at the end of this month. The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is in editing. Cursed Necropolis DC being written and its cover is being approved.

– Exalted 3rd Edition: More map notes going out. A couple of EX3 chapters are getting finalized by the Devs and ready for Editing. The EX3 Quickstart is getting, um, started.

– V20 Hunters Hunted 2:  Files are with the printer for the Deluxe. Going live with the PDF on DTRPG this week. Justin is bogged down on real life issues for a presentation at his day job, but will send the HH2 Fiction Anthology to editing ASAP.

– V20 Anarchs Unbound is in editing and we are getting art for it.

– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press and getting the page-edge gilding put on. Mike Lee went back and revised a fair number of chapter in the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel prior to submitting to Bill for dev review.  The Storyteller Screen files are at press with W20. Bill has theW20 Anthology stories in and is formatting them for editing.  Jess Hartley continues writing the White Howlers Tribe Book  and the W20 Cookbook is in editing

– Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Very early sketches for the fulls from Michael William Kaluta look awesome. Getting art notes out to a ton of classic Mage artists- sketches are coming in. Going to try to get up an art blog this week.

– W20 Changing Breeds  Kickstarter continues into it’s last 10 days with some cool Stretch Goals that have added Hengeyokai and Ahadi sections to the book itself in a perfect demonstration of how our fans can affect the content of our projects as mentioned above. The full text is available here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

– W20 Rage Across the World: All the art is in and needs approval.

– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art notes are out to artists.

– Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is in final proof and goes in for CCP approval.

– Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is in editing.

– W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined.

– V20 Rites of the Blood: is being written and red-lined and is in Open Dev on the blogs: http://whitewolfblogs.com/v20/

– Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): Being outlined and teased by developer David Hill.

– Trinity Continuum:   We now have a whopping big Aeon outline and a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline.

– Scion: Great call between Ian and Joe. Much meeting of the minds, and Joe’s team are hammering systems.

– Demon: The Descent: The text is now in editing! Lots of example of play commentary including from Black Hat Matt McFarland’s play test are up on the new Demon blog: http://whitewolfblogs.com/demon/ Check it out, there are quite a few playtests posted now and they give a very interesting (if early) look at the game.  Demon Quickstart art notes are out to the artist as it gets created and edited. We need to delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS but we’ll create a Demon Preview Booklet for Gen Con.

– Hunter: The Something About Monsters: Outline to writers.

Reason to Drink: Lots of pic-a-nics.