Welcome to the New Year, friends!
Most of what Eddy and I discussed was housing in Atlanta (a lot of friends are shuffling housing and jobs), and the WW 2014 Schedule. We’ve got some pretty great submissions from the Developers (which is how a year’s schedule is put together: interested parties pitch their ideas and I take those delicious ingredients and try to make them into an awesome dish for the year). Can’t tease you folks much right now, because I need to submit the line-up to CCP for approval, but I promise I will once things are OK’d. And we caught up on the holiday activities we each were involved in.
I will share with you folks a bit of internal structuring that started Monday as well, in that after Eddy and I were done I convened another meeting with the folks who are currently involved with running or putting together the pieces behind the scenes of Onyx Path. These aren’t the Devs, but the guys who enable us to get projects done, out the door, and into your hands (tablets). I would consider a fair number of the Devs to be vital and engaged with not just their lines but Onyx Path as a whole, and will I’m sure invite them into this new weekly meeting as needed, but my purpose with this particular meeting is to look at the week ahead and make sure that we’re all on the same page with graphics, web communication, marketing (as much as we currently are doing), and the business of building up Onyx. I really feel that we were stumbling along enough last year that this year we need to be in at least one weekly mind-meld, like my meetings with Eddy.
And here now, the news:
– God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and some art is being CCP Approved.
– Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is in post-writing Development.
– Mummy the Curse is approved by the CCP Review Board and the index is almost done- illness over the holidays delayed things. The MtC Kickstarter was funded after about 33 hours and has passed the 300% funding milestone. 10 Stretch Goals have been achieved, including a Screen, a fiction Anthology, two city books, Washington DC and Rio, and a passel of other cool stuff. If you haven’t checked it out, we have 28 hours to go before it closes!
– EX3: Had a couple of fantastic talks with the Devs and they are still pushing hard to complete this by February. One of our talks was just about the Deluxe EX3 Kickstarter, and if we can pull it off it should be the most amazing one yet, really integrating the Reward Tiers and Stretch Goals with the launch of the new edition. This is still something we want to Kick-off in early February.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2 is done in layout and ready for me to proof today, with most of the art in for review. We are going to try and get its Deluxe Edition Kickstarter live early next week.
– V20 Anarchs Unbound‘s writing is in various stages of completion and red-lining.
– Deluxe V20 Children of the Revolution is done shipping except for a couple of Reward Tiers that need personal handling. The PDF and PoD versions are on sale at DriveThru RPG. If you didn’t get involved with the KS for this, now is your chance to pick up this beautiful and cool book. Justin and company went all out to present awesome characters, and the art is stunning.
– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter Compiling Surveys. Mike Lee is writing his novel. Proof is at CCP for Approval. Aileen is working on the Storyteller Screen and Wallpaper. Trying to find the best way to deliver the classic PDF rewards (and then the W20 PDF itself) to KS backers.
–Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has been confirmed for September-ish 2013 and Phil Brucato has started assigning writers and has started writing his part.
– W20 Changing Breeds is also in Art Direction and Editing. We have to get backer info and photographs from the w20 Deluxe Kickstarter backers so that folks who are going to appear depicted in the art can get us in photos for reference.
– W20 Rage Across the World is in Art Direction and Editing- check out the W20 CB blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/
– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.
– Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is ready for Editing and Art Direction.
– Mage Translation Guide has begun being written.
– W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined.
Reason for Drinking: Last weekend WW founder Stewart Wieck was married in Houston. Congrats, Stew! I had a great time and was out every night with Mike Tinney- which might also be so much drinking that we never have to have a drink again. Right.
Thanks for the updates 🙂
Anything in regards to the Book of the Wyrm?
Added update up there.
Many thanks! 🙂
What are the next steps for Mummy after the completion of the index, if I might ask?
Prepping for PDF, Print, PoD, various versions like a single book version and breaking the Player’s and Storyteller’s sections and the SAS apart into their own books. Adding in the backer’s names will need to be done at some point.
Will the EX3 Kickstarter be a literal Deluxe thing, like W20, or more like the MtC one?
I’ll admit I’m biased towards the latter.
It’ll be Deluxe to start.
Will there be non-deluxe levels of backing to get a non-deluxe book?
The current plan is pretty much what our publishing model has been for awhile- PDFand physical PoD versions (this is your regular release version) and the KS allowing us to do a Deluxe version. We are looking into an ultra-deluxe version, but that’s still way up in the air and might not happen.
The reasons why we don’t do a traditional hardcover version as well as a Deluxe version in a Kickstarter are threefold:
1) The whole reason we go to the exhausting (but fun!) effort to run Kickstarters is to create projects we wouldn’t do like a Deluxe version which just costs too much to front, and which we aren’t set up to manage in the very ways KS and Amazon do.
2) The PoD versions are getting more and more to the quality of traditionally printed books- even where they were in 2013 was about where our book quality was 20 years ago. And DriveThruRPG is as easy to use as Amazon.
3) There is a minimum amount of books that need to be produced with every run of the press or it’s not worth them turning the presses on. Figure 1000 for traditionally printed books, and you, the publisher, are still paying a lot for that small a run. The reason we were able to do an ultra limited run for the Heavy Metal Deluxe W20 was that it was a specialty press in order to do the metal slab cover. And even with that, 200 was a hard and fast minimum, and cost a lot to do.
Hope that answers your question- maybe more than was needed. 🙂
Such an exciting start to the year! Can’t believe how the Mummy Kickstarter blew it’s goals out the water. Here’s looking forward to the Exalted Kickstarter and the insane amount of money we all are going to throw at it.
Here, here!
Any news on the updated Red List from the Children of the Revolution Kickstarter?
Red lines came back from Justin to Matt and he’s working on those changes. More solid news when I have it.
am i correct that there will be no Kickstarter for the God Machine Chronicle? i ask because i’m hoping that in the best sense that means the book should be out to pdf fairly soon, yes no?
Still up in the air.
For those (including myself) that isn’t interested in a Deluxe Leatherbound edition of various books (HH2, among others) but still want to support the KS (and get a PDF before the others) and will buy the PoD down the line anyway, why not have a reward tier that gets you a PoD copy when one gets available (a gift certificate for the exact sum, a 100% discount on the product or something to that end)? I remember the V20C kickstarted has a reward tier that got you the Deluxe and a PoD version (granted that one was signed by Justin Achilli) but still, you have offered PoD’s as a reward in the past. I would greatly appriciate it if you would do so in the future.
Regards
Christofer
A valid request, and one that has been discussed and (hopefully) still being mulled around to figure out how it would work.
the V20C had “issues” (to put it lightly) with the shipper who was paid to combine the PoD and Deluxe editions and ship them out.
I’ve suggested a “Coupon” to Matt and Richard, and they’ve said they’d look into it. It’s still good for others to voice their opinions and interests in similar rewards too.
I too would like to receive a “coupon” to redeem PoD books through DriveThruRPG and have it delivered separately from the Deluxe book (especially if it means i could get it before the Deluxe edition!) Of course, it won’t be signed, or anything, but… I think it’s still a good thing to offer, if they can figure it out. 🙂