Not much in the way of cultural reference in our talk today- mostly talking approval processes and schedules. Did go over a bit on the #1reasonwhy commentaries on Twitter and elsewhere as both Eddy and I have very strong opinions on the importance and value of women game designers and other creators. One of the great parts of hearing from the community during the V20 and W20 projects has been hearing the stories from fans who became so because they or a friend felt like WW’s products didn’t shut them out. And a bunch of those fans (male and female) went on to be creators in the RPG and computer game industry- where they’ve faced other struggles for acceptance and just simple respect as the commentaries make appallingly plain. Thanks to Eddy for letting me know what was going on there, and then we moved from real world issues right to the unreal world of creating paper RPGs and what’s what:
– Silent Knife (VtR) I got the new hard proof, it looks good, expect to see this made available on DTRPG this week.
– The God Machine Chronicle Fiction Anthology (nWoD) is on sale now at DriveThruFiction (and cross available at DTRPG too I believe). If you want more WW Fiction, check this out and spread the word.
– Conventionbook: NWO (cMtA) I wrote “Still looks good for November- we will get this out as scheduled!” last week and in fact we did! Yeah! Sales are excellent and we’ll see how folks like this. Check it out on DTRPG and write a review- let other folks know what you think about the first new official Mage the Ascension book in years!
– God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) and Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is still being written. As some folks might have read on Twitter, God Machine is in editing and tight, tight development.
– Mummy the Curse has been reviewed in second proof form, and with a few tweaks we hope to get this in front of the CCP Review Board and out to an editor for the Index. (Ha ha ha for all of you joking about WW indexes, but check out the V20 index and tell me we’re not serious about them). Still pulling together the KS- every time I get ready to submit, I get new info that makes me reconfigure the KS.
– EX3 to say again: Slated for Feb 2013 now. Just talked with the Devs and things are moving along nicely here- because of the intricate machine that is Exalted, each change has to be carefully fit into the whole. And that is taking time. But the manuscript is coming together, the systems are in developer playtests in preparation for being sent to external playtesters, and art notes are being written soon. Not Kickstartering this this year-we’ll get back to you on when, but Feb 2013 looks good.
– V20 Hunters Hunted 2 is in Editing and Art Direction this week, and Anarchs Unbound‘s outline is out to writers and on the V20 blog: http://whitewolfblogs.com/v20/.
– Deluxe V20 Children of the Revolution is at the shippers. Justin is signing a bunch of books as per the rewards, I signed a T-shirt and sent it to him, and I’ll have a Kickstarter Update to let our wonderful Backers know where things stand. The PDF and PoD versions is 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 Surveys are out. Mike Lee is writing his novel. I looked at the W20 first proof and while there are changes, it looks sweet so far.
–Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has been confirmed for September-ish 2013 and Phil Brucato is on the case!
– 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.
– Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.
– Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is being written.
– W20 Rage Across the World seems to be almost done development according to Stew Wilson- Stew is another hero pushing to get us back on schedule- check out his blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/
Reason To Drink: Unseasonably warm weather here at Onyx Path headquarters- we drink because the warmth is a lie from winter, but we love it anyway.
I know this is a ways away, but I’m curious as to who is going to be developing the Mage Translation Guide. I’d love to mix some of that NWO paranoia into an Awakening game.
Any odds of getting another Mummy spoiler while we wait?
I sure hope so. I’m super pumped about this. The new mage and vampire books have been fantastic.
I’ll talk to Mr Suleiman. See if he has something up his sleeve- most likely more info will be included in the Kickstarter info.
Nice, thanks for the update.
Thanks much, Rich. We’re trying to be patient, I promise!
So any chance of seeing mummy sometime next week?
Not in completed form.
The naysayers are saying that Mummy will not be out this year, but can I send my Santa Mummy a wish and ask it to please give me the joy of Curse this month?!?
We’re pushing as hard as we can to do just that.
In the words of a great Earthican philosopher, “Shut up and take my money!” 😎
Hello!
I was wondering, any chance we could hear about Scion too? I heard there was going to be a new edition, but I can’t find anything else about it. Thanks!
Yes, we’re doing a new Scion.
That’s about all the information that’s available right now. It’s still too far in the future to say anything definitive about it.
That’s enough to satisfy me. I love Scion. I’d love to see a bit more addition in the way of pantheons; I’m itching for an official take on the Sumerian/Babylonian/Akkadian pantheon, and maybe one or more African and/or North American pantheons.
Thank you IanW. 🙂
Do we know whose going to work on it? Or even that is too far ahead?
Glen: Indeed. More pantheons, more lore for inspiration. I’d love to see also: Less going all over the books to find that one creature, power or rule. And a more solid system. With those tweaks, man, Scion would be the THING. I ran a table top game for a couple of years spread out across 4 groups of players all I in the same universe. That was easily my second best run as an ST ever.
Right now, just like with Trinity, we’re really talking a good holistic look at the whole of Scion, what works and what doesn’t and what could be added. Any ideas folks have can be added on the Scion WW forum pages or here or on the OP site.
Thank you richt, your open-mindedness about this is very much appreciated. I’ll gladly accept the invitation. Hopefully, when you said “Here” you really did mean “Here”. I’ll try to stay succinct.
1. Setting: It’s magnificent. The entire world and its history is our playground. Any encyclopedia on mythology turns into an endless supply of story hooks. I wouldn’t change this for the world. The absence of a meta plot in this setting is a good thing, and I think it should remain this way.
2. Changes to Mythos: It can sometimes get confusing when doing historical research for something due to changes or extrapolations that were made in the Scion version. While I completely understand the need for such changes, may I suggest a side bar near the biggest of these so we know what to expect when we start looking deeper than the Scion books? It would prevent people using something and later finding out that it’s been altered.
3. System and Rules: I mean no disrespect, and I have had years of fun with vanilla Scion. But I have to be honest, some of the rules do not work well once in actual play. The tick system is brilliant, but hard to implement when a character wants to try to intercept someone else’s action. Furthermore, there’s a lot of rules which are all over the books and hard to find. May I strongly suggest a quick sheet with all the derived stats and rules clearly outlined in one or two pages?
3.2 Social VS Willpower: It is far too easy to resist social powers. Any man in the world can refuse Aphrodite by spending a willpower. I think not.
3.3 Knacks: Once a characters starts to do things with 7+ automatic successes, descriptions becomes fairly over the top to the say that least. There are several things described as “Knacks” that I think would be very much okay to just do with that many successes without needing to spend willpower or legend. Particularly when it comes to social knacks. For example “Hard Sell” for demigods, you can order a crowd to do something for you such as “buy this book” for the cost of one willpower. At basic demigod levels of Manipulation, you get 7 successes before rolling any dice. That’s more than enough to do the same without a knack. This is true of several knacks. May I suggest either reworking the automatic success concept or the idea behind such knacks.
3.4 Purviews: Several very high level Boons are very nice, but not at all powerful. Later books have introduced the idea of alternate Boons, if I may suggest: this may be a great way to allow these powers to be kept within the purview, but be lower level alternate boons while keeping higher levels ones truly epic.
4. Book layout: Hero, Demigod and God book layout was a great idea, but in retrospect it’s hard for STs to find what they’re looking for in there (was for me after a while, anyway). Searching for a specific monster usually requires going through all the books when you don’t know the contents by heart or haven’t played for a while.
Furthermore, the end of the books were for storytellers only, but they contained several creatures and birthrights that could be used for players as creatures. That made it very hard to keep players from reading it all.
I feel I should suggest a fix because I want this to be constructive and not negative, but I really have no idea how to best adapt the layouts. May divide everything by pantheon?
5. Faith-binding: Absolutely brilliant core concept, but ultimately not usable as is at all. The storyteller has far too many things to think about and do. Faith-Binding alone if done as per the game rules would nearly be a full time job. Several good ideas have been said about this in forums and it would take far too much space to recap here. So, I’ll leave it at “Brilliant Idea that needs works”.
Thank you for listening. Hopefully, I managed to keep this positive and constructive. I mean no disrespect to anyone who worked on the original Scion by my above comments. Scion is my second favorite Role Playing game and that’s thanks to all your hard work and your brilliant ideas. I thank you all for all the fun I had while playing Scion.
Is there an expected release period (Q1 2013, Q2, etc) for Mummy the Curse yet? I’m stoked about this and am part of a group planning a White Wolf themed gaming convention in Pennsylvania. Ideally, if there’s enough time, I’d to schedule the con as a Mummy the Curse release event.
Where are you at in PA? You should let me know what you’re thinking about at richt@theonyxpath.com and we can talk about some kind of support.
This sounds like a great idea. And depending on when it happens, I might be able to contribute to that support in some way, be it through material, in-person, or via Skype.
I’ve never had a chance to travel to any WW based con. Funny considering I move all over the country constantly, having something in PA would be close enough to travel to for once. I’d love to hear more if you have more info to share where can I find it. S.M?
And yea, it really is warm here in the D.C. area isn’t it?
First, Rich, I sent you can email with my info.
Second, for everyone interested in this Con idea that I’ve pitched, here are some details. I’m in the planning stages but the feedback is the right encouragement to make it happen.
Where: South of Harrisburg, PA, at a hotel off of exit 61 of I-81. Also near the PA Turnpike, 283, 78, and 83.
When: Early 2013. I need 3 months lead time to make it a go, so March is the earliest.
Length: 1 day. 12 hours. 10am-10pm. Registration starts at 10. First game at 1030.
Capacity: 75, including Storytellers and Support staff. The room will hold up to 100, but that’s a bit tight. The tables seat 6-8.
Cost: $10. Discount for pre-registering online.
Website: TBD.
Game Schedule: Ongoing morning and evening sessions with staggered starts. 4 hours of time alloted for each game with a 1 hour gap between games at a particular table to allow for over run and wrap up. Storytellers can take both sessions at a table if they want to do a single long game. First games start at 1030, last games start at 530. With this schedule everyone who shows up before noon should get in at least 8 hours of gaming.
There is space, in the current plan, for open tables and free play if desired.
Storytellers: I have 4 storytellers lined up willing to run. The games in mind right now are: Mummy The Curse (if things work out), Promethean/Vampire (he hasn’t chosen yet), Hunter the Vigil, and Werewolf the Apocalypse. I may be able to wrangle someone to run Exalted and am open to anyone who reads this and would commit to running a game or two.
Yep- I got your email. This sounds like a pretty easy visit for me- circumstances permitting. We’ll keep in touch in terms of what Onyx Path can do to help out- thanks!
Hi Richt, Im sure you have chatted with Louis, organizer for our local WOD meetup: Dead Gamers Society. We too are planning to run some big events locally in Fullerton & Pasadena, CA. It would be great if we too could count on your support 🙂
That’s right. The Dead Gamers Society is planning a release and gaming event for Mummy the Curse. Likely sometime after the games release, so we can digest it first. And, that’ll kick off a monthly Mummy event in Pasadena. JBurgos will be one of the Storytellers for Mummy. And, at Strategicon on President’s Day weekend, we’ll be showing off Mummy too.
Rich, if you are ever in the Los Angeles area, look us up, we’re making sure the World of Darkness flag is flying solid and high.
Absolutely, I’d love to meet you all. 2013 is going to be the year we get into more sorts of support and marketing efforts- this year was about setting up the methods of getting cool books made again.
I have to say thank you to you fine folks for keeping the torch lit and held up high.
Oh yeah, recently, we rethemed our website to a Mummy the Curse theme. Looks good I think. Check it out.
I bought The God Machine Anthology, read about a quarter of it and I have to say it is quite, quite good. Well above any gaming fiction standards. I’d easily recommend it to anyone who has interest in WoD-like themes, it’s not just an intro or a teaser for the game book.
I’m fairly certain I’ll buy The Silent Knife after I’m done reading The God Machine Anthology.
Woot, good to hear Mummy’s on the cusp!~
I just noticed that the cover art for NWO is signed “SHY 99” – that’s rather a lot older than I would have expected the art to be. Does that mean the art was commissioned back then, but that the book was just never pushed all the way through? Slightly confused, especially since ItX was a 2001 book. Does it also mean that all the Convention Books cover art has already been done?
Yeah, it has – they were originally the chapter-openers in the Guide to the Technocracy. There’s an ad for all of the convention books from a turn of the millenium Mage book that shows which is which, though the Convention symbols are also a dead give-away.
Aha! Here you go;
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?586820-White-WOlf-release-schedule-2011-2012&p=14234858#post14234858
Ahh, right – makes sense 🙂 Been a long while since I’ve last looked at GttT, which would explain why I didn’t recognise it.