Scarred Lands Finds New Home with Onyx Path Publishing and Nocturnal Media

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SCARRED LANDS FINDS NEW HOME WITH ONYX PATH PUBLISHING AND NOCTURNAL MEDIA

October 11, 2013 – Nocturnal Media and Onyx Path Publishing are proud to announce that they have jointly purchased the rights to the Scarred Lands fantasy setting.

Rich Thomas, CEO and Creative Director at Onyx Path Publishing: “Scarred Lands was one of my favorite settings to world-build during my days at White Wolf, along with Scion and Trinity, and I’m just thrilled that Onyx Path, teamed up with my good friend Stewart Wieck’s company Nocturnal Media, has a chance to revisit and revitalize this epic fantasy world that’s been warped and twisted by the wars of gods and titans.”

In the Scarred Lands, the gods and the titans warred for supremacy, while vast armies of mortal creatures fought beside their creators. The monstrous spawn of the titans violently engaged humans, elves, dwarves and other Divine Races. Now 150 years after the defeat of the titans, the world remains scarred and untamed. Even Ghelspad, the most populated and mapped continent of the Scarred Lands, plays host to vast unexplored regions; guards unsolved riddles from ancient cultures; and taunts adventures with the promise of undiscovered riches hidden among ruined civilizations.

“Rich and I are very excited to once again control the destiny of the Scarred Lands,“ says Stewart Wieck, Publisher at Nocturnal Media. “This fantasy world was the combined effort of many talented developers at White Wolf a decade ago. Rich and I were very hands-on with the world from the beginning, and feel like there is a lot more that both we and the setting can offer.”

The Scarred Lands was one of the most successful and engaging campaign settings to arise during the wild and crazy days of the D20 license. While it is richly detailed in over two dozen game and fiction titles, Nocturnal Media and Onyx Path Publishing have plans to reimagine the setting and system to excite a modern gaming audience as well as to thrill fans of the original game.

About Onyx Path

Onyx Path Publishing was founded by industry veteran and long-term White Wolf Creative Director Richard Thomas. The company collaborates with other experienced designers, developers, artists, and writers to bring new (and existing) games like Scion®, Vampire: the Requiem®, Exalted®, and Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition® to fans worldwide via PDF and physical PoDs through DriveThruRPG.com and Onyx’s many successful Kickstarter campaigns for Deluxe traditionally printed editions.

For more about Onyx Path Publishing, visit us at: www.theonyxpath.com

Or, find us on Twitter @TheOnyxPath or Facebook.

About Nocturnal Media

Nocturnal Media, LLC is a Houston-based game development studio specializing in games, applications and interactive multimedia on a broad range of platforms – from printed product like books and boards to all the latest tools, including augmented reality. We create with an ethos of rigorous, old-school game development and a focus on content-rich design. Our studio was founded by Stewart Wieck (author and game designer who established White Wolf Publishing in 1986, publisher of Vampire: The Masquerade and the series of World of Darkness games) and Oliver Diaz (principal owner of FuelFX, provider of turn-key creative and branding services for companies like BP, Dell, Tyco, Nabors, Chevron, Schlumberger, Halliburton and Vestas).

“Our innovation is content.”

Find us at www.nocturnal-media.com, on Facebook, or follow Stewart on Twitter @stewartwieck.


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33 responses to “Scarred Lands Finds New Home with Onyx Path Publishing and Nocturnal Media”

  1. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    Still have my books. Writing was great, world building was great. Art was phenomenal.

  2. Chad Avatar
    Chad

    Scarred Lands was one of my two favorite campaign setting. It’s great to hear that it’s coming back. When you talk about the plans to reimagine the setting are you talking about a Scarred Lands Revised Edition or something more drastic?

  3. tau neutrino Avatar
    tau neutrino

    So what system will it use? D20?

  4. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Great Setting, one of the few campaign settings that came out where I got every single book. Looking forward to seeing what’s coming now.

  5. Daniel Avatar
    Daniel

    Perhaps an alternate Pathfinder setting?

    1. Harrison Avatar
      Harrison

      It’s what I used when Pathfinder came along, I vastly preferred using it’s system over 3.$.

  6. AGS Avatar
    AGS

    Please, let it be a Pathfinder-compatible game, as PF is THE 3.x-like system still alive (AND prospering) after the end of D&D3.5.

    Plus, the core rules are translated into my language 😉

    1. tau neutrino Avatar
      tau neutrino

      Maybe they should use Hackmaster.

  7. Harrison Avatar
    Harrison

    I still have the books, I always felt that what killed the setting was the 3e to 3.5 transition. Going into Termana instead of revising & expanding on Ghelspad proper was a bad move. The better writing was under 3e but the stats of characters & creature’s were off & under 3.5 the characters & creatures stats were correct but the writing wasn’t as crisp or cohesive.

  8. Patman Avatar
    Patman

    This is great news. I also am hoping for Pathfinder/PF-compatible (or setting neutral).

  9. justanothergeek Avatar
    justanothergeek

    Awesome! Good news just keep coming. Scarred Lands is, at least in my mind, in the top 3 Settings for D&D along with Ravenloft and Planescape, only these 3 have always explored the full potential of D&D. It broke my heart when the line was discontinued and the sad part is I discovered it on the eve of it’s cancellation. This news made my day.

  10. richt Avatar
    richt

    Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm and support!

    We’re not looking at making huge decisions about systems and how changed and what kind of books, or any of that, right now. Stew and I are going to take the time to examine exactly what we want to do with Scarred Lands and the best way or ways to get this wonderful setting out to both old fans and new players.

  11. Burtacamoose Avatar

    This is most excellent news! Any news as to whether or not you’ll be bringing this back to life via storyteller system, something more OSG, or something entirely new?

  12. ruemere Avatar
    ruemere

    Pathfinderizing SL may be not the best of options – this is highly competitive market right now, with quite a degree of system mastery required. Secondly, given the breadth and wealth of already published and still available material, putting new crunch books may also be a wrong choice.

    System-agnostic Campaign Companion though, supported with a decent adventure could be nice though. And use of 13th Age’s Archmage system (by Pelgrane Press, written by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, this is a relative newcomer d20 with already established fanbase due to high product quality) could be a winner here.
    Note: Archmage engine system is very simple and highly polished version of d20.

    Regards,
    Ruemere

  13. Michael Arellano Avatar
    Michael Arellano

    OMG!!!! Scarred Lands was one of the most detailed of all the D20 settings and offered a variety well situated lands from Ghelspad to Termena. Great way how this setting was handled and how it was the first to have detailed class books, and innovative many rules that found there way into 3.5 and Pathfinder.
    Some of the questions teased in books I hope are answered like…. Dragons (Elven Sourcebook hint that many are godlike in power!), Ashumas (A god later mentioned in Lost Lands), more info on some of the dead gods hinted at like Miradum and Hadarus, and who/what is Yugman the Sage….. please make this setting Pathfinder compatible.

  14. Xaltotun Avatar
    Xaltotun

    13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age! 13Th Age!

    Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

    1. Kirt Avatar

      The Scarred Lands calls out for a 13th Age treatment. Seriously.

  15. Teragen Avatar
    Teragen

    Woot! You guys know you rock, right?

  16. Telperion Avatar
    Telperion

    I’m pleased to hear about this. I’m currently running a Scarred Lands campaign set in Hornsaw using Pathfinder as my system. Got all of the published books (except that Slarecian Legacy-book) right next to my Pathfinder books, and it works beautifully. Whatever plans you may have for the future please know that my gratitude for bringing this campaign setting to life so many years ago knows no bounds.

  17. Deepfire Avatar
    Deepfire

    I would like to see a system that works fine with very high level characters – I am not really satisfied with high level d20/PF. Rolemaster comes to my mind here …

  18. Grimtina Avatar
    Grimtina

    Yay… that’s about the best news in a while. Yes please make it a PF setting.

  19. David Shepheard Avatar

    I just found out about this over at the Scarred Lands forum at The Piazza. (Even the Scarred Lands page on Facebook has not covered this yet.)

    What with scarn.com getting attacked by spammers, you might need to start working to connect with the fanbase. The Scarred Lands forum at The Piazza was not the world’s largest SL communty *before* scarn.com got killed, but I’m not sure who else is out there now.

    What sort of timescale are you guys thinking of working to? Are you going to have time to hook up with fans or make some guerilla marketing tools available to anyone that wants to help spread the word?

    When do you think you will be able to announce what rules system you will be going with? Someone has mentioned Pathfinder, but have you considered sticking with 3.5 and publishing your own Scarred Lands PHB, DMG and MM replacements, so that the original setting products can be reprinted (or put out on Print on Demand)?

    Are you planning to do any system neutral stuff (like an Atlas of the Scarred Lands) so that fans who have the old products can use your new stuff even if you do change to a new rules system?

    1. IanW Avatar
      IanW

      The Scarred Lands page on Facebook isn’t ours.

      As Rich mentioned in his latest Monday Meeting blog, we probably won’t have anything out before 2015, so there’s a long way before we get into much detail on what and how we’ll be doing it.

  20. Beastman Avatar
    Beastman

    Glad to hear that the Scarred Lands are coming back. So, nothing against Pathfinder (I played it from the very start, but stopped playing last year and turned to OSR games) but IMHO Pathfinder would be a bad choice. The market is full of Pathfinder products – most of them of high quality. Nearly everyday, new books / pdfs appear out of nowhere. I’m sick of Pathfinder, having trouble deciding what to buy and what not to buy. It’s simply is too much – even if you stick to official products from Paizo. so please consider to not use Pathfinder as your rule’s base even if using another system would mean more work for you. Thanks for listening.

  21. DE Avatar
    DE

    So many great memories across several Scarred Lands campaigns from Ghelspad to Termana and back again!

    I’d love to see a Fate version of this very rich setting!

  22. Conway Avatar
    Conway

    I’m so excited to see a Scarred Lands update. I’d love to see the Pathfinder ruleset as I don’t know anything other than 3.5. I have every SL book and will admittedly buy everything, regardless of system.

  23. Nightflier Avatar
    Nightflier

    I realize that nobody is asking for the fan opinion just yet, but I would support Pathfinder Scarred Lands firstly and system-neutral secondly. And SL using some other system, either unique or something else, I would ignore entirely. The reason is this: I don’t have the time to learn new rules. My players don’t have the time to learn new rules. We are now playing Midnight by FGG, using PF, Midgard by Kobold Press and Amethyst by DEM. Midgard and Amethyst would be completely ignored by me and my players if it weren’t for PF logo on the covers. Just saying.

    We stopped playing Iron Kingdoms because they’ve decided not to use PF rules.

  24. chazz Avatar

    Ill buy everybook no matter the system but pathfinder would be best for u,everybody is using that these days according to the money generated towards tabletop RPG.

  25. Kthulhu Avatar
    Kthulhu

    Swords & Wizardry!

  26. adalchemist Avatar
    adalchemist

    Make it PF please

  27. vodacce Avatar

    Pathfinder+ 13th age as a stretch goal double win

  28. Caliburn101 Avatar
    Caliburn101

    I understand the clamour for a Pathfinder version.

    However, this gameworld, for which I own every book and have run many times, would do very well indeed converted to D&D 5th Edition.

    It would be far easier to represent the gritty and dangerous nature of Scarn with such rules as Bounded Accuracy and less ‘Christmas Tree’ magical item progression would reflect FAR better the magical items found on most NPCs etc. Scarred Lands has always made magical items more unique in feel and less generic.

    So – if you must release crunch material for newer system, or indeed comletely new material – please, please make it 5th Edition. By all means make it PF too – but 5th Edition is the spiritual home of this campaign world.

  29. Steve Devaney Avatar

    Just curious if there is a good high resolution map out there of Ghelspad and Termana. I’ve purchased most of the source material for the setting but the continental maps are really hard to read. I’d hoped to find one in the gazetteer but no dice.