Podcast [White Wolf] Montags-Treffen, Blogcast & Darker Days

Hunterrrrriffic!

By richt – January 28, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

If you haven’t noticed, I’m using some Hunters Hunted II art as the Featured Art in these notes. That’s because we went live with the Deluxe V20 Hunters Hunted II Kickstarter last Thursday and it hit the funding goal in about two days- which is awesome! Now we’re going for additional info about the classic WoD hunter organizations like The Inquisition as Stretch Goals, so check it out and help us add that section to the book. And to be clear, for folks who might have heard the word hunter too many times- this isn’t for Hunter: The Reckoning, or Hunter: The Vigil (although you could use the info in it for those game lines), this is a reimagining of the very first mortal hunters book we did in the first year or so of Vampire the Masquerade. It was in that book that the mortal side of the predator/prey matrix was first really brought, ahem, into the light.

So, that means that Eddy and I talked a fair bit about Kickstarter as well as Indie-agogo, another crowd funding site that our good friend and EX3 Art Director Maria Cabardo is using for fundraising for her Indy documentary on the life of the seminal fantasy artist Jeff Catherine Jones http://www.indiegogo.com/BetterThings. We constantly throw around theories of why the crowd funding sites work, what could be done better, etc- as I’ve said before, it’s all experimental from our point of view.
Before we even got talking, I was Skype assaulted by Teemu and BillB as they leaned into Eddy’s camera and then made Eddy talk to them for ten minutes (or maybe 45 seconds, I lost count).

Because we had big releases drift into 2013 and other projects hold closer to their release dates, there has been a ton of beautiful art rolling through the CCP Approval Board and so far, things have rolled along really smoothly (jinx, jinx!), which is a large part of what we tend to talk about business-wise.

I let Eddy know that he should join Onyx Path on Thursday anytime from 11-4 as we do our first AskMeAnything on Reddit. We’ll be posting more info as it gets closer, but if you ever wanted to literally ask any of the Onyx Path creative dynamos or myself anything at all, this is the place to do it. I haven’t done one of them before but it sounds like fun and I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s some stuff we’re doing:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and some art is being CCP Approved.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse did not get into PDF this last week as there were far more Page XX’s to put page numbers onto than previously imagined. But it should be ready soon as will links for the PDF Rewards we offered with the Mummy Kickstarter. Ace Developer CA Suleiman is currently re-blocking out the MtC release schedule in order to add in all the cool Rewards from the Kickstarter.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: I’m working with my old friend Maria Cabardo, one of the most talented designers and art directors in the business (or any creative business actually-Google her) on integrating the Devs ideas with a bunch of brilliant artists that she works with as well as on a new Exalted logo and map. Our intention is to have some smashing new pieces ready for the EX3 Kickstarter in early February.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2 layout is going into for CCP Approval. The Kickstarter for the Deluxe edition has already done wonderfully well, and we’re excited to see what additional Stretch Goals will be revealed.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is in post writing Development. I think Justin has been posting some things, on the WWBlogs.

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter Classic PDFs went out to backers of the Kickstarter. Mike Lee is half-way through his novel. W20 to the indexer. Aileen is working on the Storyteller Screen and Wallpaper. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline for prospective writers. Putting the W20 KS Stretch Goal projects into the schedule.

-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.

- W20 Rage Across the World is in Art Direction, Mike just had an artist have to drop their piece because of a scheduling demand from their day job- check out the W20 CB blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is in Editing and done in Art Direction.

- Mage Translation Guide has begun being written.

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

Reason for Drinking: It can’t really be the end of January, can it?

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Post Reddit AMA Jitters

By richt – February 5, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

That’s right, it’s like I’m back in Nam, knee deep in the rice paddies, and the we’re being hit from all directions- Eddy’s down! We all knew he’d be the first one, didn’t we?

So, for those of you who have No Idea WHAT I’m Talking About: the Onyx Path crew did a Reddit AskMeAnything session last Thursday that was just a crazy 4 to 6 hours of questions and comments being fired at the bunch of us who could log in: Ian Watson, Rose Bailey, Joe Carriker, Eddy Webb, Matt McFarland, Justin Achilli, Matt McElroy, John Morke, I think Dave Brookshaw got on there but by then I was shell-shocked and I’m sure I’m missing some folks. And if you can be shell-shocked in a good way, that’s what I was, because trying to keep up with the Reddit interface was exhilarating even while it seemed we’d never get to all the questions. We are definitely doing more of these, and at different times of the day, too. If I missed following up on any conversations, please accept my apologies and that it wasn’t deliberate. Many, many good points were made and answered- more info about Demon: The Thing and Exalted Third Edition than I’d seen, but we were supposed to answer honestly on an AskMeAnything so we did. Sometimes we all rushed to answer a general question and keep things rolling and the poor asker got four of us all saying the same thing essentially , but in our own ways. Here’s the link: http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/17mu3l/we_are_onyx_pathwhite_wolf_amaask_us_anything/

Also, while that was going on, the Deluxe Hunters Hunted II Kickstarter passed its first Stretch Goal and we’ll be adding a section on the Inquisition, those most ferocious of mortal vampire-hunting organizations, fueled by the fire of zealotry, first as a PDF and possibly right into the book as added content if we pass the next goal. But that raised a difficult decision that I thought I’d take right to the KS community: would you rather we add more extra content like Project Twilight, or the Arcanum, or a Hunter Fiction Anthology? I’m letting backers let us know what Stretch Goals they want next, and will announce once we get right on top of the current goal. Yeah, its kind of a stunt, but more importantly, I think it illustrates the difference in publishing with KS added into the mix- we can directly ask the folks who’ve already proved how much they want the product what would make it better for them- and then add it.

Besides the above, Eddy and I also talked about the community reaction to his Bloody Rites of Bloody Blood book outline (Of Blood). Some folks had their own ideas of what the book was going to be about, and Eddy says he was glad to be able to use the blog to describe the book he was envisioning and get folks to understand what kinds of cool info was going to be in there. Better now than when the book goes live, particularly because Eddy was really able to explain the value we place on the direction he’s going while letting folks know that other directions would also make fine books. I dunno, for some reason there’s a thing with gaming fans, and maybe it’s all fandom, that makes us think that a choice different than ours is somehow peeing on our ideas- instead of just being a different choice. I guess we take the stuff we care about personally. http://whitewolfblogs.com/v20/2013/01/29/blood-ritual-rites-of-the-bloody-blood/ Nevertheless, some great ideas in there, and Eddy is already tweaking the outline and a couple of the writers, so far, Jason Alexander and Matthew Sanderson, have already starter threads and blogs of their own.

Some other internal CCP stuff, all pretty routine, and I let him know that I mailed out 37 freelancer checks over the weekend, so that’s pretty good.

And here is more information about some of the books folks were asking after:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and some art is being CCP Approved.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - I sent out links for all of the Reward Tier free PDFs, as well as a preliminary version of the Mummy: The Curse PDF. While this version will soon be Updated to the actual version containing all the Backer names (and if you are a Backer, but still haven’t returned the all-important Survey, please get it in by Friday), a beneficial side effect of getting an early version out is that we are hearing about areas where the info isn’t as clear as it could be, as well as where we missed genuine mistakes during layout and editing. So we’ll be altering the text and layout to resolve those issues- brought up to us by our eagle-eyed fans. Thanks! Ace Developer CA Suleiman is currently re-blocking out the MtC release schedule in order to add in all the cool Rewards from the Kickstarter.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: I continue working with my old friend Maria Cabardo, one of the most talented designers and art directors in the business (or any creative business actually-Google her) on integrating the Devs ideas with a bunch of brilliant artists that she works with as well as on a new Exalted logo and map. Our intention is to have some smashing new pieces ready for the EX3 Kickstarter in February. The DEVs are currently head down and deep into the Charms section. Lots of stuff on the Reddit AMA about EX3.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2 layout is going in for CCP Approval. The Kickstarter for the Deluxe edition has already done wonderfully well, and we’re excited to see what additional Stretch Goals will be revealed (see above for how you can determine the added material for the book).

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is in post writing Development. I think Justin has been posting some things, on the WWBlogs.

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter Classic PDFs went out to backers of the Kickstarter. Mike Lee is half-way through his novel. W20 to the indexer. Aileen is working on the Storyteller Screen to the template provided by the printer and Wallpaper. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline for prospective writers. Putting the W20 KS Stretch Goal projects into the schedule.

-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. Time to talk about the art.

- W20 Changing Breeds is also in Art Direction and Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World is in Art Direction, Mike just had an artist have to drop their piece because of a scheduling demand from their day job- check out the W20 CB blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is in Editing, art is going to CCP for approval.

- Mage Translation Guide has begun being written.

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

Reason for Drinking: To warm up.

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Pope Unseated Due to Vampire Plot: Inquisition Called In

By richt – February 11, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

I was going to use another full-page piece of art from The Hunters Hunted II as the header art for this post, but then the Pope resigned, and how often can you use this Palpatine-looking photo on your blog? As for the title, well it’s pretty interesting that this Pope news is breaking just as we’ve added The Inquisition and Project Twilight write-ups to The Hunters Hunted II because of passing Stretch Goals on it’s Deluxe version Kickstarter- and are heading towards adding The Arcanum into the book as well. Coincidence?! I think not!

We’ve never used a Kickstarter to add actual content to the book being KS’d before, so it’s been a pretty cool experiment. You can check it out here because we still have a week to go: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-hunters-hunted-ii

Also, here’s an article with an interview with Justin Achilli with one of our German friends: http://obskures.de/2013/world-of-darkness-deluxe-hunters-hunted-ii-an-interview-with-justin-achilli

Eddy and I talked a fair bit about the economics of RPG production and how “sharpening the saw”, getting your internal processes in line, doesn’t directly affect how well a project sells, but is so very important in making sure you can produce those projects. Certainly, Onyx Path is in need of, and is currently doing, just that. Eddy’s favorite example is how easy it was to get an answer to a question about something, or to brain-storm ideas, when you could just pop down the hall in the old WW days. Now we need to use Skype, or Goggle Hangouts, and schedule a meeting that works for everyone. But we can work with folks all over the world. So that’s the trade-off.

Then my computer crashed, for no particular reason except it heated up. Finished up on the phone discussing who could write the extra Hunters Hunted II content that has been added on by the KS Stretch Goals, with Eddy stepping in to Develop that stuff so Justin can concentrate on the other stuff.

And stuff:
- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and some art is being CCP Approved.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - Gathering all the Backers’ Credits names from the Surveys so Mike can add them to the book. CAS has culled the various bits of errata, and Mike has already changed them. Working the Mummy schedule still.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: First art sketches coming in. Our intention is to have some smashing new pieces ready for the EX3 Kickstarter in February. The DEVs are currently head down and deep into the Charms section. Lots of stuff on the Reddit AMA about EX3.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2 is in for CCP Approval. Obviously, we’ll need to run all the extra sections past CCP after they’re written and laid out as well. The Kickstarter for the Deluxe edition has already done wonderfully well, and we’re excited to see what additional Stretch Goals will be revealed (see above for how you can determine the added material for the book).

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is almost done in post writing Development. You can check out Unlife in the Anarch Domains here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ymvzia_aSfCtl501GyJE1JH39VMBkW2Xs-xsOuyW1kA/edit

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter Mike Lee is half-way through his novel. W20 to the indexer. The Storyteller Screen and Wallpaper are up for CCP approval. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline and looking for prospective writers. Putting the W20 KS Stretch Goal projects into the schedule. The Skinner is ready for Editing.

-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. Talking to a guy about the art.

- W20 Changing Breeds is also in Art Direction and Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World is in Art Direction.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is done in Editing, art is going to CCP for approval.

- Mage Translation Guide has begun being written, we have an Editor ready.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

Reason for Drinking: Early Valentine’s Day dinner (the only one we could schedule) with my beautiful wife is at a place with both a Pimm’s Cup and a Capt. Morgan’s Old Fashioned on the menu.

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A Presidentially Delayed Monday Lunch Meeting

By richt – February 19, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Happy day after Presidents’ Day. I know this is a big deal holiday for every single person reading this, so I bring it up.

Eddy and I discussed the Deluxe Hunters Hunted II Kickstarter that just closed yesterday at 211% of the funding goal with Stretch Goals that added sections on The Inquisition, Project Twilight, The Arcanum, Organized Crime, a smattering of lesser-known hunter organizations, and hunter gear to the book itself. Like I said last week, this was the first time we added additional content to a book because the backers both requested those sections and pledged past the Stretch Goals, and I think the response was really exciting. I don’t know how or when we’ll use the same kind of goals again, but its nice to have such enjoyable goals added to our Kickstarter bag of tricks. We also allowed backers to be the determining factor in how many short stories we’d commission for a Hunters Hunted II short story anthology that Justin will develop, and that went really well as final continuing Stretch Goals. We’re at 7-8 stories, btw, which is a nice number for a small fiction book.

We talked a bit about the Open Dev Process and how now that folks are enjoying it that it’s become something they demand. Which is pretty gratifying for those of us who believe in the ODP, but fans being fans, there seems to be a bit of upset whenever an interesting project isn’t as fast, or as thorough, or whatever, compared to this other project that “did it right”. Since I hear the same thing from some people about our different Kickstarters, let me address this right now.

There is NO “one right way” to do these things. There are ways that resonate with you personally, but each project is different- and we want them that way. For a long time we’ve talked about “getting off the production treadmill” when it comes to making decisions about quality, and process, and creative talent, and part of that is to look at what works best to get the coolest project out to you folks. That means, we look at what is best for the project- knowing that the best book, or game-line, or fiction, is the project you (and we) deserve. Not the one that follows a set pattern of process, or rewards, or stretch goals, but the one that is created using a flexible set of tools. If Developer A is the best developer for Monkey: The Flinging, then that dev is who I want on the project. And if they love the Open Dev Process, then we throw wide those gates and you folks get all the blogs you could ask for, and more. If, however, they work better iterating their ideas with a small team behind the scenes, and are uncomfortable with revealing their cool ideas to everyone beforehand, then that’s the way info about the project will get released. I’m not going to force creative folks to adapt to my ideas of how a book should be developed even if I’m fully committed to the Open Dev Process. (Sorry if that was ranty, it wasn’t meant as anything but explanation of how I see things in this regard).

In any event, Eddy is certainly using the Open Dev blogs for V20: Rites of Blood and having a great time, just as Justin has for V20: Anarchs Unbound.
We talked CCP Approvals and got some great feedback on a bunch of art, and I let Eddy know that I’ll be submitting the 2014 WW Schedule this week once I hear back from our Devs on their thoughts now that it’s assembled.

And here’s where we are on 2013 projects right now:
- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and most art has been CCP Approved, but we need to redo a few pieces.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - A new PDF containing all the KS Backer names has been created and we’re going to upload that for backers to get this updated version and let them tell us if we messed up any names. I also expect that folks will have some comments on the changes that CA Suleiman made, and we’d like to hear them. Meanwhile, the PoD version is being readied, and Chaney is also splitting the single book PDF into Players, Storytellers, and SAS books to be bundled into the Virtual Box Set. And once I get a cover template from the printer now that the final page count has been settled, we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: More art sketches coming in. Our intention is to have some smashing new pieces ready for the EX3 Kickstarter in late February. The DEVs are currently head down and deep into the Charms section.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2 As above, we just wrapped up the Kickstarter for the Deluxe version, and all the new sections are getting written. We’re doing that while Amazon Payments verifies all the payments.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is almost done in post writing Development. You can check out How to shatter praxis and install your own Anarch utopia. here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dv0KioEpiNhKVeHIpFHA7ItYYPch8zEi9xrr1e8Pn7c/edit

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition Kickstarter W20 Index has doubled in size beyond our Indextrix’s dreams or nightmares. Expecting the clean files in a day or two. Mike Lee is half-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen and Wallpaper are approved by CCP. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline and looking for prospective writers. The Skinner is ready for Editing.

-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. Talking to a guy about the art.

- W20 Changing Breeds is pretty much approved art-wise and in Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World is in Art Direction.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is done in Editing, art is going to CCP for approval.

- Mage Translation Guide has begun being written, we have an Editor ready.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

Reason for Drinking: A toast to George and Abe. As I get older, I grow more amazed that they managed to do what they did in the times they were in

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Monday Meeting: Frustrating Thieves since 1955

February 25, 2013 By IanW
I was late to my weekly Monday Lunch Meeting with Eddy today, because I had to drive down to Philly and help deal with a situation at my late Mother’s house. Somebody broke in and ransacked the place- hence the opening pic- and so police were called, and all that stuff you do in this circumstance needed to be done. But the joke was on the thieves, as my Mom never had anything worth stealing. It was a point of pride with her that she didn’t need or like expensive things- in fact, other than enjoying electricity for TV and air conditioning, she could have been Amish. So, in the end, they made a mess (but not a nasty one thankfully), threw around some cushions, and for reasons unknown unmade the beds. No sign of extended habitation or vandalism. Although there was a twinge of outrage towards somebody rifling through the house I grew up in, it was really just a time-waster for me that made me late for the Monday Lunch Meeting. And now has made you late to read the stuff you’re really interested in.

In the abbreviated time we had left, Eddy and I discussed the Revised WW 2013 and 2014 schedule that is now in CCP’s hands for approval. Not much changed in terms of the projects in 2013 except for the release dates as I tried to anticipate any more shifts, but I think a lot of the projects for 2014 are pretty cool and designed to give a moment in 2014 to almost all the game-lines WW has. Once we get the WW Schedule hammered out with CCP, I’ll start letting folks put out some teasers here and there.

Since we had just played a session of Eddy’s V20 Chronicle last night, we also delved into something I had noticed during the session: the idea of personal scenes that are hidden from the rest of the players, and personal scenes that are played out in front of the other players. We had both last night and the two types of scenes served two pretty different purposes to the narrative. The Hidden scene is the more realistic- as players outside the sequestered group we know something is going on (or not if we really are role-playing and the scene is truly Hidden from us) and Eddy gets to leaven the results into the larger story later. The Overt scene is being played out in front of us players, but not our characters, so now we know something that realistically we shouldn’t but which allows us to be spectators in the narrative. And the Storyteller weaves the actions of the active characters into the narrative right there in front of us. Having booted non-participating players out of the room on occasion because “You wouldn’t hear this”, I’m personally more likely to opt for the Hidden scene option, but what I liked about it last night was that I felt like even though my character was across town pretending to be a street person, I as a participant in the night’s game was still engaged with the story and not reading an article waiting for my turn to play my character. And then at the end of the scene, Eddy asked if the participants were going to tell the rest of the Coterie and they answered “Yep, texting them right now”. So our characters got the info after all, but even the idea that we might not added tension and paranoia to our tense and paranoid game. In the end, we pretty much feel like this is just another tool to tell a story and get players immersed in it and that depending on the sort of game, and the narrative sophistication of the players (can you play a character that doesn’t know something you the player does?), both kinds of scenes have their roles to play.

And then there’s the lineup:
- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and most art has been CCP Approved, but a few redone art pieces are coming in.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - The new Backer PDF is live and we’re waiting to hear if the PoD files were approved by the printer. Once they are I’ll get a physical copy sent to me and if it’s cool, we’ll go live on DTRPG. And once I get a cover template from the printer now that the final page count has been settled, we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version. Chaney is working to get the Character Sheet Pack reward ready for Backers.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: More art sketches coming in and a few finals. Our intention is to have some smashing new pieces ready for the EX3 Kickstarter in early March. We’re working on a new logo, I have a cartographer rendering the new map, and we’ve actually got a very cool soundtrack put together for the KS video. There things are just taking some time to pull together. The DEVs are currently head down and deep into the Charms section.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are getting written. We’re doing that while Amazon Payments verifies all the payments.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is almost done in post writing Development. Our editor is standing by for the files this week. You can check out How to shatter praxis and install your own Anarch utopia. here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dv0KioEpiNhKVeHIpFHA7ItYYPch8zEi9xrr1e8Pn7c/edit

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: The Index looks to be huge but is now done and in the designer’s capable hands. We should be able to have an Advance PDF out to backers pretty quickly once the layout is OK’d by me. A little feedback from Backers as to their names while we arrange the PoD files, and then we’ll be prepping the Deluxe printer files. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20 and I hope to get the Wallpaper out to Backers very soon. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline and looking for prospective writers. The Skinner is going to Editing. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer.

-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. Talking to a guy about the art. That guy: pretty excited about the art.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is done in Editing, art is going to CCP for approval.

- Mage Translation Guide has begun being written, we have an Editor ready.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

Reason for Drinking: It could be worse, you could be living in Philadelphia. (If you are in Philly, or as far out as Quakertown like Chuck Wendig, take two drinks).

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It’s Wednesday and Finally Monday Because of Tuesday Addams.

By richt – March 6, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

Yep, things spiraled out of control around here because I didn’t get to write these notes and get them up on Monday, like normal. First of all, with the new year I’ve followed up every Monday Lunch Meeting With Eddy with a second meeting consisting of folks who are helping Onyx Path move forward as a company- which is different than the Development and Art teams that work on each book or line. We look more at the overall concerns for Onyx and right now, and for the past few weeks, we’ve been talking all the time about Marketing. Onyx Path wasn’t even announced until mid last year and that truncated what sorts of methods of information we had to use with all you great folks. As you might have noticed, we really only used social media like the WW Forums, various Facebook pages, my personal and OP‘s Twitter feeds, the Kickstarter communication venues, the Onyx Path website and these blogs. Any interviews or announcements came out as they went live, and with only a skeletal plan. So one of my goals in 2013 was to get our Marketing moving in a cohesive and directed fashion that encompassed and directed what we were already doing with social media, but which also included demo teams at cons and prize support and maybe even parties. So there’s been a lot to discuss in these Monday OP meetings as we got things sorted out, and the meeting has ballooned from an hour to, on some Mondays like this last one, four hours. So, I ran out of time to write this up. And then yesterday I sent out the links for the KS Backers’ copies of the Werewolf the Apocalypse Twentieth Anniversary Edition PDFs and that started out taking most of the day and kept going as I wanted to respond to and pull together the Backers’ comments. We’re finding some errors and omissions (Thanks to our eagle-eyed Backers!) but by and large, and with great joy on our part, the vast majority of the comments are in praise of such a beautiful and huge book. Which feels really great, let me say! (The comments are still coming, but the flood eased up overnight.) And I ran out of time to write this up.

So here we are at last, and now the notes from my meeting with Eddy: We started with talking about the pros and cons of Adobe Reader. Right now, its looking good for PDF review, but I was concerned that some of the better features from Acrobat would be missed if I didn’t install Acrobat on my new “main” computer. When I mentioned liking the pen tool in mark-ups for signatures and missed that in Reader, Eddy noted that there’s a HUGE HONKING BUTTON at the top right that says “Sign”. I am so smrt.

In reference to the delivery of the W20 PDF I talked about how getting a preview copy out really helps us clean up those bits of info and errata that even a bunch of eyes and several proofing stages miss. This related to some of the very detail oriented comments that fans post during the Open Dev Process that catch things the writers and Dev gloss over as they pull together the work of several different writers into a coherent whole. This sometimes creates a funny dichotomy with a community member wondering “How could they miss that bit that we talk about at almost every game session?”, and a Dev wondering “How did they catch that obscure reference from a forum post in 2001?” Or words to that effect. The great thing is that what is really a complementary relationship can now be part of how we pull these projects together and the two kinds of game knowledge can be united to make the games better.

We talked, as we should, about CCP Approvals and got some thumbs-up on some art and projects, and at the time the 2013-2014 Schedule was still under review. But as of today, I can say that CCP approved our proposed projects through the end of 2014! Woot! One of my questions about that is whether to release any of the 2014 schedule before Gen Con of this year…maybe in sections? I need to talk to my Marketing guys! (After all, I already know your response: tell us everything!) (And actually, I don’t hide this info just to tease you all. We’ve learned over the years that things WILL change, and people seem to see announced schedules as promises of chunks of heaven and get real miffed when those changes take anything away. So it doesn’t pay to announce things too far out).

Finally, although its not a WW-focused thing, I let Eddy know that we’ve been having some great discussions about both Scion and the Trinity Continuum with their respective Dev teams and hope to have more to say on development progress soon. Is that info you folks would like me to include here like I do the WW properties- keep it all in one update a week?

And here are those WW projects now:
- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and most art has been CCP Approved, but a few redone art pieces are coming in. A proof is with Matt McFarland: gentleman developer.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - The new Backer PDF is live and I’m waiting for a physical PoD copy to get to me and if it’s cool, we’ll go live on DTRPG. Still waiting on a cover template from the printer now that the final page count has been settled; we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version. Chaney is working to get the Character Sheet Pack and Wallpaper rewards ready for Backers this week.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Looks like this Kickstarter is happening mid-March now as we had a couple of delivery hiccups from our art folks- nothing that could be helped unfortunately, but things are still rolling and the art is looking sweet. We’re working on a new logo, I have a cartographer rendering the new map, and we’ve actually got a very cool soundtrack put together for the KS video. These things are just taking more time to pull together. The DEVs are currently head down and deep into the Charms section, getting together the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter, and getting their vocal cords tuned for the KS video.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are getting written. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is almost done in post writing Development. Our editor is standing by for the files this week. You can check out the Storytelling chapter here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12wSuBi0l8SHKDuzTBdunDvOQ9iHJUXPDRwkPqhie3G0/edit?pli=1

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: As I mentioned above, the W20 Backer PDF is out, and folks are loving it. A little feedback from Backers as to their names while we arrange the PoD files, and then we’ll be prepping the Deluxe printer files. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20 and I hope to get the Wallpaper out to Backers very soon. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline and looking for prospective writers. The Skinner is in Editing and Art Direction. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer (if you want to know who, bug Stew Wilson).

-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. Talking to a guy about the art. That guy: pretty excited about the art. Phil: also excited about writing the art descriptions for the full-page pieces of art.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is done in Editing, art is going to CCP for approval.

- Mage Translation Guide is being written, we have an Editor ready.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

Reason for Drinking: W20, at least in PDF form, has seen the light of day finally, and the WW 2013-2014 Schedule has been approved. This is a huge thing as it means we can plot out the next year and a half. It will be…glorious!

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The Screaming Cat What Screams At Midnight…

By richt – March 11, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

It has been a week of sleep disturbances culminating with Eddy postponing our bi-weekly V20 game because he couldn’t sleep well over the weekend due to a screaming cat. I choose to picture said cat as per the Featured Image with this blog. YMMV. Hearing about Eddy’s woes led to a discussion of the extremely uppity-downity (like timey-whimey, but different) energy cycles of creative folks and how self-discipline and professionalism can only force your body to do so much, and then you’re going to do what it tells you. Sometimes that means crashing and getting some serious sleep, sometimes that means that you’re staying up all night for no reason, monkey boy. It’s the body’s call, and the brain is just along for the ride. One of the things I’m trying to do with Onyx Path is to enable the cycles that our creative teams go through if that means they can summon forth more creative work than yelling and screaming at them because we have a deadline might produce. Sometimes, that bears amazing creative fruit, and sometimes we get a messed up schedule, and right now it means we get both. You can check out our Onyx Path website for a revised schedule that our webmaestro Ian is working on, and just because I said I would, here’s is the 2013 WW Schedule as agreed on with CCP:
March 2013

Mummy the Curse
VtR Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology
April 2013

Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition
nWoD- The God Machine Chronicle
MtAs- Convention Book: Progenitors
May 2013

V20- Hunters Hunted II
MtAw/MtAs- Mage Translation Guide
Exalted Third Edition
June 2013

Mummy the Curse- Guildhalls of the Deathless
W20- Book of Changing Breeds
VtR- The Strix Chronicle
July 2013

MtAs- Convention Book: Syndicate
Demon Translation Guide
Mummy the Curse- Book of the Deceived
EX3- Arms of the Chosen
August 2013

Demon the ??
V20- Anarchs Unbound
MtAs- Convention Book: Void Engineers
September 2013

Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition
EX3- The Realm
October 2013

M20- M20 SAS
Mummy the Curse- Sothis Ascends
W20- RAGE Across the World
November 2013

V20- Rites of Blood
Dt?: The Flowers of Hell
December 2013

W20- Book of the Wyrm
DA- Darkening Sky
HtV- Monstrous Basterds (title very tentative)
EX3- Dragon-Blooded: What Fire Has Wrought

As we’ve said with all our schedules, this one is subject to chaaaaange and these are the months we’d like to make the PDF/PoD versions available at DriveThruRPG.com. Also, if you were a backer of our last three Kickstarters, you’ll notice that I didn’t include the extra projects we took on as part of those Kickstarters as getting them fit in is something we’re still working on.

Eddy and I also had a decent chat about the differences between the members of a Dev team on the direction of a project they are working on together, and how those expectations need to be focused on what the Developer is looking to achieve. And how then that whole set of expectations needs to be considered along with those of the community. For example, we discussed the Anniversary Editions- not the main books themselves, but the continuing books we’re doing after the main one for the lines. If we are doing a version of a book published long ago, then why are we updating it? Some folks might want it to be a pure update to the X20 rules, some want them updated setting-wise to the year 2013, some want new info but in the style of the previous book, and some want to change all the stuff that bugged them previously. For the Dev team, the best way to pull these disparate impulses together is for the Dev to create a strong outline for the project that gives clear guidance to the team. Sometimes, for very new or different projects, we’d create an entire “bible” for the project to go into the details of the world we were creating. This was common sense to Eddy and myself, but as he has talked to other writers who haven’t worked for us in the past it appears our methods aren’t an industry standard. (And to be fair, WW wasn’t always consistent in implementation either).

Finally, I mentioned to Eddy something last week, but feel it’s worth noting here: I’ve had a lot of trouble staying logged on to the WW Forums, so I’m not posting there as much as I’d like. This is no reflection on how great the Forumites there are, and I hope you all are getting enough info via this blog project updates, and our Onyx Path Facebook and web sites and following us on Twitter. I’m @rich_thomas_ww and @TheOnyxPath.
As if my magic, or summoned by the screaming of a cat, here are the project updates:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) is in Layout and most art has been CCP Approved, but a few redone art pieces are coming in. A 2nd proof is with Matt McFarland: still a gentleman developer.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - So I asked for changes to the cover file after looking at the physical PoD copy as the tones were just too washed out and it dulled down the cover, Mike Chaney is putting a new version up for printer approval and we’ll get a new physical copy and if it’s cool, we’ll go live on DTRPG. Expect this to be next week. Still waiting on a cover template from the printer now that the final page count has been settled; we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version. Chaney is working to get the Character Sheet Pack rewards ready for Backers this week.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Looks like this Kickstarter is happening mid-March now as we had a couple of delivery hiccups from our art folks- nothing that could be helped unfortunately, but things are still rolling and the art is looking sweet. We’re working on a new logo- looking cool, I have a cartographer rendering the new map, and we’ve actually got a very cool soundtrack put together for the KS video. These things are just taking more time to pull together. The DEVs are currently head down and deep into the Charms section, getting together the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter, and getting their vocal cords tuned for the KS video.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and we’re getting art for them. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is almost done in post writing Development. Our editor is standing by for the files this week. You can check out the Storytelling chapter here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12wSuBi0l8SHKDuzTBdunDvOQ9iHJUXPDRwkPqhie3G0/edit?pli=1

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: As I mentioned above, the W20 Backer PDF is out, and folks are loving it. The feedback from Backers is being integrated and then we’ll arrange the PoD files, and then we’ll be prepping the Deluxe printer files. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20 and I hope to get the Wallpaper out to Backers very soon. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline and looking for prospective writers. The Skinner is in Editing and Art Direction. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer (if you want to know who, bug Stew Wilson).

-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. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) putting the cover together, getting the interior laid out.

- Mage Translation Guide is being written, we have an Editor ready.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: we’re talking about the big, big picture stuff that will affect the entire Continuum as opposed to individual games/settings. That “bible” idea mentioned above.

- Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. Joe looked through a secret project I threw at him out of the blue. He liked it.

Reason for Drinking: Uh, St. Paddy’s Day. I used to specifically not drink on this day, but Mike Tinney made me do it.

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So…Close…Now…

By richt – March 19, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

That’s really what this week feels like. So many things are so close to getting out to everybody.

But first, the Monday Lunch Meeting. We really hopped all over the place conversationally. First, Eddy and I talked a little game design. It’s no secret that some of the Onyx Path Dev teams are working on the re-imaginings of Scion and the Trinity Continuum, and one of the primary things they’ve been tasked with to start is how to create a dice-pool system that scales from man in the street to god-like. With that, we discussed the thrill of the dice- the visceral feeling of throwing a heaping handful of dice. Now, I get that. Seems like some folks really, really get that as the story has come back to us of a gaming group that regular rolls nigh unto a hundred dice for their upper level dice pools. A hundred! Any of you folks do that? It certainly begins to explain why I get ongoing requests for new dice sets.

I filled Eddy in on my dinner and drinks with CA Suleiman last week, as we ran through the Mummy: The Curse schedule and Reward fulfillment and what the future might bring. It was great to talk about old times, and how excited we are at Mummy‘s success. There are already several very positive reviews up on the interwebs, and according to CAS, he has some great surprises in store in the upcoming books. Because Onyx Path‘s whole structure is spread out around the world, it’s really a joy to get together and strategize or just hang out face to face. We talked briefly about the new single-volume editions of V20 available at DTRPG now that their PoD printer has both overcome the page count restriction and added a Standard and Premium options for their color printing. V20 is getting a whole new hierarchy of PoD options very soon- I have the sample one volume color hardcovers here and they look great!

Finally, we got some great news from CCP Marketing who are footing the bill to send Eddy to Gen-Con again this year. They don’t have to do this- Eddy’s not part of Onyx and is really busy with the WoDMMO, but they know that our fans have enjoyed the Rich and Eddy presentations so much for the past several years that we always have an avid audience that nobody wants to disappoint.

I know I’m going to hear that very emotion from folks as they read through our updates this week, but we really are crazy-close to getting a bunch of these out to you finally. You must hang on!:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) I’ve reviewed the second proof and now it goes into CCP for their review.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - Put in the order for the 2nd proof PoD copy- hope to see it late this week. Still waiting on a cover template from the printer now that the final page count has been settled; we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version. Character Sheet Pack rewards went out to Backers last week, and we fixed the sheet replication issue this weekend- check your Library on DTRPG for an Updated version. CAS and I reviewed the Mummy schedule and should have harder dates for most of the Stretch Goal rewards soon.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Looks like this Kickstarter is happening end of March now as things come together slowly. The Devs are still in the Charms section, getting together the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter, and getting their vocal cords tuned for the KS video which we got a script together for.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and we’re getting art for them. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is in editing ad we are getting art for it. We’ll be contacting the Children of the Revolution backers who pledged to be models in AU this week.

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: The backer feedback was integrated and we’re expecting to get the PoD files and maybe the Deluxe printing files out tomorrow! Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20 and the W20 Wallpaper went out to Backers. Bill is preparing the W20 Anthology outline and looking for prospective writers. The Skinner is in Editing and Art Direction. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer (the always delightful Jess Hartley) and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has been confirmed for September-ish 2013 and Phil Brucato has started assigning writers and is churning through writing his part. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes.

- W20 Changing Breeds is almost out of Editing.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) first proof is to Ryan.

- Mage Translation Guide is in Editing.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: we’re talking about the big, big picture stuff that will affect the entire Continuum as opposed to individual games/settings.

- Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. Joe looked through a secret project I threw at him out of the blue. He liked it. You might like it too, it might be out in a few weeks.

- Demon: The Frutang: some example of play commentary from Black Hat Matt McFarland’s play test will be going up on the new Demon blog.

Reason for Drinking: As soon as I get the EX3 Kickstarter submitted, or Mummy: The Curse on sale, or W20 to press, I’m taking a slug for sure

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Behind the Monday Meeting Notes

March 21, 2013 By richt
One of the hardest things to accomplish with the start-up of Onyx Path has been getting the word out as to who we are and what we’re working on. This past year, we talked to you folks via forums, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit AMA. We shared various interviews with our gang, blog posts, and dove into your questions on Kickstarter. Obviously, when you take into consideration the volume of information shared on these venues — we’re all over the place. Of course, so are our fans and backers, so for now we go where there are folks we can talk to. As the year progresses, you’ll notice how we continue to avail ourselves of these venues, but with more directed and focused information about what we’re up to. That’s one of Onyx Path‘s goals for this year.

But that’s actually Where we’re sharing information, not How or Why. One of the guiding precepts of Onyx Path Publishing has been to be as transparent about production as we can possibly be. Having worked behind the wrought-iron, spear-topped, and black-rose draped walls of White Wolf for two decades, where we created and published our projects with very little community-focused discussion and feedback, I started Onyx Path with the idea that we could do something new. Part of the fun we’re having in this corner of publishing is that we now have so many ways to have a dialogue that we didn’t have before. Working with the Open Development Process where developers and art directors post what they’re working on (as they are working on it) is one aspect of this transparency. With our Kickstarter projects we’ve been giving the backers a chance to review and submit errata before we finalize the files. Another example would be my weekly Monday Lunch Meeting Notes blog which include a weekly progress report about current projects.

This is what actually brought me to the idea of this commentary today. I realized this past Monday that some of our fans were looking at the Monday Meeting updates as strict “announcements” rather than as honest and transparent progress reports. When I tell folks why a book is delayed, (which happened a lot in 2012 as our infrastructure was welded into place), some have been disappointed and frustrated that the project was being announced and then “pushed back.” This is totally understandable, and I feel their pain. Part of that pain, however, is based on the expectation that the Monday Meeting updates were to inform fans of firm publication dates. While they can serve that purpose, my intention has always been to keep the Monday Meeting notes more casual, but focused on development. And then, when we do announce a new release, folks’ll either see that in a separate announcement or shared through social media.

If the Monday Lunch Meeting Notes blog isn’t to announce books, then what’s it for? Well, this is a bit of a history lesson, but here goes. Back when I took over as Creative Director of White Wolf, I realized we needed to have more and continuing communication with our audience. So, I began posting to Live Journal with “RichT’s Ramblings”, “RichT’s Ruminations”, etc. Basically, I’d been talking about the various things we were up to, or which were concerning our community. And even before that, at least a decade earlier, I instituted a Monday Production Lunch to start the week with our team eating together. This was a really great chance to goof around as a group, but also to look at what we had accomplished the week before and to see what was ahead. Everybody got a chance to pick the lunch venue — Josh Timbrook’s was always “Subba-Wubba”– and we could share company and individual info as we ate. This Monday Lunch continued on for years and years, up to the time that Eddy Webb and I were telecommuting and putting together V20 as CCP Transmedia.

So combine the two ideas, and we now have a way for Eddy and I to touch base between Onyx (me) and CCP (Eddy), and I can lay out just where in the process of creation each project is. The community gets a window into the ups and downs and hurry ups and waits of what we’re doing, as well as mini-essays on the sorts of game design, pop culture, and personal issues Eddy and I talk about. And, because it’s a blog, we often get some excellent comments and ideas posted from the community.

I think (and hope) that the blog is entertaining and informational, to fill a niche beyond what a press release, update, forum post, or tweet can do. What do you think? What are you getting out of the Monday Meeting Notes?

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Burning Teemus

By richt – March 25, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

So, Eddy and I started our talk today with the idea that Finns are more flammable. No real reason, just fits into some ideas we were exchanging about the balance we need, as creative people, between loving our work and yet not letting our lives be only about the work. Very tough balance, but anyone that sits in front of a computer all day knows how important it is to get up and move around, to exercise and eat well. Physically and mentally we are then stronger when we need to create and work on projects. And when you get happy solving problems with your work, it is really hard to not spend all day putting out fires. But you’ve got to wind down, decompress, feed your brain.

Along with the idea that we’re both really, really goal oriented, Eddy mentioned that he finds MMOs hard to consume regularly, as he has gotten into the habit of feeling damn satisfied when finishing a computer/console game and MMOs don’t have the same sense of completion to him. I suggested that was based on internally enjoying games in the same narrative sense that you do a book or movie. For me, MMOs are something I play sporadically and with various goals in mind as I play (see, it all comes together) so for me they are more like ongoing TV shows. And that led really quickly to why Dr Who works for both of us as it has mixed the elements of a serial and a TV show. No really, we talked for a stupidly long time about Dr Who.

Back to work: we talked about a blog post I put up last week on the Onyx Path web site: http://theonyxpath.com/behind-the-monday-meeting-notes/ This topic came out of a bunch of comments we got on last week’s Monday Meeting blog, and raised a lot of great questions and conversations. The gist of the OP blog, and the discussions, was my intention that these Updates below function as weekly snapshots as to where the projects are in the process of creating them and getting them into your hands, but that a fair number of you folks are seeing the Updates as announcements. This sets up an expectation that folks can come here to find out an absolute like “this book is on sale this week”, and while that info might pop up here, that’s really a side effect of the progress we’re watching. And part of why that expectation exists is the way we have to announce projects on a whole lot of different social media venues in order to “hit” all the different ways our fans get their info, and also because of the way I’ve phrased some of these Updates. As for the former, we’re ramping up and consolidating our media outreach and will keep doing that through this year, and as for the latter, I’m going to try and change my language here to avoid focusing on the end result even more than I have tried to do so far.
So with those points in mind (and if you get the chance to follow that link to read the blog post and comments I think you’ll get a better idea of what I’m touching on here):

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) At CCP for their review.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs will be on sale shortly. Still waiting on a cover template from the printer as they had to go back and redo their quotes due to a mix up on their end; we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version. CAS sent me his revised Mummy schedule so that we can work it into the larger release schedule.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: We have everything ready except for a completed video with voice-overs from the Devs, art, graphics and cool music working together. The Devs are still in the Charms section, and have assembled most of the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and we’re getting art for them. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book. Justin is reaching out to writers for the HHII Fiction Anthology and the KS backers are suggesting a title.

- V20 Anarchs Unbound is in editing and we are getting art for it. We’ve received photos from some of the Children of the Revolution backers who pledged to be models in AU, but not everyone yet.

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: We’re submitting the W20 PoD files for approval this week, and I’m expecting a new revised W20 Deluxe (both regular and Heavy Metal Edition) quote and then we’ll send the files to press! Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is in Editing and Art Direction. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer (the always delightful Jess Hartley) and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has been confirmed for September-ish 2013 and Phil Brucato has started assigning writers and is churning through writing his part. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes.

- W20 Changing Breeds is almost out of Editing. Really.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) revised layout and second proof this week.

- Mage Translation Guide is in Editing.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: we’re talking about the big, big picture stuff that will affect the entire Continuum as opposed to individual games/settings.

- Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. Early next week we’ve prepared a special file for our Scion fans (something fun but which doesn’t distract any of our creative team from Scion 2).

- Demon: The Frutang: some example of play commentary from Black Hat Matt McFarland’s play test will be going up on the new Demon blog.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores in June, I think, and is currently being put into editing.

Reason for Drinking: As soon as I get the EX3 Kickstarter submitted, or Mummy: The Curse on sale, or W20 to press, I’m taking a slug for sure . I really am. This week for sure.

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Who’s The Fool Now, April?

By richt – April 1, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

As you folks might know, we had a tradition at White Wolf where we put out a product on April Fool’s Day- usually a twisted, but playable, version of our regular stuff. The Iceland By Night supplement, the Dudes of Legend, etc. This year, we at Onyx Path continue the tradition by publishing Scion: Extras- a collection of those gods and Scions that the pantheons don’t like to talk about. I’m hesitant to do anything on April 1 that is a publicity stunt and much prefer to offer a product that can evoke a chuckle or three, and that can, maybe, if you’re that sort of gamer, be used at the table. So when Monica Valentinelli and Matt McElroy approached me with their ideas for what would turn into Scion: Extras, I liked the idea that these were the sort-of-useful hangers-on, the sort of gods and Scions that the other gods don’t invite to the important events (but might invite to a party). And once I read the Psy Sci Scion lyrics, well, I was sold. So here it is, free (for now) on DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/112967/Scion%3A-Extras-%28Supplemental-Yet-Can-Be-Somewhat-Useful-On-Occasion-Scions%29

Meanwhile, Eddy and I talked only a little bit about CCP approvals since he had mis-programmed his meeting schedule for the Approval Board last week, and so they didn’t actually review anything. These things happen- usually, it’s me who fumbles the electronic reminders, so I can’t get too uptight. We used the extra time to talk about the W20 Anthology story he’s writing, which appears to be a Garou heist story. And it’s that very cool kind of creation where the characters have taken on lives of their own that Eddy, as the creator, is excited to keep working on just to see where they lead. Being Eddy, he has been researching heist films (he shared the theory that Star Wars is a heist film), and how the kinds of characterizations you need for that sort of film or story might run counter to the expected “developing character” story arcs. This led us to the same dilemma WW faced with the signature characters we came up with for the lines years ago: we created them for the game-books as interesting examples of their “splat”, but if they were put into play for novels or other narratives, we really didn’t want to see them develop so much that they were no longer good examples. I fell back to some of the talks we had about the real value of Transmedia experiences- that each venue for your overall world would tweak the basic info of that world to be the best example of that venue. So novels would do what they needed with the characters and stories to make the best novels, a single-player computer game would pull some elements while an MMO would emphasize others, etc. I used to call it the Doctrine of Appropriateness when applying the same thinking to graphic design and art issues with our WW books, but the core concept of making your creative choices based on the core of the project still applies. Also, Elementary is growing on Eddy.

Updates here, not announcements- remember last week’s blog?:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) At CCP for their review, see above.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ll be adding separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Still waiting on a cover template from the printer as they had to go back and redo their quotes due to a mix up on their end; we’ll get those files out to start the creation of the traditionally printed KS version.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: We still have everything ready except for a completed video with voice-overs from the Devs, art, graphics and cool music working together. The Devs are still in the Charms section, and have assembled most of the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and we’re getting art for them. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book. Justin is reaching out to writers for the HHII Fiction Anthology and the KS backers are suggesting a title.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: We’ve submitted the W20 PoD files for approval this week, and I got a new revised W20 Deluxe (both regular and Heavy Metal Edition) quote and are really close to sending the files to press! Mike Lee is three quarters-way through his novel. The Storyteller Screen files will go off to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is out of Editing and still in Art Direction. The White Howlers Tribe Book is with a writer (the always delightful Jess Hartley) and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has been confirmed for September-ish 2013 and Phil Brucato has started assigning writers and is churning through writing his part. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) one art tweak and into final proof.

- Mage Translation Guide is in Editing.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: we’re talking about the big, big picture stuff that will affect the entire Continuum as opposed to individual games/settings.

- Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. And our special file for our Scion fans (something fun but which doesn’t distract any of our creative team from Scion 2) was Scion: Extras, as you all probably guessed.

- Demon: The Frutang: some example of play commentary from Black Hat Matt McFarland’s play test will be going up on the new Demon blog. We have the blog, now we need Matt to post: http://whitewolfblogs.com/demon/

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores in June, I think, and is currently being put into layout.

Reason for Drinking: That Mummy drink was good, need more- c”mon W20 to press, and EX3 KS!

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Tuesday is the New Monday (This Week)

By richt – April 9, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Hey, sorry not to post yesterday- pieces of things that had to be handled all happened to land on Monday. Also, as an aside, you might notice we dropped a few graphics here and a few widgets on the Onyx Path site. We’re working with our webhost to manage our increased audience and pulled back on those things until we have it figured out- so thanks for checking us out and here’s a crappier looking site in return.

For now though- we’ll actually be prettier when we get back to normal.

A short lunch meeting with Eddy today as he’s neck-deep into project planning on the WoD MMO team, so we had to squeak a meeting in between planning sessions. Having gone through those sessions during my 3 years on the MMO team- I know how intense that is. Seems like there were some bigger issues than normal with the WW website, wikis, and forums, and Eddy tells me the IT guys at CCP are looking into it. And pretty much an hour after he told me that, I was able to get on the forums again. Thanks, CCP! With a bunch of approvals last week: art, God Machine proofs, and the Free RPG Day project all were OK’d, we had a fast review of the other things coming their way, and some old WW contracts and files were found by their office that Eddy’s going to send to me for Onyx‘s archives. While I was writing this, I was listening to an interview with Eddy that goes into the background of how Onyx Path came into being and how we work together now , check it out: http://dorkland.blogspot.com/2013/04/dorkland-roundtable-with-eddy-webb.html

Updates here:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) Approved by CCP. At DriveThruRPG for file review.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is into Editing.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) is in a crisis right now. Two of our writers had to drop out of the project because of very real personal issues, and Rose has been talking to replacement writers all weekend and thinks she has everything lined up, but these new writers are starting at square one for their sections of the book. More news next week, but I expect this will delay the book at least a month.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ve added separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Cover template for traditionally printed MtC special edition in hand and soon to press.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: No change here as both John and Holden have been smashed down by nasty chest colds- hard to do voiceovers when you sound like a cartoon. We still have everything ready except for a completed video with voice-overs from the Devs, art, graphics and cool music working together. The Devs are still in the Charms section, and have assembled most of the text we’ll be teasing with Updates throughout the Kickstarter. We’re looking at sketches for the new Exalted map.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and almost all the art is in and in for approval. Rather than tacking them on at the end, we’ll be adding a chapter before the Appendix as that just works better for the flow of the book. Justin is reaching out to writers for the HHII Fiction Anthology and has signed Bill Bridges, Rich Dansky, Alan Alexander, Matt McFarland, and more to come.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Sent the Deluxe W20 files to the printer (both Standard Deluxe and the Heavy Metal Edition). The W20 PoD versions look good right now, and without promising to do so, I think this will go live at DTRPG really soon. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are going to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is out of Editing and still in Art Direction. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Phil and I had a huge talk about other artists we’d love to work with on the book.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is at review at CCP.

- Mage Translation Guide is almost done in Editing.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: we’re talking about the big, big picture stuff that will affect the entire Continuum as opposed to individual games/settings. Big conference call this week.

- Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. Scion: Extras, has had a huge number of downloads- thanks! We’ll be offering a PoD version later on that we’ll charging for, and will probably drop a small price tag on the PDF as well, so get it free now.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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/

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15, I think, and is at press.

Reason for Drinking: Ahhhh, W20 files to the printer- now I think I need a double for when the EX3 KS is ready!

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A Taxing Day in the USA

By richt – April 15, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

In more ways than one. First, here in the US April 15 is the deadline to send in our income tax to the government. This year was the first year I did it for Onyx Path, and so it was a tad stressful and complicated but ultimately it was nice to know that the company made a little bit of a profit last year. (Enough to send a bunch of us to Gen-Con and buy some meals and drinks for the team). Second, I had to be on the phone all afternoon with my IT guy trying to figure out why my main computer no longer believes our network printer in online. And third, I have friends and family in Boston that needed checking on after this afternoon’s cowardly attacks. (So far, everybody is reporting in OK).

Before any of these things happened this afternoon, Eddy and I spoke at lunch, as is our wont. I let him know that not only are we doing the PDF and PoD versions of projects and having traditionally printed versions made via our Kickstarter campaigns, and the ePub versions of our fiction projects like The God Machine Chronicle Anthology, but thanks to Manly Mike Chaney we’re making some serious head-way with other formats that tie into other venues. That’s about all I can say about that now, but we continue to move in that direction as I really want Onyx Path to create tabletop RPGs in the formats people get their entertainment in.

We also talked a lot about a topic near and dear to my heart as Eddy attended and spoke at the 221b Convention over the weekend. It seems that an interest in Sherlock Holmes has really grown with the success of the movies, Moffat’s Sherlock, and Elementary. Now, Eddy and I are fans- we can talk about ACD canon, and the importance of Watson, and all sorts of stuff, but what we generally discuss is the broader picture of how this specific interest informs an overall view of media. In this case, Eddy pointed out that a lot of the growth of interest has been from more and more women becoming fans of Holmes. While incredibly thrilled and not wanting to jinx such a thing, we still wondered at where such interest is coming from. Or to phrase that better: why the upswell in interest now? Is it the modern day settings for the TV shows, or Watson being a woman in Elementary that is more appealing compared to the original stories? In addition, there’s the fact that Eddy was told several times by Holmesian newbies that they got into the character via the TV shows, but started reading the fiction afterwards as they were intrigued by what they learned from their entry material. So much that they’d attend a convention about it, even. This is for us a great trend to examine in terms of whether interest in game worlds would/could have the same patterns.

And from there, more discussion of Eddy’s story for the W20 Fiction Anthology- his Werewolf heist story. Eddy has a tendency towards a Noir sensibility which seems appropriate for WtA, while I maintained that the best heist or caper flicks are actually upbeat. The protagonists can have dark secrets in the past, even painful ones, but the resolution has to show how they win out through tricky planning. So I think Eddy’s offering in that anthology is going to be walking a very fun line and I’m really looking forward to it.

Some updates here:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) Waiting for PoD proof copies.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is in Editing.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) is in a crisis right now. Rose was scrambling last week to fill the loss of two of our writers who had to drop out of the project because of very real personal issues, and then was sick all this weekend so I haven’t been updated yet as to whether this will delay the book a month or more.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ve added separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Sent the KS edition files to the printer.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: I’ve been told that John and Holden are feeling much better and were recording voice-overs for the Kickstarter today. So I expect to get the KS pulled together this week if those VOs work. Sketches are all approved for the map and the artist/cartographer is moving to finalize the painted map.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and almost all the art is in and in for approval. Justin is reaching out to writers for the HHII Fiction Anthology and has signed Bill Bridges, Rich Dansky, Alan Alexander, Matt McFarland, and more to come.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Sent the Deluxe W20 files to the printer (both Standard Deluxe and the Heavy Metal Edition). So far, no issues with the printer. The W20 PoD versions look good right now, but we did make a few changes that have to also be set into the PoD files and all new proofs sent out. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are going to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is in layout and almost all the art is in. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. I’m looking at very early sketches this week for the fulls, I hear. Phil and I had a huge talk about other artists we’d love to work with on the book.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) waiting for DTRPG PoD proofs.

- Mage Translation Guide is almost done in Editing.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: we had a great call last week that really pinned down the last vague overall Continuum issues, and are looking at the schedule to start setting up writing.

- Scion: some very impassioned creators sharing their ideas at this very early stage. Scion: Extras, has had a huge number of downloads- thanks! We’ll be offering a PoD version later on that we’ll charging for, and will probably drop a small price tag on the PDF as well, so get it free now.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15, I think, and is at press.

Reason for Drinking: Mmmm, W20 and Mummy files to the printer- now I think I need a triple for when the EX3 KS is ready!

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All Things Are Better With More Arms

By richt – April 22, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Before getting to the Monday Lunch Meeting Notes, here are a few thoughts that have arisen based on some emails I received last week (although we did talk about these at lunch too). I got an interesting message from one of our Mummy: The Curse Kickstarter backers where they let me know that they didn’t think that they’d back any more Kickstarters since while they appreciate all the “free stuff” they really didn’t like having to wait for the KS edition while the PoD was available. They much preferred to just go to DTRPG and click on an available product that’ll be sent pretty fast (instantly if a PDF). Their tone was that they wanted to be supportive, but that KSs just don’t work for them. My response to them was to suggest that they probably shouldn’t back any more of our Kickstarters. Not in a dismissive way, but because we really don’t want backers who aren’t comfortable with the process and/or aren’t really excited about the Rewards. Because the whole point of adding Kickstarters to the Onyx Path business methodology is to add fun to how we all make these great projects, not to force folks to adopt a process they’re not in tune with. We’ve said this a few times, but it bears repeating here: Kickstarter is not a pre-order system, but a chance for backers to enable, and be engaged with, the creation of the project. Some folks really get into that- they love the whole participatory aspect of a KS- but some don’t and there’s nothing wrong with that. Like I said to our concerned fan, the KS support is awesome, but so is showing your support by purchasing the PDF or PoD from DTRPG- we need both those kinds of fans, and more!

And that point is similar to some other messages I got concerning our Open Development Process and why project X is more or less Open than project Y. And by similar, I mean that in the same way I don’t want fans to try to adopt systems we’re using that don’t work for them, I also don’t want our creative teams trying to force themselves to work to a strictly defined set of Open Dev processes if those processes actually impede their quality of work on their projects. Some developers and writers thrive on the immediate feedback and intellectual bantering that goes on when they post whole swathes of their current project for the fans to see, others want to percolate and iterate their work until they, the creator, is ready to present a polished, finely-crafted work to open consumption. And most fall somewhere in between and are comfortable with different feedback loops at different stages. There’s really not a magic formula for “optimum genius” with this, or all creators and their creations would start to seem the same. And so, in the interest of encouraging as much pre-publication interaction with you great folks as possible, but not forcing it, you’re going to see varying levels of how we define the “Open” part of the Open Dev Process with each project.

And now, the meeting: not much on the Approvals end of things as we’re in a slight lull of project parts needing to go to the Approval Board. Eddy and I talked about the V20 Rites of Blood project he’s developing and how the idea of referencing other books in a text has been changed by the easy availability of the White Wolf backlist on DTRPG. While we agree that telling a reader “look it up, we’re not writing it again” isn’t how we want to go, the accessibility of old WW PDFs and PoDs means that adding a reference can be done specifically to let readers know that there is broader or deeper or just additional info at a place if they choose to access it. As opposed to telling a reader to look it up in a book that’s out of print and expensive to get a hold of. We also went over a definition Eddy found of just what long-term fans want from new editions: “What I liked before, but different”. Maybe, yes/no? Neither of us is sold on that being all there is to it- what do you think?

Here’s some more of that, but different updates:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) Had to reorder proofs after discovering a couple of mechanical errors so we’re again waiting for PoD proof copies. Still trying to get this on sale in April.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is in Editing.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Crisis handled, new authors working on the project, and we’ve pushed back our release estimate by a month to compensate.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ve added separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Sent the KS edition files to the printer.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Voice-overs came in mid last week, Ian is working on the KS video. I’m putting in the Reward Tiers all wordified, and the main text and we’ll combine these efforts with a KS preview for the dev team. From there we’ll submit. Sketches are all approved for the map and the artist/cartographer is moving to finalize the painted map- looking at printer samples this week that might be related to the map.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: New sections are in layout and almost all the art is in and in for approval. Justin is reaching out to writers for the HHII Fiction Anthology and has signed Bill Bridges, Rich Dansky, Alan Alexander, Matt McFarland, and more to come.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Sent the Deluxe W20 files to the printer (both Standard Deluxe and the Heavy Metal Edition). So far, no issues with the printer- hoping to see printer proofs this week. The W20 PoD versions look good right now, but waiting on new proofs. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are going to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is in layout and almost all the art is in. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. We are very sad that Quinton Hoover, one of the artists we had hoped to work with to provide new art for the book, passed away last week. He was an amazing talent and his work improved every project he was in (check out MtA first edition’s Sons of Ether Tradition Book).

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is onsale now at DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/113471/Convention-Book%3A-Progenitors.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is in editing and art direction.

- Mage Translation Guide is almost done in Editing.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing.

- Scion: Scion: Extras, has had a huge number of downloads- thanks! We’ll be offering a PoD version next week that we’ll charging for, and will drop a small price tag on the PDF as well next week, since it will have been out free for a month, so get it free now.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being redlined and Rose is trying to get early art notes together.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15, and is on its way to the FRPGD warehouse.

Reason for Drinking: We’re up to a quadruple shot, but very close now to when the EX3 KS is ready!

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Adios April-

By richt – April 29, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

This week, what I can relay about our Monday Lunch Meeting is pretty limited in that Eddy and I had quite a bit to cover, but most of it was behind the scenes or stuff that’ll be talked about soon. Nothing we can really blab about as yet. Which leaves the twenty minutes we talked about not letting the personal creative flame go out- buried beneath the weight of demanding job responsibilities, serial projects, and regular life. I’m struggling with wanting to do more Creative Director stuff- like finishing the “Making of the Art” PDFs for Children of the Revolution and W20- but needing to be The Publisher of Onyx Path, and Eddy is in a quandary as to how to balance his very exciting and demanding full time gig on the WoD MMO, with developing V20 projects, and doing personal work. In either of our cases, the need for focus and discipline, and to create to the order of external forces- no matter how cool our jobs are- has to be balanced with the fun and unordered exploration of creativity driven by forces from within us. After all, before we had our careers (and in my case that was around the time the dinosaurs (Jesus Horses?) ruled the earth) the creative impulse was what propelled us forward. It’s still there and access to it is what brings the fun and freshness to our creations- and the lack of it can burn us out. So it’s kind of an essential thing we were discussing, at least for us, but not something to belabor because YMMV.

So here are some very creative projects in progress:

- God Machine Chronicle (nWoD) Reviewed one proof of two- will the second come Tuesday?… I’ll have some thoughts about GMC and Strix/Blood & Smoke Chronicles in a blog on the Onyx Path site (and probably linked elsewhere) that should be at least a little interesting. A teeny bit, maybe.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is in Editing.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Crisis handled, new authors working on the project, and we’ve pushed back our release estimate by a month to compensate.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and standard color PoD, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ve added separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Sent the KS edition files to the printer. We have gathered a double handful of online questions for CA Suleiman that he’ll be answering and we’ll post this week.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Ian is working on the KS video- we’re fine-tuning it now. We’ll drop that into the rest of the KS shell and get feedback from our Dev team. From there we’ll submit. The Map artist/cartographer is moving to finalize the painted map- have printer samples that might be really map-tastic.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Sending Chaney the HH2 backer names and we’ll make up the PDF. Justin’s writers have a deadline for their first drafts of the HH2 Anthology of 5/10.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Sent the Deluxe W20 files to the printer (both Standard Deluxe and the Heavy Metal Edition). Saw proofs and the few corrections are going back to the printer this week. The W20 PoD versions look good right now, but waiting on new proofs. Mike Lee is three quarters-way through the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are going to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is in layout and almost all the art is in. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Talking to more artists this week.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Progenitors (cMtA) is onsale now at DTRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/113471/Convention-Book:-Progenitors.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is in editing and art direction.

- Mage Translation Guide is in Layout.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet.

- Scion: Scion: Extras PoD is about ready to go live, and we’ll drop a small price tag on the PDF as well. Monica has some designer notes and extras we’ll be posting on the OP site.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being redlined and Rose is trying to get early art notes together.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15, and is on its way to the FRPGD warehouse.

Reason for Drinking: We’re up to a quintuple shot, but very close now to when the EX3 KS is ready!

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EVE Was 10 Years Old Yesterday, Eddy Was Off

By richt – May 7, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

By way of an explanation why our Monday Meeting was today, and so the Notes are today too. Although I had half a mind to do them yesterday and just pretend that I’d talked with him because I did have a couple of notes to share independent of the usual topics drawn from the Monday Meeting.

First, we released the God-Machine Chronicle last week and the response has been phenomenal! We’re all really glad that the book has struck such a strong note with not just our nWoD fans, but I’ve heard a lot of comments from other folks that they’re looking into it, too. Certainly, being able to read the free GMC Rules PDF has provided a painless way to check out the systems tweaks and let folks decide for themselves if they want to get the complete God-Machine Chronicle book itself. I wrote a little blog post on the Onyx Path website about the rationale for creating the Chronicles, what we hope to accomplish, and how awesome our amazing creators are: http://theonyxpath.com/so-whats-a-chronicle-book-anyway/

Next, I submitted the Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter to KS on Sunday, so now we’re waiting to hear back from them on when we can go live. As we have with the last KSs we’ve done, we’ll give 24 hours notice to let everyone get ready to check out the fun limited number of backers Reward Tiers. This is liable to be a really wild ride of a KS, so keep your eyes open for added Stretch Goals and Rewards- I’m both already excited and exhausted just thinking about the next month.

Finally, while this info will only interest those of you going to Gen Con in August, I want to confirm that not only will Onyx Path be there, but that I’m going as an Industry Guest of Honor again this year. Which is pretty darn cool. So not only will we have panels just for Onyx Path (“What’s Up With WW/OP?”, “Onyx Path Q&A”, “New World of Darkness”, and “Classic World of Darkness”), but I’ll be sitting in on GoH panels as well. Anybody who was there last year knows that that means, scheduling being what it is, that I’ll probably be running willy-nilly from panel to panel. But all for a good cause of meeting attendees. Fortunately, we’ll have Onyx Path reps at the DriveThruRPG booth even when the panels are going on, so you should always have an Onyx person to talk to. (Although, why aren’t you at my panel?) Closer to Gen Con, we’ll have actual times and locations.
On to the Meeting: a chance reference to how my youngest son is playing his Goblin Prince (hint: peeing is funny) in our family D&D game led to a discussion on “disruptive characters” and whether there is a social contract when playing with a group, or even a huge group like at a LARP event, to not play the character in a way that wrecks the fun of the others playing. In other words: yes, your character could do that as they’re written, but please don’t. The fact is, like so many group activities, there’s a fine line between amazing role-playing and ass-hattery, and the players who can pull off a disruptive character and make it work have to be really inspired. Just pointing to your sheet and saying “Sez here” isn’t likely to make it happen. And there’s also the context of the group. We’ve probably all sat down with our regular gaming crew and had the “new guy/gal” completely miss the tone of how the group has been playing.

This led to talking about how game industry creators pretty much all start as gaming fans and then follow a kind of natural path from “Our group likes this”, to “Who am I making this game for?” in their thinking. Note how the first is a statement that leaves no room for dialogue, while the other is a question that invites attempts to answer it. Some creators make the journey pretty fast- whether from natural inclination, or being forced into a working process, or because their personal designs actually do strike a chord with a wider audience- and others continue to create based on their own groups’ enjoyment. Interestingly, at different times in a game creator’s career, they can be at different points on that spectrum. And there isn’t a right way to make cool games: for every beautifully focused, thematically connected gem of a game, there’s another fantasy heartbreaker. Then, to balance out popular games that allow a lot of play experiences and players to approach from a lot of angles, you also have games that were clearly “designed by committee”. So this whole discussion we had served to remind me of one of the things I’m trying to do with Onyx Path: find a place on our release schedule for the smaller focused projects, often with a single creator, and the bigger ones like folks are used to from White Wolf. (Right now, we’re mostly compelled to push for the WW projects until they gather their own momentum).

And speak of them and here they are:

- God-Machine Chronicle (nWoD) As noted above, the God-Machine Chronicle and the free GMC Rules Update are live on DTRPG and doing really well. Check them out if you’ve missed them so far, by clicking on the links.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is in Editing.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Crisis handled, new authors working on the project, and we’ve pushed back our release estimate by a month to compensate.

- Mummy the Curse - The single volume PDF and color PoD versions, as well as the “virtual box set” PDFs are on sale and doing great. We’ve added separate product listings for the Player’s Book, the Screen PDF, and the SAS. Sent the KS edition files to the printer. We have gathered a double handful of online questions for CA Suleiman that he’ll be answering and we’ll post this week.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: KS submitted for approval to Kickstarter. Keep an eye out for us announcing when it goes live- we’ll give 24hrs notice. There will be lots of Updates via the KS that reveal pieces of what will be in EX3, so keep an eye out for those too. The Map artist/cartographer is moving to finalize the painted map- have printer samples that might be really map-tastic.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: PDF will be going out to KS backers this week. Justin’s writers have a deadline for their first drafts of the HH2 Anthology of 5/10.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Corrections are with the printer. The W20 PoD versions look good right now, but waiting on new proofs. Mike Lee is almost done the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are going to press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner just needs the Skindancer glyph and its ready for Dev proofing of the layout. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Talking to more artists this week.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is being written.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is in editing and art direction.

- Mage Translation Guide is in Approvals with CCP.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/
- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet.
- Scion: Looking forward to talking to Joe Carriker about the project this week.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being redlined and Rose is trying to get early art notes together.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15.

Reason for Drinking: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! That hit the spot.

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Short, Sweet, and Upbeat

By richt – May 13, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Sorry this goes out later Monday/early Tuesday, but while we had our Monday Meeting, I couldn’t get to the notes because of the follow-up meetings and phone calls. They all got pushed to Monday after the massive madness of the launch of our Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter. If you haven’t heard, that went OK. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-exalted-3rd-edition

It was 4 days ago and I swear it’s been so intense that I honestly thought it was two weeks ago.
So, then, the Monday Meeting Notes will be short, although check out the Updates below as we have some good stuff in there. Eddy and I talked about the, wait for it….Exalted KS. Also, the changing gaming/gamers view of (the) transgendered folks. (I put in the “the” because I kind of recall that there is some sort of issue with not doing so. But my memory is faulty right now and since I don’t wish to offend, I included it.) Which spread to a whole look at how society is rapidly changing, particularly at the age range that folks first get into tabletop gaming, and inevitably we talked about the Holmesian convention Eddy went to a couple of weeks ago. Also we spent a couple of nano-seconds talking about approvals. Boom! On to the Updates.

These here Updates:

- God-Machine Chronicle (nWoD) the God-Machine Chronicle and the free GMC Rules Update are live on DTRPG and doing really well. Check them out if you’ve missed them so far, by clicking on the links.

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is GOING INTO LAYOUT. Woot!

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Crisis handled, new authors working on the project, and we’ve pushed back our release estimate by a month to compensate.

- Mummy the Curse - Sent the KS edition files to the printer with cover corrections. The Screen is at press as well. We have gathered a double handful of online questions for CA Suleiman that he’ll be answering and we’ll post more this week on the Onyx Path site.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: KS – see above. There will be lots of Updates via the KS that reveal pieces of what will be in EX3, so keep an eye out for those too. There’s also the map and new art there.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: PDF went out to KS backers and comments and a small number of missed backer names and correx came in. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Corrections are with the printer. The W20 PoD proofs are great- we’re going to go live with this on DTRPG this week maybe even tomorrow. Mike Lee is almost done the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are at press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is ready for CCP approval. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Talking to more, more artists this week.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is going into editing.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) has about half the art in.

- Mage Translation Guide is OK’d by CCP and we’re looking to get a PoD proof ASAP.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet. He almost caught me but I started talking about genre emulation and got away.

- Scion: Gotta talk to Joe Carriker about the project this week as I missed him last week.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being redlined and Rose is trying to get early art notes together.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15.

Reason for Drinking: 18 minutes.

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A PDF and a PoD Walk Into a Bar…

By richt – May 21, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Today’s Monday Meeting Notes are going to go in reverse order of how Eddy and I talked today. No reason except I want the meaty bit to be all together near the Updates, but we actually talked about it first.
Eddy convinces me to give Elementary another chance, based solely on his enthusiasm.

We confer on Gen-Con. He has his badge confirmed and looks we’ll be rooming together again, as we’ve done it before and we like our “special times” together.

I complain a fair bit about why every mcdamn thing in my life has to tilt sideways while I’m having a major Kickstarter (The Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter, breaking KS records near you!). Nothing that is going bad, just everything needs me to set it back on its course with phone calls and paperwork.

This leads us to what I really wanted from Eddy today: a gut-check on a direction I want to take Onyx Path in concerning how we release our PDFs and PoDs. As Eddy and I talked all the time while we were transitioning WW out of the traditional RPG three tier distribution system and into the new PDF/PoD model WW evolved into, and Onyx Path is using, I wanted his input (and memory) on how I think we should be doing things. That is, we once released our PDFs when they were ready and then followed up with a PoD version as it got done. We had a fair bit of feedback that folks wanted the two release types to be put on sale together, and so we adopted the simultaneous release policy that we’ve had for a while.

But since then and now, we had a bunch of these little things I like to call Kickstarters, and one of our tenets going in has been to be as transparent as possible, from my messages, to the Open Dev Process which our developers use to some extent or another. We want to hear from the community, in fact we count on it with the Kickstarters, and one of the things we did in that regard was to get the backer PDFs out and let the backers know that if they found errors in their names that we had time to change those credits. Really, all I wanted were happy backers who got a little bit of a kick out of seeing their names the way they wanted to in the finished books. But instead we started to get notes and comments on things the backers found in the text itself: typos, confusing syntax, sections from one chapter not agreeing with others. Of course, we hate to see those sorts of things slip through, but they do, they always do, and so we were grateful to use that opportunity to make the changes and create a tighter book. And then it happened again on the next one. So on the one after that, I left time specifically to gather and correct anything the backers found. This was good, this put thousands of eyes on a project as opposed to a dozen. A small company like ours can really use that kind of crowdsourcing. And we all got better books out of it and a lot of fans really seemed to dig helping make that so. It was the logical progression of the Open Dev Process.

That still left us with our non-Kickstarted releases (yes we still have them), as they still were locked into the PDF/PoD simultaneous release strategy. No biggee, I thought, we just have two different ways we release our projects. But a funny thing happened. The folks who bought Progenitors and God-Machine Chronicle sent us the errata they found anyway. And we fumbled our way through how to update the PDF and then…not update the PoD? That didn’t seem right. Ignore the fixes? But that both flew in the face of our desire to work with the community and one of the key selling points of PDFs in that we can make changes that tighten up our PDF books and the purchaser gets free updated files forever. Make the changes to both PDF and PoD at the same ? That would take the PoD off the market until the new version was approved and have different PoD versions out there as well.

So maybe, it seems to me, that the real solution, the one that is in line with Onyx‘s philosophy of working with the community and not releasing until we’re satisfied with the quality of our projects, is to do just what we’re doing with the Kickstarters for our non-Kickstarter releases as well, and release the PDF before the PoD and let folks get back to us on whatever slipped past our regular crew. An Advance Screening, if you will, that gives us that last bit of Quality Control before we start making physical books with the PoDs. Something like this would mean that a PDF/PoD combo purchase would be about a month later than the initial PDF release, but then those two versions would be totally synched up, and as error free as we can make them. Fans who want the PDF as soon as we can get it out would get a version that they can either comb through for slips to send us, or not; either way those PDFs get updated with tighter and more perfected versions automatically as we make the changes. We won’t be trying this on the Mage Translation Guide as those PoD proofs are already coming to me, although any feedback will be reviewed of course, but soon after that.

And… Updates:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) Strix is in layout.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Crisis handled, new authors working on the project, and we’ve pushed back our release estimate by a month to compensate.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press. The final Q&A with CA Suleiman is going up on the Onyx Path site at 13:34 EDT on Weds (the 22nd).

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Kickstarting like crazy: We funded in 18 minutes, we have 700% funding and are the #3 funded tabletop RPG KS. Headed towards 3,000 backers and those backers have blown through 13 Stretch Goals. There will be lots of Updates via the KS that reveal pieces of what will be in EX3, so keep an eye out for those too. There’s also the map and new art there.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: PDF went out to KS backers and comments and a small number of missed backer names and correx came in. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press. The W20 PoD is live. Mike Lee is almost done the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are at press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is ready for CCP approval. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Talking to more, more artists this week.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout. Talking to Stew about Strey-tch Goals.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) has about half the art in.

- Mage Translation Guide PoD proofs ordered.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet. He almost caught me but I started talking about genre emulation and got away. I might read his outline this week.

- Scion: Gotta talk to Joe Carriker about the project this week as I missed him last week. Ditto.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being redlined and Rose is trying to get early art notes together.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15.

Reason for Drinking: Have you paid your dues? Yessir, the check is in the mail.

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Thanks for Waiting

By richt – May 30, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Seriously, thanks for waiting until I had both time and head-space to get the notes together. Eddy and I talked on Memorial Day, so I was treated to seeing him in his study as he had the day off from CCP. We talked a lot about the Open Dev Process, which he was diving back into with V20′s Rites of the Blood. He had some concerns for how far he’d be able to push the process, because his style isn’t quite the same as Justin’s when it comes to using Open Dev. And this is really the truth about Onyx‘s use of Open Dev: how Open we go is up to the Developer. I’m not going to force folks to adopt this terrifying new way of having a dialogue with the fans if it screws up their ability to deliver beautiful work. But I will suggest that they try to be as open to it as they can be, because it is incredibly awesome to be able to avail oneself of so many extra eyes and brains. Okay, that maybe didn’t come out all that nicely, but there you go. Sometimes I feel like I’m repeating this a lot, but folks get some expectations because they enjoyed a particular way one developer did things and expect the same from the next. In WW‘s day, we tried to create set systems and expected the staff to conform to them. I don’t think that’s something that I can expect or even want with how I’ve set up Onyx Path, though. I want the best work from our talented and wonderful Dev teams around the world, not the most standardized. And the thing is, maybe I’m wrong and this artsy-fartsy nonsense will doom Onyx Path as much as doomed can be, don’t cha know? But I’d rather try and reach for a better method and fail.

Which kind of relates to something I touched on with Eddy this week: I’m not graceful. I’m not elegant and smooth and able to side-step around problems. The Open Dev Process fascinates me because its like my worst nightmare- all of my mistakes out in the open for folks to criticize. Kickstarter is very much the same torture. What I do is careen wildly forward, bouncing off walls, knocking over vases, stepping on the cat. But forward. For years I did this for WW, and now I’m doing it at the front of Onyx Path; and for Onyx and the creative teams that are putting out some amazing projects. I don’t say this to grandstand in any way, but rather to be sure that you folks out there grasp that there while there are master plans and strategy meetings and such, I’m usually going to implement them in what appears to be the worse way at first. I’m not graceful. If we have a new PDF program, I’m going to send out the wrong links. We’ll get the rights ones out- and the next time the process will be much better, but I’m gonna ham-fist the hell out of things at first. And somehow, we will move forward. And our products will keep getting better and more beautiful. But there’s going to be some broken vases to trip over on the way.

Finally, in regards to last week’s ideas about the Pre-Release PDF program I was thinking about. I think Onyx and DTRPG may have found a solution. The current idea is that we put the PDF up, folks can buy it and comment, we’ll make changes based on your feedback, then put up the PoD and PDF/PoD combos a month later. The PDF purchasers who bought a PDF up to that time will be sent a coupon to upgrade to the combos minus the difference between the cost of the PDF vs the PDF in the combo. The point being that we don’t want this to be financially punishing to any fan: PDF only fans, PoD only fans, or Combo fans. What do you think, sirs?

Look! Updates:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Crisis handled, new authors working on the project, and we’ve pushed back our release estimate by a month to compensate.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Kickstarting like crazy: We funded in 18 minutes, we have 800% funding and are the #2 funded tabletop RPG KS. Headed towards 3,300 backers and those backers have blown through 18 Stretch Goals. There will be lots of Updates via the KS that reveal pieces of what will be in EX3, so keep an eye out for those too. There’s also the map and new art there.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Preparing files for press. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press. Mike Lee is almost done the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are at press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is approved and the PDF is going out to the KS backers ASAP. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/03/18/w20-cookbook-update-white-howlers-outline/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Talking to more, more artists this week.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout. Talking to Stew about Strey-tch Goals.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but a bit continues to trickle in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) has most of the art in.

- Mage Translation Guide went live and is doing great on DTRPG.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

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

- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet. He almost caught me but I started talking about genre emulation and got away. I might read his outline this week.

- Scion: Talked to Joe Carriker about the project and broke his back with its awesomeness. When he gets up, we’ll talk about Scion: Origin.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being redlined and Rose is trying to get early art notes together.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15.

Reason for Drinking: “Sometimes the shit comes down so hard, you have to wear a hat.”

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And Just Like That, It’s June!

By richt – June 3, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting
How did we get here so fast? So many projects- we need to warp time to cover them all.

Like a Time-Lord even. Look at me, the king of segues- so Eddy and I talked about Dr. Who at today’s Monday Lunch Meeting, and as we’ve discussed in the past we’re both kind of “meh” on the show right now. Now as frequent readers know, we both think Moffat is an amazing writer- I rank “Coupling” up there as one of the best written comedies ever- and we’ve been pretty vocal in our praise of “Sherlock”. But maybe his puzzle-box seasons are a bit too referential (and even reverential) to the previous storylines. I’m missing Davies’ huge moments and sense of fun and drama. Eddy feels like we’re not part of the stories so much as being pulled along through Moffat’s puzzle-knot and his tighter than the norm scripts have set us up to expect every damn plot point to be explained- which both limits the drama and is really not quite Dr. Who and gets folks uptight when he doesn’t tie some things up. Interestingly, we both referred back to Davies’ first year as a truly tight and focused new start for the Dr., and how Eccleston delivered the idea of alien-ness so well. Point being, we look at and often pick apart the creative process and just what is delivered out of that process as a matter of professional interest- although we’re only working on getting to 25 years with our White Wolf projects, not 50 like Dr. Who, the question of creative and authorial tone in the scene, the chapter, the episode, the book, the series, the game-line, the franchise, is one that we face at Onyx Path as well.

We only talked a little bit about Kickstarters- which is a surprise considering the crazy ride we’re having with the Deluxe Exalted 3rd KS. Well, maybe not ups and downs like roller-coasters, more like being simultaneously expanded and contracted by massive forces of the universe. We’ll be starting the W20: Changing Breeds one soon, and I’m actually looking forward to the tighter focus on that one book. What I mean is, we’re really starting to see a kind of division between the “new game” KSs that are essentially a core book that heads up a line, and the “supplement” book KSs, where the book itself is the focus. New game ones are bigger and we find that we can use the Stretch Goals to add all sorts of auxiliary projects that help expand the line beyond just the game books- fiction, music-suites, PDFs of books that wouldn’t have been produced, for example. And that is really such a great thing that Kickstarter can enable beyond the Deluxe book itself. The supplement books seem to create more interest from the backers in Stretch Goals that focus on adding to the book, and only a secondary interest in extra products. Far secondary. Which makes a lot of sense, but is good to see reflected in what we can actually demonstrate with data.

Also we talked spoilers and Game of Thrones. You know what I mean.

Updates about the Present, based on Past messages that you like to know the Future:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) This is smashing into Rose’s work on Demon and so we re-prioritized her to push the Demon text to editing and for art notes.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: Kickstarting like crazy: We funded in 18 minutes, we have 800% funding and are the #1 funded tabletop RPG KS. Headed towards 3,600 backers and those backers have blown through 18+ Stretch Goals. There will be lots of Updates via the KS that reveal pieces of what will be in EX3, so keep an eye out for those too. There’s also the map and new art there. The EX3 KS ends Saturday!

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Preparing files for press- getting an OK on the cover treatment from the printer this week. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers- all but two of the final drafts are in.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press. Mike Lee is almost done the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel. The Storyteller Screen files are at press with W20. Bill has prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is approved and the PDF is going out to the KS backers ASAP. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is being outlined. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/06/03/white-howler-gifts-and-a-recipe/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Getting art notes out to a ton of classic Mage artists.

- W20 Changing Breeds is in layout. Stew finished his KS Video voice-over. I’d really like to get the KS ready for Kickstarter review and approval over the weekend, but that depends on available time. Will have up to date info next Monday, and as before, we’ll give 24 hour notice before it goes live.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but two more pieces need to come in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art notes are on their way to us.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) in layout.

- Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is ready for editing.

- Mage Translation Guide went live and is doing great on DTRPG.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

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

- Trinity Continuum: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet. He almost caught me but I started talking about genre emulation and got away. I might read his outline this week. Gonna get more feedback on the outline, but looks good.

- Scion: Talked to Joe Carriker about the project and broke his back with its awesomeness. When he gets up, we’ll talk about Scion: Origin. Gonna get Joe to share a call with Ian and compare Scion and Trinity notes.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being readied for editing and Rose is trying to get art notes together. The subtitle has been agreed upon and check out Matt McFarland at Origins for info on that. We’re looking to create a Demon Quickstart to roll out before the game itself as we’re not sure the finished book will hit Gen-Con- but the Quickstart can. If we go with that strategy, we’ll delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores June 15. Real soon.

Reason for Drinking: Starting to feel like summer is really here.

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One of Us was Sick, the Other: Tired.

By richt – June 12, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Monday Eddy was sick, so we didn’t have our meeting. Tuesday, he was OK, so we did meet over lunch, but then I, overwhelmed by a wave of post-Exalted 3rd Kickstarter whoop-ass, just lagged out. I’m pretty sure the after effects are over, but boy, a month of that crazy Kickstarter really just drained me. But here we are, things are cool now. So here now the news.

We covered a few pieces of art and projects in for approvals at CCP, and there are a couple of the business heads-ups that just kind of get tossed back and forth. Did you see what so-and-so was up to, etc. Since our good friend Adam Jury was down in ATL and visited with Eddy, I got the benefit of hearing about some of their conversations about Kickstarter and the very different experiences Adam has had with his KSs vs, say, the Ex3 KS. Always good to hear some of Adam’s thoughts and I hope to get a chance to personally compare notes at Gen-Con. One thing I thought was interesting was how one KS creator pretty instantly grasps that there isn’t one right way to set up or run a KS, and that we’re still in a state where lots and lots of experimentation is still possible. (This despite some internet pundits who seem sure there is one true way to KS heaven).

Right now, for example with just our own KSs, I’m looking at structuring the Deluxe W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter along the lines of the Deluxe Hunters Hunted 2 KS, as it seems like there’s strong evidence what backers are looking for with KSs that aren’t “line-starters”. For core books like W20, EX3, or Mummy: the Curse, we have less things we can do to the book itself, but a great chance with the Stretch Goals to add projects that extend the sorts of projects for the line that we can do. Fiction, of course, but I’d never have green-lit the W20 Cookbook, for example, as it’s not what I think the majority of W20 fans would like to see on the official line roll out even though its clearly a fun project. But for the non-Core books, we have received really clear evidence that the backers really want Stretch Goals that let them add to and improve the specific book they’re pledging for.
Its great that KSs let us be so much more responsive to the interests of our fans.
And that’s just us.

When I look at other folks’ KSs, I see a really wide range of usage of the KS basic model, which I think is really healthy. All of us set up an overt KS “Funding Goal to Do X”, but then there’s the strategic goal that I hope all KS creators have past “lotsa bucks”. Because that’s really selling the KS model short. For example, I see the FATE KS seemingly (I say seemingly because I haven’t grilled these guys on this) set up to use KS’s social networks to spread the word about FATE- and there they go with 10,000 backers. Awesome! It seemed to me that Monte was using Numenera‘s KS to roll out an entire two years worth of game line so that he could have that amount of time to enjoy working on the projects without the worry of using one product to pay for the next, and to have the bills paid during that time. Dunno whether I’m right or it worked exactly, as I’m not privvy to that info, but it sure looked like a win from over here. Also awesome!

For EX3, we really wanted the coolest Deluxe we could make, we wanted to add things like fiction or a comic book as I pointed out above, and we wanted to provide a platform that could bring together current or lapsed Exalted fans and show them a whole range of teasers and spoilers in a coherent manner that worked with the Devs comfort level at providing peeks at the new book. Coming in as the #1 funded tabletop RPG KS was just an insane example of how the fans truly love this game. Which we hope we showed that we feel as well.

We also love giving you Updates:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout. We’re waitingon a single chapter’s worth of formatting fixes.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) This is smashing into Rose’s work on Demon and so we re-prioritized her to push the Demon text to editing and for art notes. Still waiting on some final drafts.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: The EX3 Kickstarter is over and was more successful than we could have imagined! The Devs are back to work on the book and I’m creating Reward and Stretch Goal lists so that we can prioritize what needs doing during this two-week period where pledges are being validated by Amazon Payments.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Preparing files for press- getting a revised quote on the cover treatment from the printer this week. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers- all but two of the final drafts are in.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press. 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 prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is waiting for PoD approval and should be available from DTRPG in a week or so. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is ready for editing- which might take a while since our regular copy editors might not be as up on translating UK measurements to US ones. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/06/03/white-howler-gifts-and-a-recipe/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Getting art notes out to a ton of classic Mage artists.

- W20 Changing Breeds Stew finished his KS Video voice-over and Ian created a video to go with it. Still working on getting the KS ready for Kickstarter review and approval. Will have up to date info next Monday or earlier, and as before, we’ll give 24 hour notice before it goes live.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but two more pieces need to come in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art notes are on their way to us.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) in layout.

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

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- V20 Rites of the Blood: is being written 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: Looking at the schedule to start setting up writing. John Snead is chasing me through the internet. He almost caught me but I started talking about genre emulation and got away. I might read his outline this week. Gonna get more feedback on the outline, but looks good. Ian now starting a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline.

- Scion: Talked to Joe Carriker about the project and broke his back with its awesomeness. When he gets up, we’ll talk about Scion: Origin. Gonna get Joe to share a call with Ian and compare Scion and Trinity notes- EX3 KS interrupted this, gonna try again.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being readied for editing and Rose is trying to get art notes together. The subtitle has been agreed upon and check out Matt McFarland at Origins for info on that. We’re looking to create a Demon Quickstart to roll out before the game itself as we’re not sure the finished book will hit Gen-Con- but the Quickstart can. If we go with that strategy, we’ll delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and additional rules files from the Strix and God Machine Chronicles. This will be available at participating friendly local game stores this Saturday, June 15! Go to the stores, ask for the booklet!

Reason for Drinking: Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter campaign is over and surpassed all of our expectations in every way.

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Miracles of Modern Science

By richt – June 17, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

So, I’m sitting here writing this up on my new tablet that I went with instead of a laptop (for those regular readers who remember my indecision on that subject a bunch of months ago) because my cable and Internet are both down and that inevitable eventuality is a big part of why I got the iPad to begin with. So we’ll see how this works.

Eddy and I kept it pretty business-focused today and the pop-culture references were few. We have a couple of things in with CCP Approvals as sort of “check out where we’re going with this” sorts of pre-emptive submissions so nobody is surprised later in the creation process. Next we talked a bit about the way rumors turn into facts- which has kind of always been the way with human conversation, but it’s now magnified by our friend Mr. Internet. Again, this was more in a business context, but it’s often really hard not to feel lousy when you’re misrepresented by somebody online. There is a necessary balance to learning how to listen and how to ignore posts if you want to be creative or run a company that relies on the Internet. At least, if you want to try and stay reasonably sane.

We did a bit of Gen Con prep and went over some of the panels we’ll be doing for Onyx Path this year. As we have for, what, five years now, we’ll be doing the What’s Up with WW/Onyx Path panel where we’ll be looking at all the cool plans we have for the next year. We’re doing an Onyx Path Q&A panel and panels specifically about nWoD and cWoD as well. And I’m one of the Industry Guests of Honor again this year ( I’m not worthy!), which was a lot of fun last year. It gives me a rare chance to meet a lot of people I’ve only heard mentioned over the years. For such a small industry, there are still a lot of professionals I never got the chance to meet being behind the scenes at WW for so long. A brief rundown of the GoH panels I’ll be on- times and locations TBD- will be Art for IPs, RPG Books Aren’t Textbooks, Running a Successful Kickstarter Q&A, Gender in RPG Art, and Working As a Pro Artist. I dunno how much I’m going to add to he mix, but I hope some of you will get a chance to sit in on a panel or two.

And now- what we’re working on now:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout. We’re waiting on a single chapter’s worth of formatting fixes.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) This is smashing into Rose’s work on Demon and so we re-prioritized her to push the Demon text to editing and for art notes. Still waiting on some final drafts.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: The EX3 Kickstarter is over and was more successful than we could have imagined! The Devs are back to work on the book and I’m creating Reward and Stretch Goal lists so that we can prioritize what needs doing during this two-week period where pledges are being validated by Amazon Payments.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Preparing files for press- getting a revised quote on the cover treatment from the printer this week. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers- all but two of the final drafts are in.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At press. 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 prepared the W20 Anthology outline and contracting prospective writers. The Skinner is waiting for PoD approval and should be available from DTRPG in a week or so. Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is ready for editing- which might take a while since our regular copy editors might not be as up on translating UK measurements to US ones. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/06/03/white-howler-gifts-and-a-recipe/

-Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Getting art notes out to a ton of classic Mage artists.

- W20 Changing Breeds Still working on getting the KS ready for Kickstarter review and approval. Need to add in the Reward Tiers and submit to KS for approval, and as before, we’ll give 24 hour notice before it goes live.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but two more pieces need to come in.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art notes are being worked on to get out to artists.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is having its first proof reviewed.

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

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- V20 Rites of the Blood: is being written 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: John Snead is working on his outline, Ian is now starting a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline.

- Scion: Talked to Joe Carriker about the project and broke his back with its awesomeness. When he gets up, we’ll talk about Scion: Origin. Gonna get Joe to share a call with Ian and compare Scion and Trinity notes- this week for sure.

- Demon: The Frutang: 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. Text is being readied for editing and Rose is trying to get art notes together. The subtitle has been agreed upon and check out Matt McFarland at Origins for info on that. We’re looking to create a Demon Quickstart to roll out before the game itself as we’re not sure the finished book will hit Gen-Con- but the Quickstart can. If we go with that strategy, we’ll delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS.

- Free RPG Day Project: Reap the Whirlwind, for VtR, is a combined 64 page booklet that combines a revised version of “Into the Void” and was available last weekend at FLGSs near you. Hope you had a chance to pop in and get one. Despite some odd “on sale/not on sale” moments over the weekend, this will be available on DTRPG sometime this week for reals.

Reason to Drink: OMG this tablet is awful for this.

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Sliding Into Summertime

By richt – June 24, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

This is the last week before CCP North America takes a two week Summer vacay, so Eddy and I talked about how to handle our art and book approvals during that time. My idea, that we get a free pass on anything submitted during that time, was heretical and I’m in the time-out chair right now. Actually, what we really don’t want is to load up the approval queue so that the board comes back to lots and lots of things to review and everything gets bogged down, so Mighty Mike Chaney and I will be planning accordingly to use that time to get further tweaks in before we put anything up for approval. Lots of talk about Gen Con too, as Eddy and I are gonna be roomies again as well as do our infamous “What’s Up With WW/Onyx Path” panel. Working to get signage, business cards, shirts, and a brochure all set and being printed for the show as well. We’ll be in the DriveThruRPG booth again this year with Monte Cook and his massive Numenera presence, so the joint should be jumpin’.

We talked a fair bit about how he and I have been talking about WW‘s, and now Onyx Path‘s, business model for years and years and how it seems that this is info that we can never stop talking about because it seems like its really hard to get the word out. Maybe folks don’t realize what we mean by “business model” and tune out when those two words are used because that sort of topic is boring. Much more fun to talk about the Clans and such. I don’t know really, but I do know that we are gonna keep talking about a few things- and apologies to all of you regular blog readers who already have had to read this info time and again; I’ll try and keep it merciful and quick- and first on the docket is to reiterate that Onyx Path, right now, has one full time employee, me, and utilizes the concept of development teams whose brilliant creators are situated around the world. These folk are all freelance- our developers, our writers, our designers and illustrators and editors- and a lot of our creators are not full-time freelance either (although some are) and rely on working a full-time job and do our work in the evenings and on weekends because they love creating RPGs. So that’s the first thing: Onyx Path is committed to bringing the most talented creative people to a project and we’ll bend the schedule to get the right folks creating their best work on the right project.

Second, and last for today, is something I touched on above, and that is the idea that Onyx Path is committed to quality over timeliness. We are going to take the time to make it great. This means, as we’ve been explaining since we announced our existence almost a year ago, that our schedules and dates are always best-guess estimates. Please, please, take that to heart because we are operating on that idea. I make decisions every day based on “what is best for the project”. I really wish we at WW had held to that same precept back in the day, but we had in-store deadlines that were brutal to miss in terms of the repercussions. The chain book stores in particular, being huge businesses, had penalties for failure to hit their deadlines that really forced us to make decisions that in retrospect make me wince. Does that mean we want some of these insane slips in the schedule or in Deluxe Edition delivery- no, of course not. We slip because we made a call based on quality, not because we don’t give a crap. We care about every book that is published, we care about what happens when you read through that book, we care about the experience you have as players, and we generally care about you, our readers, storytellers, and players. We think you deserve the best, and strive to deliver that.

Later, I’ll write one of these that talks about how these two parts of our business model combine with our other parts like how we deliver these books and projects to ya’ll, but for now- How about some Updates?:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout. We’re waiting on a single chapter’s worth of formatting fixes.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) This is smashing into Rose’s work on Demon and so we re-prioritized her to push the Demon text to editing and for art notes. Still waiting on some final drafts.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press. The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is headed to editing.
- Exalted 3rd Edition: The Devs are back to work on the book and I’m creating Reward and Stretch Goal lists so that we can prioritize now that the two-week period where pledges are being validated by Amazon Payments seems done. We won’t be flinging out the KS Surveys this week as we’ll try and use the regular contact info for a few of the Rewards we need to get started with.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Not quite at press but the files are ready- getting a revised quote based on the cover treatment from the printer this week. Justin’s working on redlines for the Anthology writers- all but two of the final drafts are in.

- 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. The Skinner is available from DTRPG in PDF and PoD form: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/115057/Skinner-SAS . Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is ready for editing- which might take a while since our regular copy editors might not be as up on translating UK measurements to US ones. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/06/03/white-howler-gifts-and-a-recipe/

- Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and developing his writers, also like a maniac. Art notes and contracts out to our full-page artist, once we have some feedback from him I’ll look a posting an art blog along with Phil’s developer notes. Very early sketches for the fulls look awesome. Getting art notes out to a ton of classic Mage artists.

- W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter to go live at 11am EDT on Tuesday June 25th.

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but two more pieces need to come in.

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

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is having its first proof changes input.

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

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- V20 Rites of the Blood: is being written 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: Gonna get Joe to share a call with Ian and compare Scion and Trinity notes- on Tuesday.

- Demon: The Descent: Yes, that’s the title. Yay! 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. Text is being readied for editing and Rose is trying to get art notes together. We’re looking to create a Demon Quickstart to roll out before the game itself as we’re not sure the finished book will hit Gen-Con- but the Quickstart can. If we go with that strategy, we’ll delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS and create a Demon Preview booklet for Gen Con.

Reason to Drink: It gets so hot that folks think the old rules no longer apply.

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Right Before the Fireworks

By richt – July 4, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

I’ve been using this icon of myself for a couple of years, and that thing in my mouth is a fireworks sparkler. With the 4th of July US holiday coming this week, I just thought you should know not to hold sparklers in your mouth. (I do things like that, but I do a lot of things I shouldn’t).

Eddy took some time from his vacation to chat yesterday, and interestingly enough, he was happy to talk about last week’s look at the business model for Onyx Path. This is not surprising, as it was through our conversations that the current direction of Onyx was molded (as was the direction of WW in the last few years), and it is through our ongoing talks that I get to hear how things look from an outside observer who already understands the various pieces that make up the company. Very useful, that.
Following up on last week’s two Onyx Path business model precepts, here’s a big one for this week:

Third, Onyx Path delivers our projects into folks hands using three methods: PDFs (electronic publishing), Print on Demand books, and traditionally printed Deluxe Editions via Kickstarter Campaigns.

PDFs, were our first alternative to the traditional printing and distribution methods that our hobby has used for decades. Obviously, a lot of the methods Onyx is using with PDFs are what we learned after the years Eddy and I began transitioning White Wolf towards electronic publishing, but as the way we all get our entertainment has shifted in the past decade, we’re looking at going even further with ePublishing. Right now, we’ve just started on other electronic methods like with the choice of formats for the God Machine Chronicle Anthology, but we’re working on extending what we can do. Our Dice Roller App is still in production, and Mirthful Mike Chaney is exploring ways to include other ePub formats with our RPG book projects.
Now, I wasn’t all that satisfied with only being a PDF publisher, despite the future possibilities, because I’ve made books look beautiful for 30 years and still really love the physical turn of the page. For years, WW looked at PoD technology and results (we even seriously considered buying a set-up), but I didn’t like the quality. But about six years ago, DTRPG started showing us examples of where PoD printing had progressed to, and I started to see a black and white printing quality very close to what we had back when I started at WW. With DTRPG able to ship paper books to fans with the same ease as ordering from Amazon, I feel that Onyx Path offers printed books with a quality that keeps evolving to higher standards, while not forcing Onyx to deal with inventory, warehousing, and distribution.

And then last year, Onyx Path launched its first Kickstarter and the final piece of our current publishing delivery strategy fell into place. Even though DTRPG’s PoD service has a lot of excellent advantages, it still can’t truly replace the traditional printer when it comes to making books that use unusual inks, or embossings, or other materials for the covers. But those cool Deluxe features are expensive to print- really expensive- and Onyx doesn’t have a sales and ordering set-up and would have to find methods of shipping those orders if it did. We discovered that Kickstarter had the methods for inputting payments, the KS funding if it succeeded would provide the dollars for the printing, and if it failed to fund we’d get valuable info as to whether fans really wanted the book. And even more importantly, KS added greatly to Onyx Path‘s communication methods with our community (more on that next week). And Onyx doesn’t print any more of the Deluxe projects than we need to to fulfill pledges, so again, no inventory to store and manage.

As you can tell, from all three of these delivery method descriptions, I’m really looking at having the fewest steps between you, our fans, and our creators. We are freed, in ways White Wolf could never have been in its heyday, to produce the projects that we and you are most excited about without having to check with our sales venues. That means we are out of, and have no intention returning to, the traditional three tier distribution system like WW used for decades. Which is not to say Onyx never will, because never say never, nor that we don’t want to support our FLGSs. Our model doesn’t drop the books into a retail store like back when, but we are adjusting two aspects of the model to at least allow Retailers to join us on this path. First off, we have been including Retailer Reward Tiers in our last several Kickstarters, and secondly, we have been experimenting with a Retailer Discount Program for PoDs on DTRPG. Neither of these provide the same profit margins as the old distribution to retailer model, but we try to give as good a discount as possible without costing Onyx money to fulfill a Reward or order. Because that would be dumb.

Finally, speaking of Kickstarters, our buddies at By Night Studios are coming to the end of their Mind’s Eye Theatre: VtM Kickstarter and if you haven’t pledged yet, you might want to check it out as the book looks like it’s going to be sweet. Also, both Mark Rein-Hagen and Stewart Wieck, WW co-founders, are running Kickstarters. Mark’s is for his horror RPG I Am Zombie, and Stew’s is for an Augmented Reality Board Game called Darkling Plain. Again, if you haven’t checked them out, you should, they look like very cool projects.

Enough about other folks’ projects, here are our Updates:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) is in layout.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) This is smashing into Rose’s work on Demon and so we re-prioritized her to push the Demon text to editing and for art notes. Still waiting on some final drafts.

- Mummy the Curse - Book and Screen are at press. The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is in editing. Cursed Necropolis DC being written.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: The Devs are back to work on the book and I’m creating Reward and Stretch Goal lists. In return, the Devs are getting together a full book status report and we just sent notes back to the cartographer.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Files are with the printer for the Deluxe. We’re not going to get the PoD and PDF files OK’d this week, but will aim for next week. Justin’s almost ready to send the HH2 Fiction Anthology to editing.

- 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. The Skinner is available from DTRPG in PDF and PoD form: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/115057/Skinner-SAS . Jess Hartley is writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is ready for editing- which might take a while since our regular copy editors might not be as up on translating UK measurements to US ones. Check out some news here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/2013/06/03/white-howler-gifts-and-a-recipe/

- 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.

- W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter went live and we funded early last week. Now working on adding cool extra bits like a front of the book comic as Stretch Goals. The full text is available here: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- W20 Rage Across the World: Most of the art is in but two more pieces need to come in.

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

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is having its first proof changes input.

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

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is being written and red-lined. Check out the W20 blog notes: http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/

- V20 Rites of the Blood: is being written 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: Yes, that’s the title. Yay! 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. Text is being readied for editing and Rose is trying to get art notes together. We’re looking to create a Demon Quickstart to roll out before the game itself as we’re not sure the finished book will hit Gen-Con- but the Quickstart can. If we go with that strategy, we’ll delay the Demon Translation Guide in order to work on the QS and create a Demon Preview booklet for Gen Con.

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

Reason to Drink: Canada Day and the 4th of July in one week!

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Catch-Up Ketchup

By richt – July 15, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

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.

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The Pause That Refereshes…

By richt – July 29, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

I go through 2-5 of these Coke Zeros a day. During vacation, I got it down to 1-3. That’s good isn’t it? Maybe I’ll get superpowers.
But some days you just need the magic go-juice.
I hope everybody enjoyed Eddy’s guest stint last week as he returned to writing our blog here.

Now watch me dovetail the last two ideas: next week, we’ll have two different guests filling in for me as I try to get an actual vacation and not one that has me finishing up a very busy finish to the W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter (which is mentioned below, but let me say again, it really was great!). Rollickin’ Rose Bailey, who gives me a weekly Update on where our projects are in writing, development, and editing, and Mirthful Mike Chaney, who does the same with art and design, will guest host.

Today, I brought up to Eddy a couple of things. The afore-mentioned Deluxe Changing Breeds Kickstarter wrapping up so nicely, a big stupid issue with the Deluxe Mummy the Curse books (more on that below), and the book that I read over my “break” that I first enjoyed purely as a fan of the Pertwee-era Dr Who, and then, like we do, I examined as a nostalgia product. Since both the cWoD and our Trinity Continuum (and to a much lesser extent, Scion) game lines must be designed with an eye towards those nostalgic feelings our fans have, it was interesting to shuffle through my own responses to the book (Alastair Reynolds’ “Harvest of Time”) and to try and see what he did that really played up my enjoyment of that era of Dr Who. The author has an excellent ear for each characters syntax, so much so that I mentally read it in their voices, and that was vital in recreating the feeling of watching one of the TV episodes. For the 70′s Pertwee Dr Who, treating the UNIT “family” well is a vital and important key to drawing me back there. The pacing and storyline were also dead on to the episodes, but here we have improvements as the writer isn’t limited to the episode structure or budget and can avoid long sequences of running back and forth through hallways except as a wink to the reader. The settings were interesting as they were very evocative of the sorts of places shown in the TV episodes, but with just enough extra stuff that couldn’t have been done on TV- but not too much. The Master’s prison is in a shut down nuclear facility, and his entire cell is submerged in cooling water and must be raised out of the pool by a winch. Not impossible for the FX and budgets of the time, but not likely. Skillfully and importantly, I was never drawn out of my fan-boy recreation of a Pertwee episode.

I think this relates back to the question of how much do you change with a cWoD 20th Anniversary book, or with Trinity. Enough that the setting lives again and isn’t just a reanimated but ultimately uninspiring hulk of nostalgia, but not so much that our nostalgic touchstones are swept away and the game is unrecognizable to a devoted fan. It’s sometimes a hard line to draw, but I think its worth it to be able to re-ignite those fires and remind folks why they love that game, or setting, or era.

Also, as I discussed with Mr. Webb, it occurred to me that Dr Who as an IP was a truly Transmedia one. The TV shows were one whole way to enjoy the “world” of Dr Who, but the novels were very much another, and the audio dramas were something else as well. And the comics, etc. What I was saying to Eddy was that as far as I could tell, the various different ways that folks could get into the IP were pretty good at being viable novels, or audio shows, and also ways to enjoy the IP. Not just tack-ons or projects that are bad at being novels, for example, for the sake of preserving something from the TV shows. (They could no doubt be bad for other reasons, of course). The viability of “Transmedia” as a concept is still something that Eddy and I feel is deserving of consideration, particularly when we have potentially disparate media for our game world to shine in like board/card games, novels, comics, and audio. Hmmm.

For nostalgia’s sake then, more Updates:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) The PDF and electronic format versions are on sale now at DTRPG/DTFiction: http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/117396/The-Strix-Chronicle-Anthology

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Still 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 just after mid-August. (Which is not exactly right, in that the Mummy books were at the shipper on Friday as promised, and on Saturday I discovered that for a currently unknown reason the printer had not embossed the covers. So back they go, and the cover will be embossed and the books reshipped to arrive around the 20th. More details to the backers in a Backer Update, but that’s the story in a nutshell). The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is in art direction/layout. Cursed Necropolis DC being written and its cover has been approved.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: A couple of EX3 chapters continue to be finalized by the Devs and thence for Editing. The EX3 Quickstart is being written. EX3 novel contracts are being created and should go out this week.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Sent a couple of corrected pages to the printer for the Deluxe but other than 3 pages the book is good to go to press- thanks to those of you who caught just a couple more changes we needed to make via reviewing the PDF. Which is live 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 done and ready for W20. Bill has theW20 Anthology stories done and they are headed for editing. Jess Hartley continues writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is almost done 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- lots of sketches are coming in and a good number of finals were approved. Going to try to get up an art blog this week- this didn’t happen but I will try this week.

- W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter finished last week and was our third highest funded KS. The last few days were amazing and the excitement from backers and fans was infectious. A fair amount of expanded material was added to the book, and a Changing Breeds Fiction Anthology was added to the schedule because of passing through the Stretch Goals. I’m talking to Stew Wilson and Jess Hartley later this week to go over the KS and what we do next.http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/
- W20 Rage Across the World: All the art is in, approved, and going into the book.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art is coming in.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) is ready for the PDF version to go live on Weds.

- Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is in editing. Art is all in.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is almost ready for editing.

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

- Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): Writers are writing. David is sending Mirthful Mike art notes for the cover.

- Trinity Continuum: We now have a whopping big Aeon outline and a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline. Ian and John Snead are gathering their writers.

- Scion: Joe’s team is hammering systems, but Joe himself has been stricken with chronic back pain. Measures to relieve this are being taken, and we must look at other measures to ensure that Scion isn’t delayed while Joe recuperates.

- 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 is being laid out this week with the approved art. Our goal is now to get copies of the Quickstart for Gen Con as it has come together quicker than expected.

- Hunter: The Something About Monsters: Writers are writing.

Reason to Drink: Did you see that Mummy news up there? Grrrr Glug-glug.

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Flying Out to Indy…

By richt – August 13, 2013Posted in: Monday Meeting

Just a quick Monday Meeting Notes to say that everything anybody is talking about this week is Gen Con in Indy. There are plenty of our Onyx Path gang not able to attend, and we’ll miss all you folks and hope you’re working hard while we’re “playing” at the con. Was that mean? Only on the surface, because this Gen Con we are going to be working our butts off.

Already in preparation, we have all new booth signage, official Onyx Path camp shirts so fans will be able to recognize us in the booth and around Indy, snazzy Mirthful Mike Chaney-designed business cards, an Onyx Path brochure (with our plans through to next August in it) to hand out, and Demon: The Descent Ouickstarter samples for folks to check out at the booth. Plus I just put the last parts of our “What’s Up with WW/OP” presentation together (hopefully our AV system can show it well this year), and we’ll have some printed samples of the Strix Anthology and Hunters Hunted 2 at the booth as well. Getting all that stuff ready while still pushing all our projects forward was quite a task! We’ll be in Booth #1201, with DriveThruRPG and Monte Cook (so it might be crowded over there).

And then, while we’re there, we have these panels that I’ll be at with as many of our gang as can attend (since everybody besides me is a freelancer, some folks have their own cool projects and companies to push, if you can imagine that!):

FRIDAY – 11:00 a.m.
Q&A With Onyx path
Crowne Plaza :: Victoria Stn A/B
FRIDAY – 1pm-2pm
Portfolio Review w/Mike Chaney
Booth #1201
FRIDAY – 3:00 p.m.
New World of Darkness
Crowne Plaza : Grand Central Bllrm C

SATURDAY – 11am-12pm
Portfolio Review w/Mike Chaney
Booth #1201
SATURDAY – 1:00 p.m.
What’s Up With White Wolf/Onyx Path?
Crowne Plaza : Grand Central Bllrm C
SATURDAY – 4:00 p.m.
Classic World of Darkness
Crowne Plaza : Victoria Stn A/B
Also, we’ll have signing times as listed at the booth.

Also, also, I’ll be there as an Industry Guest of Honor again this year and am on these panels that you should stop in and catch if they sound interesting:

THURSDAY – 3:00 p.m.Being a Professional RPG Artist
ICC : 210
FRIDAY – 1:00 p.m.
Gender Issues in RPG Art
ICC : 211
SATURDAY – 2:00 p.m.
Creating Art for IPs
ICC : 211
SUNDAY – 10:00 a.m.
RPGs Aren’t Textbooks
ICC: 211
SUNDAY – 11:00 a.m.
Running a Successful Kickstarter Q&A
ICC: 210

Also, also, also- we have our two Gen Con meals with Holden, John, and myself, with the Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition backers who pledged for that somewhat dubious reward.

So what I’m saying is that we are going to be running constantly while we’re there. But it’s going to be worth it. I know that our gang is really looking forward to getting to talk face to face with as many of you folks as we can- no, seriously! Because that’s really something that all the internet communication that we do just doesn’t provide- the human to human moment. Isn’t that really the telling point of our hobby, the difference between playing around a table vs into a screen?

Philosofizin’ aside, we really are looking forward to talking with everybody who drops by, and by we, I mean: myself, Mirthful Mike Chaney, Evil Ian Watson, Rockin’ Rose Bailey, Madcap Matt McElroy, Eddy (he can write his own damn nick-name) Webb, and a host of writers and developers who will be dropping in like Black Hat Matt McFarland, Holden Shearer, C.A. Suleiman, John “Put a slash through the O” Morke, David Hill, Monica Valentinelli and many more.

OK, gotta run- here are the Updates:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) The PDF and electronic format versions are on sale now at DTRPG/DTFiction: http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/117396/The-Strix-Chronicle-Anthology Samples of the printed versions will be at the GenCon booth #1201.

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Final dev pass.

- Mummy the Curse - Deluxe book and Screen are at press- book being re-covered. The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is in art direction/layout. Cursed Necropolis DC being written and its cover has been approved.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: A couple of EX3 chapters continue to be finalized by the Devs and thence for Editing. The EX3 Quickstart is being written. EX3 novel contracts are being created and need a tad bit of discussion at GenCon this week with the freelance creators.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Deluxe is printing. The PDF is live on DTRPG and samples of the printed books will be at our booth (#1201) at GenCon. 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 binding. 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 done and ready for W20. Bill has theW20 Anthology stories done and they are in editing. Jess Hartley continues writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is almost done 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. A good number of finals pieces were approved. Going to try to get up an art blog- OK, when Mike and I get a week where we can assemble some pieces, this will start.

- W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter expanded material being written, and the Changing Breeds Fiction Anthology is being discussed.

- W20 Rage Across the World: All the art is in, approved, and going into the book.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) is into editing and art is coming in.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) PDF version is live and we are incorporating changes pointed out by you, our community.

- Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is in editing. Art is all in.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is almost ready for editing.

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

- Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): Writers are writing. David is sending Mirthful Mike art notes for the cover.

- Trinity Continuum: We now have a whopping big Aeon outline and a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline. Ian and John Snead are gathering their writers. There will be some talk at Gen Con, oh yes there will.

- Scion: Joe’s team is hammering systems, but Joe himself has been stricken with chronic back pain. Measures to relieve this are being taken and they seem to be working, and we must look at other measures to ensure that Scion isn’t delayed while Joe recuperates. Again, we will be talking about this at Gen Con, but without Joe unfortunately.

- Demon: The Descent: The text is now in editing! Art has been assigned. Demon Quickstart samples will be at Gen Con for folks to check out and give us their thoughts about before we post it on DTRPG after the con.

- Hunter: The Something About Monsters: Writers are writing.

Reason to Drink: G. E. N. C. O. N.

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Post Gen Con Sorta Monday Meeting Notes

By richt – August 21, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

Wow! Was that a wild five days. Plus travel.

Eddy and I shared a room again this year, so it sorta counts as a Monday Meeting. But because everybody has been playing catch-up on sleep and emails and notes, I have no Updates nor any real meeting notes this week. Instead, let me talk about Gen Con and how Onyx Path did there this year. Our goal this year was to continue to ramp up enthusiasm for, and awareness of, Onyx Path and our license to publish WW games. You folks all know what we’re up to, but there are lots of gamers who don’t. So we had Onyx staff shirts, signage, biz cars, and stacks of the physical version of this:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118000/Onyx-Path-2013-2014-Publishing-Schedule

We also had things to show off: copies of the Strix Chronicle Anthology and Hunters Hunted 2 PoD proofs, a sexy copy of the correctly embossed Deluxe Mummy: The Curse that was shipped to my hotel by the printer on Friday, and a few print-outs of this:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118271/Demon-the-Descent-Quickstart

Booth traffic was brisk, no doubt helped by having the Monte Cook sharing it, and as far as I can tell there were a lot of folks getting really excited by seeing the WW game lines getting attention and new releases again. So, I think we got the message across there.

Then there were the panels as well, which were a lot of fun. We had so many freelance creative folks there that are working on projects that there was often little I needed to say at the “Onyx/WW Q&A”, or the “nWoD” and “cWoD” panels. Great questions, lots of enthusiasm. And then there was the “What’s Up with WW/OP” panel- or the “Eddy and Rich Show”, that we’ve been doing for years now. Once more we revealed the new schedule until next August 2014, and it was great when I mentioned that the “schedule isn’t fixed in stone, but more of a…” and half the audience said “framework!”. He, he- some folks have been paying attention- thanks for that. We also announced that we are indeed doing Wraith 2oth Anniversary Edition for later next year with my friend Rich “Dead Guy” Dansky developing the game he is so well known for. I thought it would be a surprise to announce it at that panel- but pretty much everybody expected it- that didn’t stop the cheering, but now I need something else to use as a surprise. Also got some very nice excited comments and questions over the Scion 2nd and Trinity Continuum listings, so that’s very heartening to hear since those are Onyx‘s babies now.

I was also one of the Industry Guests of Honor again, which is pretty cool in that I get to sit on panels with great and talented folks from other companies that I rarely get to talk to like Jon Hodgson, art director at Cubicle7, the inimitable Stan!, and my old friend Nicole Lindroos, from Green Ronin. Most importantly, for our purposes here, I get to talk to people who really don’t follow this blog and our other efforts and let them know what Onyx Path stands for. I was on a “How to Run a Successful Kickstarter” panel with Stan! and afterwards a nice guy came up to let me know he was going to specifically buy some stuff at the booth because he was impressed by my enthusiasm and business direction (which was pretty amazing since this was the tail end of the con and energy was something I barely had left). But most importantly, to me, was the “Sexism in RPG Art” panel that I found out that both Jon and I had proposed. What a fantastic meeting of minds in that room. You could tell a lot of folks there were scarred veterans of internet wars over the topic, but in that room there was a pervasive sense of trying to improve the representation of body types, races, and genders in gaming art and nobody went for someone else’s throat. Because sometimes one person’s “sexy” is another’s “sexist” and it’s easy to lose the idea that we’re all people when you only see a name on a screen. Which was indicative to me why the RPG industry might be able to lead the way towards hanging up the old chainmail bikini. At least at Onyx Path, we’re going to try.

Another cool thing was that the Exalted developers, John and Holden, and myself had two meals with our Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition backers who had pledged for just that sort of a meal with us. It was a little hard to talk at the Saturday night dinner because they had one of those open to the dining room kitchens and the noise was loud, but lots of upcoming parts of their plans for EX3 were revealed during the wave of questions from the backers. Sunday was a fair bit quieter as we were tucked into a round table in the back of that place, and while there was some duplication of questions, mostly new topics were covered. Also, this time, I thought to tweet a few random quotes (wish I’d thought of that the night before), here are a few completely out of context:

“Camelot is going to eat people, whether you want it to or not”!​

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“Speaking of excesses, how are limit breaks going to be handled?”​

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“Now I want to roleplay a lemur!”​

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I was so busy that I really didn’t get a chance to walk the floor, although I did see lots of old friends including artist Jeff Menges who was the spearhead for the Magic the Gathering artist retrospective book “The First 49″ that I was honored to be included in, Dave Martin whose Wrecking Crew were demoing WW/Onyx games in the old church/train station combo building, and Jeff Combos whose Hollow Earth Expedition RPG is a joy to see being issued again. Unfortunately, I missed a lot of people I’d have loved to talk to, and I very badly missed a scheduled podcast- I am so sorry!- that Eddy was able to fill in for. I did do one podcast there for NerdTangent that they dragged me to after most of a night drinking. I had to though, as those young Canadian punks were talking smack about Tim Burton’s Batman. I think they’re going to run it sometime in the next four or five weeks, but it was an ugly drunken brawl of a “discussion” with no-hold-barred action and insults. Of course, I destroyed them with logic (one example was pointing out how stupid they were in general) and eventually the one named Todd actually was knocked unconscious by my devastating devaluation of their thesis. Also, on another late, late, night, I played D&DNext and did another podcast talking about favorite comic book artists.

Downsides? Our sign was small, our brochures needed to get into more folk’s hands, and our AV needs to be professionally done as it’s not fair to Eddy to make him try and do the AV work every year. I thought his broken mic meant we had no recording, but Evil Ian Watson may have found a source for some record of at least one of our panels- we’ll let you know if he can get that posted.

So go ahead, ask questions about the con or the schedule- I have at least 20% of my brain working again.

Reason To Drink: After last week, you have got to be kidding- my booze hump is full.

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Scheduling a Schedule Talk

By richt – August 26, 2013 Posted in: Monday Meeting

A lot of what we’re doing right now at Onyx Path is catching up with both the stuff that drifted a bit with Gen Con attendance and prep, and scheduling talks and meetings with the folks we met there. There should be some fun announcements coming up in terms of who we’re working with on upcoming projects. Eddy and I talked a lot about that and the overall way that Onyx Path is getting out the idea of how we’re handling the WW license and our new projects. Overall, I was pretty happy with our panels and stuff as I mentioned last week, but then we discussed how some of the response to the new Schedule was evidence that the message about how Onyx Path is doing things hasn’t yet sunk in to all of our potential community. Let me finish with the meeting topics and I’ll delve in more deeply to the Schedule.

At the Con I was reading a Mike Hammer omnibus, which naturally led to Eddy and I talking about noir genre tropes and Eddy’s take on the heavy christian symbolism present in the Hammer novels. There’s certainly an “Old Testament”, eye for an eye, vibe in the first three novels I read. Not having read Micky Spillane before, I thought his prose was compelling and could clearly be seen as inspiring Frank Miller’s Sin City, but also James Ellroy and Andrew Vachss. And yet, as I told Eddy today, I’m not sure about the series- I’m not going to spoiler it up here, but let’s say that the targets of his bullets in the last chapter of each book all have things in common that even I, not the most socially/politically sensitive guy, find a bit concerning. So, I’m only thinking of maybe checking out the fourth book rather than grabbing it as planning to. In other news, Eddy’s role in being my contact at CCP has also grown a bit from approvals to also managing some of the business aspects as far as CCP is concerned, so that’s good news for me, although Eddy, as always, has more work to do.

Now, on to the Schedule.

The purpose of the Schedule is pretty much as we labelled it in the brochure: to let folks know which projects we intend to do for which lines in the year to come and the order we intend to work on them. The order of release is put into months because we all need a level of structure to use as a framework for everything from creating a development/editing/layout schedule internally, to allocating manpower in our freelancer pool, to noting what books happening near each other can create some kind of synergy. Our intention is to hit those months with our releases, but we have the understanding that they may not. Our publishing business model is, in fact, specifically designed to give us the flexibility to make the call to delay release if we feel doing so will improve some aspect of the book or the experience of the game in general.

Let me say that again, because it really is a serious change in how we operated in the WW days and really changes how we roll now: the ability to miss the projected release date for a good reason is part of our overall business plan. We don’t want to miss the release month, but we’re able and willing to if it makes for a better release when it does go on sale.

Now that’s not to say that there aren’t downsides to this model- there really, really, are. Erosion of customer confidence, loss of momentum for a new line if the supplements roll out late, lots of books falling out of one year and into the other meaning we have an explosion of books in one month and none the month before, and an erratic cash-flow issue that can really cripple a new business; these are just some of the issues that could still bite us hard and wreck Onyx Path. But I’m taking the chance that you folks would rather have a later book done really well, than something forced together just in time to hit a release date scheduled as much as a year and a half earlier. Another aspect of the Schedule that came up talking with Eddy, is the fact that the Schedule you can download or hold in your hands is the same one we are working off of. There’s no “fake dates” version running around because that really seems to run counter to the idea of Onyx being as open and transparent as we can be with you all. I’d rather takes the lumps of failing in front of all of you than give you or our teams false dates- which in the case of a few of our projects we still would have blown past anyway.

So, that’s the idea behind the Schedule itself (which is, after all, something that we evolve and change as we know things will shift, and is only the beginning of project news with the very weekly Updates found below as an ongoing window into where each project is), and in the coming weeks I hope to give you an idea for why the books listed were selected as the ones we’re doing, and to focus on a couple of them in more detail than we could put in the Schedule.

Your weekly window into the project world of Onyx Path:

- Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology (VtR) The PDF and electronic format versions are on sale now at DTRPG/DTFiction: http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/117396/The-Strix-Chronicle-Anthology If you already purchased them you should have received an Updated notice in your DTRPG library as we made a few minor changes. Waiting for new PoD proofs to put this totally on sale- thanks for the help!

- Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle (VtR) Final dev pass. Art notes out to a couple of main artists.

- Mummy the Curse - Deluxe and Screen: On road from printer to the shipper. The MtC Ready Made Characters Pack is waiting for new art and then it will be ready for approvals from CCP. Cursed Necropolis DC being written and its cover has been approved.

- Exalted 3rd Edition: While John hunkers down to rewrite the Charms chapter, the rest of the team is working on a couple of EX3 chapters that continue to be finalized for Editing. Contracts for Matt Forbeck and Jess Hartley’s EX3 novels as well as Zub’s comic are being created and their notes from the Devs are going out with the contracts.

- V20 Hunters Hunted 2: Deluxe is ready for assembly. The PDF is live on DTRPG and I’m waiting on new corrected PoD proofs this week, I hope. Justin has sent almost all of the HH2 Fiction Anthology text and once the cover text is delivered, it will go to editing.

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

- Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: At binding. Mike Lee is submitting chapters of the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel to Bill for dev review. The Storyteller Screen files are done and ready for W20. Bill has theW20 Anthology stories done and they are in editing. Jess Hartley continues writing the White Howlers Tribe Book and the W20 Cookbook is almost done in editing

- Deluxe Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition has Phil Brucato writing like a maniac and has most of the book written and we are prepping an editor for this big ol’ thing. Very early sketches for the fulls from Michael William Kaluta look awesome. Almost all of the finals pieces were approved. Trying to get Mirthful Mike Chaney to start an art blog.

- W20 Changing Breeds Kickstarter expanded material being written, and the Changing Breeds Fiction Anthology is being edited/developed by Jess Hartley.

- W20 Rage Across the World: All the art is in, approved, and going into the book.

- Guildhalls of the Deathless (MtC) layout is waiting on a couple of pieces of art and then itsdone and ready for CCP approvals.

- Conventionbook: Syndicate (cMtA) PDF version is live and we are incorporating changes pointed out by you, our community.

- Conventionbook: Void Engineers (cMtA) is in editing. Art is all in and going into CCP approval.

- W20 Book of the Wyrm is ready for editing, this morning actually.

- V20 Rites of the Blood: is in editing, Eddy is preparing art notes.

- Under the Darkening Sky (classic Dark Ages): Writers are writing. David is sending Mirthful Mike art notes for the cover.

- Trinity Continuum: We now have a whopping big Aeon outline and a Trinity Continuum Core Book outline. Lots of word count, format, and schedule talk- had several very cool discussions at Gen con with creators, and fans at the panels.

- Scion: Joe’s team is hammering systems- big time. Joe is getting back up to speed.

- Demon: The Descent: The text is now in editing! Art has been assigned. Demon Quickstart PDF is free on DTRPG.

- Hunter: The Something About Monsters: Writers are writing.

Reason to Drink: Despite 25+ years in this biz, I am just not a professional.

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