Scion 2e: With a Name Like “Troll Preserves”, It’s Gotta Be Good! [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting, News

Troll Preserves as a yummy(?) jelly was one of the funny bits to come out of these past 5 days as the Scion 2nd Edition Kickstarter roars forth. (The actual topic was a mention of an animal preserve but filled with Trolls (Not the kind from Stand Still, Stay Silent, though)).

When I posted last week about how Onyx Path does our Kickstarter campaigns, I kind of talked in general terms. So now that Scion 2e‘s KS is rolling, here are some thoughts specific to how we’re handling it.

First, the goal of the Scion 2e KS is to create two separate books: the Scion: Origin and Scion: Hero core rulebooks, and then to use the KS numbers to enable us to traditionally print enough for the backers who pledged for them and overprint an amount to send to retail stores. So not to create Deluxe or Prestige Editions, but to launch Scion 2e as a game line in a way that approximates how it was originally launched, but, hopefully, improved by the methods we’ve figured out these five years Onyx Path has been publishing.

Thinking of the KS as a launch might also help folks get an idea of why they are seeing, and will continue to see, Stretch Goals that aren’t about making a book.

We’ve already started the first in a series of goals to build up a Scion 2e Fiction Anthology, which past backers might recognize as something we have done for quite a while. Kickstarter Stretch Goals for fiction stories for an anthology are a sweet way of enabling us to create fiction for those who enjoy it or who can enjoy since they can’t get a game of Scion 2e together but want to dive into the world in their free time anyway.

We just announced a Stretch Goal that if passed means we will work with other game designers to create Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) rules for Scion 2e. Judging by responses at MidWinter and GenCon this past year, there really does seem to be interest in playing Scion 2e live-action, but we just couldn’t justify allocating any of Scion‘s limited budget to exploring the idea. The small amount of money we get from this Stretch Goal offsets any additional work we have to do to make that happen, with approvals and all that, and any bits we need to pay the design team.

Projects like these, and the ones we’ll be including later in the KS, are all about extending the reach of Scion 2e so that folks who might find the setting interesting help keep the game alive by spreading the word and buying these auxiliary projects, even if they don’t game.

Which is not to say that we don’t have a place for game book info in the Stretch Goals; we do with the Scion 2e Companion, a compilation of topics, pantheons, and other ideas, that enhance your Scion game, but aren’t need in core rulebook. By putting these extras in a Companion, rather than squeezing them into the core books themselves, we are using KS to build a book release schedule without imperiling the release of those core books.

Remember, goal #1 is getting those two core books into stores. Added material has a nasty way of slowing the finalization of a book project, so we’re sidestepping that.

Totally a different topic, but I wanted to mention it even though its in The Blurbs below- I was really thrilled to get the PoD proofs of Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, and they look great, and we’re putting the book on sale on Wednesday. I just love it when a new Chronicles of Darkness game line gets its 2nd Edition, we’ve learned so much since their first editions and the lines deserve to gain the benefit of that knowledge.

OK, back to the Kickstarter mines!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER!

The KS campaign for Scion 2nd Edition went live at 12 noon Eastern US time, Thursday the 22nd and funded in 37 minutes! Currently, the project has 1745 backers and $147, 073 in pledges. We are thrilled with the response and are already using Stretch Goals to create a Scion 2e Companion, filled with additional pantheons, expanded or alternative rules, and other goodies, as well as a Scion 2e Fiction Anthology, and even more.

ON SALE!

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

On Wednesday, 9/28, the long awaited opportunity to own Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition as a physical book is at last at hand!

Come to DTRPG.com and discover the secrets-filled tome of wonder….

Now available from DriveThruRPG in PDF: Mage: The Awakening Condition and Numina Cards.

Part of the new Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition rules, Conditions add an additional layer of consequence and reward to certain actions in the Chronicles of Darkness.

Various things within the course of a game can cause Conditions. These include exceptional successes, supernatural abilities, and really any situation where the Storyteller thinks they can be used to heighten the drama of a game.

Also available in this deck are brand new Numina cards featuring these rules from the Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition rulebook for ease of reference at the table.

On sale NOW from DTRPG: the Promethean Dark Eras chapter A Handful of Dust in PDF and PoD versions! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/178800/Dark-Eras-A-Handful-of-Dust-Promethean-the-Created

The Great Depression and the black blizzards of the 1930s turned the American Midwest into a wasteland. For the better part of a decade, thousands of people experienced deprivation and alienation right alongside the Created. They also clung to the faint promise of hope, that the rains would come and restore the land.

This is a single chapter from the larger work, Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras.

A Festival of Blades, the swashbuckling new Jumpstart advance PDF for Rose Bailey’s Cavaliers of Mars available on DTRPG! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/191678/A-Festival-of-Blades-A-Cavaliers-of-Mars-Jumpstart

Live, fight, and love on Mars, a world of red death and strange mystery, a world of savagery and romance.

Includes:

A complete adventure set in one of dying Mars’ greatest remaining cities.

The innovative DEIMOS rules, for high-flying, swashbuckling adventure.

Four pre-generated player characters, ready to get into the heart of the action.

Behold the Miracles of the Solar Exalted! Originally a backer reward for the EX3 Kickstarter, but now so much more, with additional Charms written by the developers just for this book! For sale now at DTRPG in PDF and PoD versions! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/184596/Miracles-of-the-Solar-Exalted

This book contains over 80 new Solar Charms embodying a range of concepts and stories dreamed up by players of Exalted and meticulously crafted and balanced for inclusion at any and all tables.

Fire an arrow and let it become a waiting judgment upon the wicked. Unleash a sword stroke that can overwhelm the blade of Heaven itself. Train your loyal beast companion into an unstoppable colossus. Effortlessly seed the battlefield with inspiring words alongside arrows and blades. Empower your spirit familiar with the light of your anima. Tame a hurricane with your music. These miracles and more may be found within.

What was once unliving now arises! The Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition Advance PDF is now available at DTRPG! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/189395/Promethean-the-Created-2nd-Edition

You are a pilgrim now, one of the Created. You rose to life from dead flesh or inert matter, under the ministrations of one of your own, or a mad scientist, or perhaps just the power of the Divine Fire. You wander the world, sometimes alone, sometimes in the blessed company of your own kind, driven by memories of events and facts you never knew, all in the service of one Great Work…

…to be human.

This book contains:

The complete guide to playing a Promethean in the Chronicles of Darkness

Reimagined Lineages and Refinements, and a redesigned system for Transmutations

A more detailed approached to the Pilgrimage that presents players with more control over their characters’ path

New challenges on the road to humanity, including deranged, greedy alchemists

NOTE: This is the Advance PDF version. A final PDF version and PoD versions will be available at a later date. If you have purchased this Advance PDF, you will be automatically updated to the final PDF and receive a link to enable you to purchase the PoD at a discount designed so that your total price matches our usual PDF and Print combo offer.

CONVENTIONS!

Onyx Path will be at Mid Winter Con 2017 in January in the lovely city of Milwaukee. Come brave the cold wastes to game and cavort with us!

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

CtL fiction anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

BtP Building a Legend (Beast: the Primordial)

Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

BtP Player’s Guide

V20 Dark Ages Jumpstart (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Cookbook (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

VtM Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Stretch Goal Content)

GtS Geist 2e core

VtR Half-Damned (Vampire: the Requiem 2nd Edition)

Redlines