Tuesday We Try and Get Along Together

Monday Meeting

Last week, I mentioned that there are other lingering “tentacles” that seem to continue to cling to what Onyx Path is all about. Some sucker-tipped thinking gets us fightin’, just like the awesome fight scene that our old buddy Ron Spencer created for W20 Book of the Wyrm. Here’s where I digress and push the Deluxe W20 Book of the Wyrm Kickstarter that is entering it’s last 36 hours! Go quickly and pledge the Wyrm out of it if you don’t want to miss it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-w20-book-of-the-wyrm

Now back to how we can get fighty about things and what Onyx Path is trying to do. First, there’s a general position that I think its useful to express once in a while: I don’t want Onyx to be a company that slags other companies, games, or creators, in order to boost ourselves. When we do something awesome (which is, of course, all the time) I think we should be talking about how and why that awesome thing is awesome. My desire not to rip at previous work also applies to the work done on all the WW products for the many years they’ve been around. A complicating factor to that with anything creative that has that sort of longevity is that there were a million decisions made by the creators and some were good and some were stinko. One of the joys of fandom is lauding the parts that you think are great and ripping apart the parts you hate. So for us as creators, there’s a natural tendency to play to that when we’re showing how the new thing we’re doing is going to fix that old crappy thing. It gets folks excited, and talking, and yelling- all about your cool new thing. I’ve fallen into that trap myself.

Plus if you’re a creator who was/is also a fan of the line you’re now working on, it is really hard not to let those critiques you developed over the years spill forth.

What I’d like Onyx Path to do as a whole is to acknowledge the parts that aren’t going to work in whatever new version we’re working on, and explain why. Just not do it by ripping at those parts or the folks who created them. Besides the “Can’t We All Just Get Along” aspect of positive karma and beams of white light and all that, there are practical reasons for this intention.

One, if Onyx Path gets a reputation for letting our current creative teams rip apart the work of folks past or from other companies, how many creative folk today are going to want their work ripped apart by new guys in years to come? We’re going to have some issues with getting talented people involved in our projects. I’ve set up Onyx Path in a way that I hope allows us to avoid a lot of the external negative factors that can, and did, influence some of those questionable bits of game design and content, but its important that current creative folks recognize that there were factors in those days that they might not be aware of. It’s not much of a mental hurdle to accept that and to show a little respect, even if you’re sure you’d never had made that call that way.

Two, with over twenty years of game lines we have a varied and intense community who has members in it who may just love the very thing that is getting lambasted. Our fans are creative and intelligent enough to take an idea and make it work for them- and they don’t deserve to be told that idea they ran with actually sucks. That leads to some folks feeling like we’re saying they suck, and down we slide on the slippery slope to BadWrongFun.

And all of this ties into the idea I’ve talked about before of wanting our entire gaming community to understand that this hobby of ours is just too small for us to forget that simply being a tabletop RPG player makes us a rare and freakish species. We should be exalting (small e) each other, not fightin’.

More on inclusion next week, I think.

Here are the projects as they fight their way to completion:

– Book of the Deceived (MtC): In Editing.

– Sothis Ascends (MtC): First draft heading into redlines.

– Cursed Necropolis: Rio (MtC): First draft heading into redlines.

– Exalted 3rd Edition: From Holden: “Final Charm balance tune-ups continued this week, while Evocations are hitting their final tree. The Introduction is currently being written (yes, we left the first part of the book as the last part to be written). This coming week should focus on finishing Evocations, art notes, and getting various 98%-done parts of the book done with final clean-up passes.”

Both EX3 novels are being worked on, and notes went back on Matt Forbeck’s synopsis. The EX3 Music Suites are at a standstill right now until our composer gets through his full time job commitments.

– V20 Anarchs Unbound: It is live on DTRPG in PDF, ePub, PoD and PDF/PoD combos. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/127247/Anarchs-Unbound Getting printer quotes finalized for Deluxe version.

– V20 Rites of the Blood: Approved by CCP. PDF on sale at DTRPG very soon.

– V20 Dark Ages: Scribes are scribing 2nd Drafts and some 3rd Drafts. David Hill has delivered some art notes. Finishing full page art notes.

– V20: Ghouls: In 2nd drafts.

– V20 Red List: In final draft stage.

– The Making of the Art of Children of the Revolution: Creating PoD files to go with PDF for sale on DTRPG.

– V20 Lore of the Clans: Was Blood Diaries. Writing.

– Deluxe Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition: Mike Lee has delivered several new chapters this week of the W20 “Houses of the Moon” novel for Bill to review. The White Howlers Tribe Book is in layout approval, and the comic was being scripted by Bill Bridges and John Bridges has started on the art. W20 Wyld West: PDF and physical book PoD versions are on sale now: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/130128/W20-Wyld-West-Expansion-Pack.

– W20 Changing Breeds: Deluxes and Screens on trucks on the way to the fulfillment shipper.

– W20 Book of the Wyrm- 2 Days to go and still having a lot of fun with the Pentex Board Nominees posting their schemes and campaign platforms, and have already passed several Stretch Goals including the creation of a Pentex Employee Indoctrination Manual including sections on Magadon, The RED Network, Sunburst Enterprises and a transcription of the Pentex Guide to Werewolves online video series, a Wyrm KS t-shirt and a Pentex t-shirt discount, and added a section on Fomori First Teams, Fallen Changing Breeds, more info on Mockeries, Wyrm Cults, and more on the Black Spiral Dancers to the book itself- said topics of extra text being chosen by the backers themselves. Next Stretch Goals are for adding more info on Fomori and Banes, and adding Endron, the massive oil company to the Pentex Employee Indoctrination Manual.

– W20: The Umbra: In post-second draft development.

– Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition- Satyr Phil has handed all the text off to Bill. Bill has started his “second set of eyes” developer’s pass. The Character Pack book and the “How Do You DO That?” book would be next on our agenda. The M20 Quick Start PDF was sent to backers today, with the PDF and PoD versions getting set to be made available on DTRPG as soon as we can figure out one tiny problem with the PoD!

– Trinity Continuum: System Doc being assembled by Joltin’ Joe Carriker. He says system development is really hard and apologizes for the delay. The first new piece of art in YEARS has been commissioned. We’re doing some Gen Con things with that.

– Scion: Sketch for Scion: Origins came in and WOW!

– Demon: The Descent: Demon Seed Collection is in post-writing development. DtD Seattle is in layout. Heirs to Hell backers’ PDF went out to KS backers last week. Demon Translation Guide is being written. The Demon Fiction Anthology + Interfaces is in post-writing development.

– DtD Players Guide: Flowers Of Hell: PDF is available now: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/131419/Flowers-of-Hell-The-Demon-Players-Guide.

– nWoD: Dark Eras: All but one 2nd draft is in, and Black Hat Matt expects to be able to run a focused dev pass on that to get it to editing too.

– WtF: The Idigam Chronicle: In redlines. Stew Wilson is doing a remarkably regular Friday blog that focuses on specific topics for the book- lots of good discussion happening right now: http://theonyxpath.com/category/projects/werewolftheforsaken/

– GtSE: Geist Ready Made Characters: In redlines.

Reason to Drink: This week is the week of the 4th of July. Two of my kids have birthdays this week.