A Beastly June [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting

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As is usual right before a Kickstarter campaign, most of our talk is making sure all the parts are working together, and our KS team (me, Rollickin’ Rose, Mirthful Mike, and Impish Ian) as well as the developer(s) are all set to cover our respective responsibilities. Some of those are dictated by the way KS processes work, like I have to be the one to change KS text or Stretch Goals on the KS page, but both Rose and I can answer KS comments and Updates.

As you can tell from the proposed book cover design above, we are now very excitedly getting ready for the Beast: the Primordial Prestige Edition KS. Black Hat Matt McFarland has lent his experience in developing new games to this brand new addition to our nWoD roster of game-lines. In some ways, it could be conceptualized as how we add the Creature From the Black Lagoon, or the Wendigo cannibalism spirit, or even Godzilla to the New World of Darkness, but the Black Hatted One has done a lot more with it than that. There are multiple layers throughout the book that touch on loss, raw power, hunger, the drive to protect your own, and the fate of the outsider. If that piques your interest, check it out on the KS page on Tuesday June 2nd.

Eddy and I talked earlier about his time at MoMo Con in Atlanta where he had a run in with a lout harassing a security officer at the con, and then we heard that there had been further harassment aimed at one or more cosplay enthusiasts who then had trouble with security. So Eddy, who thought the con had grown nicely, is looking to see how the MoMo team respond and evolve to meet the needs of 2015. As it was, they seemed to be trying to adapt and grow the con, so now would be the time to enforce a safer environment. Eddy and I continued into looking at how we can further work with some app designers, and on our Secret Project. We also chatted about what we need for the Pugmire setting brochure for Gen Con (I promise that is the only mention of GCon this week in this part of the blog) and I’ll need to work with Mirthful Mike to get a concept artist working on a cityscape for the town of Pugmire itself.

To return to the “meet the needs of 2015” concept, I think we see a bit of the necessary questioning of just what that means in some of the conversations happening with the backer PDF for Mage 20th. Like all of the 20th Anniversary books so far, Mage 20th was created to celebrate the huge legacy of the original run of Mage books. All editions: which for Mage is a particularly necessary but tough task. To do that, we really aim at bringing together the elements of the games that came before that people have loved and been inspired by. This is the “love letter to the fans” approach that I talk about in the descriptions of the Anniversary core books all the time.

With that approach though, as we learned pretty much starting from the time Vampire 20th was published, we also are stuck with some things we’d not necessarily include if these were new games. Some rules issues, some setting issues. Put it this way: in 1992-1994, we did not have Wikipedia or anything except the barest beginnings of the ubiquitous internet we have now. Research required poring through books. Being able to know how Vampire was actually being played in Germany, and not just how we heard it was received, required a transatlantic plane trip. So, our modern world enables our creators to write more accurately, and they have fewer excuses for factual errors. But some of those are now sacred cows of the gamelines because our community has worked around them for so long that altering that text would change the feel of the game.

With V20, we made very few changes and all of them had to be justified extensively inside our group of creators. In fact, many arguments ensued over what could and should be “fixed”. With W20, we continued to hold to that but already we could tell through our Open Dev Process and Kickstarter comments that many of our audience wanted us to upgrade the setting to the current year and fix rules issues. So we did more in the W20 core, but still not that much as we intended to expand further into those areas in the supplements. With Mage 20th we adjusted even further, both as an answer to settling the Edition Wars if we could, and as a way to show how this amazing setting about growth and change could be resonant right now.

Sidebars, “future fates”, pulling elements that have existed through the editions but giving them a new focus and importance like the Nephandi; developer Satyr Phil Brucato used all these options and more to both speak to the existing Mage community of all they loved in the past editions, to speak of the concerns and ideals of the present, and to speak of the future for that community and newcomers as well. I think he did an amazing job juggling and blending all that while still never letting us lose sight of the core wonder of Mage.

So, we’ll continue to look at how to evolve our game lines, our ways of delivering those games to you, and just what sort of new games, rules, and settings, make sense to our creators and you, our community now.

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And now, the BLURBS!

Fear the dark places: the Beast: the Primordial Kickstarter will go live at 2pm Eastern US time tomorrow, Tuesday the 2nd of June!

Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition KS backers: M20 PDFs went out to backers, and the response has been amazing! Thanks to all of you for your support and accolades. And also thanks to all of you intrepid eagle-eyed backers sending us notes on possible errors using the “Contact Me” button next to my picture on the M20 KS page. Your comments are great and very appreciated. We’ll be letting the eratta threads go for most of this week, so get in your notes soon!

The next Pugmire poster, Princess Yosha Pug, will be available this week, and you can still get the first of the six Pugmire posters on DTRPG.com, and start spreading the Code of Man: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148516/Sister-Picassa-Collie-Pugmire-Poster-1

The Art of Changing Breeds for Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition will be going on sale in both PDF and physical book PoD versions on Wednesday! Check it out and see how the art for the Fera was commissioned and created.

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And now, new project status updates!:

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (Projects in bold have changed listings)

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

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

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

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

Pugmire Gen Con Materials (Be a Good Dog.)

CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

The Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dark Eras Expansions (nWod Dark Eras)

VtM Lore of the Clans Expansions (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

Pugmire Early Access

Dark Eras Companion (nWod Dark Eras)

C20 core (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

WtF The Pack (Werewolf: the Forasken 2nd Edition)

VtM Lore of the Bloodlines (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

Redlines

Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)

Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition

Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)

Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)- In Open Development

nWoD Hurt Locker (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)- In Open Development

W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

Second Draft

Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

Demon Storytellers’ Guide (Demon: the Descent) (Some drafts turn out to still be out)

Scarred Lands Player’s Guide: Ghelspad

W20 Changing Ways (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

Development

Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created)

“Sardonyx” System Rules (Base rules set for Scion and the Trinity Continuum)

V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

nWoD 2e core (New World of Darkness)

Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening) – In Open Development

Editing

M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

Demon Translation Guide (Demon: the Fallen and Demon: the Descent)

Development (post-editing)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE

In Art Direction