What’s the Deal With All the Dogs? [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting, News

A comment in the comments section, of all things, basically asked why every time they look here lately there’s dogs all over the place. The art samples have dogs in them, the Kickstarter news is about the dog card game. Dogs, dogs, dogs!

Part of that is, of course, coincidence or a coming together of multiple projects for a line with three Kickstarters and a bunch of projects which came out of those KS Stretch Goals. And it helps that Eddy Webb is the kind of developer who pushes to get projects finished as close to estimate, and sometimes earlier, as possible.

So, woof, woof, woof go the dogs.

In a week or so, maybe it’ll seem like only WoD books are mentioned, or CofD, or Exalted. And so on. It’s all pretty much coincidence as to how books of a particular setting come out together, as we have projects from all of our “worlds” going at all times at different stages of creation, and a lot depends on which projects you’re waiting for.

This also applies to Kickstarter news when you don’t back Kickstarters, or Onyx Pathcast news when you don’t listen to podcasts, or convention info and our plans for FangCon 2019 when you can’t get to the convention.

So for this blog, I try to mix the things I mention and art I put up to give a bit of a taste of as many game worlds and activities we’re doing as I can so that I’m touching on something, I hope, that is relevant to YOU. But, if coincidence gives me mostly Exalted stuff that week, I’m mostly going to be relaying that, with a mix of other things if I have other things on my radar to share.

No Marketing department, no professional writer here – just your dear old Uncle Rich and whatever we’ve discussed during the Monday Meeting.

(Which reminds me, not only is last week’s Onyx Pathcast a great inside look at the way we conceive, create, and publish our projects, but this Friday yours truly is grilled by Dixie and Matthew for a very special episode. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. You’ll learn secrets of the early days of White Wolf right into Onyx Path.)

Which means, it’s time for some quick topic hits:

In a similar conversation to the one above, there was a poster that remarked how the first mention of Pugmire made him wonder just what Onyx Path was turning into. Then, he dug into the background of Pugmire and realized there was a lot more to it than a funny animal TTRPG.

My response must be that we aren’t turning into anything different than we’ve always been on track to be: a publisher who creates amazing and engaging worlds for folks to explore. And that the poster was dead-on right to identify that one of the threads that combine all of our projects is that there are depths built into our worlds that reward players who look into them.

Some of that is a heritage from old White Wolf we’ve been fortunate to bring to the fore, and use as models for what works and what doesn’t, and part of the depth is built in by our amazing creative teams who know they can do that kind of game and world building with us.

We’ve been having other great conversations on our Onyx Path Publishing Discussion Group on Facebook, which you might be able to get to through this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/419273928504341/ I haven’t had a chance to join in to the discussions yet, but hope to very soon.

I haven’t been able to jump in because these last couple of months have been a combination of working up and with contracts for new projects and licenses, putting in pitches for projects, and getting Changing 20th, Prince’s Gambit, and soon, V20 Beckett’s Jyhad Diary Kickstarter rewards out to backers. It’s a bit of an endurance challenge, so I’m lucky to have maxed out Fortitude.

Plus, I’m trying to keep up the communication with backers for the Scarred Lands Kickstarter that the late Stewart Wieck had started for our two companies, while representatives for his company, Nocturnal Media, work to get the KS fulfilled and shipped. So, four KSs shipping around a month from each other.

The flip-side is…we’re getting out four KSs’ rewards to our backers!

Finally, I think I might have mentioned this before, but one of my working methods when creating a new setting, or establishing an overall art “look” for a project, is to take what Allen Moore calls a “high altitude pass” and gather all sorts of reference material and sift through it without trying to force any sort of viewpoint over it.

For visuals, this is very often seeing what registers as “right”. What feels like the sort of feeling we want the setting to give players. Although we can pull huge amounts of story from an illustration (picture=1K words), very often a far more lasting impression comes from the viewer’s emotional reaction. I’ve been doing this pass for Aberrant for about 3 months now, and we’re getting to the decision point on creating an artist list, and actually further back for when I did the initial designs for all four Trinity Continuum main books.

Right now though, I’m reading through a collection of 1950’s EC Weird Science comics in preparation for establishing the art for They Came From Beneath the Sea!. Developer Matthew Dawkins and I already have a strong idea overall based on the films of the time and some TV, but in a lot of ways looking at illustration when thinking about kinds of illustrations is actually more directly what I need.

Not going to go too far into the history of EC right now, although I could and it is a fascinating tale of the rise and fall of a publisher, but suffice to say that their comics were a gigantic influence on both the comics that came after, and on the generation of creators who wrote science fiction in all media (including TTRPGs) for decades to come.

So I get to read comics collections as part of my job. It is tough. But it’s what ya gotta do in order to explore:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

Fetch Quest, the adventure card game set in the Realms of Pugmire went live last Tuesday, May 22 and funded in under a day, and now we’re over 250% funded and have added a group of six cats from the Monarchies of Mau to the game as alternative adventurers via Stretch Goals!



This is definitely a game that needs to be spread by word of mouth, so please let your friends and family know about this game of good dogs (and cats!) out to fetch what Man has left behind!

ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here are the links for the Apple and Android versions:

http://theappstore.site/app/1296692067/onyx-dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onyxpathpublishing.onyxdice&hl=en

Three different screenshots, above.

ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Scarred Lands: Death in the Walled Warren (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) V20 Dark Ages: Cainite Conspiracies (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Chronicles of Darkness: Strangeness in the Proportion (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Vampire: The Requiem: Silent Knife (Kindle, Nook)

(Kindle, Nook) Mummy: The Curse: Dawn of Heresies (Kindle, Nook)

OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there!

https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

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/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

This week, we’ll be releasing a cornucopia of merchandise and other items on Wednesday!

This is our monthly release week for our ongoing series of PDF releases for Exalted 3rd Edition, and we have the Barrow Hound and Devilstone for Hundred Devil’s Night Parade www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242687, and Iron Siaka for Adversaries of the Righteous http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242686 on DTRPG.com!