5 Useful Facts About Onyx Path [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting

Every so often, I like to reiterate a few points relating to who Onyx Path Publishing is and what we strive for and believe in. The mere fact that we can believe in things other than “sell lots of books” (although we do believe in that too), should let folks know we are not a big corporate structure, but it helps to restate these things again. Plus, these five things are all related to discussions which we talked about in our weekly Monday Onyx Path meetings today:

1) Onyx Path products start with a PDF version. That first PDF is an electronic file, so we can change it and fix it if it needs that kind of care. A PDF = easy to change, a printed book…not so much. Because of that we have started waiting for feedback from our Kickstarter backers on KS’d books before we go to press. In fact, we also now put out Advance PDFs of non-Kickstarted books so that we have time to get feedback on those PDFs as well. We want these projects to ultimately get into your hands with the least amount of glitches as possible. And we want them to get into your hands in the ways that enable you to play the way you like to. PDF and physical books, posters, cards via Print on Demand from DTRPG, with a program for getting those PoD products into brick and mortar stores. Fiction in PDF and PoD as well, but also in ePub and Mobi formats. T-Shirts from our RedBubble site. And more options to come.

2) There are lots of ways to talk with Onyx Path. We want to hear about your character. Or anything else you want to talk about, including letting us know about errors in the books. So we’ve provided you a lot of options. That might even get confusing, so I always suggest you try and communicate through the venue you started dealing with. Like if you saw a tweet you want to reply to, go ahead and send us a tweet. If you saw a post on one of our Facebook pages, go ahead and comment there. If you have an issue with one of our Kickstarters, send me a message via the Contact Me button next to my picture on the KS page you are referring to. If you zero-in on the most directly related way to get a message to us as per your problem or interest, you’ll have a lot better chance of getting a response in return. We really do want to hear from you, and if the option is that you go elsewhere and write a scathing 42 page essay on why we suck, we really, really want to hear from you.

3) We love all the game lines we have here to work on. That’s the White Wolf IPs we have the license for: classic World of Darkness, new World of Darkness, and Exalted; and our own Scion, Trinity Continuum, and Scarred Lands lines; and creator-owned lines like Cavaliers of Mars and Pugmire. We want all of them to do well, and grow, and evolve into the sorts of games that you want to play and read about now, today, without losing the magic that you responded to originally. Every once in a while we get accused on not loving a particular line, usually because there hasn’t been anything new out for it lately. That’s not love or the lack thereof, that’s just us hitting the limit of how fast we can redo, reinvigorate, or re-imagine all these game lines and maintain the high quality we constantly strive for.

4) Our Schedule is a suggestion, not a rule. Same thing applies to estimated dates. That’s not a lack of caring about getting you your anticipated game when you expect it. No, we do actually care about trying not to let you down. It is, however, an enlargement of that caring zone to also include ourselves. This might sound kind of “mmmmm-OK?”, but many of us are veterans of the days when that shipping deadline date ruled our lives. And I say veterans for a reason. The stress of delivering those White Wolf books when that schedule said it had to happen affected each and every one of us who dealt with those deadlines with physical and/or mental disorders including chronic back issues, to ulcers, to depression and PTSD. Some might say that we should get better resource management and these things won’t happen. Well, my response to that is that I am managing our greatest resource: our amazing creative folks. And, if you have no sympathy for our woes, since we were getting to work in the greatest and most creative business in the world, it also resulted in us putting out books that just needed more time to get right. At Onyx Path, we want them to be right.

5) We are going to make mistakes. We are pretty much all human, and we’re going to fuck up. In fact, it is a necessity that we do. Because only in an environment that allows mistakes can truly awesome experiments happen that lead to really great work. A situation where the tolerance for mistakes is so tight that they are punished, or are so feared that there are a thousand procedures to prevent them, leads to stale projects and no risk taking. That’s the opposite of what we are about. We allow the possibility of mistakes, and for technical ones we provide editing backup, developmental oversight, and encourage your feedback. For creative moments that somehow don’t turn out as cool as we thought, we try and learn from them, and provide you all with options and new directions. There’s a difference in making a mistake and making that same mistake over and over again, and we really do try and learn and improve.

And here’s a 6th one, that’s kind of something I just want to say out loud:

6) We love what we do! Despite some of our hard-won lessons like I mention above, we love this industry, this business, this hobby of ours. There is so much creativity and art in making our worlds into games ready for you to expand on and run with. You are interactive with the stuff we create, and make it so much more personal to you: there’s no other kind of entertainment that does that.

And also, this weekend I got to draw dogs in fantasy clothing and armor, and reviewed several gorgeous proofs of books, and played in Justin Achilli’s Pathfinder game and could call it research. What a company!

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And now, the BLURBS!

Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition‘s Advance PDF is still available at DTRPG although the time to submit errata for official review is over. In fact, Stew Wilson got us the compiled changes today! Figure a bit of time to make those tweaks, and time for the index to be pulled together, and in around a month the physical copy PoD versions will be ready for sale. They’ll look not unlike these mock-ups below:

The Deluxe V20 Lore of the Clans Kickstarter is being put together right now and we hope to have it ready to go live between now and next week. We have a plethora of Clan-focused Achievements that we hope will add to the fun for backers along with the Stretch Goals and Rewards.

If our proofs get here before Weds., expect to see a batch of new posters go up on DriveThru! Perfectly sized to fill that one place on the wall that just screams for an awesome full color illustrated masterwork!

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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)

W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition) (Going for open development soon.)

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

Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition) – In Open Development

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

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

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

Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

nWoD Hurt Locker (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)

Pugmire (Be a Good Dog.)

CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

WoD nWoD 2e core (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)

Redlines

Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)

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

Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition

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

Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)

Demon Storytellers’ Guide (Demon: the Descent)

Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition) (Preview post last night.)

Second Draft

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

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

W20 Novel by Mike Lee (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

V20 Red List (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

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

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

Beast: the Primordial core book (Beast: The Primordial)

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

Editing

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

MtC Dreams of Avarice

Development (post-editing)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE

In Art Direction