Beware the Ides of St. Patrick’s Day! [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting

Can you believe that this silly picture that Impish Ian, living up to his name, posted early Sunday as just a timely funny pic has generated over 4,000 retweets, over 1,000 favorites, and added around a hundred new followers to our Onyx Path Twitter account? We were stunned. We should stop all this unnecessary nonsense with publishing games and get right into more stabbed salad dressings! French for Bastille Day! Green Goddess for the First Day of Spring! The possibilities are endless!

Eddy and I talked about his continuing experiences freelancing into the computer game biz. It seems far more uncertain than tabletop RPGs, in terms of how quickly a project can fall apart. Maybe that’s just my perspective but tabletop games generally do get made once work has begun; certainly it’s more the rule than not. We also talked about the first sketch I’m working on for some characters in Pugmire to provide to the illustrators who will use my pieces as reference. Lot’s of good decisions there as to what our “uplifted dogs” are going to look like: five-fingered, clawed hands with fur that are shaped and furred to go with their breeds, for example. Going to make some changes before sending out, but Jack Terrier the Ratter is looking pretty darned roguish.

Three of our Onyx group were missing today, but we soldiered on. I particularly wanted all of us to be aware of some of the issues surrounded the use of Native American cultures in Monte Cook’s Bruce R. Cordell’s The Strange tabletop RPG that has had some negative buzz attached to it. You can Google the details, but suffice it to say that some folks felt that the stereotypes depicted were damaging to actual Native American culture. Having mentioned last week that some folks were concerned about how we’ll be adding the local Native American culture to the Hunter Dark Era in nWoD Dark Eras, and since we will be publishing Scion and the Trinity Continuum, both of which touch on real world cultures, societies, and belief systems, I just wanted out team to be aware that some of the concerns we’ve been discussing for quite a while are impacting another game line in our industry. Our Hunter Dark Era Devs are in fact reaching out to Native American experts in those tribes that were in the Salem area and which would have potentially interacted with the situation described in that chapter. Which is something they started during the Dark Eras Kickstarter, but seems timely now.

One thing I do think is important is that we all try and keep in mind that editorially neither version of the World of Darkness is actually our real world. They are fictional constructs designed to facilitate great gaming and stories. Since the beginning, we expected our community to at least nod at that, even if everyone then went on to pretty much play as if everything was happening for reals. “Our world, but darker” was the mantra we worked off of in order to justify the awful conditions we described and illustrated in the books. Strangely, in a lot of ways, the real world caught up to our imaginations, unfortunately or fortunately depending on the issue and your perspective on it.

From there we looked at how some of these sorts of issues have been handled by other publishers. Again, not going into details here, but we _think_ that our policy of first responses to the issues raised by all of you on our forums or in FB comments, etc, where we try to explain our thinking and process, works well for Onyx Path. I have found that approach helps turn an angry rant into a conversation, and I hope it demonstrates how we really do care about our fan community. It doesn’t always change minds, but a lot of times folks are just misinformed or don’t see the reasons behind the decisions we make and that leads to them drawing the wrong conclusions. It was Fast Eddy Webb who pointed out that we seem to have a pretty standard pattern of response even though we haven’t intentionally set this down anywhere, which maybe he realized because for many years he was the one who kept communication alive between WW/CCP and our community.

1) We explain our thinking and process. If that conversation doesn’t take us to a better place, we move to:

2) We explain again, this time focusing on specific issues the person might have. If this doesn’t help create an understanding, we go to:

3) We basically default to agreeing to disagree, and suggest that there really isn’t much more to say on either side. And should that fail, then sometimes, and more rarely than we could, but more often than we’d like:

4) We bring down the ban hammer. I hate doing this, but there’s a point where some folks become toxic to the entire forum or FB page. Sometimes because they can’t control themselves, sometimes because they genuinely prefer to accuse and insult us or our creative teams. In those cases, all they are doing is pissing in the water we all drink and they need to leave.

We have rules on our social media, and those rules are in place to insure that folks can express their opinions in an environment that encourages discussion, not bile and insults. You know, the “Don’t Be a Dick” sort of rules. That thinking is applied for the benefit of all the folks in our community: gamers and creators and Onyx Path crew and newbies popping in to see what all this Murdered Caesar Salad Dressing hoopla is all about.

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And now, the BLURBS!

Wow! Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition‘s Advance PDF went on sale at DTRPG a week ago last Weds. and rocketed to Platinum last week!

Thanks so much to all of you who waited more or less patiently for this, and for those of you who have already picked up the PDF and sent us errata on the forums. You can join in the commenting here: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/werewolf-the-forsaken/427917-forsaken-2e-errata-thread until this coming Weds. the 18th.

Above is a mock-up of what the PoD physical book versions will look like once we get to them after assembling the errata and adding in the missing sheets and index. We held back on the index so that any changes we might have needed to make to the book wouldn’t cause us to have to redo the index. That is a task that you don’t want to do twice.

The Deluxe V20 Lore of the Clans Kickstarter is being put together right now and we hope to have it ready to go live next week. Tuesday the 24th if we can get all these “Achievement” incentive ideas together.

New T-Shirts at our RedBubble site: http://www.redbubble.com/people/theonyxpath New Mage Craft symbols, Hunter shirts, Mummy:the Descent symbols- all kinds of shirts!

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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.

Dreams of Avarice (Mummy: the Curse)

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)

Development (post-editing)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE

In Art Direction