Shambling Off To Buffalo! [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting, News

Yes, we stumbled back to a fully attended Monday Meeting today – the first one where we were all there in quite some time with GenCon and vacations and all. A good and informational meeting nevertheless.

They’re not all that way, though. We have 50ish of them a year, and sometimes the energy level all around is low. Sometimes the upset level is really high, like if we’re all under stress or if a social media flame-war is flaring around us. Sometimes I’m the crabby one, and so I set us off in the wrong direction. Feelings get hurt when you have a lot of intensely dedicated and creative folks trying to wrestle our schedules together and make them work.

But. Not today.

A lot of that, no doubt is because we’re seeing movement on projects that, for a variety of reasons, had been bogged down for a long time. Not everything that is lagging but most of the real long-term ones, so if we can catch up on the latest and keep getting tighter on the newer projects: we’ll be rockin’.

That’s the result of the very hard work our crew put forth in the first half of the year. Not just their personal work of writing, developing, editing, but their efforts at working together and helping our freelance talent focus and push their work forward. Helping others create is, it turns out, really difficult!

(Just as examples, I’m looking at WoD: Ghost Hunters, M20 Book of the Fallen, and Signs of Sorcery for Mage: The Awakening as the most egregious examples. Even Wraith20 has gone to press and the Scion core books are working together they way we have tried so long to make happen).

Our Dystopia Rising: Evolution Kickstarter is also lurching forward right now into the wastelands of a Kickstarter’s time-frame – that very slow pledge time before things pick up close to the end. If you pledged; thanks so much and please tell your friends. If you haven’t, here are some reasons why we think this is a very cool game to play and might inspire you to check out the KS here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/dystopia-rising-evolution-tabletop-rpg

1- Characters don’t necessarily die forever when they are killed. The path to a shambling zombie starts with your first resurrection at the behest of an entity known as the Gravemind. This means, gameplay-wise, that you can play Dystopia Rising: Evolution with a sense of lurking doom ala The Walking Dead, or as a contrast, you can play balls-to-the-wall like the Mad Max universe because you can blow up real good and still come back!

Could the Gravemind be pulled from DR:E and used in any of our other games? Well, just as an example I thought of this afternoon as I thought about this blog, I’m wondering if the Gravemind could arise as a rival to the God-Machine in a Chronicles of Darkness chronicle. It is clearly messing with the order set down by the G-M…or is it?

2- As I think I mentioned last week, Eddy adapted the Storypath System to create a simple but strong system for finding, retrieving, and pulling useful items from scrap. If your thing is using your real world knowledge in a post-apocalyptic setting, this here’s a built-in framework in the game to really enable you to use that info. With physical items also being degraded by the Gravemind, being able to fabricate the things needed for survival is one of the best and integrated uses for a “crafting” system in a game I’ve ever heard of.

3- While Dystopia Rising: Evolution is definitely a grim and scary post-apocalyptic world, it is also a world where settlements are surviving and growing. There is a sense of hope and community that can serve as a counterpoint and a backdrop to the hard tales of hard survivors making hard decisions. Included are rules for those settlements and how they can work (or not).

4- You don’t have to take my word for it. As we’ve done with almost all of our recent Kickstarters, we are releasing a section of the book each week and before the end of the KS backers will be able to download the complete edited text and dig in for their favorite sections!

As if you have not heard enough about this damn Dystopia Rising: Evolution game, I do strongly suggest that if you want to know about the thinking behind the game – and this is some really fascinating, in-depth, discussions of both the reasons for the game design and the thinking behind the last ten years of the game world’s creation and growth – that you download and listen to last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast.

Eddy interviews the very people that started Dystopia Rising as a LARP over a decade ago, Michael Pucci and Ashley Zdeb, and then created a tabletop RPG version that Dystopia Rising: Evolution is the new edition of. Some of the highlights of what they discuss are:

Eddy admits to an error in the Kickstarter

The history of Dystopia Rising

How Eddy and Onyx Path came into the picture

Faithful licensing vs “throw it all away if you want”

Disability as post-apocalypse trope

The struggles of introducing inclusivity over the past decade

The push and pull of abstracted social tension vs community building

The switch from 20+ Strains to 8 Lineages Here the link to our Onyx Pathcast page on PodBean, although you can find it at your favorite podcast venue too: https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ This Friday, the Terribly Terrific Trio will be back together and taking an in-depth deep dive into Vampire: The Masquerade, which makes sense considering our long history with it and the advent of V5, so it should be a good…no wait, dare I say it? A GREAT podcast this week! Yes!

Finally, although I added some info about this in our On Sale section below, just a word that sometime this week DTRPG.com will be running a week-long sale for 75% off of Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension PDFs. Not just the 20th Anniversary ones we have created, but all of them back through time. We’re thrilled to be able to work together with White Wolf to offer you folks this chance to catch up on anything you are looking for, particularly with all the discussion featuring WoD, by new fans and long-time ones as well, due to the V5 interest and publicity. And we’ll have another, different, combined sale running the week after this one! There you go, so much is going on you need a scorecard to keep track of our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

The Dystopia Rising: Evolution Kickstarter funded in less than a day, and two sections of the Threat Guide companion PDF Stretch Goal have been added, which is a first-person guide with mechanics to the various threats facing survivors in the DR:E world, and we are shambling forward to open up a Community Content site for the game!

Dystopia Rising: Evolution will be powered by Onyx Path’s Storypath system, and includes all the rules you need to play as a survivor in the post-apocalypse, including rules for creating characters for up to 24 different Strains, variations on humanity that survived the Fall. It also has details on the powers of faith and psionics, along with advice on running action-adventure stories, webs of personal intrigue, or procedural investigations. And, finally, dozens of antagonists, including a variety of zombies and raiders to use in your series.

Throughout this Kickstarter campaign, we will be posting complete previews of the Dystopia Rising: Evolution manuscript as backer-only updates.

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:

Starting later this week, DTRPG together with White Wolf and Onyx Path are having a one week massive 75% off sale on all Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension PDFs!

This Wednesday the original Scarred Lands Trilogy: Forsaken, Forsworn, and Forbidden by Richard Lee Byers, will now be available in PDF/ePub and physical trade paperback format PoDs on DriveThruRPG.com!

CONVENTIONS! From Fast Eddy Webb, we have these: Broadleaf Writers Conference ( September 22-23 ) in Decatur, GA. He’ll be there to talk about writing for interactive fiction, and hanging out with other writers who have far more illustrious careers. Eddy will be speaking at) in Decatur, GA. He’ll be there to talk about writing for interactive fiction, and hanging out with other writers who have far more illustrious careers. http://broadleafwriters.com/ 3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers- conference/3rd-annual- broadleaf-writers-conference- speakers/ Save Against Fear ( October 12-14 ) in Harrisburg, PA. He’ll be running some Pugmire games, be available for autographs, and will sometimes accept free drinks. Eddy will also be a featured guest at) in Harrisburg, PA. He’ll be running somegames, be available for autographs, and will sometimes accept free drinks. http://www. thebodhanagroup.org/about-the- convention