We Leave The Realm…For Now! [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting, News

A bit of a lighthearted illustration to balance the unfortunate news that today we stopped the Legendlore Kickstarter campaign. This was our 44th KS, and the first that we ever cancelled. So, none of us are thrilled about it.

We didn’t come to the decision lightly, and even going into our Monday Meeting today we were all hoping for some sort of indicator that the situation with the pandemic was going to look differently during the next three weeks that the KS was planned to run. Unfortunately, we just weren’t seeing anything to warrant letting Legendlore grind forward while everyone, including us, is dealing with all the stuff that is happening in the world.

Now, like I said to the backers as reprinted below, I do think we would have funded, but the road is already rough for a new game trying to cut through the ordinary noise of competing Kickstarters. Add in lots of extremely concerning and important info flying into our spaces every hour on the hour about the Coronavirus, and I actually kind of feel bad trying to distract people with this KS right now.

Maybe wouldn’t be as much of a issue if the game had an established audience – loving a game tends to help folks notice when it’s put up on Kickstarter. But things are as they are, and so we’ll be back later in the year with a new Legendlore KS when hopefully things have settled down.

My statement to the Legendlore backers:

Dear supporters of Legendlore,

When we plan a project for Kickstarter we rely on our years of experience with KS, so we really thought we were totally prepared to give our Legendlore TTRPG a great start with a great Kickstarter. But nothing, I mean NOTHING, in our experience has prepared us for anything like our lives during the Coronavirus pandemic.



We even thought that we could run this Kickstarter like normal since it’s online, our crew is online, and you folks and other potential backers are all online. But we really can’t do much of anything normally these days, and trying to push forward with this KS in the face of the seriousness of how all our lives have been affected seems like trying to dive into a tidal wave while hoping to swim out the other side.



All of us right now are focusing on social distancing, quarantine, school and work closures, border and business closures, shortages of supplies, and anxiety for loved ones. Hell, just anxiety in general. We’re all distracted and often overwhelmed by all that is happening and how to adapt to it.

At this point, not knowing yet how things are going to resolve, we have to be realistic and face the fact that now is not the time to continue to ask you to support the launch of our game. There is just too much other, far more serious, stuff going on. While we still think that we would have eked out the funding amount and maybe a tad more, we also feel that Legendlore has a lot more to offer than a “just funded” campaign.

So we are cancelling this Kickstarter with the intention of relaunching it later this year.



We’ll need to figure out how to fit it into our current roster of Kickstarter projects, but we will. None of you will be charged for a cancelled campaign, and James will be providing all current backers links to the complete text as a PDF. We hope you’ll be able to take the chance to give Legendlore a try at your gaming tables and when we relaunch we’ll love to hear how your games played.



We offer our grateful thanks to everyone who have backed Legendlore’s KS so far. You will be the first to know when we launch again!

We shall all return to the Realm another day, and it will be glorious!

— RichT and all of Onyx Path

Hopefully, that message and my thoughts above it show where we’re coming from with this, but as always, please feel free to ask questions in the comments.

At the end of the day, this Pandemic is out of our control, out of anybody’s, but people are trying.

Scion Companion art by Shen Fei

So Yeah, the Virus.

I don’t have to tell any of you loyal readers how messed up things are. The virus has affected all of our lives and rendered most of them very different today than two weeks ago when I last sat down to pen this blog.

We have a great team here at Onyx Path, and we have, in fact, always been a virtual office with many of our freelancers also working out of their homes. So you’d think, in a lot of ways, the strictures of this pandemic are less of an issue for us. And to some extent, you’d be right…but to a much wider extent, we are being impacted just as all of you are.

Even if our creators are used to working at home, in various states of isolation, they are now dealing with family members in the spaces that previously were designed to allow creative efforts. Roommates, significant others, children, and parents, are now all both distractions and responsibilities that require attention.

This isn’t even taking into consideration our freelancers who have, up until now, been working day-jobs that are now supposed to be done from home, or have been put on hiatus, or just shut down completely. Put it all together, and there’s a ton more stress than we were under a month ago (at least in the US). We at Onyx Path need to be aware of that, and to do what we can to help our creators still be able to create.

For example, and this isn’t just for our freelancers, this coming Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features Dixie and Eddy talking about working from home. This is a topic Eddy and I have been talking about since the old LiveJournal days – the care and feeding of yourself as a freelancer working for home. But now, they’ll be sharing some tips and thoughts with a much wider audience grappling with a new work-from-home status.

Our business operations and production are also affected by the restrictions being put on the services we require to make and sell our projects in physical form. For example, the card manufacturer used by DriveThruCards is suspending their operation. We don’t have a ton of cards that we rely on selling, but now we have no idea if plant shut-downs by other manufacturers will effect the creation and shipping of our other PoD products like physical books. Not to mention the traditional printers and shipping that we use for our Kickstarted projects.

What to do? We know a lot of folks are looking at uncertain economic times right now, so please take this as informational and not as an attempt at a hard sell:

If there are PoDs of our game books that you really want to own in the next few months, you might want to order PoDs from DTRPG now, in case they can run the orders and ship before, and if, they have to shut down the plants.

You might want to order the physical books we have available from Indie Press Revolution (IPR), which are a lot of our Deluxes but also the books Studio2 also has available for ordering like Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau, Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition, Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition, Cavaliers of Mars, Scion: Origin and Scion: Hero, and Trinity Continuum: Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon.

Plus you can order traditionally printed physical book versions of V5 Chicago By Night from IPR and Studio2; and from Modiphius if you’re outside the US.

As far as we know, as of this writing, all three of them: Indie Press Revolution, Studio2, and Modiphius, are still working, but I didn’t get confirmation from Modiphius today as I understand new government-issued measures were announced over there just a couple of hours ago.

If you can hold off on physical versions, you might want to really investigate our projects available as PDFs, since the electronic store at DTRPG, at least, is not likely to be disrupted during this pandemic.

Mighty Matt McElroy put together a daily free PDF offer all last week consisting of a core 20th Anniversary rulebook each day, and we’re looking to continue that initiative with other core book PDFs throughout this period of staying at home that so many of us around the world are experiencing. Making it easy for folks to try new games might brighten a few people’s days, we figure!

Because so many of us are in either self- or government- enforced isolation, this might be the time to explore options for online gameplay. I know that right now, newcomer Astral Tabletop is free to get into, and Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Hero Labs, etc. may be offering similar introductory offers.

Because if you look at our hobby, we don’t need to be as disrupted as some other hobbies. How are LARPs going to happen now and how virtual can you go with miniature gaming? But TTRPGs have had a burgeoning virtual tabletop community for years, and it is available for pretty much all game lines and systems.

Actual Play streaming, and the like are variants of that, and you can see how many of those exist on just our Twitch channel in the Onyx Path Media section below, never mind the hundreds more out there. So even if tonight isn’t doable for your virtual group to play together, you can relax and watch games you’re into be played.

Which then brings us to all the social media communities out there, including our own on Facebook, the Forums here on the Onyx Path website, our Discord channel, and the hundreds of others out there dedicated to entire companies, or to just the game lines you enjoy!

Lunars art by Joe Ng

But I Digress…

Finally, a bit of digression for the sake of historical archeology that you might find amusing: I noted while perusing some social media where a poster describing the Clans from VtM noted that the original creators might “bristle” at the Clans being compared to character classes in other games.

Well, I really don’t think that would be the case, considering that our original White Wolf VtM team added the Clans after Chris McDonough noted that he didn’t know what sort of vampire to play as they discussed the drafts before the Clans were included. “Who’s the fighter? Who’s the thief or magic-user?”, he asked. (I was told this story as I was working on the art for the first edition, so take it as my best recollection of a time that seems a long way from here).

What the original creators did feel is that Clans provided a deeper and more meaningful way to conceptualize characters, as well as to provide all sorts of possible historical rivalries and backstories – a possible aspect proven true through almost 30 years of products and player groups doing just that.

So, no, bristling would only really happen if the Clans were discounted as _only_ character classes.

It reminds me of the times when we’d get fans showing up at White Wolf‘s Stone Mountain offices hoping to get a tour and meet the team. Very often, as we took them around through the cubicles and offices, the WW crew in t-shirts and jeans hunched over their keyboards, they’d get this disappointed look on their faces because they had expected stone walls dripping with ichor, black drapes and candelabras, and creators sitting around in shades discussing the dark arcana of the hidden world.

Nope, just a bunch of super-creative people trying to hit deadlines and make the very best games they knew how to make. Which, I feel, is a pretty dead-on description of our Onyx Path creators of:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

As talked about above, we have cancelled the Legendlore Kickstarter for the time being. We’ll get Legendlore back on KS as soon as we can, and meanwhile we are building the M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter!

Onyx Path Media!

This week, Dixie and Eddie are going to discuss tips and thoughts about working at home, something they are intimately familiar with under normal circumstances but which becomes a topic important to a much bigger audience during these uncertain times!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Hang in there, everybody. If you’re self-isolating or locked down, please take the time to tune in and watch some fun gaming. This week we’ve got two games of V5, Eddy’s Workshop, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Lost, Changeling: The Dreaming, Mage: The Awakening, Scarred Lands, and a Dark ErasWerewolf: The Forsaken chronicle!

This week sees the unexpected and delightful extension of Uptown Shadows. A massive thank you again for the Blood City crew who really put out a fantastic show. Thank you! You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/SPhD9ubde9I

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale: https://youtu.be/5TCXPbvuimg

Pugmire: Paws & Claws: https://youtu.be/bKo7KjVUuCg

A Legendlore Q&A with developer Steffie de Vaan: https://youtu.be/M5X1zZve1xQ

Blood City: Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/it5x_HDrHw4

Trinity Continuum: Community Service: https://youtu.be/1y9BYyBaqlQ

Deviant: The Renegades One-Shot: https://youtu.be/7ItVYkLtUqU

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!



Red Moon Roleplaying‘s V5 Cults of the Blood Gods “The Family” chronicle concluded in dramatic fashion on their YouTube channel, Spotify, their website redmoonroleplaying.com and everywhere else good podcasts might be found! https://youtu.be/4lK3dM3_fns

More new Occultists Anonymous for all you Mage: The Awakening fans out there:

Episode 90: Aftermath

With the Prince slain, a sarcophagus under guard, Songbird and the rest of the cabal begin to clean up after the night’s action. https://youtu.be/dd09qDclgL8

Episode 91: Deadly Alliance

Atratus takes a moment to meet the Totem Spirit of Rescue One. The cabal make a deal with a Seer, and have a terrifying revelation, just before going to Cambodia… https://youtu.be/2k9K4MDCN7E

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is 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 awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

Update: the devs are working on the updates for the roller in both Android and iOS; here is the rundown from them:

1) Redo the UI for system for Android. It will look the same as the current design. My goal is to have something ready by Saturday to send out to the Facebook users, asking them if this fixes the issues. This will be a beta type thing. This will break several of the fancy dice.

2) If the above worked out and the android users give all the clear, we’ll redo the graphics system to fix the fancy dice that got broken. We’ll do another Android beta through Facebook. This might take up to two weeks, as my schedule allows.

3) If everything worked well, we’ll release to Android for real at that point.

4) Port all of the existing stuff to iOS and release on that.

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 from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau 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

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!:

https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

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

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This week Part 2 of Yugman’s Guide to the Scarred Lands will be available as a PDF on DriveThruRPG! And over on the Slarecian Vault Community Content site for Scarred Lands, Travis Legge’s massive multi-part adventure for levels 1-15, Vengeance of the Shunned will be available for the first time in compiled form as a PDF and as PoD physical books!

Conventions!

Though dates are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s our current list of upcoming conventions:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

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

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)



N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Second Draft

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

The Book of Endless Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

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

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Editing



Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Indexing

They Came From Beneath the Sea! (TCfBtS!)

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy

Tales of Aquatic Terror

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Contracted.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – More final art coming in.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs – Art notes over to artists this morning.

WoD Ghost Hunters – Getting KS artwork going.

Aberrant – Another batch contracted.

Pugmire Adventure

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2 – ADing that out post Aberrant AD.

Deviant

Legendlore – Kickstarter on hiatus.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Prepping for KS.

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Part 2 this week.

Contagion Chronicle

Vigil Watch

Scion Companion – Artwork in progress.

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart

Pirates of Pugmire

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Inputting proofing comments.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate

At Press

Ex 3 The Silence of Our Ancestors (Huggins Novella) – PoD files uploaded.

TC Distant Worlds – Prepping for PoD.

Scion Mythical Denizens – PoD proof on the way.

Night Horrors : Nameless and Accursed – Errata gathering this week.

Dark Eras 2 – Prepping for PoD.

VtR Spilled Blood – Prepping for PoD.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution

DR:E Screen & Booklet

DR:E Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Geist 2e Screen

Memento Mori

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Indexing.

Chicago Folios – Awaiting PoD proof.

Geist 2e Anthology – Errata gathering.

C:tL 2e Oak, Ash, & Thorn – Errata gathering.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

In the midst of all the upheaval in our lives, with all the input into our heads of the bad things that are happening, try and take heart with the actions of “the helpers”, as Fred Rogers called them. The folks who are stepping up to make things better; the tech teams trying to devise faster tests and respirator manufacture, the scientists and doctors working on better tests and meds to fight this thing, the musicians playing free online concerts, and all those who stay at their posts, doing their jobs, in the constant threat of exposure. Heroes all!