Same Path. Different Web-design. [Monday Meeting Notes]

Monday Meeting

We talked mostly about three things today. The first you can hear more about in the BLURBS! section below, and that was the launch last Weds. of the Advance PDF of the Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition featuring the Idigam Chronicle core rulebook. Awhooo! Very pleased with how well the book came together and with how excited folks have been with the new ideas and shifted first edition emphasis that Stew Wilson and his team created. And I’m loving the new cover- there is a directness to the challenge of that staring wolf that crackles- thanks, Mirthful Mike!

Just a word about the Advance PDF idea. This is something we’ve been doing for different projects for well over a year, and we’ve been so thrilled with the results that now any of our projects that aren’t from a Kickstarter come out first as an Advance PDF. This is pretty much a stage where we are looking for members of our community to do what they always do with our new books and let us know about any mistakes or hard to understand areas that they find. It is the idea that a thousand eyes are better than a dozen.

So why is this good? Well, in three ways. First, it’s good for those members of our community who love to dive into our books and pick them apart (in a loving, caring way, of course). Some of them are eagle-eyed catchers of spellcheck errors and grammar, some are systems checkers who can note a misplaced + or – from a mile away, and some are setting enthusiasts who know the lore as if they actually lived there. The important thing is that everybody has an area that they can help us with, and so they get the satisfaction of being involved with the final stages of the project by helping (or bragging rights for being smarter than us, as if that was hard to accomplish!). Secondly, it is great for everyone else who buys or intends to buy the book, as you are getting a tighter, more polished project. And finally, we benefit because we have a happier community overall, not just on release day, but into the future as new folks buy the book.

Which is not to say the Advance PDF idea is without a downside. WtF fans who don’t want to know about this stage of polish and tweaking, who just want a PDF and/or PoD book please, have to wait for us to get all that errata input and the new PDF uploaded and the print files sent out. So, more waiting because of this stage. For us, we lose out on those big release day crazy sales and comments and eighty new threads across the forums because not everyone who wants the book will buy it at the Advance PDF stage. We’ve even made it painless financially to get the Advance PDF and then get the PoD physical book later with a discount to the combo price, but it is still not a single trip to DTRPG. And we also lose out on DTRPG’s leader boards for the same reasons, so our projects don’t look as successful as our friend Monte Cook‘s, for example. But we knew these things going in, and while they are unfortunate, the upside is just so significant that we’re willing to take these hits in order to have the tightest book possible at the end of it.

So after that “digression”: How about this new website?!

Massive kudos to Impish Ian Watson and Mirthful Mike Chaney for their behind the scenes work these last few weeks putting all the pieces together over the skeleton created by my old friend Mike Wendell. That Mike and I have known each other since before I moved to Georgia, the first time, and he sold me the first desktop publishing and 3-D animation desktop system ever used in TV in my home town of Philadelphia. I had a hunch that there might be something special happening with these desktop computers, and convinced the management at TV29 to invest in a system so I could do animations and advertisements on it. Mike was the jack of all trades and salesman at the PC company that we went with, and sometime later replaced me at the station when I headed to the start-up White Wolf. A bit later he started his own web design company and a chance meeting on Facebook later and I got him doing the site design. But again, if it looks sweet, it’s because of Ian’s diligence and Mirthful Mike’s seemingly endless ability to juggle projects. We’re still fine tuning, it ain’t perfect, so hang on and watch it evolve.

Also, we have no evidence that the work on the website caused any of the slow-downs or shut-downs last week except the one Saturday night when Ian took the site down to implement the new one. But that sure is the sort of coincidence that makes me grind my teeth. Almost ready with our spankin’ new site and the old one keeps crashing? WTF? (Not to be confused with WtF 2nd Edition).

Finally, we talked about PAX East, as both Mighty Matt McElroy and Fast Eddy Webb, and his lovely wife Michelle, attended over the weekend. I thought this was turning into a really appropriate convention for Onyx Path to attend from what I was hearing the last couple of years, and everything Matt and Eddy reported today just confirmed that. Back in the day, we had hoped that DragonCon in Atlanta would become a true multi-media convention, but that seemed to collapse, and for a while San Diego Comic-con was heading that way, but Hollywood invaded and drowned that. PAX East seems to, so far, be headed in a very good way with electronic gaming and tabletop actually being seen as complementing each other, not threatening. I’m very interested in the many attendees who have never heard of D&D, never mind World of Darkness or Exalted. This may be a very good place for Onyx to talk to new gamers who are interested in a more face to face kind of gaming than League or WoW really are about. Plus, if they liked the eras in Assassins’ Creed…think of what they might enjoy playing in nWod Dark Eras or the Trinity Continuum.

Also, despite the corporate connections of how they started, the PAX East staff seem to be really focused on including everyone in our community and several of our friends in gaming really appreciated things like the Diversity Lounge. And I hear that they have at least one “time out” area for when all the people and noise and pressure just get too much. I know I could have used that many a year at other cons. I’m going to be asking around about those sorts of things, but if they really made that sort of effort, then I’m thinking we should look into attending next year. Certainly worth making further plans for.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

And now, the BLURBS!

Wow! Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition‘s Advance PDF went on sale at DTRPG last Weds. and has already rocketed well past Gold Status on their site and Platinum is within grasp already! 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

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 DM’s Day Sale is ending on the 10th at DTRPG, as you can see from the slider on the front website page. Hundreds of PDFs are on sale including the God-Machine Chronicles, Mortal Remains for Hunter: the Vigil, and The Skinner SAS for Werewolf 20th!

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

And now, for once, our Dev status hasn’t changed from last week, although the Art Direction has a new format:

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)

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

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)

Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)

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)

Second Draft

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

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)

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

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)

Editing

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

Development (post-editing)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE

In Art Direction