New TTRPG books!

Been a few months since our last update, so we’ve got some new content out! For those of you who do follow us here, thanks for being patient. We’re a tiny team, so we mostly interact on social media. But it’s good to have a hub where you can find things in one place!

Anyhow, we have a few bits of news to pass along.

First, Cyberpunk: Tales of the Red has been out for a while now, and it’s gotten a great reception. Fran’s adventure is called Drummer and the Whale, but there are a ton of great stories in there for you to play through.

Second, Fran contributed a full chapter to the upcoming Danger Gal Dossier for Cyberpunk Red, an excellent NPC and faction guide, where she brings the cyberpsychos of the Maelstrom boostergang up to Red level spec and timeline. And that’s just one of 15 nifty new factions, each with a dozen fully-statted NPCs, most of whom you can even buy miniatures of.

We also contributed either writing or editing to three books by the excellent writer Alain Giorla, all for Scarred Lands: Ships of Ghelspad One and Two, and Vigil Watch: Bela-Kay. Alain creates great products, so check those out!

And latest, but definitely not least, we’ve put out a new Scarred Lands supplement! Vigil Watch: The Walled Warren and the Slitherin Broods is a great big in-depth look at an awesome, underused Scarred Lands addition we got with the 5E version. The Walled Warren is a city of slitherin as impressive as any other city on Ghelspad’s eastern coast.

Except maybe Mithril. They have that cool golem.

Anyhow, the book adds a bunch of new NPCs, special materials, feats, backgrounds, and adventure ideas. Oh, and a whole city, complete with maps and detailed descriptions. And it updates the slitherin broods from the 3E Warrens of the Ratmen that didn’t make it into the Creature Collection.

And it gives you playable statistics for all the broods, so you can create a Red Witch slitherin PC. And it uses Yugman’s new rules for heritages, so you could, if you wanted to, create a halfling PC who grew up among White Wraith slitherin.

It’s pretty great. You should go get that, especially because it’s discounted right now in honor of Onyx Path Con.

Virtual Orca Con January 8-10, 2021 and Onyx Path Blog

Two things I forgot to mention in my last post. First off, in addition to all the other stuff we did this year, I (Sarah) wrote three blog posts for Onyx Path Publishing about working on Frostlands of Fenrilik and writing NPC stat blocks:
http://theonyxpath.com/npc-stat-blocks-for-frostlands-of-fenrilik-part-1/
http://theonyxpath.com/npc-stat-blocks-for-frostlands-of-fenrilik-part-2/
http://theonyxpath.com/writing-for-frostlands-of-fenrilik/

And Fran and I are going to be running Virtual D&D games at Orca Con’s Virtual convention in January. Sign up if you’re interested!
– Saturday, Jan 9th at 1PM PST we’ll be running Frostlands of Fenrilik’s Into the Gorge adventure: https://tabletop.events/conventions/orcacon-online/schedule/22
– Sunday, Jan 10th at 11AM PST we’ll be running one of our Vigil Training Mission games: https://tabletop.events/conventions/orcacon-online/schedule/23

Which Vigilant Training Mission game we run is partly up to you, as we ran them both at last year’s Orca Con. If we have entirely new players we’ll run whichever one we’re in the mood for. Otherwise we’ll run whichever one none of the players has played yet.



Cool Stuff we’ve done in 2020

Despite Covid19, we’ve managed to produce a lot of great stuff this year. Really because of it, since we were stuck at home and unable to go to conventions, and thus work on all this great things!
First off, we have several new RPG titles available on DriveThruRPG:
The Calendar of the Scarred Lands: years, months, and weeks on Scarn work differently than on earth, organized and named after the victorious gods. Keep track of seasons, zodiac, lunar cycles, and holidays with this handy calendar.
The Serpent Amphora 5e Quickstart: This introductory adventure not only introduces the Scarred Lands setting, but supplies all you need to run Dungeons and Dragons 5e (at least rules wise. You still need a few friends and some dice). The adventure ties into our novel Vigilant and follows the first adventure of his brother Kane, as described in Vigilant’s prologue. It includes character sheets for Kane and his friends.
Vigilant Training Mission: Maritime Patrol or Oh Bouy, What a Bloody Oar-deal! This adventure introduces the Blood Sea setting of Scarred Lands. The players play Veshian Vigilants out on patrol on the sea when a terrible storm hits. It comes with 6 level 3 playable characters and full color maps of the galleon vessel where the bulk of the adventure takes place. The maps can be printed out or loaded into your favorite virtual table top application.
The Mists of Algos: This Blood Sea adventure can be run as a sequel to Maritime Patrol or as its own stand alone game. Help a little fishing village on the coast recover their lost harvest that was raided by pirates! This rich adventure is a good 8 hours or more of play.
The Frostlands of Fenrilik: This in-depth Scarred Lands book takes place in the far northern continent of the Scarred Lands, introducing new locations, monsters, geography, rules, races, subclasses, spells, magic items, maps, and NPCs. An introductory adventure takes players through level 2 (which can also be easily be adapted to higher level groups). This title is also available a physical book through Print on Demand.
The Frostlands of Fenrilik: Yenie’s Journal: This supplementary material for Frostlands of Fenrilik is pay what you want. It expands the travelogue introduced in the main book and adds a city map, new spells, rituals, and 3 NPCs. This is a nice little title gives you a taste of the setting if you’re not sure you want to pick up the full book yet, and adds more rich background information if do.

We’ve also been involved in multiple weekly Twitch streams:
Running on Mondays from noon-2PM PST (3PM-6PM EST) you’re find us at both Travis Legge’s PlasticAgePlays and the official Onyx Path twitch channel.
Fran and I both played in the later episodes of Myths and Matchmakers (a complete series available on You Tube) are are currently played in Travis Legge’s series A Family Affair (which posts about two weeks after the episodes first air on Twitch).

On Fridays (11AM – 1:30PM PST / 2PM – 3:30 EST), Sarah does a weekly Twitch show with Jeremy Hochhalter of Wanderer’s Haven Publications called The Lore You Know, where we primarily discuss the deep lore about the extensive setting of the Scarred Lands. We delve into the original 3.x D&D setting books as well as how they connect with the new 5e lore. You can see the entire series produced so far here on You Tube.

If you subscribe to the Onyx Path twitch channel you may find Fran or myself in various other events, including Scarred Lands: Frostlands of Fenrilik game I ran titled “Welcome to Kovokimru,” and a handful of interviews and special events.

Currently we are part of the Scarred Lands Kickstarter for Dead Man’s Rust. Fran was one of the authors on this phenomenal new title for the Scarred Lands. You can check out Kickstarter through December 22nd, or look for it on DriveThruRPG after the campaign is over (although it will probably be a while if you missed the campaign).

And finally, in non-Scarred Lands related news (yes we do, occasionally, work on other things), Sarah wrote a weekly Agile Insights blog. You can find all of her blog posts on her LinkedIn page or on her employer’s web site at Ascend Consulting. Drop an email if you’re looking for an Agile Coach.

2020 Convention Schedule

UPDATE: Well, that went well, didn’t it? 2020 has knocked us for a real loop, just like everyone else out there. All the cons we hoped to go to have been canceled. However, there’ve been a few online opportunities, including a short-notice online-only Onyx Path convention where we played in an exhibition game and ran one of our vigilant training scenarios. We’re keeping an eye out for other opportunities like this, and if such things open up, we’ll announce them here–we promise.

Here’s an update list of our conventions this year. We already attended OrcaCon (Bellevue, WA) in January (and it was AMAZING). We ran two Vigilant D&D missions, played a ton of cool board games (and even won a new game in the Play & Win drawing), hung out with some amazing people, and overall had a blast. We’re already setup to go next year.

We also attended NerdFaire (Lynnwood, WA) for the first time. I won a free entry at OrcaCon. It’s a little one day event with lots of vendors and cosplay. Depending on how things go over the next year, we might look into tabling there next year.

For the rest of 2020 you can find us (Fran and Sarah) at:

March 12-15 Emerald City Comic Con (Seattle, WA). Drop us a message on social media to find out where we are.
April 9-12 NorwesCon (Seatac, WA). We’re just attending, not tabling, but we are willing to run a pickup D&D game if you’re interested. It’s a smaller convention, so we should be easier to find — drop us a message on social media if you have trouble.
July 17-19 Readerfest (Tacoma, WA). We’re going to be speakers at Readerfest!! Check it out at https://readerfest.org/.

August: Alas, we’re going to miss both Dragonflight and Britcon in August. Not only are they the same weekend, but it’s also the weekend of my little brother’s wedding on the east coast. Maybe next year.

September: We may table at RustyCon (Bellevue, WA). Details TBD.

Upcoming Conventions

We love going to conventions and seeing people!

Fran and I will be at Geek Girl Con in Seattle, WA on November 16th-17th. We’ll be selling copies of Vigilant and a few Pathfinder Player Guides for the Scarred Lands.
We’ll also be running short (think 2 hour drop-in) Scarred Lands D&D sessions in the gaming area.

Convention Schedule for 2020:

January
OrcaCon: Bellevue, WA Jan 10-12. We’ll be running games, signing books, and hanging out!

March
Emerald City Comic Con: Seattle, WA March 9-12. We’re not tabling, but we will be there all weekend attending as pros, and we’ll have copies of Vigilant with us. Drop us a message if you want to meet up!

April
NorwesCon: Seatac, WA April 9-12. What we’re specifically doing is still TBD, but we have hotel rooms and will be there for the full show! Could be tabling, reading, and running a game or two. We’ll definitely be socializing with our favorite fellow geeks. We’ll have more details soon.

We’re also looking into attending GenCon (in Indianapolis, ID) from July 29-Aug 2, but that’s still TBD.

-Sarah



Interview with the Authors

Hey, all! It’s been a busy week or so for us. For those curious about how and why we wrote the book, Digital Market Scout just posted an interview with us where we go off into the weeds on all kinds of fun topics: what we love about the Scarred Lands, why we thought Eochaid’s story deserved telling, and how we developed the gruesome combats we put him and his friends through.

We also nerd out a lot, because it’s us. Feel free to chime in here with more questions if you want, and we’ll keep the party going!

Vangal’s Bulging Neck Muscles, it’s Vigilant Aloud!

Still wondering whether you’d enjoy Vigilant? Not interested in reading the previews on Amazon or Barnes & Noble? Well, now you can hear it read with a rich, sonorous English accent on YouTube!

The Gentleman Gamer, an Onyx Path associate, is going through the chapters one by one. As of this posting, he’s on Chapter Two, but there’s a handy playlist that’ll let you keep up with new chapters as they’re added or start from the beginning.

Battle on, Eochaid!

Vigilant: Available Now!

Vigilant is out in stores. You can purchase the book on Amazon, DriveThru, and Barnes & Noble. Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy it very much.

And we have a special offer, for a limited time: if you read and review the book (on any of the sites) and comment here, Fran Stewart will write you a haiku poem on any subject you want as a small bonus and a thank you for helping us get our book in front of more people.

The more people read Vigilant, the faster we can produce the sequel!

Welcome, Vigilant Readers!

Vigilant, the story of Eochaid Lenahr, a ranger and soldier for the nation of Vesh, is now out in the world and, we hope, being read and enjoyed! 

So far, the book’s not out for sale anywhere. If you have a copy, you’re probably one of the Kickstarter backers for Onyx Path’s new edition of the Scarred Lands Player’s Guide. We hope our book came as a welcome surprise for your patience. 

This is our first novel, and you’re some of our first fans. We look forward to hearing from you about who you are, how you found the book, what you think of it…and where you think Eochaid’s going next. Because even now, even though Vigilant is just reaching readers, we’re already working on the sequel. 

So post comments and let us know you’re out there! 

-Fran and Sarah Stewart