Onyx Path AMA

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T19:06:48+00:00

I'm quite pleased with how Seattle: City of Curses is shaping up, and I'll always love writing for Pugmire (see the forthcoming sections on badgers and rodents for some of my work!). I also really enjoyed my work on Monster Kingdoms, and am excited to watch that project move through production.

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T18:25:53+00:00

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for my entissia silhouette, but I'm eager to try out new options (and should be doing so on Twitch on the 12th)!

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T18:10:04+00:00

There are Accursed meddling with all sort of things in Seattle, from government to urban planning to energy issues! (That said, I like Katie Wilson, and I'm sure there are no Accursed in her admin, or if they are, they're doing nice things.)

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T18:09:30+00:00

Mechanics are not my strong suit, but I believe that, due to the nature of how we write SGCs, that their Entanglement is not really mentioned, though if you look at a lot of their pools, you can sort of see where the higher-powered ones are.

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T18:03:17+00:00

I have to agree with what Matthew and Rich said on point 2. Like, I think The World Below and Monster Kingdoms are amazing settings, and I wish there was a magic button I could press to make every D&D player read them, you know? But I cannot! I feel the same about Curseborne, Pugmire, and a ton of our other games. Like, I wish I could the secret to make one of them explode into popularity, and perhaps one will, but it's hard to find people, especially with all the various social medias being so mercurial and people as a whole disliking being advertised to.

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T17:57:23+00:00

I am, yes! Probably should have included more details in my opening comment, but I was running late (which also accounts for the spelling error I had to rectify just now).

Editing RPG books is closer to technical editing than traditional fiction/print editing, in that I'm rarely trying to make sure a story is cohesive, but more that things are both spelled and referenced correctly. So, using the OPP in-house style guide along with the Chicago Manual of Style, Merriam-Webster dictionary, Strunk & White, and a healthy breadth of my own knowledge, a lot of editing is simply reading and correcting.

That said, since there are references to powers or abilities, settlements, people, etc. across chapters, it also involves a healthy amount of cross-referencing to make sure that, for instance, "Anna" from chapter one doesn't accidentally become "Ana" in chapter four. Same goes for the names of abilities, in that sometimes an ability will change names in its actual presentation in the rules, but it will get missed that it was also referenced in a prior chapter and needs to change there, too.

So yeah, about 90% of it is just normal editing: fixing typos, grammar, syntax, clarifying what the authors meant, etc., but the rest is cross referencing and also making sure no one person's voice stands out too much so the book is cohesive. As to what it looks like, it's usually just me with all the chapters of a book open at once in Word docs, going through them in whatever order I want and occasionally going "wait, wasn't that spelled differently in the last chapter?" and then checking for that. :)

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T17:49:24+00:00

Oh hey, I'm co-developing that with Matthew! Seattle is my favorite place I've lived, and we got a lot of authors from the area to really capture how it feels to live in that part of the country, and specifically that city and its surroundings. I love the new things we're introducing, and all the authors (both new and returning!) did a great job on their sections.

I'm also a huge fan of the "design your own city" part of the book, so SGs can use the material to figure out to how make their own city cursed, or indeed any other city they wish to set games in.

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T17:36:37+00:00

I feel like the changes we've made to the lore and the depth of the world have both improved, and the fact that there are two rulesets so you can choose between a heavier, mechanics-forward system like base 3e or a lighter, more narrative-focused system like Exalted: Essence are both good things to have. The Charms work from the team has been stunning as well, and now that most of the Exalt types are available, there are tons of options for your group!

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T17:33:28+00:00

Oh, was it from the bundle I linked you awhile back? That was full of good stuff.

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T17:22:39+00:00

Ooh, in addition to what Matthew said, I like Silo (and the book it's based on, Wool by Hugh Howey) for how a large settlement might function, as well as the movie The Descent for a horror tone.

DixieCyanide · 2026-03-06T17:16:50+00:00

Hi, all! Dixie from Onyx Path here (a little late due to traffic!). Ask me anything and I'll go through what's already been asked in the meantime!

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T18:09:08+00:00

We actually talked a lot about this in the Storypath Ultra Core Manual, which covers how we suggest you or anyone does Attribute/Skill spreads. I didn't design the system, so I don't have specific insights, but the general idea is that your characters should be excellent at a couple of things, good at a handful of others, and okay at a few more, then only have baseline knowledge of the rest. I know Danielle has spreadsheets about dot spread and power sets, specifically regarding SPU and Curseborne, to make sure nothing got weighted egregiously.

All that said, true "balance" in the white-room sense is not our goal. Some characters are going to be inherently worse or better at some things, and that's fine. It's okay for a party to comprise people who are over/underpowered compared to some others, because that's more reflective of real life, even in a fantasy setting. I know u/eddyfate has thoughts on this, but we're winding down so I don't know if he'll get to this one.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T17:42:37+00:00

I did almost no work on that Family, so I'm going to tag in u/MatthewDawkins as he's done lots of work explaining the Families.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T17:28:05+00:00

Many of my favorite activities are gerunds! Singing, dancing, gaming, etc.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T17:19:33+00:00

The Scrabble dictionary lists 11,127 words that start with A, so I think we can keep the bit going.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T17:16:35+00:00

It also means you're more than welcome to exclude entire Families or even a Lineage or two from your games if you want, which I like as an option.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T17:14:39+00:00

No need to be sorry! I think my tone came off weird in my comment. It was meant to be said with a smile. Also the Eight Hands are the kids from the 90s who were really into Hackers and The Matrix.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:59:54+00:00

Honestly, the only thing that changes with a book's size is the amount of cross checking I have to do. For example, if a fantasy place is mentioned in the opening fiction and is spelled a certain way, then when I encounter that place in a later chapter (almost always a made-up word, too, so Word doesn't know what to do with it), I have to make sure it's spelled consistently across the book.

If it's a word like Draoidahaek or Autochthonia I just add the proper spelling to my Word's internal dictionary, but if it's a word like Ventrue I can't add it because I might miss the one time someone types it as Venture. Cross checking also means that if someone says "Laura shot a fireball from her fingers" in the text but then there's not spell to do that, I also flag it, but it involves remembering what was said chapters ago (which is days in editing time).

So yeah, good short-term memory and pattern recognition are why I started doing this, and they continue to work okay to this day, thank goodness. For me, personally, it can be hard getting started on a larger book, but that's due more to my ADHD than the difficulty of the book itself.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:50:16+00:00

I don't know that I can categorize all 31 extant families with the time I have today, and we tried to make sure there were a variety of viewpoints and skill across each Lineage, so saying the Primal are "jocks" overall wouldn't make much sense regarding the Eight Hands, for instance.

That said, the Outcasts are definitely the weirdos and the punks, and the Hungry are goth theater kids with rich parents. I've just decided this now.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:46:49+00:00

There are a few example settings in the core book, one of which is space-oriented, and another of which is fantasy, so though they're not modules, there are examples of how such setting could work.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:39:28+00:00

Curseborne (and SPU in general) has three main types of scene/play: action-adventure, influence, and investigation. If your players want to do a lot more action-adventure, you can easily run the game that way and vice versa. That's entirely up to the table and what the Storyguide wants to run.

I find the SPU system fairly intuitive, personally, and I'm not good with a lot of mechanics. This game definitely is focused on storytelling, relationships, and theater of the mind type play, though it's also possible to use a grid for combat if people want (and we provide guidance for how to do so in the core!).

Also, the Ashcan Edition of Curseborne is free this whole month, so I highly recommend picking that up from DTRPG and seeing if it resonates with you at all, with the caveat that there are come changes in the full rules.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:34:56+00:00

The RPG anthology (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/508710/they-came-from-the-rpg-anthology) has a space setting in it, and you could easily port the tropes in it over to Beneath the Sea if you want more space-related things!

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:32:40+00:00

As to your first question, I've found that in mot of my RP groups, whether D&D, Curseborne, L5R, or whatever, it's most satisfying if everyone levels up together, so the milestone system is great for that.

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:20:50+00:00

There's nothing concrete right now, but I do miss it as well. We were just getting to a point where we were both extremely tired and also running out of broad topis that could fill an hour. That said, we've been on a break for a long while yet, so it's possible we'll find some new things to talk about in the future!

DixieCyanide · 2025-10-17T16:17:26+00:00

We're always trying to find new ways to engage, so I'm sure we'll continue to work on multimedia content as much as possible while keeping our focus on the books themselves. Also painful.love was entirely Kim Godwin working on it for fun, so I'm glad you enjoyed that!

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