Exquisite Corpses Work in Progress (plus other updates)

Looks like the monster template count for the book will be going from the first edition's 26 up to FORTY. Whew.

This book is going to use a special format: Hardcover + spiral binding, thick and heavy perforated page stock (the printer can not bind and completely cut the pages) for the color monster illustration pages. There is little point to presenting this project without the format. But these special formats are not the most inexpensive on Planet Earth.

Stephan and I will do everything we can to make this more amazing and useful and quick so the gaming utility matches the presentation.

This isn't going to be a throwaway novelty purchase, but the go-to at-the-table monster guide for your campaign.

Yes, we're setting an impossible standard over here at LotFP, but dammit, why shouldn't we?

(I could go on a speculative rant here about how the perceived decline of the tabletop RPG industry has a lot to do with widespread boring-ass low-quality book formats and navel-gazing boring-ass content, but that would show actual pride and ambition for the work I'm doing and want to do, and it's for some reason considered gauche to display pride and ambition for one's work these days, so I'll leave that rant for another time)

We're looking at a June print date on this one, but this is LotFP. Scheduling predictions are slightly less awesome than our books.

(other updates AS PROMISED IN THE POST TITLE)

The shirts will be ready to pick up from customs on Tuesday afternoon, which means all shirt orders ship on Wednesday. Zak and Amos have already received their shirts and give the thumbs up. I can't wait to see them!

Grindhouse and Vornheim PDFs will go on sale as separate products tomorrow.

Ten different Swords & Wizardry books have arrived, are in stock, and will go on sale Monday once I have the shipping materials for them. Damn them letter-size US format books and their slight-but-rather-important difference from European A4 format!

Carcosa work continues but at a slower pace. These Grindhouse box assemblies are, as they say in the biz, kicking my ass. However, I've been floating the idea of providing a color cloth map for the first x number of orders. And maybe even a little metal thingy. Because games started to suck once they didn't come with cloth maps and little metal thingies, and I can't allow my stuff to suck. More on this as I discover feasibility.

The "Tuberculoids" project progress stopped the second books started to arrive, and that work is in a folder now. However, a shorter-form, more immediately useful product idea has occurred. More on that as it becomes something worth announcing.

(Trollsmyth noted that Vornheim is going to cause an ergonomic gaming revolution, and it certainly is changing the way I think about what projects to pursue and how to present the projects on the table now. JOIN THE ERGONOMIC GAMING REVOLUTION! BUY VORNHEIM!)

Updates on Order Shipping and the Shirts!

I shipped around 100 orders last week before heading to Gothenburg, I shipped 75 or so today, and hope to get the remaining >125 out the door tomorrow... but that may leak into Friday.

Basically, from this point forward if you place an order it'll ship out the next day.

Distributor orders go out early next week.

Orders with shirts in them won't ship until the shirts arrive, of course.

I had Zak and Amos' shirts shipped directly to them from the shirt people. They have received them and both give the shirts thumbs up.

I won't see them for probably another week though, but when I do, they and the orders they are attached to will ship the next day.

I should get the Frog God/S&W shipment out of customs tomorrow. They won't go up on the site immediately (no shipping supplies yet for that size book and there's a minor PDF issue to clear up), but soon. Very soon. I'll have six copies of ten different modules, plus over a dozen copies of the S&W Complete rulebook if everything's in order... those of you planning on buying lots of this stuff could get a bit of value out of joining the Gardening Society. Just saying.

I'm looking into the possibility of going to RPC Germany. Yeah, short notice. I'll know in the next couple of days.

Free Raggi DNA With Purchase!

... for select random orders.

Damn I'm giving myself a lot of papercuts folding these cardboard mailers.

LotFP Stuff Registered For the ENNIES

Evidence!

Weird New World is supposed to be in there, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't get nominated for anything other than cartography, and that's if they ignore my map in there and just marvel at Dow's.

Then again, Death Frost Doom's cartography got an honorable mention last year so who knows. :D

If you've released something since May 1 and haven't submitted to the ENNIES, what are you waiting for?

Vornheim is the Greatest Gaming Supplement Ever

... I was wanting to shout that at passersby all damn weekend, but thought it would be bad form.

(my wife was already trying to advise me I was being enough of a Loud American already. As if I have a choice in the matter. :P She also vetoed the airhorn idea, much to the relief of everyone I'm sure.)

I couldn't contain it anymore. I need to shout it out. TO THE WORLD!

Luckily I have this blog which is nothing but bad form. And dammit, this is Zak's book, so he's the one that needs to pretend to be humble about it, not me. Hyping this shit is my job, right? Why the hell should I feel self-conscious about it?

It's like I got infected with shame when I started accepting money in exchange for stuff. I put everything into these books and then sit there, hands behind my back, shuffling one foot around waiting for people to tell me I did a good job so I can repeat what they said and call that "marketing." Weeeaaaaaaaaakkkkkkk Sssssaaaaaauuuucccccceeeee.

Everyone at GothCon that passed my table without picking up Vornheim missed out on gaming excellence at a slightly discounted price before the rest of the world even had a chance to get their hands on it. Can you believe these people? Point and laugh at them next time you see them.

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating.

Maybe it's not the greatest gaming supplement ever.

But maybe it is.

At the very least I can stop flinching every time I look at the Dungeon Alphabet, lamenting the fact that LotFP never released anything so awesome. I can rest a bit easier with my own stuff that's in the works, knowing that no matter what comes next, LotFP has released one of the all-time awesome things in gaming. No footnote in gaming history here; this gets a mention in the main text.

Think this is just some big empty hype from someone with a financial interest? Yeah? Well I disagree with you. On the Internet.

Fact: Everyone who plays runs games with cities in them can find something to use immediately in this book, and likely a whole lot more than just "something."

Fact: Everyone who writes RPG material will learn new things about the presentation and organization of gaming material.

Fact: Your gaming library has a great big gaping sucking hole in it if Vornheim's not there.

Fact: Great big gaping sucking holes may be good in other places, but not in your gaming library.

Cheers to Zak for writing such a clever and useful book and for giving me the opportunity to release it, cheers to me for getting the darn thing out, cheers to those that have ordered it so far, cheers to those who will order it, cheers to the games that are going to be enriched by the book, and cheers to the Vornheim hacks and derivatives that will surface at game tables worldwide as people's minds go kaboom when exposed to this book.

Whew. I feel so much better now. :D

Now hopefully the other 1900 copies arrive tomorrow as (re)scheduled...

Kenneth Hite: "Vornheim is the Sex Pistols covering Ptolus"

GothCon is over and done with.

Didn't do too bad, I hit my goals, but it's still frustrating to be "internet famous" (for certain values of "internet famous") and then I go somewhere and almost nobody knows who I am. Ropecon will be the first con where I return as a vendor and it will be interesting to see if there's a difference in response.

Goblin Games and Sci-Fi Bokhandeln (at least the Gothenburg location) are now carrying LotFP stuff in Sweden.

The star of the show was undoubtedly Fallen Games and their Fallen Reich game. Go look at that link. Their table was magnificent and drew all eyes to it. Top-quality physical product, great unified look to the products, the tagline "Can Evil Be Stopped In Time For Tea?" on T-shirts, the people manning the tables dressed like 1930s Brits... just magnificent. Just one glance and you got what the game was about, the tone, everything.

If the printing of either the main book or the optional character creation boardgame were half-assed or done on the cheap, it wouldn't have been half as impressive. But you could see the loving care the creators bestowed upon the entire project. It just screamed "CLASS!!!" (as much as true class actually screams, I guess). I haven't played it of course, but reading through the book it seems to follow through on the promises that its exterior makes.

I am also turning into a boring publishing professional. As I made my rounds around the vendor room and checked out the other small publishers' works, I was feeling the paper, checking the binding, looking at layouts and artwork not for the effect but for technical quality.

Kenneth Hite was there, and not only did he seem impressed with the production upgrades of the new LotFP box, and he really likes Vornheim. Never hurts to get "celebrity" endorsement.

As I said before I left, the full Vornheim print run didn't arrive on Wednesday. Those that did arrive were for the most part shipped out that evening, I brought some to Gothenburg, and I still have some packed up and ready to go here.

Tomorrow (Monday) is a holiday. Can't mail squat. The other 95% of the Vornheim print run is supposed to arrive Tuesday, so I can't be off mailing anything until that comes. Likely won't get to the post office by the time that's unloaded and brought up to the apartment. The wife (and therefore the car) won't be available during business hours Wednesday, so in all likelihood, the next mass shipment will go out Thursday, and the hope is all outstanding orders will go out then. Or at least the ones not including T-shirts, although those should be arriving any day now as well.

Then I can take the damn pre-order tags off the store and after that orders can be mailed as they come in.

Whew.

I'm off to bed, but back to work in the morning catching up on emails and continuing the assemble the Grindhouse boxes.

Vi kommer til Göteborg i morgon! And Vornheim Came!

We got confirmation yesterday that Vornheim was arrviing today. Then today they tell us it's coming tomorrow.

Alarm bells. We're off to Sweden first thing in the morning, so that's no good. That started a day of stress.

Some helpful employee of the printing company that drives an expensive car dropped off four boxes of Vornheim - about 100 copies.


For some reason one of the boxes was padded with... a ton of Vornheim dust jackets. All the books I've seen look fine, but I hope this doesn't mean there's a bunch arriving on Tuesday that will be naked.


Yeah, we kept telling them "Nobody here tomorrow or Friday!" and they'd say "OK, the rest will be there Tuesday!" but when we'd talk to someone new, they say "...and the rest will be there tomorrow!" Hopefully there isn't a pallet of picked-apart pallet of Vornheims waiting for us when we get back Sunday.

So we're off first thing in the morning to Sweden to attend GothCon. We are bringing copies of the Grindhouse Edition, Vornheim, Death Frost Doom, Grinding Gear, Hammers of the God, Tower of the Stargazer, Weird New World, plus a couple of Rogue Games' Cursed Chateau and Shadow Sword & Spell Basic and Expert books. We'll be at the convention Friday and Saturday, but not Sunday.

We'll be back Sunday night, and we will likely have no internet access until then.

We've shipped about 100 orders so far. About 200 more to be filled, but you have to wait until next week...

Oh yeah, I got a notice today telling me that my Frog God Games shipment is sitting in customs. We'll deal with that when we get back, and that will mean 11 Frog God Swords & Wizardry titles will get added to the webstore very soon. We've arranged it so if you order the print copy, you get the PDF free direct from our store.

That's enough news for now.

Mentzer, Mona, Raggi

... are the judges for this year's Ropecon Scenario Competition.

Details, in English, here.

(It doesn't say in the announcement, but I've asked for clarification: The competition is open only to those who will be attending Ropecon.)

I Am OLD (X-Men Related)

I used to be a huge comic freak. The X-Men were my favorites.

When I started on X-Men, Scott Summers was already married, and Kitty Pryde was older than me. I used to have a crush on Kitty Pryde.

So I'm bored this morning and channel flipping, and something called X-Men Evolution is on. I'd long given up on comics before there was ever an X-Men cartoon and I don't think I've ever seen one.

It's not dubbed! I can watch.

Oh. It's about Wolverine. Shit.

Still, all the X-Men besides Wolverine are kids. KIDS. Then I realize, "Oh yeah, they were pretty much all supposed to be young students back then. Except for Wolverine. And Banshee. And Thunderbird. And Sunfire. But you get the idea.

I never got the sense, not in the 80s X-Men anyway, that Nightcrawler or Rogue were teenagers. And I'd stopped reading before I recognized myself as older than Shadowcat, and she's definitely way too young in this cartoon, but that's how old she was supposed to be back when I was reading (Claremont was pretty crap at the whole "writing a teenager" thing, wasn't he?).

*sigh*

... and now on is something called Batman the Brave and the Bold. Teaming up with Sherlock Holmes fighting occult powers? Goddamn this is violent.

(Wait, that's Diedrich Bader? Evil Alien Conquerors is one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies. :D)

What the hell happened to cartoons these past 25 years?

(you can all stop laughing now)

Some Pictures (An Independent Publisher, The Glamourous Life of)

Taking a break from the box-filling grind...

Looked at the proofs for the large sheets that are going out with the bundled pre-orders. Thumbs up!
The kitchen table has been moved and is now Box Assembly HQ:
Here's another view of the apartment, with a Grindhouse box on top of the packing boxes for scale. The kitchen table used to be under that chandelier. And we have 2,000 hardcover Vornheims coming next week... someone on Twitter called my wife #martyroftheosr, and that's not far off...
Compare that to last year when we thought we'd trashed the apartment:
A portion of the 2,000 sets of dice and 20,000 character sheets.
When we return from GothCon, we have well over 300 orders to ship, including comp copies, contest winners, pre-orders, and retail & distributor orders. Here's a page from our shipping supply vendor's catalog. We use Mercamer here in Finland. When I had my metal zine in the US, I got my shipping supplies from Uline (actually, the box seals I use are from Uline because they're impossible to find at a reasonable price over here). Both companies have give me good supplies and great service and I recommend them both.
Here's a look at the spine of the Grindhouse Edition Rules & Magic book next to the Deluxe Edition Rules and Magic books.
Here is Command Center Iota - where all the magic happens!
Finch asked awhile back what we keep at our desk. Let me list it for you:

The top left panel below the plant (my wife's...) is where I keep the current month's receipts. On the first of every month I organize them and send them to my accountant.

Haven't figured out a use for the bottom panel. It's not a normal shelf, but more like a solid folder. I have an empty Levykauppa Äx plastic bag there right now for some reason.

In the center are my computer speakers and wireless headphones (for when the wife is asleep) up top, and on the desk itself around the monitor are my packed pen holder, blank note paper, customs and shipping method stickers, hair ties, screen duster, metal bookmarks, and other miscellaneous crap.

The top right shelf is a mess right now... a pile of notebooks, a couple of Deluxe Editions, my personal copy of Grindhouse, all my module releases, the blank Grindhouse mockup, and my supply of Rogue Games releases (about half spoken for with pre-orders). I need to clean this up. It'll probably be a stock shelf as I have dozens of titles from different publishers on the way for the webstore... some arriving next week, many on a slow-boat pallet shipment arriving probably in June. In particular, if you're a European OSR buyer, I'm going to be your best-bet hookup.

The middle right shelf has my history reference and current reading. I have 17 Osprey Publishing titles dealing with the 16th and 17th century as well as book on early firearms, conquistadors, the reformation, inquisition, 30 Years War, three on the English Civil War, and one about Vlad the Impaler.

The bottom shelf has my permanent gaming reference. I use... XRP's Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, Silk Road, and Ecology and Culture. Troll Lord's World Builder, Extraordinary Book of Names, and Insidiae (all from the Gygaxian Worlds series), Mythmere's two Adventure Design Deskbooks, the Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future corebooks, and Goodman's Dungeon Alphabet and Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra.

Also on this shelf is my layout software's user guide. ... and my current CDs in rotation! I do not (and will not, ever) use an all-digital format for music or books. I'd be a vinyl snob if I could afford it, but I can't, so it's CDs or nothing. The current pile:

Briton Rites For Mircalla
Ghost Opus Eponymous
Blood Ceremony Blood Ceremony
Blood Ceremony Living with the Ancients
Upwards of Endtime From Genesis to Apocalypse and Beyond
Hour of 13 The Ritualist
Witchcraft The Alchemist
Orchid Capricorn

So a lot of retro doom stuff. Three albums from three different bands with Phil Swanson on vocals, oddly enough.

I need to talk about Capricorn's packaging. This album has convinced me to do a Referee screen for LotFP, because look at this frickin thing!

It just looks like a normal digipak CD...
But it's not! It's a multi-panel cool piece of work. The surface of the whole thing, inside and out, is like a hardcover book, not cheap cardboard.
The art, when the case is half-folded, forms one image on the inside.
But of course when it's completely unfolded, there's lots to see as well.
They placed the booklet over there on the left.
And the CD sleeve over there on the right.
So I'm thinking, if a tiny label (The Church Within Records out of Germany, a very excellent, if obscure label with great bands on the roster) releasing the debut record from a band that effectively nobody's ever heard of (but quite excellent - best album I've heard in years!) can do this (and it costs no more than a regular CD; the special edition is even more grand)... so can I.

It'll be months before I can get to this, but imagine... a four-panel hard board screen with A4-sized panels. Some magnificent work of art on the player-facing side. Cool color-coded tables on the Referee side. Perhaps in the ends are booklets - maybe one of optional rules, the other an adventure.

That would be killer.

Grindhouse Books HAVE ARRIVED!

I forgot to take a picture of the books on the pallets outside the front of the building. While we were unloading them and bringing them upstairs, you should have seen the looks on peoples' faces as they passed by and looked at the covers outside. :D

Anyway, books look good; don't see any pixelation in the images, text is clear, the color art looks nice and vibrant (can't tell so well from that second pic, but "evidence of existence," not "attractive advertising photo," was the goal there.

Mission accomplished. I did good. Now to assemble, pack, and ship these fuckers, all the while selling a bunch of them.

Vornheim arrives next week.

One Last Pause

The winners of the "Follow This and That" "contest" have been notified. Don't unsubscribe just yet - if someone doesn't respond I'll be picking new winners. And I'd really like to rock on Cyclopeatron's May rankings. ;)

Just up late dealing with art notes for Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown as I'll be busy these next couple weeks.

The Grindhouse books arrive tomorrow. Er, later today (Thursday). I'm terrified. I'm having nightmares about faded text and pixelated art and off colors. Thinking that the proofs were somehow not representative of the final product. I have some people coming to help haul boxes up to the apartment (the truck is going to drop pallets outside the front door) in exchange for pizza (how many hallmarks of a truly professional publisher can you find in that sentence?), but when it's all done I'll take pictures of both our hopelessly full apartment and the finished books.

Until then, I am in a state of EEK.

And some editorial:

I just had a pretty good pre-order drive exceeding my goal by 25% and I'm a fleaspeck sized RPG publisher. The Grindhouse box is selling faster than the last printing as well - what took the Deluxe box 6 weeks to sell, I just did in 2, counting direct orders only. And that's with an absolutely shit $/€ exchange rate right now, which makes all those US orders more impressive. (THANK YOU)

Evil Hat just started a Kickstarter drive for this Do game, set a $4000 goal, and has already raised $12,000+ in four days. Evil Hat's a rising star but not one of the big boys (I'd say at this point due to the slow release schedule more than anything else).

If the truly small publishers (in the RPG sense) can do five figure product opens, then the rumors of the RPG industry's death are...

... wait for it...

... greatly exaggerated.

As they always have been.

Good night.

The Boxes Have Arrived!

The books to fill those boxes are supposed to be delivered on Friday. The dice have been here for months and the character sheets and OGL sheet have been here for almost two weeks now. When the books arrive I'll start putting the boxes together (all the boxes besides the one on display are still flat).

Vornheim will be here Tuesday or Wednesday next week, then we go to GothCon. When we return, we'll start preparing the pre-orders for shipment, and that will start once the shirts arrive, hopefully soon after.

Those pictures of how much of a mess this apartment was last year during box assembly? Haha, that was less than a third the number of boxes I'm doing now, plus I have another product arriving as well.

Fun, fun times, if you don't ask my wife what she thinks of the arrangement.

(buy buy buy for her sake!)

Are You Following This Blog?

11:59pm Wednesday night I randomly select a blog follower to get a free Grindhouse box.

(will do the same for LotFP Facebook followers and Twitter followers...)

Poag: Hard at Work on Exquisite Corpses (Art Pic!)

Fangoria's Fangorotica Feature with Luna and LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Cover Art

See the pics and read the interview here.

Pre-Order Deal Ends Wednesday 11:59pm

I got word today that the Grindhouse boxes will be ready on Wednesday, and the books that go into those boxes will be here Thursday or Friday. (Vornheim expected the following week)

You know that "Buy Grindhouse + Vornheim together, get the oversized Vornheim roll-on tables" thing? Ends Wednesday 11:59pm Helsinki time.

No, that die table sheet thing is not a huge thing, but it is a thing, and something that makes using Vornheim a little bit cooler and easier > being without something that makes using Vornheim a little bit cooler and easier.

So don't delay! Act today! Get crazay!

(and I sometimes doubt my marketing abilities... phaugh!)

Last Day for T-Shirts

11:59pm Finnish time tonight, the T-shirts come off the store and I place the order to get them made.

Get 'em while you still can!

What's Your Favorite Piece of Grindhouse Art So Far?

Need a bit of a pick me up. So, like the subject line says...

What is your favorite piece of Grindhouse Edition artwork so far? Hell, go wild and pick two! I'm curious.

LotFP to Release Stefan Poag's Exquisite Corpses

Conspicuous by his absence from LotFP projects until now, weird fantasy artist Stefan Poag is about to become quite conspicuous indeed as LotFP prepares to re-release his Exquisite Corpses project into distribution.

Exquisite Corpses is Poag's unique monster book for classic fantasy RPGs, in which tens of thousands of different monsters can be generated with the turn of a page, and hundreds of thousands of more variations made with a few additional die rolls.

To achieve this end, Exquisite Corpses uses space-age flip-book technology, like so:


The LotFP release will feature:

• New cover art
• 32 full color base monster templates on thick pre-perforated stock
• New interior art (the extent of which is still to be determined)
• Hardcover/Wire Binding: On the outside, it's a hardcover, including a spine. On the inside, a thick wire coil to allow the monster segments to be flipped while the book lays flat.

More News as We Make It, and Further Details as We Invent Them!

PDF Issue Fixed

Grindhouse and Vornheim PDFs should both be good for everyone.

More news later.

Update on the PDFs. I HATE TECHNOLOGY

Short version: I have updated, working PDFs for the Grindhouse Edition. People ordering now should be able to get them no problem.

I just have no idea yet how to get them to the people that have already ordered.

Stay tuned.

Long version:

whew. Been working on this two days straight. Between the time it takes to generate a new PDF of the books and upload them either to the server or send them to someone who's helping out due to my cheapest-possible internet connection, well, that's been my life since I woke up yesterday.

The basic problem? The PDFs were fine on their own, but it was only when combined in one larger file that fonts started to go all flaky.

The easiest thing to do would be to just put all the files separately into a ZIP file like I did for the Deluxe edition. But... some people at the time said that wasn't so convenient, so I looked for a one-file solution.

The likely suspect was the way the font was embedded. Apparently it was different for every file, and when the files were combined, *ffaaaaaaaarrrrrttttttttttt*

Had someone with more advanced software take the individual files and stick them together by some arcane technological wizardry. It worked as far as fixing the fonts and the gibberish, but it stripped out the bookmarks in doing so. No good. (data point: The fixed file with no bookmarks was 15mb less than the screwy single file, and the good files ZIPped separately, which are both around 65mb)

Then I used the handydandy "book" tool in my layout program, where different files could be added as chapters and it outputs one PDF. This worked like a charm, except it automatically renumbered all the pages, but not the individual Table of Contents for the three books. That was ugly, and not a good idea I don't think.

So I decided to just upload the ZIP file and to say hell with it. Sometimes, it's just too much work. I did time as a programmer for awhile last century, and I learned never overwrite anything. So I renamed the current download and created a new download attached to the Grindhouse product, loading the ZIP file into the new download. (hint: THIS WAS THE WRONG THING TO DO)

The problem was that the new download was not associated with the purchases already made - they were still pointing to the old download even though I'd disassociated them.

I said hell with it and went to bed.

Today, more fun!

I'm told that overwriting the current file would have been the right thing to do, but there's another suggestion to be made for a one file solution first.

It was suggested that when embedding the font, I was only embedding the subset of the font that was needed for the individual file, and so all the different files had different subsets, which created the bllarrghh.

So I remade all the individual PDF files, then combined them again! Success! Page numbering is correct! Fonts all look good! Bookmarks present! But, oh, 105mb. +40mb for fully embedding these fonts? What the hell?

Whatever. I'll upload it, people can deal with a large file after all this crap.

A funny thing happened though. After replacing both the original download thingy and the other download thingy so all customers would be working from the same file... the system automatically logged me out. Probably timed out.

When I log back in, the downloads are gone. There are now no files associated with Grindhouse, and no evidence that there ever was.

I'm informed that 105mb was way over the file upload limit for the server. Instead of canceling, it just erased all evidence that anything was ever there.

So I make a new download for Grindhouse using the ZIP file. It fits, it's associated, all new orders should now be able to grab that.

However, previous orders still have that original PDF with the font issues in their download area. Even though as far as the admin controls are concerned, it no longer exists.

...aannnnndddd... manually adding a new product to an existing order in admin does not associate the download with the order for some reason, so that's not a solution either.

And that's where we are now.

Everyone is going to get correct and working PDFs, no matter when they ordered. Exactly how that is to be accomplished is still unknown. It would be damn embarrassing to have to send RPGNow coupons to everyone considering I have this new shiny store, but if it comes to that, it comes to that. You'll get correct and functional PDFs with your print order dammit.

My web guy has tools available to him that aren't on the admin control panel, and there are still a couple tricks to try.

Vornheim's PDF seems to be OK except for one single page (the neighborhood building roll-on chart). Hopefully when that's fixed I'll just update the file in the existing download associated with Vornheim and that will be that. Hopefully.

All other PDF files in the store are fine.

These issues did not affect the PDFs that went to press - they've been checked. And were never combined into single files in the first place.

I'm off now to drill holes in my head and hope that the blood spatters on the wall in patterns that inspire a solution to all this.

First 100 Combos are SOLD

Figures the last one went literally minutes after I went out for the night.

Yeah. Everyone pre-ordering combos still gets the oversized Vornheim sheet, and the actual box and books of course.

Tomorrow I have actual gaming to do, Monday I'll get to that PDF font issue.

Updates on Things!

First off, WOW. Thank you guys. This is CRAZY.

Announcement: A typo in Grindhouse has been found. thanks so much. I remember the days when I had to get it back from the printer before finding one. :P

By my rough count, and I may be off by one or two, but there are seven Rulebook Combo Offers left to be had.

Yes, there are issues with the PDFs, what with me being all cute and selecting seldom used fonts. That'll teach me. I won't be able to sit down and take a good look at the issue until Monday. In the meantime, there are threads for the PDF issues for both the Grindhouse and Vornheim books in the LotFP Forum. If you have an issue that's not listed there, describe what your issue is in the appropriate thread. When the issue is fixed, of course you can re-download it.

Any other questions or issues, email me or put them in the comments.

Discussion of content or art or anything like that, to the forum!

(Breaking news: Sucker Punch may be the worst movie I've ever seen!)

I'm off to bed... 5:30am... blleehh!

Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim and Shirts: PRE-ORDER IS LIVE!

LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Grindhouse Edition is a horror-fantasy game with everything you need to play in one box. Tutorial, Referee, and Rules & Magic books totaling 360 pages, plus character sheets and dice. Contains new and revised material and tons of new artwork by top talent.

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Zak S is both a mini-setting describing locations seen in the I Hit It With My Axe webshow and a general fantasy city playing aid. 64 pages, hardcover.

PDFs of these releases will be available to download as soon as the order is completed at no extra charge. (The Grindhouse PDFs seem to have a technical issue - this will be taken care of early in the coming week - but you can still download it and take a look at the art in the meantime)

The first 100 people to pre-order both the Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim will receive an extra Rules & Magic book (168 pages) at no extra charge.

Everyone who pre-orders the Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim will receive an oversized chart of Vornheim roll-on tables.

These offers end when the printer notifies me the books have shipped from the printer in Keuruu. I will update this blog when that happens. Might be a week from now. Might be two. Who knows?

Also for sale are Grindhouse and Flailceratops T-Shirts. Orders for these will only be taken until 11:59pm April 7 Finnish time. Only those ordered during this week, plus a few for the artists and a couple for me and my wife, will be made. Be part of the fun when people start posting pictures of themselves wearing their new shirts. :D

Because the shirts will likely be delivered at a different time than the books, be careful about pre-ordering them within the same order - if you do that I wait until everything arrives before shipping. Also, depending on what and how many of whatever you order, non-EU customers may find it advantageous when it comes to shipping costs to place multiple orders rather than just one big one. Feel free to fiddle around in the shopping cart before placing your order.

I had previously mentioned a big discount when ordering copies of the Grindhouse Edition for your whole group. That is still happening, but not as previously described - that shipping weight trick I talked about couldn't happen with the way the store software is set up, so instead I just made the discount on the boxes themselves a bit deeper to compensate.

*phew*

Yeah, I talk a lot.

The big link for pre-ordering: HERE

(YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I WANTED TO PUT A RICKROLL THERE)

The Plan For Today

2:50pm: I take the store down and activate the new releases. All the info is in there and has been tested (hopefully enough) to make sure all is in order. At this point if you try to log onto the store you'll get some sort of "Undergoing Maintenance" message.

3:00pm: As soon as the blog announcement posts announcing that pre-orders are open, I'll hit the button and the store will be live.

And at that point I hope we all get what we want.

I will be monitoring the situation (and so too, hopefully, will the web guy) until about 6pm. Then I get ready and go to Night Visions and won't be back until about 4am. Before I leave I'll update how many orders have been made, but if there really is a big rush I may not be home to post when the first 100 are already spoken for.

I feel like I'm giving a war speech. :D "Good luck gentlemen."

(all times are Helsinki local times)