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.
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.
Thanks for the updates the anticipation builds, can't wait to get my physical copies.
ReplyDeleteAlso thanks for CD list, I already own 3 of those CDs, the two Blood Ceremony and the Witchcraft so definitely going to check out the others.
Everyone else's house looks much neater than mine. I am a slob.
ReplyDeleteNo, limpey. You are not alone. If my desk were empty, it would still somehow be messier than James's desk. Here's what is UNDER my desk:
ReplyDeleteyggsburgh, about 15 old Dragon magazines in a box, 3 TLG Gygax series books, A Black Company book, an empty binder, a Warhammer novel, a bottle of ink, 23 various resource books, mostly the PF and S&W versions of Frog God releases, a book about how to clean your house efficiently (buried under the Dragon magazines and the empty binder), a manila folder with some sheaf of paper in it - I don't know what - and that's what's visible. There appears to be a second layer under all that, but I'm not going to go digging in it.
That is what's underneath the desk. The top of the actual desk is messier, even though it's much clearer than last week.
You guys should see my wife's desk. Talk about a disaster.
ReplyDelete@limpey
ReplyDeleteyou are an artist, having a messy house is a sign you are not wasting time.
Heh, having two artists and two young artists in training in my house means there is probably only one clean day every three months or so at my house ;).
ReplyDeleteLarry Elmore gives a long and interesting talk about art:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wViMmbGkCNo
From 2008.
Just my two cents, but I think the referee screen would be better with clear plastic slots on the referee's side, so that each referee can place their own reference sheets in them. I think that would be especially marketable inside the OSR, where we have so many different slightly different rule sets and where home-brewing is so common. Maybe you could print the LotFP color coded tables under the plastic pockets, so it could be used as-is, but could also easily be added to?
ReplyDeleteThe best picture I could find to show what I'm talking about is here:
http://www.hishgraphics.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=775
It's a picture of the Savage Worlds screen. It's just three panels with a plastic pocket on each side that reference sheets or art can be placed in. Obviously, you would have just art instead for the LotFP screen's player side, but could put pockets over the tables on the GM side.
I was about to ask you about a GM screen as well (even though I didn't use one since, well, too long). That's good news as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat if there was transparent insert panels on the inside and instead of booklets/adventure there were DM reference table inserts for the various editions/simulacra?
ReplyDeleteI'm down for a LotFP gm screen!
ReplyDeleteThe screen is a good idea, despite the claims of of one of my friends that the GM screen is "a wall of fear and ignorance." I was thinking about asking you about doing a free one. No need, now.
ReplyDelete