Just Visited the Printers

My hopes for publishing a generic old-school referee screen were dashed - they can do a quality piece of printing, but the per-unit price was what I was hoping final retail price would be. Doing a serious shop-around for printing what I thought would be a neat novelty item doesn't sound like my idea of a fun time, so I'm shelving this idea.

However... it looks like my box set plans for 2010 are feasible. Quality artwork (for both the box itself and all the individual booklets) will be expensive... and how to handle this being an OGL product (it's rules, not a scenario, you know?) while none of my other stuff is (and how my current marketing setup would be breaking OGL restrictions) will be tricky... but this is too delicious not to do.

I know we need another rules-set (or branded set of rules) like we need a hole in the head, but a beginner's boxed set, with tutorials, is something else entirely. The rules will just be OGL ripped from other sources, but it's the tutorials and intro adventures (and advice) sections that will be the hard work and the heart of the project.

But that's a way off yet.

Insect Shrine writing will be completed today, or perhaps tomorrow. However, looking at the enormity of this, playtesting this won't be a fast process. I'll announce playtest plans soon (you want to play, right?), but it is very possible that the next project (which has been run multiple times already but has not started any sort of production process beyond commissioning artwork) will be released first. I know that sounds like more delays but I'm not going to end the Insect Shrine story with "rushed to press."

So back to work...

Quality Control and a Train Wreck

See this thread. Someone claims that "Jim Ward is ruining Troll Lord Games." The discussion quickly veers off into discussing The Tainted Lands thing that was just released.

Extra-short version:

Check out this review (ignoring the first two paragraphs, of course). Now check out this comment. The full version of the thread is still fun, especially when the critics and supporters start arguing over the quality and content of a single passage of text.

Now I haven't looked inside a new Troll Lord book since perhaps 2006. I do know that the C&C books released up to that point were atrociously edited. I could almost believe not a single proofreading pass was made on them. The Gygaxian Worlds books suffer from the same problem.

It sounds like in 2009 that these problems continue, as discussed in many places (and noted by supporters, not just critics). Sad.

I know typos and mistakes will happen and are unavoidable. But they are embarrassing. They can take all the pride and joy out of one's creation. If I release a 36 page book and discover one typo (I wish), that one word is how I see that book from that point on. And it's funny how they hide in manuscript form but leap out and dance on the commercially released page. Yet there are things to be done to minimize such things. You don't need to be a gamer to spot inconsistencies and unintended silliness, and it doesn't take a professional to spot typos.

That they're dredging up Ravenloft in the first place is something else I don't understand. I guess I should say I never understood the appeal of Ravenloft. It turned "horror" into a gimmick. Horror lurks in the heart of the D&D experience, as I've gone on about before. If one wants to brand more explicitly horror-focused products, I can understand that, but turning horror into a separate setting like it's Spelljammer or something? Awful. And now the concept lives again.

... and the company is trying to sell pdfs of a pad of graph paper. That takes big brass balls.

It's really a shame. Troll Lord Games is the most public face of an older style of gaming. People know the C&C name and the books are widely available. They had Gary (and The Castle), they release adventure modules as an important support method for their games, and the whole thing superficially resembles classic D&D. They should be the company that us OSR publishers should try to emulate and perhaps be the company that writers want to work for.

But Castles & Crusades, and Troll Lord's output in general, is completely irrelevant to me as a gamer and I hardly think I want to be like them when I grow up as a publisher.

What happened?

The Curse of Ad Copy

You know those promotional blurbs for DFD, NDiD, and PoP? You know, those bits on the products page here?

I hate them and think they're cheesy and fear they are frightfully ineffective and perhaps even detrimental to the cause of piquing interest and attracting curiousity and sales.

But you know what? I think the same thing about the promotional copy for basically everything ever made. It all feels insulting to read (everything more awesome than everything else) so when it's time to do my own, I treat it as gingerly and distastefully as a dead rat I've found in the basement that needs to be disposed of.

Should it be a piece of creative writing evoking the atmosphere of the adventure? A minimalist just-the-facts-ma'am rundown? A sensationalized attention-grabber?

Amateur marketing is amateur, and that's where I am now. But professional marketing is sleazy and cheesy. Even dryly explaining what it is is uncomfortable. Hyping my own work to people (outside of my blog... no shame here :D) feels wrong and intrusive, even though doing that is probably my primary function as publisher and more important to success than the actual quality of material.

To leave it simply as "Adventure For x, y, and z Games, Character Levels a - b" would be wonderful on my end, but kooky consumers feel entitled to a bit of information before making a purchase. Insane, I know.

Not sure what to do.

I air this concern because the over-the-top hype angle is what I've been thinking about for Insect Shrine.

"CONTENT WARNING: THIS ADVENTURE NOT SUITABLE FOR GAMERS AFRAID TO BE TESTED

This is the big one. The long-awaited masterpiece of fantasy adventure is finally here!

(blah blah has a sandbox mini-setting and goblins and other stuff yadda yadda)

The gauntlet has been thrown down. This is an adventure that only the bravest will attempt and only the most skilled and clever will survive. Don't be satisfied with the 'challenge' provided by other kiddie dungeons. Step up to the ultimate challenge: INSECT SHRINE OF GOBLIN HILL!"

But then sometimes I'm just silly. *shrug*

Ratings from Roolipelaaja's Reviews

I saw the magazine in Fantasiapelit today, and took a look at the review section with the LotFP stuff. It's a four page spread... there wasn't time to translate it (we were on our way to see Inglourious Basterds... frickin movie is 75% French and German and they didn't have English subtitles here... :P), but here are the ratings:

Green Devil Face #1: 2/5 stars
Green Devil Face #2: 3/5 stars
Green Devil Face #3: 3/5 stars
Death Frost Doom: 5/5 stars
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides: 4/5 stars
People of Pembrooktonshire: 4/5 stars

At least I hope it's a 5 star scale. It would suck if it was a 10 star scale. :P

No, Not Apocalyptic At All

Courtesy Zak Smith.

Two Reviews on RPG.net

I wrote a review of Jeff Rients' Miscellaneum of Cinder, that's here.

McKinney's review of No Dignity in Death is here.

Death Frost Doom is not Apocalyptic

Or should I say, I don't see it as being something that transforms an entire campaign world.

On a local level, oh hell yeah, but I keep seeing the comments that perhaps overstate the situation. It's bad bad news, but not campaign-world ending bad news. At least not how I conceptualize it or imagine it unfolding if the probable happens.

If you've got, say, a campaign map with 24 miles per hex, I'd imagine the hex you place Death Frost Doom might very well become no man's land. But even in the neighboring hexes I don't imagine having an effect greater than perhaps an alteration to random encounter tables and frequency.

Of course the individual referee can make it even worse news as he likes, and maybe I'm underestimating the impact that the entire thing would have, but over 2/3rds of the problem will be a very slow trickle into the outside world, and none of it is at all organized.

I've run the basic adventure twice for my groups in Vaasa and Helsinki. One of those groups stayed in the area and dealing with the situation was a major campaign plot arc. The other group didn't stay in the area but the fallout can be a major campaign plot arc if they head back there to deal with things.

I appreciate the reputation the adventure has gotten in such a short time, but I fear that it may discourage some. It is not intended as a "screw you, players!" exercise or only suitable for a nihilistic one-shot. It can be inserted into a regular campaign without destroying it.

Insect Shrine Map Preview: The Halfling Mound

I'm working with Ramsey Dow for the Insect Shrine cartography. Only this one map has been completed so far, but I think we can safely say that amateur maps won't be a problem this time around.

This piece is a patch of dry land in the middle of a great bog, and on the piece of land is a mound surrounded by Stonehenge-like stones.

The mound, of course, has a mini-dungeon inside:

New LotFP Site

Well, it went live last week, but I was told it might take a few days before people were seeing it and not the old one.

It's not a redesign really, just a major tightening up of the old design. The only thing to still be done is adding a message board, but seeing as how often people used the old one, it's not exactly a high priority. ;)

Lookie here!

What do you think?

Also... there's this Geekdō thing. I don't know if it's going to be a relevant deal or not, but I've added LotFP as a publisher and three of my books are listed here. All you satisfied customers (the unsatisfied ones don't have to :D) can go do that voodoo that you do so well over there. You know, comments, ratings, reviews, that sort of thing.

Roolipelaaja #23 has My Name on the Cover!

It's in the upper left corner. I hope the reviews are good.. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I've got a scheduled podcast appearance happening soon as well, and I'll give more detail about that once it's recorded. I'm still waiting on a few reviews from unusual sources (one which is sure to rip me a new asshole, but that's what I signed up for).

Today is the two month mark for LotFP as an official business. My records show 420 total books sold in print and PDF form. The actual totals are a bit bigger but this is what I've been paid for so far; this month's pdf sales revenue doesn't come in until next month. It's not that impressive revenue-wise when you consider that counts six books, half of those Green Devil Faces which aren't exactly cash cows for me (I do those for the fun only), but I think that's a solid start.

(so if you're one of those stores I've contacted in the UK, Australia, Germany, or France... I can move a couple of books at least, I'm not asking you to stock shelf-rotters... :P)

Work continues as always on Insect Shrine. All the primary artwork is of course complete and you've seen the cover in dazzling cover. I still have to collect the "filler" artwork from Laura for scanning, and Aino is supposed to contribute a filler pic as well just so she's got something in there as well. I have received the first completed map from Ramsey Dow and it looks great, so if the rest look even half as good the maps will be 1000 times greater in quality than they have been.

I expect to finish off the writing before the weekend, and have my internal revising done within a week after that... and then the final version needs playtesting. I'll make announcements here calling for a Skype Squadron when it's ready.

Everything seems to take longer than it should on this project, and after having that dream about the Insect God I wonder if there's something more to it all. No matter, it will get done, and you shall all be amazed, both on the refereeing side and on the playing side.

At least you better be. ;) I'm going for broke on this one. No half-assing allowed.

And a request: For you PDF customers out there: I'd like some feedback. I've heard not a single word from you about your purchases. I'm not a PDF-user or buyer myself, so my PDF products are just pure guesswork as to what makes them useful and attractive to you. How am I doing? Are they adequate? Pretty good? Absolute shit? With no feedback, I'm just going to keep doing future PDFs the same as I did the previous ones. If there is something I should be doing that I'm not, please let me know so I can address it. I don't like flying blind.