Blog @ Canadian Geek

Behind The Counter #204 – How Can I Sell What I Don’t Know (or don’t like)

Happy Harbor Comics — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:30:12 +0000

Back in October, Marvel Comics solicited a follow-up to their Secret Invasion (SI) series called “Requiem”. At that time, SI wasn’t finished so to avoid potential spoilers, the solicitation had no content information. I had no idea what the book was going to be about other than the fact it was $3.99 US for 64 pages.

The comic is shipping Wed, Dec 24 and on Dec 4, the rest of the information about the book was finally made avaialble to retailers in a secret retailer area on Diamond Distribution’s website (why this wasn’t done from the get go, I can only guess for fear of leaks). So 6 weeks after I had placed my regular monthly order for Marvel’s comics, I had to look up new information and place another order which is somewhat counter productive to my daily routine.

Anyway, my personal timetable notwithstanding, here’s the information about the new book;

SECRET INVASION: REQUIEM
Written by DAN SLOTT, Pencils & Cover by KHOI PHAM
An important stepping stone to the big shake-up in MIGHTY AVENGERS by the new creative team of Dan Slott and Khoi Pham, featuring a new name and identity for one of Marvel’s classic characters! In this 8-page story after the tragic events of SECRET INVASION #8, two of Earth’s mightiest heroes reflect on the life and times of a fallen comrade.
Plus over 40 pages reprinting two classic tales from Marvel’s Silver and Bronze ages: the Wasp’s first appearance (TALES TO ASTONISH #44) and the infamous Hank-hitting-Jan story (AVENGERS #213) — presented with all-new, modern coloring.
64 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99
FOC – 12/4, On-Sale – 12/24

So, for all my waiting and double time wasted on ordering, I see it’s for a book that has only 8 pages of new material. Wow. And to cap it off, it also has an extra special reprinting of the “Hank Pym – Wife Beater!” I know the story is essential to the character’s histories and it’s not a topic that’s so taboo it cannot be reprinted but read the solicitation for the thing!

“infamous Hank-hitting-Jan” For starters, even though it was one “hit”, he didn’t just hit her, he beat her. It was spousal abuse. It was daring, contraversial and significant to comic history and this solicit seems to cheapen it a bit, especially when coupled with, “presented with all-new, modern coloring”. To enhance the beating effect?

There’s a part of me that know’s I’m being hyper-sensitive about this, but in an industry that seems to be trying to distance the publisher from the retailer coupled with this “happy holiday season”, it’s just another frustrating bit of nonsense that I can’t deal with. I took a stand on this one. I ordered no shelf copies for my store. Yeah, Marvel needs to keep their secrets but there has to be a better way that to force me to do my job twice, especially when you’re trying to sell me books that don’t sell for me.

Now, if DC could just start shipping their big ticket books on time…

The Shepherd

Behind the Counter #203 – Chain book stores, good or bad?

Happy Harbor Comics — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:29:53 +0000

Barnes & Noble, one of North America’s largest book chains, has shown a larger than expected loss in the 3rd quarter of this year, $18.4 million. As such, they will be scaling back on purchases of just about everything including, as the news peoples like to differentiate, manga and graphic novels.

No big shock there, really. As newscasters constantly report on the “global economic crisis”, striking fear into the hearts of Joe Six-packs across the land who then curl up in a ball and cower in the corner with their socks full of dollar bills, it was only a train coming from a mile away that consumer spending would be down and, as such, non-essential sectors would be affected severely.

And no, I do not solely blame the news for the collapse of the US economy (I mostly blame unions) but I do blame them for blowing things up and striking fear into the general public instead of offering realistic, helpful advice to keep things moving along in the retail market. Of course, this discussion could ramble on for weeks so I’ll circle the wagons back the point of the topic, are chain book stores good or bad?

Just like everything else in this crazy world, ask ten people involved in an industry one question and get ten different answers. This, of course, is just one answer.

They are good. Now, why are people competing with my dollar, usually by undercutting the SRP, good for my business? Exposure. They expose comics to people who would never think of entering a comic shop to comics, reminding them that they are still being made and invoking moments of nostalgia. The advantages small book shops like us get from them, aside from the aforementioned, is that large chain book stores offer minimal selection and the staff, generally, are not people who specialize in that area and could be helpful in the ways of offering suggestions to people directly or make recommendations for gifts.

It’s like buying throw away shoes at Wal-Mart but when you need good shoes; you go to a specialty shoe store and get all the help you need.

So having B&N, and probably Amazon, Chapters and the rest, have a poor quarter does not help keep comics in as much of the limelight as I’d like. Anytime there are cutbacks, something suffers and as far as comics have come, they will probably be hit the hardest as they are the least respected. We do need chain book stores to do well, just not too well.

The stories of how once comics were everywhere are many and usually the biggest target as to why the industry isn’t as healthy as it used to be. While I could easily point the blame at many other issues that have brought things down, exposure is key and without it, we all suffer. With TV and film giving the medium a nice (and seemingly needed) bump, it’s essential to capitalize on comics being so much in the public eye. Buying (the right) comics as holiday gifts can go a long way into indoctrinating new readers or rekindling lost ones. Plus, it gives you another reason to talk geek at the family reunion over the holidays instead of just getting hammered and hitting on your cousin for three straight days…

Ahem.

Buy comics this Christmas. The end.

The Shepherd

Behind The Counter #202 – Reaching Out

Happy Harbor Comics — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:05:58 +0000

Amiskwaciy Academy is located in Edmonton, near the Municipal Airport. About six years ago one of the terminal buildings was beautifully converted into this school that focuses on Aboriginal culture, values and tradition. Amsikwaciy (pronunced a-misk-wa-chee) means Beaver Hill and is the term Native people first referred to Edmonton as. It’s a very progressive school that is offering opportunities to kids to learn and grow in ways that many schools don’t even try for.

Back in June, HH was contacted by the school libriarian, Tami, who told me that the library at the school had been closed for the past 4 years and just recently reopened. She wanted to host a book fair in the fall as a way to help energize the kids (and teachers and parents) into reading more. We, obviously, said we’d love to.

The book fair was scheduled for early Nov but the first full week of October was Read-In week in Edmonton and Tami asked if we would come and speak to a couple of classes then as well. We were very in demand for that time but we made sure to fit them in. With some assistance from HH friend Julie D, we went off on a Wed (yep, new comic day) and spoke with 2 classes about all things comic geeky, as I have done more than a couple times before. It was a good experience as the teacher for both classes was a bit of a fanboy and his enthusiam spread to the kids who weren’t quite sure what to expect.

Now this school is very, very cool school. It’s sleak and clean and adorned with plenty of imagery about the local history of the Cree couple with several modern pop culture references used to helped inspire the kids. It’s the best of both worlds, really. History without being dull; moderism without losing touch with the past. I was really looking forward to coming back and seeing what more of the kids liked to read.

That brings us to Nov 3 and the book fair. HH was to be there from 3 to 7 during the parent/teacher interviews, hopefully cornering the captive audience and motivating more kids (and parents) to read. I sent out an open invite to the HH community to get a couple of artists to come with me, to sketch for the kids which is always a big thrill when we do it. Three people were available, Tony E, Vanessa B and Paul L, which was awesome and as I began to mentally compile the list of books I wanted to showcase at the fair, I became increasingly excited at the impact we could have on this community.

Loaded and ready (on a Wed again; the sacrifices I make), I headed off the to the school. I had a bit of a Geroge Castanza moment when I was able to find a parking stall right near the entrance but I tried to contain my nerdgasim. Wheeling in my first cart load of books I was wondering how many other stores were going to take advantage of this opportiunty to help expand the local readship.

Sadly, the answer was none. Nearly all the other local bookstores had been invited, big and small, and all declined to have a presence which was unfortunate since having only one vendor with only one type of book made for a less than inspiring event.

This rant is not meant to be a back patting one, it’s one more to relfect at how pissed I am at these other bookstores. I have seen most of them at $200 a head conferences, selling to “intellectuals” and I hear them on panels and read them in the papers about how their business is suffering from a declining readership but when given the opportunity to go out and breed more readers, they refuse to show. All I can say to them now is shut up.

I’m sure they have their excuses and I very easily could have had them as well; it was on a Wed, my busiest day at the busiest time, after four straight weeks of big events. But this was important and it should have been more imprtant to all those “struggling, woe-is-me” stores out there. They should have taken the time to come and try to sell things to people who don’t buy their things! It’s what you do! We had three people who, in some cases took time off from their jobs, came and offered a FREE service to the school with no finiancal incentive anywhere to be found. Hell, Tony didn’t even take them up on the free dinner.

Is this what our society has come down to? I have seen more than enough individuals not wanting to help others but businesses often seem to step up. And I have seen more than enough individuals not wanting to help themselves but now businesses are wallowing in their own pity too? It makes me sad and sick.

I’m sufficently pissed that I want to go off an a tangent about government bailouts and lousey business practices but I won’t. I’ll just try to leave this on a more positive note with a huge thanks to Tony, Vanessa and Paul who came and helped out at this event. I should also thank every other friend of HH who has pitched in and made a difference at any school we have attended or event we have hosted. You have made and impact and it’s greatly appreciated.

The Shepherd

Experience Points #9: Evil Hat Productions

Josh Bazin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:25:45 +0000

To finish off this series of interviews, Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions was able to answer my questions about their product lines. Evil Hat was instrumental in bringing me back into the hobby of gaming, thanks to The Rolemonkeys running a session of Spirit of the Century, which caught my interest and drove me to look into many new systems. So, indirectly, Evil Hat is responsible for this blog.

Here’s Fred’s answers to my questions.

Spirit of the Century/FATE 3.0

With the products Spirit of the Century and Spirit of the Season currently in print and several others currently in the process of being completed (Dresden Files, and a SotC supplement), what is next for FATE 3?

Hopefully Dresden Files be a better game than Spirit of the Century, as we’ve learned a few things about how the Fate 3 engine runs from listening to feedback on Spirit, such tweaking the fate point economy and making some new decisions about how combat runs so it won’t drag on.

Lenny Balsera and I have been talking about where to take Fate 3 once we get past the great wall of Dresden, and we’ve got a few ideas cooking. One that we may or may not follow up on is to do some of the development of a Fate 3 “core book” out in the open as a series of blog posts. But either way, eventually we’ll roll all that and more up as a book, just like we did with Fate 2, and make the PDF free for all online.

What can you tell me about the products currently nearing completion? When can we expect them?

Ohhh, the pain, the pain inherent in that question.

Evil Hat has a curse. We’re hexed. Whenever we talk dates and deadlines, we strum the threads of karma and the universe comes along and kicks our precious timeline in the jimmy.

All I can say about the Dresden Files RPG is what’s next: we have a second round of alpha playtesting that I’m hoping to get kicked off by the end of the month — basically I need to get past Dexcon this next week, and then do some revisioneering, while Lenny finishes up his latest work, and assemble the playtesting crew.

But that’s just the second alpha round. You can get a sense of the full scope of the project by checking out my “State of the Hat” posts over on my livejournal: http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/tag/state+of+the+hat

Don’t Lose Your Mind, a Don’t Rest Your Head supplement written by Benjamin Baugh, is planned for release at GenCon in August.

And we’ve just kicked off the very very beginning of development on a new Spirit of the Century supplement, also with Benjamin, but we’re early enough in that process that it doesn’t have a date attached to it.

We’re also working with Chad Underkoffler to publish his Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies game, which is the next PDQ product from him, and Daniel Solis’ Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. But both of those projects are still exploring themselves, playtesting and such, so it’s hard to give those timelines too. Plus: the curse!

Don’t Rest Your Head

Are there more supplement materials like Don’t Lose Your Mind planned for the DRYH product line?

Planned, no, but possible, yes. It’ll partly depend on how well Don’t Lose Your Mind does, in terms of sales. Don’t Rest Your Head has done reasonably well for us, selling around 1500 copies over the course of two-plus years. But that suggests a potentially small market for supplemental material. So it’s up to the public to show us what it thinks of the idea of expanding the game, and whether it’s worth our time to go big or go small or go home, as far as our plans go.

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

How would you describe the setting of Do in three sentences or less?

Flying monks living in a temple at the center of the sky solve the problems of the universe when those problems come knocking. The sky is full of these Little Prince style worlds; every now and again, someone on one of those worlds sends the temple’s pilgrims a letter requesting their help. And so the pilgrims fly off to set things right, with Avatar: The Last Airbender style visuals at their backs.

Will Do use a system we’ve seen before, or is it something completely new?

Completely new. Daniel Solis has a brain that works nothing like the rest of us. Dan’s been something of an amateur boardgame designer for a while, so he brings an unusual approach to how he designs roleplaying games. He’s also one of the best layout artists out there, having an incredible eye for aesthetics. Frankly I can’t wait to see what this means for the final form Do will take.

General Questions

In SotC and DRYH, a fairly generic setting is provided with a few details that a gaming group can choose to use or not (for example, the character of Doctor Methuselah). In future supplements, will we see a continuation of these storylines? Why or why not?

Don’t Rest Your Head has what Ken Hite called a “thin gruel” of a setting, and honestly that was a pretty fair evaluation. DRYH doesn’t have a super-strong setting in part because it simply can’t. The “right way” to do DRYH, at least from my perspective, is to build your own campaign-specific setting out of the answers the players give on their character questionnaires. There’s no real way to write for that — but that’s part of why the GM’s side of the system is so lightweight, with the only mechanical question that the GM really needs to answer is “Okay, X happens– how much does it hurt?” and set the Pain dice accordingly. Sure, there’s the hope and despair economy to manage as well, but that’s just a shaker of spice to season the Pain. By being a lightweight system to GM, and with a thin setting, DRYH is strongly focused on making it all about the protagonists. So no, I don’t see DRYH having an ongoing storyline save in the stories that the player characters bring to the table.

Spirit of the Century on the other hand has an even thinner setting, but a more detailed storyline bubbling in the back of my head. There’s a pretty natural progression that these could take, riffing on the title — the other titles in the series, that may or may not turn into products for us, would be Shadow of the Century and Spirit of the Millennium, just to give you a taste. Possibly with an epilogue called something like Shadow of the Millennium or whatever. Shadow of the Century is probably the closest to potentially actually happening, based on a concept of — more or less — turning the Century Club into the A-Team in the dark oppressive future of 1984, but that’s still a ways down the road.

Do you have any other new properties that we haven’t already covered that are currently in development? When can we expect to see them?

Well, like I mentioned, we’ve got Ben Baugh working on a new supplement for Spirit of the Century. How soon we’ll see that will depend on boring things like budget and time availability.

There’s also something else I’m sort of working on in partnership with another company that I can’t really talk about yet.

But in both cases, these projects will involve dinosaurs. Because who doesn’t need more dinosaurs in their games?

My business partner Rob Donoghue has become pretty enamoured of D&D 4th Edition lately (as have I, though not with the same verve as Rob), so who knows what will come of that.

It’s all very speculative and “hmm, if only we could have the time and money to do…” stuff at Evil Hat these days. Largely because the Dresden Files RPG is consuming such a monstrous portion of our resources. Many new and exciting things can happen… once that’s done.

Has the coverage of your games on actual play podcasts such as the RoleMonkeys increased the interest in your products?

Absolutely, categorically, yes. Back when the Role Monkeys (and the Game Master Show) were doing their first few podcasts of actual play of Evil Hat’s games, I was watching the day to day sales numbers pretty closely. The experience was new! Numbers were exciting! And did I mention new! So when those podcast episodes hit the interwaves, I saw a real, palpable spike. Just goes to show the truism actual play sells games is dead on.

What do you think the relationship between this new media revolution and independent publishers should be like?

Hm. Symbiotic? When it comes right down to it, podcasts need content, and publishers need exposure, so these two things are really primal peanut butter and chocolate, if you ask me.

Several other publishers offer free micro-supplements or adventures on their websites. Does Evil Hat plan on offering these kinds of gaming aids to the community? If not, why?

No. I do see the point of it, but I think our community is lively and vibrant enough that we can rely on them to pick up that particular slack. I’d rather focus Evil Hat’s resources and attention on getting out the big new things rather than potentially nickle and diming our often-constricted output to death.

But this is definitely a moving target kind of answer. As Evil Hat grows, our capacity to do small things without those being at the expense of the big things will improve, I’m sure.

Do the fan-made supplements affect your position?

Only by making me all the more comfortable that Evil Hat doesn’t need to directly do that. I’ve rarely seen something produced by a fan of our games that I didn’t find in some way much cooler than what we ourselves might do. Our fans are great.

What sort of challenges does an independent gaming publisher face?

Plenty. It’s easy to dream big, reach for the big, and then crash and burn when you inevitably fall short. If there’s one thing I’d recommend to folks wanting to start out, it’s to downsize those dreams a bit, start small, and incrementally build from tiny successes into big ones. It’s what I’ve done over the last two years with Evil Hat and it’s worked out pretty well as a model.

But as print on demand gets cheaper and cheaper, and more interest in electronic products grows, it’s going to become harder and harder for a single small operation to get noticed in and among all the hubbub. Independent publishing is where a lot of the exciting innovation is happening, but those innovations really have to ring out and be heard, be something extraordinary, be something worth talking about and learning from, in order to have a shot at sales success.

But that’s not the only kind of success to be had. There are lots of others — I mean, heck, look at what Levi Kornelsen’s doing with Amagi Games (http://www.amagi-games.com/) — weekly, sometimes even daily, free, excellent ideas for things to do with your games. And he’s putting all of that out in the public domain. Levi’s success won’t be measured by sales figures, when it all gets tallied up, but I’m betting it’ll still be palpable.

What did Evil Hat do to resolve these challenges?

We got married.

Seriously, Evil Hat would not exist without Deborah Donoghue (Rob’s wife) and my wife, Christie. My wife supported me when I decided the Internet industry was poisoning me and I had to get out, and she’s made it possible for me to have a full time game industry life, at least for a few years. I’m so much happier and healthier as a result, and Evil Hat’s been able to turn into something I’m very proud of. And without Deborah and Christie backing Rob and I when we got the chance to score the rights for the Dresden Files RPG, that simply wouldn’t have happened, and so much of Evil Hat’s success has come about simply because we’ve had that opportunity.

It’s a good life. It’s hard work. I wouldn’t choose any other way to do it.

All of Evil Hat Productions games can be purchased at Indie Press Revolution. Be on the lookout here on Reviews from a Dead Planet for reviews of their upcoming and already released products!

Behind The Counter #201 – Loonie Dive

Happy Harbor Comics — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:58:30 +0000

Cause we don’t have swans. Get it?
Sorry.

Anyway, for more than a few years, Happy Harbor has gone to the efforts to adjust prices on extremely out-of-whack SRPs on, primarily, trade paperbacks and graphic novels. Just over a year ago, well before the dollar reached par, we decided to follow in the footsteps of our colleagues and friends at Redd Skull in Calgary and began pricing everything based on the exchange rate at the time of billing.

This pricing policy would provide a level playing field, as it were, for the customer and the retailer. Thankfully just about every person accepted the change, realizing at that time things were working quite in their favour and everyone has become comfortable with it since. Occasionally someone will ask why our prices are above cover and we did have one customer who proclaims to have left us for greener pastures. More on them in a moment.

First, to dispel a few misconceptions. Canadian cover prices on comics from American publishers are arbitrary values, adjusted however they feel necessary. A majority of comic companies do not even print Cnd prices on their books but since Marvel and DC do, the majority of books on the shelves appear to be priced at par or only slightly above.

Pricing to retailers for comics is based on the US cover price; so again, the Cnd price plays no part or has any effect. It has been said that Marvel and DC use those prices because there is extra shipping or duty costs involved but that’s not true since we Canadians are billed based on the US price, in US dollars and then converted to Canadian by the distributor (or by Visa/MasterCard).

Marvel and DC have a set system for determining what the Cnd cover price will be…
*snicker*
*snicker*
hee-ha-aha-ha-ha-ha!

Sorry. If they did, it certainly defies logic since it’s not consistent between their comics and graphic novels nor is it reflective of the ever changing rate. Four months after the Cnd dollar was at par, the Big 2 finally dropped their cover prices. Now that the dollar is above the US again for the past several months, they haven’t changed. Nor do they ever, EVER, acknowledge why or how they set the price. It’s a mystery not to be revealed, for some reason.

In the end, it is a bit of a moot point since it’s a “Suggested Retail Price” and not a “Set in Stone” price. Many factors help determine how much something costs and I don’t expect a store in Yellowknife to charge the same for a comic as they would in Toronto with the additional shipping they have to pay. Retailers are free to charge what they want but the original price on the cover is a guide to expectations.

So why do Marvel and DC still print Cnd prices? Well, as small as the market is in Canada, it’s still a good portion of sales and often you try and treat your smaller customers as well as your bigger ones. With the majority of comic shops being small, non-computerized shoppes, having a printed cover price saves them from stickering books. Of course, having the wrong price hurts their bottom line but hey, in an industry where less work is always better, a few cents here and there so you don’t have to sticker anything is a nice trade off.

So, the HH customer who “left” us for lower prices, well, that’s not working out so well for him now. For a bit, with the strong Cnd dollar, most Edmonton stores were charging the US price AND offering the usual file discounts. Were, until the dollar started to weaken again then chain store A cut off all file discounts (HH actually just adjusted discounts accordingly but still honoured the original deals offered to people) and now chain store B has added a 6% surcharge to all of their product. ALL OF IT, no matter how old it is. So, something from 8 months ago, purchased when the dollar was at par, is now 6% more. Something purchased second hand for pennies on the dollar is also subject to the out-of-this-world levy. I would suspect that the customer is beginning to see a potential problem here.

The long range plan is lost for sure. Removal of discounts and surcharges are a decent short-term solution for the company but a hassle for the customer. And what happens when the dollar gets worse and those plans no longer meet the needs of the company? What do you charge it there’s no Cnd price? Who many times do you adjust your surcharge to all of your products?

And while the one defector mentioned that I was just making more money than my competitors and not being customer friendly, I reminded him that our “surplus” went right back into the store in the ways of a greater selection of titles and products, better paid staff who are happier and provide better customer service (even if they don’t get tipped) and also affords us to provide outside events that reach schools, libraries and the community as a whole. Plus, even though our prices on a $2.99 US comic may change from week to week, regular customers always knew what to expect and new customers appreciated our logic.

And certainly no one made an issue when our dollar was worth more than the US and people were getting their books below the SRP.

So what can we expect out of all of this? From HH, more of the same but from other stores, probably a lot of floundering, flopping, customer confusion and dissatisfaction along with the potential alienation of the buying public which is not good for our industry. Hopefully, they’ll change their tune.

Behind The Counter #200 – A Column in Review

Happy Harbor Comics — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:16:31 +0000

So, I think this is my 200th post but the automated system says otherwise. I tried to be careful when I began numbering but something happened and I’ve been too busy (lazy) to go back and find out what went wrong. Maybe someday…

For my 200th post, I had intended to go through all the posts and do a recap, if for nothing else, for reference to see what tidbits of knowledge this column has produced. While I personally believe that very little has come out of here other than some insights to my messed up mentality and my dislike (”hate is a strong word”) for a certian marvelous company, I have been told that people have read these things and, occasionally, taken something away from it.

That’s good to hear as that was the point, for the most part. In February of 2001 I decided, from our tiny shop in the mountain town of Jasper, that the best way to stay connected with the handful of customers in Edmonton was to “Rant” about the industry. The people who followed me upon my departure from my employment at a previous comic store was largely due to the personal connection we shared; the discussions, the griping, the debates. This needed to be maintained (or so I told myself, to feel important…) and thus it began.

Sometimes it was about silly things but relevant to our shared hobby. Sometimes it was a peek behind the curtain which is what the column has become, hence the name change from “The Rant” to “Behind The Counter”.

There’s a lot of bloggers out there and a lot of opinions. Many retailers talk about the industry but often in forums populated mostly by other retailers. I wanted to talk to you about what it is that I do. But why?

Well, primarily to keep us connected, a notion I feel is very important in this business. There’s the added benefit of helping to build an understanding of how things work which can help avoid complications down the road (You – “I ordered an item but decided I don’t want any more.” Us – “Sorry, not an option.”). This insight can also inspire. Maybe you want to open your own shop and now you have a better idea of things work and what to expect. Maybe you want to enter into the talent pool and now you have some better insights. Maybe you want to get into publishing and now know what you need to do to make me (the retailer) happy.

And I hope I have. Now, is there anything I haven’t covered in these 200 posts from the last 8 years? Maybe. I guess I better get on that review list…

If you have any burning questions, see a doctor. If you have questions about comics, drop me a line. Thanks for sticking around and here’s to 200 more!

Experience Points #8: Pelgrane Press

Josh Bazin — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:44:38 +0000

The second publisher that I had the pleasure of asking questions of is Pelgrane Press. Pelgrane Press is the force behind a variety of games, most notibly, Dying Earth and Trail of Cthulhu. Simon Rogers took the time to answer my questions.

Dying Earth

What is up next for the Dying Earth line?

We may have released our last ever Dying Earth game, although I may do one more XPS. The license expires in October, and we then have 6 months to sell our stock. PDF sales will continue during that period. We’ve done justice to the line, I think.

GUMSHOE/Trail of Cthulhu

Beyond your current lineup for Trail of Cthulhu products on the site, are more in the works?

Stunning Eldritch Tales has been a great success, so I’m commissioning lots of new supplements. Steve Dempsey ran the first part of large campaign set in London, Barcelona, the Ardéche region of France and elsewhere. Adrian Bott, who wrote the Book of Unremitting Horror, is also planning a very different world-spanning sorcerous adventure, although I don’t want to reveal too much about that. Robin Laws has written the outline to a player-driven supplement called “The Armitage Files” It does for the classic CoC player handout what the Kaiin city guide did for the citybook—takes a traditionally GM-driven resource and puts it into the players hands. It contains vague outlines of a mystery but give the players the option of deciding which elements to investigate, and in what order.

Adamant Entertainment has a license to produce supplements, so I hope we’ll see supplements from then in the next few months.

Is there a possibility of seeing Call of Cthulhu modules retooled or reworked for use with Trail of Cthulhu?

This is already happening thanks to the kind denizens of yog-sothoth.com. You can see their handiwork and a conversion guide at http://www.pelgranepress.com/trail/resources.html. We won’t literally be rewriting CoC modules, though. Converting this classic material, and creating new lines of our own would seem the best way forward.

How do you feel the reaction to your horror themed GUMSHOE games have been, like Fear Itself and the Esoterrorists?

It was Dave Allsop and Adrian’s d20 Unremitting Horror which took us in that direction. I really enjoyed the playtests for that book, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good match for d20. I suggested to Robin Laws that he design a new game which approached investigative gaming differently and used the unremitting horror creatures, and he created the Esoterrorist background for this purpose. Fear Itself was originally designed to be a game of personal horror included in the GUMSHOE Book of Unremitting Horror, but in the end I thought it better to release it stand-alone. It’s been a quiet success, very different to Esoterrorists and I’ve really enjoyed playing it.

I’ve been pleased and surprised. There are fewer people who enjoy the horror genre, but amongst those people the reaction has been very positive.

Do you plan on utilizing the GUMSHOE system for other genres?

Our next major release is Mutant City Blues, where PCs are mutant cops dealing with mutant crimes in the near future. It’s like Law and Order or CSI meets Heroes, with a dash of Top 10 and Powers. It’s not four-colour, though – the powers are circumscribed. Powers leave a forensic trail and follow a strict genetic correlation which allows the PCs to track down criminals.

Do you feel that your PDF products sell better then your print products? Do more of the gaming population seem to make use of PDFs in this age of the laptop?

I also released some innovative Trail of Cthulhu PDF products. First, I released a player’s version of Trail which included everything but the GM reference – about 40% of the page count – and secondly, a bundle of one GMs and three player’s guides. These have done rather well, although print sales dwarf them.

Well, it’s not a matter of feeling! We still sell most of our books, particularly the more popular ones through mainstream channels, although it’s quite possible we’d make more money (though sell fewer copies) if we didn’t. I discuss this in some detail here (http://simonjrogers.livejournal.com/55940.html). Most of our products include the PDF with the print version by mail order from our website or via IPR. For Trail of Cthulhu, we did a separate print and PDF release, partly to see if people find added value in the PDF, but it’s a bit early to say.

General Questions

Do you have any other new properties that we haven’t already covered that are currently in development? When can we expect to see them?

Other than Mutant City Blues, we have no specific products in development which I can discuss. I’d like to do a Complete GUMSHOE book, and a GUMSHOE Fantasy release, but I don’t think we are quite ready for that yet.

Several other publishers offer free micro-supplements or adventures on their websites. Does Pelgrane Press plan on offering these kinds of gaming aids to the community? If not, why? Do the fan-made supplements affect your position?

We already do. Trail of Cthulhu has a free adventure online which we released on Free RPG Day called the Murderer of Thomas Fell, our online webzine See Page XX has articles and resources for all of our lines and Dying Earth has a huge selection of free material. I like fan-made material. It can only help us, and build up the community. Fans have provided forms, character sheets, free adventures and conversion notes, and I am grateful.

What sort of challenges does an independent gaming publisher face? What did Pelgrane Press do to resolve these challenges?

The main challenges are producing good games, marketing, printing, providing products reliably and not losing money.

To address the last of these: Pelgrane Press is a part-time company. My full-time job is running ProFantasy Software. I really wouldn’t like to be in the game publishing business full time. It’s a dicey way of making money. That said, Pelgrane Press does pretty well financially. The best way to avoid losing money is to produce quality products, and not print too many of them. The biggest danger for small publishers is to do a large offset litho print run based on an over-optimistic projection, and end up with shelves of unsold books. Nowadays with the ubiquity of POD printers, this is less likely to be an issue. I took a risk with Trail of Cthulhu, which did sell through a large litho run quite quickly. I now have a dilemma with Mutant City Blues – litho or POD?

Good printers are very hard to find, and the best of them have problems, sometimes equipment failure, unreliable quality or bad communication. I have to keep a very careful eye on printing. I’ve had good luck with Vixen for POD, and Taylor for Trail, although this was a little delayed.

Marketing in such a densely packed market is difficult, and with little budget we rely on podcasts, my livejournal and the Pelgrane community to spread the word. Recently, we released a Free Games Day RPG, which I hope will boost Trail sales, and we’ve asked Fred Hicks to help us promote Mutant City Blues with public playtests and interviews.

To produce good games, I only employ good people. This is the worst place to economize. Working with inexperienced writers, even if you pay them half as much, is much more expensive and time-consuming that working with veterans. I rely heavily on Robin Laws to produce high quality, well written copy, innovative system design reliably and on time. Jerome Huegenin is practically my right hand man at the moment, with his layout, art and concept design for the GUMSHOE range. Much of its success is down to him.

By all accounts I’ve heard, GUMSHOE is an excellent gaming system that works very well. If any of these games sound interesting to you, head out and pick one of them up. All of Pelgrane Press’s games are available from IPR and your local gaming store.

Behind The Counter #199 – Small Press Issues

Happy Harbor Comics — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:38:42 +0000

There’s been recent, excellent discussion on the CG forum regarding ways to improve the industry, specifically the quality of material being produced by it. A call for extablished, high profile creators to leave the mainstream and focus on creator-owned projects is a noble one and if a balance could be achieved that allowed the sales for ALL the titles to sustainable, I would be all for it. As it stands right now, the market is overstaurated with mainstream and indie works and the buying public just isn’t, well, buying all of it.

Today’s comic market has never been broader or more accessible for creators of all levels. The publishing opportunites though small press and online are huge and everyone can get their feet wet somewhere, gaining exposure and potential partnership arrangements with many different companies. But the biggest problem in the end isn’t having the opportunity to create material or even publish material, it’s the selling of that material is where just about everyone falls short.

I’ve touched on this in the past (and next column I plan to recap all the articles to date for quick reference) but comics are SOLD to comic stores by publishers, so when you see sales figures, that’s what we bought to sell to you. Sales to actual consumers tend to be lower as things like variants and long-range forecasting force retailers to order more product than they can initially sell. The hope is that the product will sell over the course of several weeks to months but in many cases, there are long boxes in back rooms packed with extra copies of books ordered just to get that 1-in-75 variant.

And while the frontline retailer has the self-interest to sell as many of those comics as possible to keep his cash flow intact, what are the publishers doing to support them? Very little, that’s what. Advertising in the comic industry is dirty word (along with continutnity, affordability, punctuality and a few others) and primarily because it is expensive and the majority of publishers are pretty small.

However, there are more than a few things these small press peoples can do to help and I’m frequently surprised but the silly mistakes that these publishers make while trying to sell comics to retailers. In the August 2008 Previews catalogue, there are 2 bone-head errors that, for us, broke the deal when I was looking to order product.

The first is from Radical Publishing, an upstart company producing some pretty slick books of good quality (creator wise) and had an excellent initial promotional push, offering a sampler book on FCBD before they launched and followed that with $1 first issues. Unfortuately, this month they were offering their newest book called City of Dust and it comes with 5 different covers that, while available individually for order, they forgot to lable the pictures of the covers with their respective creators. So how do I know which cover is the Arthur Suydam cover, they one that will sell the best for us? I don’t. And what happened? I decided not to order any. Sorry Radical but my time is valuable and I can go hunting for things tlike that.

The next company did somthing that was so close to being great it’s that much more disappointing that it failed. Yen Press, a manga publisher, has a rating system to advise people of the content of their books. That’s awesome and very helpful. What’s even better is that they publish this information in the Previews catalogue at the beginning of their section. The short fall comes into play when they forget to apply those labels to the descriptions of their books. Why go to the trouble of telling me you have a rating system if you don’t give me the ratings for your books in advance? Since I’m looking to purchase specific types of books for the store I can’t order any of these books since I can’t tell whom they are appropriate for.

Now, I’m not refusing to order the books out of spite but when I have to pick out of 500 plus titles each month, I have to do so quickly and effeciently and if a publisher doesn’t give me all or the necessary inforamtion I need for their product, I have to move on. And these things are simple little things that every small press publisher needs to do. If you want your books to sell, make 100% sure you give retailers everything they need to know. And after that, give them more. Make posters or bookmarks (I can never keep bookmarks in stock people), do cheap promotion issues, send me an email with a link to promo pages on the web; just do something other than complain about how no one’s buying the book.

Experience Points #7: Mind Storm Labs

Josh Bazin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:48:22 +0000

This is the first in a series of interviews that have sent to various independent publishers to get a sense of what they have coming and to spotlight the products they already have available for purchase.

I couldn’t think of a better company to start with than Mind Storm Labs. With offices here in Canada, it would be very silly for me not to interview MSL for Canadian Geek. MSL’s first product, Alpha Omega was released earlier this year. Indie Press Revolution describes Alpha Omega as follows:

The world has been remade, cast from the fires of war, plague, and the vengeance of a long-abused planet. It is a dangerous world, reclaimed by the primal forces from which it sprang and no longer subject to the will of humanity. It is a world stalked by monsters, marked by the gleaming towers of humanity’s ingenuity, and home, once again, to the angels and demons of the ancient world-long-forgotten, un-Earthly creatures of incredible power. Earth is a world shaped by incredible shifts in science, culture, and the environment.

The 21st century nation states are no more, and the human population on Earth has declined dramatically. Most of the planet’s surface is wilderness, inhabited only by those brave, foolish, or desperate enough to risk the terrors of the New World’s nature. Known as Freezones, these incredible expanses of wilderness are pockmarked with the remnants and ruins of the Old World, evidence that humanity’s reign over the natural world has ended.

Most Humans, and the other intelligent species with which they now share the Earth, have retreated into the Arcologies, massive city complexes scraping the very edge of space. The civilized world is controlled by powerful organizations spawned from the corporations, religions, criminal syndicates, and secret societies of the 21st century.

The president of Mind Storm Labs, Tom McLaughlin took the time to respond to my questions.

Alpha Omega

You released the Alpha Omega RPG a few months ago. How has the reception been so far?

We released the game in mid January ‘08 and to date the reception has been fantastic. We’ve heard from a lot of players who said this was the first game they felt they could introduce their non RPG friends to, one player told us this was the first game he could get his girlfriend interested in.

Did the connection (even if it was made in error) between the Ethan Haas website and the movie Cloverfield garner more interest in Alpha Omega?

We launched the Ethan Haas Was Right website (http://www.ethanhaaswasright.com) in June 2007 and began leaving messages and clues across the Internet about a mysterious website that had just appeared , shortly thereafter we began receiving, what we thought at the time, was great traffic to the site.

When the trailer for Cloverfield came out and a film website decided to declare our marketing campaigns were linked it just exploded and we started receiving millions of hits a day and tens of thousands of emails. By early July the majority of online and print media outlets, including the mainstream press like USA Today and Forbes were running with the story. We left in-game messages through some of the characters, to let players know the two were not connected, but that just created more debate and conspiracy theories. It also didn’t help that Paramount contacted YouTube to have our video clips taken down.

Even after our marketing campaign ended we still had people coming up to us at conferences and telling us they didn’t believe we were real.

A great unexpected result from it was the exposure a table top RPG received in the mainstream media. We received a lot of emails from people who never played an RPG before, or had years ago, and this got them interested in playing again.

What kinds of supplements are planned for Alpha Omega? When can we expect to see them?

Our first major supplement will be a compilation of creatures for the world of Alpha Omega titled, “The Encountered Volume One”. The Encountered will contain over 200 creatures, rules for creature creation, templates for modifying or customizing creatures, an encounter management guide and several optional factions. We’ll be previewing some of the artwork and layout of The Encountered at Gen Con Indy this August as well as posting various images on the AO forums (www.alphaomegathegame.com/community).

As community content is important to the development of Alpha Omega, this supplement will provide the first opportunity for players to contribute directly to a core supplement. Players can submit their creature concepts to the New World Science and Engineering Commission (NWSEC) (www.nwsecom.com), a science and engineering research body set in the AO world. Later this summer we will select five designs to be included in “The Encountered: Volume One”. This supplement is scheduled for release in late summer ’08

We’ll also be releasing our next free module called, “The Larsa Meteor”. It will be similar in design and length as “Milk Run”, the previous 70 page free module we released in March.

Next on the list is an equipment guide (official title to be determined) that will be filled with weapons, armor and equipment that will add depth to the various levels of technology found in the world of Alpha Omega. We are aiming to release the equipment manual in late fall ’08.

I see you’ve published a free adventure on your website already. Do you plan on continuing web based support for Alpha Omega?

We have another free module coming out this summer called the “Larsa Meteor”. We have brought the New World Science and Engineering Commission out of the pages of the Core Manual, created a website for it and a community wiki where fans of AO can share their own creature and equipment creations with other players. We plan on going beyond standard web based support for the game by making what we do online a part of people’s games and allowing players to offer content to other players online. AO will always be a pen and paper RPG, but that is only phase one of the game and the game world’s development.

Do you have an over arching story line, or metaplot, that you’ll develop, or will your sourcebooks be based on explaining what the world is like, or has become?

Although there is an over arching storyline, we are planning on keeping it out of the core sourcebooks such as The Encountered and the equipment manual as we want GMs and players to feel free to develop their own versions of our world if they do not embrace our metaplot. With The Encountered we made the factions optional so GMs could still use the individual creatures in their campaigns and adventures regardless of whether they want to make use of the history, societies and areas of influence described for each faction. Critical to the metaplot will be the political, military and economic maneuvering between key individuals, states and factions that will culminate in the next Evolutionary War. This will be the first time that the residents of Earth may influence the outcome between the two warring alien races, the Seraph and the Ophanum.

General

Do you have any other new properties that are currently in development? When can we expect to see them?

We are developing several new properties and partnerships at the moment; we expect to make an announcement about the first one later in July with a sneak peek at Gen Con Indy.

Does being a Canadian publisher pose any difficulties in marketing and selling your product?

We have offices in Canada and the US along with artists and designer from several other parts of the world so I see us more as a multi national collaboration. With most marketing and sales conducted online now I don’t see any specific barriers to entry being based in Canada. In the internet era it really has more to do with your product, if you have a game that people want to play where your company is based won’t have much impact on your success as you can reach a global audience online.

What sort of challenges does an independent gaming publisher face? What did Mind Storm Labs Labs do to resolve these challenges?

I think the challenges are similar for any new venture start up, whether it’s a game company or another industry. There are always specific challenges for every industry but the business fundamentals you need to solve the challenges are the same. In our case we overcame our specific obstacles with hard work, teamwork and never sacrificing our vision for Alpha Omega.

Recommendation

I think this month is a no-brainer for my recommendation. I think Alpha Omega looks to be a very exciting product and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

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Experience Points #6: Board Games

Josh Bazin — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:46:27 +0000

I’m going to go off in a different direction for this post – I’m going to talk about Board Games. I’m certainly no expert on the subject, but I find several different titles quite enjoyable.

I don’t know alot about what goes into designing a board game (of course, by extension, one could argue that I don’t know anything about RPG design either, which isn’t stopping me). What I do know is what I like – which is what I’m going to focus on in this post.

Here’s a few board games you should check out.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy was introduced to me by a very close friend. The draw that Diplomacy has to me is that chance is not a factor to the outcome of the game (unlike Risk or Axis and Allies). Personally, I really disliked Risk because of a few games that burned me due to die rolls screwing me over. Axis and Allies had a bit more strategy involved, but it was still possible to watch a single infantry unit eliminate a vastly superior force.

Originally, Diplomacy was designed to simulate the dealings of the major powers prior to World War I. The players take up the helm of one of: England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungry, Russia and Turkey. Each turn, the nations confer with each other, looking to make alliances and determine strategy. Orders are submitted and executed simultaneously. This is where the fun begins. Who kept their word? Who didn’t?

Diplomacy is an excellent study of game theory, which in itself, is a very interesting subject. This could be why I enjoy the game so much.

Players worldwide have developed many different variants. Some simply modify the basic board (changing the starting units, modifying the layout of supply centers) and some develop entirely new boards to reflect different areas (and times) of the world. Articles on strategy are abundant.

Diplomacy is an excellent game, especially when played with a number of skilled players.

Settlers of Catan

I really don’t know what to say about Settlers. I really like this game. I’ve only played a few times and I’m sure that I haven’t even scratched the surface of the strategy and awesomeness of the game.

Settlers also has several expansions that add new rules and change the experience. I’ve yet to give any of these a try, but they look cool.

Just play it. You’ll understand.

Arkham Horror

I had the opportunity to play Arkham Horror for the first time this past weekend. I quite enjoyed how the game played, even though we lost. It definately is a game for ‘gamers’. It’s also co-operative, which is pretty different.

There’s several expansions available, which changes how the game plays, with more on the way, to make sure each play is vastly different than the previous play session. I’d like to play again to get a better grasp on the rules, but overall, It was very fun.

So, obviously, the recommendations this month are:

Diplomacy
Settlers of Catan
Arkham Horror

If you like board games, at least one of those games will suit you just fine.