Out On Campaign?

This is a piece of a big idea my brain is chewing on right now, but I think there's at least something I can share right now.

I don't know how many people read this anymore, but a few months ago I posted the basic outline of my big idea here. For those who don't follow links, my idea is that a roleplaying game can be separated out into a number of separate levels. The System (the rules of the game), the Setting (the physical location of adventures), and the Campaign (What the characters are expected to do in play). If you want to be a stickler, you can even add a level below the Campaign which is the Adventure (specific scenario), but that's only useful in certain contexts.

My rant in the link above was mostly about how I felt sort of cheated by gaming products which use the word "setting" in their descriptions, but instead mostly speak to the Campaign level rather than my (more neutral) definition of Setting.

As I was working on explicating this idea, I had something of a realization: Successful gaming products are the ones that reach down to the Campaign level in some fashion.

Let's take the most popular and recognizable RPG out there: Dungeons & Dragons. The basic rulebooks touch on System, Setting and Campaign. They are rulebooks, so of course they provide System. They also communicate Setting through race and class choices and a pseudo-medieval equipment list. They answer the question of Campaign through details like reward structures (XP for killing monsters/gathering loot) and advancement benefits (hit points and combat powers are common gains when leveling up).

This is why you can say "Let's play D&D" and it's a meaningful statement.

It also explains why GURPS has not been as successful as some other games on the market. The basic rulebooks are full of System and only System. Their Setting books are largely Setting, leaving Campaign level alone. While there are those who love GURPS for this reason, it does stand in the way of broad market success.

Looking at this sort of model as a designer is actually kind of fun. But as a publisher, I've got to ask "Have the products I've published sufficiently addressed the Campaign level? How much work am I making the GM do before they play my game?"


While a couple of tweaks to the rules of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road have suggested themselves since I released it, I can't help but wonder if the book's  Narrator advice needs punching up as well. Or maybe something more than that.

I don't know how many people actually read this anymore, but comments are welcome.

RPGaDay 2015 #10 Favorite RPG Publisher

I like myself. It's important to like yourself. So my favorite RPG publisher is myself.

Though I wish I did more RPG publishing. I haven't put out a new product recently. I wish I had more product support for Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. I wish I were able to bring any of the other ideas I have to fruition.


Hopefully, this writing burst will turn into some actual productivity. Time will tell.

Laying It Out

The visual impact of a game book is very nearly as important as the words in it. Illustrations are part of that, but another aspect is the layout of the book. For Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, I went for 2 separate layouts.

The print version of the book is laid out to measure 6 x 9 inches, a nice compact size that can fit on the shelf with your other Oz books, or game books.
But as I contemplated the digital release of my book, I realized that this layout was not quite right. While it can look fine on a screen, there are those PDF buyers who want to print the book out, either in whole or in part. And it's current layout would waste a lot of paper. So the PDF layout would have to be 8 1/2 x 11.

One of the problems with most game books in PDF is that they use a standard 2-column layout. Once you've zoomed in to the point where you can read it comfortably on a screen, your reading process is something like this: Read, scroll down, read more, scroll right, scroll up, read, scroll down, read more. A lot of scrolling, right? So I decided that I would throw that methodology out on its head. Or, more accurately, its side.
(Typical gaming PDF. Specifically the Advanced Player's Guide for the Pathfinder RPG by Paizo Publishing)
(Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road PDF layout)

By turning the page on its side, it's much easier to read. Once you've finished one column of text, simply scroll to the right and read the next column. While you might have to do some scaling to get this to work on your tablet, it is far less scaling than would be required of your typical gaming PDF.

So why not support gaming PDFs that are designed for the way you actually read them? And don't forget, you can also get AiO in EPUB format, a specialized format that dynamically lays itself out for optimum viewing, no matter what you're using to read it.

The Cost of Gaming

I apologize for missing my usual Thursday blog last week. Thursday wound up being an insane day (I'll tell you more about it in my official con post), so I didn't get a chance to get anything together.

But one thing that's been bothering me, and the con has helped bring it into focus: The cost of RPGs has steadily risen over the last several years.

When I started gaming around 12 years ago, I like to think that things were relatively inexpensive. My typical purchase back in those days was a GURPS supplement. 8 1/2 x 11, 128 pages, Black and white art for around 20 bucks. If the book was bigger, hardcover, or a core rulebook for a game, it was more expensive. Box sets full of booklets, handouts and gewgaws were also in this more expensive category. If something was particularly cool, I would cough up the 30 bucks. When the Forgotten Realms setting book for D&D 3rd edition came out, it was right around $40. It was cool, but it took my fiancee breaking out the puppy dog eyes for me to break down and buy it.

Lately, though, this has been increasing. The 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons has rulebooks that cost $35 each and 3 of them are required to play (a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, and a Monster Manual) for a total of $105 before dice and minis. Pathfinder is only slightly better. They only require 2 books (the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary) to give you the same level of information with a total required investment of $90 ($50 for the rulebook and $40 for the Bestiary).

This even seems to extend to indie games. Books only slightly larger than my own AiO were selling for $20-$30 at the con. The Dresden Files RPG main rulebook sells for $50 and the setting book is another $40 (and I will admit, not a necessary purchase. The rulebook comes with enough stuff to keep you busy for quite some time. The setting book is mostly a nice big reference to the series with game stats included).

I wound up swallowing my pride and buying a couple of newer games full price. It felt slightly wrong though. Maybe I'm being a crotchety old man on this. Which is funny, because I'm not that old (I swear!).

Here are a couple of reasons that I can think of why prices may have gone up.

Inflation: What with the economy as a whole going down the toilet in recent years, a dollar may not buy what it did just a few short years ago.

POD: While Print on Demand presents itself as cheap, it's still not quite on a par with traditional printing. It's pretty close and getting closer, but it's not there yet. While it may be only a buck or two difference, that adds up when you need to fit your entire operating budget into 40% of your retail price.

Production values: I'm sure people are going to bring this up. While more books are going the full-color hardcover route and doing some really interesting things visually, I'm not sure it really justifies the prices people are charging.

Capitalism: It may simply be that people have realized that they can charge these kind of prices and the average gamer will cough it up.

While this (among other) phenomena has kept me from buying as much new gaming books as I'd like, my main concern is for the hobby itself. These prices may be nothing new to the typical gamer, but I think they are growing to the point that it's choking out the new blood.

And I'm clearly not alone in this. While experienced gamers have been wondering about the D&D Essentials line from Wizards of the Coast, I very clearly saw it as reaching out to new players. The new Starter Set resembles the classic Red Box D&D to bring in those old school, potentially lapsed, gamers, while the box more clearly says "game" than a book does, and the lower price points clearly make the line more accessible to people who haven't jumped on the D&D bandwagon yet.

The scary part of this line of thinking is that I'm debating raising the price of the print version of AiO up from $15 to $20. My gut is telling me "Hell No!" but my brain is steadily finding it more compelling. The new price wouldn't be hideously unreasonable and would allow me more profit per sale. It would also make getting into distribution a bit easier.

Just a few paragraphs up, when I mentioned fitting your entire operating budget into 40% of your retail cost, I was talking about distribution. When a distributor buys your book, they require a 60% discount. So AiO, which should sell for $14.99, would have to be sold to the distributor for only $6. But my manufacturing cost per book from Lulu is around $7. While Lulu does offer bulk discounts, a quick check reveals that I'd have to order in volumes of 300 or more to make any kind of money in distribution at my current price point. Which would cost more than my tax return this year.

But with a retail price of $19.99 that 60% discount means I'm selling them into distribution for $8, making profit possible at much smaller (more affordable) volumes.

Just to be clear, I am still working on getting OneBookShelf set up for POD with a much lower manufacturing cost, but this would allow me to do this sort of thing right now.

What do you, my loyal readers, think of all of this?

I Hate Christmas!

Actually, I really enjoy Christmas. While I don't get as many toys anymore (damn growing up!), it's still fun to check up with the family and play with the nephews' toys (though they're getting older now).

What I don't like about Christmas is how aggressively mercantile it's become. While out shopping for Halloween candy, I see displays with Christmas trees and Santa Claus. Thanksgiving gets no breathing room at all. It's primarily used to mark the day before "Black Friday", which is the day that people trample other people to death at Wal-Mart... I mean, the biggest shopping day of the year.

The worst part about this is that this is my first Christmas on the other side of the fence. As someone with something to sell, I'm going to have to find a way to tap all of this mercantile Christmas spirit while trying to make sure that I don't lose my personal love of Christmas.

ARRRRR!!! A Pirate's Life For Me!

As the PDF version of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road nears completion, one of the things that must be addressed is data piracy. More specifically, how afraid should I be that my book will be pirated?

The answer seems to be a fairly qualified “not very.”

In spite of what some people claim, a pirate copy is not necessarily a lost sale. There are a couple of reasons for this:

Some people download pirated RPGs as a form of “free trial.” If they like the game, they will purchase it legitimately. A few small publishers will even include a note in their games to the effect of “I know you pirated this. I’m just a regular joe like you trying to make it in this business. Please help a guy out by paying for this.” in order to encourage this effect.

Also, there are those who say that the people who pirate RPGs weren’t going to pay for them anyway. They just like raiding torrent sites to see what they can get for free. One story I read has a guy joining an online session of an RPG, only to discover that the Narrator of the game had pirated the rulebooks. He also noticed that the Narrator was very poorly organized and didn’t know the rules as well as a Narrator should. This player came to the conclusion that since the Narrator hadn’t paid for the book, he wasn’t invested in it and didn’t really care about the game he was running.

This makes a degree of sense. One of my favorite old saws is “The Story of the $20 Kittens.” Now you might have seen someone giving away free kittens from a cardboard box outside the grocery store or something similar. The person who told me this story saw a similar scene, but rather than saying “Free Kitenz”, the sign on the cardboard box read “Kittens $20.” Now these kittens weren’t terribly different from the free variety, so my source felt compelled to ask what made these kittens so special.

The people selling the kittens explained that if they gave the kittens away for free, the people who received them would not attach value to the kitten, and potentially mistreat them. But if you give the kitten a cost, it therefore has value. And a valued kitten will get a much better home than one that does not have a value attached.

Another reason not to fear piracy: I’m just a small fish in a pretty big pond. If AiO is getting pirated, I tend to view it as a sign of success. There’s enough of a demand that someone found a value in making it available via pirate channels.

And all of the potential headache is worth it for the payoff it creates. Putting the game up on PDF sites increases the places it is available by 4 or 5. The lack of manufacturing costs means that I can sell it for less while still making money.

Some of the biggest marketing successes of the last two years have been due to PDFs. In 2009, Paizo Publishing released the electronic version of the rulebook for their Pathfinder RPG for only $9.99. Considering that the print version had an MSRP of $49.99 (it was a full-color, very thick hardcover book), this made a lot of progress towards making Pathfinder one of the RPGs to watch ever since.

Some publishers take advantage of the format to release books before they’re technically ready. Since PDF retailers allows their customers to re-download the file if the publishers revise them, those early adopters are not left out in the cold. Steve Jackson Games has taken to releasing the PDF first and encouraging their customers to report errata for the book before it is sent to the printers. Evil Hat released their Dresden Files RPG electronically before the layout was finalized.

While I’m tempted to try something like this (I do have a preliminary draft of the PDF), I do not feel confident that I can pull off the same stunt. Since this is my first product and I do not have an established reputation, the first impression people will have of me will be the game that I release. If that is imperfect, or not the best it could be, then my chances of eventual success will be much reduced.

Defining Success

This entry is not about success in roleplaying games, but in the RPG industry. How do you know when you've "made it" as an RPG publisher?

So I've done some thinking and come up with a couple of milestones to guide me along the way to success.

1st) "I'm free!": 81 sales. This is the amount of sales I need to have everyone paid off that I currently owe. Publishing something as lovely as AiO is an expensive proposition and I still owe people money for helping me put it together.

2nd) Schmuck: 100 sales. There's a bit of "common knowledge" that says "Any schmuck can sell 100 of anything."

3rd) "Don't laugh, it's paid for": 237 sales. This is about the point where I have actually earned back all of the money I spent on getting the game produced. Now I can talk about getting the money back from all the marketing expenses (which I'm trying to keep low, anyway).

4th) "Made it": 300 sales. This is the point where I can declare myself a survivor of the rat race that is self-publishing. It's not a record, but a badge of honor for my experience.

It is mine and it is glorious!

I have in my hands right now (you know what I mean) my proof copy from Lulu of my game, Adventures in Oz. I wanted to to a big unveiling, but my camera died on me. No photos, no video at the moment, but I swear to you, the book exists.

The cover image is a little offset, with a strip of green across the top, but no missing details. I opted not to put my name on the cover, since my name is not the one that's going to sell this book. It's L. Frank Baum's name that is going to sell this book and that is definitely there.

I was a bit worried that I would mis-judge the thickness of the book, making the spine look poorly done, but it actually looks fine. "Adventures in Oz" it reads, along with the product code "FDW1000". I included that as a reminder that I'm not done with Oz yet. And there may be other game lines to follow, as well. I also put the price on the back cover, so I don't forget. $14.99

The interior is very nice as well. My layout person cooked up a really neat border design, though it does come rather close to the edges at times. The pages are not perfectly centered, but again, there are no missing details, so it's not a problem.

The layout looks even better than it did browsing it on my screen, though this may just be the excitement of knowing that it's an actual product now.

Watch this space May 15th for info on how you can own this wonderful game as well!

Why Self-Publishing?

There's something of a stigma associated with self-publishing. People have this idea that if you didn't go through the rigorous selection process involved in having someone else publish you, then your work is no good. So why do people do it?

If you're writing for a niche, self-publishing is often the way to go. Professional publishers often look for books that they think will sell several thousand copies in bookstores across America. If they think your book will only sell a few thousand, or even just a few hundred, they will pass you up. Oz is considered to be very niche, so it is very hard for Oz writers to get published traditionally.

Other writers may self-publish simply for the joy of seeing their name in print. This is largely where we get our concept of "vanity presses."

Self-publishing is increasingly common in the RPG sector. This is largely due to the niche nature of the industry, as companies focus on providing support for their existing successful products instead of taking risks on new properties. Also, many publishers are gamers and game designers who started their companies in order to get their babies published and everything else is secondary.

So now that I am a publisher, what am I going to do with it? Will I keep this godly power to myself? Or will I use my powers for good and help some other guy get his work out there?

I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to be successful. If I can't pick a winner that I've created, I'm certainly not going to take a risk on something that someone else sends me. Once I've got a success or two under my belt, we'll see.

And Now The News

I started this blog to keep everyone informed about my RPG project. Then I got tired of silly little updates that basically equaled "No news yet" and started blogging about other stuff. Now when things do happen, it's fighting with all the other stuff in my brain.

As I write this, I am one illustration away from having all of the art for the book completed. Once that is turned in, then the layout can be finalized and the book can pretty much go up for sale.

The only thing that could create a significant delay beyond that is the ENnies. It would certainly be nice for my game to be considered for such an award (and maybe others if they come up). But the cutoff for the latest round of awards is April 30th.

My challenge is that in order to enter, the game must not only be released to the public by April 30th, but I must provide 6 copies for judging. That not only requires money (and the game itself will not have been on the market long enough to pay for itself in this regard), but proofing time (Print-on-demand may be a modern miracle, but it isn't perfect yet). And if a problem does turn up in the proofs, that'll delay things even further.

My current options are:

1) Scramble to get everything done by April 30th. This may result in a sub-optimal quality and less chance for an eventual award.

2) Delay the print version, releasing only the PDF version before the deadline. PDFs are much harder to mess up in transmission. The downside here is that the print version would not get a fair shake.

3) Delay the release of the game until I have enough good quality copies to be eligible for judging. If this means waiting until next year, so be it.

4) Deliberately delay the release until after April 30th. With no deadlines to worry about, I can prepare for next years' ENnies in relative peace. A May release does have a certain appeal, given that I can release it on L. Frank Baum's birthday (May 15th)

Onward to Adventure!

It may be that my worry 0ver supplements last week was overwrought. I was thinking that I would have to produce another setting supplement, with all the research, writing, and interpretation that would require. However, a thought occurred to me: Why not make an adventure supplement?

The first big reason is demographic. At least two major portions of my game's intended market are Oz fans (who may not have gamed before and might appreciate help coming up with adventures) and parents introducing their kids to gaming (who have many other things to do besides creating adventures for their group). A supplement containing ready-made scenarios would be a good thing on both counts.

The second reason comes from a rather different quarter. In many quarters of the RPG community, there are those who say that adventures generally don't sell well, except for D&D. Ken Hite (whom I have had the honor of meeting) goes a step further by pointing out that Call of Cthulhu has a rather successful adventure line. He even goes the step farther to explain why.

Because both games are designed with an eye to creating a specific kind of story, their customers are more likely to buy adventures that support that kind of story: "dungeon crawls" for D&D and occult mysteries for Call of Cthulhu. Oz stories also have a rather similar structure that could be fun and easy to emulate.

A few more bits of news:

Although one of my early goals was to have the game finished and ready by DunDraCon, that has become pretty much impossible. Although the game may not be for sale there, it will still be played. I have managed to get "The Magic Belt of Oz" on the schedule for the convention. I will be running the game as part of their kids program.

If all goes well, I should have the Winkie preview posted to the site by next week.

Time vs. Money, Fluff vs. Crunch

A wise man once told me that time and money are rather interchangeable. If you don't want to spend money on something, spend the time to make it yourself. If you don't have the time, spend the money for someone else to do it for you. Art is a good example. It would be impractical for me to spend the time to produce satisfactory art for the game (my stick figures suck), so spending money is the most efficient route to cover that.

For a good portion of this project, I've had plenty of time. When I started blogging, I was unemployed, and I was not gaming. Then I got a job. Then I got a gaming group. Now I'm working overtime. Time is rapidly becoming a precious commodity. I'm wondering if I should hire writers to work on the rest of the material. Especially with the beast that is Quadling Country staring me down.

On top of that, some "conventional wisdom" in the gaming industry says that your first supplement should follow very soon after (within 3-6 months) so that your fans know your are serious about the project. Some publishers have even mentioned avoiding publishing their game for a time, in order to give the supplement time to be completed.

The trick is, in the highly competitive RPG industry, there's no assurance of success. If the main book turns out to be a loser, why should I invest on a supplement that will just lose money?

On the other hand, marketing is important. My opinion is that the reason so many games fail is due to marketing. This extends to the prepublishing process of market research, as well as the actual promotion of the product. And part of that promotion is creating the impression that your company is not a fly-by-night operation and that the product will be supported. It's one of the reasons I started blogging back in April.

Which brings up the next part of this week's subject: Fluff vs. crunch. For those not in know, these are terms that RPG fans use to delineate rules and mechanics (crunch) from setting information and Narrator advice (fluff). Books that offer solely "fluff" generally do not do well commercially, but that's largely the kind of book that it's going to be. Of course, depending on the material that gets covered, there may be room for more character templates, some spells and magic items, and maybe enough "crunch" to make it worthwhile.

Thoughts, guys?

Stuff and things

Another late post. I'm thinking that I should move my usual blog day to Thursday just because it is becoming more difficult to find the time on Wednesdays.

Just a few random items this week:

I just found out that a couple of Baum's books are still under copyright. Apparently, Dover Publications bought the rights to these books while they were still protected and they are now the copyright holders of "John Dough and the Cherub" and "Queen Zixi of Ix". It will take some time for me to figure out exactly what my ability to refer to those works will be.

The good news is that I have plenty of time. As I've mentioned before, the setting info in the rulebook will focus on Oz itself, with the other lands going to a supplement. So I have at least that long to sort things out and round up any money needed.

It can't be too difficult, since Hungry Tiger Press recently published a new edition of John Dough, since Dover let it fall out of print.

Second item: For those who have been paying attention, I am calling my publishing enterprise F. Douglas Wall Publishing. There are two reasons for this. For one thing, this saves me having to file Fictitious Name Statements and the expense of that.

Also, it helps remind people to get my name right. The fact that I use my middle name makes things awkward enough, but people just can't get over the first initial. My high school yearbook gives my name as Douglas F. Wall.

More recently, I entered a video contest at The Fump. When the winners were announced (finally!) at Con on the Cob, Tom Rockwell AKA Devo Spice of Sudden Death got my name wrong. He simply said "F. Douglas". An honest mistake, I'm sure, especially since my partner in crime (and many other things) attached the name K. Green to the project. It's just that it's one of many mistakes made by many different people that makes it so irritating.

I try and keep my personal life out of this blog, because this is intended to support my publishing enterprise. But it's also oddly relevant. Notice that the original author of the Oz stories is named L. Frank Baum. Although his first name was Lyman, everyone knew him as Frank. In an article promoting an educational event about Oz in the local library a couple of months ago, the creator of the Oz books was none other than "Frank L. Baum." I wonder how many times that has happened over the years and if I'm the only person out there irritated by this.

In other news, work is proceeding apace on the new setting material. If I can find the time and energy, I should be able to have an update for my playtesters today, but by next blog update at the latest. Then it's off to work on the next tantalizing preview of the land of Oz for my devoted readers.

6 Months In

First late blog posting in a while. Hope you're not too disappointed

For those who have been paying attention, I've been blogging for the last 6 months. When I first embarked upon this project, I thought I'd have something to show for all of this by now. While I don't have a product to sell, I do have a bit more wisdom than I did when I first started out. A few of the things I've learned so far are:

1) Things cost money. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I've come across is money. In as many areas as possible, I have attempted to get things done for cheap or free. Web-hosting on the site is free, this blog is free. The things that cost money are either happening later or slowly. The website is not pretty, but it costs money to hire a web designer. I would advertise more than I do, but again, it costs money. Art is getting paid for slowly. It doesn't help that I lost a job and had to go on unemployment for a while until I got another job and neither of them pay terribly well.

2) Other people are other people. No matter how much I've tried to build a community around this project, little has happened. To my knowledge, no one has played the game. For most of the time I've been working on this, I haven't had a gaming group of my own. I finally managed to get some people together a couple of weeks ago, but Adventures in Oz got voted down as our system of the moment. This may change; I'll keep you posted.

3) Thrive on deadlines. The weekly blog helps me set deadlines. If I don't have something meaningful to post by the time Wednesday rolls around, I had better come up with something.

If anyone is interested in being a playtester, feel free to give me an email at konradthebarbarian@yahoo.com . You will be emailed with the Adventures in Oz playtest kit, and will receive updates to the system by email, as they happen. It contains all of the rules and setting material as they exist up to this point. While all of this material is on the site at this moment, this will change. That's right, sign up to be a playtester and you'll get access to exclusive content before anyone else. Also, playtesters who provide useful c0mments will get their name in the book and a free copy of said book as soon as physical copies are available.

Why Oz?

Before I answer the question posted above, I just thought you'd like a little progress report. Gillikin, Munchkin and Winkie Countries are complete and available for download on the Adventures in Oz website.

If you've been reading my blog, you'll notice that I have large areas where my weekly post is just a lot of hooey letting you know that I'm still here. And it's a lot of hooey and not interesting reading. So I've decided to change that. Every week, I intend to offer you something. A new piece of art, design notes, or Oz commentary.

Now to the big question: Why Oz? Why try to publish an Oz RPG?
It all started when I bought some trade paperback comic books at a used bookstore some time ago. They were collections of a series called "Oz" published by Caliber Comics. It featured a very gritty story set in a dark Oz that was conquered by the Nome King. An interesting story, with quite a bit of researched detail (including some things that I didn't get until I started doing serious research). However, it wasn't very "Ozzy."

That just begged the question in my mind: "What is Ozzy?" Since I'm an avid gamer, the answers to that question began expressing themselves as RPG rules.

Publication wasn't part of the initial goal, since it was largely intended as a thought experiment. But as I thought about it, and did some checking, it became more and more possible. The original stories had fallen into the public domain, so I wouldn't have to pay for a license. Print-on-demand technology has reduced the need to shell out for massive print runs at the outset like in the old days. My only real expenses would be minor business and publishing expenses, and whatever content I couldn't generate myself. This last one is turning out to be a killer because I am not an artist. A single piece of art isn't too expensive, but the amount of art that a project like this will take lets it add up quickly.

It was out of this interest in being published that I attended a seminar on game publishing at DunDraCon back in February. There were two main bits of advice that I took away from that: #1 Don't bank on success. It's unlikely, and won't make you a millionaire in any case. #2 If you're going to do it, do it. If it's going to succeed, it needs to do so in the marketplace. If it's going to fail, it should probably happen before it becomes your baby.

So I resolved to put nose to the grindstone and get this baby published by the end of the year, so I can appear at DunDraCon next year as a dealer. While my timing may not be as good as I'd like, my dedication to getting this done has not changed.

Next Week: Combat

The Magic Belt has arrived!

It's finally here! "The Magic Belt of Oz" is complete and ready for download.

Well, not totally complete. I would like to make this a lovely debut product, with a sexy layout and all that jazz. But I'm not going to do that until I can be sure that it's a good product, so I need your feedback to help me out with that. Either drop a comment on my blog (you can do it even if you're not a blogspot member, so don't be initimidated) or send me an email at konradthebarbarian@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you.

It's coming, it's coming!

For those of you who are worried that my last few posts haven't had a whole lot of substance, I apologize. This is very much a one-man show here. While I am commissioning art from professional artists, I'm paying for them out of my bi-weekly paychecks from my drudge of a day job. And content generation is all me. It's easier with the help of a few online resources, but it still takes time and effort. And it's not the only thing on my plate at any given time.

There's also the fact that I want to do this right. I mean, anyone can put out a book these days, but if it's not any good, than people won't buy it. I want this little beauty to have the best chance it can at success. Which is one of the reasons that I'm compiling a fastplay adventure: to help market the game.

Once people see what I'm doing, I think they'll like it. I am trying to treat the whole Oz realm with the respect and detail that it deserves. I'm trying to make a game that will appeal to the casual Oz fan as much as the hardcore gamer.

Coming next week: The official announcement of the completion of "The Magic Belt of Oz." I'll probably put it up for peer review for a while. Once that's done, I'll get a layout guy on it, and try to shove it in as many hands as possible as a free download or handout.

The Art Keeps Rolling In

For a long time, Bryan Fowler was the only artist who was producing art for me. You all saw his interpretation of the Winged Monkeys a few posts back. Now I've got two other artists getting started. Brad McDevitt has done some really nice pieces depicting the characters from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", from the Tin Woodman to the Queen of the Field Mice. The talented Amanda Webb has also gotten started on a few pieces. I haven't seen her final drafts yet, but her preliminary sketches look rock solid.

The main reason that you're not seeing any of this yet is that the pieces aren't fully paid for. Unfortunately, reality has forced me to fulfill my publishing dream by nickel-and-diming my way there. As I get this work paid for, I'll start posting some of it up here. I really want you to see this stuff.

The other reason that you're not seeing all the art that I have is that I don't want to give away the whole thing for free. If you saw all the art here, you'd have no need to buy my books when they arrive.

Building Character

The website now features characters for use with "The Magic Belt of Oz" fastplay adventure on the Download page. You can use them for any game you care to run with the system, but they will be included in the adventure to get players started quickly.

They are all canonical characters, but you may find some differences from what you expect. This is mostly because they are created as starting characters under the rules. It's as much a test of the character creation system as it is a test of any other mechanic. I think I did a pretty good job, overall.

What do you think?

For the Love

I recently discovered that I have a competitor. At first, I was unsure how to respond to this. My first reaction was territorial. RPGs are a small market by themselves. Oz RPGs would inevitably be a much smaller market. Could 2 games survive in the same very small niche?

I sent off a very guarded email to the designer of the other game. He was not interested in being adversarial. He offered some comments on my game and I gave him some on his. We've decided to just make the best game we each can do and let the chips fall where they may.

I recently had a conversation with Brad McDevitt, artist, industry veteran, and all around heck of a guy, about the state of the gaming industry. He said that through much of the '80's and early '90's, the gaming industry was rather friendly. Then Magic: The Gathering came along. And Magic made money. It made mad money.

Suddenly, all of these guys who were in the business for the love of the game realized that there was an actual hope of making serious money. And the love of money drowned out the love of the game. Publishers became much more adversarial, trying to get larger and larger pieces of the pie and making sure that their former friends didn't.

I have realized that I'm doing this for the love. I'm doing this to see my name in print. I'm doing this because I want to be able to say that I did something with my life. I'm doing this to show the world that I can.

And that's what really matters, in the end.