Happy Thanksgiving!

While I could bore you with another quarterly report right now, I don't think I will. You're probably reading this on your way to or from some family gathering, or while the turkey is in the oven. So I'll just wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

I do want to take a moment to thank every one of you for reading and commenting on the blog over the past year. You are not only creating the future of this blog, but AiO as well.

And before you gird your loins to face down the Black Friday crowds, consider doing at least some of your shopping online. To help you with that, you can now buy the print edition of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road for 20% off at RPGNow and DriveTruRPG. From now until Cyber Monday, November 26, it's just $11.99 when you buy from those retailers. (Note that the links to RPGNow and DriveThruRPG above are a little different than the ones over on the right. That's because the links above contain the discount code for the special price.)

Also, Lulu has a coupon code valid starting tomorrow and running through Cyber Monday. DELIRITAS is good for 30% all of your purchases on that site (like Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road) or 51% off calendars (like this Ozzy calendar right here).

Q1 2011 Quarterly Report

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	January	February	March	Quarter Total	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	3	3	1	7	57
Lulu/PDF	-	-	-	-	4
Lulu/Total	3	3	1	7	61
Paizo/PDF	1	-	-	1	4
One Book Shelf/PDF	2	1	4	7	57
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	6	4	5	15	123

If you just look at the two lines labeled Lulu/Print and One Book Shelf/PDF, they look like they're tied. But that's not the case, because there are now multiple formats available at Lulu. Combining the two formats for sale at Lulu brings total sales up to 61, giving them a lead in overall sales. Interestingly enough, they did manage exactly the same sales totals for this quarter. Lulu strongest in the early parts of the quarter, with OBS picking up the tail.

Note the bolded line highlighting Lulu's total sales. This chart is going to gain a couple of those lines as format options expand over the year.

The pivot point was in February, when I attended my annual gaming convention, DunDraCon. Exactly why this shift occurred, I don't know. A boost in after-con sales at OBS might be an increased awareness of the game from the con, since the OBS sites are places that a gamer is more likely to shop than an Oz fan. But I've got no guesses as to why Lulu would drop off at the same time. It might be part of the general shift away from Lulu, but we'll see how that happens over time.

Q4 2010 Quarterly Report

I should actually be working on my NaNoWriMo project right now, but I did promise numbers and maybe some other kind of information.

This quarter included my first Christmas as an actual publisher with an actual product. One the one hand, it was exciting. On the other hand I did not want to be one of those callous merchants of artificial and manufactured merriment that seem to dominate the holiday shopping season (which gets longer every year).

Another big thing that happened this quarter was the release of Oz: Dark & Terrible, an "adult" RPG from a company called Emerald City Expeditions. It also served as the springboard to get me to record my first Adventures in Oz Podcast, an audio review of the game.


 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	October	November	December	Quarter Total	YTD Total
Lulu/Print	6	7	6	19	50
Lulu/PDF	1	3	-	4	4
Paizo/PDF	2	1	-	3	3
One Book Shelf/PDF	9	7	5	21	50
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	18	18	11	47	108

One thing to notice this quarter is that digital sales trailed off closer to December. Probably because those customers view their PDF purchases as personal purchases, since digital items are less easily giftable. This big sales month for any format or vendor was November. The sales might have been boosted by interest in Oz: Dark & Terrible (a Halloween release) or as a pre-Christmas rush.

Or it might have been the Doctors Without Borders Pakistan fundraiser in late October of that year. Which is just an example of the power of giving something away for free. Enough people were impressed with AiO even though they got it free with their contribution that they sought out my other work. At this relatively early date, all that was available was the print version over at Lulu. The fundraiser also got me my first review. Not only was it a 5-star review, it was by someone who's books were on my shelf. That's one of the strongest compliments I can imagine and it happened!

This was also the quarter that I broke 100 sales.  As we all know, anyone can sell 100 of anything. The challenge is coming up with more of that. So I close out the year with 108 sales over the space of 7 months. 2011 is going to be the challenge. We see how next time.

Q3 2010 Quarterly Report

This quarter marked the release of AiO in PDF. 5 sites were chosen for this release: DrivethruRPG, Lulu, Paizo, RPGNow, and YourGamesNow. As you can see, they did not all perform equally. Print was the preferred format over at Lulu for some time. And this is the only sale I ever logged over at YourGamesNow. The only reason I haven't stopped selling there is that it's more effort to remove it than to keep it up.

Lulu Print showed a bump in August due to my first "Ozma's Birthday Sale" and the kind folks over at the RPG Circus podcast announcing it. 5 copies were sold during that time at the discounted rate.

The big news this quarter in terms of sales is One Book Shelf. Although it was only an active vendor for one month of this quarter, it very quickly moved in to the #2 position in terms of all time sales. It would eventually surpass Lulu, but that's a story for another time.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	July	August	September	Quarter Total	YTD Total
Lulu/Print	4	7	1	12	31
One Book Shelf/PDF	-	-	29	29	29
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	1	1	1
Totals	4	7	31	42	61

One Book Shelf is the company that operates RPGNow and DrivethruRPG. Both sites use the same back end, so my sales data from them is not separated by site.

A DunDraConUndrum

As I do nearly every year, I'm planning to attend DunDraCon this upcoming February. For the last few years I've run two AiO demos over that weekend. But I'm thinking of changing that. Not specifically in a downsizing way, either. Some thing I'm thinking of doing as well or instead are more promotional efforts. Such as:

Seminars: Rather than just getting a small group to play my game, this would involve a (hopefully) larger crowd that I can talk to about my game.

Running another game: One of the things I love about cons is the opportunity to try new games. But sometimes the games that I want to try out are not being put on the schedule. Which tends to give me the itch to put those games on the schedule by running them myself.

While I could theoretically do all of these things, I would be a very busy man. Busier perhaps than I am at my day job. Not exactly what I would consider a vacation. And since it is my one real opportunity to get out of town in a year, I'd like to keep it feeling like a vacation. So while I'm open to doing any of these things (including my AiO demos), I don't feel like taking on all of them.

What do you think?

Q2 2010 Quarterly Report

This has clearly been a long time in coming. Over two years, in fact.

I've been more than a little nervous about sharing this information. Not because it's supposed to be a big secret or anything. It's because I'm afraid that the numbers are so small. Which basically makes me the kid who doesn't want to shower in gym class because he knows he won't compare well to the other boys. But we all have to grow up sometime. So even though I'm no Fred Hicks (who made a habit of sharing Evil Hat's sales figures on his own blog and now on the Evil Hat website), I'm going to flaunt my numbers to the best of my ability.

Since I am so far behind, I'll be posting one quarter per week until I get caught up. After that, I hope to keep this updated on a quarterly basis.

The first quarter I started selling AiO was Q2 (April-June) of 2010. Actually, I only started selling halfway through that quarter. Almost exactly halfway, as my release date was May 15.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	April	May	June	Quarter Sales	YTD Sales
Lulu/Print	-	14	5	19	19

As we see, only one format and one sales channel. Not a big start, but not a bad one, either. And next quarter is going to be an eye-opener.

With Friends Like These...

For quite some time, I've billed the Friends List/Oz Point mechanic as a way to encourage players to make friends and be helpful as they play. But what if we could use that motivation for evil instead? While you could theoretically rebuild the Friends List into an Enemies List, that would be more work than I would ask of you (though those sufficiently motivated to do so are encouraged to tell me about it). So right now, we'll be talking about evil friends.

If all the players agree, you might choose to do a wicked (though not necessarily Wicked) campaign. Players choose villains for their Starting Friends and earn Oz Points for helping their wicked schemes. All of the characters might have a single evil patron (they are all Nomes invading Oz and so all of them choose the Nome King as their Starting Friend), or each of them takes a different villain as their patron (such as the various Wicked Witches).

Another angle, and one that I think provides an interesting moral dimension to the game, is for the Narrator to sneak in a wicked friend. Perhaps your party of Oz explorers  finds an old woman in trouble and they help her out. They're ready to accept the Oz Point they've just earned for making a new friend and to add a new name to their Friends List. And the Narrator tells them "Mombi."

If your players know the Oz stories, they should be very wary of tying themselves to Mombi, the former Wicked Witch of the North. If they don't recognize the name, then they're ready for the next stage. Because Mombi wants something. It might be small and simple to start, and it will get the players Oz Points, so they'll probably go along. But eventually, they'll realize that she's up to no good.

What makes this interesting is that the characters are now getting Oz Points for doing something that is decidedly bad. And this bribe is just as strong (in fact it's the exact same bribe) as the one to be good and helpful. And depending on who else is on a character's Friends List, you get the ability to set up some interesting conflicts.

Suppose Mombi wants Glinda's Magic Book of Records. If both Mombi and Glinda are on your Friends List, that's bound to be an interesting choice. If you steal the Book for Mombi, you get an Oz Point. If you tell Glinda about the plot and help her thwart Mombi, you get an Oz Point. Which do you choose?

Another possibility that could work for a darker campaign: Allow the players to choose Starting Friends as normal, but establish as part of your campaign setup that these people are prisoners of the campaign's villain (and since some people may enjoy taking established characters as friends, this could have an interesting impact on the setting as a whole). And in order to help and free these friends, the players must do some favors for the villain. This creates the same sort of scenario where the players are rewarded for the bad things that their characters do, but lets them retain a veneer of heroism. And if the campaign allows for the prisoners to be released and/or the defeat of the villain, all the better.