Evil Hat Productions Announces ‘Atomic Robo’ RPG License

Double 2011 Origins Award Winner Licenses Eisner-Nominated Comic Book

SILVER SPRING, Maryland— January 10, 2012 — Evil Hat Productions, LLC, today announced an agreement to produce, publish, and distribute a role-playing game based on the Eisner-nominated Atomic Robo comic book. The Atomic Robo RPG will be co-written by Atomic Robo scribe Brian Clevinger and Kerberos Club: Fate Edition author Mike Olson, creator of the Strange Fate version of the Fate engine.

“I’m such a big fan of the world Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener create in every page of Atomic Robo,” said Fred Hicks of Evil Hat. “When I found out they were fans of role-playing games—including Evil Hat’s own Spirit of the Century—it was clear we had a giant-sized opportunity that had to be pursued.”

With The Atomic Robo RPG, Evil Hat will build on the legacy of Fate games like Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files RPG—together with the ideas of Evil Hat’s upcoming Fate Core project and Mike Olson’s Strange Fate work. The stand-alone game will deliver a fast-paced and fast-to-play role-playing experience focused on the themes of Atomic Robo—action-science, robots, angry talking dinosaurs, high weirdness, and more.

“Brian and I are lifelong RPG nerds, I mean enthusiasts, and we could not be more excited to partner with Evil Hat and Mike Olson to bring readers even closer to the world of Atomic Robo,” said Scott Wegener. “There’s over a century of adventure in our comic book, but we can only show you guys slices of the whole picture. This game opens up so many opportunities to play with that world, its history, the weird unexplored corners, and the might-have-beens,” added Brian Clevinger.

The Atomic Robo RPG  begins development in late February of 2012. “We’d love to get The Atomic Robo RPG out in 2012, and if everything comes together fast and smooth we might just manage that,” said Hicks. “But as with all licensed projects at Evil Hat, we want to take our time to make sure we serve the license and the fans well. Thankfully, Brian and Scott have the same opinion, here. The Atomic Robo RPG that we release will be the best one we can possibly make, period—and that may take us into 2013.”

For more information about Evil Hat Productions, the Fate system, Spirit of the Century, and the Dresden Files RPG, visit www.evilhat.com. For more information about Atomic Robo, visit www.atomic-robo.com. Atomic Robo is published by Red 5 Comics, available at www.red5comics.com and in comic stores everywhere. Kerberos Club: Fate Edition is published by Arc Dream Publishing, www.arcdream.com.

About Evil Hat Productions

Evil Hat Productions believes that passion makes the best games. It is this passion for gaming that raised Evil Hat to its acclaimed position in the RPG community. Our games can be used to build the best kinds of role-playing experiences—full of laughter, storytelling, and memorable moments. Today we don’t just run games, we don’t just make them, we work with you to make your play the best it can be—the kind that upholds and gives birth to passions of your own. That’s the Evil Hat mission, and we’re happy to have you along on it.

Since its inception, Evil Hat has won accolades ranging from the Indie RPG Awards, the Golden Geeks, the ENnies, and the Origins Awards, most recently claiming the Origins Awards for both Best Roleplaying Game (The Dresden Files RPG: Your Story) and Best Roleplaying Game Supplement (The Dresden Files: Our World).

About Atomic Robo

Brian Clevinger is a ten year veteran of online and independent comics. You can laugh at and sometimes with his early work at nuklearpower.com. Follow him on Twitter at bclevinger.

Scott Wegener used to fly planes until he found out it was nothing like High Road to China. Now he draws comic books as a form of very slow starvation. Follow him on Twitter at Scott_Wegna

Press contact

Fred Hicks
Email: feedback [AT] evilhat.com
Website: http://www.evilhat.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/fredhicks

It’s worth saying that some of these things aren’t surefire, definitely-happening projects — sometimes the project is figuring out if it’s a project — but most of them are capturing some amount of my attention on a regular basis, and I certainly want them to happen.

Do we have the money to make all of these projects happen at once, simultaneously? No. (We do have enough money to make sure the creative folks working on the projects get paid for their efforts — that’s my necessary minimum.) But they won’t be happening simultaneously, and in at least a few (or maybe even many) cases, we’ve got the option to throw a little Kickstarter juice at them. Our ambitions would be just a tad smaller if we didn’t have the option of crowdfunding in the mix. Thanks to Kickstarter, our ambitions are having a bit of a right time, right place quality to them, which is great.

Let’s get into the details.

Role-Playing Games

Don’t Rest Your Head

Don’t Hack This Game: Hopefully you’ve read the post about this already. Don’t Rest Your Head is over 5 years old at this point, and Ryan Macklin & I think there’s been a lot of great, creative play and hackery going on out there. Don’t Hack This Game will be a supplement for Don’t Rest Your Head where we collect some of the best ideas and give folks a roadmap for hacking the game to be what they want it to be. The system can be bent into all sorts of shapes, but that’s really only one piece of the puzzle.

Dresden Files

The Paranet Papers: This has been one of the “big dog” projects since the Dresden Files RPG launched. The Paranet Papers is part system update and setting catch-up (getting us mostly current into the beginning bits of Ghost Story), part campaign starter kit. That latter part is being addressed by us cracking up the city creation mold a bit and looking at six different “cities” that do it a little differently, all viewed in light of the fallout from Changes. Those locations: Las Vegas; the “Neverglades”; the open road (taking the Dresden Files in more of a Supernatural direction); the Russian Revolution; South America; and some of the “outlands” of the Nevernever.

DF Adventures: Fairly recently we got ink on a contract addendum that lets us do a handful of “for-pay” adventure arcs for the Dresden Files RPG. Previously we were only in the clear to do free web support type stuff, which is where our collection of one-shots for the Dresden Files (as well as a Fiasco scenario) came from. Now, we’re going to get to do some more ambitious stuff. We’ve got three such projects slated, and the option to do more. You’ll probably see these parcel out over the course of the next two years; at least one of them will include some new details about the Dresdenverse gathered straight from the Word of Jim.

Fate

Fate Core: This would be that new core Fate book that we’ve been promising folks since Spirit of the Century. We haven’t been burbling about this as much as we could over on FateRPG.com, but that doesn’t mean the project’s on hold. Lenny is in straight up nose to the grindstone mode with this one; we’re hoping to have the full text to an editorial squad by February.

Gumshoe

Bubblegumshoe: Evil Hat’s going to be exploring Pelgrane Press’s Gumshoe system a bit, with a focus on taking it in some more deeply “story-game” directions, in a pair of projects. The first of these is Bubblegumshoe, the teen detective roleplaying game. In essence, we’re looking for something that runs the gamut from Nancy Drew to Veronica Mars here — a mostly female-protagonist perspective, but with plenty of room for Hardy Boys and The Great Brain besides — with a focus on how our teen investigators interact with the authority figures and other relationships in their lives. This one’s got a trio of RPG experts working on it: Kenneth Hite, Emily Care Boss, and Lisa Steele.

Revengers: Evil Hat’s other Gumshoe system game will be penned by Will Hindmarch and features ghosts-as-cops who investigate murders for the recently dead and, when possible, get revenge for them. This one will be half whodunit, half let’s-get-’em, and Will and I have been talking about making several system decisions that put some real story-shaping power in the players’ hands, as well as building some unity between the game-space and the story-space. That’s a bit gearheaddy, so let me stress again: you’re dead cops solving murder mysteries and haunting the bejeezus out of the murderers. Badass.

Spirit of the Century

Strange Tales of the Century: A Spirit of the Century inflected tour of the mostly-real international pulps that existed in the first half of the 20th Century, with geek librarian superstar Jess Nevins as your tour guide.  This will be a must-have for fans of pulp who want to break outside of the often-common American-inflected mold. Strange Tales of the Century is one has been in the works for a while, but got spun into an editorial limbo a few years back. We’ve managed to breathe new life into it with an expanded editorial team and believe we’ll see this one out in 2012 for sure.

Board/Card Game

Race to Adventure: One of our two big forays into the board game arena. Race to Adventure!™ is an easy-to-learn family board game you can play in 20-30 minutes. It features heroes from the Spirit of the Century setting racing around the globe on a scavenger hunt, trying to be the first to get their passports stamped and return to the Century Club’s home base. Of course, they run into all sorts of complications from the villainous masterminds of the SOTC setting along the way. The game was designed by Evan Denbaum, Eric Lytle, and Chris Ruggiero, features card art by Spirit of the Century illustrator Christian N. St. Pierre, and graphic design by Daniel Solis.

Zeppelin Armada: The flipside of Race to Adventure, Zeppelin Armada is a fightin’ card game featuring the villainous masterminds of the Spirit of the Century setting. An artifact of ultimate power has been discovered — and EVERYONE wants it. So they gas up their zeppelins, and of course, all arrive at the site of the artifact at the same time. A nasty brawl ensues! Featuring rules designed by Jeff Tidball. This one’s going to end up coming up a little bit behind Race to Adventure in part because we’re using the same artist for both projects — there’s only so much he can draw at once!

Fiction

Don’t Read This Book: A fiction anthology set in the Don’t Rest Your Head setting, edited by Chuck Wendig. This features some incredible authors — I’m seriously agog we got the roster we did for this — but I can’t list all the names just yet. I can say that it will contain a new short story by one of my favorite authors, Harry Connolly, and that I have read it, and that it is fantastic.

Dinocalypse Now: A novel — possibly the start of a trilogy if it is well-received — set in the Spirit of the Century universe, as psychic dinosaurs from the distant past try to take over the present and rule the future. Chuck Wendig will be writing this one, with the pulp action and strange science dials cranked to eleven. Expect to see the heroes from Race to Adventure put in an appearance, including our game’s classic love triangle, Jet, Sally, and Mack.

Graphic Novel

ElectriCity: ElectriCity will be a stand-alone graphic novel written by longtime friend C. E. Murphy – a superhero story set in a new world, with the rivalry between Tesla and Edison as part of the backstory of it all. We’ve been having a lot of fun developing the script and are working on finishing that up and assembling the artistic team. More than any other project on our roster, we’ll be relying on Kickstarter to help us determine if this is just a lovely dream or something we can actually bring to the world.

Mystery Projects

We do have a couple of them — pipe dreams, or opportunities that haven’t gotten any momentum yet. In nearly all of these cases that adds up to shouldn’t or can’t when it comes to talking about them, so I’m going to simply put a footnote here at the bottom that what I have listed above is not necessarily the whole span of what we’re hoping to do. In most cases, though, if something’s not listed above, it’s a project more likely to happen in 2013 than 2012 — though any of the above projects could end up in 2013 as well simply due to scheduling and effort particulars.

You only wish your experts were this awesome.

When it came time to figure out what the right name for Race to Adventure! should be, we knew we were going to be way off track if we tried to figure it out ourselves.

What we needed was an expert at playing games, but also had a perspective on what would appeal to kids and families, since we see Race as a way to introduce younger family members to the role selection genre of board games. We knew we had a leg up with basing the game in the Spirit of the Century universe — talking gorillas, jetpacks, and lightning guns all have plenty of kid appeal. Still, we needed that expert in what kids like and what they like to play.

So we went to the source.

Eight-year-old Ian Hanrahan is an amazing kid. He’s Chris Hanrahan’s younger son. He might not be your typical sample – he plays Ravenloft, D&D, Ticket to Ride, Qwirkle, and so forth. But we’re betting he’s not alone amongst the children of gamer families everywhere.

The thing is, I knew all this, and knew he’d be a great kid to check in with. What I hadn’t quite grasped was HOW great. So great, I think I owe this kid a consulting fee or something. So I invite you to listen in as this expert weighs in on the play of the game and, later, on our efforts to brand the game correctly with the right name:

Ian’s Playtest Comments (MP4)

Ian’s Brand Analysis (MP4)

Magnificent.

I’m not going as a publisher.

That’s not strictly true, of course. I’m going to check out the Origins Awards and hope for (but not expect) a win, and that’s an undeniably publisherish thing for me to do. I’ll meet a few people for business purposes, and I’ll be carrying around my Zeppelin Armada prototype deck for playtesting (if you see me and I’m available, feel free to ask to play).

But when it comes down to it, in the last 5 years of gaming conventions — which is most of the span of time I’ve done gaming conventions outside of AmberCon Northwest — I’ve rarely gone just as a “civilian”. This will definitely be my first Big Convention without a booth concern. (You’ll find Evil Hat’s stuff represented at the Indie Press Revolution booth.)

I’d say I’ll hardly know what to do with myself, but that’s a lie. I intend to:

• Eat at the many fine eateries of Columbus, Ohio
• Try to restrain myself from eating my body weight in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
• Talk with all those lovely people I haven’t seen in ages, and even some of those who I have: Rob Donoghue, Chris Hanrahan, Leonard Balsera, Amanda & Clark Valentine, Matt Gandy, Jeremy Keller, Cam Banks, and more (if I leave you off the list, it is for brevity, not lack of desire!)
• Drink while doing so
• Spend some serious time in the Board Room
• Hit up the Games on Demand area (though at 5 tables only in Delaware A, that may get crowded!)

I’m approaching all this in a vigorously ad hoc fashion, but I also don’t want to get to the end of it with an “aw, damn, I really meant to talk to…” feeling. So please track me down, or holler in the comments here if you’re looking for a slice of my time!

So if you’re not already a playtester for us, and you think that sometime in late May/early June you’ll be able to do some multiple-session playtesting (2 to 4 sessions worth is probably 2 to 6 hours), I am interested in hearing from you. Volunteer with your credentials in the comments below, or you can email me at evilhat on the gmail.

So who’s going to write these letters? Well, we’ll write a few. But mostly: you are. We’d love to have your letter, and to give you a chance to be a part of Do with us. Interested?

We can’t promise we’ll accept every letter we get, but we will do our very best to get into trouble with it. Ideally we should have your letters in before the end of April. This will give us time to select the letters we’ll use, and get some editing and artwork done on the booklet. And even if we don’t use your letter, we’ll save it up and possibly share it on Daniel’s blog later on. No letter goes unheard by the pilgrims.

Here are your guidelines.

Inspiration:
Avatar: the Last Airbender, The Little Prince, Kino’s Journey. Stories of young people traveling through the strange, often absurd world of adults.

Premise:
There are hundreds small worlds orbiting a flying temple. Like islands, these small worlds often have strange cultures and unique problems. Whenever the people have a conflict that cannot be resolved on their own, they send letters to the temple requesting assistance. The temple sends young monks on a pilgrimage across the universe responding to a stack of letters one at a time. Their goal is to leave each world with less trouble than when they arrived.

Your Mission:

• You’re a worldly citizen (that is, a citizen of one of the tiny worlds floating in the sky) with a weird problem. You’re writing to the pilgrims of the flying temple for help. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a letter to be included in the next supplement for Do.
• Your letter should be around 150-500 words.
• List key phrases from the letter, including character names, important locations, important objects, adjectives and verbs. Repeat them up to three times if they are very important. Depending on the difficulty level of your letter, the letter should have a list of 10 key phrases (Easy), 15 (Medium), or 20 (Hard)
• Tag your letter with two or three of the symbols that describe the subject matter in the letter. These are described in this PDF. (There’s a sample letter in there too!)
• Email your letters to Fred Hicks at evilhat [at] gmail [dot] com

Guidelines:

Getting Inspired: To get started, what is your favorite episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Kino’s Journey, Star Trek or Stargate SG-1? Pretty much any show where the heroes go from place to place helping people and getting into trouble is a good place to start. Imagine you are one of the people who needs help from the heroes. First you may have to explain a little about the world you’re on, just to give the heroes some context for your problem. That also gives the players more hooks and inspiration to begin their adventure.

A Dose of Realism: You may find inspiration in stories of the real world as a way to start your letter, like natural disasters, historical conflicts, and even outright wars. But make sure you approach those subjects with sensitivity and respect. Do is by its nature a comedic game. Before you submit a letter “ripped from the headlines,” try to change the circumstances enough that the letter doesn’t seem like it’s just making light of a real-world tragedy.

Symbols: The trouble symbols are described in this PDF. Think about the subject matter of your letter. What makes a TREE+BOOK letter different than a SWORD+BOOK letter? What kind of troubles do you expect pilgrims to get into when they visit this world and meddle with people’s lives?

Difficulty: A good letter suggests a complicated situation with no clear solution. A great letter suggests several problems with several unfavorable solutions. Present a Gordian knot to the pilgrims and they’ll figure out the rest.

Age Appropriateness: Do is a game designed for players 12 and up, so adjust the tone of your letter appropriately. The editors reserve the right to revise or re-word your letter in order to make it more age appropriate, if necessary.

Fundraising Exceeds Expectations for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
New storytelling game for YA and family gamers wins massive support

In less than a day, the fundraising campaign to publish Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple met its initial goal. Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions quickly pivoted into Phase 2 of the campaign, intended to raise more funds next several weeks. Phase 2 goals were surpassed in less than 6 hours.

“Our initial goal was to raise $4,000 in 45 days, enough to do a print run of 500.” Hicks said. “When we met that on Day 1, we knew we’d tapped into an enthusiastic fanbase. Our next goal was to raise enough funds — another $2,500 — to get a bigger print run, which meant we could lower the cover price through the economies of scale. We busted through that goal in less than 6 hours on Day 2.”

Game designer Daniel Solis believes a long development cycle and a transparent design process built up years of anticipation.

“I design a lot of little board games and post them on my blog, ready to play for free.” Solis said. “I followed that same philosophy for Do. The basic rules have been online, free for anyone to play, for about a year. I’ve also been posting art from the game for quite a while, too. I guess people just wanted the game, finally!”

So what’s the next move?

“Our next move is to use the remaining time to develop additional content for our supporters. We’ll produce a booklet of additional letters and adventure seeds, which will be shipped exclusively to those who pledge at the $40+ level. We intend for those to be the only copies in print that we produce. Those who contribute a smaller amount will get the booklet in PDF form,” Hicks said. “When it comes down to it, the early-adopter $40+ contributors are the reason we were able to hit our goals so rapidly. With their help, the cover price of the hardcover is down to where we believe it will be well-received by parents, teachers, and YA fans.

“These generous backers deserve our gratitude in a palpable way. This specially-produced Book of Letters is our way of doing that, a unique gift showing that they were a key part of Do’s success.”

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple is a storytelling game about helping people and getting into trouble, for 3-5 players, ages 12 and up.

Evil Hat Productions publishes Spirit of the Century and the Dresden Files Role-Playing Game.

Fundraising was facilitated through the crowd-source service Kickstarter, a no-risk way to raise funds for creative projects.

Relevant Links:
Fundraising Page: http://kck.st/fwk4DD
Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com
Evil Hat: http://www.evilhat.com
Daniel Solis: http://www.danielsolis.com
More about Do: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/do-pilgrims-of-flying-temple.html

That said, with the goal hit, it’s time to talk about phase two for the kickstarter.

Our initial funding goal was set on the idea of producing the Limited Edition of Do as a small run boutique item, at about 500 copies to be printed in hardcover and with color interior. But there’s a literal price that comes with printing such a thing at that level. Despite the book being a modest-sized affair (you’ll hear more about that from Daniel in the coming days), we had to set the minimum level for getting a printed copy at $40.

But (checking… yep) now that we’ve hit that $4,000 target, it’s time to think about what to do with any additional funding we get. The way Kickstarter works, you keep raising funds until the deadline. In this case, that deadline is May 24. Until then, you can keep pledging, pre-ordering the game and telling your friends to do likewise.

As I suggested before, we’ve had our eye on expanding the print run to 750, 1000, or even 1,500 copies (but probably no more) if we get more funds. With the economics of printing being what they are, at each new increment we’re facing a steadily lower unit cost. And to us, it doesn’t seem right to keep the cover price on Daniel’s crazy little game up at $40 if our costs are dropping.

So here’s the plan we’ve got in mind:

At $4,500 raised, we’ll increase the print run to 750 copies, making this gorgeous (but still limited) edition available to more people. But we’ll also drop the cover price to $35, and ship a copy to anyone who has contributed at least $35. (International customers will still need to bump up by $10 to cover the additional cost of non-domestic shipping.) And HOLY CRAP, we may hit THIS level before I even finish this post!

At $5,500 raised, we’ll increase the print run to 1,000 copies — and we’ll drop the cover price again by $5, to $30, and ship a copy to anyone who has contributed at least $30.

At $6,500 raised, we’ll increase the print run to 1,500 copies — and yet again drop the cover price by $5, to $25, and ship a copy to anyone who has contributed at least $25.

(At that point, we’ll have the price point more in a range that we’d like to see, and we’ll have enough copies at a good price point for getting this game out to more people. Once that print run runs out, we’ll transition to a black and white softcover standard edition of the game.)

In addition, for the high-end patrons out there who are sad about missing out on the Flying Turtle contribution level, Daniel is currently looking into the possibility of providing a few more high-end rewards at the $150 and $250 level, but it may be even as much as a few weeks before we can share that (conversations need to conclude, and stuff needs to move from point A to Z, before we can commit there).

Dan & I will also talk about what could happen beyond the $6,500 level, if it comes, but that’s a longer conversation and he has some travel planned a week from now. Possibly an exclusive benefit for all contributors to the kickstarter, at that point. But for that, you’ll have to stay tuned.

Thanks so much, everyone. It’s incredibly gratifying to see how many folks out there have the same kind of enthusiasm and faith in Daniel as we do here at Evil Hat.

One of the interesting aspects of this kind of work is the degree of disconnection between the “skin” of a game (the story-conceit, what it looks like, all that) and the “bones” of it (its rules). If you’re doing a licensed game (we’re not, at least not as our first one), you probably start skin first, and then feel around for a rules concept that can play comfortably inside that skin. Personally, though, I’m a rules junkie — I like the fiddlies — so when I look at a design, that’s where my head starts.

With a card game, you can find yourself skinless to start. You may find yourself with the root of a rules concept you’d like to explore, and it’s only through the exploration that you’ll uncover what your best-fit skin for that might be. Part of it is about fitting the rules, and part of it is about making sure the high concept of the game is something you can explain clearly and succinctly, in a way that piques interest and gets folks willing to sit down and play a hand.

With our first game in development, I brought an idea to Jeff that had been banging around in my head for a few years.

The idea grew out of a drive back from one of the big summer conventions with Matt Gandy and Rob Donoghue, where we devolved into a certain amount of “leet speek” trash-talking: IM IN UR BASE, KILLIN UR MANS. Of course, that phrase right there stuck with me and I got the vestiges of a card game idea, where each player is frantically trying to build his base, while the other players were sending invading DOODZ who might kill his MANS. I didn’t take it very far, but the core idea there stuck with me: each player trying to build a 3×3 grid of cards in front of him as his base of operations, the center card representing the player himself in the command & control center, and the ring of cards around that card forming the perimeter of the base, with various defenses and weaponry in place.

So I tossed that idea at Jeff, and he liked it enough to get off to the races. We gave the prototype the code name SIEGE, knowing we’d be changing it; the design concepts Jeff hashed out (which I’ll talk about in a later post after it’s had a little more development & testing done)  didn’t have a home yet in terms of skin. What was the 3×3 grid of cards going to represent? What about the occupant in the center card of the “base”? We kicked around a few ideas over the course of this, including:

• Sci fi/future war techno-bases, cleaving close to the original roots of the idea
• Castles with all sorts of fantasy tropes & flair
• Video game playtesters at a (collapsing) start-up, holing up in their cubicles in order to fight off the HR goons coming to pink-slip them

Each of these had their charms, but they didn’t necessarily sit perfectly right for some of the rules ideas Jeff was coming up with. Then the idea of treating the 3×3 grid less as a physical structure and more as a formation came to mind. That’s when it got interesting for us. A formation of what?

As a publisher, one of the things worth looking at is what else you have in your catalog that your new product can “vibe” with, hopefully driving some cross-sales traffic. We talked about some of Evil Hat’s intellectual property, too, through the course of this — and when we said “a formation of what?”, pretty damn quickly we arrived at the only possible, the only right answer.

Zeppelins.

Stay tuned to see what we’re going to let fly.

So, you like Fate‘s idea of zones, and you’re not a fan of the one-inch-square map gig, but you’re playing 4e, and you definitely want to see a map get some action, just not one with all of that regimentation and orderly geometry. How to mix 4e play with Fate’s zones? This is a very brisk exploration of my initial thoughts about that.

Your Map

First off, let’s adopt our earlier idea that roughly 5-6 squares equals a zone. When eyeballing a combat space and drawing up your zone-ified maps, something to keep in mind. But really, you can stick with your developed-in-Fate instincts for drawing our your maps, too.

Move

Anyone who could do a 5 square movement can move one zone; anyone who can do a 10-square movement can move two; etc. This is your guiding principle. You’ll need to think long and hard about what this does for characters who can only move 4 squares (I say let ‘em anyway), or have a base move more like 7 squares. Maybe you divide by 4 instead of 5, and round generously for the ones that come out at x.75; clearly someone built for a base 7 move is looking to get some extra pizazz from that.

“Running” is simply doubling the number of zones you can move normally (usually going from 1 to 2).

Engagement: Opportunity, Flanking, Pushes, Pulls, Slides, Shifts

So, attacks of opportunity and all the elements of shifting or forced movement. Interesting, tricky things when your space is more abstractly defined. To preserve that element, I’d do something like the following.

You can use a move action to engage a target occupying the same zone as you. This places the “engaged” condition on the target, and the target places the “engaged” condition on you as well. (I’m calling & framing this as a condition; maybe there’s a better way?)

Engaged:

• If the target makes a ranged or area attack, it triggers an attack of opportunity by the character that engaged him.
• If the target moves out of its current zone, it triggers an attack of opportunity by the character that engaged him. This condition is then cleared.
• If two or more characters have engaged a target, the target provides combat advantage to those characters.
• The target may use a move action to clear one instance of the engaged condition.
• If the character that has engaged the target no longer possesses the reciprocal condition, this condition clears.

Targets may shift or be pushed/pulled/slid into or out of engagement within their current zone, essentially converting every 2 or 3 squares (2.5) of effect into one instance of the engaged condition either created or shed. If the target’s movement is 5 squares or more — in other words, a zone — then that principle may not apply, with all engaged conditions simply dropping as the character leaves the zone. (That said, I could see someone with, say, a 8-square push effect pushing a target into the next zone, and then into an engaged position with one of the characters in that zone with the remaining 3 squares of effect.)

Maybe there’s a more elegant way to do this, by introducing the idea of block actions, by playing with the idea of borders, etc, but I’m not swiftly seeing the path to that. If you do, pipe up. I think the bookkeeping part of it could be elided simply by using your figures/markers on the map and grouping them close to each other when “engaged”. Visually simpler than writing down “Engaged by X” each time it happens.

Range, Close Effects, Area Effects, Wall Effects

Ranges usually divide up into increments of 5, so turning that into zones of range is pretty easy.

Bursts and Blasts are interesting, but not too hard to work out a good equivalence for. If something affects an area that’s up to 5×5 (so, up to blast 5 or up to burst 2), that’s a zone, 6×6 on up is 2, etc.

Small-sized close blast (1) and burst (2 or 3) effects might warrant some kind of sub-selection of targets — say, all targets currently engaged by/engaging the character.

Walls are almost nonsensical in this setup, but I might say that you can hit one target within a zone for every 2 or 3 squares (2.5) of wall, and you can extend the effect into another zone for a similar cost (so a wall of length 10 could hit two targets in one zone, cross into a neighboring zone, and hit one more).

The high level “gut” view: sales were down (as expected) in the fourth quarter of last year, but not horridly so. In terms of sales volume, for example, Q4′s DFRPG sales were only a few hundred less than Q3′s for each title. That’s a palpable drop, sure, but not a “it’s drying up!” On top of that, we got a nice boost out of launching & selling our limited edition “Wizard” Fudge Dice, clearing over half of the units we produced in just a couple months through direct and distribution channels.

The quarter’s numbers from Q3 can be found on my previous post. While the percentage drop on the smaller volume titles was more brutal, comparatively speaking, the overall robustness of the DFRPG and the addition of the dice did nicely by us.

Here’s the high level sum-up. Lifetime sales-wise everything is looking pretty rosy. I’m particularly happy to see that Your Story is within striking distance of 10k copies sold (as always our lifetime totals reflect digital and print combined, but counting Print+PDF bundle sales as only a single sale, not one of each), and Our World falling just short of 8k. That’s a nice footprint for us and gives us a good shot at selling a few thousand copies of our in-development Paranet book, I think.

And the source-by-source particulars (“special” just means “the spirit of the century hardcover from Lulu” for now):

Play More. Run More. Share More.

Sounds simple, and it is simple, but just because something is simple does not mean it’s easy.

Play More because playing more makes you happy, and your happiness is important. Own that, make time for it, make it a priority, and engage the people who are a part of your life in this mission. Be honest that it’s about your happiness, and ask them how you can help them with THEIR happiness by finding ways so that they can Play More too.

Run More because the biggest enemy of Play More is inertia, and everyone is looking for the guy to run the game they want to play as the way to beat that inertia. If you’re looking for that guy too and nobody’s stepping up, you’re that guy. And other people will be that guy, too, but you’ve gotta get the ball rolling. Do it.

Share More because our hobby is social, and is only improved by putting more energy into the social side of it. If you love a game, show other people why. Organize an event at your local game store. And importantly, play with people you don’t play with right now.

That last bit, in a lot of ways, has been the lynchpin in my recent revitalization of my own gaming. It might be in yours. It was a big block: I had a lot of time going on where gaming wasn’t happening and, yes, some of it was because I was “busy” (I had to make time for it), and some of it was because I was waiting for that guy to run it (I was that guy), but more than anything I was wanting gaming to happen with the same people that it’s always happened with … and the reality was that within that small circle our schedules were just not working out. Breaking past that sacred-cow barrier in my thinking about my own gaming is what limbered up the rest.

Your situation might be different. You might have a different sacred-cow barrier. Be merciless in identifying that cow and shipping it off to the meat plant. It’s standing between you and your happiness, your deeper satisfaction with your hobby, and through you it’s shaving off just a little of the vitality of your hobby itself. The solution is simple, but that simple solution is going to take a little work. Identify that work. Comment below and tell me what that work will be for you.

Then get off the damn computer and do the damn work.

Your year will look all the brighter for it.

The Mith Son Muse questers were split into four teams, each tasked to follow a different color path into the bowels of the ancient ME-TRO. The table I ran was the Green Line team, and I set up three scenes (two of them full on encounters) on their path:

• The Devil-Cow of Green Bel
• The Format Ki of Fort Ott
• The Ultimate Battle Against the Guardians of Mith Son Station

The Ultimate Battle scene was the same for all four teams, so each of us came up with the challenges along the way. Dave took the Red Line, Tom took the Orange (I think), and Bob the Blue (I think). I’m curious to get a recounting of what their points along the way were since I missed out what was going on at my table.

Setting this up was fun. The Devil-Cow encounter was based around the idea of a bunch of mutated farm animals, so there was a Devil Cow, a Hell Pig, a Big Damn Bug, and a Glowing Chicken, all reskins of one form or another. The chicken (a reskinned blood bird) turned out to be the highlight of that one. I challenge anyone to say that reskinning a blood bird as a radioactive chicken isn’t a move for the better — the high comedy of one of our guys, the Empath/Mindbreaker, having a glowing green chicken latching on to his head and trying to peck him to death while radiating his allies was fun while it lasted. (The other members of the party were a Yeti/Gravity Controller, a Plant/Felinoid, and a Plant/Mindbreaker — the level of overlap was more than I expected.)

They recovered the key hanging around the neck of the Devil-Cow, used it to enter Green Bel, and found an ancient train which took them to FORT (t)OTT(en) where a rumored FORMAT KEY could tell them how to find Mith Son Station. The Format Ki was an artificially intelligent InFORMATion KIosk in the middle of Fort Totten Park, which had convinced all of the semi-sentient plantlife in the park that it was their god.  I purposely designed this part of the plot to be “soft” in terms of its time footprint, the sort of thing that could drag out into a bigger deal, or be resolved in a few quick skill rolls. That said, I wanted to make the “skill encounter” reinforce the potential lethality of Gamma World, so I set things up such that if they failed skill rolls, the Format Ki would become displeased and would encourage its herbaceous minions to retaliate. The player’s speaker goofed once, triggering the wrath of the SCREAMING TREES, hitting 3 of the 4 PCs with a little sonic damage that they carried forward into the final encounter. That said, they managed to milk out the maximum information from the Format Ki:  “THE MUSE lies between THE ENIGMATIC TRIANGLE and CHIVEY PENN. To reach THE MUSE, you must continue on the GREEN LINE until you reach FANT PLAZZ. Another train awaits you there bound for VEENAFAX. Board, and you shall reach MITHSON. Beware the guards of MITHSON STATION. They are skilled in the ancient art of ninjaness and have a love for consuming plants.”

That last piece of information, achieved thanks to a DC17 Interaction roll, had my half-vegetal party on edge as they followed the directions and rolled on in aboard a ME-TRO TRAIN at MITH SON STATION. Speaking of the station:

That’s the map I cooked up for the encounter, had copies printed out for each GM. Worked pretty well. The real killer — which ended up being a hazard mainly to the bad guys — was the glowing/interdimensionally charged THIRD RAIL going down the center:

Third Rail – Level 3 Hazard (XP 150)
Detect - Perception DC 15                           Initiative —
Immune attacks
Triggered Actions
Attack (special) • At-Will
Trigger: A creature enters or ends its turn in a square containing the third rail.
Attack (Free Action): Melee 1 (triggering creature); +6 vs. Reflex
Hit: Roll 1d6:
1 = Photonic! 2d6 laser damage and the target is blinded until end of its next turn
2 = Atomic! 2d6 fire damage and ongoing 5 radiation damage (save ends)
3 = Electrical! 2d6 electricity damage and target is dazed until end of its next turn
4 = Psychic! 2d6 psychic damage and target is slowed (save ends)
5 = Hyperkinetic! 2d6 physical damage, target is pushed 5 squares in a random direction
(roll 1d8), and knocked prone
6 = Wormhole! Target winks out of existence until the end of its next turn, when it
reappears in any square to either side of the third rail
Miss: Target is pushed up to 3 squares left or right along the rail.

… but I also filled the encounter with two Hoop Ninjas, a Hoop Battlemaster, and a Hoop Sharpshooter. Further, the train was on the fritz, so every round I randomized which doors were open and which were closed, at one point cutting the PCs off from exiting the train unless they wanted to chance the Third Rail (they did not). The original plan had been to kick the PCs into the Third Rail occasionally, but the rolls did not work out that way. Instead, as an opening move, one of the hoop ninjas on the opposite platform bounced across the tracks and… stepped onto the rail. Got hit with some straight up electrical, but made it into the car and made an attack. But, dazed, it just sort of sat there in a stupor afterwards. That’s when the Battlemaster with a grenade launcher popped in at the opposite end of the car and launched a grenade at the group. Two took cover, but our already-injured Yeti went down hard (he didn’t die, thanks to some very solid death saves, and was back on his feet, barely, a few rounds later). But of course, the dazed ninja was also hit, and blown back out of the train; he landed on the third rail again, which this time inflicted its atomic mode, and the ninja went up in a cloud of fire/radiation damaged smoke. The party made short work of the rest, with the plant guys really showing these plant-eating rabbits who was boss. The food chain is forever broken!

The epilogue involved recovery of a BRO CHURR from the hoops that told how to find Mithson Muse Castle. Armed with this map, the PCs had to make a mad dash across the radioactive wastes of ASHINGTON DEECE to reach the castle. Again, this was a “it’ll hurt ya” skill thing, but even more brisk: PCs got to choose one of three skills to roll, and had to accumulate 3 successes before their hitpoints ran out. Everyone made it, though the Empath/Mindbreaker did so only barely (of the three options for skills he had, all of them sucked). And so they claimed the Our Guide… and now faced the problem of figuring out how to get back home with it. Curtains.

A player at my table had some embarrasingly hyperbolic things to say about my game, so I suppose I acquitted myself well.

- Vehicles have hit points (a given) and sometimes a resistance to physical damage. Size the hitpoints about how you might a monster of a level on par with the PCs current level. Resistances should be minor, and might convey onto the occupants (but not stack). Occupants of vehicles will in general have basic cover. A “bloodied” vehicle will need minor repairs after the encounter in order to function again. A vehicle reduced to zero hit points will immediately cease functioning and, if in motion at the time, crash. It may be totaled (reduced to negative bloodied value) or it may simply need major repairs to function again.

- Vehicles have a size, similar in intention and implementation to monster sizes, but might be narrower than they are wide. Size should refer to its longest dimension, so a 3-square-long (15′) vehicle would be Huge, etc.

- Vehicles act as mobile platforms that one or more creatures can occupy. They’re treated as difficult terrain in terms of moving onto them from the surrounding area, but movement inside in general should be treated as unimpeded (unless there are a lot of obstacles — seats, cargo, etc).

- Vehicles have a speed.

- One time this speed is considered “cruising”; two times this speed is “racing”.

- For a minor action on part of the driver, Speed can be temporarily boosted by a successful skill roll (Mechanics?) against a moderate target, adding two squares to the base speed of the vehicle for that round. Failing this roll reduces the base speed by two squares. (The increase/reduction reverses if the driver is trying to wrestle with the controls of an out-of-control speeding vehicle.)

- For a move action on the part of the driver, the driver can:
+ Increase the current speed from “stopped” to “cruising”
+ Increase the current speed from “cruising” to “racing”
+ Decrease the current speed from “cruising” to “stopped”
+ Decrease the current speed from “racing” to “cruising”
+ Turn the vehicle up to 90 degrees. (45 degrees — going from a perpendicular to diagonal direction or vice-versa — is also possible)
+ Make a (Mechanics?) roll to turn the vehicle more than 90 degrees. This is Moderate if the vehicle is currently cruising, Hard if the vehicle is currently racing.
+ Make a (Mechanics?) roll to take the vehicle from racing to stopped or vice-versa. Moderate difficulty.
+ If either roll is failed when attempted, the vehicle gains the Out Of Control condition (see below).

- Vehicles move a number of squares equal to their current speed at the end of the driver’s turn (or, if there’s no driver, at the end of the round).

- Crashes should be rated as doing damage as is level-appropriate for a low medium or high limited damage expression, with low/medium/high determined based on speed. Occupants that are not restrained will be pushed from the vehicle in a random (1d8 determines) direction equal to half the vehicle’s speed immediately prior to the crash. The vehicle takes damage from the crash as well.

OUT OF CONTROL (Condition)
- The vehicle can’t go slower than cruising
- All driver actions require a (Mechanics?) roll to succeed. Actions which would already require a roll are made at -2.
- If the driver makes a (Mechanics?) roll to control the vehicle, roll a d20. On a 10 or better, the vehicle loses the Out of Control condition.
- If the driver fails a (Mechanics?) roll to control the vehicle, roll 1d6:
1: The vehicle turns 45 degrees to the left
2: The vehicle turns 90 degrees to the left
3: The vehicle turns 45 degrees to the right
4: The vehicle turns 90 degrees to the right
5: The vehicle speed increases to racing if it isn’t already. If it is, the vehicle crashes.
6: The vehicle crashes.

This four-hour event, sponsored by Critical-Hits.com, will take place on Saturday, December 18th, from 2pm to 6pm, at Labyrinth in downtown Washington, DC (it’s metro-accessible!).

In the Gamma World RPG, you’ll get the chance to experience mutated strangeness, post-apocalyptic adventure, and almost certain death. Whether you’re new to RPGs in general, or Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, or an old hand at it all, everyone is welcome. We’ll quickly teach what you need to play, and then take everyone on a wild ride through a strange-yet-familiar landscape. We’ll do randomized character creation at the start of the session, a key part of Gamma World’s appeal, and after the session’s end at 6pm, we’ll adjourn to grab some nearby eats and find out who met the bizarrest end (friend or foe).

As a holiday bonus, table fees will be waved by the fine folks at Labyrinth — all you’ll need to do to get in on the action is let us know you’re coming. Seats will go fast, so make sure you contact us as soon as you can at atasteof@critical-hits.com to request yours. When you do, please let us know what your level of familiarity with 4th Edition D&D is, so we can match folks with similar levels of playing experience (or get enough mentors at each table!).

We hope to see you at Labyrinth on December 18th, for A Taste of Gamma World!

EDIT: Note! For the first hour that this post was up, the email address was misspelled. If your message to us has bounced, that’s why. It’s now correct as shown above.

EDIT #2: Half the seats are gone as of 1:30pm on Thursday — 7 slots remain!

EDIT #3: All 15 slots are full — so we’re expanding the event to have an additional 5 slots (and one more GM). If you’re interested, now is the time to speak up!

The store has a few key things going for it which may set it apart from other stores:

• It’s a super attractive, very open-feeling space despite having a long narrow floorplan with a slight bend in the middle (see the photos below).
• The front window lets in a lot of light to the front part of the store — and the back of the store ALSO has a big window that lets in daylight to the back half. As a result it’s one of the few game stores that’s managed to pull off the abundant natural light feel, which I think is a huge win for atmosphere. (Endgame in Oakland, CA is the big example of this in my mind.)
• It has a very family-friendly vibe going. The owner actively encourages folks to bring their kids and let them run around and explore the store.
• Location: while the parking isn’t great, the fact that this is a very metro-accessible game store smack in the middle of the DC area means that we may now have a convenient, central location to have the occasional mini-con. The store could seat 4 tables of 6 easily as is, with the option to shuffle some shelving around and get another couple tables if need be. Plus, there’s good (if Capitol Hill priced) variety in the nearby walkable food options.

I’m interested in seeing if we can get a few events happening at the store. Taking a cue from the Endgame/Go Play SF Bay “A Taste Of…” events, Tom Cadorette and I may be looking soon into organizing a few “A Taste Of… [fill in an RPG here]” events in the coming months. On the short-list of early candidates, I think, would be Gamma World, Leverage, and Fiasco. In the somewhat longer-term view, we might look at doing a multi-slot all-day thing ala “FateCon” or “HatCon” or what have you, but for right now looking at doing a single-slot, 2pm-6pm thing on a weekend “taste of” events to get our feet under us is likely the right call.

Anyway, enough of my rambling — I’m still processing my visit to the shop and thinking about possibilities — and on to a view of some of the pics I shot while there.

The Storefront

Store owner Kat explains Settlers of Catan to a customer

Front area of the store

The middle bit, at the "bend"

Back of the store, showing the window and the play space, with bonus Tom

The RPG shelf. As noted, not stocked wide or deep -- yet -- but if we can demonstrate demand for the product, Kat is definitely interested in supporting that!

Hal Mangold, Tom Cadorette, Kristin I-Forget-Her-Last-Name (@celeloriel), and Adam Jury

• My original Bandwidth post
• Daniel’s 5×5 thoughts

So, Daniel recently reposted his thoughts in response to my Bandwidth idea from December last year, and it’s gotten some interest stirred up on Twitter and his blog. Daniel’s 5×5 notion is solid, but it also cleaves close to the kind of design he prefers: interesting word-game mechanics which build towards the collaborative creation of a story. My angle is usually much more inhabit-a-character oriented and as such Dan’s designs — while good! — aren’t always in the pocket for me in terms of the designs I personally want to play. [1]

As a designer, I’m more interested in creating interesting dynamics of choice and tension through the numerical operation of the game mechanics, and THEN fitting theme and story to that. Bandwidth comes from the other direction, however, by saying “here’s some general themestuff and a setting concept” and then looking for system pieces that fit that. So as I back-of-the-brain tinker with this concept, I discard a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit the mechanical motifs that I find interesting. It’s a process of finding the Venn overlap between my system preferences and the setting conceit. At present, here’s what’s left after that vigorous flensing.

So here are words and phrases from the theme (radio broadcast superpowers) which I find interesting and which I think can be tied into system:

• 5×5 – Strength and Clarity
• Distortion
• Static/Interference

Here’s how I’d systemize these concepts for something interesting-to-me.

Tuners (or Receivers), the folks who gain powers by listening to the right signals, list the various signals they can pick up on their character sheets. They’ll rate these in terms of maximums — how much signal power they can handle (Strength) and how clear of a signal they can manage to achieve (Clarity) with their natural equipment. Strength will correspond to the magnitude of the effect the power can have, while clarity will correspond to how finely controlled that power can be utilized. Maybe the system will value clarity more than strength, if there’s a point-buy gig going on here, making it cost, say, 3 points per point of clarity but only 2 points per point of strength. [2]

Six sided dice, maybe as few as two (and definitely no fewer) get rolled when resolving an action. The goal is to get two numbers, each equal to or less than the strength & clarity numbers the character has for that signal, hopefully exactly equal so the character performs at peak ability. (Stay with me here.)

The player rolls the d6es and allocates two numbers from the results, one to strength, one to clarity. The more clarity (beneath or at your maximum), the more control you can exercise over the effect, the more delicate, the more complex. The more strength (beneath or at your maximum), the more power output you can achieve, covering a wider area, a more potent hit, etc.

If you can’t allocate a number that’s less than or equal to your target strength, that creates distortion, like what happens when you try to play something too loud through speakers that can’t handle it. In the game, distortion is a measure of unintended side-effects — extra bits of power that spew out the sides of your ability, increasing the level of (unintended/undesired) property damage and bystander casualty for example, or changing the nature of your power (it doesn’t sound the same!) in this instance.

If you can’t allocate a number that’s less than or equal your target clarity, that creates static; static builds up over time and (perhaps) reduces the number of dice you can subsequently roll, until you get a chance to squelch it. In play this may feel a bit like hit points: if you can’t roll at least 2 dice because of the static penalties you’ve accumulated, you aren’t receiving any signals. You’re jammed.

Even when generating static or distortion, generally your character successfully does something — assume that your power operates at its max level in something you can’t allocate, it just has some nasty side-effects, so long as you’re not allocating a 6. If you can only allocate a six to something, that should be a significant screw-up.

Let’s talk a few scenarios.

I’m playing a Human Torch type dude, someone who can dial in a lot of pyrokinetic power (Strength 4) and is at least middling good at mastering it (Clarity 3). Let’s say the default number of dice I might be rolling at the moment is 4 d6es (the number rolled needs to be examined but the idea isn’t far enough along yet to be sure of the ideal quantity).

Case 1: I roll 6, 5, 4, 2. I need to allocate that 2 to my Clarity, and that 4 to my Strength, to get close to ideal: I don’t have my ideal level of finesse with how I use the power this time around, but I am able to dish it out at my maximum power level (4). So maybe this is a quick-from-the-hip burst of flame tossed at my target: it burns what it should burn, but it’s not as selective or well-targeted as it could be [3]. Or maybe I could decide I’m willing to take a burst of static in order to get the higher clarity result, allocate the 4 to my Clarity (it’s over my 3, so I get a 3 clarity result) and the 2 to my Strength (I didn’t need that much power in order to pull off the effect I’m going for).

Case 2: I roll 6, 5, 5, 3. I go for 3 clarity, and 5 strength, over my 4, which gets me some distortion. Bam! I fry the target, but (distortion) I fry it a little too good and a fire begins to spread. Or maybe instead (distortion) I throw my flames at the target but it comes out as more light than heat — I overload its optic sensors, but I don’t do lasting structural damage.

Case 3: I roll 6, 5, 5, 4. I can’t allocate any proper number to my clarity, but the 4 hits the target for my strength, so I put that there (I don’t want any distortion). This does mean I end up with one or more points of static (do I have to allocate a 5, and subtract my 3 clarity rating, to take 2 static? or do I just call this a burst of static and make a single tick mark?), which will reduce my subsequent die pool. But I get a clarity 3 effect and maximum power, and grit my teeth through the painful static.

Case 4: After taking some static I end up rolling only 2 dice. I get a 6, 3, and now the pain really sets in. First off, I have to allocate a 6, and if it’s clarity then there’s a complete lack of control, a true miss; if it’s strength, then I simply have no juice, a straight up fizzle. Where I put the six matters more than color, though. If it’s strength, then I’m looking at distortion, pure distortion as my power runs away with itself and does something really unintended. If it’s clarity, then I take static again, which would take my die pool down to 1 die — removing me from the fight as I get jammed. It’s likely I’ll choose the distortion, but what if my Aunt Mae is in the crowd?

So that’s the rough draft start of the direction I’d take the idea into system. It likely has some deep flaws to it, but it’s a start, and the dice allocation and shrinking pool elements mean I get the effects I’m looking for in a design: tension as the pool shrinks due to static [4], and interesting choices as the player decides how to allocate his numbers.

—-

[1] Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s something interesting in the word-game ideas that Dan has, but I also find myself squinting a bit when a sentence like “I kill you” is easier to build than “I kill your dog”. Yes, I’m oversimplifying his ideas here, but hopefully you get my point. [back]

[2] So, the Hulk’s superstrength signal might be high strength, low clarity — not a lot of control but a hell of a lot of power. Dazzler’s lightshow ability might be low strength, high clarity — a lot of finesse in using the power, but not a ton of punch. Magneto would be a classic 5×5 guy, tons of power and a lot of deliberate versatility in its use. [back]

[3] I’m imagining the existence of tables for both Strength and Clarity that give examples of what a use at levels 1 through 5 of each might look like. Today, I’m handwaving it a bit. Bear with me. [back]

[4] “Interference” is probably a term I’d use to describe static that’s inflicted upon you by others. Maybe that points at a “contested roll” situation where the strengths and clarities generated are compared to one another as you try your Superstrength signal against my Forcefield one. Other axises may exist on the character sheet as well for each signal, such as a Bandwidth rating that suggests how broadly your power can be applied — Telekinesis being potentially much broader than Heat Vision, thus being a greater bandwidth power. That kind of thing. [back]

So that’s been banging around in my head. How to do it?  Pretty easily.

Two rules, up front, then I’ll explain:

• One zone = 5 squares.
• Single target = Add 2 more squares.

That’s all it takes. These proceed from the notion that each character stands at the center of a 5 square by 5 square “zone”.

The second rule comes from what that implies: any square within two squares of the character’s position is within that 5×5 zone.

Combine them and you get these effects:

• If you’re going to move one zone, move up to 5 squares on the map.
• If you’re going to move more than one zone (e.g., sprint), multiply that by 5 squares and that’s how far you can move.
• If you’re making a melee attack, you can attack a character within 2 squares of your position.
• If you’re using a weapon that lets you attack someone in an adjacent zone, you can attack a character up to 7 squares away. (Think about it: the next zone over has a center that’s 5 squares away from yours. Anything within 2 squares of that zone’s center is within that zone, so “one zone away” is anywhere between 3 and 7 squares away from you. Therefore, the range in squares of a single-target weapon with a range of one zone is 7 squares. Two zones is 12, three zones is 17, etc.)
• If you’re using an attack that “affects all targets in a zone”, then take its range (say, 2 zones), multiply by 5 (so, 10 squares), and that’s how far you can place the center of the 5×5 square effect. (You don’t get the +2 squares for placing the center because the 5×5 square would reach beyond the maximum single target range.)

Once you’ve got something like this going you can start looking at appropriating some of 4e’s map movement notions into stunts, introducing pushes and pulls and attack-of-opportunity rules and whatnot if you really want to get hackin’. At the least, you could add a “zero-zone move” to the vocabulary — since “the same zone” is within 2 squares of your current position, you could introduce a rule that allows the character to move up to 2 squares without taking the -1 penalty for a supplemental move action.

But even without that, the hack lets you make use of all those maps you’ve got stacked up for your maps-and-minis gaming, which for me and that map bug that done bit me is potentially really nice.

I’m also intrigued by the notion that this means the dividing lines between zones are more flexible and are relative to each character in this model. Each character is at the center of his or her own 5sq x 5sq zone, so the dividing lines for that guy who’s three squares away from me don’t fall in the same places.

If anyone gets a chance to try this out at home, let me know how it goes.

I want to get us started on running the occasional linked set of Gamma World adventures. I want to play, but in order to get this started NOW, I am going to run the kick-off storyline. My thought is that we can do a GM hotseat thing, swapping up who has the wheel between adventures.

Initial play will occur in the swampy wilds stretching between the Baldy Moor and Ashington Deece. Our backyard.

Real world location is my house in Hillandale, MD (Silver Spring ish).

First session will be Thursday November 11 between 7pm and 11pm. I know this pushes things a little late for Rob, and might start a little early for some other folks…which should illustrate to you right there why I picked those times. If you can make it earlier than 7pm, that would be great, since we can get character creation & kibbutz done earlier.

If there is dinner need, we can call Papa John’s. Eating choices around my house stink.

If you have a Gamma World book, bring it. Multiple copies will be a help.

I’m making this a general offer for local-ish folks who read my blog. Comment here on deadlyfredly.com if you’re interested. For open slots — I’ll take up to six players — it’ll be first come. That said, I’m giving first option on a reserved subset of those to the following folks many of whom have already indicated some interest: Rob, Chad, Dave C, E Foley, Tom C. Guys, let me know if you can/want to make it so I can fill up the other slots.

It’ll be like this each session ideally, with a rotating cast, part pickup game, part ongoing story. It’ll be a trick, but I think we, and Gamma World, can do it.

My Gamma World Mind Map. Click to Embiggen.

Also, check out the #gammatheworld tag on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23gammatheworld

A little something like this.

Where We Started

Lifetime sales prior to this quarter:

Penny: 660
DLYM: 1049
DRYH: 3034
DFRPG:OW: 4777
DFRPG:YS: 5018
HBR: 9
SOTC: 5688
SOTS: 629
S7S: 1267

So, if that’s where we started, here’s where we went:

IPR for Q3 2010

Penny: 39 (12 retail, 16 convention)
Penny PDF: 9
Diaspora: 25 (20 retail)
Diaspora PDF: 4
DLYM: 31 (21 convention, 4 retail)
DLYM PDF: 3
DRYH: 46 (25 convention, 12 retail)
DRYH PDF: 4
DFRPG:OW: 300 (171 convention, 79 retail)
DFRPG:OW PDF: 2
DFRPG:YS: 407 (225 convention, 115 retail)
DFRPG:YS PDF: 6
HBR: 55 (44 retail)
HBR PDF: 4
SOTC: 52 (26 convention, 21 retail)
SOTC PDF: 3
SOTS PDF: 1
S7S: 20 (10 convention, 6 retail)
S7S PDF: 0

OBS for Q3 2010

Penny PDF: 6
DLYM PDF: 21
DRYH PDF: 31 (3 in Hebrew)
DFRPG:OW PDF: 178
DFRPG:YS PDF: 205
HBR PDF: 17
SOTC PDF: 67
SOTS PDF: 11
S7S PDF: 16

e23 for Q3 2010

Penny PDF: 1
Diaspora PDF: 2
DFRPG:OW PDF: 1
DFRPG:YS PDF: 2
SOTC PDF: 3
S7S PDF: 1

Lulu for Q3 2010

DRYH: 2
DRYH PDF: 1
SOTC HC: 1

Distribution Orders for Q3 2010

Hopefully I’m not getting the numbers wrong on this; the honest truth is that I’m not sure where I cut off my reporting last quarter, so these numbers are slightly “guessy” in the sense that I might be double-dipping on a couple sources of data from the end of last quarter.

On top of that, some of last quarter’s stuff doesn’t get invoiced until THIS quarter, so I’m essentially going to omit a big hunk of September’s sales here, treating them as part of Q4 down the line.

Still, them numbers down yonder, they don’t stink.

Penny: 132
Diaspora: 66
DLYM: 137
DRYH: 152
DFRPG:OW: 1285
DFRPG:YS: 1776
HBR: 189
SOTC: 201
S7S: 133

Evil Hat Webstore Orders for Q3 2010

Penny: 6
Penny PDF: 7
Diaspora: 32
Diaspora PDF: 7
DLYM: 3
DLYM PDF: 9
DRYH: 14
DRYH PDF: 15
DFRPG:OW: 311
DFRPG:OW PDF: 86
DFRPG:YS: 348
DFRPG:YS PDF: 97
HBR: 5
HBR PDF: 0
SOTC: 17
SOTC PDF: 10
SOTS PDF: 1
S7S: 4
S7S PDF: 3

Totals for Q3

Penny: 39+6+132=177
Penny PDF: 9+6+2+7=24
Diaspora: 25+32+66=123
Diaspora PDF: 4+1+7=12
DLYM: 31+3+137=171
DLYM PDF: 3+21+9=33
DRYH: 46+2+14+152=214
DRYH PDF: 4+31+1+15=51
DFRPG:OW: 300+311+1285=1896
DFRPG:OW PDF: 2+178+1+86=267
DFRPG:YS: 407+348+1776=2531
DFRPG:YS PDF: 6+205+2+97=310
HBR: 55+5+189=249
HBR PDF: 4+17=21
SOTC: 52+17+201=270
SOTC HC: 1
SOTC PDF: 3+67+1+10=81
SOTS PDF: 1+11+1=13
S7S: 20+4+133=157
S7S PDF: 16+1+3=20

Lifetime Numbers

Penny: 660+177+24 = 861
Diaspora: 123+12 = 135
DLYM: 1049+171+33 = 1253
DRYH: 3034+214+51 = 3299
DFRPG:OW: 4777+1896+267 = 6940 (ding!)
DFRPG:YS 5018+2531+310 = 7859 (ding!)
HBR: 9+249+21 = 279
SOTC: 5688+270+1+81 = 6040 (ding!)
SOTS: 629+13 = 642
S7S: 1267+157+20 = 1444

SOTC broke 6000, but also got lapped by both DFRPG books.  DFRPG sales numbers clocked in around 50%, very roughly, of the previous quarter. We had very strong direct sales in the hundreds, but in terms of quantity of books moved, the retail/distribution channel made the strongest showing (not a shock; that’s what it’s there for).

Remember, as always, you can pick these items up at the Evil Hat Webstore: http://www.evilhat.com/store/

What are your thoughts on the numbers?

My other personal project that was active at the time may have had something to do with it. I’m looking forward to DC Game Day and I’ve been thinking about running an Inception-inspired game, making use of some mechanical ideas from Don’t Rest Your Head (but, essentially, a new system). So that’s where I spent my design juice instead.

Last night, I got to use Skype voice to run a playtest of the system. It has some flaws, but perhaps not too many, and I think I can tune to minimize them if not eliminate them. I think, for one, I gave the default dice for the GM a too-potent size; d8′s might have been more appropriate than d10′s. Other stuff like that. Fiddle fiddle, tune tune. (This *might* turn into a Thing, and regardless still doesn’t qualify as completely baked, so I am not ready to make the rules widely publicly available yet.)

Prior to the Skype session I shot emails around with the folks who I’d be running for, getting them to do some character creation and mission assembly. Here’s the team:

Morgan: “Martin Road”. Mission architect, would rather live in dreams than in real life. Devoted to the team, the mission, haunted by clocks. Architect: 2, Athlete: 1, Sentinel: 1, Baggage d8

Dave: “Colin Farley”. Grifter. A bit paranoid/cautious now; projections take extra notice of him, obstacles arise that encourage risk taking. Grifter: 2, Sentinel: 1, Baggage d6

E (geeksdreamgirl): “Winnie Monroe”. Thief, has an incurable STD in real life so tends to play it pretty sexually active in the dream-space. That’s how she gets her fix. She’s haunted by her children-that-never-were. Thief: 2, Forger: 1, Baggage d6

Daniel: “Badger”. High-functional schizophrenic, tends to attract a lot of attention from projections, but very good at creating confounding mazes at a moment’s notice. Badger’s baggage tends to reshape the landscape, dangerously. Architect: 2, Forger: 2, Baggage d8

Robb: “Kasper Heinrich Fredrick Meyer III”. Consummate soldier. Follows orders and covers his team. Great with firearms. But he’s haunted by his dead brother. Soldier: 2, Architect: 1, Athlete: 1, Baggage d8

The size of that “baggage” die indicates how much subconscious baggage the character is bringing to the mission (smaller is less, and better; but you can have more talent points if you take on more baggage). Everyone took at least some, and knowing gamer psychology about one-shots, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the majority of them took maximum starting baggage, but I was surprised, a little.

Once the characters were established and their relationships set, it was time to figure out who the target is, and what the nature of the mission is:

WHO IS THE TARGET: The Old Man. Harrison Carter. Originator of the Program. You all know him at least passingly, if not more closely, and vice-versa.

WHO IS THE CLIENT: Freda Carter. His wife. She’s terrified of what Harrison Carter is capable of, and wants to disappear from his life. (She won’t countenance murder, and besides, there’s too great of a chance of that failing with someone like Carter.) Taking care of the paperwork side of that is not so difficult; it’s dealing with Harrison’s tenacity and personal knowledge of her that’s tricky. So she needs someone to go into his mind and make him forget the crucial piece of information that will tell him where she’s running to.

They also needed to figure out what the levels of dream were for the target. A lot of discussion happened around this; ultimately it was settled that they would sell Carter the idea that someone had infiltrated his dream in order to traumatize him, and then convince him it was his wife, and then to bury (literally, in the dream) some crucial thoughts of her in the deepest dream, as a way of protecting himself from the psychic intrusion (thereby burying the crucial knowledge away).

A sixth team member was added, my friend Matt, playing “Tom Crewes”, the verifier that Mrs. Carter wanted to come along on the mission in order to make sure it was complete. Unknown to the rest of the crew, I talked to Matt on the side and told him that he was a) likely Mrs. Carter’s lover, and b) had the ulterior motive of making sure that Harrison Carter and the team he helped create got buried down under the psychic bedrock and not to emerge. Matt decided to play this subtle and didn’t step up as Crewes a whole lot during the mission… the better to strike when folks had forgotten he was there.

I also gave them “Bob, the Chemist”, an NPC who was going to take care of the first layer of the dream, much like the chemist in the movie did.

Speaking of the dream-layer plan:

Level 1: The Lighthouse (Dreamer: Bob the Chemist). Here, they sell the idea that Carter has been taken deep into his subconscious (hence the nearby ocean) and that they are his militarized projections here to help him claw his way back out. The scene is supposed to start mundanely enough, only to have a serious attack of induced surreality a la Badger. (Badger was recruited because of his mental issues; in the Program, they call him a weaponized psyche.)

Level 2: The Train Loop (Dreamer: Kasper Meyer). On a circular track, a train travels through a mountain range meant to evoke Carter’s honeymoon. An encounter with his “wife” (Winnie) will be arranged, and leveraged to sell the idea that his attackers are using her/working with her to get at Carter.

Level 3: The Mansion Party (Dreamer: Colin Farley). A gala event in a big mansion with a big basement. Here, the team gets Carter to bury the memory of where he first met his wife in the basement, bricking her up in a For The Love Of God Montressor style, thereby achieving the mission.

Here’s a writeup of what happened; I’m definitely leaving some parts out, but hopefully this puts across the gist.

I opened the game with them trying to get access to Carter. I goofed a little and didn’t have everyone roll all the dice they were supposed to in these “initiation-ala-Dogs” scenes, but it all worked out despite that.

First, Winnie talked with the wife and studied some wedding footage to get enough of an understanding of her to “forge” her in the dream. Then Colin ran the con on Carter: he had a great opportunity that might win them both diplomatic immunity in Hong Kong, but his contact had to meet with Carter Right Now. Ushered up to the loft apartment where the abduction was planned, they passed by Kasper and Badger who were hanging back at a convenience store. Badger’s challenge was, simply, to keep it together and not screw the mission by having an “episode”; Kasper helped him with this (or more to the point, kept him from running out into the street and screaming at Carter at an inopportune moment). Up at the loft, Colin stepped into the room only to be knocked unconscious by a masked man (Crewes). Martin then made his move to apprehend Carter, but Carter is still a spry ex-intel guy and managed to sock Martin and make a run for it. Carter ran into Kasper, ordered Kasper to cover his retreat, and then got knocked down by Kasper when he turned his back on him. The team had him sedated and began the dream in short order.

At the Lighthouse, the mission had a slow but reasonably effective start; Badger trapped Carter in the stairwell to the top, then set up the circumstance for the team to present as Carter’s supporting projections while they fended off the actual projections in the form of crack commandos in rubber boats (Kasper shot the rafts, stranding them out in the middle of the ocean, despite his brother manifesting as one of the boat captains), and the fake projections from Badger who attacked under a melting sky, piloting modern Somali pirate boats but dressed like they were from a pirate movie. Clues as to his wife’s involvement were then inserted (“this was our song at our wedding”), and in that moment they got Carter to agree to go under to a second dream, to try to dig into what was going on.

This put them on the Train. In short order and possibly thanks to Martin Road being haunted by countdown clocks (his baggage), they discovered some bombs planted on the train, putting them under time pressure (15 minutes!). They went to the dining car and found Carter’s “wife” there in her honeymoon outfit. A strange conversation ensued where Carter vigorously refused the food she tried to offer him (thinking it was a trick), but cementing the notion that someone was working with/as his wife to get something out of him. He conferred with the team briefly, only to see his wife make a break for it. They gave chase.

Winnie/wife got a short distance ahead, only to have some of Carter’s projections show up to intercept the team chasing her. Badger picked up on this and rearranged the train a bit, inserting an old 1930′s circus car complete with caged animals in between the team’s and Winnie’s cars. The projections didn’t pay Winnie much mind (she didn’t read as hostile), so naturally Winnie stripped buck naked and tried encouraging them to join her. (Took a successful die roll, but she did manage to peel at least a few of them off with this gambit.)

Meanwhile, the rest of the team couldn’t find their way out of the circus car, so had to take a ladder to the roof of the train. They got up there, only to find one of Carter’s projections coming up through the roof of Winnie’s car. That’s when something happened at the Lighthouse level and caused the entire scene to tilt forward; as Kasper began sliding down the train towards the projection, he tried to make an attack of it, but the projection was fast, got in a shot at him and causing Kasper to pitch over the side, grabbing on at the last moment. Carter was next in line and got grabbed and yanked inside the train car. As the team regrouped up top, Carter — thanks to the successful con — attacked the projection that pulled him in and took him out. Then he saw that his “wife” was amorously engaged with several other men, and shot them too, and started yelling at her, eventually getting to the gun-in-face “WHO ARE YOU?!” moment they’d been building towards.

Badger pulled another trick, running the train through a dark tunnel, and letting Winnie/wife escape during one of the pitch-black moments. Colin helped cement the con then with Carter, getting Carter to suggest that they capture his “wife” and go into her head in order to put this psychic intrusion to rest. Per the plan, they caught up with Winnie shortly, put her under, and brought Carter along. Kasper was left behind to act as overwatch (and he couldn’t go deeper because the train was his dream anyway).

This put them in the mansion party. Crewes and Badger peeled off to set up some “clues” to guide Carter towards the burial plan, while Martin and Colin stayed with Carter to shepherd him towards the necessities. Winnie/wife also got into position. This is of course when Crewes sprung the trap, and used his alone-time with Badger to trigger Badger’s psychosis. As Colin, Martin, and Carter headed to the basement, Badger snapped, started melting the scenery, and shrieked at Crewes to shut up, bludgeoning him to death with a hammer. Martin, seeing this scene, summarily shot Badger in the head. Winnie lock picked a door that was trying to bite her (thanks to Badger) and tried to push the mission forward as Carter’s wife again; Colin did his best to get Carter on board with bricking her up per the plan. Despite certain “spongy scenery” issues thanks to what Badger did, this got going…

… but up on the Train level, Crewes woke up and told Kasper that Badger had freaked out and was causing havoc. Kasper stayed on mission: was the mission complete? No? Then he wasn’t going to administer the Kick. Crewes decided it was a better idea to complete his betrayal on the Lighthouse level, though, and so he shot himself in the head in order to migrate up. This also convinced Kasper it was time to pull the emergency brake since Crewes is supposed to verify mission success; if he’s checked out, then he can’t, so, mission failure. Kasper started towards the end of the car that has the brake …

… and Badger wakes up behind him, still freaking, and starts making the train impossible: fused cars, doors into sleeper cabins that instead open up in to other cars, all in an effort to hole up and “encyst” himself in the train’s architecture so he can be safe. This confounds Kasper’s ability to pull the brake, so he tries to make it back to Badger and, having a bit of Architect in his Talents as well, gets into an “architect duel” with Badger. It goes horribly wrong (the dice said neither of them won, but the Threat from the GM did), and they rip the train apart, sending their car hurtling along faster than ever and rattling itself apart …

… triggering an earthquake down on the mansion level. Martin shouts at Carter to finish bricking in his wife (he needs to complete this task for mission success), but then gets promptly buried under a section of collapsed ceiling. Colin takes up the call, and crucially pushes Carter out of the way of a hunk of ceiling, getting half-buried himself instead. Carter finishes bricking her in. He gets crushed. Winnie checks out a la gun. Colin is stranded behind in his dream, unable to get to the means to check himself out …

… while everyone else wakes up in the hurtling train car of doom. “DID YOU PULL THE BRAKE?” shouts Martin. “CAN’T. BADGER HID IT!” says Kasper. Martin has an idea: he claws and runs to the front of the car, and then looks under the front lip of it. Sure enough, yet another bomb is present there. Martin mashes the BIG RED BUTTON, detonating the bomb and himself. The car pitches forward, and…

… that “kick” travels down to the mansion level, spinning the room that Colin is in, getting him unburied. Broken and bleeding he reaches for a gun that’s clattering around, puts it to his head and …

… wakes up in the train car, which tumbles and crashes and …

… everyone wakes up in the Lighthouse, where the doors are barricaded, pirates are pounding on the door and trying to scale the exterior walls. Crewes smiles at them all, says, “Mrs. Carter sends her regards,” then shoots Bob (whose dream the Lighthouse is) and himself (checking out).

I left the game there with an open question as to whether the team would make it out, or drop into Limbo, putting an end to Carter and the products of his former Program.

Where We Started

Lifetime:

Penny: 471
DLYM: 860
DRYH: 2746
SOTC: 5219
SOTS: 605
S7S: 987

IPR For Q2 2010

Penny PDF: 2
Penny Print: 29 (20 retail)
DLYM PDF: 4
DLYM Print: 38 (35 retail)
DRYH PDF: 9
DRYH Print: 57 (48 retail)
DFRPG:OW PDF: 7
DFRPG:OW Print: 81 (50 retail)
DFRPG:YS PDF: 7
DFRPG:YS Print: 100 (64 retail)
SOTC PDF: 4
SOTC Print: 58 (49 retail)
SOTS PDF: 1
S7S PDF: 2
S7S Print: 19 (12 retail)

OBS For Q2 2010

Penny PDF: 10
DLYM PDF: 24
DRYH PDF: 39
DFRPG:OW PDF: 339
DFRPG:YS PDF: 354
Happy Birthday Robot PDF: 8
SOTC PDF: 104
SOTS PDF: 15
S7S PDF: 14

e23 for Q2 2010

DRYH PDF: 1
SOTC PDF: 1

Lulu for Q2 2010

DRYH Print: 4
SOTC PDF: 2
SOTC HC: 9

Distribution Orders, Retailer Orders, and Convention Sales in Q2 2010

This is a healthy mix, mostly Alliance and Esdevium, but later on ACD, Lion Rampant, Pegasus Spiele, and others. (We recently added PHD and one or two others to our distribution contacts as well.)

Penny Print: 130
DLYM Print: 98
DRYH Print: 136
DFRPG:OW Print: 2626
DFRPG:YS Print: 2741
SOTC Print: 251
S7S Print: 232

Evil Hat Webstore Totals for Q2 2010

Penny PDF: 9
Penny Print: 9
DLYM PDF: 10
DLYM Print: 15
DRYH PDF: 15
DRYH Print: 27
DFRPG:OW PDF: 120
DFRPG:OW Print: 1604
DFRPG:YS PDF: 112
DFRPG:YS Print: 1704
Happy Birthday Robot Print: 1
SOTC PDF: 9
SOTC Print: 31
SOTS PDF: 8
S7S PDF: 4
S7S Print: 9

Totals for Q2 (HOLY CRAP)

Penny PDF: 2 + 10 + 9 = 21
Penny Print: 29 + 9 + 130 = 168
DLYM PDF: 4 + 24 + 10 =  38
DLYM Print: 38 + 15 + 98 = 151
DRYH PDF: 9 + 39 + 1 + 15 = 64
DRYH Print: 57 + 4 + 27 + 136 = 224
DFRPG:OW PDF: 7 + 339 + 120 = 466
DFRPG:OW Print: 81 + 1604 + 2626 = 4311
DFRPG:YS PDF: 7 + 354 + 112 = 473
DFRPG:YS Print: 100 + 1704 + 2741 = 4545
Happy Birthday Robot PDF: 8 + 1 = 9
SOTC PDF: 4 + 104 + 1 + 2 + 9 = 120
SOTC Print: 58 + 31 + 251 = 340
SOTC HC: 9
SOTS PDF: 1 + 15 + 8 = 24
S7S PDF: 2 +  14 + 4 = 20
S7S Print: 19 + 9 +232 = 260

Lifetime:

Penny: 471 + 21 + 168 = 660
DLYM: 860 + 38 + 151 = 1049 (ding! 1k milestone)
DRYH: 2746 + 64 + 224 = 3034 (ding! 3k milestone)
DFRPG:OW: 466 + 4311 = 4777
DFRPG:YS 473 + 4545 = 5018
Happy Birthday Robot PDF: 9 * Note that this does not include the ones sold in Daniel’s kickstarter preorder!
SOTC: 5219 + 120 + 340 + 9 = 5688
SOTS: 605 + 24 = 629
S7S: 987 + 20 + 260 = 1267

Analysis will have to come another time, as I’ve got an evening ahead of me. But feel free to start in with your own observations in the comments!

I’ve talked about this pretty extensively over on The Dresden Files RPG website and on RPG.net, but over here at Deadly Fredly the goal with publishing posts is to pass along things that other folks can learn from. With that in mind I want to talk less about the things that went wrong so much as the anatomy of a preorder ship-out and the lessons available from the mistakes.

Let’s get down to it.

The Problem With Serving Everyone

So this is really the first time that Evil Hat has been in a position to offer strong preorder options via distribution and other means into the retailer/FLGS channel as well as direct to customers. Consider that if we weren’t selling strongly into retail prior to the product’s release, the folks who preordered directly from Evil Hat would not have the point of comparison of “dammit, this showed up in my local store a couple weeks before I got it!” Folks would simply be getting their stuff over the course of the past week and the next couple and it’d all be copacetic.  So one of the problems here is that in opening up multiple alternative ways for our customers to get our games, we’ve also created a ripe risk of problems when any one of those methods fails to execute on the same or similar schedule to all the others. In other words, if you fail to do anything other than a successful simultaneous release, someone — multiple someones, in fact — will come out the other side feeling shortchanged.

The root problem here is that the methods are intrinsically unequal, so achieving a simultaneous release is pretty tricky. Here’s a quick illustration using made-up numbers:

Suppose you have 2000 books that have been preordered. 1000 are via a distributor that sells to FLGSes, and 1000 are individual preorders you got through your web-store. That distributor in turn has, say, 100 FLGSes it’s going to ship to.  You wanna do things as simultaneously as you can, so you make sure your warehouse and the distributor both have the books in hand before you pull the trigger.

The trigger gets pulled and the shipping operation goes into full swing. The distributor ships stuff for a living, and on a massive scale. Day one they’ve got everything boxed up for those 100 destinations and all the labels printed up and scheduled with their shipping service of choice. Stuff gets picked up on day 2 and delivered pretty darn fast. The stores have those books on their shelves within a few days, they’re notifying their customers, and the customers end up with them in hand. Let’s say that all in all a week plus maybe a day or two extra has passed in this timespan, and that’s at the outside.

That’s the amount of time your warehouse — which is probably a smaller operation, or worse, you, personally — has to create ten times as many shipments, if you want to land at least somewhat close to “simultaneous”. In many — perhaps even most — cases, it just won’t play out like that. And every little delay that might come up — packing material not delivered on time, someone needing to run to the hospital a couple times in the first week, the warehouse head might need to be on the ground at Origins when the product is getting its first exposure to the public rather than back at the warehouse keeping things moving at maximum swiftness, etc — compounds the inequalities at play.

And that in short is how you get to our situation. The numbers are a little different, but the shape of the result is the same.

So How Do You “Fix” That?

Good question, and it’s one I’m not sure I can answer, but it is one I can explore.

Let’s first look at simple issues of breaking the timing model. We chose to tell our warehouse/shipping service and our distributors that they could start the shipping operation at the same time. We could have told our warehouse to get cracking a week or more in advance. But even doing that as quietly and as secretly as we could have managed, at some point people start shouting about how they’ve gotten the books.

A risk enters then not with the direct preorder folks but with the retailers/distributors.  Yes, on a per unit basis you just aren’t making as much off of a sale through the FLGS channel as you are with a direct sale. So maybe on a dollar per dollar basis sales into FLGSes are not as “important” as the ones you sell direct.

But to think that is to put blinders on your brain.  FLGSes aren’t just about selling (though that’s what keeps them afloat); they’re also about concentrating customers together in a common space. That’s a fancy way of saying that a FLGS isn’t just a store, it’s also a community. Communities promote your products and play your games. But the folks running them can be persnickety — you want to keep your relationship with them as positive as possible because if they decide they aren’t well supported by you, they’ll order fewer games from you (or will just stop ordering them entirely).

And on top of that, you should also realize that they’re one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise your product. A game on a shelf at a game store is like a mini-billboard; it reaches more eyeballs than the set belonging to the guy that buys the game. But it’s a billboard that pays you for the privilege of displaying your stuff. Yes, you could look at the steep discount you have to give in order to sell the book into retail as you paying for that, but a discounted sale is still a sale and in that regard a heck of a lot better than an unsold game sitting in a box.

All of this is a long-form way to say that if you want to bump your direct preorders ship-out timeframe earlier, you can, but you risk the standing of your other business relationships when you do so, and thus doing so may not be a good long-term play.

In Evil Hat’s specific case, in order to make the scale of the Dresden Files RPG release, we forged several new partnerships in distribution and retail. The earliest part of a partnership is often its most fragile (because there’s only so much trust that can develop in a short period of time), so that left me sensitive to how it would look if we shipped out to our direct customers well in advance of shipping to those business partners.

Okay, So If You Can’t Change The Timing, What Then?

With all of the primary junk discussed above looked at, it’s time to look at the secondary factors. Here’s where all the small lessons come into play, and I’ll try to riff on them quickly here, but I’m bound to miss some of the particulars. If you’ve got a notion that it looks like I haven’t covered, speak up.

Talk about your ideal scenario early and explicitly with all involved parties. I dropped the ball a bit here; I assumed my warehouse folks would be able to handle the load in no more than 2 weeks — a week longer than the ideally-simultaneous scenario I talked about at the top of this post, but with the added benefit of being even remotely realistic. If I’d talked this out earlier and with greater detail it might have emerged that 2 weeks wasn’t likely to be the outer limit, it was going to be more like the average. (As it is it looks like the shipping window on this is 3 weeks, due to wrap up at the end of this week, with the range running June 21st-July 9th. This is at least partly due to the other complicating factors I’ve hinted at above and elsewhere.) So maybe I could have worked out something that would’ve made better sense by talking with the warehouse and the distributors and, for that matter, the customers — all involved parties means all involved parties. More communication makes things better — who can figure!

Know your limitations. I should have run some scenarios past the warehouse in advance, with numbers, to see if I had things right. In my head it seemed to make good sense that with 1600 preorders and 5 business days, 320 preorders processed per day would be possible, especially if a little boost in staffing was in the cards (it was and is in current effect). But data often has to be massaged, so I’d've added a few days on the front of that — two to three — giving things a week and a half to play out. If I’d laid that out maybe it could have been done, maybe it couldn’t, but I would have known it sooner and been able to communicate about it and manage customer expectations better at least.

Make sure to look at the rest of your pipeline, too. My warehouse/fulfillment service is located in Gerlach, Nevada. It’s a very small town (with a population boom whenever Burning Man comes around), and out in the middle of a desert, so that means the pool of available labor is small when it needs to be temporarily boosted for a big shipping operation, and it also means that the “post office” is staffed by just one person and thus probably capped at about 50 outbound shipments per day (depending on complexity — international shipments are chock full of time-eating paperwork complexity, while domestic ones can probably be higher volume).

Try to ask yourself whether or not you’re using the right tools for the job. I might have been able to leverage the shipping power of a larger operation like one of the distributors to my advantage here, entering a short term or one-off contract with them to handle the preorder shipping. This one’s tricky in terms of how much lead time it requires, though. I would have had to know I needed to do this at least a month in advance of when shipping actually started, because I would have had to tell the printer to ship the preorder quantities to the appropriate distributor warehouse instead of to my own warehouse. Plus the contract would have to be all worked out already by/before that point. Arranging for that any later would have meant shipping the product to the distributor from the warehouse instead of the printer, which would mean incurring triple shipping charges (printer to warehouse to distributor to customer) instead of just double (printer to distributor to customer). And even then that would have to be done at least a couple weeks in advance of the ship date so the product would have time to reach distro.  Looking to the future, if Evil Hat’s due to have another large preorder like this one it may make sense to establish a secondary or primary shipping relationship with a distributor able to do fulfillment services (I know Alliance offers this and I’m told PSI does as well).

But “right tools” doesn’t just stop with the warehouse/fulfillment service you choose. You should also look at the methods you’re using.  The vast majority of  preorders got “free shipping” and I decided to splurge on using UPS for all of those. That may have been a good idea; see the comment above about Gerlach’s post office’s capacity — which I didn’t know about at the time — but also consider that the most affordable shipping method for us via the USPS, Media Mail, takes several weeks to reach its target and doesn’t come with a tracking option. But it’s possible that postal mail packages might have less up front processing in terms of the data entry necessary to generate a UPS label and tracking number. Given some foresight on this one we could have run some stopwatch testing here — how long to prep 10 media mail packages vs. how long to prep 10 UPS ones, for example.

Plan for things to go wrong. When you’ve got this many moving parts in one tight timeframe, it’s not that things may go wrong, it’s that things will go wrong. At least from where I’m standing I feel like I went into this thing blind for whatever reason to the possibility that Other Things Might Happen At The Same Time. I don’t know if I could have eliminated the impact of the things that did crop up, but I might have been able to at least alter the plan in a way that would mitigate the hit.

People will get disappointed. Know who you’ll disappoint in advance. Knowing who you’ll disappoint means you can get out in front of the disappiontment and, for example, offer low-cost apology benefits where you can (I’ve already said elsewhere I’ll send a free PDF of any Evil Hat product to someone who feels wronged by how the preorder has played out, though I haven’t trumpeted it as loud as I could), or at least work at managing expectations and hopefully turning some of that disappointment into happiness simply by virtue of not keeping folks in the dark.  The worst thing you can do when disappointment comes knocking is to hide your face and say nothing. It will suck more for you (believe me), but by taking it in the face and keeping people in the loop it will suck less for them.  Your customers and business partners outnumber you, so in the algebra of customer relations you’ll net a positive by owning it and addressing it as best as you can. Anxiety increases exponentially in a vacuum of information.

What Did I Miss?

I’m sure I’m leaving out an angle or topic of discussion in all of this, but over 2,000 words in I think I’m exceeding easy reading length and I know I’m starting to lose coherence. What questions or answers or analysis do you see in recent events surrounding the Dresden Files RPG preorder shipping situation?

Back at the beginning of the Dresden Files RPG preorder in April, I decided to track daily sales data — at least as expressed through our web-store. It’s been an interesting ride, one that’s now over as I don’t intend to keep tracking day to days from here on out. I’ll share the data and some pretty graphs down below after the cut.

What’s perhaps more exciting, though, is that once we add in the distributor and direct-to-retail orders we’ve processed, DFRPG sales on each volume are in the mid-4000′s — around 75% of what we printed in the first print run. That’s major news because of another statistic I’ve been tracking across the years — Spirit of the Century’s sales numbers. With PDF and print sales combined, SOTC was just a bit past 5,000 units sold (before this quarter’s numbers get added in).  It took SOTC since the latter part of 2006 to get to that figure, about 3 and a half years. Dresden Files, meanwhile, has gotten within striking distance of that figure in three months — and with an aggregate price-point between the two volumes that’s three times what SOTC’s cover price is. Huge, huge, huge.

Granted, I have a fat check to write Jim Butcher for his royalties, a $60,000 loan to repay, and probably a $40,000-or-so reprint run (for about 3000 copies of each volume) on the nearish horizon, but I’m at ease because (once the preorder shipments wrap up and I can demonstrate their shipment to PayPal) the money we’ve been drawing in through the Evil Hat webstore pretty much covers all that. The checks that’ll roll in from the distributors in about a month will get to go right into the profit coffer.  Rob’s and my taxes will be real interesting this year, I have a feeling.

Anyway, the pretties:

Day to Day Sales

Cumulative Sales Over Time

% Difference Between Volumes in Sales Over Time

Still sitting nicely between 5 and 6 percent. The vast majority of sales are sets, still, at least in direct orders.

The Raw Data