German Publishing Revolution

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Hi,

There is a pretty cool thing happening in Germany at the moment. I guess I'm just pointing it out to say, "look what can be done in RPG publishing". If you see any points for discussion, feel free to go ahead. Fortunately for me, Settembrini has already explained quite well in English what it's about, so I can quote him.

[In Germany there is] no mass-market tradition of (Superhero) comic reading that would be comparable to the US. But. There is a huge market and audience for Pulp-Fiction (going back in tradition to Karl May), called Groschenromane. There´s one line for every taste, ranging from all kinds of romantic stuff, the ever popular special agent Jerry Cotton, the neverending exploits of Western hero G.F.Unger, the internationally known Sci-Fi franchcise Perry Rhodan, the hugely successful Geisterjäger John Sinclair and related series like Professor Zammorrah or the raunchy Vampira to the somewhat objectionable Landser-Hefte, which concern themselves with German Soldiers in the second world war. At one point in your life, you most likely have read some of those, no matter where you come from.
Most people get on a reading binge for some time, mainly in their adolescence, only to move on afterwards, but some remain fans for life.

In the year 2000 a new series started, called Maddrax. It is a series that turned out to be not at all a post-apoc Madmax-clone, but rather a Sword & Planet romp worthy of Thundarr the Barbarian, complete with violence, bug-riding Romans, cthuloid entities, time travel and bare breasted Amazon women on nearly every cover.

Next week will see the publication of an RPG for this franchise. There have been Perry Rhodan RPGs before, they all basically sucked and have been marketed very poorly. They only appealed to the audience that was into RPGs already and was a Perry Rhodan fan at the same time. But now, they are not making an RPG to be sold at RPG stores.
No they are making an RPG in the format of the Pulp-novels, and are distributing it as the anniversary 200th Episode! my mind boggles, who would have expected this?
Every fucking German newsstand will field a 3d6 based 64 page complete RPG for a totally gonzo Sword & Planet setting, which is already succesful and wonderfully illustrated next week!
For €2.50!
And they even apologized for the price increase for this double issue!

So, yeah, that's it. That's the "RPG in a bookstore". It's exactly what I've been saying for years somebody should do. It's of course not independant, not in the Forge sense of the word. But I take it the author is pretty much in charge of the publication. I don't know the background of this, but I suspect it is far more about furthering role-playing as a hobby for idealistic reasons, than about furthering the profit of the Maddrax line.

It has been announced that adventures and further materials will be published regularly, but they will not be available as separate issues, they will all come along with one of the novels. Also, they are planning to include a page with RPG infos in the novels every now and then. Like: The novel introduces a new species or piece of equipment, and somewhere is a boxed text with stats for the RPG. If this ain't neat then I don't know.

- Frank

P.S.: Check out the covers of all 200 novels printed so far here.

[Eero Tuovinen]

That's cool. I had this idea in 2005; we have a similar pulp culture in Finland. Haven't had time to investigate the practicalities, but I'm glad somebody is doing it. I wonder how they're going about bridging the gap from reading a pulp story to playing a game about it, though. That seemed tricky to me.

If you get the book in question in your paws, be sure to let us know what's inside.

[matthijs]

Google shows a Maddrax RPG PDF at what looks like the official site (www.maddrax.de).

[oliof]

The PDF is an older version, the new one is more streamlined, people say.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

I've got it, but only skimmed through the pages as yet. It's mostly crunch (races, skills, combat maneuvers, equipment, creatures, as much as you can put on 64 small pages) and a very brief breakdown of the setting. It looks reasonable enough. The interesting part, however, will be the adventures published.

[Jason Morningstar]

Isn't this similar to what Mike Pohjola's doing with Tähti in Finland, Eero?  News-stand distro, magazine format, accessible content? 

[Eero Tuovinen]

Well yeah, barring the existing of an audience pool, periodical publication, a rules system (Mike's work is in the freeform tradition) and actually getting the product into magazine racks. But we can say that Tähti would be similar in the right conditions.

[xenopulse]

Man, I used to consume liberal amounts of John Sinclair in my early teen years.

Come to think of it, they had a multiple choice adventure in at least one of the issues, where you got to "play" Sinclair as he was going through a vampire-infested house. That was a proto-RPG-thing, I imagine.

Now, I'm really curious to see how this experiment turns out. If they want to do a John Sinclair game, I'll offer my services.

[Grumpy]

Any chance we could get it in France ?
I mean, does a website sell it or do you have to go pick it from a german newsstand?