Personal Victory -- vs. Monsters Deluxe Finished

[philreed]

While it took a long time to do (most of that time was spent distracted on other projects and stress from work) I've finally finished vs. Monsters Deluxe Edition.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2899

I'll wait a few weeks before sending this to print but I expect to have the print version -- and the limited edition boxed set -- ready by early August. While I don't think I'll be able to make it to GenCon I would like to find someone going to the show who would be willing to sell copies (and copies of Motocaust).

vs. Monsters was my first real indie RPG so getting this edition finished is a personal milestone for me. Special thanks to The Forge for all of the fun with the 24 hour version and all of the great feedback.

[philreed]

For those of you who wanted a boxed set, pre-orders are now being taken.

www.roninarts.com

[John Harper]

Congrats, Phil! I can't wait to get my hands on it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

Phil, in the interest of keeping Forge threads from becoming announcement-bulletins, can you provide any insights, advice, or personal comments about this experience? Your history with Steve Jackson Games and the three-tier publishing approach makes you a very important source for such comments.

Best,
Ron

[philreed]

Phil, in the interest of keeping Forge threads from becoming announcement-bulletins, can you provide any insights, advice, or personal comments about this experience?

The first thing that comes to mind is that working for myself, and not a company, completely changes the way that I do things. In the past I would work up proposals and, sometimes, marketing plans and schedules before writing a word of a product. On many occasions,  much time went into the planning of the product as the work.

With Ronin Arts, a project like vs. Monsters is a more spontaneous thing. The original, being done in 24-hours, was extremely sponantaeneous and while this version was planned the plan was "Hey, let's improve this thing." I took advantage of a situation to get some nice boxes and then went to work with the plan: boxed set.

The actual design and re-writing was as sponatneous as the original game -- I find my best work comes when I sit down and work. Playtest and review feedback was vital to what the final release would look like. While this has also been true of my work with other companies, this is pretty much the first time that I ran everything myself. In the past, an editor would handle looking over and incorporating feedback.

So far, it's been a very interesting experience. As to advice, I'm not sure that I yet have any as I'm still learning to stand on my own feet. The biggest challenge I find that I'm facing is one of name recognition. I haven't spent enough time marketing myself or Ronin Arts.

As an example, I was recently contacted to do some layout work for Paradigm Concepts. They had a stack of books that needed a fast layout job and they had been told I could do the work and do it well. While discussing the project I mentioned that I had some D20 PDFs I'd like to collect and revise for print and asked if they'd be interested in looking at something. It wasn't until I mentioned Ronin Arts that the company realized I was the same Philip Reed. And this hasn't been an isolated incident.

Lesson Learned: Self-promotion, while important, must include promotion of almost everything that you've worked on. I now include an "About the Author" in all Ronin Arts releases and have started encouraging authors that work with me to do the same.