Driftwood Project Progress Report

[Brian Leybourne]

So, what's this I hear about OBaM coming out as an early birthday gift for me? How thoughtful! You really shouldn't have...

Believe me, Lance, nobody is more keenly awaiting this book than me :-)

And welcome back.

Brian.

[Darth Tang]

Of beasts & Men- is a pdf version going to be released, or just a hardcover?

And any sort of a release date?

[Jake Norwood]

Here's the current schedule. OBAM is released in print 4 months from right now. I know I've been saying that for a while, but next week I tell the distributors so, and so it *has* to be true. In truth, though, I'll make the print version available on-line as soon as I have them in my hands--that'll be much sooner. It will probably be paperpack.

The PDF version...I'll have that out in April, I believe.

Jake

[Lance D. Allen]

That reminds me, on the cover of OBaM.. Did you decide to go with the awesome border effects (so that the picture looks like you're looking into a crystal or some such) that you have for TRoS-main and the cover art for SatF? I really hope so. Unity of design like that really brings something to a line of products, in my opinion.

[Jake Norwood]

while it's never too late to change it to the crystal effect, we actually dropped it for a number of reasons on this cover.

Jake

[Shadeling]

Here's the current schedule. OBAM is released in print 4 months from right now. I know I've been saying that for a while, but next week I tell the distributors so, and so it *has* to be true. In truth, though, I'll make the print version available on-line as soon as I have them in my hands--that'll be much sooner. It will probably be paperpack.

The PDF version...I'll have that out in April, I believe.

Jake

Egads Man! July? That is crazy talk. Well guess OBAM will be a B-Day present for my wife. So I take it SATF and TFOB are pushed back in turn?

[Jake Norwood]

Well...yeah. I'm still planning on One of the next 2 supps out near the end of summer. The problem is 1st money and 2nd time. I have really limited (or negative, even) supplies of both. It's not lack of desire or of things to write, I assure you!

Jake

[Sneaky Git]

Here's the current schedule. OBAM is released in print 4 months from right now. I know I've been saying that for a while, but next week I tell the distributors so, and so it *has* to be true. In truth, though, I'll make the print version available on-line as soon as I have them in my hands--that'll be much sooner. It will probably be paperpack.

The PDF version...I'll have that out in April, I believe.

Jake

Looks like April is going to be a good month.. Can't wait!

Chris

[Nick the Nevermet]

April is going to be an expensive month, for me.

Good, too, mind you... but gah

[Shadeling]

Well...yeah. I'm still planning on One of the next 2 supps out near the end of summer. The problem is 1st money and 2nd time. I have really limited (or negative, even) supplies of both. It's not lack of desire or of things to write, I assure you!

Jake

Still the thing with not getting all the money from the distributors eh? I mean TROS obviously sold well, we are all a testament to that :)

[Jake Norwood]

Yeah...the whole industry is really a mess. I'm treading water (as I think all of the "successful" companies are), but I'm not gonna be crossing the channel anytime soon.

Jake

[Shadeling]

Yeah...the whole industry is really a mess. I'm treading water (as I think all of the "successful" companies are), but I'm not gonna be crossing the channel anytime soon.

Jake

That is unfortunate, but I am glad you are still treading and not sinking :)

[Lance D. Allen]

Just keep doggie paddling, and imagine the day when you'll actually be able to live off of Driftwood Productions, and all that training as a linguist can just be a hobby.

[Callan S.]

Yeah...the whole industry is really a mess. I'm treading water (as I think all of the "successful" companies are), but I'm not gonna be crossing the channel anytime soon.

Jake

Anything we can do about that. I'm not exactly going to buy another main book, and in my gaming group the culture is to only have one copy of anything (just seems to happen that way).

That being said, after the effect the main book had on me, I do feel I owe it to myself to own OBAM as well. But beyond this?

I was thinking of going to my gaming store with a 'Customer recommendation', ie a very small note on the good points of TROS, so they could put that near the books to attract more attention to it (it means sales for them, too). But I'm sure they'd ask why am I doing it, whats in it for me? 'Uh, because I'm a big dork that liked this indie book and want it to be bigger?' sounds kind of weak.

[Brian Leybourne]

Anything we can do about that

TROS is already doing pretty well. Unfortunately, it's doing pretty well for an RPG (an Indie RPG at that) and the RPG industry has sucked since the mid 80's boom. The D20 thing has re-energised the industry a bit, but what it has really allowed is a lot of publishers to peddle a lot of crap (which would otherwise have never seen the light of day) which sells really well because it has the D20 logo on it. There's going to be a backlash, and soon. It's also not doing a lot for non D20 stuff. That's all IMO of course.

If you're serious about helping (and this applies to all of ya, of course), then probably the best thing you could do is to approach your FLGS and offer to run a demo game or two. Most stores are really happy to let you do this, because it gets foot traffic into their store, and while people are there they're more likely to spend money because they spot something they like. It's good for TROS because hopefully the players and the people who just happen to be in the store at the time who see you playing will all like the game/be interested enough to buy copies of the book. This gets TROS more into peoples minds, and so on. Everyone wins. This is 1000% more likely to sell copies of the book than people seeing it sitting on the shelf along with 300 other RPG books, even with a written recommendation from a fan attached (although that couldn't hurt, admittedly).

Essentially, it's the old "you tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on..." thing. If people are seeing other people enjoying TROS then they're thinking about it. If they're thinking about TROS, they're (hopefully) interested in it. If they're interested in TROS, they're playing it and telling their friends, and then Jake gets rich and gets to retire and have bikini vixens suck his toes.

[Less serious mode]
Also, you should all buy 2+ copies of OBAM each and tell Jake how fantastic it is and that he should get me to write more books
[/Less serious mode]

Brian.