State of the Trolls
It has been a momentous few years since my last State of the Troll. A great deal has happened since, from the OGL conundrum, to the addition of employees, revamping old infrastructure, rekindling old relationships, and other sundries. Below we'll tackle all of this as well as dive into some places we’d like to go.
I do not want to spend a great deal of time on who we are and what we are working on. That info is all over the place. However, I will touch on the highlights to remind us all (and to cue in those who do not know Troll Lord Games), of our most recent challenges.
Read a more thorough history here on the Troll Lord Wiki.
Disclaimer: I want to remind everyone reading this and the rest of you, that Troll Lord Game was founded in 1999, and we began calling ourselves trolls even then! The use of the term “internet trolls” came long after, and we don’t think we had anything to do with that… at least we’re pretty sure. Not 100% mind you, but you know. We’re the good kind of trolls…. the ones under the bridge.
Readers Note: The next section is a collection of quick notes on things we want to draw your attention to. After that is a recap of where we are and what is coming. Skip to “New Trolls” to get to the meat of it or skip to “Crop Circles” for the even-meatier part.
Quick Notes
Free Game: We still offer the Castles & Crusades Players Handbook, 7th print, for FREE. You can download it from our store.
Veteran Discount: This is in full force. If you are a veteran, please give us a shout.
RECAPS
In 2023, WoTC attempted to rescind the OGL, a license that our properties Castles and Crusades and Amazing Adventures were tied up in. Davis Chenault (my brother and cofounder of TLG alongside Mac Golden) got on vid and after a very short discussion decided to pull the OGL from all our books and to make our games free of entangling alliances. All of them. We discussed but decided not to join other efforts to create other licenses. Too many entangling alliances. (As it turns out GW was right).
Jason Vey began the revisions with Amazing Adventures, as it was deep in the pipeline, but it could not be updated completely until the C&C material, specifically the spells and magic items, were properly updated, so we had to dive into that as well. Work was slow at first as we had so many irons in the fire, and it took Davis and I a while to get a direction. The key was to preserve the integrity of the game but make the necessary changes.
These revisions forced us to stop work on all of the books originally planned for 2023, which included the Codex of the Planes, a short movie, and other sundries.
We hammered away throughout 2023 and 2024 overhauling 7 major books, C&C Players Handbook, C&C Castle Keepers Guide, C&C Monsters & Treasure, AA Players Handbook, AA Chronicle Keepers Guide, the Codex of Aihrde, and the Monsters & Treasures of Aihrde, and we are at last in the process of releasing them. In all, the revisions spanned several million words of content and 1,800 odd pages of art and writing. This spilled out into adventures and other sources too as we began to make what minor changes were needed. We were basically reforging the whole line.
Amazing Adventures has released in its fresh form last month (November, 2024) and the Castles & Crusades material, as I write this, is on trucks headed our direction or is already stacked in the warehouse.
In the midst of all this we landed one major license and were able to see another older one revived. Troll Lord games signed contracts with ERB Inc. to produce a Barsoom (John Carter of Mars) role playing game, a huge milestone for myself, as I've been a fan of the Mars material since I was knee high to a jumping frog. That was followed, or maybe preceded (I can't remember off hand), by a revival of the Gygax licenses. After many years TLG was given permission to continue work on the many works of Gary Gygax, something we have dived into with gusto. The first book, Gary Gygax’s The Hermit, should be out in the next few weeks.
Both of these licenses distracted from the revisions, but were more than welcome additions to the TLG line up. Work continued on the multitude of projects already in the pipeline. You and the new trolls (as listed below) have enabled us to complete or damn near complete this bundle of hardcover books: the reforged Castles & Crusades Players Handbook, Castle Keepers Guide, Monsters & Treasure, Beneath the Canopy Green, the long expected Adventurers Armory, Monstrous Armory, War Mounts, and of course Gary Gygax's The Hermit, the Codex Infernum, and Codex Exaltum, will all join Amazing Adventures Players Handbook and Chronicle Keepers Guide and a slew of adventures. The past 18 months are coming to pass in a big way.
NEW TROLLS!
Jeremy Farkas joined the team first as editor but now works hand in hand with Steve and Peter on the production process from creation to layout, art, design and the lot.
Grace Carras was the next hire, and she joined TLG to tackle all the social media and comms. She works with Chuck and I some, but mostly runs that show, from advertising videos to just posts and responses. From Pinterest to Twitch to X to Instagram.
Finley Clayton joined next, coming on board as full-time editor, a post that much in need of filling. He goes over each manuscript before it goes to layout, and then again after it is laid out. (he edited this and I am currently rewriting it, so any mistakes are on me and not him).
We've also added more permanent contract folks, Meliora Henning as illustrator (and increasingly becoming my go to person for putting out fires), Zoe DeVos who has been illustrating for TLG for years, and Monica Haught to manage the monster that is our webpage, and of course Willim Edmunds on cartography and layout. His work is instrumental in helping us jump into many worlds of VTT with a little more order.
Along the way Tim Burns stepped down from the company. His departure was honestly catastrophic, and we have only now recovered from it. However, once a troll, always a troll, and even last weekend we sat on the banks of the Spring River and mused over the future (the past too, which is unusual for Tim, though it mostly involved a discussion of the population of Jonesboro Arkansas over time). He remains one of my closest friends and we are plotting a return with some UFO/UAP stuff, and publishing the novel he is set to complete in the near future (go check out his newsletter on Substack).
CROP CIRCLES
This new crop of books we are releasing is, in no small way, full circle for us. We have, after 25 years, returned to our roots. Those original books Mac Golden, Davis Chenault and I debuted at GenCon had no licensed material in them. They were owned solely by TLG. They included no unnecessarily entangled alliances. So it is again. The OGL drove us, but reforging became the focus.
OGL
There proved to be only a little OGL content in our books, but it was everywhere in bits and pieces and had to be rewritten when it was. This was done with care, making sure the spirit remained intact so that those who had earlier printings could continue on as they were. Some names changes, some basics, but all in all it was surgically done.
We avoided working with other companies in all of this, just bringing it all home here in the Dens, for ease on us and you.
Distribution
During the 4th edition market collapse TLG shifted its focus away from distribution to retail stores. We left that in the capable hands of my good friend Aldo Ghiozzi. When Aldo sold his company to a larger company, our distribution footprint all but vanished. Even Aragorn would have had trouble finding it. This lasted until late last year when, at my direction, TLG severed ties with the conglomerate and began reaching out to distributors for direct sales. The irony here is that when we first started in this biz a man named James Mishler, working as a sales rep for ACD, picked us up (a term meaning the distributor will carry your products) and we found a home there, as they sold our books to stores.
Fast forward many years later and one consolidator after another until we landed with a huge consolidator that proved impersonal to the point of non-existent sales. We severed with them, and have begun reforging old relationships. We were first picked up by Alan over at GMS for the UK and Europe and now are carried by Universal out of Canada and are very favorite ACD.
Building on old foundations, forging new relationships. Always good.
Look for more of this in the future.
We are going to make our own crop circles! But of course, crossing galaxies in anti-gravity ships, traveling to the UK, and painting pictures in fields of wheat is never without its challenges…
CHANGING LANDSCAPES
Several shifts seem to be unfolding before us as players and publishers. The big two ones on my mind are compartmentalized communities and possible supply chain disruptions due to changes in the economic environment.
These sound exhausting, I put cliffs notes at the end of this section if you want to skip the longer discussion (see cliffs notes below).
Compartmentalized Communities
That said, we have discovered that it has become slightly more challenging to put out information for a variety of reasons, ranging from locked accounts to our inability to update existing information (TLG’s 10 year argument with Wikipedia), and other sundry problems.
To this end we've made some small moves to anchor TLG in the digital space without excluding anyone.
Wikis: Monica, Mel, and I put together a TLG wiki page earlier this year in order to allow us to post information about the company, our partners, the people here, the games we publish, and other tidbits without having to wrestle with the powers of Wikipedia. This has allowed me to write and post a pretty extensive history of Troll Lord Games (as of now I am up to the year 2020), and will in the future allow me to update it as I add more. We’ve a pretty good page on C&C and Jason Vey put some great info out on AA. It is there for us all to read.
Our Games to Your Club: Chuck Cumbow launched a very cool program for School Game Clubs. It has proven wildly successful, and we’ve seen several dozen schools join and receive free books in turn.
3rd Party Publishers: We continue this, and have recently (at last) updated the legal there, removing the OGL references.
Wandering Menagerie: Grace and I conjured a community building idea with the Menagerie which started off well, but internet bots discovered it as a weakness and through continued attacks kept shutting the TLG site down. We will return to that as soon as we conjure a way to host it logically. The basic idea was a caravan of NPCs that anyone can add their NPC to and anyone can use in their games or writing, lots of fun but a bit too open.
Forums: The old forums have been turned off for the same reason, bots. They proved a quick avenue to overwhelm our site. Those were shut down. They will reappear when we have figure out how to do it.
Pinterest: We have grown our company Pinterest page, sharing a host of our art for your inspiration and games. Our many attempts to build Patreon as a place for the pooling of information have proved unsuccessful, but we'll continue on that for awhile.
In short, we will partially join the trend of compartmentalized communities, but in only so far as it allows us to put more content out for everyone.
Our longstanding and slightly controversial policy of no politics on all of our platforms continues in full force, and hopefully creates that table space for us all to roll dice on and try to not get our characters killed without having to worry about what lies beyond the table.
Tariffs
There has been a great deal of talk about new tariffs on all manner of goods. The idea is by next year we'll see these tariffs land, and it will have some impact on economic conditions here in the United States. We'll find out soon enough whether these statements are negotiating tactics or a reality, but regardless TLG has no control over that. Nor do we really have any concern about it.
As many of you probably know, TLG has had a Made in the USA philosophy since 2003. This policy was put in place, in no small part, to safeguard TLG’s releases against overseas factors. This is the second time it has benefited us.
All our books are manufactured here, the paper is sourced locally, as are the board, headbands, string, etc. The glue may be from overseas. We also own and operate our own print shop, allowing us to print anything in softcover format. Our paper for the print shop is locally sourced as well. Parts for some of our equipment can be manufactured locally in machine shops, others we are already stocking up on in case there is any kind of bottleneck in the supply chain. And honestly that is my only real concern, bottlenecks.
If the tariffs manifest it will drive some publishers out of business, but others may relocate their business to the States. This will send more work toward the printer we use for hardcovers and slow the response time by several weeks at the least. We experienced this during covid as the supply chain collapsed, publishers moved to domestic printers, and print times jumped from 4-5 weeks to 10-12. We are already implementing plans to accommodate longer print times into effect.
PRINT SHOP
When Dakota came on board last August, he spent the first few weeks to a month revamping the print shop. Cleaning it, organizing it, updating some of the equipment, servicing the equipment, addressing parts redundancy, and so on. He also established, with my blessing, new print procedures and storage procedures. We even added a ramp to get pallets to move over concrete lips! Amazing things have been afoot.
The shop has become far more streamlined and efficient, and our books are looking better than ever. The Siege Engine line reforging simply carried over into the print.
Note: It did in the mail room as well, as it was cleaned, streamlined, and updated.
Further Expansions: We also intend to explore, once again, expanding our own print shop, and printing our own hardcovers. With Dakota on board this is a much more realistic goal. On this we’ll have to wait and see. I looked into it last spring but put a pin in it as other, more pressing needs, overcame us.
Helping the Community: With the overhaul of the print shop complete we can begin offering print services to other publishers as we used to in the past. We usually can offer a better price than most PODs and overseas printing. If you own a publishing company and are fearful of your cost of goods increasing because of impending economic conditions, or if you just want to safeguard yourself, give us a shout. We can talk printing costs and help you manage it through our own shop.
INFLATION
Inflation has crept into almost every part of our lives. And I strongly suspect unnecessarily so. TLG has not, and has no immediate plans to increase prices. The growth in direct sales and crowdfunding has allowed TLG to maintain a fairly steady pricing policy on our books. The latest printings of the core books will remain at their pre-covid prices. These books are already printed and their prices fixed, tariffs or not.
Personal Note: It is important to note that backing large multi-national conglomerates like Hasbro is a huge part of this inflation problem. Stop doing it. Backing TLG, or other small publishers, will help us and our publishing friends, keep our prices low and send a clear message to others.
CLIFF NOTES
Compartmentalized Communities: We are building internal networks that allow us to give you information faster and more efficiently but so you don’t have to join anything.
Tariffs: We print all our books and source all our material locally, starting with our own shop and ending up in Missouri where our hardcovers are printed. We have no fear of tariffs except for slowing print time.
Inflation: We have not raised our prices in years and have no intent to do so.
What's Coming
We will continue to grow the game and community that you have been so instrumental in building. And with that I would like to close by thanking you all for helping us these past 25 years build a game company that I am very proud of, and one I hope you are able to share in. Both the people who work here and those of you who join us at the table are the reason any of this happens. Well, that and a small river of Dr. Pepper and the music of Blondie...
Steve Chenault, 2024
2 comments:
Excellent article. I knew that TLG's had all of its product made in the US, but never realized that you had your own print shop. That is awesome. I know a couple indie's that have published their own games and will mention TLG to them. Not in my wheelhouse, but you never know. I am stoked to hear about an actual Barsoom RPG. The series was the my first scifi read when I was a kid all the way back in the early 70's. Please please please stick with the books and not the movie. And please please please do right by the martian ships. Layouts/deck plans that can be used for the all important swashbuckling heroic sword fights. Nit just a "stat" card, and paragraph or two then ignor it like 99.9999% of RPG's do whent hey do anything "ship". Traveler being an exception, if not exactly applicable here :)
A wonderful update.
As the forum admin, and a Discord Mod I am here to help any time it is needed (new, dedicated, server needed I say) and welcome/congratulate you on all you are doing.
I very much welcome the UK distribution channel opening up as P&P costs have been prohibitive!
I also very much welcome the addition of two new editors to get rid of all those silly mistakes that have always seemed to creep into the books. As an editor and proofreader I understand how hard that job is, and how easy it is to make a small change post-editing because you have a sudden flash of inspiration, which has mistakes in. Let's get those bugs squashed!
Here's to the next year of greatness!
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