State of the Trolls, April '25

Made in U.S.A., International Trade, Tariffs

With all the recent news about tariffs and trade wars, and the potential damage spreading through our community, coupled with the host of curious and angry comments online I thought it is a good time to put out some kind of public statement concerning Troll Lord Games and the manifold projects we have in the hopper. I’ll try not to ramble, but as I’m listening to Kassi Valazza’s Dear Dead Days album at the moment I’m going to be prone to go a little western and let my pony lead the way. Bear with me to the end. There’s some big news down that a-way. 

Short Answer

We make our products here in the United States and have for decades. The current uncertainty, much like the Covid Pandemic, will have very little impact on our pricing. I do not anticipate any price increases. I do not anticipate a delay in output. We will not have any difficulty fulfilling any crowdfunding campaigns, direct to consumer orders, distributor orders, Amazon, or other orders. The only negative impact I can see is a delay in print time from 4 weeks to 12 weeks. This last will be the result of publishers shifting their printing from overseas to U.S. based printers, causing a log jam.

A Note to my Fellow Publishers: If you have any questions or would like some assistance in contacting U.S. based printers, please give me a shout, I’ll steer you as best I can. I have many contacts and an occasional solution. 

There are two reasons TLG can navigate this crisis. The first is that we have long manufactured all our primary product here in the United States (except for a brief stint in beautiful Canada in 2000-2003) and second because we own our own print shop, which is also here in the United States. That might be only one reason with an addendum instead of two reasons. Regardless, you get the idea.

 

First: Manufacturing in the United States

Early on in our company’s history, not long after I took over the helm, we shifted to U.S. based printers. Before that we used several printers in Canada. There were several reasons we shifted south of the border, and they ranged from the technical to the patriotic. Nafta was all the rage in those days and there were constant discussions about cross border trade. Borrowing from history and wanting to support local communities, we shifted our printing south and it has remained there ever since. I watched over the years as U.S. based game companies and publishers shifted their printing to far flung shores. We never did. The uncertainty bred by such relationships can be problematic. Once our production shifted to the U.S. it remained there. It remains there still.

 

Our books, game boxes, game screens, slip cases and cards are manufactured here in the U.S. The paper is sourced locally; the board and chip and headbands are all sourced locally. We frequently inquire with our suppliers and printers to find out where the materials are sourced, just to make sure that they are made in the U.S. This removes a whole level of uncertainty from the equation.

 

We’ve managed to keep a very high quality in our books as well. They are all Smythe Sewn, with tight back binding where the block signatures are sewn to the headband and the headband blued to the spine board. The end sheets are glued in giving the book even more support. All this is manageable with U.S. based printers.

Sidenote: I remember when the pandemic hit and so many companies suffered a collapse of the supply chain. TLG didn’t feel it at all. My main hardback printer is a 4 hour drive from our warehouse. Push to shove, we’d have loaded up trucks and gone to get it. We’ve done it before and that was one wild ride.

 

We have printed here for years. Only a very few items stand out as exceptions. 

 

· Dice. As soon as Lou Zocchi closed shop we had to order dice from overseas. Before that most of our dice were made by him. Wonderful little dice. We even sold a crayon with them. We did buy some from Crystal Caste, great folks over there, but I’m not sure where they were made. More on this later.

 

· Merchandise. Early on some of our merchandise was made overseas. Things like journals, glass mugs, etc. 

We will continue to use U.S. based printers for our hardcover books, boxes, and screens.

Note: Our main U.S. printer is in Missouri but we use printers in Michigan, New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and now Ohio.

 

Second: Our Print Shop

Back in 2005, my younger brother Davis Chenault –wandering in from the wilds as he was a working archeologist at the time– listened to me ranting about the cost of a rush print job (it was Temple of Kubla Khan by the esteemed writer Casey Christofferson that I needed for a con out west) and said something to the affect: “You know what you should do? You should build us a print shop and we should print our own books!” 

Of his many ideas that one proved one of the most fortuitous. It was not easy to do. Todd, Davis and I had no experience in such things. But over the next many  months we put the shop together. We struggled with it like crazy, learning the new trade, and it really wasn’t fully functional until late ’07/early ‘08. Even partially functional it quickly became a central part of our publishing endeavor. It has remained so for almost 20 years. The print shop is home to a large printer, 1954 champion paper cutter (it never quits), a perfect binder (we are on our third) and all the other manifold things one needs to make a book without a mess.

 

In our own print shop we manufacture all our soft covers. We did, for many years, manufacture all our own hard case screens and even manufactured our own hard cover books for a short time (this latter suffered too many problems and we abandoned it). Having this control over the line proved a godsend and saved the company more than once in the many ups and downs over the years.

 

All the contents of our books are sourced locally as well.. We use a local paper company (not Dunder Mifflin, but sort of), a local printer servicing company, and some suppliers up in Michigan for all our materials.

These two things have kept TLG secure from the uncertainty of international markets. And now, with the second giant upset in five years, Covid being the first, we are happier than ever that we made this move.

 

Cost of “Too Expensive”?

I’ve never been price shocked by pricing here in the United States. It is higher than overseas for sure, but the cost benefit for me was never close. The uncertainty of shipping, markets, my desire to support local businesses and communities, reduction of my footprint on the environment, and a host of other reasons make it worthwhile. And besides, crowdfunding campaigns mean that TLG is selling far more units direct to consumer, and avoiding distributor discounts. That has more than made up for the slightly higher price we pay for printing here at TLG.

 

Sidenote: Just so that you know it, when you spend your hard earned money here at TLG, it goes into our coffers. That money then goes into local businesses here in Little Rock, Arkansas (we are one of the largest clients of two businesses here), but it also flows north to Missouri, into businesses there, paying salaries and retirement to people there. Additionally, it flows to New Jersey, Michigan, Colorado. Know that when you spend money here, your money is going back out into your local communities.

 

Practices

Every business, every publisher, has to make a decision about what is best for their business. I read a great deal of history and I am well aware of how fast situations can change, and how dangerous it is to work with outside players. If you don’t believe that, just read up on the pandemic. I am also keenly aware that it is important for us to support our local communities. Wherever you are in the world, one should support their local communities first. This isn’t just a feel good philosophy. And though there are personal and patriotic reason we manufacture stateside, there are very sound business reasons we chose this path:

 

· It is good for your business as it creates personal relationships (I’ve been with the same sales rep for hardcover books for over 20 years), and that comes in handy more often than you could imagine. 

 

· It is good because it protects the environment. It cuts down on trans-oceanic shipping, makes certain that the goods you are having manufactured are done so in a safe and clean manner. That waste is properly handled.

 

· It is good for labor. The people who make your products are being compensated fairly and properly for their labor.

 

· It is good for the local community as it pumps revenue into secondary businesses, restaurants, gas stations and so on.

 

· Manufacturing locally (and for me this is has always been a huge one) reduces the economic uncertainty created by an unstable world. This was brought home with a vengeance during the Covid Pandemic. It is reinforced now. That’s twice in 5 years. That is more than enough to destroy companies.

 

Going Forward & the Exciting News

To this end TLG is committed to expanding our print shop operations. This week, on the 14^th of April, 2025, at about 12:30 pm, I drove up to Lowes to meet my real estate agent and give him a check. That check is for the deposit on acreage here in central Arkansas that TLG has just purchased. The plan is to greatly expand our printing ability.

 

That acreage will be home to our new manufacturing facility . . . “The Factory” as I’m going to call it. The plan is to build, over the next six months, a 4,000 square foot print facility and warehouse. To that end:

 

· We are negotiating for larger printing equipment, which should double the output we get from our current equipment. 

· Bringing back hard case game master screen manufacturing.

· Expand our warehousing capability threefold in order to order larger quantities of paper, reducing cost.

· Create a ready-made platform to help publishers get their books printed in the Factory or their products shifted to other printers who can manage it.

· Create a space to experiment with mold injection equipment and see into making little cubes.

 

With luck and a whole lot of hard work we’ll make The Factory operational before the end of the Summer. If we can make this work, and there many a slip between cup and lip, trust that we’ll have plenty of room to expand and maybe, just maybe, we are going to tackle this m----- f------ dice problem.

 

A Message to the Community

It is possible to manufacture in the United States. It isn’t as easy as it used to be, but it is possible. We work with several box makers that make our game boxes. Printers that do our hardcovers. You’ll need to find die cutters and do a lot of home assembly. I cannot count the number of times that TLG employees have gathered at my house around my game table and assembled boxes and all their contents, even shrink wrapping them. It isn’t easy. It’s a move away from the one stop shop that some have become used to, but it is doable. We did the board game Planet Busters in the United States some years back. All the components made in the U.S. and compiled in our basement.

It might not look as pretty as it does coming off the assembly line in distant lands, but it is doable. Dice and game pieces will be the real challenge.

If there is anything I or TLG can do, if you just need someone to vent, please don’t hesitate to reach out and we can work together to getting you a solution.

Now back to work. The Factory brooks no delay. 

State of the Trolls, 2024

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!

Growing interest in Castles & Crusades, from new players and old, has seen ever more tables hosting the game. This has given us cause and the opportunity to hire four new full time employees: Jeremy Farkas, Grace Carras, Finley Clayton, and Dakota McMurry. These new trolls are not only capable but foolishly possess a willingness to tackle the many headed hydra of publishing!

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).

Dakota McMurry, who many of you know from the convention circuit, joined only a few months ago during the summer. He has taken over logistics and the print shop. For the first time since Mark Sandy left in 2018 the TLG print shop is in full swing. This will be touched upon later as we dive into possible market upsets that may be coming down the pipe.

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

The OGL kerfuffle allowed us the freedom of thought to break with 20+ years of tradition, pick up where we left off in 2000 and 2004, and complete the circle. It has been a wild ride, and we thank Peter Adkinson and his Wizards of the Coast for what he made possible, but now we turn away from the bloated corporate giant that that company has become (since Peter’s departure mind you) and return to what Americans do best, build it ourselves.  

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

There seems to be a trend, growing for some time, for people on the internet to find their own community. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of my concern, but the overall effect is very much my concern. Troll Lord Games continues to welcome any and all to the table, we ask only that you respect each others’ beliefs and carry on with the game. 

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 have a pretty exciting roster in front of us. A small host of Gygax world building books will be out in 1st to 2nd quarter next year. Codex of the Planes for Castles & Crusades is coming. The Barsoom RPG is in the works. More cross-over material with AA and C&C is also coming. We'll try to make Patreon more appealing (we welcome suggestions) and useful, making it more a part of the TLG experience. You'll see more tutorials and Twitch streams (two new online games should launch this December and January). The Crusader reborn is on the wish list. 

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

Plywood Memories from Gencon to Vegas

 Out trip to Gencon took us up through the Arkansas Delta country, and into the boot of Missouri, across the Big Muddy and on into the sprawling flats of southern Illinois and Indiana. It is a marvel to travel in this part of the country. When people think of the bread baskets of the U.S. their minds always go to the Great Plains, but they forget the never-ending fields of corn that mark this region, the Lowlands and Till Plains of Indiana. Its beautiful in its never ending yield.

We broke camp early in the morning of the 31^st and drove that last few miles up to Indianapolis and over to the convention center. We went to the marshalling yard to get our unloading bill and in short order found ourselves pulling the canvas back from the truck, and hauling boxes, banners and stands into the great hall of the Indiana Convention Center. It was hot in there, as it always is, during set up, but no matter Dakota and I set to unloading and assessing what we were going to need to get set up. It quickly became apparent that are racks were woefully worn down and out. We had to do something.

My primary concern however was flooring, something to soften the concrete on tired feet, so off to a hardware store we went. While there Dakota mapped out his ideas for some new racks, what he wanted, and what he thought it should look like. He gave me a list and off to the Container store we went. By this point Jeremy had joined us, and we all wandered about gathering the gear we needed.

Racks have always been a problem for us. We had smaller budgets and little access in those days. At our first convention, Gencon 2000, we didn’t have anything. The books were laid flat on the table, map hung with some tape on the front table and a banner on the back curtain. We knew that wouldn’t play for the next round so Todd Gray and I sat about making a more lasting display. We took 3 sheets of 4 x 8 ¾ inch plywood and attached them one to the other with little brass hinges. Carefully measuring and cutting strips of loop pile carpet we glued it on the inner face of the plywood, making a beautiful, if simple, covered backdrop. It was perfect because velcro would stick to it. We had posters made with our books on them, glued velcro to the back of them and could put them up and take them down from the carpet face. We could attach lights to the boar too, for better lighting if need should dictate.

It was brilliant and worked beautifully and, to my mind, still the best-looking booth display and backdrop we have ever had. It was so clean and simple, functional, and ridiculously sturdy. It folded up nicely too, one sheet over on the other so nothing would get torn or scratched. Its only real draw back was its weight. Lugging that thing around was crazy. But lug it we did. When we loaded for shows from GTS in Vegas to Pentacon in Fort Wayne, Gencon, or Genghis Con, we did it by loading that monster into the truck first, piling the stock and luggage on its back and hauling it in and out of cons.

Todd and I were so exhausted at one Vegas show that the idea of moving it was mind numbing. We hired some kids in the parking lot, paying them 40 bucks, to haul it in for us.

We used it for 3 or 4 years I think, dozens of cons. After the hard times hit in ’05 and TLG’s staff dwindled to me, managing the beast became difficult if not impossible. I remember it leaning against the house, in the back yard sometime in the fall, when the rains hit. And they hit and I quietly forgot about it. Intentionally? Purposely? Maybe a little bit of both. Either way the boards warped and the carpet popped. It was abandoned after that and eventually was consigned to the burn pile.

I feel bad about it now and again. But then I remember hauling it around and that eases the feeling a little.

We later switched to wire racks, spinners, magazine racks, and hanging banners.  These were so cheap that they didn’t take the weight of the books and became lopsided, bent, twisted. Eventually one blew out of the open bed of the truck one night on the way back from Origins or Gencon and we didn’t notice until we were back home. That was the beginning of the end of those things. The banners too have had their ups and downs, the canvas is never even, sags and folds. We’ve rigged braces from pvc pipe, dowels, and 1 x 2 boards. It all ends the same. It looks good for a short while, but doesn’t weather well.

After that we bought the racks we have now and have had for many years. They are tall, fairly stout racks but long sense battered half to death. Wires broke, legs twisted, just tired and worn. The backdrop has enjoyed new collapsable banners, but these cheap things break at the nearest opportunity, or give up the banner so it lazily folds over itself and hangs as if defeated in a game it never wanted to play.

I like the look, but its time for something new for sure.

That new began during set up yesterday at this Gencon 2024. New shelving and displays, lights and fixtures, just the beginning of the overhaul. We are talking about digital displays. Projectors casting rotating images on screens, in place of banners and backdrops. All very exciting and makes me wonder what the old plywood backdrop would think.

On the Road to Gencon, Interstate 57, Dave Trampier and 25 Years

We left Little Rock in the late morning in a truck loaded with books, racks, luggage, a cooler of Dr. Pepper, and all the other sundries one takes on the road. We crossed the Upper Delta of Arkansas, those flat lands of rice fields and soy beans, first on 40 and then hanging a left onto 55 and on up to the show me state. Crossing into Missouri somewhere after noon we headed on to Sikeston. The weather was amazing. Blue skies as far as one can see, dotted by clouds here and there, only interrupted by Dakota’s rambling observations about this, that, and the other.

Dodging out of Sikeston, we hit 57 north and in short order crossed the Mississippi River. I only took a glance at the muddy waters, as my mind was lost in the trip I took on that same highway quite a few years ago, when I was looking for Dave Trampier.

For those who don’t know Dave, you should look him up. He is a bit of a legend in the old world. The writer and artist of Wormy, a smart talking, pool playing dragon, that appeared in the old Dragon magazines. Really good stuff. Dave had a falling out with the industry back in the woebegone days of the early 80s and vanished. No one knew where he was.

It was the early oughts, ‘03 or ‘04 I can’t remember now, and TLG was still very young and looking for what, we still didn’t know. Mac Golden, one time partner in TLG and longtime friend of me and the Trolls, was a huge fan – we all were/are – and he suggested, since we were working with Gary Gygax that I try to find Dave. That’s an idea I thought! I set about to see what I could turn up. We were working with quite a few of the old TSR people in those days so I thought surely someone would know something. After some polite questions, I got wind that he had gone down to Cairo, Illinois where he was driving a taxi for the Yellow Cab company.

I don’t rightly remember which convention I was going to, I was alone, so it probably wasn’t Gencon, it was probably the Alliance Open House or more likely a convention up in Fort Wayne Indiana called Pentacon or some such. Be that as it may, it took me up 57, right past Cairo. Right over the river, I detoured and cut down the ramp into Cairo hoping I could run into Dave.

I quickly found the shell of the Yellow Cab Company, it was either out of business or closed (out of business I think) so I took it on myself to poke around and see if I could find some rumor of him. I ate lunch at a small diner and asked about him. No one had heard of him of course. I drove around a bit to see if something might turn up. Cairo has seen better days for sure. I drove down an empty main street, old brick buildings standing stark under a lonely, calm, too-quiet sky. They must have been beautiful in their day, something to behold. I stopped for a long while and just looked at these old brick facades. The failed attempts to bring them back to life. The hoped for renaissance that all small towns enjoy, where hope forever flourishes.

I’m rather fond of buildings.

After musing for a bit, I fired up old blue (my truck) and set to leave town. As I rolled up the street I noticed an old dusty shop with huge store front windows. In it, looking out at me, was a large cut-out of a weird looking troll. I stopped and stared at it. There was no one else it could have been but Dave. His work that is. Pulling over, I jumped out to get a closer look. Pressing my face against the dirty window I could see no one had been in the building in a forever of Sundays. There was junk here and there. Maybe an old flea market, that last dying gasp of hope of many a small-town building.

There was no sign of anyone. No sign of occupancy on that day or for a host of days preceding it. It was Dave, of that I had no doubt, he had been there. Once. For certain.

I drove around a bit, asked a few people who owned the shop, I could turn up nothing on the brief search. Time was pressing and I had a show to get to, so reluctantly headed back to 57. I knew he had been there. Once. I took off, hitting 57 north.

On the same road Dakota and I were on. As I left my reverie the Big Muddy was long behind us and we were well on the road to our return to Gencon.

We drove on through the afternoon, stopping for gas and some eats a few times. The skies opened as we crossed into Indiana in the early evening, dumping water in sheets. At last, a few miles south of town, we pulled into a La Quinta Inn for some rest and lodging.

Another journey in the long list of 25 years of such journeys. Also looking for something or someone I suppose. This one our return to Gencon.

I should note that I eventually found Dave Trampier. He was living in Carbondale Illinois, driving a cab. I talked to him briefly, sent him several letters, trying to engage him in bringing back Wormy or something similar. He politely asked me, in a beautifully written letter, to stop contacting him. I did of course. He’s crossed over now, passed some years ago, like many an old brick building in every town you’ve ever been in.

The Saucer's Unique Spin

 As I wander ever deeper into the world of UFO sightings I keep finding ever more interesting parcels of information. For instance, a Japanese astronomer noted, in 1949, a giant explosion on Mars (December 9 I think). He theorized that it had to be an atomic explosion because of the size of the dust cloud. Were the saucers coming from Mars?

There are hosts of these small things that roll across the pages.

That aside, I found fascinating the question  "why the flying saucer?" Why the unique shape for this particular craft that was spotted so many hundreds of times. Buried in the text of "Flying Saucers from Outer Space" was a short essay in the guise of a Q/A with the author and a Canadian scientist. 

Set aside the possibilities of visual anomalies, and wander back to the 1950s, fresh from World War 2 when jet engines were barely 5 years old and the Atomic Age only just beginning. Bi-planes, single engine, jet planes, all have a distinctive reasoned shape. But the saucers that suddenly appeared. Why the saucers? Its that shape that gives them their speed.

The saucers all moved at tremendous speeds. They changed colors, blue, red, what have you and even though the footage from those days we have these saucers doesn't show it (see below), they seem to spin.

The saucers are able to achieve such considerable speed because they use a magnetic sink to propel themselves forward. This "sink" creates a flux in the earth's magnetic sphere into which the craft is propelled. The sink also provides the ship with electrical power. A ring built around the ship, giving it the distinctive saucer shape, channels the energy through and behind it, again propelling it forward. The craft must spin in order to avoid building up too large a charge. The changing colors are a reflection of the speed that craft is achieving.

It reads a little better than that and like really cool science fiction, something you might find in the upcoming Star Siege, but what is really fascinating is the amount of energy put into trying to decipher what was being seen.

I love this concept, though I'm not sure how grounded in science a magnetic sink is or what it would mean for travel through the atmosphere. It sure would explain a lot though!

Regardless of why, there certainly were alot of saucer sightings in the 1950s.

Look! Look! They are Here!

I'm still looking for a good history of the UFO phenomena in the United States and beyond. Preferably one that begins in the post war period, the "Atomic Age" (what a great name for an age too, we are stuck in the Information Age, or have we left that and entered some other dystopian Age as yet uncatagorized) and carries it through to at least the 1980s. These years seem to be the golden years of UFO sightings and reportings. 

Sans that history I have begun gathering books written on the topic, but starting at the beginning, or as close to it as I can. I'm currently reading Flying Saucers from Outer Space. Written in 1953 by Donald Keyhoe, it is an interesting catalog of conversations that supposedly happened between the writer, a retired Air Force Colonel, and a host of Air Force officials throughout 1952-1953. He is trying to get the air force to admit what everyone "in the know" already realizes, that the flying saucers are real and they come from out space. Turns out this is not the first book written on the phenomena by Keyhoe, as he had previously published a book The Flying Saucers are Real* that only appeared in limited number in paper back. That book is in route to me now.

There is a sense of urgency about this book, Flying Saucers. Every page wants to leap out at you, to grab you by the collar, jerk your head to the heavens and say "look! look! they are coming!" There is an almost frantic need to get the truth out there, to let everyone know about the coming contact. There's not the hint of fear, only an unsettled certainty of what is coming and bracing for it. barely a half decade from a devastating world war and in the midst of the Korean War there is no trepidation, only hurry up, tell us the truth.

I've yet to finish it, but the half I've read carries the same tone, the same feeling to it. I can't imagine it will change pace. Keyhoe wrote science fiction as well, or maybe this is, and his pacing is very good, his hand on the doorknob is spot on.

I wonder what it was like to pull this book off the shelf in 1954 and start reading it. Atomic testing was on the way. The Soviets were building an arsenal, the US was detonating missiles, a whole new style of living was unfolding in the US. In a world of total uncertainty and constant change, where all you had for information was the steady hand of a writer (who, if nothing else, had to take the time to write something several hundred pages longer than a wiki article) to tell you what was up. 

I wonder what it was like to look up at the heavens in 1953.

The truth is out there. But who has it? Its hard to say.

* Turns out what is really needed is a historiography of the literature on the phenomena, a project that might be a good toe in door project for Chenault & Gray Publishing, our parent company. 

Songs from the Drowned Lands ~ Kernaghan

Recently I took a trip to New York (the city) and needed something to read that I could easily carry on the plane. I don't really buy paperbacks anymore but still have my rather large collection from the '80s. I poked around and found a book I hardly remembered reading, but whose content echoed some vague satisfaction from when I first read back in '83 or '84.  

I plunged into on the plane and had trouble putting it down to chat with my wife, or move about, or even wander NYC (which I did, finally taking the time to see the beautiful Empire State Building and the painting of Washington crossing the Deleware). But even while I wandered about my mind kept returning to the stories, now untold but aching to spill out of the pages.

Songs From The Drowned Lands was written by Eileen Kernaghan and published in 1983. It was one of many fantasy books I scooped up in those days and several by Kernaghan. Fantasy was different then, you could read a book and not have to worry about it being part of a giant trilogy or multi-book series, which always run the gamey risk of thrones of never being finished. Plus its nice to just read a story and move on to another with different characters and different settings.

Songs is just such a book. It tells the story of the Sorcerous Isles, rarely named, as taken from the point of view of 5 different characters. Those who inhabit these isles have learned of its eminent demise at the hands of the Lords of Chaos, upon whose arrival the sea will rise up and sweep the Isles and all who inhabit them away.

The tales each relate how notable sorcerers respond to the threat, with acceptance, fear, seeking to flee, fighting it and hope. 

The book is wonderful written and Kernaghan's descriptions of the landscape paint an amazingly vibrant tapestry through which the characters wander. The dialogue is crisp. The characters engaging. And the threat of Chaos is painted so subtly that it yields this strangely compelling fear that nags at the reader, at least it did me. 

Here is one of my favorite passages, heard by Theiras, a noble of an ancient house, a relative of the king. She has only just realized the Lords of Chaos and the coming storm and must come to terms with her melancholia.

"For you there will be no wine, no poppy. That is not the way a king dies, or the daughter of kings. A king does not run from death, nor does he bargain with it. Theiras, if there is the true blood of warriors in you, you will not let death strike you from behind. You will hold out your life in your hands, a gift freely offered. That is the order of things - the first and ancient order - and you will not betray it."

I cannot recommend this book enough. It has encouraged me to return to the genre and read more stories, that are just that, stories.

Find it on Biblio!

The Presumption of Hell

It is presumed in Hell that the plane is one of structured law. That Hell is a realm governed by the dictates of its occupants and creators. That it is one of continuity and design, of purpose and patterns. That Hell’s decalogue governs all things there and all those who inhabit it. This is not wholly the truth, for Hell is also governed by evil, and evil is petty, vainglorious, vindictive, lacking in any real understanding of consequence. Those who occupy Hell are too evil to see the folly of their own deeds and because of this the plane of their manufacture is only a façade of order, a charade perpetrated by the very nature of those who dwell there, the great and the small. It is an artifice for which they themselves have fallen and one they, in their egomaniacal solipsism, propagate unceasingly. 

                                                                                ~ The Codex of the Planes

I think I've Forgotten More than I Remember

 I've been working for Troll Lord Games for 25 years now. That's a fair bit of time and it has been an extremely busy and vibrant quarter century. Notice I don't use the word successful, because it has not always been that way. There were some hard fights along the way, most of the way. And I suspect more to come. 

So many things have happened or we have been a part of that it is difficult to remember them all, or even to string some of them together. I now can safely say, that I've forgotten more than I knew. 

I wonder though, if I went back through all the financials, if I could put things together. A time line for sure, but I wonder if it would trigger all manner of memories. 

For instance when we began, we kept records in a ledger book, one you would see from the 1930s. We had a huge business check book, spiral bound, black, that we made payments from. Now of course it is all automated and we do it on computers. Digital files. A wholly different type of ledger!

This jumbled pile of financials represents 2007 through 2018 or there abouts. Every receipt, check, etc. There's the historian's bread crumbs. The other 7 or 8 years are tucked away in other corners here and there.

Movie Recommendation ~ The Last Stop in Yuma County

I kicked back and took a little time to watch The Last Stop in Yuma County last night and I have to say, I was NOT disappointed. 

It was riveting from start to finish. It is a beautifully shot movie, capturing the Arizona dry heat in this not too glaring yellow wash. I felt I was there. The story is, very unusual, with some interesting bordering on wild turns. Everyone in the movie carried it wonderfully. 

No spoilers here but to say, it is not for the faint of heart and just, well, just watch it. 

Memories from the Office of a Game Publisher - My Office Circa '07

 I feel as if this is the typical office of an RPG publisher. Maybe. Maybe not.  This was taken in and around 2007 I suspect (see previous post). 

On the left you have a flail or a morning star as I like to call it. 

The fan of course. A printer with instructions written on the front of it. A pile of indiscriminate paper, which if I remember correctly led to the big metal 1950s teacher desks we have now. I had no drawers with this table as you can plainly see.

A monitor rather old and with no telling what windows was on there (95?). I wonder who I was emailing?

A pile of Gary Gygax books. What RPG publisher would be worth their salt without the world builder books!

A pile of screw drivers for lord only knows what reason. probably the printer. A map of the world of Aihrde on the wall. A stapler, not red, paper clips, scissors, check stamps, a calculator (I still have that calculator and stapler). 

A Dr. Pepper of course.

Interestingly the floor is incomplete. I was laying down pergo flooring and ran out. We ran out of money so it stayed that way for a few months. 

This was definitely taken in 2007 as the Cosmos Builder is there on the far right and it was published in 2007.