Good Days Are Fine Days

Today was a good and productive day. Though things have stalled a little bit on the release front as A6 Of Banishment and Blight languishes on my desk we are moving forward on many other fronts. A productive meeting this weekend led to changes in the Barbarian, Illusionist and Monk class. Minor on the latter two but major on the first one which brings us a few steps closer to the 4th printing. Peter turned over Monsters and Treasure 3rd and I had a chance to look it over quite a bit. We had a good business cycle last week embarking on several joint ventures which will help our overall cash flow. I wrapped some of these up on Friday and today. All very good.

The new facebook page for Troll Con seems to be giving us a little traction and with that in mind Richard McBain and I had a productive meeting today which will see a greater emphasis on a number of conventions including Dragon Con this fall.

I have a growing amount of game material on my desk, day to day operations have not allowed me to tackle it as quickly as I would, but here are some of the items to see in the very near future: Monsters of Aihrde IV, the CKG, the aforementioned A6, Of Gods & Monsters, Heart of Glass and the Book of Familiars.

So things are moving at quick pace here in the dens, hope you all keep along for the ride.

Now for you listening pleasure: Oxygen.

Thanks for Playing,
Steve

Gary Con

The Trolls are off to Gary Con this Thursday night. We'll close up shop Thursday afternoon, load up in the truck and head off north Lake Geneva. After 12 hours or such, we'll come to the end of the road to meet old friends and toast our memories. I remember this time, just a year ago arriving in Lake Geneva, driving a car up from Chicago, stunned at the incomprehensible news.

Well, a year has come and gone and this old cowboy song comes to mind. So enjoy it and think of the Trolls treking north in the cold dark night to relive, if only for a few days.

The Blizzard.

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Curt meet Bare Knuckles Role Playing

I have no idea what is going on around here. I've been back from Dundracon for several days...10 I think, and I still can't get my head on straight. California always does this to me. I come back dazed and confused. Flying into San Fran is strange. At this time of year it seems to be a GIANT golf course. The hills and valleys are covered in this lush, picture perfect green grass. Cows are wandering about in vales and the like. A few burbs here and there and then water, marshland and you land at Oakland. It seems so peaceful and serene. Then you get off the airport and there are 17500 people crammed into a small box sized terminal. Its quite shocking to my system. :)

Its a great place though, going through a couple of bumps right now.

But the con was fair to middling sales wise. I did what I expected us to do, but for all that you'll have to read my Convention Blog on in 16. I'll keep it short. I would like to say that I had an interesting encounter on Monday (con runs through George Washington Day... I refuse to call it President's Day, Lincoln did some great things, but Washington is OUR FOUNDING FATHER).

I was sitting at the booth, hum drumming the morning away when a fella came up and asked if I had anything to do with the company and C&C in particular. I said, "A little. I run the company and helped design/write the game." He said, "Great! I wanted to talk to someone about it." I'm going to paraphrase but he went on to tell me that he had bought the books yesterday from a dark haired guy (I though, Luke! Good job Luke!). Then he continued with how he read it over and was very disappointed, it looked like a 3.5 knock off. (Dirn it Luke! Curse you for selling this guy the books!). And he tossed it in his bag. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, the I want my money back shoe. Which truthfully, noone has ever asked for their money back.

Well, he goes on to relate how at 1 a.m. the previous night he and his buds had nothing to play. The con was a loss because the several games he signed up for hadn't panned out. So they pulled these C&C books out and decided to give them a whirl. He then said, "This game is Awesome!" We started playing on the table, using the table cloth for our character sheets, no screens, no nothing but some dice, hotel pencils and the PH and MT. He said it was fast and fun and let him and the players really stretch their RP muscles. He was very excited and jumped into the spritit of the game immediately.

It was a great encounter and jazzed me up to no ends. On top of a slow weekend this was the perfect ending. He showed me the table where the paper table cloth was, with the characters scribbled out on it. I asked if he minded if I took it and he didn't care so I did. I have it here and am going to get some photos up shortly!

It was a great encounter. The dude's name was Curt something or the other, I didn't catch. But to him I tip my hat! Thanks for playing the game Bare Knuckle Style.

Thanks for playing
Steve

Ps I somehow disabled spell correct on this blog, so my spelling will be normal. Brian??? Jason??? hahahha

A little more Shonen Knife.



LISTEN to the Troll Dens Blog with Odiogo

Singapore

Who is supposed to be updating this blog!?

Good Grief.

Enjoy...Singapore.

Steve

Round 2

Well if February isn't already upon us! January went by extremely fast it seems to me. But it was a good month. We released a good number of products in January. A5 Shattered Horn signals the revival of the A series. Bands of Orcs is a new pdf release that offers quick made encounters. Arms and Armor is a great resource for any game system and a truly unique approach to the subject. DB6 also launched this past week, The Conquered East brings us all back to the Haunted Highlands and at the last few days we shipped Crusader 15. All these products compliment the ever growing C&C universe the RPG community at large.

January has been a good month and strong start to 2009.

This of course has been complimented by a new catalog that will be made available this next week for download. Its final draft is being completed now. This is the first tool in my arsenal to revive the sagging Retailer sales that TLG has experience since 2006. The drops in these numbers reflects a failure amongst distributors to push the C&C line and the very poor reaction I have to retailer needs...the catalog being one of the most important.

Mark and I have prepped the machine shop for its expansion which is going to enhance out abilities to do new things. Look for perfect bound copies of C&C products in the very, very near future.

I'm also considering an option, I have to talk this over with Peter, to revive a project he has long wanted to do, offer the PH and MT in one perfect bound book for quick reference. I'm mulling over the options, if we do this, it must include the updated 3rd printing material of the MT and the 4th printing material of the PH. This actually allows folks a less expensive way to get the latest version of the game. More on this early in the week.

For the first time in TLG's history I'm about 90% compliant with all my end of year financial filings, book keeping and the like. Its a small miracle which can be attributed to the staff here at TLG: Mark Sandy, Peter Bradley, James M. Ward, Cory M. Caserta, Brian Kowalski, Elizabeth Stewart, Mike Stewart, Jason Walton, Casey Cannfield, Casey Christofferson, Mark Allen, Robert Doyel, Jason Alexander and Richard McBain. And of course let us not forget the indomitable Davis who blasts into my office at 11 pm with all manner of ideas and mountains of CKG notes for me to put together and assemble.

This coming week I'll turn my attention to the CKG and begin my drive into retail shops and new distribution opportunites. Mark will begin the revamping of the shop to make room for new equipment and aforementioned expansion and Peter will be hopping hard on the multiple covers we've got him working on. Also look for the previously mentioned update on Crusader to make the copy more appealing and let people know what is in each bloody issue. In short we'll be removing the cluster of crap that is the crusader copy now!

Enjoy and as always, Thanks for Gaming!
Steve

For the song's smiths!



LISTEN to the Troll Dens Blog with Odiogo

Yodel to the End

Well, in the spirit of bringing TLG into the digital age, albeit reluctantly (Peter just informed me that Google has electronically scanned scores of our books without permission), I thought I'd stop by, to let folks know that I'm going to schedule regular blog posts this coming week.

But until then, enjoy a little of the most pleasent sounds you'll ever here.

That's how we do it! (Peter's head is going to explode on this one!)

If that hurt your ears then check this out.

Electric! (Julian Grimm, this one I'm sure your going to like!)

Thanks for playing,
Steve

2009 is upon us. Today the family, Mac’s family, Todd and Mark gathered for our traditional New Years Day feast of hog jowls, black eyed peas, turnip greens and corn bread with some local muskidine (sic) wine to top it off. Great fare…er, but for the turnip greens, that I could do without. Its supposed to bring us good luck and fortune. Here’s to it!!! And to you and yours as well!!

I’m looking forward to 2009, I really am. It’s going to be an exciting year. Its going to be a year that tests the market staying power of our communities game: Castles & Crusades. If the game does well, then we have a game that will stay and any amount of “it’s a fluke” talk that we’ve all had to endure can be permanently banished to the rubbish heap, where it truly belongs. As those of you who play already know C&C is so much more than a retro d20 game. But why am I so excited? There are several reasons.

Foremost is that the core books for Castles and Crusades are up for new printings: The Players Handbook will hit its 4th, the Monsters & Treasure its 3rd, the CK screens their 2nd. These are perfectly timed. We have literally run out of all three items at the same time. And this just happens to be the time that the Castle Keepers Guide is finally being wrapped up (Davis handed over Chapters 1 and 2 for editing this past Monday). The opportunity to address some long standing trade dress issues is golden. We can fix the books and release the new books all with the same look. To this end, several months ago actually, I charged Peter the task of making the trade dress more stark and eye catching. Bring in some colors and contrast them with the background. I also wanted at least a small overhaul to the C&C title logo, to make it more readable. He has done all these things with a gusto. The look has been on the site for awhile, but you can see the near final rendition of the new trade dress and the art for the M&T on this site, tonight. We are also going to take this opportunity to fix some long standing problems with the PH, specifically the Barbarian and the Illusionist. The Barbarian takes on a far more playable character class. I know you all are all going to enjoy it. Some other minor fixes, a new cover piece within the trade dress will top it off. The screen will sport the same art but a slightly different layout.

Next up is our growing relationship with James M. Ward. Jim, as we call him, has been hard at work for TLG for almost a year, if not long. He’s taken over the editor job at Crusader and turned that into a monthly magazine. Sagging subscription sales have picked up and the magazine seems to be inching into a new life. But more than that is the new C&C core book Of Gods & Monsters. This book explores well over a dozen pantheons and offers a host of monsters, magic items and spells to help round out the C&C experience. But more than that Jim takes a different approach to the deities, and makes them playable. The gods are given avatars and these avatars, like the Odin who wandered Midgaard we now have gods that take the guise of mortals. This book is going to be more than useful.

The Aufsrat series, the A adventure modules, lends itself to my happiness. This series is really core to the Aihrde universe as not only does it give people a playable series to dive into the setting with, but it ends with the monumental adventure: Aufstrag. We have managed to kick start the series of adventures that has sat stalled for years. A5 is already out the door and shipping. A6, the cover is done, the maps need drawn and the book edited. It should ship in January with no problem. A7 is on my desk. Peter has begun laying out the Great Tree and though work is far from done I anticipate that the moment the CKG is out the gate this adventure will dominate my attention.

Casey Christofferson has given me mountains of material to work on for the Haunted Highland series. Anticipate a folio edition of that setting coming out soon. He’s explored all manner of new items as well, next up the Black Librum
There is more C&C goodness further down the line. Much more. Miniature battle rules. Oriental rules. The Basic set. Adventures, MT 2, graph paper and more. Its too much for my overly taxed new year’s brain to put out today.

This doesn’t even touch the new adventures for Star Siege we are working. The Harvesters Game, Victorious and the oft mentioned Pulp Siege. We have a Horror Siege in the works as well. We’ll work hard on getting at least two of these out this year. Each game system will be considered for its own line of expansion and setting projects. All very much fun.
We have even more as well, but I’ll save it for later as the website is updated and it is time for me to go to my weekly game. But the shop and product line expansions will bring much growth to TLG and we are all looking forward to it with anticipation.

Alot has happened in the past year. More than any of us could have forseen. But its behind us. My mom once told me something that I use to guide my life. Her husband went off to war in Vietnam (twice volunteered), her three sons joined up during war time (first Iraq war) and I asked her once, when we all thought we would end up overseas, if it was hard saying good bye. She told me that it was harder than I would ever know, but the best thing to do, is to say Goodbye and then go on. And I can't say that in the many times that I have left my mom, when I would look back at her, that she has ever stopped and looked back at me departing. She would say goodbye and then turn around and walk away. In many respects this is what we are doing. We won't forget, we'll honor the memory and hold up the candle for all to see, but we are going forward. Always forward.

TROLLZAH

Now to the Land of Plenty!

Thanks for playing.
Steve

Quartermaster Blues

Ha I just had a great idea for March, 2009!

Good solid week this past week despite a bumpy Monday. Sometime around Tuesday the nature of the week changed as several items were brought to my attention. While boxing up some emergency orders Mark asked me to bring over some larger shipping boxes. I noted we were out, we checked the various and sundry places we have attempted to store our shipping boxes...the Blue Room, Storage, Mail Room (very crowded), Shop, Todd's Attic...and we couldn't find any but for one mangled, oil covered box that must have survived the Exxon Valdez spill. Being cheap and noting that this was an outer shipping box, we used it.

Mark taped it with Duck Tape.

"Mark, what are you doing?"

"We're out of packing tape."

"Ahh."

Making a mental note I went on about my day. Later while nosing around in the shop for more boxes I saw two garbage cans full of scraps. There were no liners in the can.

"Mark, why aren't we putting liners in the can?"

"We're out of liners. So I'm using the large wraps the Upper Works bundles came in to catch the scrap. Its not really working."

"Ahh."

This led me to the inescapable conclusion that we might be running short of supplies.

Its been a busy 6 weeks, what with getting Crusader 13, Upper Works and Towers of Adventure out as well as work on non TLG projects. Mark and I have been running pretty constantly. And inevitably we run out of supplies. Which is, I think, a good thing.

So Wednesday, in the midst of whatever else it is I was doing I began compiling a list of material and supplies the Trolls will need. Its the perfect time, with Christmas and end of year, so its the perfect time to resupply and get ready for January 1 and 2009 which promises to be an interesting year.

Here is the short list of what I came up with.

Large Shipping boxes...50
Outside Shipping boxes...100
Inside Shipping boxes...100
USPS FRB2 boxes...100
USPS large flat rate...100
USPS priority Mail shoebox ...100
USPS priority stickers...100
39 gallon garbage bags...4 boxes
light bulbs...4 cases
packing tape...12 rolls
6 100 round belts of M80 ball with M62 tracer rounds
Paper....22000 sheets
Toner....4 cartons
Ink for small printer...1 cartridge

The list goes on.

So Thursday I set myself the task of traveling around Little Rock and gathering these supplies. We buy much of it locally, the boxes and what not, but its a bit of a drive to go get them. And I think for the better part of the entire day I was either ordering stuff or driving and picking up stuff. Its a good thing I have a full size truck.

I'm about 3/4 of the way to resupplying the company. And I'm glad to report we are preparing ourselves for whatever 2009 brings us. And who knows what that will be?

In thinking about Castles & Crusades. I wonder sometimes, is it a Crusade we lead? Or is it a Civil War? We crossed the Rubicon to find what had been lost . . . .

Enjoy your weekend. Do not be troubled... (Around miniute 3.52, is a great scene)

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Last Train to Midnight

Well, here it is deep into December. I think I've forgotten about the blog entries for a few weeks. Of course, the busier I get the less time I have to put out announcements. Not really the best of situations as . . . well you understand.

Things have been moving very fast around here. I'm not sure what's going on. I'm actually managing to keep up with paper work. I've fixed IRS problems that have posted since 2005 (or I think that I have). Mark is working through some issues in the shop which have led to some quality issues (and we hope not released into the general pubic). Peter is doing some freelancing while hammering on a bunch of covers and interiors. Jason has been busy on cartoons and interiors. Davis has turned over 2 complete modules (3 if you count A5) and James Ward had been hammering on Of Gods & Monsters. This doesn't even count Mike doing some extra work on Arms and Armor, Casey on Halls of Adventure, Liz on the Crusader (14), and Cory editing two books. And we top all this off with Brian working over the webpage and trying to get us a gallery up of past pictures and events and McBain on conventions, Breakdaddy on the computers (which I have some questions for him come Monday...he loves hearing my hair brained questions).

(I know some of you are asking Who are all these people? I have the same question . . . . Mark assure me he know them!)

It seems that each day begins with simple tasks and ends in harried confusion. Take today (friday) for instance. I plopped down in front of the computer around 8:20 or thereabouts. Liz needed some material for Crusader 14, pictures and such. I had a few small task to tackle as well, a contract and financial statement to the bank. I figured about 2 hours and then I could wrap up the final read of A5 before it goes to Cory for editing. I thought, okay, before I get started I'll clean this desk up a little. I filed some papers, found some unpaid bills. Logged on paid those, filed those papers. Went through the in box a bit, noticed that I had a new solicitation sheet from Alliance. I cross checked that with my announcements. Noticed that some annouced projects hadn't been put up on the boards. That led to a sheet of inventory needs by Aldo Ghiozzi. I pulled print sheets and called him for an update inventory sheet so I could see what I needed to send him. He was out of lots of material. So I begin to go through the mail room and my stock room inventory to see what we had on hand.

It hit me then that i hadn't even gotten to Liz's Crusader needs yet. So I stopped, went through some art files from the old Codex, got some pictures. I couldn't find the original cover as she had asked for so I had to go into the storage boxes, dig out the old CDRoms, transfer the original cover over and save it the file type needed. I scratched that off her list. I noted that some of this art hadn't appeared in the Codex, so I moved some files around to get it where I could get to it later (or more likely forget about it). I then laid out an ad for Winter Dark. Doing this led me to the discovery that several of Jason's digital originals were not where they were supposed to be. I hunted them down, moved them, finished the ad and sat back. It was already 1015 in the a.m.

I sat back to see to some contracts I needed to do and Mark sauntered in. He needed the days assignments and wanted to go over some minor issues. We discussed these and got him set up and he wandered off to the Shop after we both cussed the governement and various technoligical devices for a few minutes.

Back to work.

So I worked over the contracts. As I was finishing those I wandered up to answer email on the lap top and process some orders. I had there a letter from Luke Gygax and I fired him off a couple of bone headed responses (to which he hasn't yet answered). The phone rang and I chatted to a Canadian customer for a bit. Back to the main office and the financial statement that the bank needed back in November. I stared at the tiny boxes for a minute and thought it best to dig out an old one and copy it instead of digesting another years worth of tax returns and other crap. And of course it had been a year since I needed one of these and I couldn't find the old ones. I searched for a bit and quit, to take up another task and wait for my old brain to joggle around. It was 11:20 so I had me some lunch. Two P&J sandwiches. Watched the news and cussed the tv.

Conversation with Peter, Casey Christofferson and the wife and then back to work. I busied myself for a minute noted that Amazon was down and worked on its password for awhile. Checking the boards I noted that I hadn't announced the Christmas sale.

Off to do a press release, realized that my email addyes were destroyed and thought up a way to get the word out. This meant extending the sale to RPGNow, something that I should have done anyway, and off to work over that sale page. This took the better part of an hour to make a new logo and design the bundles and upload all that. I returned to the file where I remembered I filed my financial statements and tackled that. Of course it was more painful that I remembered and it took too long. I remembered that I hand't signed and shipped the contracts and I stopped on that project, hit the contracts, made out the envelopes and booked off to the post office. The christmas cards, addressed, but unstamped were in the seat of the truck. So I gathrered all this up and dumped it on my local post master. Glenda laughed at me and gave me two books of stamps. I spent a good while stamping post cards. Got all that done and back to the office.

It was 3 in the afternoon. HOLY CRAP. So I finished the financial statement, faxed it to the bank. Answered a few emails and headed upstairs to get my work in on A5. I sat down and worked through a paragraph and the phone rang. Took an order. Worked and the phone rang again. It was Patrick, the latest bundle of Upper Works and StarSiege boxes were ready for pick up. Crap. Called Mark, he was elbow deep into some jobs that he couldn't quit. We decided to pick them up on Monday.

Mail arrives and a big check is there that I need to pay some bills with. Off to the bank. Back to the computer. Balance books. Pay some bills, leaving the freshly balanced books unbalanced. Head back to A5.

Its now after 4. For the next hour I struggled with A5 and managed to get through a few pages. Several interuptions and a VALA moment where I remembered a way that I might salvage my email addys from the pre-flattened computer. I wandered down to the old computer, searched them and found some original LDIF files Jason and I had saved long ago when we ported out of netscape. I imported these and they looked live.

Well. Long Train Ride later. I didn't get A5 done, but will this weekend. I managed to get alot of small stuff done and put some fires out. Strangely though it seems that every day has its own little litany of things that need doing. What's up with that??

Well, after that, we all deserve a little music. Here ya go you '70s freaks!!

Heavy Metal.

Thanks for playing.
Steve

For you listening pleasure.

Ole Paint.

Have a great weekend!
Steve

Well Hell's Bells

I hadn't realized how long it had been since my last post until I noticed someone's posting on the message boards. Time moves quicker than we like sometimes me thinks. I'm only going to take a moment to give a quick update so folks can get a better idea of what is going on.

Things seem to moving at an almost feverish pitch here, I'm not sure why. We've finally gotten Upper Works into the channel. It shipped out last week and was announced as available starting this week. That's good news. Restocks and reorders came in for Star Siege. Mark has begun the full release run of Towers of Adventure and it will be out in early December. In the meantime we've finally wrapped up Crusader 13, it will ship out to subscribers on Thursday.

NOTE MANY OF YOU MADE SIX MONTH SUBSCRIPTIONS, THEY ARE RAPIDLY ENDING. SO BE ON THE WATCH OR GIVE US A CALL.

Arms and Armor was delayed as its waiting its turn to print. Should be late this week. I'm wrapping up text for Crusader 14 and Jim is laying out the prospects for the Crusader 15-17.

In exciting news Jim Ward has turned over the first 2 chapters for Of Gods & Monsters. So that book is in advance of schedule. I'll turn them over to Peter for art direction tomorrow.

Peter in the meantime is working on the cover for M&T, 3rd printing, which will be announced in the next couple of weeks.

I have been working on the CKG, amidst the hordes of technical problems we've had around here (thank you Jason for fixing this cluster #&#@).

On a more relaxed note, the wife and I have rearranged the living room so that we have our large pine desk facing the fire place. The cold has at last arrived here in Arkansas and I've been spending my evenings (once everyone goes to bed) sitting at the desk, writing and working by the light and warmth of a crackling fire. It really helps the writing mood.

Thanks for playing.
Steve