A Lion in Winter

Well its been a crazy two weeks since my last post. We've been working like mad around with little direction. We've tackled projects like The Black Librum of Naratus, The Castle Keeper's Guide, Monsters & Treasure, Tainted Lands, Crusadser 17, Monsters & Treasure of Aihrde, A6 Of Banishment & Blight and the 4th Printing of the Players Handbook. Too many loose ends and too many attempts to tie them all up nicely have left us a bit off key.

So we are going to regroup this weekend and get back into order. Black Librum's final should be on my desk on Monday as will Crusader 17 A6 has undergone a major revision and must needs be playtested again, so it will head to playtesting on Monday or Tuesday. M&T 3rd Printing is off to print with proofs approved. Other projects will be set aside and all attention given to the CKG.

So hoping that next week calms a bit and allows us to keep a little more focus.

Now enjoy a little of a great piece of music (not country this time I promise).

Thanks for playing.
Steve

Out of the Office

I will be out of the office until Monday the 30th. I'm taking my family to the mountains for some R&R, but I'm also taking A6, Chapter 6 from the CKG and Heart of Glass with me in order to do some writing, editing and cleaning up while I am away from the mad hatter's race that is TLG.

Here's a little June for you and your weekend!

And really you have to check out a Day in the Life!

Steve

The Den is A Mess

Really. The Troll Dens are a mess. Papers are covering my desk, they have spilled on to the floor. A stack of Crusaders is sprawled out next to my chair. The file cabinet looks like it vomited its soul of files and papers. The adjoining counter and desk is covered with half finished projects from t-shirts, to rolled up maps, someone's safe and various and sundry bottles. The adjacent mail room is a confetti nightmare. The 10/5 sale has done very and swamped me and Mark. We sold out of all available M&Ts, (the last of the 2nd printings, about5 30 or so are coming in from the Warehouse, there were reserved for other sales but i'm pulling thme) DB4, A5 and a few others and are reprinting them. But paper, boxes, packing and tape lies everywhere. Its a mess. I shutter to think of what the print shop looks like.

But the day ended with me catching a terrible mistake in MT 3rd printing. The bid called for a round binding and TLG always does square binding. Fixed that, finished the cover and guts and its at last off to the printer. Now on to Gods and Monsters.

But Davis is coming in tonight to work so no real need to clean up as he'll explode across the office like a typhoon of mess.

Here's one of the bed time tunes I used to sing my youngsters...seriously.

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Graphing it all out

Alright, today is a good day so far! Mark is producing more graph paper as it is selling like madness. McBain and I had a productive conversation about Troll Con and are looking at an expanded guest list . . . we'll see on that, pretty exciting at any rate. I just finished Monsters of Aihrde IV and released it and will spend the rest of the day finalizing some things with the Monsters & Treasure, 3rd printing, and it will go off to press this afternoon.

Still digging my Oxygen.

Thanks for playing.
Steve

Tuesdays and Kill Time

The fight to keep time from overwhelming us is a hard one . . . .

Yesterday Breakdaddy reassembled the discombobulated computers in the print shop and got us back online and in business. A good thing by any stretch. Gave me an opportunity to clean the shop some in Mark's absence. Of course the highlight was Breakdaddy giving Todd a friendly punch in the stomach . . . Todd just had surgery on his guy last Friday. The groan was heard in the back of the shop. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time!

We just launched Crusader No. 13 on RPGNow. Be sure to pick that pdf if you haven't already. Of course you should really subscribe and join the Crusade now. A6 continues to get bumped on the roster, but hopefully it will get wrapped up tomorrow. I will launch Monsters of Aihrde IV on RPGNow sometime tomorrow. The last bit of art came in and it looks fantastic. Its the Mogrl by Mark Allen.

Hartsfield aka AGNKim, this one goes out to you!

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Launch Pad

Monday is off and running. Today we launched our fourth annual 10/5 March recession madness sale!!! Get 'em while you can. Some of these items, the PH and MT, are just not going to be around for long...at least in these printings!

Also please note that the Monsters & Treasure 3rd printing is now available for sale! It is off to the printers sometime today or tomorrow!

We had a good weekend, I worked on several projects, most notable Monsters of Aihrde IV, Dwarven Glory III and Crusader 17. So with a little luck we can work through our computer problems and have this week luanch into space much like the space shuttle
Discovery did last night!!

Today I"m working on MT 3rd, Crusader 17 and Heart of Glass. Mark is wrestling with computers and machines as is Breakdaddy!

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Bumpy Ride

Well this week unraveled a little.

On Wednesday we were having trouble with a file, thought the file was corrupt but it wasn't. Turns out we needed updated software. This put us way back on production as we have still not managed to get the software on there. Finally made Breakdaddy aware of it but it will be Monday before we get it online (note to Troll Self: call Breakdaddy first).

We have lots of website updates but Bryan is down with a horrible flu so none of that happened. Hopefully this weekend. Of course can't blame him too much as I was trying to get these files updated for Mark and didn't have time to even get him updates on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Peter got caught up wrapping up some other projects and we didn't get the Title Logo finished so M&T and Black Librum aren't press ready.

E-Con canceled, or sort of did, so we've pulled out for this year and will look to next year!

Lots of visitors in the office and too much conversation.

Its been a frustrating week to say the least. So I'm clocking out early, turning off the phone, shutting down IM and going to get to work cleaning up work spaces and getting ready for what promises to be a bumpy week next week!

So until Monday.....Death Proof SPOILER the end of this movie appears in this video!! Great Movie!

Thanks for Playing
Steve

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