Digging in Under the Bridge

The last few weeks have been very interesting. We continue to see tremendous amounts of traffic at the site and interest in the game. Initial orders went beyond expectations. Generally a reprint is not met with much reaction at the retail level, but we saw strong out the gate numbers. This was encouraging. They were away and beyond the 2nd printing of the M&T. Nothing to shatter records and put C&C on the map as the game of choice, abut very good for TLG and the Crusade in general. In many ways the M&T is the weakest of the books as it is designed primarily for the Castle Keeper. So we have high expectations for the 4th printing of the Players Handbook.

That book has been moved forward, in front of Gods and Monsters. This was a tough decision for me to make and it is mine alone (so if it goes south, we have no one but me to blame). Essentially we are reprinting two hard back books back to back with nothing to soften the expense blow other than the two books in question. This might not make a lot of sense, but both the PH and the will be viewed as reprints by the retailers. This means that they treat them as a normal restock as opposed to a new title. New titles always outsell restocks by 10 to one if not more. The original plan was to bring Gods out to soften the blow for the PH and MT however circumstances changed when retailers quit ordering the PH 3rd printing altogether (once they heard the 4th was coming) and consumers followed suite. Without the PH in the pocket the Crusade has little steam to go on no matter the quality of the M&T, Gods and the CKG. So I moved it forward of Gods to bring it to the fore asap.

Now the 4th printing is slated to go to press on May 31st. We are on target for that date. I have dug in under the Troll Bridge today to finalize edits and material to get over to Peter. The barbarian is largely finished, but I will have it playtested a little more before press time. In the meantime I am putting together more of the art notes for Gods and Mosnters and bringing that fellow to a close. We hope to have everyting on Peter's desk by June 5th so he can finalize layout and we can get this guy to press and out by Troll Con VII. As it stands we are on target for that.

Once these two books are done and gone its all hands on deck for the CKG. Which is still on target for the August release. I'll bring more of that to light later.

But in the meantime. Look for the Heart of Glass release this weekend. It will have some few things the original did not, namely the Crna Ruk as a playable monster (as oppossed to the prestige class of yeasteryear) and the Rings of Brass as playable magic items.

All this is coming and the 4th Crusade expanding into the next realm!

Thanks for Playing
Steve the Troll Lord

The Fourth Crusade Begins

Monday afternoon some 56 cartons of books arrived here at the dens. Now of course that's not what goes into distribution. Those ship to Ft. Wayne. Mark was buried deep in some printing work so Davis and I scheduled an after hours unloading. It began in they damp hot air about 5 p.m. We carted the boxes from the truck (we had picked them up at the shipping center) through the mud to the warehouse either on our shoulders or with the hand cart. Mark joined us. By the end of it
we had stacked and inventoried the books.

Inside? Monsters. Monsters and more Monsters.

It was indeed the 3rd printing of the Monsters & Treasure.

I pulled two boxes and carted them back to the mail room and popping one open, had my first look at the M&T. I am very impressed. The last minute switch to green really did well and Peter's new cover is a brilliant blue. Very eye grabbing. The insides are largely the same, some minor changes and some additional art . . . the bullette and dragonne come to mind. But of particular interest to me is the paper stock. Peter pushed me hard to get a different type of paper stock, something about the grayscale art coming out better. I very grudgingly agreed (as it cost more and I'm cheap and didn't want to raise the price of the book...and did not by the by). But holy skype hunting. That paper is awesome. The 2nd printing was too light and stuck together, the first printing was too stiff. This paper stock is awesome.

I am impressed sir Peter, very impressed.

Tuesday we hoped up and packed and shipped the pre-orders. Those should be making their rounds even now. We took all the inventory and cooridanted with Impressions Advertising and Marketing to get the announcements down and here we are.

The Fourth Crusade has begun! Buy your today!

Steve

Free Free Free

Dirn it if the first shipping bill came in for Free RPG Day! haha We have sent out the first 1200 copies of the C&C Primer for 2009. It sports Peter Bradley's new layout with Jason Walton's cover for Monsters of Aihrde.

I finished the first pass over on the Heart of Glass, rework. That's nice to have done.

Work work work.

And Its all good!

Steve

This Crazy Blog

Whose in charge of this thing anyway??

Lots of news around here. The M&T is here and being processed and inventoried. Black Libram is out. We are working on a new cover for the PH, announcing a monster book of devils. Work has proceeded fast on Gods and Monsters and Tainted Lands.

We've added a 4th estate for media info on TLG.

Troll Con is raring up!

Things are moving along fast and furious and folks are grumbling at me for not getting them the
proper materials they need to do the jobs I've hired them to do!

THE FOURTH CRUSADE HAS BEGUN.

Steve

ps: Today I hit the speaker phone on my desk phone to call a distributor and got up and walked into the mail. A few seconds later I heard this ringing and thought, who the heck is calling me? I came back to the desk, saw the light on and said: "Hello." "Hello?" "Is anyone there." It kept ringing and then it hit me . . . . I need some sleep.

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