News at Last, Thank God Almighty there is News at Last!

Hey Folks,

I've been absent from the boards for several weeks, mainly working on the CKG, and as I'm way overdue for some news, here she goes . . .

Things are going to heat up a little around here. As I put more time into the CKG I'm going to move things around a bit in the schedule. All the below is set to give me more time into the CKG:

Neal joins us for the next two weeks and he's going to take over all the electronic uploads we've been needing to do, particularly over at Paizo, Game Hermit, RPGNow, Amazon etc.

I'm going to shift Crusader back one issue, a month's delay essentially. Resetting the magazine so that Issue 21 will ship in October, Issue 22 in November and so on. I'm doing this mainly so that I have more time in the short term to work on the CKG. I may have to do this again at some point in the very near future. So for the next few months it may get bumpy . . . certainly not as bad as it was back during the early days of the magazine.

Players Handbook is due to ship to these offices on the 23rd of this month, that 's this Wednesday. It normally ships in 2 days so that we will have the books late on Friday afternoon. Now, we are going to attempt to preset packaging and get a batch of them out on Friday, no promises on that though as we just never know when those tractor trailers are going to arrive.

Gods and Monsters is up next, but its going to have to wait a few more weeks for the pipe to clear.

The Screens continue to be a vexing problem. We are going to have another go at them this week.

CKG, chapter 21 wrap up today and tomorrow. This has really been the hardest chapter of it all, so hopefully this will prove to be the end game for this project.

We've launched the personalized Players Handbooks as well. Get your orders in quickly, if not the files, so we can set these up and start printing them. Thanks.

I'm sure there's more but it will have to come to me as it comes to me.

I have started a thread over on the message boards called News and More News. If you have any questions, please stop by and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Good Sweet Heavens

Gen Con, Hardbacks, Tainted Lands, too much unloading and loading...lots of work going on around here and the blog gets shucked to the side again. I'll update in the next coming days.

But in the short term, we returned from Gencon at 4 in the a.m. and we are back at the work bench hammering away: up next CKG.

Steve

Troll Con and Beyond

Hey all from the Troll Dens,

It was a very good show, whole lot of fun. Lots of games, visiting and hanging out. The set up was nice and the show went smooth as butter.

A very hearty Thank You to Jim Ward, the 501st and everyone else. The Troll Crew did an excellent job running the show and I thank you from me to them: Richard, Excellent job! Breakdaddy, Todd, Brian, Mark, Davis and all. Great job.

But the real thanks goes out to the people from John Adams and family to Robert Miller and Family and all the Wichita guys and everyone else who took the time and money to spend a weekend with us here in Little Rock. A very kind thank you very much from me to you.

We'll get some wrap ups in the next few days out for Crusader and what not but suffice it to say it was a real fun time.

And the real good news is that its only going to get better.

Lots to do around here, lots more work to be done. Gods is a wrap, PH is a wrap and we are on to Tainted Lands and the CKG. Its all bore now for Gencon and the fall releases. Soooo, I'm going to take a week off and go to Montana and walk around the glaciers there and get my head cleared.

But when I get back on the 20th we are going to hit the ground running.

Trollzah! and remember its a Troll World After All....hahah

Thanks for playing,
Steve

ps: Davis and Mark are in charge while I'm gone. That should be fun. :)

Message Boards

Hey folks,

The Message Boards are down. It appears to be a problem with the DNS on the providers end. Bryan is looking into some solutions. We may attempt to get some temp boards up.

Thanks for the patience!

Steve

Players

Steve: hard at work on PH edits and a little reformat.

Peter: hard at work on Gods and Monsters.

Davis: hard at work on CKG.

Mark: hard at work on Area mapping sheets.

Jim: hard at work on CKG.

Thanks for playing,
Steve

Growing Pains

Well as usual, we seem to be having growing pains. At least I hope its growing pains . . . .

Jim and Liz have just put Crusader 19 to bed and its a good one, chalk full of all kinds of articles. We have a few sneak peeks on the CKG in this issue as well.

Work on the Castle Keeper's Guide has been tremendous has knocked us off schedule with the A series, nothing unusual there as that poor series is constantly being knocked to the side. A6 has just now shipped and we'll announce its availability tonight or tomorrow night. We'll also put up some errata for the Monsters & Treasure, apparently we left out the stat block for the Shark.

But problems with the M&T have made us take a closer look at the PH which we are going over now. That has necessarily delayed that project by a week or so. This of course has delayed work on the CKG somewhat, but it has not impacted Gods & Monsters as that book is almost completely in Peter's court now. This has had a small impact on Tainted Lands though that project is well on its way for a Gencon Release.

In short we have a ripple affect going up and down the line caused largely by the PH delays. I'll have a better assessment next week of where we are on everything.

Thanks for playing!
Steve

A6 Shattered the Horn

A6 Of Banishment & Blight is finally done and ready to ship. It took a monstrous last minute effort to align text and the 12 odd maps in the book. Davis made a kick ass adventure, but good lord are the maps complicated, 7 towers over 7 causeways to 7 dungeons that lead to a central dungeon that has four levels.

Ug. I hate Davis sometimes. And have let him know quite a bit.

But he has been pounding out the CKG and we invited Jim Ward's input as well and Jim has turned over some remarkable material. The book is well on its way to being completed.

I'm now doing some wrap up for Crusader 19, it should be shipping by early next week at the lastest. So that's good.

After that, some more CKG and then on to Tainted Lands. Box cover is done, now to editing and guts.

And then, Cleaver the Pit. Look for a box set of the game, version 2 I think, this coming Gencon!

Thanks for playing.
Steve

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.