Reasons Why I Publish

• I like doing it.
• It makes me happy.

Huh. Same reasons why I play games.

Some #s

Total Sales for 2007

carry. a game about war.: 93 (96 in 2006)

Timestream Standard PDF: 5 (17 in 2006)

Timestream Basic PDF: 8 (9 in 2006)

Timestream Premier Edition (print): 13 (168 in 2006, mostly cuz of sales into distribution)

Timestream Reference Edition (print): 2 (28 in 2006)

Time’s Champions: A Stream for Timestream: 4 (3 in 2006)

I Like It More Now

I finally finished fiddling with my official publisher website. I like it a lot more, and it’s hopefully simpler, easier to navigate, and more informative. And prettier.

So, that’s at hamsterprophetproductions.com

If you have any feedback about the site, feel free to leave a comment.

Dolla Dolla Bills

This may be of interest to some of y’alls.

When I released Timestream, it was partly a grand experiment to see how different price points, for the same content but different presentation, would work out.

The Basic PDF is $8.00. This is because, though there’s two versions in the package (screen and optomized-for-print), they’re both in grayscale, and there’s no PDF hyperlinking (kind of by accident, but that’s how it turned out, and whatever).

The Standard PDF is $12.00. Again, with the two versions, but it’s much prettier, with the full-color interior border and color pics. Also, the hyperlinks work. So there’s a little bit of value-added, plus the increased prettiness. I decided that this was worth an extra 4 bucks to those who cared about such things.

The Reference version is $16.00. It’s in print, it’s a grayscale interior, and it’s coil-bound. I really, really like coil binding, because it’s easy to reference at the table. So, the idea is that it’s a little less pretty, but it’s more utilitarian, and cheaper. I figured, since I’m charging 4$ more for the pretty PDF, I’ll charge 4$ more for the next “step up”. By accident, it’s also pretty much at the standard markup from the print cost (which I discovered later, when I started doing short digital print runs).

The Premier version is $26.00. Same content as the reference version, but the full-color interior (by which I mean, color borders on every page!) color pics, perfect binding, etc. So it’s more of a “real book”, right? I was gonna charge 20$ for it, keeping with my 4$ markup pattern, but then I printed them with the intent of going into distro (via Key20), and, um, that would have lost me a lot of money. I managed to figure out how to get the full-color down to something manageable, with the help of Lance at Avalon Innovations, but the 26$ price point is the lowest amount that gives me a whole dollar margin on sales in distribution. So, like, whatever, I priced it there, and I decided to see what would happen.

carry, on the other hand, is just the one version, with no plans for any others, and no fancy printing shenanigans. I looked at other games on the market, thought for a while, and decided to price it at $15.00. I was going to put it at 20, but I felt wrong about doing that, because, while I don’t think that anyone who would buy it at 15 wouldn’t buy it at 20, I don’t expect anyone except me to play the game more than once. So, 15 bucks for one evening of entertainment, that sounds fair to me, and I make enough off of that to pay for things.

Interestingly enough, while sales of all versions have slowed to a trickle, the general trend for Timestream is that the Premium far outsells the Reference, and the Standard PDF outsells the Basic PDF.

So, there’s some thoughts, from the publishers end, about pricing my small-press games.

It’s Back

carry. a game about war. is back in print.

Sorry for the delay.

You can get it now from Indie Press Revolution. I’ll be selling some direct pretty soon as well.

And there’s an apology thing that will be happening once I get it together, to say sorry for taking so damn long to get more books out. More details soon.

Wow, Taxes

So, income from my independent publishing was a quarter of my total income for 2006.

Wow.

(To be clear, this is a testament to how little I make in my “real life”, not how much I make selling games).

Carry Errata

The only appreciable change (other than typo corrections and layout tweaks) is this:

Par. 3304-c (page 45) originally read:

c.     If the winner’s action pool included any Burden Dice, the winner MUST spend points inflicting fallout on each of the Grunts that provided a Burden Die, if he has the points to do so. He then gives their Burden Die back to them.

Replace it with:

c.     If the winner’s action pool included any Burden Dice, the winner MUST inflict fallout on each of the Grunts that provided a Burden Die. This does NOT cost fallout points. He then gives their Burden Die back to them. The winner may shell shock, wound or seriously wound each Grunt without restriction, but he may only do one of these per Action scene.

It’s one of those changes thats minor but not really. It worked out really well when we played it that way at JiffyCon, and I think it’s more in line with how I want the Burden/Ranking Officer/Action Scene feedback to work.

Haha Wow

So I’m doing a proofreading edit of carry for the second print run, and guess what! one of the examples is wrong!  Not in a huge way, but definitly in a way that directely contradicts the rules text right next to it.

Wow. I feel like a total shmuck.

Writing rules text is hard.

Spiel x Press Review of Timestream

German gaming mag Spiel x Press has published a short review of Timestream. Many thanks to them, and to Christian and Harald for the translation help. The review in the original german can be found here in PDF form; below is the translation.

The stream of time is unchangeable. Or maybe it isn’t? In the roleplaying game “Timestream” the protagonists can influence the stream of time immensely. Time travels are possible, time can be slowed down, and different situations can be lived through over and over again.

The details are left to one’s own imagination in “Timestream.”

“Timestream” is not a highly professional product of a large company. Accordingly, the focus of the Timestream rule book does not lie in impressive illustrations and the optical design, but in simple rules provided in a way as to be understandable. Timestream does not commit itself to a specific world or specific mechanics that are needed to time travel, but leaves these parts to the individual play groups. In this way, each roleplaying group can play time travel adventures according to its own preferences.

For this reason the rule book of Timestream is kept simple and general. Characters are created quickly, there are only three rough classes of characters and few attributes, which leads to not getting lost in rules but focusing on on the playing-out of the story.

Timestream is a roleplaying game that has its strenghts–such as flexibility and simplicity–but also its weaknesses. For example, an evening of Timestream means quite a bit of work for the game master. To pull an adventure out of nothing without a lot of background is tedious, and that in a roleplaying game about time travels almost any unforeseeable event can happen doesn’t make the whole thing any easier.

Anyone who wants to play a time travel and time manipulation game without fighting their way through endless constructions of rules and theoretical foundations will be in the right place with Timestream. The whole game is kept very simple, and while it’s not an optically professional product, it’s thought through very well and piques one’s interest.

So I think I’m going to get working on some situation generation tools for the game. Seems like that would be good thing.

Ah Crap, He’s At It Again

The Imp Of The Perverse just got promoted from my “Work In Progress” folder to having it’s own directory.

Oh jeez.