Voice #9

A new Voice of the Revolution!

Covenant review and John Harper interview

Show notes:

0:29 - Brennan starts things off with IPR news. New on the site:
Ninja Burger (PDF)
Faery's Tale
Active Exploits Diceless Roleplaying
Classroom Deathmatch
Finis: A Book of Endings to Give People New Beginnings
Urchin
5:02 - Covenant, by Matt Machell, is a roleplaying game of failing conspiracies.
20:12 - Paul sits down with John Harper, the designer of Agon, to talk about Go Play Northwest.
31:22 - In Pravda, Brennan discusses the process of printing your game.
40:35 - Brennan and Paul share their currently playing lists, which turn out to be rather long.

The Big Time!

I got interviewed on a mainstream media outlet! Yesterday, I got a call from TheStreet.com, and talked about Indie Press Revolution. The interview went up today: Small-Biz Buzz: How to Feed the Gamer's Fix

Cool!

Voice Episode #8 Now Available

The Voice of the Revolution Episode #8 is now live! Paul and I review Don't Rest Your Head and have an interview with Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games.

Show notes:

0:29 - Brennan starts things off with IPR news. New on the site:
The Dossier (PDF supplement for Cold City)
Piledrivers and Powerbombs (PDF)
Sports Fan Double Pack (PDF)
Donjon and Donjon Pack B-1 (PDF)
Primetime Adventures
3:18 - Don't Rest Your Head, by Fred Hicks, is a game about insomniac superheroes and the nightmares that want to eat them.
20:18 - Jason Morningstar, author of the The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, talks about the forthcoming Grey Ranks (set during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising) and The Roach Returns.
30:25 - In Pravda, Brennan talks about the editing and layout stage of game production.
40:15 - Brennan and Paul share their currently playing list before signing off.

The Voice of the Revolution, Episode 7

Episode 7 is now live! Paul and I review Hero's Banner and interview Chris Hanrahan of Endgame Oakland.

Show notes:
0:29 - Despite audio problems, Paul and Brennan are back for the April show. As always, the episode starts with IPR news. New:

The Zorcerer of Zo (PDF)
Intergalactic Cooking Challenge (PDF)
Nine Worlds (PDF)
Seven Leagues (PDF)
Vs. Monsters (PDF)

Dust Devils Revenged
Beast Hunters

02:41 - Hero's Banner, by Tim C. Koppang, is a roleplaying game that focuses on coming of age stories.
15:38 - Chris Hanrahan of Endgame in Oakland, CA, talks with Paul and Brennan about indie games from a retailer's perspective.
29:07 - Brennan talks about the process of procuring art for your game in the latest installment of Pravda.
39:26 - Paul and Brennan talk about what they're playing now. Paul even goes first this time.

Other games:

Polaris
Agon
Dogs in the Vineyard
Mortal Coil
Don't Rest Your Head
The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach
carry. a game about war.
Primetime Adventures
Mystery of the Abbey

Another Interview

I was interviewed over at The Games the Thing by Ron and Veronica Blessing. I don't think I made a total ass of myself. I talk about Mortal Coil, design, my upcoming projects, and also IPR.

Check out the podcast here:
http://www.thegamesthething.com/

[IPR] Disintermediation

I've been interviewed several times recently, and people often ask about the business model of IPR. I thought I'd post a little primer about some of the nitty-gritty of publishing and selling games, and where IPR fits in that picture.

So, to understand what IPR does, you need to understand the concept of disintermediation. To anyone who read business literature during the dot-com boom, the term disintermediation will be familiar. To everybody else, it's a long word for a pretty simple concept: cutting out the middle-man.

Any business that creates items it wants to sell has a problem: how do you get these things you make out to the people who want to buy them. Traditionally, it's been pretty hard to hook these two groups of people together. That's why stores exist. They gather up a lot of different items people want to buy, and customers come to the store to get all the supplies at one place. This is pretty simple. It does get complicated upstream, though. Stores often have the same problem their customers do: how do I find all the different people who have things I might like to sell?

This is where distributors come in. Distributors search out products and present stores with a big list. These are products they have researched, often purchased, and then sell on to the retail store.

You see this pattern in all sorts of industries, and you find it in the role-playing game industry as well. In the RPG industry, this is called the "three-tier system." Tier 1: the game manufacturer. Tier 2: the distributor. Tier 3: the retail store. The thing is, for small publishers like Galileo Games, the three-tier system had actually become a four-tier system. Distributors were not interested in researching, pursuing, or purchasing from very small publishers who may or may not be in business in six months (an understandable, if problematic, attitude). So, they were relying on fulfillment businesses, like Key20 or Impressions, to find and consolidate lots of small publishers together and then the distributors would order lots of titles together. These fulfillment businesses are like distributors to the distributors.

I'm sure you can see the problem that is starting to appear here. First off, retailers need a significant discount in order to keep going. They have a lot of overhead costs: rent, utilities, staff. They need to make a certain percentage, usually 40-50%, off each product to stay in business. Distributors need to make some money, too, or they couldn't warehouse and ship the books, maintain the staff to find and order the products, etc. They want another 10-20% of cover price. Then you add in the fulfillment house, taking 15-20% of what's left, and there is a pretty small piece of the pie left for the creator.

When the dot-com bubble was in full swing, there were loads of books and articles about how the internet would change this sort of arrangement. The word for this was disintermediation. The internet would facilitate buyers and sellers meeting directly, and cutting out all the levels of middlemen that had grown up in just about every industry imaginable.

This definitely happened, and you can see the results in a variety of places. The ones I think demonstrate this best are places like Lulu or OneBookShelf (formerly RPGNow and DriveThruRPG). These are places where creators post their work, and customers come directly to shop. Of course, the sites themselves act as middlemen, but at least one layer, and usually more, has been removed from the transaction.

However, there is another problem that occurs on these sites. Anyone who wants can post a product, and many do. There is soon a vast slush pile that potential customers have to shift through, and the value of the store owner becomes evident. IPR deals with this by screening all products that go up, thus insuring a level of quality. This quality may be idiosyncratic, because I am the one who does all the screening, leading to a collection of books that reflect my own tastes, but it is better than no screening at all.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts and comments on this subject in the future, but I wanted to post this since I've explained it (in considerably fewer words) several times in the recent past, thanks to various interviews about IPR.

[IPR] The Voice of the Revolution Episode 2

Some podcasts are more monthly than others. Due to some technical difficulties, Paul and I squeaked under the wire for our November podcast:
http://www.thevoiceoftherevolution.com/
Also, there's an annual ranking of "best indie games of the year" over on RPGNet. If you liked Mortal Coil, mention it on the list! I got some love early on in the thread, then it tailed off.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=298677

Indie Game Fans Take Heed

I set up a news list for Indie Press Revolution. Subscribe if you're interested in getting updates on new releases, upcoming events, and general IPR news:
indiepressnews@ yahoogroups. com

For convenience, here's a quick link to the group so folks can sign on up:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/indiepressnews/

And perhaps more to the point, here's an RSS feed for the messages:
http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/indiepressnews/rss

Which Fred Hicks has added to LiveJournal syndication:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/iprnews/

[IPR] The Voice of the Revolution

Good afternoon. It's nine o'clock and this is the Voice of the Revolution, broadcasting on 275 and 285 in the medium wave.

Paul Tevis, of Have Games Will Travel, has teamed up with me to do a monthly podcast for Indie Press Revolution. Our first episode is up, and you can listen to it here: http://www.thevoiceoftherevolution.com/

[IPR] Radio Interview

A couple of guys from Eugene, Oregon have a radio show on the local college radio station. The theme of their show is getting your artistic work out there once it's complete. They are both fiction writers, and have their own indie publishing label. They contacted me last week to ask me on the show to talk about Indie Press Revolution and what we were doing in the role-playing game market, obviously with an eye to how this could apply to other types of creative endeavors as well. Dudley and James were great guys, and it was a lot of fun to do the show.

I'll update the link when I have one that actually leads to the interview.

Thanks for having me on, gentlemen!

Edit:
Ok, they sent me the wrong link. Here's the right file:
http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/pdf/kwva%20art%20hustle%2016%2010%202006%20show.mp3
It sounds kind of weird at first because they ran the same promo three times before the show starts.

GenCon: My Take on the Whole Thing

For some, GenCon started on August 10 and was over on August 13. For me, GenCon started months ago, and was over yesterday. The amount of planning that has to go into a major convention like this is daunting, and started way back in January of this year, for me. This all led up to the con, and then afterwards, I had lots of bookkeeping, inventory management, and backed up web orders to deal with. As of Sunday, August 27, all of this was officially done.

So, whew! I have three hats I was wearing there, the IPR hat, the Galileo Games hat, and the Brennan Taylor hat. I'll break out my impressions in three parts, based on this.

IPR
IPR went in with Luke Crane, Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker, and Tim Kleinert as a primary sponsor of the booth. I don't really know what this entailed for the others, but for me it meant that I paid for a full 10x10 portion of the booth (not quite 1/4 of the total cost, actually, the number was negotiated with Luke directly). In exchange for a 10% fee, I would handle all money/sales transactions, and I would process credit cards for the booth. Last year, they really didn't have this capability, and based on the sales this year, I'd say that hurt. A lot.

Based on the booth sales from last year (roughly $20,000), I calculated that if the booth did that well, I would break even. Well, the booth did over $33,000 in sales, so I did more than break even. That makes GenCon a much more successful con for IPR than Origins was. At Origins, I broke even, but made no extra money.

I brought Alexander Newman along, like I had at Origins, and he is a fantastic helper. Together, we run a tight ship, and a lot of problems I anticipated never materialized. Overall, I felt the booth ran quite smoothly, and it was extremely successful. We sold things hand over fist for most of the con. I can remember only a few short periods of time where the cash register was not busy.

Things that went not so well:
1) The booth space for shopping was too small. I knew this was going to be tight, and boy, was it. Three browsers crowded up our booth, and since there was often a line at the register, shoppers were blocking the shelves most of the time. I'm not sure how to solve this, a few ideas have been floated for layout next year, and we shall see.
2) People don't come to the Forge booth to buy d20 stuff. I sold a few titles from the d20 publishers I carry, but for the most part, no one was interested. These books are all big, 8-1/2 x 11 inches, and they took up a lot of shelf space. For items that weren't moving, they sucked up some serious real estate. I want to support these publishers just like I support all of the non-d20 indie publishers I carry, but our space at GenCon didn't cut it for this. I am not sure what to do about this issue next year, and I will be discussing it with these publishers as we plan.
3) There wasn't any storage space at the booth. We had a lot of boxes full of stock that wouldn't fit on the shelf. We stuck these in the Wicked Dead section of the booth, and stored some more at another booth not affiliated with the Forge thanks to the generosity of the person running that booth. This was definitely not ideal. We sold lots of books, as mentioned above, and restocking was confusing and time consuming, and at least once, a book ran out and no one could find the backstock for an hour or two. We've got to have some sort of solution for this next year, perhaps a stockroom made up of temporary walls like Jason at Key20 uses.
4) Booth helpers weren't organized. Alexander did some organizing starting Friday regarding staffing and helpers, but this should have been done earlier. Some planning needs to happen before the con, and there needs to be a written schedule so everyone knows when they are supposed to be at the booth. This didn't turn out to be a big problem, but it had the potential to be far worse than it was, and I want to keep that from happening.

In conclusion, IPR had a great con overall. There were some big, serious problems I'd like to work on next year, but these were far outweighed by the good things that happened at the con.

Galileo Games
I came to GenCon as a Galileo Games representative to sell Mortal Coil, and it sold well. It was no mistake that I released this game at Origins, and then toured it to DexCon. There was some good pre-con buzz, and a lot of people came to the Forge booth with Mortal Coil already on their shopping list.

I didn't run demos early, but when I started, I sold an average of one game a demo. Total sales for Mortal Coil at the con were 60 copies. I was super thrilled at this number, and it put me in the top 10 for the booth.

I only had one Mortal Coil game on the schedule, and unfortunately, the listing failed to mention the system, only the scenario title. That kind of sucked, but I had four players at a Friday morning 8 a.m session, so that wasn't so bad. One was Shawn de Arment, who had played MC at DexCon. Another was a player who had been in a Bulldogs! game I ran at GenCon 2 years ago and was familiar with my work, and had e-mailed me before the con to ask if the session was Mortal Coil. Lastly, a British couple who thought it might be a D&D game, but were pleasantly surprised that it wasn't (not that they had anything against D&D, they were just playing mostly that the rest of the weekend and thought something different would be refreshing). They came to the booth later and bought two copies!

So, nothing bad to report here. For Galileo Games, GenCon was a blockbuster success. I had anticipated almost exactly what happened, and was not disappointed.

Brennan
As a participant, the con was not bad for me. I got some shopping done, and picked up gifts for the whole family. Krista got a V for Vendetta mask, Crispin got a Dragonology board game, and Lilith got a Fruits Basket card game and A Fairy's Tale RPG. I got Qin: Warring States, Bacchanal, a set of Bacchanal dice, Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men, House of Horiku, Cat, and Thirty. I also got a whole passel of games for free to review for inclusion at IPR. I plan on reporting on all of these as I read through them.

I got to play a couple of really good games after hours, also. I ran two sessions of Mortal Coil, one based in 1960s London where magic was surreal psychodelia accessed through drug use, and the other in the punk scene of the 1970s where music was magic, stolen from the Devil at the crossroads by Robert Johnson. Loads of fun, like Mortal Coil always is for me.

I also playtested a new game from Ben Lehman called Drifter's Escape, which was a really interesting experience. I'll probably talk about this some more in a seperate post.

On a fanboy note, I ate dinner one evening with John Wick, creator of Legend of the Five Rings, which I have played and enjoyed for years. I was excited to meet him, because he was something of a celebrity to me. Of course, familiarity breeds contempt (I don't really have contempt for you, John), and by the end of the con, I viewed him as a peer, just like all of the other really awesome game designers I get to hang out with there.

Also, I drank a lot with some crazy Scotsmen. They bring lots of fun with them to GenCon, and man, were there a lot of them this time out!

There wasn't a lot of time at the con for me to personally enjoy myself, but I really enjoyed the few moments I had away from the exhibit hall.

[IPR] Most Influential

Indie Press Revolution won the 2006 Ogre's Choice Award for Most Influential Company! The Ogre's Choice Awards is run by Ogrecave.com, an RPG news and podcasting site. See the details here: www.ogrecave.com/ogres_choice/awards_2006.shtml

Origins Aftermath

I have returned from Origins. My fellow booth monkey Alexander Newman has posted a detailed report of our activities there, and his discussion can be found on the Forge: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20285.0

There are also a couple of podcasts from Origins where I or my game is mentioned:

Mike Sugarbaker of Ogrecave interviewed me at Origins about IPR:
http://www.ogrecave.com/audio/index.php?id=41

Paul Tevis and Ken Hite talk a little bit about IPR and Mortal Coil in the latest Have Games Will Travel: http://havegameswilltravel.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=106869

May Day Sale at IPR

Indie Press Revolution is holding a big May Day sale. Gamers of the world, unite! It's 20% off everything in the store, so great deals on some awesome indie games. Get Bulldogs! for $19.95 and Bulldogs! Races for only $4.75.

They have great stuff over there (I run the site, so I know), so hie thee at once and stock up!