Death Spray of the Ancient Ones

Thank you Thrash Geek for this actual laugh-out-loud moment. It's worth clicking to see it larger, so you can read all about what this amazing product does.

Barnes & Noble stretches the truth

Lots of OSR publishers would like to get onto Barnes & Noble ... oddly enough, Rappan Athuk seems to have gotten there without agreeing to be there, on terms that not only weren't authorized ... but wouldn't be approved.

Someone pointed out this link to Rappan Athuk at Barnes & Noble, and it caused a bit of confusion over at Frog God Games, because it is completely and utterly unauthorized. We have no idea why Barnes & Noble is offering the book, since they don't own any and haven't bought any.

The price they are quoting is below the price we would sell the books wholesale, so don't expect that they will honor any orders put through their website. If this turns out to be a third party seller rather than B&N, and we can track who it is, that third party seller will NOT be getting any copies.

In summary, if you hear that you can get a cheaper price at Barnes & Noble, don't expect that B&N will actually come through. This is also technically endangering our agreement with Kickstarter, which is why we are trying to make it absolutely clear to everyone that we have not authorized B&N to sell the books at ALL. Much less at bargain-basement clearance prices.

So unless you're 100% confident in your ability to sue Barnes & Noble to sell you a book when it's at a loss to them, I wouldn't pre-order from them.

EDIT - the only place to get it is from Kickstarter, here.

Wisdom of Guy Fullerton (and Gothridge Manor)

Given all the publishing activity that's begun in response to Kickstarter's insane ability to gobble in money for its clients, Guy Fullerton has posted an absolutely fantastic set of guidelines for the prospective module-publisher. He also references an earlier set of posts on the specific topic of editing that were done at Gothridge Manor.

Here is the link to Guy's first installment.

Here is a link to the Gothridge Manor series, but I recommend going here from within Guy's posts where the link appears.

Rappan Athuk Kickstarts Now

Frog God Games and Necromancer Games are announcing that the Rappan Athuk megadungeon will be sold through Kickstarter rather than by doing the pre-orders through Frog God Games as originally planned.

This is the Kickstarter page!

Yes, at $25K this is a really ambitious Kickstarter goal, but the fact of the matter is that it's a really big project to do a 700 page hardcover book with a separate map booklet, etc., etc.

Although Kickstarter does charge a fee, using the Kickstarter model allows us to pull in bonus goals and do other things that would be difficult if not using Kickstarter -- they've done all the website-programming already. Plus, I expect that the Kickstarter name will increase sales, although I'm not sure it's by 5% (not for an already well-known company like Necromancer or Frog God).

But if Steve Jackson thinks it's the right thing to do ... you don't argue with the OGRE.

I just got a phone call from Bill that in the first 10 minutes after launch we got a $3,000 backer. I haven't even finished this blog post yet. Okay, now I'm done. I'll blog more about it soon, I'm sure. I have to go see if he's yanking my chain.

Edit: nope, that was true. I think we broke $6K in the first hour, or really close to it.