The Future of Earthdawn

Editor's Note: This is a transcript of the seminar given at the 2005 Origins International Game Expo. It is not a word-for-word transcription; a lot of the extraneous comments have been cut out (though some have been left in where it fits the flow of the text). Page One is an introduction and general overview of RedBrick's plans for the line. Page Two covers the publishing model. Page Three is general Q&A and wrap-up. The format and layout should be self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me or visit one of the Earthdawn web forums linked in this transcript. We try to check them daily, and answer questions as quickly as we can. --Josh

James
I'll give you a bit of history, because it is quite amusing, and that will lead into what the original product plan was when we presented this to FASA/WizKids/FASA.

I ran a convention a few years ago, being an Earthdawn GM from a long way back, and at the convention Richard Vowles, a friend of mine, got hooked on it. He had a really good time--obviously I was really keen--and he brought up the idea of pursuing the Earthdawn license. When I told him that Living Room Games already has an Earthdawn license, he decided he was going to send an e-mail anyway.

When FASA shut their doors, most of their intellectual property went over to WizKids--Shadowrun, Battletech, and Earthdawn. We approached WizKids and they said, "Yes, you can have the license." We went through negotiations with WizKids, and after about 6 months we learned the rights for Earthdawn had reverted back to FASA, but that they might still be interested.

At that point I felt it was going to be too much work, and thought I would go on and do something else like raise children. Richard said, "No, we can do this!" and he sent an e-mail to FASA, and FASA said, "Yeah, we're really keen." So I was dragged back into the fray.

Josh
By the way, when he says FASA, he means Ross Babcock.

James
Yeah, that's pretty much FASA at this point. FASA is still around, but their interests are almost entirely in intellectual property. They're basically just maintaining copyrights and trademarks.

In October 2003 we announced that we had successfully negotiated a license for Earthdawn, and everybody said, "Oh my god! There's going to be a third Earthdawn! The moon will fall, and cats will be sleeping with dogs!"

The original plans were largely to--as Josh described--take the core content, roll it all into a couple of books, chuck it out the door and see what happens.

What happened over a period of time, unfortunately, was something completely different. "While we're doing it, let's just fix this area here. And this is a bit rubbishy, let's do some work there." And then some more people got involved, like Carlton, and others that aren't here today; the whole collective community. We've ended up with what we've got here.

The publishing model that we've presented is based around print-on-demand. I won't make any bones about that, but it's a little bit different. It's not this sort of print-on-demand. [Indicating mock-up of the EPC] This is not POD, this is puddle.

The print on demand publisher we're using is Booksurge. Booksurge has recently been purchased by Amazon.com. They have a rather unique model in that they have distribution centers around the world. So as long as you have an ISBN number, you can order product. They have an online shop--as soon as the products are listed, they are available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, pretty much every online retailer.

Booksurge are a print-on-demand publisher, but they also have affiliations with major distributors like Alliance and Diamond--at least that is our current understanding. They can source their product directly from Booksurge, and Booksurge will print whatever quantity they desire.

The reason this is largely experimental is--while places like RPGnow are providing PDFs that can be printed out--we didn't want to invest it in the core product lines from the get-go, because there is still an issue of risk because the second edition is still out there, and first edition is still being played. It's a conservative thing.

So what you'll notice is that we haven't really gone ostentatious. We haven't hired the greatest artists, and told them "Go forth and create great artwork for us!" Yet.

If it all goes well, I suspect that whatever future edition we release will be like many others out there--perhaps even a color interior with new artwork and all the cool, funky stuff that goes along with it.

Josh
In terms of art, Dammi has been fantastic. He's been tracking down some of the original Earthdawn artists--people like Jeff Laubenstein, who actually mentioned that he might do a promotional piece for us. His prices are a little higher than they were ten years ago, but he had a great time working on Earthdawn, and he's keen to get back into it. Several other artists as well…

Dammi
Les Edwards and John Matson gave us rights to re-use the cover art.

Josh
One of the more common complaints I hear about LRG's stuff relates to the art; most of it comes across with a kind of amateur feel. Not that it's bad--some of it is actually pretty good--but just the general feel of it isn't consistent with the older books. That is something that we're going to try and avoid; we'll try and keep a consistent feel with the earlier product.

James
The goal is to try and maintain the most professional looking products that we can, and hopefully the book meets with your approval in terms of layout and feel. There's a bunch of stuff that we can do--I come from a page layout background, and Dammi has a hand in that as well.

Josh
I just write stuff.

James
There are more arrows in our quiver than just taking some games and chucking them together. It's still early in the process.

The other part of the business plan was to engage with the community more. That's a two-edged sword, obviously. Fan is short for fanatic, and Earthdawn has a lot of fans. That's meant in a nice way, of course.

One of the really interesting things--I was chatting with Matt the other day--was you get a lot of criticism and comments over the boards, aired quite publicly on forums and mailing lists and so forth. We don't really have a problem with critical feedback; that's fine. Normally, if something is in print, it's a bit too late. With our print model there's nothing stopping us from fixing errata and the next person that gets the book gets the latest one with the errata in it.

We have to make some conscious decisions with that, because you can upset some people if they just bought the book and there's a new version out a week later. That's something we're going to look at more closely once the books are actually done.

Print on demand is hellishly flexible. There's a lot of stuff we can do that we couldn't otherwise. We can get just the internals printed out--as a hypothetical example --one of the ideas floated as the "leather-bound, limited edition, combination player's and GMs guide". One thousand twenty-four pages of role-playing goodness.

Josh
Suitable for use as a doorstop.

James
Exactly. Throw one of those at your players and they'll really feel it.

We've talked about customized internals. If you're a fan of t'skrang, you could have the watermarks all t'skrang related, if you want. We don't care--the content is the same, it's just a theme.

Josh
The other advantage--the one that really sold me on getting more involved with this project--is that there isn't a lot of capital tied up in product that might not sell.

James
That often kills role-playing companies.

Josh
Yes, but it also doesn't take as many sales to start turning a profit.

James
We're actually pretty open on this. If we sell about 250 copies, we've broken even. We encourage everybody here to buy twenty copies each.

Josh
Most small press companies do an initial print run of about three thousand copies, and start turning a profit at about twelve hundred sales. But since we aren't tied up in stock--as soon as we break that 250-unit profit line, the money can go into other development; paying artists, writers, and things like that. That will actually help cover the higher prices of the better artists in the industry.

James
As we've said, this is all experimental. The philanthropic thing I've been talking about on the forums from time to time is trying out this publishing model, see how it works, refine it a bit if necessary, and make the plan a publicly available template in the RPG community.

There are a lot of small companies out there that want to do a similar thing, and the technology and infrastructure is in place to make it possible now, where it wasn't before. It isn't rocket science, and you don't need a lot--though it is time-intensive.

Josh
And paper-intensive. I have a two-foot stack of printed chapters all marked up in red pen: "This is crap... and this section needs to be over here, and this whole chapter needs to be rewritten!"

James
Josh is polite.

Josh
I plan to scan a few of my marked-up pages and post them online just to give people an idea of how much work goes into something like this. A lot of fans don't quite realize--I didn't realize, quite honestly--how much work was involved. And this was material that was already written for us. Somehow I think that writing original stuff will be easier.

James
[Doubtfully] Yeah.

(General laughter)

Josh
It'll be different. Let me put it that way.

James
We'll reserve judgment on that. It'll be an interesting exercise.

So, while we're apologetic for not having released anything yet, bear in mind this is a learning curve for us, and there are good reasons for why we're not rushing it.

Josh
We'd rather have a quality product out there that people are happy with, even if it is six months (or more) behind our original plan.

James
Especially where we have all of this stuff waiting in the wings, ready to go out the door on a more regular schedule.