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'm sure you've got heaps of questions, and we should try and cover those--as we have only a short time.

Josh
Yeah, only about ten minutes left in here, so let's try and answer whatever questions you have at this point.

James
We've sort of played a bit of bit of hiding-behind-the-scenes game, as may be apparent from the forums. While we've been trying to be transparent about things, we've probably not been as transparent as we could have been, or should have been.

Since we were here at Origins, and having the books so close to going out the door, we thought it would be appropriate to touch base with people, and also go ahead and answer whatever questions you might have, face to face.

To touch back on the forums a bit, keep in mind that any questions you post there will be answered, just not straightaway.

Josh
Unless they're really stupid questions, in which case we'll just mock you.

James
Yes, that costs nothing.

It's largely a case of time spent answering questions on forums is time not spent behind a page-layout program, or a word processor.

Josh
Which is part of the reason that lately I've been the more vocal one on the forums. My work at this stage is mostly done; Jim is the one scanning and laying out pages. I probably spend more time on the forums than I should, since I have three or four more chapters that I need to look at in the player's guide.

James
So... any questions?

Question
What are your expected release dates?

Josh
The tentative plan right now is mid-late August for the player's book, only because while we are pretty much done--all that's left is final proofs and a quick polish or two...

James
Finish the index.

Josh
The book will have a good index. A pet peeve of mine is bad RPG indices. We're taking a page from the previous (and current) edition of Ars Magica, and will have a separate alphabetical spell index to make finding spells easier if you don't know the Discipline and Circle offhand.

James
On top of the quick-reference summaries and appendices, all of which will be available online as well.

Josh
Part of the delay is simple turnover. We have to send it in to Ross at FASA--though he's been really good at turning things around quickly--he'll take a look, say "That's cool, go ahead."

James
Then it's getting it up to Booksurge. They have a two-week--no more than two-week turnaround--for galleys to come back, let us know what it actually looks like. Assuming we get approval, we push the button and it's available. It's all electronic.

Josh
Yeah. Once we get the galleys, we tell them to go ahead and it's available. There's no waiting for the printer, and then shipping to distributors... the book may not be available in shops until September, but it can be ordered online almost as soon as we give them the signal to go.

James
Another thing to bear in mind, if you want to order online, the way Amazon tends to work is offering discounts. One of the interesting things with this model--and there are variations--is that we really don't care if a vendor or distributor discounts. We make what we make on it. All of our margins are based on recommended retail price.

We may take a hit in one sense, but at the same time we know exactly what we're up for. It's the same profit for every single sale. It's sort of the opposite of the standard model, where you print it as cheaply as possible, and then negotiate your discounts You may make only two dollars here, but maybe five dollars over here. We can actually plan a bit more effectively, from an accounting standpoint.

Another thing to keep in mind if you order online, it will actually be shipped from your local center; Booksurge has outlets in the UK and the Netherlands in Europe, one or two places in the United States, Australia, and Japan as well. They have more popping up, so shipping costs will be lower, and the ship time will be shorter for "international" sales.

Question
Will you be at GenCon?

Josh
Not this year--in large part because we're not going to be able to be there. Also, we're not 100% sure that the books will actually be out by then. We've made some contacts here this weekend, and its possible that if things go really quickly over the next couple of weeks we might have material available at somebody else's booth.

Question
You don't want to go to the trouble of getting booth space, arrange distribution and then not have anything?

Josh
Exactly. Jim is flying back to New Zealand on Monday, Carsten goes back to Germany, and I don't have the time to go and do a major convention alone.

That's part of the reason we didn't get a booth at Origins. There wasn't anything we could do with a booth that we couldn't do by running a few events and hosting a seminar. We didn't have any material available.

James
The other reason to come to Origins was to see what a big convention was like. Dammi and I haven't been to America much, and now we're getting a good firsthand sense of it all. Hopefully we can come back and do GenCon or the GAMA trade show, or whatever, but that's in the future.

Question
Are there plans to offer electronic versions?

James
There are. We currently have an arrangement with DriveThru RPG for the old FASA products. Our license with FASA is actually pretty broad. We negotiated English-language products worldwide. We have a whole bunch of miniatures coming out--we're redoing the old Heartbreaker line...

Josh
All the good ones.

James
Yes. All the rubbishy ones 'accidentally' fell into a vat. I've got ninety ork scorchers on thundra beasts on my shelf at home saying, "Paint me!" We're working on the shop for those, so they will be available soon.

Question
Are pictures of the miniatures available?

James
Not yet. I have a digital camera at home, so it's just a matter of taking the pictures and posting them. The minis are important to me--I'm a minis gamer as well, and I'm drafting up some skirmish rules to be used with the minis. I picture tribes of orks running each other down... yeah.

The reason for this is, again, to drive the ability to create more, original miniatures that might be more applicable to the line. As with everything else, it's a case of seeing what the demand really is.

We can't do computer games--Microsoft owns those rights--but we can do electronic support products, and we'll probably work with guys like Lars Gottlieb and his Second Step program in that area.

What else? Plush t'skrang toys? Not yet.

Josh
Though if somebody were interested, we actually have the right to negotiate sub-licenses.

James
That grew from the Drive-Thru deal. While we had the rights to use the old FASA material to create new product, we didn't actually have the rights to just reprint the original books on their own. So we negotiated the rights with FASA to do that, and that meant entering into a sub-license agreement with another party--opening up that door as well.

We've had some correspondence with FASA about people who are interested in writing modules for the game on their own, and FASA is quite happy to deal with them on an individual basis, as long as it doesn't step on our toes--or LRG's toes--but essentially the gate is open for doing similar things if somebody has cool ideas.

Question
So you would be interested in hiring people for freelance work?

James
Absolutely.

Josh
That's actually one of the things... I keep coming back to this. We don't want to be harsh on Living Room Games, but we keep coming back to the differences between what we're doing and what they've done. One of those is that LRG has been rather closed; they have their people, their company, and that's all they use. Which is fine, but not the way we want to work.

If people want to write stuff for us, fantastic. It means we don't have to. We are going to be writing stuff--like I said earlier we've already got two or three products in the pipe.

Honestly though, a few former writers who did stuff for FASA have come back and said, "You guys are doing this? If you want something from me, just let me know." Steve Kenson, for example. James and Dammi met with him yesterday.

James
Steve actually e-mailed us after we announced the license agreement. So we stalked him here at Origins. But people who have been involved with Earthdawn over the last decade seem to be popping out of the woodwork all the time. Robin Laws...

Josh
Robin Laws has expressed some interest. Some of these people who got their start in the mid-90s doing work on Earthdawn are now recognized, award-winning names in the industry/. They're stepping forward and saying, "We'd love to do this." Frankly, I geek out a bit and think I'm incredibly lucky to be a part of this.

James
They really love the setting--I think we all love the setting, which is why we're here. The game is great, but some people don't like the Step System. The setting is quite important to a lot of us, and we want to see that continue as well.

Anything else... collectible card games? You're not going to see an Earthdawn CCG anytime soon.

Josh
If at all.

James
Yeah. I just make them and build a big bonfire, adding some petrol, maybe.

What else? I guess we should briefly talk about what we talked about with Lou.

Josh
We met with Lou Prosperi this past Tuesday, and 'wasted' about two hours of Lou going through the GM's book and asking questions about what we were doing, and what he thought about some of the stuff he saw.

Then we more or less covered the history of what they were planning, and why they were planning it, and how that related to what Living Room Games put out...

Actually, that reminds me... I want to mention Barsaive at War.

Okay.

This is something that we've been going back and forth on.

James
This is where I eat crow.

Josh
The legendary supplement, Barsaive at War, was in the pipe when FASA stopped the line. I think it's the reason why the game continued on as this cult thing. It's like if Episode III never came out; there would be this massive cliffhanger, with all sorts of people upset and crying, "We want to know what happens next!" I really think that's why, within a certain circle of the community anyway, the game really continued on.

Living Room Games did their version a couple of years ago. At this point, it's come out, so I've been asking myself, do we do our own version? Do we say, "The events that are described have happened," and set our line after that point, including the relevant information in the history chapter? The war happened, here's the aftermath, and now we're starting off after that. Or...

James
Make up something else entirely with lots of windlings in it?

Josh
Do we put out what FASA (and Lou) intended? Do we do our own take on it? This is really where we want to hear the feedback from the fan community; would people like to see something like that?

I mean, the LRG version is out, and I think that people know what was intended--in the core fan community anyway. There have been a bunch of discussions about what was originally planned, what was put out by LRG, and so forth--and people have the material to do it themselves if they want.

Just as an informal poll here, is this something you'd like to see? This is something we were looking at, but have realized that this may not be something we need to sink development time and money into. Would you rather see original stuff, would you rather see more compilations of older material? We've discussed packages like the Throal Sourcebook and the Serpent River together in a single hardcover, perhaps including Throal Adventures as well.

We actually need to get going here, so the next group can set up, but we'll be hanging out in the hallway after this, so please, let us know what you'd like to see. After the core books and the first two or three supplements, we're not exactly sure where we're going to go, and we'd like to at least get some idea of what the fans want to see.

Obviously, we're aware that the people who actually tell us anything are only a small sample of the whole community.

Anyway, thank for coming out. If you want to keep talking to us, we're happy to ramble on for hours, but we need to open the room up for the next group. Thanks again.