Best Year Ever!
Yes, I know, I said the same thing last year, but this year was better than last year. (find out more after Mark Hyzer's Illustration)
We released more than 75 products in 2011, more than any other year, and saw our highest sales numbers both in dollars and copies sold (breaking our monthly sales goals multiple times), we also surpassed our goals for the year both in terms of dollars, copies sold, and products released.
Pathfinder!
We have seen continued success working on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game compatible products especially the 101 Series which included the popular 101 New Skill Uses and 101 Not So Simple Monster Templates. We also saw success with our #30 series, with the work of T. H. Gulliver on the series recently earning an award for best supplement.
This year also saw the release of the print compilation of the Evocative City Sites series with Cubicle Seven as our print/distribution partner and also saw freelancer Rob Manning taking over the series as the lead designer, creating a tight creative partnership with cartographer Richard Biggs Jr. Their work has truly taken this series to new heights.
I watched as we finalized and released The Breaking of Forstor Nagar, establishing it as a professionally designed, critically acclaimed adventure for the free virtual tabletop program Maptool. Finally, you could run an adventure with friends on the other side of the world for less than $10. A gloriously fast-paced rescue mission just looks gorgeous. Congrats to Jonathan Roberts, Ben McFarland, Tyler Bartley, Devin Night, and Mark Moreland.
Also finalized was the Curse of the Golden Spear Trilogy set in our Kaidan (Japanese Ghost Story) campaign setting. Its style and exotic tale really showcases Jonathan McAnulty’s ability to tell a story, supported by Kaidan’s creator Michael Tumey’s wonderful cartography, whose Japanese ancestry and background really shows through. It is a unique and wonderful creation.
We also saw Matt Banach and Justin Sluder handcraft a wonderful series of npcs that can be found in any market place at any level with the Faces of the Tarnished Souk. This series continues to grow and grow and gains support from every person who reads it.
We also saw the launch of our FREE Pathways e-zine as we dedicated our advertising budget to creating a monthly free product rather than advertising in other magazines or buying banner ads. My work with editor in chief David Paul (who is a major force behind it and the 101 series success) has helped maintain the same level of quality we have in our for profit products. One of the things I am proud of when it comes to Pathways is that we use a different artist on every cover image, providing opportunity and paying jobs for starving artists and new artists, but also proving you can create a high quality cover without sacrificing the profitability of your product.
Beyond Pathfinder
We produced a high quality full-color adventure for Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved set in our Jade Oath campaign setting Infernal Romance at Moon Temple that is available as both a PDF and a full color print product via DrivethruRPG/RpgNow’s print on demand program. I have been extremely pleased with the quality of both their black and white POD and full-color books.
We have also seen the continued success of Jonathan Robert’s Fantastic Maps line with a new release nearly every month and sometimes with multiple releases in a month. Jonathan Roberts is my favorite cartographer (no offense Todd Gamble and Christopher West), as he does glorious work. If you use battlemaps at your table then these easy to print packs should be part of your collection.
We have also gone beyond 2-D map packs with our newest imprint Lone Tree Games and its 3-D Fold-N-Go papercraft models. They have been a tremendous success, and I could not be happier. They take a while to create but the engineering and design work of Brain Bartlow coupled with artists Jonathan Roberts and Devin Night make it well worth waiting for.
I could make this entire article about how successful and fast our first Kickstarter project The Demolished Ones (FATE) has come together, hit goal, and has gone into production (the adventure portion of the manuscript is on my hard drive). I want to thank all the backers and freelancers, but especially Brian Engard for his energy and productivity. In addition, I would be remiss in not thanking Fred Hicks for the FATE OGL.
Failures
Yes we do have a few failures, but our hope is that we set them right and learn from them.
The Questhaven Campaign Setting (PFRPG) has grown to be bigger than I anticipated, and its development has simply taken longer. This has to do with our production schedule and me being unable to dedicate more time to writing manuscript. We are hiring more freelancers to take over some of my design work so that I can focus more on it and bring on new freelancers to help with Questhaven itself.
The Rituals of Choice adventure path for Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved next adventure Ceremonies of Sacrifice has also been delayed by the same problems associated with Questhaven; again, I am working to correct this.
Lords of Gossamer and Shadow powered by Erick Wujcik’s Diceless Roleplaying continues to be delayed. The reason for this is simply that Jason Durall’s day job has increased his work load. LoGS is a tortoise but it will get there. The bright side of this is that we have been able to spend more time (and money) on our artwork, with Jason Rainville creating more masterworks of illustration than I can shake a Trump card at.
The final obstacle has been the learning curve of creating products for print, and dealing with the logistics of a print/distribution partnership. We continue to stumble, fall down, pick ourselves up, and try again, and eventually through perseverance we will hit our stride.
Sad News
For those who did not know my mother who had been fighting cancer for the past two years died in May, it was a horrible event in my life, which still impacts me every day. I want to thank all of the fine folks who have helped support me during this difficult time.
The Future
What does the future hold beyond continuing our current PDF series (at least one a week)? We are looking to strive forward with print products via our print/distribution partnership with Cubicle Seven (hopefully one a month). You will see more support for programs like Hero Labs (the 101 spell series already has full support) and perhaps other online tools.
We have plans to announce two new Kickstarter projects next year: a martial arts book (PFRPG), and a naval combat book Fire As She Bears (PFRPG) by Louis Argesta and his team of freelancers, launching in January/February.
Also, look out for a new quarterly adventure series that will release sometime in March/April (we want two completed issues before we release the first issue).
The future looks bright.
Steven D. Russell
Rite Publishing
