Monday, January 18, 2010

Bat in the Attic Status Report #3

The bad news is that I am not going to have my article ready for Fight On! #8. Between work, family, and campaign prep I just didn't have enough time to a quality job. On the good side the preparation my upcoming Swords & Wizardry campaign is causing me to write a lot of stuff that will make an appearance in later products. Thanks to the Rusty Battle Axe choice of playing a Thothian Mage my venerable briefing document on the Order of Thoth has been rewritten. I eliminated all the overt Ars Magica references as well streamlining the history. Dwayne of Gamer's Closet helped create a new Code of Thoth that is original to the Majestic Wilderlands.

For Dwayne and Tim I will be creating new material on the Elves as well pulling together for the first time in 20 years my notes on the Viridians. The campaign is going to start in the fringes of the shattered Empire of Viridistan specifically the province of Gormmah.

I developed the major plotlines for the campaign. Basically the way this works that I create a sequence of events that would occur in the absence of PC intervention. From that I create a cast of recurring NPCs and locales that need notes. Some of the event have a wide enough impact that even if the PCs go far from Gormmah and the old empire it will still have plenty of preparation done. I will try to share as much of this as possible as the campaign progress.

In addition I went through my stack of modules and pulled out those that I could for locales during the campaign. This would cause problems if I ever want to publish the campaign but I just don't have enough time and desire to write up everything. My method is to use the module for the physical site. Then replace the cast of NPCs and background to fit the actual locale in the Majestic Wilderlands. When it comes time to publish I will have to come up with a new locale using the same background and NPCs that I created.

I am revising the title of my next product from the Beast of Kensla to the Scourge of the Demon Wolf. I have Tim of Gothridge Manor to thanks for this and appreciate him letting me use it. The adventure was inspired by the legend of the Beast of GĂ©vaudan particularly as it was told in the movie the Brotherhood of the Wolf. However my plot is unique to the adventure. What inspired me in that it was a lone creature terrorizing the villages and the protagonists had to deal the all to human problems of those they were protecting as well as fight the beast. With those themes in mind I created an adventure and a plot better suited for adventuring parties and fantasy RPGs.

I said in the last update I broke even in my sales of the Majestic Wilderlands. Now it is far beyond that point . Since many are interested in hard numbers I will share them with you.

RPGNow sales of Majestic Wilderlands PDFs - 70
Lulu sales of PDFs (both covers) - 16
Lulu sales of the Full Color Cover - 48
Lulu sales of the Original Style Cover - 39

Roughly I get 65% of the cover price which equates to $4.50 for PDFs and slightly less than $6 for the books.

I don't have a feel what the yearly total will end up to be.

The caveat I will add for using these figures that the Majestic Wilderlands was setup as a rules supplement which generates the most interest of any type of RPG product.

By all the ranking systems I been able to access it seems that the Majestic Wilderlands is a hit in the Old School market and I thank all of you helping to make it so.

Also if you are interested only in the PDF I strongly urge you to buy from RPGNow. I am able to update the product there with additional files. I done so two times now. Lulu seems more limited in this regard.

2 comments:

ze bulette said...

Re: the hard numbers: Congratulations - that's amazing! There's (some) gold in them thar old school pockets. I appreciate your sharing these. While it probably isn't a primary motivation, I think it helps give a sense of the market potential to other aspiring OS writers and hopefully encourages them.

James said...

I concur with ze bulette. Thanks for sharing the numbers.