Taking the publishing plunge

Not one to tout "vaporware," I've been reluctant to make any real announcements, but for various reasons I have decided it is beneficial to make an announcement before I have anything solid. I'll tell you about that after the announcement.

I'm starting a publishing company to publish Fudge-compatible PDFs, and eventually larger POD works.

Woo! Big surprise, eh? A lot of people already knew, and many more might have guessed, but I've not been talking about it publically because of the "vaporware" thing, and that's been getting in my way.

The number one reason I decided to make the announcement at this point is simple: I need more accountability. I've been watching Wolfgang Baur over on Open Design, and I see a lot of value in working closely with the customer.

I also need to be able to talk more openly about what I'm working on. I've asked some questions about what people want, but I haven't really opened up a dialog. I'd like to be able to dialog more, and I need to talk about what I'm actually planning in order to do that effectively. (i.e. In order to not waste time dancing around the "secret" that I'm working on starting a company.)

Yes, I have a company name and I've registered a domain name. I'm not going to tell you the name until I have something to show. Gotta keep you in suspense about something.

What am I going to publish, you ask?

My focus is going to be on short, interlocking books… I'm thinking around 32 pages max, unless that turns out to not work for what I'm doing. They should be fairly affordable… maybe $5.50 for 32 pages. (More expensive per-page than 3rd Edition GURPS books… but we're talking a niche market here.)

I'm going to start with a free "quick-start" fantasy rule set based on Fudge. It will be a "complete" rule set, with all the options set (no "toolkit" here), but it will be bare-bones. After that, I'll be building a fantasy world, about 32 pages at a time. The opening book will be kind of like The Keep On the Borderlands… it will contain a little bit about the world, some detail about a specific area, containing an adventure and enough material to get you started. The world is one that my wife and I started working on a couple years ago… it's familiar enough that your D&D-playing buddy will be comfortable in it, but it has enough twists and turns to keep things interesting.

Sure, you're not going to get a 200-page world book right out of the gate… but you'll start getting the material a heck of a lot earlier. After that initial product, future products (with a brisk release schedule) should cycle through various types of world material… details on races/monsters, magic items, and so on. (I expect I'll draw on some OGL material for some of this, translating it to Fudge. Those works will probably be longer, but have a lower cost-per-page.)

The magic system in the quick-start is going to be the core of the new Gramarye 2.0. Somewhere in the middle of that, I'm going to release a Gramarye "design guide," which is what the Gramarye was meant to be in the first place… the system that everyone calls "the Gramarye" is actually a sample system. In the design guide, it's very much a sample, and the work talks extensively about how to design and balance your own magic system. I've had this book about half-done for a few years… it's time I finished it. Somewhere along there, I (and my freelancers!) will translate the entire d20 SRD spell list to the system. Boo-ya.

Eventually, a line of "Department 13" books will cover the same kind of ground for that setting. A free Fudge-compatible "Modern quick-start" will come out to support that.

From there… scifi, probably, maybe supers. That's on down the road and we'll have to see what happens.

So, I'm no crazy-man, thinking I'm going to write all this myself. And this is another reason I want to get this out in the open… I need freelancers, and I'd like to get some of them in on the ground floor. I'm going to pay high royalty rates, but nobody is going to make any real money off of this… pizza money is about all I'm expecting myself. But I'm not doing this for the money… I'm doing it because I think Fudge needs a strong commercial success, and because I think PDF and POD publishing is "where it's at" for niche markets. I'm not giving it away for free, because: at least a little money is a good incentive compared to no money at all, the market takes you more seriously when you're not "free", and Fudge needs more commercial success.

So, if you like Fudge, can write reasonably well, like to write high-fantasy worlds, and want a chance to make a little pizza money doing it, drop me a line: raven@phoenyx.net. Remember, the PDF business is the only segment of the roleplaying industry that has grown in the last two years, and its growth is accelerating. And the Fudge community is used to getting their support material electronically.

I'm serious about this. I spent over 11 years managing the Fudge List, started and organized the Fudge List Guide to Fudge wiki, guided and often drove Fudge Factor magazine… I'm dedicated to the Fudge community, and I think this is what it needs now. Fudge Factor is retiring, I'm no longer managing the Fudge wiki, I'm training a replacement team to run the Fudge List, and I'm pulling way back from organizing local roleplaying club events because nobody comes to them. My plate is nearly clear… this publishing business is my main focus, and I plan to stick with it for a long while. (See, by saying that here, I get that accountability thing.)