Okay, you Fabled Lands devotees were unfairly worked up to a lather by that "Serpent King arises" headline. Now it's Valentine's Day and you want some love. In particular, you want to know when the Fabled Lands role-playing game will be out. And the answer, I am at last able to tell you, is June this year. Yep, only four months to go. Greywood Publishing are starting off the series with the rulebook and the Sokara sourcebook, which is the first of twelve supplements covering the whole of the known Fabled Lands.These will be released as both print books and PDFs. So everyone's happy. And if you choose the PDFs you get the bonus of Greywood's eye-poppingly gorgeous colour design, plus the option to buy just the parts of the rules that appeal to you. For all my championing of ebooks, I'll be getting the print edition myself and I expect it to get well-thumbed and lovingly battered very quickly as my role-playing group tear through the world of Harkuna for a change.
The game system is by Shane Garvey and the scenario and background material is by Jamie Wallis. Not James Wallis; he's the erstwhile Dragon Warriors impresario. Whole other RPG designer and publisher. No relation. And if that seems like an unlikely coincidence, what about there being two Steve Jacksons who both wrote Fighting Fantasy books? Spooky.
Where can we pre-order! Awesome news
ReplyDeleteHi Kiwi - good question. It may be worth contacting Greywood via their website, as the pre-order demand for these books ought to be huge.
ReplyDeleteAnd just to confuse matters more... Jamie Wallis was the man who did the Fighting Fantasy d20 conversions.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to the pre-order question - we should have some info soon. In the meantime, if you want to register your interest, send an email to shane@greywoodpublishing.com and we'll update you as soon as we have news.
ReplyDeleteHey Dave
ReplyDeleteIf the background is by Jamie Wallis, how much input have you and Jamie had on it?
Also, since the books will be covering all 12 "lands", this means that the ones we have not seen before will be covered as well. How have these been fleshed out and will/would this influence what you include in books 7-12? The basic premise for my long winded question is have you influenced the materials in the sourcebooks or have they influenced your plans/structure/background for books 7 to 12?
Everything is being run past Dave and Jamie and then we modify it based on their input.
ReplyDeleteYep, Alberto - what Shane said. In a perfect world, the gamebooks, RPG and apps will all sell so well that Fabled Lands LLP could get gamebooks 7-12 being written at about the same time they Greywood are working on those supplements and Megara are getting to Ankon-Konu and beyond.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, awesome news, Dave. Me will buy :D
ReplyDeleteGreat news!
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll put them on amazon or somewhere else where we can order them easily from foreign countries too, like you did with the reprinted books (I was just glad that I could buy them on german amazon).
Oh boy, these gonna be four very long months... :-D
Greetings from Germany
Schmidt
Hi Efrem and Schmidt - I assume Greywood will use the same POD service we did with the gamebooks. If so, there should be distribution via all Amazon stores in Europe and the US, and eventually in Spain too. (Sorry, Spain - it's not my fault Amazon haven't got themselves sorted out there yet.)
ReplyDeleteLone Wolf, AFF2, Dragon Warriors and now Fabled Lands! Woot!
ReplyDeleteInteresting news.
ReplyDeleteCan you tell us something about the rules system that is going to be used in the core book? Or is that news for another PR a bit later.
Regardless of the main rules system the sourcebooks sound right up my street.
These are wonderful news!
ReplyDeleteI hope the artwork is treated diffenrently from what is seen in this example, though. The rule book cover looks like a placeholder (and I hope it is), and I don't like the style anyway.
Anon, I have seen some of the rules chapters and I like them a lot, but I had better not start blogging about them while Shane is still designing. I've already advised him to tune out all the comments he was getting from every quarter because I can see he knows what he's doing. And as a game designer myself, I know you have to just refuse to listen to the voices or you'd never get anything finished.
ReplyDeleteAnd Anon (any relation?) I can't say for sure about artwork. I expect Greywood will be doing new interiors and maybe covers too. The artwork above was borrowed from the FL app by kind permission of le Duc himself, Mikael Louys, but I can't say whether it's a placeholder or the real deal. Keep an eye on Greywood Publishing's site for updates.
I find that cover very beautiful and attractive.
ReplyDeleteDamn, Anon, you should try and make up your mind, man :-)
ReplyDeleteCheers Dave.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right that Shane should not listen to anything we (well maybe not you) have to say whilst designing. With a June release I was obviously expecting things to be pretty much fixed on that front - as stuff like playtesting, final edit and layout take a fair chunk of time. Obviously small companies are even more agile than I thought.
Still I think from what little you say we can assume it is going to be a system specially designed (or maybe adapted) for the setting. Good.
Andy
I'm the rules Anon (not any other anon)
Andy, yes, it's definitely designed for the setting, and very closely parallels the FL gamebook rules but with extra scope that fleshes out the sort of details players expect in an ongoing campaign. I think that anyone who has played the FL books will find the RPG system "familiar yet fresh" - that's the impression I've been getting from the chapters I've seen so far.
ReplyDeleteWe think you'll like what we've done with the rules. Playtesting is about to start shortly as we just have a few things to finish up on the rules front.
ReplyDeleteAs for the art, Jamie will have to answer that question. I believe some of the art that Megara did for the iPad app is going to be in the books as well as new art, but I am not sure.
Hey there,
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see the missing continents of the fl universum finally covered in an rpg! Will they be connected to the Heart of Harkun Comic books, or is it a different timeline? And yes, I'll definitely get the printed edition!
Andreas "the copper pot"
It's nice to have a release date at last. Well, release month, anyway. Though not as soon as Dave would have had me believe!
ReplyDeleteAh well, if you need any extra playtesting done, you just let me know Shane! I'll be dropping you an email to register interest shortly anyway.
I guess I could use the months between now and then for some kind of grand intro...
Andreas, I assume it will be the same timeline as the comic books, yes. If you have any special requests for characters or storylines Greywood should focus on, now is the time to tell them.
ReplyDeleteJames - well, the first date I was given by Greywood was February, but I always did think that was a little unrealistic. It's better they take the time and get it absolutely right, as this is a game that could be played for - who knows? - as long as Dragon Warriors.
Yeah a number of factors conspired to push Feb back, but as Dave said we are focusing on getting this right.
ReplyDeleteI wish you good luck with the FL RPG!
ReplyDeleteI hope you could tell as in the future about the system and the rules (I understand not now!). I guess this is the first RPG that you can explore by your self before start playing as a GM (or umpire, as Dave say). That gives you a unique perspective of the world!.
I think the difficult part will be convince the fans and the RPG fans to buy the source books, when you can pick the gamebooks for inspiration, locations, NPC or even adventures!
Ikaros
PS: Another difficult is that many of the RPG fans have there own favourite system, so i guess it will to sell. I wish you the best in this adventure!!
Thanks, Ikaros. I think it could have an appeal beyond the current FL following and entice other RPGers into the fold, as the system is simple enough that the focus is on the pace of action - that is, on what character are doing rather than the dice the players are rolling.
ReplyDeleteThere will be a lot of material in the RPG sourcebooks that isn't in the FL gamebooks: city maps, more detail about the temples, extra information about politics, culture, creatures, and so on. But I agree it will be an uphill road, as role-players are not numerous and many of them are quite religious about the system they use. We can only hope that the FL world background and the freshness of the rules will bring about many "conversions".
If this does well does it make the rest of the gamebooks being published more likely? I would like to have the rest of them quite a lot.
ReplyDeleteHi Wanderer - it can't hurt. Since the gamebooks feed everything else, the more outlets we have for FL that are at least moderately successful, whether the RPG, the app or the original books themselves, the more likely it is that books 7-12 will get eventually written.
ReplyDeleteSome info for you: pre-orders will start next week by the looks of things. More information to come...
ReplyDeleteWhy not use Kickstarter to fund the rest of the series?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kickstarter.com/start
You set the amount of money needed to complete book 7 (as an example), we pledge an amount, and if the total amount is reached in a certain number of days, we are billed. If not, no one loses anything. Of course, you have to offer rewards for certain donation levels.
We have discussed this idea in the past over at the Fabled Lands group.
Unfortunately, Mike, Fabled Lands LLP is incorporated in the UK, not the USA, so we can't currently use Kickstarter. I understand they may be expanding their reach overseas in the future, though. As to whether it would raise enough to cover the full costs of six books - see Wtan's comments at the end of the "All together now" post.
ReplyDeleteI did not realize that Kickstarter only accepted US based applicants, as they accept international donations. What about http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/
ReplyDeleteThey are pretty much UK's equivalent. You could set it up to fund a book at a time and the actual book would be the reward, with bonuses to those who donate more money.
I have no idea why Mongoose didn't pick up the series, when Lone Wolf and Dragon Warriors are on there (puzzled).
Actually, Mike, Mongoose aren't the publishers of Dragon Warriors, only the distributors (and maybe printers) as the books were published by Magnum Opus Press. The new DW license holders, Serpent King Games, may continue that deal or they could handle the whole publish/print/distribute package themselves.
ReplyDeleteJamie and I had extensive negotiations about FL with Wizard Books, who took over the Fighting Fantasy series from Penguin. There was some interest there, Wizard perhaps recognizing that to new readers FF is no better known than any other gamebook brand. So they could have done quite well out of it but, for whatever reason, the deal didn't happen. It sure wasted a lot of our time, though.
All told, to bring a new gamebook to market (including advertising support) costs some $64,000. That's to get a print edition into bookstores. A POD edition with no advertising, that'd be around $40,000. That's why, if the series is to continue in print, we'd rather see a major publisher get behind it.
An alternative is to launch books 7-12 first in app/ebook form, as I suspect the market there is potentially a lot bigger - and worldwide distribution a lot easier. The print editions would then become a special prestige offering, like a hand-tooled leather hardback once was, for the folks who would prefer to read off of a paper screen.
Whether a campaign on something like Kickstarter could fund even a POD edition - I don't know. Seems like a lot of money for a few hundred fans to have to shell out, because you have to figure that less than 1% of the people who would buy the book on Amazon would contribute an upfront pledge of possibly ten times the book's cover price. And is that even fair on them? I'm concerned that we'd just be exploiting people's passion for the series if we did that.
I see your point, I wouldn't want us to pay a hundred or more dollars per person to complete the rest of the series either. Have you gone to Tor or Random House?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/05/our-fictional-offerings-expanded-staff-new-procedures-same-old-quirky-fiction
http://www.randomhouse.com/
I also sent you and Jamie an email regarding low or no cost alternatives that may help bolster sales figures. I've used the email address at the top, and Jamie's FL email as well. The flavor of your writing style could easily make an excellent pitch. That, plus the fact that you have many, many projects under your belt. Utilize your vast archives of material to show them what you are capable of, Sir Morris of Harkun :)
May the blessings of The Three Fortunes smile upon you!
- Mike -
We do indeed have many projects in the Fabled Lands portfolio, Mike. I've already talked a bit about Dirk Lloyd, teenage lord of all evil, who will be hitting the publishing world like a supernova this October. And not just publishing either - I'd say more but he wouldn't like me to reveal too much just yet. Dirk is tweeting away as TheGreatDirk and he may let slip some secrets about our other plans in Fabled Lands LLP now and again.
ReplyDeleteI have worked a lot with Random House over the years and one of their senior UK directors was the original publisher of both Fighting Fantasy and Dragon Warriors. I don't know anybody at Tor but we leave all that to our agents anyway. (I say agents, plural, because I'm repped by one agency and Fabled Lands LLP has its own.)
Would any of them be interested in the Fabled Lands series? As for sales figures, we shall find out around March, after the book festival (if I recall), am I correct? I hope that those sales figures don't determine whether books 5 and 6 will be published. I wonder if you could make a living off of the Robot Factory animated series, as international licensing royalties and merchandising revenue would be astronomical, if you can get a series on the air.
ReplyDeleteI would love a Heart of Harkun television series myself, is there any way you could post the entire series on Google Docs or somewhere, and post it on the sidebar? I have listened to the first 20 minutes of the radio drama in MP3 format.
Going back to the funding comments, I'd be more than happy to gift wrap a total of two hundred quid for the last 6 FL books, though I'd need the certainty of publication (printed or otherwise) for that and understandably I wouldn't expect many others to match my generosity!
ReplyDeleteAbout £50k cost to release a new book makes sense in the context of the number of re-released book sales required in order to green light the rest of the series. Minimum 10,000 sales at £5.99 gives a minimum revenue of £59,900 which is best part of £10k profit. Add to that digital and other revenue streams and I think you do just about have a viable business, but it's not exactly water tight so every sale really counts!
I think the new books would sell quicker as they are not repeats - for that reason I have to confess to not buying the re-released books, however I'm happy to promise to buy them if 7-12 eventually get released (so that's 9,996 sales required now then)! :-)
Colin, if only we made the full cover price back on every FL book sold! But for that to work, both Amazon and Lightning Source (our printers) would have to be charities :-)
ReplyDeleteThe problem with releasing books 7-12 without first re-releasing books 1-6 - well, obviously one part of that problem is that they ain't written yet! But also we need to bring in new readers if the series is to be viable. Dragon Wariors proved that you can't make money just by riding a nostalgia wave. So first we need to see if the original FL books can find a market today. It's not going to be overnight, but steady sales could get us there.
I see what you mean Dave, guess I thought the share of sales revenue was already woven into the £50k number. Rather, the £50k is up front fixed costs to launch I presume and then you have variable costs of sale on top.
ReplyDeleteThat's right, Colin. It was cheaper for us in the case of the reissued FL books because we already had the text and illustrations. Even so, it's not cheap to do the set-up for something like that, which is why Fabled Lands LLP decided to test the water with just 4 books to start off with.
ReplyDeleteTraditionally, publishers have reduced their risk by moving most of the author's payment to the back end. For example, Oliver and I were paid £750 (about $3000 in modern terms) to write each of our Golden Dragon books. As a wage that would be grounds for revolution, but we aren't complaining because the 10% royalty has earned us many, many times that sum over the years.
Printers, distributors and bookstores don't care to be paid any later than the end of the month, though, so there's only so much you can do to reduce risk in the book business. We're going to see a lot more series starting off in ebook form and only moving to print if the demand is there.