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Dispatches:
News from Atlas Games
In Like A Lion, Out Like A Fool
As John mentioned in the last dispatch, he and Michelle are going on vacation later this week. They're going to Ireland. I'm staying here.
I'm thinking it's no coincidence that they're leaving on a jet plane on the last day of March. They're fleeing the country to avoid me on April Fool's Day. Perhaps it's for the best.
Update
OK, we're now officially sold out of
Lunch Money: Sticks & Stones. It's been available for a whopping three business days.
Of course, your local game store hasn't yet received their copies of the game, so don't panic -- and their distributor probably will have copies on hand to restock them, too. Warehouse 23 still has it, and some of the last copies from our warehouse are going to beef up their inventory.
The fact that all of the print run is out in the "channels" (in distribution, as opposed to in consumer hands) is why I'm not going to order up a reprint before I leave on vacation. By the time I get back, I should be able to get some better feedback from game stores and distributors about how well it's selling on the front lines. It's too soon to say if the product now in transit is a six day supply for the world's game stores, or a six month supply. If gamers are as excited about the game as game retailers and distributors seem to be, though, it's probably going to be selling fast.
Brisk Sales
This week,
Lunch Money: Sticks & Stones is beginning to appear in stores. Also this week, it seems likely that it will be disappearing from the Atlas Games warehouse. The initial orders last week were tremendous, and some last minute additions mean that all but a fraction of the print run is already gone from our warehouse. I have a reasonable expectation that the last of it will go before I leave for vacation on Wednesday. I was worried that we were being a little too optimistic with the number we chose for the first printing, but in reality it looks like we may have printed too few.
I've been busy, too!
I've been working hard to get three -- count them, THREE -- card games off to press before John and I go on vacation next week to sunny, fun-filled Ireland. After several days of manic Michelle-ness, OUAT: Dark Tales and the OUAT: Create-Your-Own Storytelling Cards expansions are packaged up all safe and snug, and waiting to go out in the mail. That only leaves Beer Money left!
GAMA Trade Show Report
The GAMA Trade Show was a huge success for us. We had a couple hundred advance decks of
Sticks & Stones, which were enthusiastically received by the retailers in attendance; we also got a tremendous response to
Beer Money, Dark Tales, and the other projects coming down the road this summer.
LM:S&S...Today!
Today, at long last, we expecting the main shipment of
Lunch Money: Sticks & Stones to be delivered. That makes it a busy day for the receiving and shipping department (that's me!), so I've gotta run...
Pictures and Pages, Some New
Today consisted largely of scattered web updates to fix a few broken links (don't forget to
email me when you find those), upload new product pages (like that of
Fallen Fane, the interstitial
Ars Magica product that transcends petty things like "editions" to present a
live-action wizardly experience), post new and revised product covers (like the correctly worded cover for
Friends of the Dragon and sample box art for
Beer Money), gussy up the Pipeline (which is still on the front page of
the site, though I've got no evidence anyone ever looks at it), and set-up some links so folks can pre-order those books which are at press now (such as
En Route III).
All that is one brazen, shameless sentence. Writing it felt like stealing from the cookie jar. Mmm, cookies.
The Proof is in the Pudding... or, rather, the Mail
Like magic, our marvelous printer has sent us the proofs for the slew of books we sent off to them last week. Like clockwork, the proofs have gone back to them via post. Like always, they'll be printed and delivered in a jiffy and then on their way to you, dear reader. It won't be long now.
Alack! Alas! I'm all ALONE!
John went off to the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas on Sunday, leaving me at home to take care of our pet rabbits, Wendigo and Chimera. Kind of quiet around the office ... in a rather CREEPY way. No percolating sounds of coffee brewing in the morning. No tippity-tapping of fingers on a keyboard in his office.
On the plus side, I get to snoop through all of the mail, and my evil scheme to rearrange John's office may come to fruition if I can get a couple of the guys in the office to help out. ;)
The Fallen Fane
An Ars Magica Live-Action Scenario
by David Chart
Live the Legend.
The covenant of Fanum has broken the Code of Hermes by interfering with the mundane population of Germany. Their interference has resulted in the near-destruction of another covenant, and now the members of Fanum have been summoned before the Rhine tribunal to face Hermetic justice. You are that tribunal.
Fallen Fane is a live-action Ars Magica scenario for 12 to 24 players. It’s equally suitable for Ars Magica veterans and those who have never played the game before, and can be run in an afternoon.
Description: 48 pages, saddle stitched
Stock Number: AG0274
ISBN: 1-58978-064-7
Suggested Retail Price: $12.95 (US)
Shipping to Distributors in July 2004
Once Upon a Time: Dark Tales
Explore the grim side of your stories with the addition of the
Dark Tales expansion to your
Once Upon a Time storytelling card game. The 56 cards included in the set are designed to be mixed in with the original
Once Upon a Time game, to provide new story elements and endings. In these stories, trolls lurk under every footbridge, inconsolable wraiths search for their lost loves, fiends tempt the innocent, and evil stepmothers serve up children in tasty stews.
Not every fairy tale has a happy ending...
Single Deck: Stock No. AG1003, ISBN 1-58978-060-4, MSRP $9.95 (US)
Designed by Richard Lambert, Andrew Rilstone, & James Wallis
Art by Scott Reeves
Shipping to Distributors in June 2004
It only SEEMS quiet...
...because we haven't written in the blog yet this week. But, in truth, it's been very busy here. This afternoon we just sent three books to the printer:
Cause and Cure (Ars Magica),
Friends of the Dragon (Feng Shui) and
En Route III: The Road Less Traveled (Penumbra/d20).
At the same time, we're busy packing up goodies for the GAMA Trade Show. This year I've decided not to bring every product in print -- that's just too much stuff, and the reality is that not a lot of retailers are interested in spending their finite time at the trade show leafing through books we published 10 years ago. Instead, I'm bringing one copy each of all the items we released in the past 12 months, plus various evergreen essentials (bestsellers and core rulebooks). This makes it easier to bring more items to give away to buyers at the show -- things like a lot of copies of
Lunch Money: Sticks & Stones. We have lists of all the in-print titles, of course, but we want to focus our quality time with retailers on the exciting products we've done lately, and the other exciting products that are coming up soon.
Sticks and Stones and Delays
We have some unfortunate news with respect to
Sticks and Stones: It is delayed. The decks themselves are all printed and packaged, but there was a problem with the display box. When the printer was trying to pack the decks into the displays (we have a nice point-of-purchase display, holding 10 decks, for retailers to better be able to merchandize the game), they discovered that they had provided us with the wrong dieline -- the decks don't fit in the boxes. Now we're waiting for a new die to be made, new display boxes printed/cut/assembled, and then at last the games can be sent to us. We had been expecting the game to ship to us from the printer last Monday, March 1st; our best guess now is that it will ship next Friday, March 12th, from the printer to us. That means it will arrive the following week, while I'm at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas, so I won't be able to ship it out until I get back. On the bright side, we're still not late, strictly speaking, since we'll still be releasing the game in March, as announced...but we'd all been hoping for March 1st rather than March 19th.
Also on the bright side, we have a bunch of actual decks in our hands already, and we're going to get some more sent to us to help promote the game at the trade show. With some Special Ops assistance, we'll be running a lot of demos to heighten retailer awareness and interest at the show. The pre-orders we have from distributors are tremendous...already we've pre-sold almost half of the print run, and not all of our regular distributors have placed their orders yet.
Just in case you've been wondering what I'm up to ...
I just finished my long-standing project of reading the ENTIRE Northern Crown manuscript so I can get revision comments to the author, Doug Anderson. In case you hadn't heard, Northern Crown: New World Adventures (formerly Septentrionalis) is our upcoming D20 world set in colonial North America ... witches, wendigo, the First Ones prophet Tenskwatawa, what more could you want? What was that? You want it to incorporate the best parts of Nyambe, too? Hmmm ... I'll see what I can do. ;)
Next up is getting Beer Money to press!
And the Inventive Gamer of the Week Award goes to ...
John and I had the chance to go to the Great Lakes Gaming Convention in Duluth, MN this weekend, where we met Jim Alcala Salés, the man behind the newest Nyambe fan site. We were really impressed by the terrain he used for his Nyambe demo, which included paper huts he designed himself. So, to share the inspiration, I thought I'd point out that his helpful instructions for making these huts are posted on his Nyambe fan site at www.nightwasp.com/nyambefan/huts/huts.htm
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