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Dispatches:
News from Atlas Games
Northern Crown Character Sheet
For your gaming enjoyment, author and illustrator Doug Anderson has created a custom
Character Sheet for our new Northern Crown setting.
Northern Crown is a colonial New World campaign where the legends of North America come alive, and is described in the New World Adventures and Gazetteer sourcebooks, available now through your friendly local games store and
Warehouse 23.
New Nyambe dowNloads
NEW THIS WEEK: Learn about the magic of Nyamban trophies in the
Rewards of the Hunt PDF, an out-take from the
Ancestral Vault soucebook of magic items for
Nyambe: African Adventures. After a hunt, it is a common practice for a Nyamban warrior to cut off some part of his prey as a symbol of his victory. These body parts are often used to decorate weapons, shields, headdresses, or other items. If the kill was especially difficult, the hunter may even pay to have the animal part turned into a magic item. These enchanted animal trophies bestow magical powers upon the items they decorate.
Nyambe is an African analogue setting, which is also tied in to
Northern Crown: New World Adventures, Atlas' new D20 setting located in a fantasy version of colonial North America.
GenCon News
Our thanks to David for announcing the ENnies awards while we were away from our computers! And congratulations to him as line developer, and to all the playtesters whose hard work made the "Best Rules" gold award possible! Our thanks and congratulations also to Scott Reeves for his artistic contributions to the "Best Production Values" silver award.
In other GenCon news, the con went really well for us. Besides having a LOT of people interested in Gloom demos at the booth (thanks to Matt Muth, Fabio Rojas, Wendy Wyman, and Mark Reed for their help!), we were also showing the prototype for Let's Kill to select people, and got good comments about it across the board.
Monte Cook also unveiled "The Year's Best D20: Volume One" ... a book compiling what he considers the best elements from the past year of the hobby games industry's D20 releases. In it he used several pieces from Love and War by David Chart, published by Atlas Games, including Counterstrike, Coward's Bane, Damaging Spell, Dying Blow, Might of Courage, Spell Cleave, Spell of Opportunity, and Warrior's Path. Congratulations, again, to David!
ENnies Awards
The ENnies were recently presented at GenCon Indy, and
Ars Magica Fifth Edition took two awards. First, there was a silver award for Production Values, so many congratulations to John, Scott, and Michelle on that; it was nothing to do with me.
ArM5 also won the gold award for Best Rules.
I'm really very pleased about these results.
Out of the Office
Just a note that John and I will be out of the office from Wednesday, Aug 17 through Monday, Aug 22 for GenCon. If you leave a message or email for us, we'll try to take care of it when we get back next week.
In the meantime, here's the new
Northern Crown errata page for you to ponder over while we're gone. :)
Some of Gloom is En Route
Our printer in New Delhi tells me this morning: "We have had quiet some problems at this end with shipping due to Mumbai floods. However, we had this container going towards NY city which will reach NY in exactly 30 days from today and thus we stuffed your shipment into this container. But as we were short of space, thus we ended up stuffing 5040 decks of Gloom twin deck and another 3600 decks of Gloom booster. Due to space constraints, we will ship the balance next week. I had to decide at the nick of moment yesterday and thus got this stuffed without consulting you. I hope part shipment is not a problem."
So part of the
Gloom shipment is on the way, most likely to arrive in late September. The partial shipment should be enough to satisfy pre-orders, unless the numbers for
Unhappy Homes come in higher than I expect.
Mind you, it's possible that this shipment or the next could encounter unexpected delays (such as a delay in customs). I suppose having two shipments will increase the odds that one of them will actually be in our warehouse before the end of September, though...
New Dungeoneer Exp and Let's Kill Downloads
I just finished a website update before we leave for GenCon. The product page for
Dungeoneer: Realm of the Ice Witch is now up and its image is on the front page (at left), and the
Let's Kill page now has card samples, a
full card list, and
rules up. Enjoy this preview of Let's Kill before it comes out in October ... or, if you see me at GenCon, ask me for a sneak peek at the mockup of the game that I'll be bringing! :)
Great News - Metacreator for ArM5
Peggy Kvam of Alter Ego software passed along some great news: The
Ars Magica 5th Edition version of Metacreator is now available! The official press release reads:
Alter Ego Software is pleased to announce Metacreator™ character generation support for two more game systems: the 2005 Origins award-winning Ars Magica™ 5th Edition by Atlas Games, and Unisystem™ by Eden Studios.
The Ars Magica game system template provides whole-character and covenant management, from creation, to study and training, to spell research and enchanting magical devices. Previous 4th edition customers can update to 5th edition at no charge.
With the Unisystem game system you can create characters for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, CJ Carella's Witchcraft and Armageddon. Both products are now available at our webstore at www.alteregosoftware.com, and can be purchased at GenCon Indy in Booth 1321 where the Atlas Games folks are located. Check out our free demo downloads at the website as well!If you already own the 4th Edition template, get over to Alter Ego and update now -- and if you play Ars Magica and don't use metacreator, it's a good time to find out what you're missing!
Let's Kill is Off to Press
Last night Michelle put the finishing touches on
Let's Kill, the delightful little card game of imaginary mass murder, and this morning the mailman picked up the materials for delivery to our printer. This means the project so far remains on time for release in October. We hope it will make it into stores in time for Halloween. This game doesn't have to deal with any border-crossing perils, but unpredictable delays are always possible nonetheless.
The Divine Arrives in the WarehouseMeanwhile, my day has been one of back-breaking labor.
Realms of Power: The Divine was delivered to our dock a couple of hours ago, and I've been busy packing orders. I just finished all the orders for all the non-US distributors who had their numbers in on time, so they're ready for the daily UPS pickup, which should happen any minute now. After the little break I'm taking I'll get to work on the US distributors, to whom we will ship on Monday.
Dream Date with Atlas Games
Imagine it ...
It's the Friday night of GenCon, and you walk into the Crowne Plaza's Grand Hall for the ENnies Awards. But instead of your usual lousy seat in the back, you've got a place reserved for you at the front of the hall, sitting with John and Michelle Nephew of Atlas Games. And not only that, they're so happy to see you that they give you a complimentary copy of
Ars Magica 5th Edition for your trouble!
Now's your chance to go on a "dream date" with Atlas Games, and support the ENnies Awards at the same time! Just go to
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5228962508 to place a bid on your seat at the Atlas Games table at the awards ceremony. Your winning bid will go to EN World to help pay for the ceremony and related costs. The bidding starts at just $20 ... that's even less than the cover price of Ars Magica 5th Edition! But hurry and place your bid right away, because the auction closes Sunday, August 14th at 16:31:54 PDT.
We'll see you there!
Atlas' Marketing Madness
In the last few months, we've had quite a few promos and such come out, and we've been working on more for the coming months, so I thought I'd do a little recap:
- Gloom appeared on the cover of ConTemporal this spring.
- A Gloom review appeared in Scrye in April.
- An Ars Magica 5th Edition review appeared in Scrye in May.
- "Villians of Vandalia" appeared in Game Trade Magazine for Northern Crown in July.
- A banner ad for Northern Crown appeared on EN World in July.
- A banner ad for Nothern Crown appeared on RPG.net in July.
- A pre-review of Northern Crown appeared on EN World in July.
- A review of Seven Civilizations appeared in Pyramid magazine in July.
- The "An Unwelcome Guest" article, with promo card, appeared in Game Trade Magazine for Gloom in August.
- A FREE adventure for Northern Crown is now available from Adamant Entertainment
- A mention about Northern Crown, The Divine (ArM5), and Gloom: Unhappy Homes appeared in ICV2 (Q3, 2005, #8).
- A pre-review of Northern Crown should be appearing in Casus Belli soon.
- A blurb about Northern Crown will appear in Dragon in September.
- Gloom will appear in Toy Directory Monthly as one of their picks for "Best Games" (for 2005, I'm assuming). They may also review it in the future.
- A review of Northern Crown should be coming up in a future issue of Pyramid.
- Northern Crown will be featured in an upcoming contest on the Game Trade Magazine website.
- A review of Northern Crown will appear in an upcoming Scrye.
Preorder Over the Edge Now!
Warehouse 23 is now taking preorders for the long-anticipated reprint of the
Over the Edge core rulebook.
Order it now!
Update: The Divine
I received word from our book printer this morning: the new
Ars Magica book,
Realms of Power: The Divine, is scheduled for delivery to our warehouse on Friday afternoon. This is great news, since it means we'll not only have the book at Gen Con, but we'll have it shipped out to our distributors before we leave for the show. Most likely I'll be able to ship a handful of non-US customers on Friday before UPS shows up for our daily pickup; I'll spend the weekend packing orders so that everyone else is shipped on Monday.
So far the pre-orders on the book are looking very good, showing a healthy increase over the initial orders we saw for the last two
Ars Magica titles (
Guardians of the Forests and
True Lineages). We've seen really strong reorders of all the 5th Edition supplements, so it looks like distributors and stores are responding by increasing their initial orders.
Update: Gloom & Unhappy HomesIn other good news, we UPS delivered three heavy boxes this morning, containing a couple hundred advance copies of the reprint of
Gloom and the expansion
Unhappy Homes. I was starting to worry whether we'd have these in time for Gen Con, so I'm much relieved to have the physical goods in hand.
Our printer in New Delhi, India, also recently gave us an update on the status of the main shipment of these titles: "Yes, monsoons in Mumbai [formerkly known as Bombay] do create a problem as Mumbai is the port city. Shipments are not being accepted for the next 5 days due to flood situation in Mumbai. We have got a confirmed date for movement of this shipment which is 16th August. Though it has been delayed, but shipment moving out from New Delhi (capital city of India) are automatically on priority and will ship even before shipments of Mumbai are accepted." We'll keep monitoring the situation, and hope that the weather cooperates.
Last Chance to Vote for Ars Magica!
This coming Monday, August 8th, is the last day to vote for
Ars Magica 5th Edition for this year's ENnies Awards! Ars Magica has been nominated for Best Production Values, Best Rules, and Best Game. So be sure to stop by the voting booth at
www.enworld.org/ennies this weekend to cast your vote!
Gloom Update
We've gotten a number of phone calls about
Gloom recently,
so I thought it might be a good time to provide the world at large with an update.
First of all, if your local store doesn't have the game, it's not their fault! We sold out to distributors this past spring. Many distributors stocked up to have a supply that would last a few months, when we told them we were running low, but I think just about everyone is now sold out. So as much as your local store may want to get the game for you...it's just not available right now.
We ordered a reprinting of
Gloom back in April, even before it had sold out, and at the same time we contracted for the printing of
Unhappy Homes, the expansion set. However, as with the original printing of the game (the one we'd expected last October, but was delivered in January), the time it takes to make this unique game is a lot longer than is typical for our card games. Our printer, halfway around the globe, gave us the word just last week that the printing was finally complete. Then we wired them the balance of payment for the whole project (ouch! my bank account hurts!), so this week the process of ocean freight shipping gets underway.
We have arranged for a limited quantity of the reprint and expansion (200 copies of each) to get delivered by air, so we'll have it to show off at Gen Con. We'll be running demos, and selling the games as long as those copies last.
You probably won't see them on the shelves of your local store until mid to late September. It all depends on the unknown factors of sea freight, which are far beyond my control. Last year, for example, we were held up by a dockworkers' strike in Bombay, missed container ships, and a special Homeland Security inspection of the shipping container our games were in. In theory, if everything went well, we might see the games in our warehouse before the end of August. In reality -- well, I hear it's
monsoon season in Bombay right now, so who knows what might happen? We'll just have to cross our fingers and hope nobody at the big game table up in the sky is planning to play the "Was Laid Low by Logistics" card on us.
Watch this space for further updates, which we'll post whenever we have news.
Penumbra Bestiary Sale
This month, in collaboration with our friends at
Warehouse 23, we have a special offer: A printed hardcover copy of the enormous
Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary can be yours for just $15! It's an incredible deal, and it's on for this month only, so don't delay.
Download a FREE Northern Crown Adventure!
To mark the release of
Northern Crown: New World Adventures and
Northern Crown: Gazetteer, Adamant Entertainment has just made availabe a FREE PDF adventure called The Caves of Chisca. Adamant is our official licensee for Northern Crown, and will be releasing more PDF support for the setting in the coming months. Download the adventure now at
www.adamantentertainment.com/crown!
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