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Imaginos said:
This came in. The fastest I’ve ever had something print and ship from DrivethruRPG. Ordered on Friday, delivered yesterday.

file was too large so posting link from Imgur.

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Do you have experience of the previous Dogs of WAR?

I'd be interested to hear of any differences, and if it's an improvement.
 
The Convenient Skill said:
Do you have experience of the previous Dogs of WAR?

I'd be interested to hear of any differences, and if it's an improvement.
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I have both versions but have not done any comparisons yet. I’ll see if I can compare this weekend.
 
Acmegamer said:
Do you mean the "Cities" supplement? Originally done by Midkemia Press and then Chaosium and last Avalon Hill. I don't think they did another one after that. I had used to have all the Midkemia Press stuff once upon a time. For the time period they were ahead of their time in some ways. Probably why Chaosium used their encounters stuff in the "Thieves' World" box set.
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Chaosium published Cities, Carse, and Tulan of the Isles.

Chaosium-midkemia.jpg
 
Acmegamer said:
Right, I recall that pretty much that Chaosium did the work mostly to completion, I just wasn't aware of that whole hiring the counter kid from the local game store part. LOL Nicely played Avalon Hill. Wow. I thought the whole idea of Chaosium using Avalon Hill at the time was due to AH having a larger reach and more publishing muscle to produce more books faster. Sounds like Avalon Hill fooled Chaosium.
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Here's what I wrote up in my forthcoming new edition of the MIG:

In the early 1980’s Chaosium was in serious financial trouble. While many of their releases were critically acclaimed, the production costs for boxed sets ate away at their profit margin and every successful new product seemed destined to be offset by another product failure. A potential solution presented itself in April of 1983 when Avalon Hill agreed to partner with Chaosium to publish a new edition of RuneQuest. The successful wargaming company had been seeking a premium “Cadillac” product to accompany its Powers & Perils and Lords of Creation RPGs which it had only recently launched. Surprisingly, both of those games were canceled within a year. All of Chaosium’s RQ2 material went out-of-print and the RQ community waited for the new edition to debut.

The working arrangements seemed straightforward and played to each of the two company’s strengths. Chaosium would write, edit, commission art, and do the layout for each product. Avalon Hill would then use its printing facilities, distribution network, and marketing efforts to print and sell the final product to a wider market, and ultimately greatly increase sales.

Thus, after a brief interim, Avalon Hill released the third edition of RuneQuest in 1984 at Gen Con. The core mechanics of the game were basically the same, but virtually every topic had been revised and expanded. Questionable additions, like sorcery, and the shift of the game’s focus away from Glorantha to a generic “alternate earth” changed the structure and appeal of the game dramatically. Sales were never what Avalon Hill hoped they would become.

Unfortunately, the relationship between Chaosium and Avalon Hill only worsened over time. When Chaosium published and sold RQ2 they could count on earning about 40% of the cover price of an item to defray their development costs and make them a profit. Now they had to cover those costs on a royalty of 5% from Avalon Hill. Because sales did not increase as expected, Chaosium ended up earning less money than it had previously.

The creative differences only increased over time. By 1989 relations had sunk to the point where a new working arrangement was reached and the contract was amended. Chaosium was basically just licensing Avalon Hill the rights to use the RQ trademark, and Chaosium was no longer going to develop any future RQ products. William Dunn, who had been project manager for the line, left Chaosium to work for Sega. The first releases for this new approach startled most of the fans when Daughters of Darkness and Eldarad were the only products published in 1990. Avalon Hill then paused its presses and nothing came out in 1991. Going forward, no more non-Gloranthan products were ever published for RQ3.
 
rmeints said:
Unfortunately, the relationship between Chaosium and Avalon Hill only worsened over time. When Chaosium published and sold RQ2 they could count on earning about 40% of the cover price of an item to defray their development costs and make them a profit. Now they had to cover those costs on a royalty of 5% from Avalon Hill. Because sales did not increase as expected, Chaosium ended up earning less money than it had previously.
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I'm not in publishing but 5% seems incredibly low. I think that's a bit on the low side for authors who just write the words (in areas generally more professional than rpgs). If Chaosium was also doing layout, editing, and paying for art, you'd think they would be getting three times that much. It sounds like they screwed themselves by entering into that contract.

I got the impression that AH never really grokked rpgs and got into them late and in a desultory manner as it was the new cash cow. So, it's no surprised that they mishandled RQ.
 
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Stan said:
I'm not in publishing but 5% seems incredibly low. I think that's a bit on the low side for authors who just write the words (in areas generally more professional that rpgs). If Chaosium was also doing layout, editing, and paying for art, you'd think they would be getting three times that much. It sounds like they screwed themselves by entering into that contract.
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i know in the late 90s/early 2000s they made some poor financial decisions (Wizards Attic, among other things), and before their collapse TSR came out with the Magic Encyclopedia line, which according to one former TSR staffer cost more to make than what they charged for.

I guess when I see RPG Kickstarters saying things cost more to make than they predicted, or their printing cost more thab they thought, I should feel they’re just keeping the less-known gaming traditions alive.
 
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rmeints said:
Questionable additions, like sorcery
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In my heart of hearts, this as polite and charitable to sorcerers as I feel I can honestly be, either in-world or out-of-world.
 
So weird. It shows up on my side. Pics are too large to load so linking to imgur. The pic is the Bunkers & Badasses RPG box (from the Borderlands video game series).
 
WTF. I can now see it now. I don't know what changed but once I linked the above imgur then and I refreshed the page I could now see Imaginos Imaginos posted imgur! LOL!!!! (flails about) What the hell. Great cover on the Bunkers and Badasses btw. Also, Bunkers & Badsses sounds like it should be a rpg for playing in WWI or WWII. lol.
 
Acmegamer said:
WTF. I can now see it now. I don't know what changed but once I linked the above imgur then and I refreshed the page I could now see Imaginos Imaginos posted imgur! LOL!!!! (flails about) What the hell. Great cover on the Bunkers and Badasses btw. Also, Bunkers & Badsses sounds like it should be a rpg for playing in WWI or WWII. lol.
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Your mind just needed proper imgur calibration.
 
Another in the series of "more crap rescued from the lockup". I didn't think there were any books still in there and that all that was left were garage tools and computer stuff (cables, old hard drives etc) by the box load. I tend to accumulate stuff and throw it in a box and buy more when I can't find it. Then it all goes in storage for years and you dig it out and like, have 9 copies of one book or whatever (Rules Cyclopedia I'm looking at you. And DC heroes 3e, BECMI and others).

Anyway, I suppose the interesting book from this latest haul is Prince Valiant the RPG. I knew I had at least one copy and thought I had more. Also Dungeon Crawl Classics never showed up and neither did Star Wars Saga edition of Starships of the Galaxy, which I knew I had one of. Why that was rare/hard to get hold of I'm not sure but it took some tracking down back in the day. Maybe I sold it in one of the wife enforced purges. Or perhaps its still in a box in the lock up.

Anyway, the shelves are starting to creak a bit now and I can't be bothered/have no room to put another set up so I'll have to be more organised.

IMG-20211206-181923.jpg


Three boxes jammed full like this today. I think that's it now.

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Various stuff. The dark blue Star Wars (2e) didn't do it for me. By the time 2e Revised and Expanded came out I was onto other things but it's a great one book solution to play star wars with. These were in here too:

sw-books.jpg


I think there were quite a few books churned out in this line but it started to get hard/expensive to collect them and I bailed out, selling most of the stuff in a purge. Can't even remember if the game was any good.

IMG-20211206-190547.jpg


This shelf is several deep of Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf. Loved Lone Wolf back in the day and despite being much easier than FF (which were ridiculous in some cases) I tried to keep up with the story. These days collector prices have kyboshed that idea so I suggest anyone who hasn't played these go to https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home

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As you can see my filing attempt was reduced to 'get everything back on the goddamn shelves'. The book with the cloth was an early attempt at printing pdfs and binding them into hardback books. I played about with cloth (in this case dishcloth) before buying proper muslin cloth which is stronger and thinner and meant for the purpose. Not all of the books on these shelves are for RPGs. There are some board games and the (almost) infamous 'Showering Products: The RPG' which has hand written (and typed up) campaign notes and ideas from 30 or so years ago. The really old stuff (like 40+ years old) seems to have vanished sadly. Maybe it'll turn up in one of the boxes but I can't imagine it will have survived four decades.

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I started to try and organise this stuff and ran out of places to walk on the floor so chucked it all back on the shelves in a random order to try another day. One of the boxes today was chock full of lone wolf and fighting fantasy gamebooks (and occasional other lines). I don't have OCD (gee can you tell?) but it does niggle that Lone Wolf Collectors edition (hardback gamebooks, nothing fancy) are missing Book 4 and 5. Either I didn't grab them back in the day or they are hiding in another box in the lockup which means another trip over at some point. It's miles away and takes a good hour each way in the car.

Another thing I contemplated doing was dragging old stuff off the shelves and doing a kind of retro/revisit review. Dig up the original White Warf/Imagine (and sometimes Dragon but I wasn't much of a fan of Dragon back in the day) reviews of the game and have a flick through, some pictures, general thoughts etc, how it stands up to continued play, whether its worth hunting down and so on. Anyway, not sure if that's of interest and would only be for the stuff you can't buy as PDF on Drivethru (like the original Judge Dredd RPG for instance).

Something I thought odd was a box with this lot in:

IMG-20211206-191841.jpg


I never read any of these (Inquest and later Inquest Gamer). According to the blurb it says 'The guide to collectable card games' but I'm wondering if there's anything of interest for RPG fans in here. It's an American import magazine and supposedly 150 issues. There are a lot here (some piles are several inches deep in places) so maybe it's the complete run. Don't know. EDIT: 35 issues here. Might be another box with more of this stuff in... I *think* (this is going back a bit) one of the issues had a preview of the Marvel Universe RPG in (sometimes around 2003 probably) and I wanted to collect that (I was into the game at the time and still think it has potential) so put in a cheeky ebay bid thinking I'd have to state which issue I wanted. Then the whole box turned up. Don't think I paid more than a pound or two for the lot and postage was probably £10 +

I'll have a look anyway. I've never been sucked into the world of Magic the Gathering or similar games but it may be something I can interest my son in. Or it might lead to madness and bankruptcy. I'll do some research first.
 
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Jenx said:
According to the blurb it says 'The guide to collectable card games' but I'm wondering if there's anything of interest for RPG fans in here.
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Yes indeed! I used to write freelance for InQuest, and the magazine's editors tried constantly to broaden the readers' horizons. I wrote a lot about the history and lore of RPGs, and InQuest also published lots of RPG reviews that might retain historical interest.
 
Through Sunken Lands and Other Adventures - a slick OSR take on the swords & sorcery genre, with a pronounced Moorcockian flavour. Written by the same people as Beyond the Wall, it uses the same lifepath system to generate characters that really inhabit the genre. Good stuff.
 
McDeath said:
Through Sunken Lands and Other Adventures - a slick OSR take on the swords & sorcery genre, with a pronounced Moorcockian flavour. Written by the same people as Beyond the Wall, it uses the same lifepath system to generate characters that really inhabit the genre. Good stuff.
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Ooh, that sound neat-o.
 
Stan said:
I'm not in publishing but 5% seems incredibly low. I think that's a bit on the low side for authors who just write the words (in areas generally more professional than rpgs). If Chaosium was also doing layout, editing, and paying for art, you'd think they would be getting three times that much. It sounds like they screwed themselves by entering into that contract.

I got the impression that AH never really grokked rpgs and got into them late and in a desultory manner as it was the new cash cow. So, it's no surprised that they mishandled RQ.
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Although there were definitely too many versions of Kyger Litor and some appalling artwork, there were also some really great supplements in the AH era. Elder Scrolls of Glorantha, Sun County, River of Cradles, Shadows in the Borderlands and Strangers in Prax all saw use in my campaigns.
 
Séadna said:
I've the Games Workshop edition of that. I can see the art is different. The GM section is also only three pages in the Games Workshop version. I wonder are there any other differences.
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I'll have go and snag it and get you page counts etc and then repost it.
 
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