Now I can put a name to you.
I'm guessing you recognised me and knew I hadn't recognised you.
I hadn't put two and two together, but you probably know me. I signed up for 10 copies of something you were planning many years back on account of what I'd read and heard, and that something was picked up in a later incarnation by Goodman Games.
Good to see you on the board.

My honest evaluation....

The artwork is striking and the packaging (if that's the real thing) looks distinctive. Remember that quality is about how it feels in the hand, it is tactile, as well as how it impacts the eye.

That said, the artwork is a little gothic for the general genre of fantasy, if you know what I mean, but it is in keeping with how the UK certainly is viewing the arts coming out of your area of the world. So it is not incongruous with you as a writer, even if it doesn't quite sit right with fantasy. It marks the product as your own. Interior art and the quality of the cartography are equally as important. They also need to follow the same theme.

I see you've learnt from your dealings with Goodman Games, and unlike many small press people, you seem to see the difference between a 'quality product' and 'a product'. This is something GG and PPP get down to a tee (although there were weeknesses in PPPs typesetting), and something so many enterprises do not get. Hell, most of them see no real difference between what they produce and what Goodman Games turns out, and it's that ignorance that dooms them to failure.

Well, James. Not having recognised you from your handle, welcome aboard. If ou recall the occasional e-mails of yesteryear, and the shelf full of your past works you've mailed out to me over the years, you already know I already consider you one of the small presses that have been sneaking through collectable gems for the collectors who picked them up along the way.

JimLotFP wrote:
Making good on a messed up preorder I did some time back for what is up to this point vaporware. Some people are going to get 50€ boxes for what was a 10€ order.

I hope the rest of you here will consider this a prime candidate for a future collector's item though. I'll start taking orders only when all the parts are printed, and I expect that to be at the end of this coming week.

Are you saying Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill is not going to happen? And we are getting this now instead? (Either way you'll need my new address)

ShaneG.

mbass, mark me aside for one of your 10..    

This is not a review per se, but more my first impressions of the product that just landed this morning....



The box is sized to carry digest size books in the traditional 'white box' form, however, unlike most, this box is a single form thick cardboard mailer type box with a full colour printing on one side and a plain white lining on the other. No weak corners that can split, no colour paper wrap that can peel away, and what feels like a reassuringly heavy package in a box that could take some punishment.

The whole thing was shipped in a ziplock bag to prevent the packaging from rubbing the box, and as you can see, mine arrived in pristine condition.



My initial impression is one of dark and brooding gothic horror, D&D with a hint of Cthulhu.



The box is surprisingly full, like opening Castle Zagyg:Upper Works, you find there isn't that much spare room in there, the thing is full of digest books and all manner of extras. On the top we have a tiny set of dice in a ziplock baggie (like a little gamer fix), a pencil, and a Thank-you/Disclaimer advice sheet.



Our first two books are the Referee book (aka GM Guide) and the Rules book (aka Players Handbook).



Next we have a book called Tutorial and one called Magic. Tutorial is as its title indicates; simplified explanations of the game mechanics and stats followed by a simple adventure dungeon and a written commentary watching a group of players map and work through the dungeon, in the James says; Enrico says; type thing. This will probably be the first book I read cover to cover when I get the time to dip into this.

Magic details the Cleric and Magic-user spells and mechanics.



Then we have a pleasantly thick stack of specially printed character sheets, (as opposed to just a page you have to photocopy) a stack of quadrille mapping sheets, flyers for Expeditious Retreat Press and Dragonsfoot.org, a copy of the OGL, and a short booklet titled, Recommended Reading. Recommended Reading provides a short synopsis of notable influential authors who's writings have contributed toward the tone of this boxed set, and will probably be the booklet I read after I've read Tutorial.



At the bottom of the box is your beginner module Tower of the Stargazer in traditional booklet with wrapover card cover with interior maps.




And finally Wierd New World, a gazetteer to the world of Lamentation of the Flame Princess.

Conclusion

A well presneted product in a market that is already saturated with similar 'clone' rulesets. This one stands out from the others by being more highly polished, more promising in what it offers the reader, and surprisingly complete for those who have never dipped into RPGs.

I don't know whether I'd pay £39.99 for it if it were on the shelf of my local games store, but I probably wouldn't think twich at the £25 mark. Maybe we'll see a Retail Edition hit the shops on the back of J.E.Raggi's reputation and past success, but in the meantime, these little gems look great, unusual, and I'm glad I have one.

Keith the Thief wrote:I may as well edit and *bump*
since I have a question about the old school rules sets:

Some retro clones use an AAC scale (which I just might prefer).

So, to convert from D&D's or AD&D's armor class to an AAC scale, you simply "flip" the AC.

Is there a trick to this, or is it as simple as it sounds?

Thanks
Keith

Yes you essentially flip the AC.  For example AC 3 is 10-3 = 7 +10 = 17 ACC.  The Base 9 AC editions for AC 3 go 9-3 = 6 + 10 = 16 AAC.

This takes advantage of the fact that except for AD&D's six repeating 20s each lower AC is one harder to hit then the previous AC.

mbassoc2003 wrote:I prefer to watch and invest in trailblazers, and they are few and often come out of the blue.

My last sentence that you quoted was the relevant part of that statement. At the time of posting, I had not known the new member of our forum, the one posting the question, was Raggi. Raggi was the stalking horsewaiting in the wings to which my last sentence eluded to.

The point I was making is that everyone is printing D&D clones. They are all pretty much the same; bland, fairly poorly typeset, fairly badly presented, poorly illustrated, poorly thought out, and fall into that non-catagory of also-ran products. The type of products that resellers cannot shift for $5 and regret having purchased from the outset.

The number of authors and publishers that understand the difference between a marketable product, a good marketable product and a great marketable product, are few and far between. Often they go on to become great well known publishing houses or authors (or both, take Bill Webb for example).

Yes, I agree, the market is hard, and WoTC will always dominate. That is both a fact of life, and irrelevant. It merely shepes the market landscape. Understand that, and how to operate within that constraint is the difference between a working publisher and a successful working publisher.

At the moment, James Edward Raggi IV is an interesting author/publisher who is promising in both his understanding of what makes the difference between good and great products, and is learning to navigate the market within the constrants of real world business. At this moment I find his work more exciting and promising than most of the products I look at, and whilst at the time of posting my criticism of 'clone rulesets' in response to posed question, I was at that time unaware of the person posting the question, unaware that he was planning on releasing a product, but more than aware of the author moving quietly in the wings.

A lot can be learned from the way this package has been put together and presented to the market. Presentation and polish, while not impacting on the rules and mechanics, will dictate sales. Too many 'clone' rules sets just look like nasty decorated boxes of badly typed cheaply printed paper. The authors of such things just don't see or understand their mistake, and the fact that they don't understand or don't think it's important goes to explain why they fail to make any impact or build a customerbase outside of their own groups of friends on the boards.

mbassoc2003 wrote:Sadly, even games like C&C which has a horrificly large following, has peaked.

I imagine this could change shortly, if TLG finishes that damned CKG. At least it is finally going to editing and layout, although in chunks.

I don't care to get into your opinion, but some of what you said was almost right.

mbassoc2003 wrote:The perfect RPG ruleset to grow in a secondary market seems to be a single unit core product that forms the rule set, priced reasonable ($25-40), and a whole slew of cheap (sub-$10) supporting products none of which are important or key to gameplay (adventures, options, gazetteers, etc).

This is right on the money, as it were.
One (1) rulebook.  
TSR created this trilogy mindset that only worked
because D&D was so innovative.  

But the true brilliance of D&D lay in something
much simpler:
The Dungeon.

I think Dave Arneson was responsible for this.
Rant though we may against railroading PCs,
it is still this core theme (keep the PCs confined)
that was so intoxicating to us back in the day.

If someone can produce a quality product
with that kind of out of the box (ahem) thinking then we'll
have the next big "D&D".

Or I could be full of sh**.  My wife & kids think so.