Adam Jury

My Best Four Days in Gaming

Adam — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:53:59 +0000

Gen Con started badly for me. I flew out from DC on Wednesday morning; my girlfriend Kristen on a direct flight and me with a connection through Chicago. Some bad weather meant my flight from DC left late, and my flight—and the flight before it—to Indianapolis were cancelled. There was no chance of going standby on a later flight, so after I figured out that my bags would continue to Indianapolis without me, my cries to the twitterverse were answered and my rock-star designer friend Tiara zoomed by the airport to pick me up on her way to the convention. This turned out to be a fun little car trip, although I was sad that I missed spending a half-day in Indianapolis with Kristen.

ENNies

Gobsmacked. In a year where Paizo’s stack of ENnies needed a hand-cart to take them back to the booth, winning the Silver ENnie for Best Product may as well been Gold for us. A gold for Best Writing and a silver for Best Cover Art rounded out Eclipse Phase ENnies. In the Best Production category, Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition caught Silver. I can’t deny that I voted for Eclipse Phase in that category, but I joined Randall from Catalyst onstage and, since he was already wearing the ENnie’s medal, I yoinked the certificate. I had no idea I was going to be up there until I had started walking. Shadowrun 20th Anniversary is an awesome book and I am proud as all hell of it.

Eclipse Phase

Sunward was released, the GM Screen was available, and we had ample stock of them and the core book to satisfy our fans. We also had some miniposters, t-shirts, and some plush monsters from OhNo!Doom, a Chicago art collective, to round out our swag. Our booth was busy, sales were good, and our games were very well attended. Our gamemasters kicked ass in accommodating tons of players per game. We gave all the players feedback forms, and from the sampling I’ve read so far our GMs are very well loved!

This Just In … From Gen Con 2010

I appeared on This Just In .. From Gen Con on Saturday at 5PM. Fifteen minutes earlier, I was walking to our hotel room with Kristen saying “I’m feeling the need for some introvert time. Are you cool with just hanging out by yourself for awhile?” Of course, she was … and she got to. I didn’t, because I remembered at the last minute that I needed to be podcasting—not an introverted activity—in another hotel. So I dashed over, and thankfully I was paired with the awesome E Foley of Geek’s Dream Girl, who carried the show. I mostly talked about the ENnies, Creative Commons-licensing stuff, and how twitter functions as the “water cooler” for those of us that work from home but need feedback/stimulation from colleagues.

Friends

I hugged my friends extra tightly this year.

Magic: the Gathering and other Acquisitions

I didn’t manage to play any MTG at the show, but with my trusty iPad and some good timing, I was able to score a copy of the From the Vault: Relics set. Beyond picking up my comp copies of Sunward and the GM Screen, Sixth World Almanac, and the Dresden Files, I didn’t buy anything at the show. I bought a lot of games over the last year that haven’t been played much, so I didn’t want to add to the unread/unplayed piles.

Playtesting

We pitched game concepts and playtested things that will become Posthuman Studios’ next games. We have some cool stuff brewing! Refinement starts … tomorrow.

Self-Hate Harms

Adam — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:25:49 +0000

My Gen Con tips from last year contain this piece of advice:

There is a CVS about three blocks from the convention center. It is your best bet for inexpensive bottled drinks, snackfood, cigarettes, Red Bull, and condoms.

Jonathan Medina (@mtgmetagame) had this to say about that advice, yesterday:

Just read @adamjury’s GenCon Tips -> http://tinyurl.com/39q4jvm Favorite Part “There is a CVS about three blocks from the convention center, It is your best bet for inexpensive bottled drinks, snackfood, cigarettes, Red Bull, and condoms.” Condoms?! Really at GenCon?! lol
(Part 1, Part 2)

I think Medina is a cool guy and I enjoy this writing, but naturally, his tweet ended up getting him a good handful of “Why on earth would Magic players need condoms?”-style replies.

I gotta ask: gamers, Magic players, why do you feel the need to self-hate? Yes, there’s things in the gaming community to dislike and discourage, but here’s the thing: Self-hate may look to you like an in-joke when it’s limited to your “tribe” but those on the outside will take it at face value, and all those stereotypes will continue to be perpetuated. If you want to rise above the “smelly/hopeless/loveless/jobless/etc. geeks playing that dumb game all day” stereotypes then you have to show the positive side of yourself and your hobbies—not just putting on a show to non-geeks, but by treating your fellow gamer better, and treating them as complete human beings: including love and sex lives. People will notice how you treat other people and form opinions of you based on that, not just how you treat them directly. Geeks treating geeks well will raise their profile among non-geeks (and for a direct bonus, it’s usually more fun to hang out with people who are treating you well!)

And Jonathan, if you need the most important Circle of Protection at the show, hunt me down at booth #2009 (Posthuman Studios, Sandstorm Productions, WildFire)—I always have a couple handy.

Gen Con Attendance Tips

Adam — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:16:20 +0000

I haven’t updated my Gen Con tips this year; I intended to, but it simply hasn’t happened. Last year’s tips should still be useful, though:

See you at the show!

ENnies Award Voting 2010

Adam — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:59:18 +0000

Voting for the 2010 ENnie Awards is now open.

I can’t deny that this year’s ENNie Award nominations aren’t a little bittersweet after the events of earlier this year. Projects that I worked on are well-represented, and the great number of worthy entrants in every categories indicate something that has been true for a long time: gamers are spoiled for choice!

Shadowrun: Seattle 2072 received an honorable mention nod in the Best Setting category. Steve Kenson did a bang-up job with this title, melding Shadowrun’s past to the present and setting groundwork for the future.

Eclipse Phase in the following categories:

Best Cover Art: Stephan Martiniere’s gorgeous cover art will launch thousands of campaigns.
Best Writing: Developer Rob Boyle has had his hand in many great gaming books, and for Eclipse Phase he may have assembled the best writing staff he’s had to date: Lars Blumenstein, Brian Cross, Jack Graham, John Snead; with additional writing from Bruce Baugh, Randall N. Bills, Davidson Cole, Tobias Wolter, with Jason Hardy and Michelle Lyons on editing.
Best Production: This is the best-looking book I have ever made, with cool visuals that don’t overwhelm the art, and a huge thrust towards making the 400-pages very navigable, most notably the two-page spreads that open each chapter and point you to important information.
Product of the Year: With nominations in three of the “pillar” categories, plus the intangibles of Creative Commons-licensing, our trend-setting low price point for the electronic version, and of course a great game to play in a setting that has unlimited potential … I think a nomination in this category is well-earned.

Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition got nods in these categories:

Best Interior Art: Art Director Mike Vaillancourt and myself butted heads a lot on this project, but in the end, the artwork in this project is really strong and takes Shadowrun in a new direction.
Best Production Values: Apparently I build good-looking well-organized books consistently! The giant index that covers not only itself but all the other SR4 rulebooks is so freaking cool.
Best Game: Personally, I’d love to see “Best Game” and “Best New Edition” categories. But games don’t get produced for 20 years if they don’t see actual play, and Shadowrun has always erred on the side of being a game that should be played, not just read.
Product of the Year: A punched-up and improved version of one of the most successful RPGs ever certainly qualifies.

In every category we are up against other amazing titles: Paizo’s Pathfinder juggernaut, Green Ronin’s Dragon Age Boxed Set, FFG’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Boxed Set (which looks gorgeous … I have to make the time to read through my copy!), and others too numerous to mention.

To spread briefly about category’s I’m not in: Jess Hartley’s One Geek To Another deserves props in the blog category for doing something different by offering advice about gamer etiquette, something sorely needed. For Best Setting, you can’t accuse the guys at HERO of not taking a chance with something different in Lucha Libre Hero …

… and Best Publisher could just be Posthuman Studios.

DriveThruRPG Updating PDFs for iPad Compatability

Adam — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:58:25 +0000

As many people with an iPad know, the PDF libraries included with it are written by Apple, not Adobe, and they don’t support all PDF feature perfectly. They’ve been working with freelance designers, myself included, to rid these PDFs of glitches (as much as you can when not always having access to the files used to create the book.)

I’m going to keep a running tally of which books I’ve updated using Tumblr: ipadrpgpdfs.tumblr.com/

Early experiences with short fiction via Amazon Kindle

Adam — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:26:15 +0000

(Edits: I removed the word ‘fair’ from my post and replaced it with ‘reasonable,’ which I think is a better term and doesn’t present such a moral implication, and I added two notes: about DRM and Disclosure.)

Posthuman Studios publishes a few pieces of short fiction via Amazon’s Kindle service (Well, technically one piece—the second one is in the processing queue.) These are short stories that have already appeared (or will appear) in our rulebooks—they’re on the Kindle store to boost awareness of the game’s super-sweet setting and because I like experiments. I didn’t expect to make more than pocket change with them, and with almost no promotion beyond our usual game-related channels, that certainly seems to be holding true in the early stages.

I think that $0.99 is a reasonable price for a digital copy of a short story that has appeared elsewhere. Format agnostic: PDF, ePub, mobi, Kindle, whatever.

Here’s some fun stuff I’ve learned:

If you publish via Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, you have two royalty choices: 35% and 70%.
If you want 70% royalties, Amazon will deduct an additional service charge per download. In my tests, it was only $0.01 for a relatively small file.
If you want 70% royalties, you have to set the desired sale price to $2.99 or greater. If Amazon decides to sell lower than your desired sale price, you get 70% of the actual sale price. If your royalties are 35%, you get 35% of the desired sale price or the actual sale price, whichever is higher.
If you price your desired sale price to $0.99, Amazon will honor that price in the USA, but not internationally. It will automatically bump the price up to $2.99 in non-USA markets. If you bump your desired sales price up a little bit, the international price will get bumped, also. (I tried to see if a slightly-higher USA price would convince Amazon’s algorithms to lower the international price, with the USA dollars subsidizing the international costs. No luck.)
You get sales reports that include, on a per title basis: units sold, refunded, net units, royalty %, average list price, average file size, average offer price, average delivery charge, royalty total. No other information at all; there are no ways to contact the buyers. These people are not your customers, they are Amazon’s customers.
Basic math: One sale of a $0.99 title at the 35% royalty rate is $0.35. One sale of a $2.99 (minimum price!) title at the 70% royalty rate is $2.09 (minus the service charge.)
Edit, DRM: You can turn DRM off. Amazon doesn’t promise that this option will stick around forever. Turn DRM off, unless you hate your readers.
Edit, Disclosure: The Digital Publication Distribution Agreement forbids you from discussing your sales data and other such stuff. It also forbids you from disclosing the terms of the agreement, even though it’s publicly available!

Open questions:

Should we price the Eclipse Phase short fiction at $2.99 at the higher royalty rate and make 6 times more money per sale? I like those numbers, but I don’t think it’s the right thing from a propagation/social point of view.

And finally, have some affiliate links:

Freelancing: Full of It

Adam — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:38:49 +0000

I’m full up, between my work at Posthuman Studios and my existing freelance clients. I don’t anticipate even thinking about taking on any new freelance clients until October.

Existing clients: I love you guys!

Eclipse Phase is Origins Award RPG of the Year

Adam — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:52:01 +0000

Eclipse Phase was just voted the Best RPG of the Year at the Origins Awards. To say that I am pleased, after all the hard work that went into this game, after all the business kerfuffles over the last few months, and considering the competition —well, I am very pleased.

Eclipse Phase is a complete game with a detailed science-fiction setting. It’s published under a Creative Commons license; because we have to build the future we want to live in, and sharing is an integral part of gaming culture. I’m thrilled to sanction and encourage that kind of sharing in a formal way. We sell the electronic version for $15 because we want to get it into your hands; after you’ve bought it, give a copy to your gaming group so they can fall in love with it, too. The print version is a gorgeous, 400-page full-color hardcover book, and it should be available in stores everywhere.

Eclipse Phase is a base for experiments, also. If you buy the Gamemaster Screen Hack Pack, not only do you get PDFs of the GM Screen and the Glory adventure, but you get the InDesign files we used to build the GM Screen, to let you hack your own custom GM screen. And when you’ve built your screen, you can share it with everyone. We’ll have more experiments soon.

But for now, we have our game back in sales channels, there are two print releases coming soon (the Gamemaster Pack and the glorious sexy space whale-filled Sunward), it’s thrilling to be working with Rob and Brian on future stuff, and we won an Origins Award for Best RPG. That all feels pretty damned good.

Don’t Ask: “Would you consider?”

Adam — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:41:50 +0000

Often, a fan phrases a question towards a company in this manner: “Would you consider releasing this book as a hardback?” or “Have you considered releasing a fiction anthology?”

Please don’t ask questions in this manner. You’re trying to ask a question about the end results but the question you are actually asking is about process.

Some people would actually argue that someone can’t answer that question without quickly considering both possibilities, and so the answer to any “Would you consider?” question is always yes.

Let’s use an example: “Would you consider printing future books in hardcover?”

Before a publisher decides to print a book in hardcover, they have to look at the additional printing and shipping costs for doing so, compare that to the expected sales for the book, and ask some necessary sub-questions: will making this book hardcover sell more copies? Will making it hardcover make it possible to raise the price enough to cover the additional printing costs? Will this actually add value for the people buying the book? Does it conflict with the way that series of books has been published in the past?

It’s safe to say that if you see a book on the shelf, the publisher has considered all sorts of different things to try and make the book more attractive to buyers and more profitable to themselves. That is simply part of running a publishing business. Considering happens a lot.

If you want to ask a question about the process, do it:

“What factors most influence you when deciding if a book will be hardcover or softcover?”

or:

“Book X was hardcover, but Book Y and Z were softcover. Wasn’t Z similar enough to X to merit a hardcover? Why wasn’t it?”

If you want to ask questions about the end result, do it:

“I’m looking forward to Book A, but I really want it in hardcover. Is it going to be one?”

I understand that some people think that asking a “Would you consider?” question is a polite way of requesting that end result: but it’s better to just say “I would really like to see this book as a hardcover. I bought your other hardcover books and want more, please!” (“Please” is still a magic word, even when money and business is happening.)

Please don’t ask me if I’m considering things. Ask me what it took to get previous things done, or what it would take to get the things you want done.

Wired app for iPad

Adam — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:29:46 +0000

Not quite living in the future, but the Wired app for the iPad is really cool. There’s a few little tweaks that would make it even better. I hope that since each issues is an app on its own (or at least, that appears to be the model they’re going for) that it will be easy for them to incrementally improve it each issue perhaps until they feel they can release it as an app with in-app purchases for each new issue?

Custom Table of Contents

I want to tag some article as interesting, and I also want to mark an article as “Read and Not Wanting to Re-read,” essentially creating a second Table of Contents with just the stuff I want to re-read, the stuff I haven’t read, and none of the stuff I’ve already read. And yes, after I’ve looked at it, I’d like to be able to mark ads as “Not Wanting to Re-read.”

(In print magazines, I often rip out and throw away pages if they contain an ad on both the front and the back. I buy things to read, not to fetishize.)

Hop to Web Article

I want a quick way to get a hyperlink for the web version of any particular article, so I can send it to a friend.

Better Escaping from Animated Content

Invaders of Mars has a cool animation, but once it’s swirling the double-tap to stop it is kind of strange: it stops the animation and performs the “bring up menu items” action as well. I think I’d prefer a single tap on the same hot spot that started the animation.

Puzzle

I want to try and type the answer into the puzzle!