After 10 years, I’ve decided it’s time to sell the company. It’s been a fantastic decade: Engine Publishing has put out six bestselling books of system-neutral gaming advice, with over 40,000 copies sold in print and digital editions all over the world. We won an ENnie Award in 2012, and we’ve been nominated for 13 other awards from 2010-2016.

When we published our first book, Eureka, in 2010, our “warehouse” for print books was two rows of stacked boxes under the desk in my home office. After a couple years, it took over the whole office closet. When my family moved to Seattle in 2015, it expanded to fill a good-sized chunk of our storage unit.

In the past 10 years, Engine Publishing has gone from literally just an idea to a company that has succeeded beyond anything I imagined when I signed the paperwork to form the LLC in 2009 — and that’s all thanks to you, the readers and fans who have bought our books and spread the word about them.

Thank you very, very much for your support!

Back in 2009, system-neutral GMing advice books were uncommon, to say the least. But I loved them, and wanted to publish them, and so did the teams behind each of our books. Seeing other gamers use and enjoy our books has always been the best part of the job.

The future

Encoded Designs is a stellar small-press publishing company that believes in what Engine Publishing has done over the past 10 years — and the team includes three longtime collaborators on Engine Publishing projects, founder Phil Vecchione, editor Bob Everson, and art director John Arcadian, along with Chris Sniezak, Shawn Merwin, and Tim Jones.

When I decided I wanted to sell the company, Encoded Designs was my first choice for a potential buyer. Their plan is to continue publishing all six Engine Publishing titles, as well as to expand the brand. They will continue to support past customers, and they’re as committed to the ideal of “a digital copy with every print copy” as I am. Engine Publishing is in excellent hands.

Will I publish anything else down the line? I might. I’ve been putting my work online since 1999; publishing stuff, in some form, is in my blood. But for now I’m still blogging about gaming on Yore and talking about RPGs on Twitter.

It’s been a great ride. Thank you again for your support — truly, it means an enormous amount to me. Cheers, and happy gaming!

— Martin Ralya
Signing off in Seattle, Washington

I apologize to anyone who was hurt by the language in the original tagline.

I will continue working to excise ableist language fekm my vocabulary.

Engine Publishing believes Cheyenne Grimes. We will not support the work of bad actors in the tabletop RPG industry.

This update will take a bit of time (we need to select and contract with an author, give them time to write the essay, edit it, modify the layout files, update the digital editions wherever they’re sold, and confirm with one or more proofs that the new edition is ready for printing). Once complete, all past purchasers of Unframed will be able to obtain the updated digital edition at no cost.

We contacted award-winning game designer and author Shanna Germain about writing a new foreword, and were thrilled when she signed on for the job. You may know Shanna from her Origins- and ENnie Award-winning work on Numenera and No Thank You, Evil!, her numerous books, or her erotica.

Our layout designer also offered to update the book at no charge and requested that we donate what we would have paid him to Planned Parenthood, which we did.

If you have previously purchased Never Unprepared, whether in print or digitally and no matter where you purchased it, we would love to send you an updated copy with Shanna’s new foreword. (If you bought it on DriveThruRPG, you already have access to this updated version.) No other content has changed.

Until the transition is complete — which I expect to be sometime in October 2018 — retail stores, whether online or bricks and mortar, will be the best option for purchasing our print books.

Our webstore is still open for direct digital sales, although that will likely be transitioning as well.

Whether or not I move entirely away from direct sales, anyone who has purchased a digital edition (whether on its own or as part of a print + digital bundle) will still be able to retrieve a backup copy at any time, most likely by way of me sending you a copy via DriveThruRPG.

Thanks for supporting Engine Publishing, and happy gaming!

• Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +4 features Focal Point: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Running Extraordinary Sessions at the bonus level (around $20), along with a wealth of other GMing resources.
• Meanwhile, in Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +2, you can snag Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management — also at the bonus level, around $15 — plus a bevy of other books.

These bundles are both a great deal, offering lots of books for much less than their usual PDF prices, and both include the full, DRM-free, multi-format digital editions of our books. And on top of that, a portion of each sale is donated to Doctors Without Borders, a worthy cause if there ever was one.

Both bundles end December 12, so you’ve got a bit of time to poke around and see what you think before these deals expire.

Focal Point: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Running Extraordinary Sessions, which caps our GMing trilogy covering session prep, campaign prep, and running the game, is nominated for an ENnie in the Best RPG Related Product Category.

To vote, just head over to the voting booth, click on the Best RPG Related Product category, rate Focal Point (1 is the highest/best rating, 5 is the lowest), and then click “Vote!” There’s no sign-in or registration — it’s quick and easy.

I encourage you to vote in as many categories as possible — there are some fantastic nominees this year, and I know from personal experience how much the ENnies can mean to product sales, visibility, and future success in the RPG industry. Your vote matters!

If you do vote for Focal Point, thank you SO much for your support!

I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning, but I think I can now have one less cup, maybe two less. I’m awake and pumped!

Thank you to the folks who nominated Engine for Fan Favorite Publisher, and to the judges for nominating Focal Point and Gnome Stew!