Sword's Edge Publishing

Monthly Sales for April 2012

Fraser — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:07:32 +0000

This month is about what I’m expecting until we release new product, which will almost certainly generate a spike in sales. Slow? Yup. But that’s expected. One gets back what one puts in, and I haven’t put anything in for many months now.

I’m taking a break from playtesting with the Ottawa Warband. They’ve been guinea pigs for the last couple of years, so we’re decided to go back to generic fantasy and Savage Worlds. This means Centurion and Head Crushers are both on the backburner. I will admit that I have so much research done for Centurion that I don’t think it will languish forever. Maybe by the time our fantasy campaign (I promised at least 10 sessions) finishes, I’ll have some of the Centurion research typed up, which will give me impetus to polish up the rules and get the game out.

No holding your breath.

Total Sales for April 2012
Albenistan Series
Election Day, 1
Khorforjan Gambit, 1
Qalashar Device, 1
Raid On Ashkashem, 1

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms, 1
For Simple Coin, 1
Gifts of the Elder Gods, 1

Covert Forces
Blood and Guts 2: In Her Majesty’s Service, 2
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section, 2
Covert Forces Redux, 2

Sword’s Edge System
Kiss My Axe, 3
Suffer the Witch, 3
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules, 27
Sword Noir, 4

Other
Modern Dispatch 104: Line Zero, 1
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 7

Total Sales to Date
Albenistan
Albenistan: Election Day (Modern Dispatch 113): 31
Khorforjan Gambit: 102
Qalashar Device: 115
Raid On Ashkashem: 156

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms: 37
Gifts of the Elder Gods: 33
For Simple Coin: 56

Charity Products
Relief Effort: 55

Covert Forces
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section: 94
Covert Forces: 100
Covert Forces Redux: 152
In Her Majesty’s Service: 132

Other
Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit: 35
Line Zero: 33
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 290

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 83
Kiss My Axe, 116
Suffer the Witch, 62
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules 993
Sword Noir 324
The Kheufer Scrolls, 128

At the Black Gate

Fraser — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:53:18 +0000

I know there’s a horde out there, salivating over the thought of learning more about SEP.

Just let me have my delusions.

You can head over to Black Gate to read another article on the business of RPG PDF publishing.

Be seeing you.

Build Up Some Karma AND Your SEP Library

Fraser — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:18:02 +0000

Here’s the deal. My daughter is fundraising for the Heart & Stroke Foundation through her school’s Jump Rope For Heart. Don’t know how many of you out there have a few spare dollars, but if there’s anything in the SEP PDF catalogue that you would like (other than Sword Noir or Kiss My Axe, as I owe people money on those), I’ll be happy to send it along as a thank-you for any pledges.

This offer is good until 0600 GMT on Thursday 12 April 2012.

I’m pretty sure the donations page provides some information on who is donating what, so if you donate $50 or more, I’m going to offer you one of two “rewards” for your generosity.

First Option: I will run a game over Skype or Google Hangout for you and up to two of your friends. If there is more than one $50 donator (I have my doubts this will be a problem), maybe we can all join in together. The game will be for a minimum of 3 hours, and I can run it using Sword Noir, Kiss My Axe, Centurion, Head Crushers, Sword’s Edge System, Old School Hack, or True20. You can pick the genre, if you like.

Second Option: I will write you a short story on the subject of your choice with the main character of your choice, minimum of 2,500 words. If there is more than one $50, (again, highly unlikely) I may have to do a mashup, with the highest donation providing the main plot and character and any other donations providing secondary characters and subplots. We’ll work something out whatever the case.

So, if you are feeling charitable and want some SEP swag, now’s the time to donate. Please follow the link below to donate before 0600 GMT on Thursday 12 April 2012.

You can find the donation page here.

Monthly Sales for March 2012

Fraser — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:49:03 +0000

And here I am, once again, to let you know just how miniscule SEP truly is. I should be here telling you about Head Crushers, but who knows where that is going. Centurion is on hold, although the mechanics are getting a workout through Head Crushers, so it’s still kind of in development.

And sales are small, but not too bad. I mean, beer money, right? To put that into perspective, those numbers below? They add up to just over $75. I’m not going to complain about that, really I’m not, although between Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe, I’m still over $1,000 in the red. If Sword Noir continues selling around 10 a month, it’ll pay itself off in about five months. For Kiss My Axe, at the current rate, it’ll be 40 months. That’s not a typo. KMA is just over $ 800 in the red and this month brought in about $20.

Thankfully, I never got into the biz to make money. Also, thankfully, almost half of the amount owning on KMA is for the words, which is me. Yes, I pay myself. I know, few do so. Perhaps you think it’s madness. But it’s not madness. It. Is. Business!

You can find out more about Head Crushers here.

Total Sales for March 2012
Albenistan Series
Khorforjan Gambit, 1
Qalashar Device, 1
Raid On Ashkashem, 1

Arcane Kingdoms
For Simple Coin, 1

Covert Forces
Blood and Guts 2: In Her Majesty’s Service, 1
Covert Forces Redux, 1

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 5
Kiss My Axe, 7
Suffer the Witch, 6
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules, 40
Sword Noir, 10
The Kheufer Scrolls, 6

Other
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 6

Total Sales to Date
Albenistan
Albenistan: Election Day (Modern Dispatch 113): 30
Khorforjan Gambit: 101
Qalashar Device: 114
Raid On Ashkashem: 155

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms: 36
Gifts of the Elder Gods: 32
For Simple Coin: 55

Charity Products
Relief Effort: 55

Covert Forces
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section: 92
Covert Forces: 100
Covert Forces Redux: 150
In Her Majesty’s Service: 130

Other
Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit: 35
Line Zero: 32
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 283

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 83
Kiss My Axe, 113
Suffer the Witch, 59
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules 936
Sword Noir 320
The Kheufer Scrolls, 128

Financial Judgement of 2011

Fraser — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:39:30 +0000

Doing taxes for Sword’s Edge Publishing and realizing what an incredibly unprofitable venture it is. If I had paid myself 3 cents per word, we would have had a net loss of $ 3.530 in calendar 2011. Since I don’t pay myself, we only lost $ 420.

As a point of reference, we had $1762.13 in revenue for 2011.

Now, since most of the stuff published in 2011 was written in 2010, I can’t say I wrote it all in 2011, but we published 120,920 words that had not been published anywhere previous in 2011. On a standard of 250 words per page, that’d be about 480 pages published in 2011.

The costs of operating SEP in 2011:
Production (Print) 406.10
Sub contracts 700
(including: Art 200; Layout 300; Maps 50; and Editing 150)
Advertising 247.75
Travel 551.24
(this is for GenCon, but can only claim 50% of actual costs, so I could claim 275.62 for tax purposes)
Internet : 381.95
Podcast hosting 72
Website hosting 86.69

Taxes: sometimes they unearth some interesting stuff.

Monthly Sales for February 2012

Fraser — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:18:53 +0000

Well now, things certainly have slowed down now, haven’t they? Given that I don’t anticipate having any new products coming out in the near future, the trajectory for sales is likely a continued downward trend that will level out somewhere around beer money. I can live with that. Sword Noir has made back 87% of its investment, and Kiss My Axe has made back 33%, a third of the way to profitability. I can live with these numbers. They indicate that at some point these products will be profitable.

Not everything is.

Total Sales for February 2012
Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms, 1
Gifts of the Elder Gods, 1

Covert Forces
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section, 1
Covert Forces Redux, 1

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 12
Kiss My Axe, 17
Suffer the Witch, 15
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules, 46
Sword Noir, 20
The Kheufer Scrolls, 11

Other
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 3

Total Sales to Date
Albenistan
Albenistan: Election Day (Modern Dispatch 113): 30
Khorforjan Gambit: 100
Qalashar Device: 113
Raid On Ashkashem: 154

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms: 36
Gifts of the Elder Gods: 32
For Simple Coin: 54

Charity Products
Relief Effort: 55

Covert Forces
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section: 92
Covert Forces: 100
Covert Forces Redux: 149
In Her Majesty’s Service: 129

Other
Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit: 35
Line Zero: 32
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 277

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 78
Kiss My Axe, 106
Suffer the Witch, 53
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules 896
Sword Noir 310
The Kheufer Scrolls, 122

Centurion: Quo Vadis?

Fraser — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:36:30 +0000

I’ve completed the first session of playtesting for Centurion, and it went both well and poorly. It went well because the mechanic worked exactly as I expected. It went poorly because this was not enough.

Two of my playtesters are also game designers, and one made the comment that during the dice mechanic, there are many points in which dice are being removed from the resolution and each of those moments should mean something. There should be a narrative, in-game response to the process of task resolution with dice.

He was absolutely correct, but I so wished he weren’t at the time, because I was having a hard time trying to figure out how all this could work. A lot of ‘but!’ came into my head and a few made it to my tongue.

Not to worry, as there were still six people around the table, and brainstorming ensued. This led to a new interpretation of the task resolution system, one in which each action during task resolution has an in-game component.

The biggest stumbling block so far is group involvement in a single task. Right now, all task resolution is dice vs. dice, as in the GM rolls dice that reflect the difficulty of a challenge against a player rolling dice for a character. When a group tries, for example, to find a single individual or accomplish some other task that is a single challenge, the number of dice used by the group overwhelms the challenge, but adding in extra dice to compensate for the number of characters inflates the challenge ridiculously.

Still working on that and we’ve scheduled another playtest session, so hopefully we’ll soon have a group challenge mechanic. Right now, I’m using “number of successes,” but it doesn’t feel right as it is totally removed from the main task resolution mechanic.

In case you are interested, you can find the original playtest rules here, and the new playtest rules here.

And the post title refers to the Latin for “where are you going?” rather than the novel and movie by the same name.

Monthly Sales for January 2012

Fraser — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:33:58 +0000

January was a pretty good month. It was pretty much the biggest month for SEP ever. I also was on an average of one podcast per week talking up Kiss My Axe and then – after it had been released – Suffer the Witch. This marketing, which cost me much less than other marketing I’ve done, seems to have had a fairly impressive impact. I can trace at least three sales of bundles to podcast interviews, meaning there’s likely at least another 3 – all told about 18 sales based on podcasts. That may not seem like much, but along with a new release which probably put more than a few eyeballs on our catalogue, which led to even more sales.

The numbers speak for themselves.

You can find Kiss My Axe here.

You can find Suffer the Witch here.

You can find our catalogue here.

More info on the podcasts on which I appeared soon.

Sales for January 2012
Albenistan
Raid On Ashkashem, 2
Khorforjan Gambit, 2
Qalashar Device, 2

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms, 5
Gifts of the Elder Gods, 3
For Simple Coin, 3

Covert Forces
Blood and Guts 2: In Her Majesty’s Service, 2
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section, 1
Covert Forces Redux, 1

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 16
Kiss My Axe, 55
Suffer the Witch, 38
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules, 62
Sword Noir, 27
The Kheufer Scrolls, 18

Other
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 10
Relief Effort (Charity Product), 1

Total Sales to Date
Albenistan
Albenistan: Election Day (Modern Dispatch 113): 30
Khorforjan Gambit: 100
Qalashar Device: 113
Raid On Ashkashem: 154

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms: 35
Gifts of the Elder Gods: 31
For Simple Coin: 54

Charity Products
Relief Effort: 55

Covert Forces
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section: 91
Covert Forces: 100
Covert Forces Redux: 148
In Her Majesty’s Service: 129

Other
Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit: 35
Line Zero: 32
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 274

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 66
Kiss My Axe, 89
Suffer the Witch, 38
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules 850
Sword Noir 290
The Kheufer Scrolls, 111

Number for Modern Medieval, Roles & Classes, and Treasure Chest: Unlocked not included as these lines have been discontinued and their numbers will not change. Those numbers were included in December sales, if you are interested.

Audio: Sword Noir Questions

Fraser — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:47:19 +0000

Joshua had some questions about Sword Noir: a Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery. I recorded some answers, and you can listen to them if you’d like.

You can find Sword Noir here.

You can download the audio here.

Or you can listen right now.

Suffer the Witch

Fraser — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:29:54 +0000

A group of Vikings cast ashore find a village stripped of its warriors. The chieftain speaks of a witch, once a wise woman of the village, now bitter and flushed with hatred. The village suffers under her curse, and he has lost many men in attempting to free it. He cannot risk any more.

And these adventurers, lately come from the sea, lost and in need of aid? Can they save the village of Kalved?

Suffer the Witch, an adventure for the Viking RPG Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death, was created for Gen Con 2011. It is a challenge for 4 – 6 starting characters. Pre-generated characters are included, but the adventure can be run with any newly generated Kiss My Axe character. While the adventure does not require the use of Kiss My Axe, the narrative characters and some situations are based on that system and would require modification to use with another system.

You can find Suffer the Witch here.