Very busy today as I am trying to finish all my work duties before I take off for L.A. on Thursday. Got some art back from Anthony today and, as usual, he hits another one out of the park. Behold my new desktop wallpaper:

I had quite a bit going on this last weekend.  I took the NRA Instructor course for Personal Protection in the Home Saturday and Sunday; so I will have my credentials upgraded when the paperwork comes back from the NRA.  One thing I noticed; I am a fan of Comic Books, Role-Playing Games and Guns.  Whenever you get a room full of people together in any of those three categories, the conversations tend to be quite animated, long and full of unassailable opinions! 

My wife’s grandfather died on Saturday.  We will be flying out to L.A. for the funeral this next weekend.  I also found out my best friends grandmother died as well, so on Saturday night when I got back from class I was consoling my wife, while at the same time consoling my best friend.  (Who was much easier to console since we got online and played Halo 3 to cheer him up.  Kudo’s to my wife for being so understanding!)

I am actually looking forward to the trip out to California.  I haven’t been there in 18 years!  I lived in CA for a couple of years, bouncing around just North of L.A. so it will be nice to get back there.  In-N-Out Burger here I come! But this means I will have to miss the D&D Experience con this weekend.  I’m not so happy about that but what are you gonna do?

I want to get a couple more products out this week. Look for the D20 Decade: The 1980’s from Chris Field and Otherverse Games very soon.  I’ll probably follow that up either with a D7ACU or Adventurer Essentials: Iron Rations.

Or do they?

I got some more art back from Anthony yesterday; the cover for Adventurer Essentials: Iron Rations as well as this fellow:

He’s hard at work on some other images for me as well.

I am gearing up for my weekend NRA Instructor course.  It will be Sat and Sun all day; say 8-5ish.  Hopefully I will still be able to get some other work done at night when I get home from class.  There is a Point-Shooting class at a range not too distant; rifle and pistol, that is late next month I would also like to attend if the funds are available.  They want you to bring 400 rounds of rifle and pistol ammo each; so 800 rounds total; that plus the tuition for the course and it’s starting to get a wee bit expensive!

I just finished the audio book Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card.  I really enjoyed it.  Some aspects of Card’s writing I am less thrilled with, but every book of his I have “read” has been the audio version so perhaps it is a bit different listening rather than reading the prose.  That isn’t a complaint; he is quite a good writer and I would not hesitate to pick up a book from him, but some of the ways he goes about presenting ideas or topic in his writing I would maybe do differently.  But since he is a famous, wealthy writer who makes his sole living crafting words and I am a full-time computer guy, part-time RPG Publisher, part-time firearms instructor I may not have much room to judge.

There was an ice storm last night so all the local schools are closed.  My daughters event has been re-scheduled for next Friday.  Unfortunately I am also scheduled to attend the D&D Experience that night.  I have a feeling my daughter’s event will have to trump D&D; but I will be there Thursday for a game and I have the weekend open as well.

I was feeling pretty lousy last night so I didn’t go fencing, or get much done at all.  I did manage to put together a cover for the North Side Spiders.  It may change in the future, but this is what I have so far.

I spoke with Louis Porter Jr. on the phone last night.  He has some very cool things planned for the future.  If I was running a D&D campaign right now I would be all over the Side-Trek adventures; but we are running Star Wars Saga edition.  I may pick them up anyway to have for the local group I play with once a month.  I might end up running some games with them, rather than just playing.

I am looking forward to the D&D Experience next week, and seeing first hand what is in store for 4th edition.

I put Two Bits, Six Feats: Weapons & Combat up last night.  I have plenty of feats to make up another few PDF’s in the same line, so there will be a few more coming soon.  These short PDF’s are great ways to fill in the cracks between larger releases.

I have gathered up all the art for our North Side Spiders Modern Arcana street gang.  The art looks great!  If you liked the Mia Famiglia PDF then this one should be right up your alley.

Chris Field has his D20 Decade: the 1980’s on deck as well.  He has also sent me a draft of his Otherverse America setting which is HUGE.

I have tonight and tomorrow to work on projects; as Friday I have to attend a function at my daughters school and Sat. & Sun are filled up with an NRA instructor class for Personal Protection in the Home.  When I finish that I ‘ll be certified to teach that class and meet the pre-requisites to take the instructor class for Personal Protection Outside the Home which I’ll take later this year.

I want to go fencing tonight, but I can feel a cold/flu coming on.  It’s also supposed to start snowing around here sometime today.  Snow doesn’t bother me (I went to college in the Rockies) but around the DC area a little snow causes drivers to lose control of their reflexes and common sense.

Wow, Black Tokyo is still getting people riled up. I had a person (from Amsterdam) post several comments to this Blog calling me an “idiot” and “insanely stupid” among other things, who is apparently upset that I didn’t let those comments get posted. So he has signed up over at ENWorld just so he could post bad things about Black Tokyo and Skortched Urf’ Studios while encouraging everyone to ask for a refund! According to him we are “incapable of producing a quality product”. (Despite the numerous five-star reviewed products we currently have out there; many of them written by the same author as Black Tokyo.)

I have acknowledged several of the faults Black Tokyo has, but at the end of the day NONE of our other products has generated such a heated response. Am I really expected to believe that all of this criticism is because of some layout and font issues? I put an very clear disclaimer on this product:

WARNING!

This setting is intended for ADULTS ONLY.
If you are easily offended you do not want to purchase this product.
If you are hard to offend you still may not want to buy this product!

(I’m serious; we have plenty of other offerings for “mainstream” gamers.)
This PDF is full of Hentai-inspired RPG rules, classes and setting elements; so if you would not purchase a typical Hentai product then this may not be your cup of tea. Consider yourself warned.

I can’t say I wasn’t expecting some blowback from this release. I am a big boy, and I can handle the criticisms.

At the end of the day this is just one product out of many, and we will be releasing many more.

Speaking of more products the D7ACU: The Innocent is about to drop off the front page. (For some reason no one is pouring over it looking for grammatical, layout and D20 License mistakes. ) I think the first “Two Bits, Six Feats” will be released next. I want to give Chris a chance to look over his D20 Decade: The 1980’s book one more time before it is released. I also emailed a cartographer about doing some maps for The Law of the Jungle adventure I have had for a while. I also have all the components I need for the North Side Spiders; I just need to do the layout. February is going to be a busy month indeed.

One more thing; if you have seen the movie Cloverfield then check out this $100 toy of the monster from the movie.  (If you have not seen the movie, go see it!)

I put together the first “Two Bits, Six Feats” yesterday. Obviously, it is a short PDF so it didn’t take too long. You can view the Flash Flip-Book HERE.

I worked on the pre-view script for the Pandora project and sent if off to Anthony for illustration. I want to do several short vignettes in comic-book style to illustrate the setting. I also sent him three other projects for illustration; one dealing with new Epic level spells, another for AE: iron Rations and another Fantasy PDF.

Black Tokyo has sold a bit better than I had anticipated. I was worried if I would get my artwork investment back, but I already have. In fact, thanks to Balck Tokyo (and it’s higher cover price than our usual releases) we have had our best sales month ever in terms of gross sales. I suspect sales will die down now that several people have given the product negative reviews. But who knows?

I want to clear out a few un-released projects so I can devote more time to the Pandora project and the upcoming Omens line of adventures. I also found a local designer I can pass some layout work to, which will free up more time for actual development.

I put the finishing touches on the D7ACU: The Innocent late last night.  I’ve had that project for a long while but decided to wait and release it just after Black Tokyo as a bit of a palette cleanser, it being the complete opposite of BT. I really liked the flavor text intro to this one, you can read it on the press release over at ENWorld.

One thing I noticed several of the people talking about Black Tokyo complaining about was the part in the beginning where Chris talks about other products he’s worked on and how they might fit in with BT.  This was somehow “shilling” and arrogant to some people; I don’t see it that way at all.  ( I think people were a bit disturbed by the content and are tearing the product down in other ways as a form of “lashing out”, but that’s just my opinion.)  I would have been happy to add in other companies and authors products, but given the nature of BT I was pretty sure some of them might not have wanted their projects associated closely with it.  I even had a thumbnail of the Panty Explosion PDF cover in the layout at one point, but decided to remove it.  So we stuck with products written by Chris and published by Skortched Urf’ Studios mainly.  Oh well, I knew this one would generate some vitriol.  I just didn’t expect it to target that area of the project.  And since when is cross-promotion a bad thing?  Sure, you may not want to “pad” a short five page PDF with two pages of cross-promotion, but BT was over 170 pages along so the space allotment doesn’t seem like an issues either.

I am going to steal borrow an idea from The Le Games and do a short line of PDF’s tentatively called “Four Bits, Six Feats”.  I am  going to take a selected group of related feats from the two Mega-Feats source books and put them in a short PDF with coupons for a discount on the larger collection of feats.  I think it will be a good way to generate new  interest in a couple of projects we’ve had out for a while now.  I worked up a generic cover yesterday morning.

I think the next release from us will be most likely Chris’s Otherverse D20 Decade: The 1980’s. Look for it soon.

Blcak Tokyo is off and running! It’s selling fairly well; frankly much better than I expected. I have already sold over two-dozen copies and had one RPGNow staff reviewer request a copy. The press release on ENWorld is getting some traffic and there is also a big thread about it over at RPG.net.

I’ll be sitting down this weekend to prepare a couple more projects for release, so when Black Tokyo drops off the front page I will have another product to replace it.

I saw that there was another school shooting, this time at an Illinois University. My thoughts about Unarmed Victim Zones Gun Free School Zones are well known, but if you want to read more I am going to cover it on a post at my other blog.

Tonight after work I am meeting some friends at the NRA Gun Range in Fairfax, VA to try out some of the new guns I got a couple of weeks ago. Should be a blast! [Get it? Blast? Hehe.]