Monte Cook's Blog, page 136

Embarrassment of Communication Riches

Embarrassment of Communication Riches

I joined Google+ a few weeks ago, and I love it. However, that means there's yet another social networking site for me to monitor to keep up with friends, colleagues, readers, and gamers. The best way to contact me is still through plain ol' email: My first name {at} my first and last name {dot com}. Facebook messages or wall posts, Twitter posts, comments here, LinkedIn messages... these just get missed too often by me. It's not that I ignore them, it's just that they're indirect and scattershot.

Regarding various networks, please follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, or put me in a circle on Google+ I welcome everyone at those sites. I only connect with people on LinkedIn that I know personally or have worked with directly.

Some Brief Movie Thoughts

Some Brief Movie Thoughts

I've seen some films in the last few months. Rather than actual reviews, I've jotted down a brief thought or two regarding some of them.

Thor: Up until I saw the second trailer released for this film, I was very dubious that anyone could translate a (sometimes great) comic book starring a blond beefcake who wears a silver winged hat, speaks in pseudo-Shakespearean English, and flies by hurling a big hammer and then letting it drag him through the sky into anything resembling a good movie. Some things just look better on the page than on the screen. But I was wrong. This was a fun movie.

X-Men: First Class: Marvel's having a good summer (and Captain America promises to keep it going for them). This is the only summer film that I've seen twice in the theater. It proves a point I didn't realize until I saw the movie: the X-Men belong in the 1960s. The James-Bond-with-superpowers vibe going on in this movie is pitch-perfect.

Priest: This rather forgettable little post-apocalyptic vampire film looked like films made 5-10 years ago (inspired by comics and rpgs made 10-15 years ago). Could have been so much better with better writing.

Bridesmaids: I expected this comedy to be a lot funnier and less moving. Not sure if that's criticism or praise? Me either.

Super 8: This movie was aimed right at me. A Spielbergian group of smart, creative kids have an adventure involving aliens set in 1979? Awesome. Reminded me both of my own youth and the summer movies of my youth (E.T., Goonies, Close Encounters, etc.). I also had the pleasure of going into this movie with no preconceptions. Didn't even know it was a science fiction film.

Green Lantern: This isn't as bad a movie as people are saying. It's not a great film, and pales in comparison to the other super hero movies of the year so far, but if it had come out when the comic book movie bar was lower, we geeks would all be singing its praises and ignoring its flaws, like we so often do. Instead, overcome with an embarrassment of riches, as a group we seem to have decided to toss this one aside. (Are geek movies getting so good that fans don't need to justify the plot holes and glaring problems anymore? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?)

Midnight in Paris: It's interesting to me that a filmmaker like Woody Allen can make a fantasy movie (because that's what this is) but no one will call it that. And in so doing, he can ignore all the issues that fantasy/science fiction movies need to focus on and just get to the heart of the film. There were a couple of times that I found myself asking things like, "wait, how could he possibly have just found her diary in a shop?" But those moments didn't last, as I realized this wasn't that kind of movie. It's not supposed to have verisimilitude. Which is fine. In fact, in the context of this specific movie, it's great. I'm not a huge Owen Wilson fan, but here I found him charming. Like with Super 8, I also had the pleasure of having absolutely no idea what this film was about. Even though I like sneak peeks as much as anyone, I'm one again reminded that movie trailers actually subvert movie watching pleasure.

Larry Crowne: There should be a word for comedies that aren't so much funny (as in laugh out loud funny) as they are simply charming, pleasant, and fun. Like say, Big. Or The Terminal. Or just about any Tom Hanks comedy. Like Larry Crowne. Tom Hanks is just charming in practically everything he does, and so all the parts in this movie involving him (which is most of it) are wonderful. As time goes on, Julia Roberts becomes more and more unlikable, and this movie, however, is just the latest example of that. All the parts of the movie that involve her range from not-so-great to dreadful. How anyone is supposed to believe (let alone hope) that Tom Hanks, or a wonderfully Tom Hanksian character like Larry, would fall for Julia Roberts, or the horribly Julia Robertsian character like Mercy, is beyond me. The thing is, I did really like this movie. The parts that are pleasant, funny, and charming are far more numerous than the parts that aren't. But one more rewrite of the script (getting rid of Bryan Cranston's character entirely for starters, and devoting some time to give Julia even one likeable quality, if possible) could have made this good heartwarming comedy a great one.

Some Brief Game Reviews

Some Brief Game Reviews

I've been playing some different games lately. Here are some very brief reviews:

Stone Age: This game from Rio Grande is a resource management game, kind of similar to another game I enjoy, Pillars of the Earth. It's got more random elements than most similar games, though, for not only are their random cards and tiles in play, but you roll to determine how successful you are when attempting to gain new resources (mining for gold, making bricks, etc.). This seemed odd at first, but by the time we'd played two games, I found this random factor fun and refreshing. I think I'll add this to my stable of games to go back to.

Puerto Rico: This is one of those games that apparently I'm supposed to be ashamed to have never yet played. Oh well. It's a fun game. It's another resource management game of the variety that's more typical than Stone Age. You're developing resources to build things which help you develop resources, etc. It seems quite elegantly balanced, and I see how it has become a classic of the type. Give it a try if you haven't already.

Seven Wonders: I love this game. Similar to Puerto Rico and others, you're developing resources and buildling things. But the mechanics are very different. Everyone's after a slightly different set of objectives (everyone's trying to build one of the different seven wonders of the world), and you do so with cards dealt to you. You take the card you want, and then pass your hand to the person next to you. And so on. It's also interesting that as you develop your resources and build your structures, these too affect those immediately to your right and left (but no one else) and vice versa. This of course, can create a ripple affect around the table. You might not be near the person trying to amass huge military resources, but you could still be adversely affected by being adjacent to someone who then has to build up their own military might to deal with that warlike neighbor. This is probably my favorite game on this short list.

Letters from Whitechapel: Very, very different from the others on this list, this game pits one player (Jack the Ripper) against all the others (the cops looking for him). It's an investigation game, where players move around a large board looking for Jack, who's current location is always hidden but clues are left in his wake. It's probably unfair, but if you think about playing Battleship, you're on the right track for how the game sort of plays out. My objection to this game is similar to others I've played with that dynamic--the one player has lots of interesting things to do, and the rest all have just a little. It's also very easy for one player on the investigator's side to manage the rest of the players, suggesting that really this could (and perhaps should) be just a two player game. The only time I feel like it's been done well is Betrayal at House on the Hill, where for most of the game, you're all sort of working together, and you only get the one vs. many dynamic at the very end. Playing one of the investigators, I found the game to be slow and not well balanced. I'm not likely to join in a game of this one again.

Friendship

Friendship

I've been thinking a lot about friendship, lately. I've always been one of those people that refuses to use the word "friend" lightly. I have a lot of people I know, many of whose company I greatly enjoy. But I only have a handful of friends--people that I really feel a particular kinship with, can confide in, trust to have my back, and so on.

But you know, lots of people talk about friendship. When you're eight years old, you can just walk up to another kid you've never met and say, "let's be best friends." And it will probably work. When you're older, you eventually hear the dreaded, "let's just be friends" from someone you want to date. People sign your yearbook, "Friends Forever!"

Whatever. That's all just talk. You can say you want to be a person's friend all you want. Know how to really get to be their friend? Be their friend. Be there for them when they need you. Show them how much they mean to you. Go out on a limb for them. I've written recently about how when your facing hard times you really find out who your friends are, and it's true. Embrace those people. Don't ever let them go. And make sure to return the sentiment. It's at that point, I think, that's it's time for talk about friendship, I think. Because I feel that it's good to tell your friends how much they mean to you, and how much you appreciate them.

Allow me to close with an anecdote that I believe I've probably written about before. Probably about eight years ago or so, I got my absolute favorite piece of fan mail. It was from a guy who was nearing the end of high school. He said that most of his life, he didn't really have any friends. He was introverted and quiet. But then he started playing 3rd edition D&D. By the game's very nature, he had to open up and talk to others. He told me that D&D not only showed him how to interact in a social situation, but that the people that he played with became friends that he would probably keep for the rest of his life. Friends that he wouldn't have made without the game. I can imagine no greater praise that my work (and the work of others) could get. I'm so proud of that email that I keep a printout of it near me whenever I work.

Theory About Games

Theory About Games

I have a theory about game play. When you first play a game, you're probably not good at it. You're just learning and figuring it out. Unless it's a lot like a game you've played before, your busy spending time just getting used to it rather than really getting good. This is why most computer games start out simple and get harder. Your skill at playing the game improves as you play.

Then, you reach a point where you have developed an idea for how to best play the game. You figure out a strategy. And your performance in the game, at this point, then actually gets worse. This happens for two reasons. One is that you're neglecting what you've learned up to this point about the play of the game in favor of focusing instead on your new (and so far untried) strategy. The second reason is that you're still new enough to the game that your strategy is either wrong or, at the very least, imperfect. It takes a while to work out the kinks in your idea. Then maybe--maybe--your performance once again continues to improve.

The interesting nature of this is that as a designer, you could attempt to predict this point, so you would know when a player's play is actually going to worsen for a bit. For a computer game, it's probably at about the 25% to 30% completion mark, I'd guess. For a traditional game, it's probably after the second or third play, depending on the complexity and length of the game.

You could also use this idea as a gamer in a competitive game to potentially gain an advantage on your opponents. You'd have to fine tune it to the game, though.

Writing Spaces

Writing Spaces

In the past year, I've written at a desk in my private office, in a dorm room, on a rock by a lake, in a tent, in a car, on a train, on a plane, in innumerable coffee shops, restaurants, and hotel rooms, on a friend's couch, on a friend's floor, and in a cubical in a large office building, to name just a few places. Each was different in experience, and the experience, I believe, influenced my writing.

I used to be the sort who said that I could only write when I was completely alone, at my desk, with my music, surrounded by my reference books, etc., etc., etc. Now I know those things to be crutches. Or rather, excuses not to write. I now know that I can write anywhere, anytime, if I am motivated. You learn this by necessity, when you make your money solely through writing and when your crutches just are not available to you for whatever reason.

But there's a more important point living in all this as well. Those different environments injected their own personalities into whatever I was working on. Writing in public can add an energy that it's difficult to get sitting in a room alone. A scenic vista is going to take your creative spirit in different directions than you'll get sitting in Starbucks. Not necessarily better, but different. I think as a writer, know how location affects your work allows you to use where you write to help influence how you write. It can make your writing better. Sometimes, it's just the change of venue. But even beyond the simple change, I think that writers who are very self-aware can begin to recognize that different venues work best for different kinds of writing. Maybe careful research is best done alone, but writing dialog is better when there are actually people talking around you. Or perhaps it's the other way around. I imagine it's different for every writer. But no matter what, most writers can likely benefit by getting out of their comfortable spots and trying something new, just to see what happens.

Parking Ticket

Parking Ticket

The rain was pouring down, and I had a lot to carry. I couldn't park where I normally park, and had to park blocks away, and carry my stuff through the rain. The sign on the street said "2 hour parking, 7 AM to 7 PM." So I knew I'd have to come out the next morning and repark. Annoying, but that's life.

When I do go out the next morning, I find a ticket on my car for "night parking." I ask around, and learn that in order to park in that area at night, you have to call in with your license plate. So really, I didn't get a parking ticket, I got a failure to call ticket.

The 20 bucks I have to pay is not really a fine for wrongdoing, it's a tax on people who aren't "in the know."

I got a ticket for not being one of the cool kids. That feels all too familiar.

10 Years: From Idea to Industry

10 Years: From Idea to Industry

(Note: I wrote this in honor of the 10th anniversary of Malhavoc Press and gaming pdfs. Don't forget that we're having a big sale on all pdf and print products that ends on Wednesday.)

It started on my living room floor. That's where I sat, surrounded by a bunch of papers and things where I'd drawn up a plan. I sat with Sue, my wife, and my friend Bruce. I asked them, "If I price it at just 5 dollars, do you think maybe 50 people would buy it?"

Bruce said yes.

"100 people?"

He nodded, but seemed less sure. I was worried.

The year was 2001. We were talking about a short product that I had an idea for, called The Book of Eldritch Might. (I was a fan of the word "eldritch" being a fan of Dr. Strange from way back.) We were so leery not because of the product itself, however, but because of its format and delivery system. This would be an electronic-only product. A downloadable file. A pdf. I'd only heard that acronym a few times before, back at Wizards of the Coast.

Most don't remember this, but Wizards had tried to sell electronic products back in 2000. One was a Dark Matter supplement, The Final Church, released as a pdf for sale, and the other a Star*Drive product, The Externals, created as a hybrid pdf/html product. The revenue and interest generated was negligible for Wizards of the Coast, and the whole idea was scrapped. (It was because of these early failures that Wizards of the Coast only reluctantly entered into the electronic market, and only very, very late.) But I had heard through the grapevine that the pdf products had sold at least a thousand downloads. More importantly, I saw a bit later that Wizards of the Coast was having wild success with free (pdf) downloadable products, particularly adventures. Miguel Duran's Burning Plague adventure, for example This was an important development because, had hundreds of thousands of downloads. It was likely the most accessed 3rd edition adventure ever. This meant that the 3rd Edition D&D audience was very accustomed to using pdf products. I was intrigued. 

In April of 2001, I left Wizards of the Coast. I intended to work freelance while trying to figure out a way to get my own material published. This idea of a downloadable product was still in my head. I could write it, Sue could edit it, my friend JD could provide some artwork, but how would I actually sell and deliver it?

And most importantly, would anyone buy it?

Well first things first. One night soon after I was on my own, I stayed up all night, scouring the Internet. I looked for someone else doing what I wanted to do. I found very little. A company named 0one Games was selling an adventure, S. John Ross was producing a handful of downloadable game products, and that was about it. None of them used a payment or delivery method that I liked or thought I could use. (And a fact that would become important later, they were all different.)

Eventually, I found a company online that hosted downloadable patches for software and a few other kinds of small electronic products. They weren't selling anything like what I was considering, so their main storefront did me no good. I'd have to point to the product's sales page entirely on my own.

So I had the means to sell and deliver it. But would anyone buy it? Would anyone ever even find out about it? I worried that people would find the format unweildy. And I worried that people would not know or understand Malhavoc Press (the name of my new little company).

As a test, after the launch of montecook.com, we immediately hosted a free pdf, a 4-page presentation of an alternate ranger class. I was excited when it flew off the virtual shelf. It was also interesting that when I realized that I had made an error in the product, it was easy to change it and simply make a new, error-free version available. (The last time I checked, the alternate ranger had been downloaded almost 200,000 times.)

But what I still didn't know was, would anyone actually find such a thing worth spending money on?

The Book of Eldritch Might

My fears were put to rest the day The Book of Eldritch Might released: May 27th, 2001. Those 100 copies I wondered if I would sell over the life of the product? We sold more than that in the first hour. In fact, in the first day, we sold 1,000 copies. And, as a little bit of trivia, our very first customer was a guy by the name of Eric Noah, who founded what would eventually become ENWorld. That site would become crucial to our ability to get the word out about our new products.

The day after its release, two different print publishers contacted me interested in putting The Book of Eldritch Might into print. I made a deal with the one that contacted me first, Sword and Sorcery, a newly created imprint of White Wolf Publishing.

It quickly became obvious that pdfs were a viable format for releasing products. Many, many people emailed me to tell me that they didn't like it, that they wanted print books, that it was awful having to print the thing out, and so on. But the sales figures showed that there were plenty of people who did like it and were happy with it.

The next few days and weeks were a blur. Malhavoc Press became my primary professional concern, and not too long thereafter we would realize that we could afford to have Sue quit her job so that she could work full time on Malhavoc as well.

Meanwhile, others began assembling and pdf rpg products as well. Small companies like RPGObjects, Anubium, Bard's Productions, Thunderhead Games, and many more began to produce RPG pdfs, while others already in the market producing print products jumped in with pdfs as well, like Mongoose, Mystic Eye, and Bastion Press, to name just a few. But everyone was having to reinvent the wheel on how to host, sell, and deliver these things. Just as important, there was no centralized hub for pdfs. Customers didn't know where to go to look for new releases. We longed for a pdf store where all our "books" could be on a "shelf" together.

RPGNow

It was just later that same year that James Mathe created RPGNow, a storefront for gaming pdf products. I must admit, I was skeptical at first. I didn't know James, and I wasn't sure that RPGNow would last. I also didn't know if Malhavoc's support of RPGNow would help them more than the reverse, for we were certainly selling a lot of products on our own, and experiencing a lot of web traffic. And I may have been right about that latter fact, at least right then, but soon RPGNow became a go-to destination for rpg products in electronic form.   

Eventually, RPGNow would even make a deal with Wizards of the Coast to sell products from older editions of D&D or other out of print materials. Soon "RPGNow" became synonymous with "gaming pdfs." Making it onto one of their top 10 lists was often considered to be a sign that a company or an author had truly arrived. 

Experiments with the Form

As the electronic format grew, we saw a lot of experimentation the form. Screen-friendly layouts (usually landscape oriented) and printer-friendly versions of books (low on art and graphics so as not to burn through your ink cartridge) became popular. Bookmarks became essential, as did the option to be able to copy/paste from the document.

A question arose amid all of this. Did pdfs need to feel like the rpg books that came before them--with a cover, a back cover, art throughout, and so forth? Or was it its own medium. One of the pioneers in creating pdfs that were not anything like books, Phil Reed of Ronin Arts, created a great many very short, very utilitarian, very inexpensive pdf products. This sort of product, often offering a small number of feats or magic items, a single new class or monster, and so on, became a model that many publishers adopted and was very successful. Most of the stime, these products were 99 cents or a dollar. Before this, the standard price for a pdf had been 5 dollars. I always found this amusing because I'm pretty sure that's because The Book of Eldritch Might had been 5 dollars. But of course, I had no idea how to price that originally, and just went with the cheapest price my vendor at the time would accept.

Other explorations of what pdfs could do took a very different path. Some publishers, like SkeletonKey Games and Fiery Dragon, released terrain tiles and counters. This was innovative because these high-quality artistic products could be printed out over and over again--very useful to players and GMs (and, I suppose, to printer ink manufacturers).

Meanwhile, Back at Malhavoc Press

Throughout the next few years, we published a number of smaller products, both in print and pdf. I was struggling with a number of conventional retailers, who claimed that making things available electronically would ensure that the product would never sell in print. Others condescendingly claimed that now that I had a deal in place to publish in print, I should give up this silly little pdf publishing. Sales figures on both sides proved them all wrong. There was a market for both versions of each product we produced, making it a very exciting time for us. With the OGL, the number of new publishers entering both sides of the market, the whole industry was a vibrant place.

For our part, we did less to innovate the presentation of pdfs, instead focusing on larger and more deluxe products. In 2003, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed was our largest pdf at 256 pages, but was soon undone by the even more deluxe, full-color Arcana Evolved in 2005, at 432 pages. We worried that these products would be too large to be desirable as electronic files, or that their deluxe nature would make people want a print version only, but again our worries were unfounded. Features like cut/paste, bookmarks and in particular the searchability of electronic books made them extremely useful in using large books.

Rise of the Ebook

Soon the pdf industry fueled such a busy marketplace that other vendors appeared to create new places for customers to find product. In 2005, DriveThruRPG (and its associated sites like DriveThruComics, DriveThruFantasy, and so on) appeared. DriveThru's interesting take on the pdf phenomenon was to encourage existing print publishers to make their existing books, including (and perhaps especially) older, out of print material available to gamers. I can tell you that the most compelling reason for a publisher to do this is that it means that nothing ever goes out of stock or out of print. One of the most frustrating things, from a publisher's point of view, is when a customer wants to buy their product but can't because it's not on the right store shelf at the right time. With pdfs, the product is always on the shelf all the time. That's fantastic.

White Wolf Publishing, Game Designer's Workshop, FASA, Chaosium, and other long-time fan favorites made their products into pdfs through DriveThru. To entice leery publishers, DriveThru implemented piracy-protection features into their products, but these proved to be very unpopular with customers and eventually such measures were removed.

Steve Wieck of DriveThru even managed to convince Wizards of the Coast to sell new products in pdf form. (I played a very small role in those negotiations as well.) Eventually, however, the company would decide to stop selling those pdfs. DriveThru quickly became the market leader in pdf sales, and eventually, that site and RPGNow would merge into a single company, OneBookShelf.

Other sources for pdfs include e23, run by Steve Jackson Games, a site called Your Games Now, and Paizo.com.

In the non-game world, the latter years of the decade saw a revolution in traditional publishing, and the emergence of the ebook as a viable format for regular fiction and nonfiction became undeniable. Ebook readers like Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and related apps on smart phones and iPads made ebooks accessible to everyone. They made them easy and even fun to use. The general public discovered what many gamers had known for a few years--that electronic books offer advantages in storage and usability that traditional books cannot. While many find that there is a certain kind of satisfaction in holding and reading a print book (and there's nothing wrong with that--I have a large library of them myself), e-readers and tablets make ebooks almost as nice to read. Some people prefer them.

Today

In 2005, we at Malhavoc Press launched our most ambitious product ever: Ptolus, Monte Cook's City by the Spire. This huge, ultra-deluxe product was a single tome, but by that point we knew the value of electronic books and included a CD-Rom with each print edition that contained support products, additional material, and some of the same material found in the book itself so that it could be printed out as needed. We eventually released Ptolus as a number of individual pdfs divided up by topic, but due to customer demand (and the fact that the print book sold out rather quickly) we also made the entire book available as a single pdf for those that wanted it.

After Ptolus, the number of products from Malhavoc Press slowed considerably, but we have produced a few things such as The Books of Experimental Might. I do enjoy keeping my hand in rpg design even as I work on other kinds of writing.

The advent of 4th Edition D&D and its more restrictive license meant that the number of publishers producing support for the game shrank, although many continued to use the OGL to create pdfs compatible with 3rd edition as well as Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder game. Now, pdf publishers continue to make more and more interesting products available each day, which if compared to how things were just 10 years ago is quite astonishing itself.

And looking to the future, we see that the whole marketplace has come full circle. With the advent of print on demand publishing, or POD, products that were pdfs can be delivered to customers as high quality print books. Which means that not only are pdfs always "on the shelf," but print books can be on the "virtual" shelf all the time as well. At Malhavoc, we're excited and proud to have Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, the Complete Book of Eldrtich Might, and other products available once again as print books thanks to POD. Soon, we'll be able to even add Ptolus to that list, which is very exciting.

In 2001, I tried very hard to spread the word that electronic publishing was the wave of the future. While I was scoffed at numerous times, I stuck with that opinion. And now I'm proud to say that the future I envisioned is here. I will admit, however, that if you would have found me that night I scoured the Internet looking for a way to sell my first pdf, and told me that 10 years later people would refer to the rpg pdf industry, or that the marketplace would be able to sustain many different gaming pdf storefronts, with dozens of new products available each week, even I would have likely doubted you. It's been an interesting 10 years, to say the least. I'm happy and proud to have been a part of it.

Here's to another 10 years for Malhavoc Press, gaming ebooks, and gaming in general. As I said all those years ago: "Go PDF!"

A Geek, Confirmed

A Geek, Confirmed

One of the greatest honors I've had was being selected as one of the 52 geeks for Len Peralta's Geek A Week project. Len (with a lot of advice and help) selected a number of people who represent geek culture, interviewed them, drew wonderful cartoon versions of them, and made them all into trading cards. For mine, he took my love for Dr. Strange and D&D wizards and made me into one. He even put in a little Cthulhu reference, which is appropriate. You can now buy the cards from Think Geek. Mine is in set #2, which was just released.

The best part about being in this project is the company that it puts me in. Just look at that list. John Hodgman, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, Weird Al, Penn & Teller, Felicia Day, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Dolby, Guillermo Del Toro, Kevin Smith, Stan Lee... and it just goes on and on. It's amazing.

I'm not a fan of bragging, and try to avoid it at all costs (self promotion: yes, bragging: no). So when I'm in a crowd of other writing professionals, I don't typically say much about my work or accomplishments unless asked. But being on a Geek A Week card? That I'll bring up. It's just such an honor to be recognized amid a crowd of people that has brought so many people (including me) so much intellectual, nerdy joy.

10 Years

10 Years

Ten years ago, we released The Book of Eldritch Might. This was the first Malhavoc Press product, and one of the very first rpg ebooks ever released. I think it's difficult to argue with the fact that it was BoEM that started the entire gaming pdf phenomenon that has blossomed into the "industry" whose works you see on display at RPGNow.com, DriveThru.com, e23, and elsewhere. 

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we are having a sale on all Malhavoc Press products. Ebooks are 30% off their normal price, and print products (available now thanks to the Print on Demand initiative at RPGNow.com and DriveThru.com) are 10% off.

Speaking of print books, Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, long out of print, is now once again available as a full-color, hardcover book. What's more, Ptolus, Monte Cook's City by the Spire, is in the works now to once again be available in print later this year.

Also, look for OneBookShelf's newsletter this week, which contains a lengthy essay by me on the birth and development of ebooks in the game industry. I think you might find it interesting.