November Update

Eclipse Phase fans — we apologize for the silence over the last month or so. Here's a quick post to clear up what's been keeping us busy and why we've been so silent.

Sunward: After a long battle to get the information listed correctly, Sunward is now available on Amazon. You can buy it here if you don't have a local game store. You can grab a copy from Amazon and pick up the PDF version for less than cover price.

Continuity: We ran into some schedule slowdowns with our next PDF-exclusive adventure, Continuity, which we had originally hoped to release electronically in October. By the time all the pieces for Continuity were ready, we were hip-deep in finishing Gatecrashing, and print books take priority. Continuity will be released ... later today! Continuity includes all-new art, maps, and audio snippets.

Gatecrashing: We're printing this title in Texas, which means that in order to hit our target release date we had to push very hard, due to the upcoming two sets of holidays playing hell with printing and shipping schedules. We won't deny: the crew got pretty burned out on this book in the last two weeks or so, scrambling to get it to press and then scrambling even more to fill in pages (such as the index) that weren't actually ready when we sent it to press! We'll be posting previews for this book starting in early December. (Before you ask — we haven't announced release dates for the PDF or print version yet — we'll be sure to post it everywhere when we do!)To liven this post up, here's the first art preview for Gatecrashing!

NeonCon: Adam attended NeonCon in Las Vegas in early November. He had a great time hanging out with friends, playing some games, and doing his CreativeU seminars, which covered the evolving electronic publishing landscape and the nitty-gritty of producing an RPG books, with Brennan Taylor of Galileo Games.

Real life: Now that Gatecrashing is at press, Adam is taking a 10-day vacation. You'll notice that Continuity is scheduled to release right in the middle of that vacation ... yeah, there's no such thing as a real vacation when you own your own small publishing company!

Future Electronic Releases: In the wake of the Continuity delays, we're planning ahead and working further in advance on some of the time-consuming aspects (such as contracting art and creating maps) so we don't get caught in a pinch again.

Next Year's Adventures: We'll be putting out a call for proposals soon, looking for authors to write the adventures we'll run at conventions and publish electronically next year. Keep your eyes peeled! We're also looking for volunteers to help us playtest these adventures and proofread future releases; you can drop us a line via the contact form if you're interested!

Breaking Up Is The Best Thing

We are changing how we handle one of our electronic releases: The Gamemaster Pack (GM Screen + Glory). Originally, you bought both of these components together, for $10, or $15 for the Hack Pack version. Now, they have been split apart so you can buy just one "half" of the Gamemaster's Pack.

If you have already bought the Gamemaster Pack, you don't have any reason to buy these new versions; this is a packaging change, not a content change. If we update the content in the GM Screen or Glory in the future, you will still get your free updates.

It makes a lot of sense to bundle a GM Screen with an adventure (or other GM-centric material) in print. It's really difficult to sell small adventures (as Glory is, at 24 pages) through retail. The low price point combined with the lack of durability makes these books riskier and less profitable for retailers. Bundling an adventure with a GM Screen is the accepted "sneaky but not really" method of publishing a small adventure in a format that game stores will happily sell.

That sort of bundling isn't necessary in the digital sphere, though. Glory and the GM Screen do work together, but they are perfectly functional as standalone items. And obviously, there are some people who don't need one half of the package -- so they don't buy any of it. It's a toss-up: do we do a bundle and ensure $10 per sale, or unbundle them and hope that additional sales make for similar or greater profits?

We think that gamers will be better served by splitting the Gamemaster's Pack into three electronic offerings:

Two bundles are also available, which replicate the way the GM Pack was originally sold:

Bump in the Night is now for sale!

Bump in the Night is now available!

This short adventure for Eclipse Phase takes the characters to the Venusian aerostat of Parvarti. While Parvarti is well known as a place of lust and pleasure, what they encounter involves little of that!

Bump in the Night can be played using the Sample Characters from the Eclipse Phase core rulebook or Sunward, and is $5 including files in both portrait and landscape alignment.