Transmissions From The End #002 -The Ghost of Diana Jones
āWeāre movinā on up, to the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.ā
As I mentioned recently, we just did up GenCon 2016 really fucking hard, and now weāre down from some R&R. But today is THORSDAY, and that means YOU, dear reader, get another Transmission From The End.
GenCon ā Financial Transparency
Our games/books (games which are also books, books which are also games!) sold like hotcakes at GenCon. With our $25,000 sponsorship plus who-even-knows how much overhead for air fare and hotel lodging, it was literally impossible for us to break even. But I believe we grossed close to $4,000 in sales which means if you were to count our overhead only as our Entrepeneurās Alley booth (which we got for $1000 as a first-year-at-GenCon company and which was upgraded to a double-sized endcap as part of our sponsorship), we actually netted at least $2,000+ in āprofitsā.
We came close to selling out of nearly everything, and we did sell out of Anathema, DicePunk Core, and the Systems Malfunction setting, although we didnāt bring terribly many of any of those.
Iād like to thank Kellyās Heroes once again for running two games of SPLINTER and two games of Psionics on Friday. I was sad that we didnāt manage to get the GMsāPsionic Phantasmsā or the three existing āGlory & Goreā episodes in time for them to feel comfortable running them, so instead they ran two instances of āCode Greyā (Psionics) and two instances of āThe Race For Szenysā Tombā (SPLINTER). I understand those instances ran well and I definitely look forward to working with Kellyās Heroes in the future.
Our new Interrim Director of Sales, Logistics, and Marketing John Jemmott ran a packed table of Singularity System (Systems Malfunction flavor) and a packed table of Psionic Phantasms and I understand acquitted himself heroically. Thanks for stepping up, John! In more way than one.
Iād also like to thank our SPLINTER and Psionics writer Richard Kelly for running three games of āGlory & Goreā: Ā one no-show, one that only two-people showed up to that went great, and then a packed table of eight that was apparently kind of a hot mess, due to no fault of Richardās own. Apparently people were expecting a rules-lite, thinking-lite, cheerful and bright storygame from SPLINTER, my dark, ruthlessly cerebral, crunchy, tactical RPG and Richardās delightfully disturbing and atmospheric āDigitarchsā dungeonā¦clearly some shit got miscommunicated along the way, and Iām sure that Rich K did the best with what he had.
In the future, I want to work harder on getting better event presence at conventions and getting better online presence for our organized play efforts such as the āGlory & Gore Living Campaignā for SPLINTER.
As for the two demos that I personally found time to run, hereās how they went:
Packed table, all eight PCs cast: Mindfucker, Juggernaut, Stormbringer, Firestarter, Sam Collins, Joey Collins, and Caleb Hendrix (vampire) and Del Finley (Aranea).
The Espers and humans came very close to killing each other for the first time in any time Iāve ever run this.
Firestarter and Joey Collins had to go two hours into the demo and became NPCs: I think Del Finley also left early, so I just had him go into his spider form and go eat some people that were further away from fire (the Firestarter unapologetically burned down the Collinsā house before leaving).
I had them become NPCs. Joey got kidnapped by the Tall Man in his hearse and the rest of the PCs followed to the mortuary to rescue him (side-note: I ruled that Espers could not bleed Overflow because they were being accompanied by a vampire and they all KNEW he was undead, because the Mindfucker had tried to Psychokinesis him and got the same result heād get from Psychokinesis on a corpse). They found the blacked-out hearse parked outside the funeral home, and busted it open. Inside the casket inside was the Firestarterās body, minus the brain. Emotional shock from this threw on about 20 Overflow which they couldnāt bleed because how can you relax when youāre around a vampire?
I was running about three hours late so I frontloaded all the danger to the first floor of the mortuary: namely, I sextupled the orbs. In the first hallway, the PCs pulped the two spheres I had there without any casualties. They werenāt so lucky in the main hallway, where Iād placed four spheres. The PCs put up a valiant fight, and might have won if the Vampireās dice luck hadnāt been shit (with John Wu Special and Master in Pistols, he should have been able to drop at least one Orb a turn if he rolled just slightly above average). But the Stormbringer got brain-juiced, causing both the Juggernaut and the Mindfucker to overload due to emotional shock. The Juggernautās initiative came up first. He made his Will check to stagger away, but all orbs and all PCs were still caught in the Obliteradius and killed, except for Caleb, who survived on the strength of having crazy Vampire Health. The second turn of the overload, the Juggernautās head exploded from overload damage.
Barely still-undead, Caleb the vampire stood in the middle of the carnage: all the orbs and every other PC were dead. The Tall Man opened a door from a nearby coffin show-room, holding NPC Joey by the scruff of the neck.
āGood evening,ā said the Tall Man, ominously.
āGood night!ā responded Caleb, and FUCKED RIGHT OFF, driving away into the night in his stolen Sheriffās cruiser, the sole survivor.
I sold two copies of Psionics off the strength of the demo, one to Caleb and one to the Mindfucker.
Epic Battles In Space!: Star Wars Edition
So I expected this event to be super-packed because this Star Wars is kind of a little bit popularā¦maybe youāve heard of it? So imagine my shock when I only wound up serving a table for two. Six more people were signed up for it, but they all had different emergencies come up and couldnāt make it.
The two kids I got were fairly omnivorous tabletop gamers and big Star Wars fans: one of them had just bought the Singularity System. I let one kid play the whole rebel fleet and the other kid play the whole empire. After the demo they went back and bought Biotech, Mind Games, and Firefight.
ANYWAY, as for the battle of Tatooine:
At the end of the first turn, the Tantive IV successfully broke off and escaped (the kid playing the rebels had the BEST dice luck Iāve ever seen outside of myself: the force was seriously fucking with him). Because that happened about three hours before the demo was scheduled to end, I decided to play through the awful pyrrhic battle that followed.
Only the Devastator and one of the two Star Destroyers survived. Every single other capital ship and fighter craft involved in the conflict was destroyed. The 36 X-Wings sent to destroy one of the star destroyers gradually killed their way through a screen of 72 Tie Fighters, but only six X-Wings were left when they actually made it to the attack run phase, and the Victory-IIās point defense guns ate them alive before they inflicted any serious damage.
So technically, the rebels won, but the real winner was the void that devours souls.
Way too little of it this year! This year I was so busy that I was essentially all business:
āAll work and no play
Keeps me on the new shit.ā
ā Lorde
I did manage to find the time, somehow, to sit down for forty minutes with our friends and neighbords at the Tower of Gygax and lose a seventh level D&D ranger to a swarm of his favorite enemy, goblins. I snapshotted this white board Ā they had which filled my heart and soul with gleeful delight:
Upcoming Products For The Rest Of 2016
Here is a partial roster of the products we have cooking for the rest of 2016:
Richard Kelly and I are going to collaborate on SPLINTER: This Is Entertainment, a free Quick Start Rules package for SPLINTER. Street date: Christmas Season, 2016.
SPLINTER: Return To The Dread Abyss of the Digitarchs by Richard Kelly is one of the best modules that I have ever seen for any game ever, and I couldnāt be prouder that itās forSPLINTER. Street date: Christmas Season, 2016.
Systems Malfunctionāa standalone scifi RPG containing both the Singularity System and the incredible Systems Malfunction settingā is coming to Kickstarter in October.
Singularity System MOD04: INFOWAR by Devon Oratz with John Jemmott will enter initial writing in early September, for a street date of Christmas Season, 2016.
Escape From Cleveland, a DicePunk/Psionics Ā adventure by Devon Oratz will enter initial writing/production in early September, for a street date of Christmas Season, 2016.
