BrooklynKnight: Welcome to #d20-modern! Today we are hosting Phillip J Reed, owner of Ronin Arts Publishing and James Maliszewski, author of D20 Modern PDFs for Ronin Arts. If you have a question please message BrooklynKnight and it will be asked in due time. If you have a comment wait for the guests to say -done- before making it. If you have any interest in Ronin Arts products, please visit www.roninarts.com for more information. Now, I think we'll start with something simple, not exactly d20 Modern related. Phil, why don't you tell us how you got into d20 system publishing, a bit about Ronin Arts, and also a bit about why d20 Modern products?
Philip Reed: I published my first D20 System PDF in September 2002. 101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires was put together during a short vacation. The PDF was created because: 1. I love spell books. 2. I wanted to see how PDF sales were. I couldn't get information from anyone selling PDFs so I decided to try them for myself. The experience of writing and publishing the PDF was quite enjoyable. So I did another. And another. And . . . well, it went from there. If you check RPGNow you'll see 116 products listed under Ronin Arts.
BrooklynKnight: What is the average length of your PDFs Phil?
Philip Reed: As Ronin Arts grew I found myself spending more and more time working at it. About two months ago I made the big leap and quit my day job and started working on Ronin Arts full-time. I'd say most Ronin Arts PDFs are somewhere between 5 and 20 pages in length. Some top 144 pages and the shortest is 4 pages.
BrooklynKnight: I actually remember early 2003 you approached me about publishing something I was writing. :-D
Philip Reed: Yes. That was right about the time I started to figure out how PDF publishing works. I've learned a lot since then and have since improved our entire process.
BrooklynKnight: Well, recently you've published many d20 Modern products. What inspired you to begin supporting d20 Modern with products.
Philip Reed: Ronin Arts has a lot of fantasy D20 PDFs available. For several months now I've been wanting to expand our catalog. I had wanted to write Modern PDFs myself but time was against me. When James Maliszewski and I started discussing bringing him in to release PDFs under Ronin Arts we agreed he would do a good job with Modern. Since the first Modern release last month Ronin Arts has now released 8 D20 Modern PDFs.
BrooklynKnight: James: Modern products have you done for Ronin Arts, and have you written for any other companies as well?
Philip Reed: And several more in the works.
James Maliszewski: You mean d20 Modern material?
BrooklynKnight: yes.
James Maliszewski: Or d2Most of my d20 work has been in fantasy to date. I did work on SSS's Gamma World d20, which uses Modern. And on Star Wars for WotC. So, this is a bit of a departure for me.
BrooklynKnight: Which of Ronin Arts' D20 Modern products did you work on?
James Maliszewski: I wrote Rumors, Contacts, 101 Urban Legends, Occult Artifacts, and Alien Devices. I'm currently completing 101 Occult Tomes
BrooklynKnight: Can we ask what other d20 Modern products are on the horizon? Both involving James and others in general?
Philip Reed: Well, the author of one of our upcoming D20 Modern PDFs is here. Talien, care to tell everyone what you've got for them?
Talien: I think it's titled Modern: Mercenary Manual, is that correct?
Philip Reed: Yes.
Talien: Basically, a book focusing on mercenaries for d20 Modern, with advanced classes, becoming a mercenary, contracts, the works...Hopefully will be exciting, as I worked on a previous mercenary book that never really hit the shelves, so this is another great opportunity to see if I mercenaries are more relevant in d20 Modern.
Philip Reed: Gene Seabolt will be the editor on the project. Gene's last big job was line editor for GURPS WWII.
BrooklynKnight: some questions from the audience have come in.
Philip Reed: Shoot.
HeapThaumaturgist: For Phil: How many people does Ronin Arts currently employ? Writers whose work the company publishes, etc.
Philip Reed: Ronin Arts is, at its core, myself and Christopher Shy. Outside of that we -- currently -- have three people producing material on a regular basis. Michael Hammes, who has written over 20 PDFs for Ronin Arts, started with us a year ago. James Maliszewski, who's been releasing PDFs with us for a few months. And Bruce Baugh. He's released two so far with us. Monstrous Advanced Classes: The Vampire and The Half-Fiend. We also work with a few others from time to time but, for the most part, five appear to be shaping up to be the core.
Lu_Baihu: Will Ronin Arts only be releasing Urban Arcana .PDFs since many of your PDFs deal with magic. Just to clarify for others, Urban Arcana is a WOTC Setting, not open to other publishers without special contract. Products that use magic, are not UA, they are simply d20 Modern and use the STL. That said, perhaps you can answer if all your products will focus on magic and "FX".
Philip Reed: The first Modern PDF we did, A Dozen Modern Rumors, avoided FX. Response was -- lukewarm. Supernatural and odd PDFs seem to do much, much better. For us, at least. That's not to say we won't do any more realistic Modern PDFs. I'm a huge fan of The Shield and would love time to do a cop D20 Modern PDF. A setting/adventure seeds.
BrooklynKnight: Its much more difficult to write non-FX d20 Modern products, despite the fact that inspiration lies in every newspaper and on every channel on television. But its a two sided blade.
Philip Reed: I'd prefer to have time to write PDFs that feature both. But my time lately has gone into running Ronin Arts.
Roudi: For Talien, in reference to the aforementioned Modern Mercenaries book: Is the book focused on the more realistic side of Mercenaries, or more with an eye to more imaginative, but less believable, concepts?
Talien: Good question. The book grounds itself historically with a timeline, so you have a real idea as to what mercenaries were, and how far they've come. I'm a little nervous these days, because the word "mercenary" seems to be clearly out of favor, but there's a lot of mercenaries in the news (without stirring any politics, I'll leave it at that). So there's definitely historical research involved. However, the book's concept is "modern" and "futuristic" mercenaries so it has an eye towards some of the more sci-fi-ish elements of mercenary life as well.
BrooklynKnight: Hrm. For the purposes of chat, despite current media, lets stick to the definition of a merc. Someone who goes where the fight is for compensation. so don't worry in using it
Talien: It's firmly a modern book however, and spans the range of cigar chomping A-Team type people, to "security personnel." There's a whole section about security personnel. :) However, I do have a timeline part that talks about what's likely to happen with mercenaries going forward... specifically the need for small military groups in war. So there's definitely a fantastic element, but it is grounded with some historical mercenary tidbits.
Frankto: My question would be to no one in particular, so here goes: I'm curious concerning the line of products "A Dozen...". Can we have more information on those? For example, what type of unusual armor does A Dozen Unusual Armor PDF features?
Philip Reed: Mainly, the "A Dozen . . ." PDFs are designed as DM tools. They present 12 of something that's designed not only to use as treasure or equipment (in most cases) bit also to present story elements. These are rarely magic items but, instead, fairly mundane items with a story. If no one minds I'll paste in a sample from A Dozen Unusual Armors.
Brittle Shield
Appearance: This item looks like a very thin shield constructed of a black, beaten metal. The leather straps on the shield are rotten and require replacing and a huge gash rips through the center of the shield, light showing through it when it is held up to the sun or a flickering torch. An upraised fist is crudely painted on the front of the shield.
Appraise Information: DC 14. This is a fairly common small shield made of light steel. It was the property of the barbarian Ulhoff and is worth some small amount to a collector of historical arms and armors. Value: 65 gp (65 gp for the historical value of the shield and no value for the small light steel shield since it is damaged). Repairing the shield will destroy its historical value.
Special Rules: As it currently is the shield is worthless in battle, providing no shield bonus.
Basically, these "A Dozen . . . " PDFs are designed for those in need of specific things. DMs who need clothes can get clothes. If you have no need for clothes you just don't buy that particular PDF. Unlike a book -- or larger PDFs -- these are quite focused and the title typically gives you a very good idea of what you're going to get. Does that help answer your question?
Lu_Baihu: Looks good, thank you very much Mr. Reed :-)
Philip Reed: And here's Michael Hammes to tell us about his Modern: Campaign Planner PDF. Watch him, though. He likes to talk more than I do.
BrooklynKnight: I believe Charles Rice, another d20 Modern writer/publisher has a question for you. Vigilance: care to ask?
Philip Reed: Sure.
Charles Rice: Phil: Where do you see the future of PDFs? Do you think they will continue to move toward smaller e-zine style delivery methods? For a time it seemed like PDF companies modeled themselves on print companies. You seem to have shifted that paradigm for most companies (except RPGObjects lol).
Philip Reed: I think there's plenty of room for both types of PDFs and, in fact, think it's good for companies to release both. The shorter PDFs, as I've said repeatedly, are well suited to the PDF format. But there are a lot of people who prefer meatier products. By releasing a series of 5-10 pages PDFs and then collecting them into a 100-page PDF you give both groups what they want.
Charles Rice: Right... but I don't think its an unfair statement to say that for the longest time PDF companies considered Monte Cook and Malhavoc as their models, and that now a second model in Ronin Arts has been added, to me this is a big deal.
Philip Reed: And, with Ronin Arts, we'll be giving everyone who purchased the smaller PDFs a free copy of the big one.
BrooklynKnight: Wow. Now that's new. If they buy the big print issue do they get the PDFs free? :-D
Philip Reed: I have noticed a lot of people releasing shorter PDFs these days.
FF|arv: I noticed a lot of publishers give you the pdf free if you buy the print version
Philip Reed: While we have nothing official in place I have been known to give people who buy printed books free PDFs. I want to build in an option to make the official.
BrooklynKnight: The only company I know that does anything similar is RPGO with their Trade Up Option. I wasn't aware any company offered free PDFs if print copies were purchased.
Philip Reed: What we've done is start offering people a discount on our print products if they bought the PDF.
BrooklynKnight: Perhaps you'd like to give us a short summary of all your current d20 products Phil?
Philip Reed: We currently have the Monstrous Advanced Classes series by Bruce Baugh. Each is designed to take a monster template and turn it into a class so that you can advance monsters as any rate you want. Currently The Vampire and The Half-Fiend are available. Bruce expects to turn in another soon so we'll probably have a third release over the weekend. Then we have Modern: Contacts by JamesM. This adapts the OGL contacts rules to Modern and presents a dozen samples. Each sample is designed to be printed on its own page and includes room for the GM to write campaign-specific notes. Modern: A Dozen Alien Devices and Modern: A Dozen Occult Artifacts present odd things a GM could use as the basis for an adventure. Modern: A Dozen Modern Rumors presents 12 rumors including sources and follow-up info. Each rumor includes a failed gather information version and a successful version. That leaves us with Modern: Campaign Planner. Now I'll let Michael tell us about that one.
BrooklynKnight: that one sounds almost similar to Quickshots by Brood d20.
Philip Reed: I've never seen that.
James Maliszewski: Don't forget 101 Urban Legends :)
Philip Reed: Right.
x12b20: The Campaign Planner takes the most vital elements of a modern campaign and puts them into a single-sheet format for easy printing.
Philip Reed: 101 Urban Legends is odd background info you can use to give your campaign flavor . . . or a GMC.
x12b20: The idea is for the GM to use the parts of the planner that he or she needs, such as the villain tracker, the organization tracker, the location sheet, etc. and place them into a binder (not included) and use that as a reference resource for the campaign. The best part, IMHO, is that by filling in the various tracking sheets, the GM can keep track of not only the history, but use that information as a springboard for further adventures and development of the campaign.
Lu_Baihu: Will there be any weapons books, or books with alternate firearms rules?
Philip Reed: While nothing concrete is in the works I'd be surprised not to see us do weapons. I know Michael's been discussing ammo.
Blueslime: General question/opinion: I would like to see the ability to validate your pdf purchases so you can have them printed out at print shops, because if you have ever looked at the cost of self printing large PDFs at home. It soon becomes apparent that it will cost all most as much as a real book. There is also print on demand, but I think a new system needs to be worked out.
Philip Reed: The nice thing about running Ronin Arts is I get to be surprised by some great material from our regulars. I once offered a "site license" so that someone could not only print copies but also print up to five for their players. I've thought about bringing that back as a basic "product" you can buy in association with another PDF.
HellHound: Did it work at all?
Philip Reed: Only a few people used it so I dumped it. The problem was I was trying to do it for each product. What I'm thinking now is one generic license that can be applied to any Ronin Arts PDF. I haven't worked out the details, though.
BrooklynKnight: I think the important thing is being able to prove its valid. When you walk into a store with a CD that has PDFs and the guy behind the desk asks "how do I know you purchased these?"
Philip Reed: We are expanding our POD options. 6 of the Modern PDFs we have available now are available in print. I was thinking of requiring the receipt (e-mail) be presented to the copy shop.
Blueslime: The thing is PDFs are awkward and hard to use, you cant self print them on consumer printers, and print stores wont let you do it.
Philip Reed: Or having people e-mail me when they purchase the license and I'll e-mail them a customized one-page PDF site license. With their name, the name of the product, date, permission to print and how many can be printed. The POD versions cost more but, well, they're books. http://www.lulu.com/roninarts.
Blueslime: That sounds like a reasonable option for PDFs. Some PDFs I would want printed other will just be source material that I could read on my computer.
Roudi: Toss-up question: What do you feel publishers like yourself can do to support Modern above creating and releasing product?
Philip Reed: I honestly don't know. In my opinion, publishers like RPGObjects have done more to support Modern than WotC have.
HellHound: I feel that with the release of Future, we'll see a massive resurgence of support for the modern rules set.
Philip Reed: The best I can do is to work with other publishers to create support that works with their material. A network of products that build on each other. We have a big Future announcement to make.
Charles Rice: That's all we can do. Publishers writing product and consumers buying it is the definition of support. Honestly we could support it more if Wizards would help. Like giving us a preview copy of d20 Future.
BrooklynKnight: I'd like to try something new for a moment. Customer/Fan feedback is important for any company. I think these live chats is a great opportunity for fans to tell the publishers what they want. So, at this time, feel free to ask the audience what they would like to see (and chatters feel free to tell Phil what you'd like to see).
Philip Reed: I'd like to have time to write, period. :) The next month is gonna be devoted to business stuff. The last thing I wrote was MotoCaust. There's a question. Would there be interest in a D20 Modern edition of MotoCaust?
HeapThaumaturgist: Here's honesty: I don't even know what MotoCaust is.
Philip Reed: www.motocaust.com I'd like to give JamesM a few minutes to announce Ronin Arts' first Future line.
James Maliszewski: Oh, OK.
BrooklynKnight: Will this line be coming out after d20 Future, or at the same time (meaning, did you have access to d20 Future ahead of time to write the material)?
James Maliszewski: The first of Ronin Art's d20 Future products will be a series of PDFs under the title "Fourth Millennium," which might be familiar to some people already.
Philip Reed: Both. The first few PDFs are setting.
James Maliszewski: The line will roll out at the same time as D20 Future, which means the weekend of GenCon.
BrooklynKnight: So you had access to d20 future? And it's fully compatible with it?
James Maliszewski: They will not require the use of d20 Future, but will make use, where appropriate, of rules derived from it.
BrooklynKnight: Or is it your own twist on future rules using d20 Modern.
James Maliszewski: A little bit of both. I've been fortunate to have access to parts of d20 Future in advance, but Fourth Millennium will, as a series, be expanding on d20 Future and in some cases be using alternate rules for various aspects of it.
BrooklynKnight: I see.
James Maliszewski: First and foremost, it's a setting for d20 Future, but each PDF will include rules that are transportable to other SF settings. Our hope is that people will like the setting in its own right, but there will be plenty of crunch for those who simply want to mine it for ideas. The first two PDFs will be a Player's Guide, which is an intro to the setting and rules for character creation, and Parahumans, which offers genetically engineered humans s new races for the game.
BrooklynKnight: Since we're going off on tangents, I declare this #d20-modern Publisher chat session officially closed!