Sales Reports

I wanted to thank John over at the Land of Nod for posting this sales report.  I think that it is always interesting to see how people are doing on the 'business' end of our little hobby, and I wish that more people would post numbers like this.

Of course, after saying that, I probably should post my numbers.  I previously posted sales numbers here, which included sales from 2007 through the end of 2009.  Sales since then are as follows:

Locales, Vol One: 8
Hand Drawn Maps, Vol One: 8
Caverns, Tunnels, and Caves (CTC), Vol One: 4
Caverns, Tunnels, and Caves, Vol Two: 2
CTC: Battlemaps One: 2
CTC: Battlemaps Two: 2
CTC: Battlemaps Three: 2
Power Cards: Secrets of Necromancy: 1
Fantasy Class Preview: Martialist Heroic: 67 (Free download)
Fantasy Class: Martialist: 4

This then brings my grand total numbers up to:

Locales, Vol One: 69
Hand Drawn Maps, Vol One: 41
Caverns, Tunnels, and Caves (CTC), Vol One: 44
Caverns, Tunnels, and Caves, Vol Two: 26
CTC: Battlemaps One: 12
CTC: Battlemaps Two: 11
CTC: Battlemaps Three: 11
Power Cards: Secrets of Necromancy: 15
Fantasy Class Preview: Martialist Heroic: 382 (Free download)
Fantasy Class: Martialist: 21

Something that I have not done before is provide my gross and net profits.  (I've told you the numbers; I may as well tell you the dollars.)  As I distribrute only through RPGNow, they get an immediate 30% cut of my gross.

My profits by year are as follows:

Year        Gross           Net
2007      $027.50    $019.25
2008      $337.23    $236.07
2009      $343.95    $240.79
2010      $076.36    $053.45

Of course, even that is an oversimplification of the truth.  That 'Net' is not true net, as it does not include my costs to collaborators on Locales, Volume One nor does it include fees for the art included in the Martialist products.

So there you go.  You have now read The Fantasy Cartographic's extremely (over)simplified financial report for the first half of 2010.

A Campaign by the Sea

Thank you, Tenkar, over in your tavern for pointing out this little bit of goodness.  Frankly, I haven't done anything more than scan it yet.  But it seems like I'll like it.

The general premise is good.  The presentation seems nice.  The philosophy of a product such as this really appeals to me.

Hopefully, upon closer reading, my opinion will remain the same or improve.

New Classes or Archetypes

I was perusing blogs earlier today that I haven't looked closely at recently, and I came across this post that details a 'Mariner' character class for Castles & Crusades.  As someone who is in the Navy, who has previously expressed an enjoyment of naval (or maritime-themed) campaigns, this caught my eye.  I read through it and thought that it was a pretty nice treatment of what I would want a mariner to be.

This, then, got me to thinking:  Does there need to be a mariner class to run a maritime-themed campaign?  My mind raced for a few minutes and then I found myself asking that age-old question:  Do there need to be a multitude of character classes in D&D (incuding all of its various iterations and clones)?

The question might be considered odd, coming from someone who created his first character class shortly after learning the rules a good 27+ years ago.  Or from someone whose only product for 4E is a character class supplement.  (That contains a Paragon Path and Epic Destiny specifically designed for adventuring in and around water no less!)  But, then again, I think that everyone has pondered this question at one time or another, if only for a moment.

I wrestled back and forth and came to that (also) age-old answer: It depends.

(I know:  That handful of you who were expecting a grand pronouncement one way or the other followed by a finely crafted discussion explaining my POV are now sorely disappointed.  Luckily for me, it is only a handful.)

So now that I've taken the cop-out, I suppose that I should explain why.  I think that in the newer editions, character customization is such an integral aspect of the game that to limit character options in any way would detract from what those games are about.  For those editions, a multitude of classes (and other ways to tweak them) is vital.

The answer becomes a little more muddied for the older editions.  Do they really need as much mechanical differentiation between classes?  I can think of arguments for and against.  And I could list them all here.

(And, I started to type several, but then I realized, why bother?)

Ultimately, what you at your gaming table do, you will continue to do despite whatever I say.  And even more importantly, whatever I say here will have little impact on what I choose to do at my gaming table.  Because hypothetical discussions on a blog are one thing, but real world game play is much more important.

What Am I?

Am I a hobbyist who has sold a few copies of some stuff that I put together or am I a publisher who just hasn't hit my stride?

At one possible point on the spectrum, you have Fred.  At another point on the spectrum, you have this guy in Oz.

Of course, those are only two points on a very broad spectrum.  If you are reading here, you undoubtedly read other places that represent some of those other points.  But the question comes back to haunt me.  What am I?  I mean, I know where on that spectrum I fall.  Not too hard to figure it out, really.  But where do I want to be?  Do I still aspire to be where I used to aspire to be?

Any ideas, anyone?

A Real-World (Fictional) Megadungeon

I am an unabashed fan of the megadungeon (even if that topic is so 2009) and am always trying to get new takes on them, read more about them, find ways to use them, etc.

I have to thank RetroRoleplaying for this post.  Obviously, they have merely linked to another place on the intraweb, but I think that I'm going to spend a lot of time reading that thread.  What little I have read so far really intrigues me.

100

I know that it is nothing to have written one hundred posts.  There are some guys who write one hundred posts in a month's time.  There are guys who write one hundred posts in a month, month after month after month.  Obviously, I am not one of those guys...

But I am happy to have finally reached one hundred posts here.  I thought it was going to happen a lot sooner.  Oh, the plans I had...  But it didn't, and now it has.

I better actually write something original, instead of merely linking to other peoples' posts.  But I derive a lot of benefit from linking to other blogs.  How else am I going to remember all that cool stuff?  At least in this way, I always known where to find something that interested me.

A Mini-Map Roundup

Dungeon geomorphs and megadungeons--what's not to love?

I've only recently come across Carjacked Seraphim, but he has made some interesting posts.  I'll probably have to stop over at his place in the coming months to see how things shake out.  Of course, it was this little number on geomorphs that first caught my eye.

Then I came across this post about supercaves.  Thank you, Seraphim for making this known to me, because there is much goodness therein.  And it is further proof that NPR can be a force for good in the world.

Long Time Gone

So the real world has done a number on me.  In the space of one month, I have ended a job, sold a car, cleaned out a house, moved my family across an ocean and from one country to another, bought a house, moved into that house, bought a car (and am about to buy a second), and am about to start the new job.  Whew!

Anyway, I am hoping that my posting will start to pick up from here on out as things start to reach a state of normalcy.  I have continued to be a lurker throughout the blogosphere.  I've tried (but not always succeeded) in keeping up with My Daily Read (which you, too, can follow to the right).  Lack of internet access does have the ability to prevent one from reading blogs however...

And it's not like I've been without ideas or topics that I want to write about.  It's just that life has been BUSY.  But enough about me.  It's time to get back to posting.