Peter Maranci writes (of AH):
>I'm sorry to say that the only conclusion I can make is that they
>must feel that RQ isn't worth spending time on. Guess _Girl's Life_ is
>the mainstay of the AH empire now...
What is this _Girl's Life_? Roleplaying at St Trinians, perhaps? (Hmm, the trusty 'Hockey Stick' would make a decent clubbing weapon at the school sports, 1d8 damage to the shins of the fat wheezy girls with a note from matron, standing on the sidelines.)
Stephen Martin writes of his experiences with AH:
>...part of the problem is that the supplements just do not sell well.
>Since I have been told in the past that print runs are generally kept
>pretty secret by companies, I will not tell you what the print run on
>each of the RQ supplements was,
I find boasting on the Digest like this (that a poster is somehow privy to
"special info" denied to the rest of us mere mortals) pretty tiresome,
particularly when the poster then goes on to let the cat out of the bag
anyway!
>...but let me say that I believe David Hall is approaching the same
>number with Tales.
The sales figures that come with my quarterly royalty statements for the English language version of Sun County unfortunately bear this out, (though of course we print far more copies per issue of Tales now than we did when Sun County came out in 1992).
However, when you factor in *worldwide* sales for SUN COUNTY (French, Japanese, Finnish and I believe Spanish, thought I've never seen it) the total number becomes quite impressive; unfortunately, the amount that was secured for these foreign rights was *astonishingly* negligible.
>And they still had some of each of them left at AH, including the ones >from back in the 80's.
Some of these were in fact very good sellers: Gods of Glorantha and the Genertela Box, for example. It's great that AH obviously have the shelf space to keep all this stuff on back order: I'm sure a lot of other companies would have remaindered the lot by now. Get what you ain't got while you can!
The cash cow for roleplaying products ain't supplements - often only bought, as Steve goes on to say, by the GM of a gaming group - but *rules*,which are bought by many more gamers. This is why you'll see successful RPGs like DnD(tm) in all manner of incarnations, often with essential rules spread over a number of supplements.
A new rules edition incites new interest and coverage about the game system, attracting a wider audience. Unfortunately, as we all know, RQ's new edition was scuppered before it left the slipway, and with it went the RQ Renaissance. While the whole sorry tale of RQ:AiG is one of mind-melting cluelessness, if as much energy went into fostering the development of the new edition as went into active efforts to torpedo it, who knows, RQ/Glorantha may even be prospering today...
Glumly,
MOB
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