Mark Galeotti, the Moon Design Acquisitions Tsar, recently provided an eloquent response for why I loathe speculative product announcements. That said, I thought I should expand on what Moon Design is up to so keen supporters feel a little more in the know. For the record, I do not feel I have been overly burdened or pestered with requests for updates on where products are at in the production process. Regardless, there is only so much information that I can concretely detail much in advance of a product coming back from the printers.
First, let me start with a little background. Moon Design signed its licensing deal with Issaries on the day before Christmas in the waning days of 2005. Then, a slightly round-about process of file and project transfer began. Issaries had a number of projects "in the works" that I inherited the chance to continue. Some projects, like ILH2, are very close to completion. Others, like Blood Over Gold and Distant Shores, had manuscripts that were nearing completion. A number of other projects are somewhere in the middle stages of creation, and many more are what we can refer to as at the "cocktail napkin sketch" phase. These all had to be reviewed and approximately scheduled. Alas, the first delay started when electronic files had to be gathered and transferred to Moon Design. While the ideal state would have been a few CDs of organized files to quickly load onto a hard drive, the reality was that a great deal of sifting and several rounds of "where is the file for X" had to take place. This culminated in makin g a trip (ably aided by hipster-cool Jeff Richard) out to Issaries HQ (Greg's place) in San Francisco for a "grab every file possible" weekend. Even so, some fragments and files remain elusive.
Luckily, a core group of volunteers has stepped forward to help bring order out of all of this Chaos. With Mark Galeotti coordinating acquisitions, Simon Bray coordinating art, Jeff Edman handling editing, Roderick Robertson with numerous irons in the fire, much helpful counsel from Jeff Richard and David Dunham, and other much needed and appreciated aid from a variety of sources too numerous to thank individually, progress is being made. Moon Design now has ILH2 going to the printers in a manner of DAYS, with an expected official debut at Tentacles X. We are going through the editing process on the final manuscripts for Champions of the Red Moon, Blood Over Gold and Distant Shores. Other projects, such as "the Guide to Glorantha", Questworld, Caladraland, Elder Races - Elves, and Elder Races - UZ are all in the advanced writing stages. Writers have submitted proposals for projects relating to Sun County, Chaos, the Holy Country, and Sartar. Greg himself is working on projects as well, but I will defer to hi m when it comes to what he has in the works. I'll only drop two names relating to them - Harmast and Argrath.
Roderick Robertson has headed up the PDF task force assembling/reconstructing much of the out-of-print HW/HQ material so it will be available for purchase as PDFs on DriveThruRPG this May. Using Print On Demand (POD) technology many of the out-of-print titles will also be available on paper as well, and will remain in print until replaced with a more expansive covering of their material. The expanded version of the Heroquest rulebook, with clarifications, corrections and errata, goes to the printers next week and will be available prior to Tentacles X.
I wish more product was on store shelves by now. I don't fancy the idea of Heroquest lingering in limbo for any length of time. A moribund game line is never a good thing. Alas, life does have a way of slowing things down. Sometimes the delays are a joy, like the birth two weeks ago of my third child, a happy and healthy daughter. Other times the delays are frustrating, like the lack of an electronic file that "somebody must have kept a copy of". I can apologize for some delays, since that is now the role I have accepted as the licensed publisher of Heroquest and Glorantha, but for others I will not. The empty release schedule of 2005 has been rehashed many times, but that was when things were not under my watch. Not perpetuating that trend is what I must focus on. All I ask is your continued polite patience. For those of you who want to help get, and then keep, the publication schedule moving please contact me. There's plenty that needs doing and, as we still see, plenty of keen people eager to put the mate rial to enjoyable use. Without trying to sound too demanding, before offering to help please take a little time to think of what you can specifically help do. General offers are nice, but harder to make work.
Now, back to the discussions on Vinga becoming a Lunar (better red than dead), and Delecti the undead demi-god of Disco...
Hope that helps,
Rick Meints
Moon Design Publications
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