The Dresden Files RPG

Quickest of status updates! The reprints of the books have arrived at our new warehouse location, so you’ll start to see them back in distribution in general very soon (they’re already with Alliance and will shortly be with Esdevium, ACD, and others). In addition, the Evil Hat webstore is back open for business. Thanks for your patience!

General status

Hi folks!

I wanted to give folks a quick heads up on what I know right now about the book supply. They are definitely still in print and definitely still available to be bought (at least in some places)! We’re getting down to the wire here on supply, but we should be on a good enough footing that we won’t see more than a two week hiccup in availability at any point.

• The reprints of both books (another 4,000 Your Story and another 3,500 Our World) are wrapping up middle of next week and will ship out to our new warehouse operation in Indiana then, which will also supply our primary distributor, Alliance (and from them, other distributors as well). So any current hiccups happening in distribution’s supply chain should not last more than a couple weeks from now. At the outside I’d say expect it to take about three weeks from now for a domestic store that’s placed an order with Alliance to get the books in.
• For direct orders, we are transitioning to a new shipper in Indiana; this means we’re going to have a short time period in which some inventory that hasn’t gotten there yet travels from our current warehouse in Nevada to the new one in Indiana.
• Later tonight we’re going to be switching off the Evil Hat webstore in order to lock things down for our own shipping reality so we can get the remaining supply directly in Evil Hat’s custody from Nevada to Indiana. That’ll take a week or so in all likelihood.
• In the meantime you’ll still be able to buy all of Evil Hat’s PDFs from DriveThruRPG.com and our books from IndiePressRevolution.com — while their supply of DFRPG will be small during the transition period, I do think they will have enough to cover a week or more of current direct-sales demand.

Thanks for sticking with us during our growing pains. While it might not sound like it, we’ve done our best to minimize them as much as is possible.

At the end of the day, the important message is: The books are still in print! The books are still available! If your preferred method of getting the books can’t supply them to you currently, please put them in touch with us, and we will get them straightened out!

General status

Just a quick note for folks going to GenCon — while Origins was our big-deal convention of the Summer, we will still have a presence at GenCon!

Folks from the DFRPG crew who will be there: Ryan Macklin, Amanda Valentine, and Clark Valentine. (Sadly, no Fred, Rob, Chad, or Lenny.)

Where to get the game: Exclusively at the Indie Press Revolution/Evil Hat Productions booth! Booth #2339. (Here’s a map with some useful vendor links.) Ryan, Amanda, and Clark should be at the booth at various times, potentially running booth demos and definitely signing books.

We also hear there will be a few games on the schedule (likely sold out long ago) and some play at the Games On Demand area as part of the Indie Games Explosion. Check it out!

General conventions

We are just now cresting onto the other side of the big hill that was the release of the Dresden Files RPG.

We started the preorder in April, on Easter. The release hit at Origins at the end of June, and the shipping operation began at the warehouse — and commenced eating our warehouse’s face for breakfast. Thankfully that wrapped up in early July, so there should only be a few straggler orders now not yet delivered (though folks who ordered internationally, or domestically via Media Mail, may still have another week or so — them’s the breaks with those shipping methods).

It’s been a bumpy ride, but it’s also been an exhilarating ride. And all the while distribution (and thereby game stores) have been hopping on board with their orders as well.

The upshot of this? So far, The Dresden Files RPG: Your Story has sold close to 5,000 copies, with Our World not far behind.

Those of you following along at home may remember that this is out of an initial print run of 6,000 copies of each book. So we are, technically, running low — though we still have books in stock, and have shipped off several orders recently to distributors who are quickly realizing they just didn’t order enough the first (or second) time around to meet the demand.

Dropping down to 1,000 copies of Your Story is why we’ve kicked off the reprint process with our printer, which should mean more books will be in hand by late August. We’re having another 4,000 copies of Your Story and another 3,500 copies of Our World printed up.  If we’re projecting this right, at worst we might see a week or two lapse in availability.

Some folks have written to us (and thanks for that!) to tell us about conversations they’ve had with their game stores about the Dresden Files RPG being out of print. We’ve investigated each of these claims, and it has always emerged that someone in the chain (this is a lot like a game of “telephone”) misunderstood the distributor’s message of “we sold out and have more on order”. For some folks the message that a distributor doesn’t have any more books right now simply translates to “oh, that title’s out of print” and “the publisher didn’t print enough”.  Neither of those things are true, since we still do have books available for sale both to distribution and direct to customers, and because we’ve already got that reprint ball rolling to make sure we minimize any short-term out of stock situations that arise.

So, let’s be clear about this: The Dresden Files RPG books will not be out of print any time soon. We’re committed to keeping the product available for purchase for as long as it’s financially viable to keep doing reprints (and as long as Jim will let us).

Six thousand copies was already a pretty ambitious number for a roleplaying game in today’s RPG market, but thanks to the fans we’re on track to smash that figure in another few months (maybe less), and are setting our sights on smashing more figures after that. Thank you all!

General schedule, status

We’re back from Origins! And naturally, we’ve come back to an absolute storm of people asking about when their books will ship. The short answer to that is they very likely already have, with the longer answer being… well, longer. Here goes an attempt to do “longer” without getting TOO long.

Shipping Started On The 23rd: In actuality, it may have even started a day or two earlier than that. But note our careful use of the phrase “start shipping” throughout our announcements — at the scale we operate at, we simply can’t take a population of 1,600+ preorders and get them all shipped out on the very same day.  The warehouse is working through all of this pretty rapidly all the same, on the scale of a few hundred orders per session, despite some hiccups like fedex not delivering the refill of packing materials on the day it said it would, or medical issues for one or more of the packing squad, or some of their crew needing to run off to Origins to make sure everything works on the ground there as well.  I asked the warehouse to do their best to serve our earlier preorders first, so they’re going through these mostly sequentially.

Slowly Entering Tracking Data Is Slow. It’s Also Manual, and Done By One Guy: I (Fred) am the guy who enters information into the Evil Hat webstore. I also do other small tasks like take care of my one-year-old, coordinate the Evil Hat team at Origins, run the company’s day to day administrative bits, answer the customer service emails (while on the road, at Origins), and so forth! These distractions mean that I haven’t had time this past week since I flipped the switch that let the preorders transmit to the warehouse to enter in any tracking data (that’s what the change of order status to “Preparing” meant). I’ll get started on that this week, but I won’t be surprised if folks get their packages in advance of the tracking information going out. Again, 1,600+ preorders is a hell of a work-load, and entering that data has to happen alongside everything else I just listed (and more).

Our Warehouse Is In The Middle Of The Desert: So even UPS — the method we’re using for any “free shipping” order in the USA — can be a little slow in getting the shipments out there. We’ve got them on a regular “dead-head” rotation out into the wilds of the black rock desert, though, with all the packages we’ve got for them these past and current weeks. But it does add time.

We are doing our absolute best to make sure this stuff happens as quickly as we can make it happen — but yes, many game stores will have the game in stock already because, frankly, they outnumber us and are gonna be just a tad more efficient at spreading product throughout the land. But everything “free shipping” from us is getting shipped out from UPS, and tracking information does exist, so we’re hoping we can get as on top of this as is possible now that I’m back from Origins and many of the preorders are already shipped!

July 4th Update: I’ve been piecing some more details together over the course of the 4th and had a brisk conversation by cell phone with the warehouse head as he was on his way with his family to the hospital (again). The rundown can be found over at RPG.net: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=12437409&postcount=202

July 6th Update: Some more perspective on the shipping situation over on Fred Hicks’ blog, Deadly Fredly: http://www.deadlyfredly.com/2010/07/some-lessons-from-kinda-screwing-up/

General schedule

Just a quick reminder/announcement post: We’re taking part in an Evil Hat/EndGame meet-up at Origins on Friday, 2pm North Market. Look for all the gamers eating Ice Cream from the inescapably fantastic Jeni’s Ice Creams! Fred’s the one with the blue hair. No, the other one.

General origins

Folks in the Las Vegas, Nevada area should drop on by Avatar Comics and Games (881 South Rainbow Boulevard Las Vegas, NV 89145) this Saturday, June 19th.

Starting around 3pm and running until whenever, lead system developer Lenny Balsera will be at the store running demos for the Dresden Files RPG, Spirit of the Century, and Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. He’ll also be available to chat with anyone who has questions, sign copies of Spirit of the Century, that sort of thing.

We anticipate that Avatar will be able to take your last-minute preorders in-store as well. Plus, it’s Free RPG day! All fine reasons to make it on down to the store and support your Vegas-local gaming source.

General apppearances

So on July 10th, just a few weeks after Origins wraps  up, a game store up in Oakland, California is holding an in-store mini-convention dubbed Dresdacon, to celebrate the release of the game. That store is Endgame, which may well be one of the best game stores, if not the best game store, in the USA.  Endgame is local to lead project developer Ryan Macklin, who will be on hand and running one of the sold-out tables of Dresden Files RPG goodness. Evil Hat collaborator Paul Tevis, author of A Penny For My Thoughts, will be on hand as well.

Recently we’ve been able to announce that Fred Hicks, one of the game’s authors and the guy who did the layout (and forgot to give himself a credit in the book — typical), will be on hand as well, all the way over from the East Coast, cementing Dresdacon as the official west coast release party. Fred won’t be running a table, but he will be on hand behind the counter to shake hands, sign books, and answer questions all day long. He can also talk about the other games in Evil Hat’s catalog, of course.

If you live in the area, we hope you’ll come by to join us, even if it’s just for conversation! Though if you’ve already downloaded the game’s PDFs and think you’d be up for running a game, Endgame still has room for two more tables and plenty of players clamoring for a chance to play.  We’d certainly appreciate your help in making this as big of an event as we can make it!

General dresdacon, endgame, fred, ryan, S, schedule

Last week we announced that the books would start shipping on the 30th of June.  We’ve been looking that date over for the last week, talking with our distributors and our warehouse and so on to make sure everything is in place for that date to happen. And that’s when we realized something.

We’ve got it all together well enough that we can ship earlier than the 30th! (That’s right; for once, we’ve got a date on the schedule that’s moving in the other direction.)

Accordingly we’re moving our ship date to June 23rd. That should put books in folks’ hands a week earlier — for some people. during the same days that Origins is happening, where the books will be making first contact with the fans. And that feels about right.

General schedule

So, we’ve had some bad news. Two of our volunteer GMs, Jon Hixson and Tom Cadorette, aren’t going to be able to make it to Origins. In Tom’s case he’s been eaten by a sudden plumbing crisis, which figures — water grounds out magic, right?

These are the game slots affected:

That said, we are looking for folks to step in and take over these games (no obligation to run the same “pitch”, just the same system) so the folks who signed up for them aren’t left stranded without gaming.

Good news is, we already have some takers! Both of Jonathan Hixson’s game slots will be taken over by none other than IPR founder and Mortal Coil author Brennan Taylor. We’re also talking with a couple people about taking on Tom’s S7S game on Saturday.

That said, we do need some replacement GM talent for Tom’s games! The two Dresden Files games (2pm Thursday, 2pm Friday, both definitely sold out) are crucial, but we’d also like to get someone in there who can run A Penny For My Thoughts using the Prisoner questionnaire Tom wanted for that one. If you’re interested and available to do this, please let us know so we can get this taken care of! You’ll have our thanks and a PDF of your choice from our catalog if you’re able to step in.

The one that’s probably in greatest trouble is Friday 2pm. On that day and at that time several of us will be joining up with Chris Hanrahan (of Endgame, That’s How We Roll, and 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction) over at Jeni’s Ice Creams in the North Market. If you’re signed up for that game and it doesn’t end up with a GM, please come on over and join us. If you can show that you were one of the folks signed up for that game, we’ll buy you a scoop.

General origins, schedule