Trejes wrote: ↑Thu Mar 01, 2018 12:05 pm
@Mataxes:
When you describe your work with the books it always seems that your team is just a few people. Less than 5? How many authors are you?
It depends on the book, but we're a small outfit (like most RPG outfits outside Wizards of the Coast and Paizo). Our core team is:
Me. I'm Line Developer, which means that I'm the one who decides the overall plan, what books will get produced, lays out the goals for setting, story, and rules development, and (more or less) has final say on stuff.
Morgan Weeks. He's my right-hand man, focused mostly on the mechanics end of things, but is a helpful sounding board for other stuff as well.
Since my project management skills are pretty awful, that end of things is now handled by Andi Watson. She's the one who sets deadlines, and makes sure things are making progress.
Tiffany Ragland is head of editorial (not just for Earthdawn, but all the FASA Games lines). She's stepped up to oversee the Elven Nations project so that I can focus my attention on the Questors book.
Jeff Laubenstein is art director, overseeing the artistic end of things.
Beyond that, everybody else involved are freelancers. Copy editors, layout, most of the supplemental writers (like Allen Farr or Joshua Fontany, along with many others), and artists. And I have to fit my development work, editing, writing, etc alongside my day gig. Which goes for the other folks as well, because there's not anywhere near the money for
one person to do this full time, let along multiple folks.
Have you maybe thought about working closer with Ulisses Spiele? (The German translator of Earthdawn) They manage to publish a lot of books every year despite the German RPG print market being a niche market. A lot of authors work for them or with them and there are still a lot of German Earthdawn fans. You could commission some books to them and just translate them...
We already have an arrangement of sorts with Ulisses. They have a couple of advantages in that they are large enough to have at least some dedicated full-time staff, a longer history and established stable of freelancers, and money. I know they have some books in production for the German market, and while I don't know the details of their license, I'm fairly certain there are options for us to publish English versions of their stuff if we want. I just haven't seen anything yet.
Urupa would be great.
What about Jerris, will it be included in Iopos? If not, Jerris and the Wastelands would be interesting, too.
And more storyline? Yeah!
I don't know how much Jerris will be included with Iopos. It depends on what the outline looks like. Personally, I think I would rather see Jerris as its own book, but that remains to be seen.