1879: The Year 2019CE in Review

1879: The Year 2019CE in Review

Yes, it’s time for another of those annual report things. This is a history game, you expected anything less? Of course there’s a chronicle to be presented. We’ll get right into the status of the product line, but first the numbers.

Calendar year 2019CE saw, not counting this report, a total of 43,845 words in blog posts, plus 39,490 words in the NYC Actual Play series, a total of 83,335 words, which is about 224 pages if it were a book. Adventures run from 96 to 128 pages. Major sourcebooks are 256 pages. Part of that was previews of material from upcoming books; the larger part was original material, including a transcript-based Actual Play series set in New York City, which turned out to be progressively less popular and was halted before the ending with no complaints from the audience.

Page views – well, 1879 still doesn’t get much love online. The most viewed page, with 300 hits, was a post comparing the magic of Earthdawn and 1879. After that, I’d like to thank the both of you reading this page for your time and attention.

Book Status

Early in the year, we lost our primary layout person, and struggled with finding the right layout staff through the year. While this caused considerable pain for Earthdawn, it brought 1879 to a halt. We had some quick successes mid to late year with the Personalities series, but then a hard drive crash wiped out the InDesign files. New talent overcame that gap, got us our next Personality, and things are hopefully moving once again. The last two of the first cycle are in draft, a twelfth monthly and a 13th that will be exclusive to the book that collects the previous 12. There was always going to be a book. The next cycle, Personalities 2: You May Hiss The Villain, will be starting probably late second quarter next year.

The 1879 Players Companion and 1879 GM’s Companion have been in lockdown, awaiting layout, since late spring. The layout resources we had available were committed to Earthdawn, as we had a successful Kickstarter that we had to deliver. Mystic Paths was already paid for; 1879‘s Companions were manuscripts that hadn’t reached galley yet. The choice was obvious. After that, there just never was a resource we could put back on the line until the last couple of months. We’re hoping to have the Companions in Kickstarter for 2nd quarter.

Beyond that? Well, Ben Sperduto has come back to us for a standalone adventure, and Thom Truelove is still working on that gaslight horror adventure. The Fort Alice book has seen some advancement recently, and I’m getting some traction on Saurids on the Grosvenor Express, after three previous writers have taken a whack at it. The plotline got a massive rebuild, and it seems to be moving better now.

Social Media

Brad, Andi, and I made a series of appearances on the RPG Coast to Coast and RPG Breakfast Club shows on Tenkar’s Tavern. Their Discord server hosts panel discussion shows that are later released as podcasts, as well as text and voice channels for gaming and games discussion. Our own Discord server continues to host a steady text-based Earthdawn discussion. Hopefully, first quarter, we’ll be able to get our 1879 and Earthdawn campaigns going in the voice channel again.

Follow our Twitter, MeWe, or FB accounts, or my Fediverse or MeWe, or hang out on our Discord. We’ve also got a forum. We’re working on getting that G+ icon in the header image replaced with a Mastodon or something, but web site maintenance and development is lower in priority on the list than layout.

Kelly’s Heroes deserves a big shout-out for their work at GenCon this year. They brought in a second GM, and ran a lot of sessions. Thanks to Kelly Slaughter and Charles B. Dustin, and hope you like the t-shirts.

Real Life(tm) has a way of intruding, and it’s been more persistent this year than many previous. The better our sales do, the more time we can put in on developing new material. If your FLGS needs posters or swag or help putting on a demo, let me know. Promo packages are a thing.

Best thing you can do is let us know you’ve played our games, and what you thought of them. Honestly, if you didn’t like the game, I’d rather hear about it than just not get any feedback at all. I don’t always fix stuff, sometimes it’s meant to be like that (sorry, Chris, the Infection rules are supposed to be brutal, Joseph Lister just had this really cool idea about sterile procedure), but if I don’t know there’s a problem, I can’t address it. And if you think the system is cool, and you’re doing something interesting with it, by all means, tell us about it on Discord or in our forum or at a convention.

In the meantime, keep the dice rolling.

Tally Ho!