Books & Boxed Sets, the future-past of the T2k hobby

[simonmark6]

I thought that there was a lot to applaud about the TW2013 rules, the ones you have already mentioned being amongst the best. Nothing in the book was a gamebreaker for me and what I considered weak (the story) was no worse than any other piece of speculative fiction: it would have been the first thing I'd have tweaked anyway.

Given the way I have to play now, I would have liked help on a way to make it more PbP friendly but that was something the designer's couldn't have predicted and I am sure that something would have been possible.

However, your assessment of why the game failed is sadly also correct: small scale operations based more on love of a concept than on business models are often doomed to failure, especially in today's economic climate.

It is a shame and I still appreciate the work that you and the others did on the books. The games star didn't shine for a long time but it did leave the Gaming World (mine at least) the richer from its albeit short existence.

As for ressurecting a print run of V1., I don't have the financial nounce to understand if it would work but my gut instinct is that it wouldn't really help invigorate the game.

Sure, there are about 500 people on this forum and an average contribution of $50 should enable a print run of V1, but how many copies would that produce? I'd guess at best a thousand and that would amount to 2 copies for every contributor. I don't see that re-invigorating the hobby or really moving it forward.

If anyone was to spend time and creative effort on trying to move the game forward, I would rather see us creating a Fanzine that draws on the multiple creative talents that we have on this site. I believe that this would allow us to not only create a body of work that people could use in their own games, but also fuel the creative process that would help keep the game alive rather than re-printing copies of games we already all have.

I'm basing this somewhat on previous experience: I have played for several Brass Bands that have thought it was a good idea to produce and sell our own CDs. We spent about $1500 to produce something that sounded good and print about 2000 discs. I've still got several hundred in my attic as have many other people.

Vanity publishing tends not to make money in my experience so something cheap but tangible where we share our love of the hobby with others would be a better alternative than throwing money at something that might not generate any benefits for the contributors.

[Targan]

I recall that a while back someone posted on this forum seeking contributions for a resurrected version of the old Challenge Magazine. Anyone know if that ever got off the ground?

[Cdnwolf]

Okay how about the fans of TWL2013 get together and try to buy the licensing rights to it?

I bought the PDF and the hardcopy (hard to get in Canada) because I loved the system.

[simonmark6]

I think it would be a waste of money. Producing new material would only need the rights if you were to sell it rather than disseminate it for free. Selling it means you'll probably end up broke and heart broken. Fans don't usually mix with business.

My advice would be, keep things as a hobby and if you create materials you want to share, enjoy the act of sharing as a reward in itself. If you want to make money: pick a more popular product. If you don't want to make money, don't spend your own cash on things like rights.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

Okay how about the fans of TWL2013 get together and try to buy the licensing rights to it?

That would be very complicated from a legal perspective. Twilight: 2013 was itself produced under a license agreement with Far Future Enterprises, which allowed use of the Twilight: 2000 name. That wasn't a "buy the licensing rights" deal - it was an annual fee, and all rights to the property reverted to FFE after 93GS stopped paying.

The Reflex System itself is still in 93GS' hands - or, more accurately, Keith Taylor's hands, as 93GS is no longer a registered business in Kentucky. However, Keith ceased all communication with his former writers and playtesters a year ago. I was in contact with multiple parties who were trying to buy the rights to the system from him. None succeeded.

Trust me: there weren't enough purchasers of Twilight: 2013 buying books and PDFs to allow 93GS to turn a profit on the game. Of the people who bought the material (X), those who actually liked it enough to want to see it continue are a limited subset (Y). If X customers didn't allow 93GS to turn a profit, what makes you think (X minus Y) fans are going to front the money for a restart?

- C.

[Tegyrius]

Also, here's some financial data for anyone looking to obtain the rights to use the Twilight: 2000 brand identity. I haven't personally been involved in any negotiations with Far Future Enterprises, but the numbers I heard for 93GS' license were 15% of all revenue with a minimum $7,500/year payment.

Let's do the math based on the Twilight: 2013 core rulebook's PDF. It normally sells for $20 at DriveThruRPG - not a bad price for a core book of that size. DriveThruRPG takes roughly 30% of the cover price, leaving a cut to the publisher of $14. At $14/copy, you'd have to sell 536 copies a year just to make the minimum license fee - without paying your writers, artists, and production staff a cent or receiving any return on your investment yourself. And believe me, we writers like to get paid. It enables us to buy our wives nice things to apologize for spending months at a time ignoring them.

So you're thinking, "woo, 536 copies is cake." Not really, guys. The 2013 core book PDF was at "Gold" status on DriveThruRPG in December 2010. A Gold seller is one that moves between 501 and 1,000 copies. That means the core book's entire lifetime sales (between its release on 08 Nov 2008 and the cessation of operations on 31 December 2010) weren't enough to make the minimum payment on the license.

Now, granted, this excludes the sales of the hardcopy core rulebook, as well as the Shooter's Guide and Anytown PDFs (some of which hit the Gold sales bracket in their own right). Remember, though, that hardcopy sales are far less profitable because of printing and distribution costs - and the supplement PDFs were priced so low that profits on them were pretty negligible.

- C.

[Cdnwolf]

Thanks for the business lesson.

[Tegyrius]

Dude, if you think you can pull together the team and cash to do it, go for it. I just want you to be more aware of the business challenges than I was when I signed on to write for 2013.

- C.

[Grimace]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

If anyone was to spend time and creative effort on trying to move the game forward, I would rather see us creating a Fanzine that draws on the multiple creative talents that we have on this site. I believe that this would allow us to not only create a body of work that people could use in their own games, but also fuel the creative process that would help keep the game alive rather than re-printing copies of games we already all have.

This...this is what would be great at attempting to build more interest in the game. That Challenge revitalization kind of fell flat on its face, from what I was able to determine. That doesn't mean we here couldn't put together a Twilight Fanzine so we can start spreading the gaming ideas of Twilight: 2000 around to a new crop of gamers.

I'd support something like this.