View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – September 2013

Something has happened in the last two or three months – the Pelgrane is soaring – but with a little mid-air turbulence. Before even the mass of releases last month, mail order sales had really taken off. We aren’t entirely sure why, but we are not complaining.  Also, another success, Gareth Hanrahan, long-time Pelgrane Press freelancer will be working for Pelgrane permanently from next month.

More on the success and turbulence below.

Creatures of all forms, squamous, shiny, vicious and crackling with blue energy are unshackled this month in the 13th Age Bestiary Hatchling Edition pre-order. For the pixel-fixated the 13th Age RPG PDF is out, as is Ken’s Moon Dust Men, a GUMSHOE campaign setting from KWAS.

13th Age

The 13th Age PDF is out now, and we’ve just completed a straight reprint of the core book – 13th Age is available in retail stores. The google+ community is thriving, and the level of actual play is unprecedented, at least for us.

The 13th Age Bestiary is out now – plain PDF now, fancy PDF later, then hard cover. Find out more here.

Interest in producing commercial and fan material for the 13th Age has caught up with us, and we’ll be releasing an SRD next month which provide clarity on what people can do with the 13th Age system.

Gareth’s new 13th Age campaign – code name Moby Dungeon – is under development.

GenCon, Mail Order and Success

Since Beth Lewis started work full time, we released 13th Age and more recently with Cat Tobin’s sterling work, sales have been increasing, but in May mail order sales really took off, and the slew of new releases Cat managed to get out for GenCon has maintained this. At GenCon we achieved our best sales ever, even without 13th Age, and it was wonderful to have Beth there for her last hurrah, and to see Cat taking over.

While this is good, it’s caused us a few problems. In particular, our mail order systems were creaking a little under the strain, and this combined with the shipment of 13th Age before GenCon, Eternal Lies and the Hillfolk Kickstarter has really put us and Cat in particular under pressure. There is also the issue that after all this time, printers still manage to find novel ways to slow us down. I do think this is a short term problem, and we’ve certainly learned our lesson in timing releases a little more sensibly. So, in the meantime, while we catch up, bear with us.

Gareth Hanrahan

Long time freelance writer for Pelgrane Press Gareth Hanrahan will be working for Pelgrane Press as of October. We are very fortunate to have him – he is consistently reliable, knows and loves the GUMSHOE system and produces excellent quality writing and plays well with Ken and Robin. Read was he has to say here.

This is what he has worked on for us, the majority of which have been nominated for ENnie awards.

• Arkham Detective Tales adventures for Trail of Cthulhu
• Lorefinder Pathfinder / GUMSHOE mashup
• Dead Rock Seven campaign for Ashen Stars
• Invasive Procedures adventure for Trail of Cthulhu and Fear Itself
• The Wedding / Pacific’s Six / Black Smoke for Skulduggery
• The Station Duty section of Esoterrorists 2nd Edition
• The Zalozhniy Quartet for Night’s Black Agents
• Cthulhu Apocalypse: Slaves of the Green Man

Gar will be working on a big dungeon-based campaign for 13th Age, the Dracula Dossier, Accretion Disk and Cthulhu City.

Hillfolk and DramaSystem

First, the DramaSystem SRD is out now, so that you can make your own DramaSystem based games, or add DramaSystem to your existing games.

Pre-orders for Hillfolk and DramaSystem are delayed until every Kickstarter backers’ rewards ship out. This will be late October, because the printer put the UK-bound copies on a ship which hasn’t even left Texas yet when their estimated delivery date is “arrived already”. I apologize for this.

The semiprecious stones and bags are here in the UK office along with the bags. They are shiny. We might have a few sets left over for general sale.

 

Night’s Black Agents

Out of eight nominations Pelgrane picked up, Night’s Black Agents won two Silver Ennies for Best Writing and Best Game. It’s certainly my current favourite.  I’ll be running the second season of my Night’s Black Agents game soon.

James Semple and his team have been working on Dust and Mirrors, the sound track album for Night’s Black Agents, for release in November. You can hear the theme here.

 Trail of Cthulhu

All but one of the Mythos Expeditions are in, including Robin D Laws Mother of Malaria – and there are more playtesting opportunities.Why not surrender to the surreal? Dreamhounds of Paris is ready for playtesting. The Eternal Lies Suite Complete CD will be shipping out in October. Sorry about the delay. You can enjoy your music by download in the mean time.