WHAT HAPPENED
I seem to have completely lost post 18 (that being the first two days of the convention). (EDIT: No it’s not. The website is being weird.) I’m not surprised. Those were long days and I can’t really remember too much about them other than that Thursday was bigger than I expected it to be, I got lost on my way to the con (that’s what I get for not checking a map first, especially when I know where the place is), getting the car stuck in the mud when I tried to turn around, and general panic. I distinctly remember writing this post, along with having the RF wheel boogered up with gumbo mud that threw the balance off and made it… interesting to drive. One quick car wash later and everything was okay again. No permanent damage. But man was it a mess at highway speed.
ARKANSAS INDIE FEST
The Arkansas Indie Fest isn’t looking good. “Games. Animation. Films. Zines.” it says on the website. It looks like it’s not tailored to tabletop RPGs at all, and I get the impression that whatever you’re doing you’d better do it quickly and get off the stage / clear your table for the next guy. With that said, I’m sure it’s absolutely amazing, but it doesn’t sound like The Chronicles of Ember would be a good fit, at least the way I’ve been running it to date. I’ll do some more research and see if things can pan out, but right now I’m not hopeful. We’ll see. I’ll also get hold of my friend Ken Kidder from Tortured Earth and see what he knows about it and what his experiences are. He’s trotting all around the U.S. promoting his stuff, and I bet he’s heard of it.
Update: No he hasn’t. Looking at it some more with fresh and rested eyes, this looks like a meet-up rather than a “real” convention that I expect to last multiple days. I suppose it qualifies because people convene to share their hobbies and projects, but that’s not what I want to do. The site says they want things with an “indie” feel to them, and I don’t want CoE to have an indie feel to it. I think I’ll pass on this one. The nice people down in Magnolia, AR are putting on a one-day event in the manner I have come to expect from colleges and universities. They’re fun, but they’re not in line with the norm. The organizers want people to submit projects for approval, much like other academic conventions where people give papers. They’re going with what they know, and I understand that. But much like a professional house painter taking his roller brush to his car, it’ll work, but it’s never going to be right.
THE WEBSITE!
I’ve added a bit more functionality to the place. The event schedule section is wired up (albeit threadbare at the moment), and further improvements will be forthcoming as I think of them. What else got done? Hmm… Well, I didn’t get a Monster of the Week entry done last Sunday because I was completely shot. Some more back-end stuff was tinkered with too, but it’s boring. Text kerning, alignment, and suchlike. I’ll try to catch up on MotW by doing two of them this week. Also, I plan to officially open the store so things can be bought.
THE PLAYER’S GUIDE
Right now the print copy is offline at DriveThruRPG because of an ISBN issue. I am partially to blame for this, but the mistake is, I believe, understandable. DTRPG simply supplies bad templates that result in wonky books. At least for the covers. I went to LightningSource directly and downloaded new ones that have LOTS of features DTRPG says aren’t available. If you’re confused, DTRPG sends the files to LightningSource to be printed. If the DTRPG folks are capable of tying their shoes, they’ll just pass the new and improved templates along directly and we won’t have any more issues going forward.
So what’s up with ISBN’s? This is supposed to be a unique, searchable 13-digit number for a specific book and trim size (paperback, hardback, digital, etc), and the people over at DTRPG just fucking stripped it off and put their look-alike SKU in its place. This is bad. Not only does the number not line up with what’s on the text block anymore, they’re even calling it an ISBN. That is, as they say in France, a no-no. Their website says specifically NOT to include an ISBN on the cover in defiance of all logic. We had words today. Their defense was that they do that so they can keep the text block and cover together and aren’t allowed by the printer to alter it (which they were doing). In other words, it made things easier for them, rather than for the author. To reiterate in brief, I’m just going to get my templates from the printer directly from now on and avoid the stupid.
CONCLUSION
Frozen Tracks kicks off tonight in about 30 minutes, and I’ll get more goodness done tonight. Once I sort this ISBN nonsense I’m going to spend a couple of weeks sawing on the Bestiary.
I love my job.
-Alan