Save Bluffside

Gencon was not all happiness and fun, I'm sorry to say. I learned to my suprise that Bluffside is falling to the wayside. MEG said they are still looking at doing a pdf for it, but other then that it won't be supported. It was one of those business descions, and Doug and Hal explained it too me and I could tell they were more then a little sad to see it go.

But I don't want it to go. And I'm hoping I'm not alone in this. So, I want to save Bluffside or at least insure that there will be pdf support. I love pdfs, so that doesn't bother me. So, please, people of EN World show your Bluffside support and post that you don't want this great city to fade away.

Huh?

Bluffside is one of the few "must have" city products out there. Whenever someone has a recommend-a-citybook thread, Bluffside always comes up.

I'm somewhat taken aback by this development.

Wierd.

Wierd and sad.

Bluffside was the "catch my attention and refuse to release it" product from the 2002 ENnie awards. Thank God I still have my copy.

Sad to see it go, but if it's not selling, it's not selling.

I don't think Bluffside was generic enough.

Neat place, but dragon men? Winged folk?

I would be shocked if more than a handful of people bought the Empire of Sands book. It's not hard to drop a city into your own setting, but an empire of dragon people?

Let me clarify that.
We are (at the moment) only going to do pdf products for it we will not stop selling it etc...

We have so many lines etc that when we have to see what we need to do to trim down the lines it is the one with the lower sales.

I think what happened was it was sooooo long between Bluffie and Interludes: Sands of Pain that the retailers kinda forgot..so sales dipped, and our other lines stay strong so all I can say is we will support the city and outskirts with pdf's but any other books (like the upcoming underwater book "The Deep") will not be Bluffside specific but will use and reprint items from that setting.

So the way to save it is for ditributors to see strong sales of the four books from that generic setting.

Like Crothian said this was a business decision not a "we are over Bluffie" decision. I do love the book and we use it all the time but the market decides what line stays and what line goes, and at the moment Bluffie will be pdf release only on future products.

trancejeremy said:

I don't think Bluffside was generic enough.

Neat place, but dragon men? Winged folk?

I would be shocked if more than a handful of people bought the Empire of Sands book. It's not hard to drop a city into your own setting, but an empire of dragon people?

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*holds trancejeremy so he doesn't fall over*
Dry Lands did fine but compared to our other books not enough when it came down to trimming down the lines. Our "poorer" selling books sell more then some other companies (at our level) bigger sellers but we need to focus the teams and the Bluffie setting looks to be a casuality.

Say it ain't so?!

Man, I loved Interludes: Brief Expeditions to Bluffside so much when i played in it, I had to buy it and Bluffside both. Since then I picked up both Empire of the Sand and Sands of Pain. Bluffside was the first d20/non WotC book I bought because I enjoyed it so much. This sucks, man. I know Hal and Doug are probably not thrilled either, so, I'm not griping at them, but for the love of all that is D&D, Bluffside is a great book and if it cannot make it... it's a little scary. Now I sound like a chicken little, which I don't want to... Never the less, Hal, if you just need a big hairy shoulder to cry on... umm, I'm not going to finish that sentence.

while i don't mind seeing BS goto PDF i do worry that there won't be anymore support for it! I love this city, this is THE greyhawk replacement for D20 and now it'll fade away eventually. bummer

Leopold said:

while i don't mind seeing BS goto PDF i do worry that there won't be anymore support for it! I love this city, this is THE greyhawk replacement for D20 and now it'll fade away eventually. bummer

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I may not be totally clear, we have two new Bluffside adventures to be released as pdf's this year. The book is staying in circulation what I was saying is support will be in pdf form.

I did not see you at all at GenCon Leopold where you avoiding me?

Well, Hal is correct but I thought I would jump on and clarify some stuff for ya all.

Bluffside will have some on-line support with two adventures scheduled for PDF soon.
We will also be releasing Bluffside as a PDF.
We chose to focus on some good producing and pontentially good producing products (example: Sups for Arcana Unearthed). Stopping production of what was on the bottom of the revenue stream (not what we loved or did not love) and sadly, Bluffside lost some momentum during our changes and never recovered.
Our minds would certainly change if we saw a massive upheaval of support in the retail channel but trying to revitalize a line that has lost its steam is not the best way for us to use our resources.

That is not to say there will be no support at all, though I cannot say what will happen after these two PDF adventure releases.

We wanted to produce city section guides to Bluffside but the reality is that Bluffie has a loyal, but small, fanbase. Less than 2k perhaps, so we would be seriously limiting the scope of the product but producing, lets say, a Sordadon sourcebook.

We actually all love Bluffside to death and it was my sincerest hope that in taking on the property we could keep it alive. Unfortunately, our resources are finite and we need to focus where our energies are best served.

I hope you all understand and would not be beyond any proposals for someone to continue Bluffside. It is not a bad seller, just not where we need our numbers to be with our production values and current product costs.