Guardians Of Order
First Post
Guardians Of Order's New Year's Message
From President Mark C. MacKinnon
31 December 2003
NOTE: This message may be reposted to other internet sites and distributed freely.
Here I sit at the dawn of a new year, writing a stream of consciousness in an attempt to sum up the past 12 months and project on the future. Like many of you, I'm saying to myself, "I can't believe it's the end of the year already;" I can barely remember the days back in grade school when time dragged from month to month. Now, a month disappears and I hardly notice.
The year 2002 has been quite a rollercoaster ride for both me personally, and the company. On behalf of everyone in the office, I'd like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who supported us in 2002 and in previous years -- distributors, retailers, and most importantly, the fans. While the past 12 months have been a great time for our company, I think our best is yet to come.
If you have a few moments, please read on as I share with you my thoughts and dreams.
SIMPLY THE BEST
Without a doubt, the highlight of the year -- and one of the best moments of my life -- took place on August 2nd at 1:11 a.m. when my wife, Karen, gave birth to our first child, William Connor MacKinnon. It's nearly five months later, and I am thankful for every single day he is in my life. Though he made me miss GenCon this year (I suppose it wasn't his fault), all the kind words my industry friends and company fans sent to me through Jesse and Jeff were felt many miles away in Guelph. Guess where William will be spending his birthdays when he's old enough to travel and game?
SUMMARY OF 2002
Guardians Of Order saw the following developments over the past year:
* we announced the formation of a creator-owned publishing imprint, Magnum Opus
* the Ultimate Fan Guide anime reference book and rpg line was launched in March
* the Revised Edition of BESM debuted in April
* Silver Age Sentinels was launched in July
* we published our first d20 System product, Silver Age Sentinels: d20, in August
* we secured the publishing rights to Slayers and Utena books in August
* we published our first calendar: the BESM Anime Fantasy 2003 calendar
* we took over the publishing of Hogshead's Nobilis in November
* we finally got back on track with BESM supplements with the release of the Fantasy Bestiary
* we hired Adam Jury as a Graphics Production Assistant to increase our output
In total, we released 16 products in 2002. A decent showing, considering the time investment into two new product lines (UFGs and SAS). We had hoped for more, but this past year we established the foundation for many future products.
SILVER AGE SENTINELS: THE YEAR OF THE HERO
After a year of in-house development, we released at Origins our biggest and most aggressive product to date -- Silver Age Sentinels: The Superhero RPG. After the many requests we had from BESM fans, moving Tri-Stat into the superhero realm seemed like the right choice. If we were going to do it, though, we wanted to do it right. We wanted a game about superheroes and supervillains, and not simply a game about people with superpowers. The themes and ideology behind the heroes of the Silver Age, set in a modern context, was the perfect match.
With a project of this magnitude, we could not outsource the development of the game to freelancers; it had to be done in-house. The new generation of Tri-Stat d10 would be a vital platform for future products from our company and we needed to guide it through strict parameters that prevented us from using outside assistance for any game rules or mechanics. SAS wasn't just a new game … it was a new platform. Consequently, the entire company was completely dedicated to producing SAS for months, which caused the delay of many other projects. We underestimated the time commitment for the project since we had never conquered a 336-page, full-colour, graphically intense book before. Now we know. Although the development costs expanded to just below the six-figure mark, the results were exactly what we wanted. Silver Age Sentinels is the right superhero game for our company.
D20: ENTERING THE WATERS
I have already espoused my thoughts on GoO and d20, so I won't go into it again in detail here. In short, there were two reasons we didn't enter the d20 market until this year: pride and creativity. When I came to terms with both arguments, we decided to do a d20 edition of Silver Age Sentinels. I wasn't simply going to be yet another d20 fantasy publisher. Rather than saying we "jumped on the bandwagon," I prefer to think we built a sleeker, faster, and more attractive bandwagon of our own and asked, "hey, do you mind if we pull our bandwagon alongside yours and travel together for a bit?"
While Tri-Stat is, in our opinion, a nearly perfect game for players who don't care/need detailed rules for everything, we recognize that the Tri-Stat player base is only a tiny fraction of the d20 base. As a business, we need sales to d20 players as well; our company simply isn't big (or small) enough to survive in the gaming industry without d20 dollars. Creatively, we wanted to bring fresh and innovative ideas to d20. Rather than change it, we offered alternatives. SAS d20 met with mixed reviews (some hated it, some loved it, many had no interest), but we achieved the result we wanted. At this early stage, Tri-Stat and d20 Silver Age Sentinels have sold about the same volume of copies. We tested the waters, and found them to our liking.
ULTIMATE FAN GUIDES: REPACKAGING OUR IDEAS
Since the release of the Sailor Moon RPG in 1998, we devoted much of our company resources on the production of licensed RPGs for the Tri-Stat System. Unfortunately, after a handful of releases, we heard grumblings from our fans that they no longer wanted to keep purchasing the core Tri-Stat rules every time we produced a new licensed book. Their arguments made sense, but lacked information regarding industry purchasing trends. Core books typically sell better than supplements. Thus, our Tenchi Muyo! RPG would have sold much better than a BESM supplement for Tenchi. How could we maintain sales and please our fans at the same time?
The answer seemed obvious: the book and comic store trade. With our high-profile anime licenses and top-quality production values, the book trade (Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, etc.) and comic shops could more than make up for some lost game industry sales. Our books needed to have a wider appeal to anime fans, though, since an anime book that looked like a game book wouldn't sell very well. We looked to the Japanese media books for inspiration and created the Ultimate Fan Guide line. The UFGs were excellent reference books for anime fans who didn't role-play, and contained all the important BESM-related information for the gamers. It seemed like a perfect product: we'd lose a few sales as a BESM supplement rather than a core RPG, but we'd gain those sales back (and more) in alternative markets.
Unfortunately, we were only partially correct. The comic stores and book stores did order significant numbers, but the numbers from the game industry were abysmal. While many factors could have accounted for the poor game sales (timeliness, price, license, format, size, etc.), the biggest problem seemed to be knowledge: retailers and consumers didn't realize that the UFGs were BESM supplements. A close analysis of the Tenchi Muyo! RPG, for example, would reveal that the removal of the core game rules and mechanics would turn the 208-page book into a 128-page Ultimate Fan Guide. In mathematical terms: BESM + Anime UFG = Anime RPG. Unfortunately, the UFGs didn't really look like BESM supplements -- they looked like anime reference guides. Our goal to attract anime fans to our books perhaps worked too well; now our gaming fans didn't purchase them.
We've learned some lessons from this, and are taking steps to adapt to our markets. Starting with the Slayers and Utena books in 2003, the UFG format will change slightly. The books will drop the UFG logo and moniker, be reduced to BESM's 6x9 size, and dropped from $25 to $20 each. With some additional internal formatting changes, we think the books will have more appeal to everyone: gamers, anime fans, comic stores, and book stores.
MAGNUM OPUS: AN INDUSTRY FIRST
The d20 System/Open Gaming License revolutionized the industry, with both positive and negative effects. It showed us that there are many people who want to publish products, but don't have the business knowledge or capital to do it themselves (even though many still try). It also demonstrated the power of a player network.
After several industry folks approached us about licensing our Tri-Stat System to them for their products, we hit upon an idea that would serve our Tri-Stat fans and the entire industry. Magnum Opus is a creator-owned publishing imprint of Guardians Of Order. Individuals or companies interested in creating a product obtain a Tri-Stat System license from us at a reasonable fee. They then complete their book -- writing, editing, art, layout … everything -- and pass the manuscript onto us. We publish and distribute the book for them and return the majority of the sales dollar profits to them directly (we get a small administration fee). To date, about a half-dozen companies have signed onto Magnum Opus for product releases in 2003.
Everyone benefits from this programme. We get additional exposure, a larger player network, and a percentage of sales dollars. Fans have more product selection than we could produce by ourselves, with some interesting takes on different genres and settings. Distributors and retailers have reduced costs since they only need to deal with us directly. The creators retains ownership to their work and has better sales penetration as a GoO product that they could achieve on their own. Additionally, the creators assumes very little risk since they don't incur the costs of producing the book themselves and forming a company. Finally, the industry benefits by keeping the number of serious publishers to a reasonable size. We expect 2003 to be a great launch year for Magnum Opus.
NOBILIS: A GREAT MATCH FOR OUR COMPANY
It's no secret that my favourite RPG is not one of our own, but the Amber Diceless RPG from Phage Press. I have formed strong friendships with dozens of people in the Amber community (in fact, I met Jesse through Amber), and have never had better role-playing experiences. Our acquisition of Nobilis from Hogshead is a perfect match for our company, then, since Nobilis is also a great diceless game. Though I was saddened to learn that James Wallis decided to close up shop at Hogshead, I was thoroughly pleased that we had the opportunity to take on Nobilis as one of our own. Rebecca, Bruce, and even James will keep working on the Nobilis line with us, ensuring a near-seamless transfer. If you haven't checked it out, I encourage you to do so. The Nobilis reprint just arrived from Thailand in our warehouse, and will be making its way to retail shelves over the next few weeks. We have no plans to make it either d20 or 6x9.
REVIEW OF GoO IN 2002
I am my own worst critic. In life, I'm an optimist or a realist … but in business, I'm a pessimist. I don't like taking unnecessary risk, I try to be a perfectionist, and I hate it when we falter. That said, I've only been doing this for 5 years now (the "real" company is only 3 years old), so I'm bound to make mistakes.
If I was to rate our performance in 2002, I'd break it into several categories. For effort, I give us an A+++. We worked our collective asses off this past year, and spent too many long hours at the office. In fact, we worked too hard, and I vow to never do that again; when work ceases to be fun, it's time to slow down a bit. By the fall, we were all burned out.
For output and follow through, I'd give us a C. We hit our initial deadline for Silver Age Sentinels (both editions) -- our biggest projects ever -- but that caused us to falter on almost all other publications. Some of our books are unforgivably late (Tékumel, BESM Dungeon, Uresia, Fushigi Yugi UFG #1), but we are doing the best we can. We need to be more realistic with production possibilities in the future, and we are taking several steps to minimize delays and maximize output in 2003. We will improve in this area.
For quality, I'd give us a solid A. SAS is one of the most graphically rich and intense books the industry has ever seen, and our Ultimate Fan Guides require weeks of work to acquire and produce the graphics. A few of our books had some unfortunate production errors, though (even if they were the printer's fault and not ours), so I can't give us a perfect rating.
For innovation and leadership within the industry, I'd give us a B-. We had some great high-points this year, including our announcement of Magnum Opus, the point-based character creation mechanic we brought to d20 through Silver Age Sentinels, and the unprecedented co-operation/competition with DoJ/Hero Games. Unfortunately (for us), this was the year that HeroClix and d20 products ruled the industry, which reduced the effect of some of our efforts. Still, I think we are on the right track and should turn some heads in 2003.
Overall, I think we deserve a B. Next year, I want to give us an A.
THE CRYSTAL BALL OF 2003
The future is always a tricky thing in this industry. You don't want to announce many ideas too early, for fear you can't follow through in time or that someone else will beat you to the punch. At the same time, fans want to know what you have planned and announcing plans early builds hype. This is what we have already announced for 2003:
* Silver Age Sentinels products: Roll Call #1 (Jan), GM Screen (Jan), Tri-Stat Standard Edition (Feb), Emergency Response #1 (Feb), Shields of Justice (Mar), Roll Call #2: The Sidekick's Club (Apr), SAS d20: Stingy Gamer Edition (Apr)
* BESM products: Limited Edition Supplement Box Set (Feb), Uresia: Grave of Heaven (Feb), BESM Dungeon (Mar), Cold Hands, Dark Heart (Mar)
* BESM d20 products: BESM d20 Hardcover (Apr), BESM d20 Limited Edition (Apr)
* Ultimate Fan Guides: Fushigi Yugi #1 (Jan), Fushigi Yugi #2 (Mar), Fushigi Yugi #3 (May)
* Silver Age Sentinels Superhero Miniatures: Sentinel, Kreuzritter, Slipstream, Alice (Feb)
* Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne RPG (summer)
SILVER AGE SENTINELS -- FUTURE PEEK
* Criminal Intent -- The villain sourcebook (spring)
* From the Files of Matthews Gentech -- Mister Matthew's take on defeating the Guard and its associates with a genetically engineered menagerie (spring)
* Emergency Response #2 and #3 -- Adventures featuring Iron Duke and Kreuzritter (spring and fall)
* Path of the Just -- Superhero short story anthology (summer)
* Empire City -- City setting sourcebook (fall)
* Roll Call #3: Country Matters -- Featuring femme fatale NPCs from around the world (fall)
* Artificer's Almanac -- Gadgets and Items of Power from the Artificer (fall)
* Whispering Winds -- Occult and magic sourcebook (fall)
* Miniatures -- 12-20 more miniatures during 2003, featuring the iconic SAS characters
BESM -- FUTURE PEEK
* d20 Mecha -- Mecha creation and combat rules for any d20 System game (spring)
* Centauri Knights d20 -- a far-future SF supplement for d20 Mecha (spring)
* Military Vehicles -- Real-world vehicle stats for your BESM game (summer)
* Space Opera -- Star-spanning action adventure genre supplement (summer)
* BESM Classic -- A new rules-lighter version of BESM, for those who miss the days of 1st Edition BESM (summer)
LICENSED ANIME -- FUTURE PEEK
* Fushigi Yugi #4 (summer)
* Hellsing #2 (summer)
* The Slayers -- Three BESM supplements covering the three TV seasons (summer/fall)
* The Slayers: d20 System RPG -- The entire TV series presented in a core book
* Revolutionary Girl Utena -- Three BESM supplements covering all 39 episodes (summer/fall)
STUFF WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT YET
* New major licenses
* SAS surprise
* Tri-Stat surprise
* Several Magnum Opus products
* Additional SAS and BESM supplements
TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW
That's about it for this address. I hope it has given you some insight into our past, and some perspective for our future. If 2002 was the year of change for us, then 2003 will be the year of growth. To follow our progress throughout the year, please visit our website often (undergoing a major update currently), read our message boards (http://pub59.ezboard.com/bguardiansoforder44269) and subscribe to our mailing lists.
Thanks for riding along with us. Best wishes for the new year!
From President Mark C. MacKinnon
31 December 2003
NOTE: This message may be reposted to other internet sites and distributed freely.
Here I sit at the dawn of a new year, writing a stream of consciousness in an attempt to sum up the past 12 months and project on the future. Like many of you, I'm saying to myself, "I can't believe it's the end of the year already;" I can barely remember the days back in grade school when time dragged from month to month. Now, a month disappears and I hardly notice.
The year 2002 has been quite a rollercoaster ride for both me personally, and the company. On behalf of everyone in the office, I'd like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who supported us in 2002 and in previous years -- distributors, retailers, and most importantly, the fans. While the past 12 months have been a great time for our company, I think our best is yet to come.
If you have a few moments, please read on as I share with you my thoughts and dreams.
SIMPLY THE BEST
Without a doubt, the highlight of the year -- and one of the best moments of my life -- took place on August 2nd at 1:11 a.m. when my wife, Karen, gave birth to our first child, William Connor MacKinnon. It's nearly five months later, and I am thankful for every single day he is in my life. Though he made me miss GenCon this year (I suppose it wasn't his fault), all the kind words my industry friends and company fans sent to me through Jesse and Jeff were felt many miles away in Guelph. Guess where William will be spending his birthdays when he's old enough to travel and game?
SUMMARY OF 2002
Guardians Of Order saw the following developments over the past year:
* we announced the formation of a creator-owned publishing imprint, Magnum Opus
* the Ultimate Fan Guide anime reference book and rpg line was launched in March
* the Revised Edition of BESM debuted in April
* Silver Age Sentinels was launched in July
* we published our first d20 System product, Silver Age Sentinels: d20, in August
* we secured the publishing rights to Slayers and Utena books in August
* we published our first calendar: the BESM Anime Fantasy 2003 calendar
* we took over the publishing of Hogshead's Nobilis in November
* we finally got back on track with BESM supplements with the release of the Fantasy Bestiary
* we hired Adam Jury as a Graphics Production Assistant to increase our output
In total, we released 16 products in 2002. A decent showing, considering the time investment into two new product lines (UFGs and SAS). We had hoped for more, but this past year we established the foundation for many future products.
SILVER AGE SENTINELS: THE YEAR OF THE HERO
After a year of in-house development, we released at Origins our biggest and most aggressive product to date -- Silver Age Sentinels: The Superhero RPG. After the many requests we had from BESM fans, moving Tri-Stat into the superhero realm seemed like the right choice. If we were going to do it, though, we wanted to do it right. We wanted a game about superheroes and supervillains, and not simply a game about people with superpowers. The themes and ideology behind the heroes of the Silver Age, set in a modern context, was the perfect match.
With a project of this magnitude, we could not outsource the development of the game to freelancers; it had to be done in-house. The new generation of Tri-Stat d10 would be a vital platform for future products from our company and we needed to guide it through strict parameters that prevented us from using outside assistance for any game rules or mechanics. SAS wasn't just a new game … it was a new platform. Consequently, the entire company was completely dedicated to producing SAS for months, which caused the delay of many other projects. We underestimated the time commitment for the project since we had never conquered a 336-page, full-colour, graphically intense book before. Now we know. Although the development costs expanded to just below the six-figure mark, the results were exactly what we wanted. Silver Age Sentinels is the right superhero game for our company.
D20: ENTERING THE WATERS
I have already espoused my thoughts on GoO and d20, so I won't go into it again in detail here. In short, there were two reasons we didn't enter the d20 market until this year: pride and creativity. When I came to terms with both arguments, we decided to do a d20 edition of Silver Age Sentinels. I wasn't simply going to be yet another d20 fantasy publisher. Rather than saying we "jumped on the bandwagon," I prefer to think we built a sleeker, faster, and more attractive bandwagon of our own and asked, "hey, do you mind if we pull our bandwagon alongside yours and travel together for a bit?"
While Tri-Stat is, in our opinion, a nearly perfect game for players who don't care/need detailed rules for everything, we recognize that the Tri-Stat player base is only a tiny fraction of the d20 base. As a business, we need sales to d20 players as well; our company simply isn't big (or small) enough to survive in the gaming industry without d20 dollars. Creatively, we wanted to bring fresh and innovative ideas to d20. Rather than change it, we offered alternatives. SAS d20 met with mixed reviews (some hated it, some loved it, many had no interest), but we achieved the result we wanted. At this early stage, Tri-Stat and d20 Silver Age Sentinels have sold about the same volume of copies. We tested the waters, and found them to our liking.
ULTIMATE FAN GUIDES: REPACKAGING OUR IDEAS
Since the release of the Sailor Moon RPG in 1998, we devoted much of our company resources on the production of licensed RPGs for the Tri-Stat System. Unfortunately, after a handful of releases, we heard grumblings from our fans that they no longer wanted to keep purchasing the core Tri-Stat rules every time we produced a new licensed book. Their arguments made sense, but lacked information regarding industry purchasing trends. Core books typically sell better than supplements. Thus, our Tenchi Muyo! RPG would have sold much better than a BESM supplement for Tenchi. How could we maintain sales and please our fans at the same time?
The answer seemed obvious: the book and comic store trade. With our high-profile anime licenses and top-quality production values, the book trade (Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, etc.) and comic shops could more than make up for some lost game industry sales. Our books needed to have a wider appeal to anime fans, though, since an anime book that looked like a game book wouldn't sell very well. We looked to the Japanese media books for inspiration and created the Ultimate Fan Guide line. The UFGs were excellent reference books for anime fans who didn't role-play, and contained all the important BESM-related information for the gamers. It seemed like a perfect product: we'd lose a few sales as a BESM supplement rather than a core RPG, but we'd gain those sales back (and more) in alternative markets.
Unfortunately, we were only partially correct. The comic stores and book stores did order significant numbers, but the numbers from the game industry were abysmal. While many factors could have accounted for the poor game sales (timeliness, price, license, format, size, etc.), the biggest problem seemed to be knowledge: retailers and consumers didn't realize that the UFGs were BESM supplements. A close analysis of the Tenchi Muyo! RPG, for example, would reveal that the removal of the core game rules and mechanics would turn the 208-page book into a 128-page Ultimate Fan Guide. In mathematical terms: BESM + Anime UFG = Anime RPG. Unfortunately, the UFGs didn't really look like BESM supplements -- they looked like anime reference guides. Our goal to attract anime fans to our books perhaps worked too well; now our gaming fans didn't purchase them.
We've learned some lessons from this, and are taking steps to adapt to our markets. Starting with the Slayers and Utena books in 2003, the UFG format will change slightly. The books will drop the UFG logo and moniker, be reduced to BESM's 6x9 size, and dropped from $25 to $20 each. With some additional internal formatting changes, we think the books will have more appeal to everyone: gamers, anime fans, comic stores, and book stores.
MAGNUM OPUS: AN INDUSTRY FIRST
The d20 System/Open Gaming License revolutionized the industry, with both positive and negative effects. It showed us that there are many people who want to publish products, but don't have the business knowledge or capital to do it themselves (even though many still try). It also demonstrated the power of a player network.
After several industry folks approached us about licensing our Tri-Stat System to them for their products, we hit upon an idea that would serve our Tri-Stat fans and the entire industry. Magnum Opus is a creator-owned publishing imprint of Guardians Of Order. Individuals or companies interested in creating a product obtain a Tri-Stat System license from us at a reasonable fee. They then complete their book -- writing, editing, art, layout … everything -- and pass the manuscript onto us. We publish and distribute the book for them and return the majority of the sales dollar profits to them directly (we get a small administration fee). To date, about a half-dozen companies have signed onto Magnum Opus for product releases in 2003.
Everyone benefits from this programme. We get additional exposure, a larger player network, and a percentage of sales dollars. Fans have more product selection than we could produce by ourselves, with some interesting takes on different genres and settings. Distributors and retailers have reduced costs since they only need to deal with us directly. The creators retains ownership to their work and has better sales penetration as a GoO product that they could achieve on their own. Additionally, the creators assumes very little risk since they don't incur the costs of producing the book themselves and forming a company. Finally, the industry benefits by keeping the number of serious publishers to a reasonable size. We expect 2003 to be a great launch year for Magnum Opus.
NOBILIS: A GREAT MATCH FOR OUR COMPANY
It's no secret that my favourite RPG is not one of our own, but the Amber Diceless RPG from Phage Press. I have formed strong friendships with dozens of people in the Amber community (in fact, I met Jesse through Amber), and have never had better role-playing experiences. Our acquisition of Nobilis from Hogshead is a perfect match for our company, then, since Nobilis is also a great diceless game. Though I was saddened to learn that James Wallis decided to close up shop at Hogshead, I was thoroughly pleased that we had the opportunity to take on Nobilis as one of our own. Rebecca, Bruce, and even James will keep working on the Nobilis line with us, ensuring a near-seamless transfer. If you haven't checked it out, I encourage you to do so. The Nobilis reprint just arrived from Thailand in our warehouse, and will be making its way to retail shelves over the next few weeks. We have no plans to make it either d20 or 6x9.
REVIEW OF GoO IN 2002
I am my own worst critic. In life, I'm an optimist or a realist … but in business, I'm a pessimist. I don't like taking unnecessary risk, I try to be a perfectionist, and I hate it when we falter. That said, I've only been doing this for 5 years now (the "real" company is only 3 years old), so I'm bound to make mistakes.
If I was to rate our performance in 2002, I'd break it into several categories. For effort, I give us an A+++. We worked our collective asses off this past year, and spent too many long hours at the office. In fact, we worked too hard, and I vow to never do that again; when work ceases to be fun, it's time to slow down a bit. By the fall, we were all burned out.
For output and follow through, I'd give us a C. We hit our initial deadline for Silver Age Sentinels (both editions) -- our biggest projects ever -- but that caused us to falter on almost all other publications. Some of our books are unforgivably late (Tékumel, BESM Dungeon, Uresia, Fushigi Yugi UFG #1), but we are doing the best we can. We need to be more realistic with production possibilities in the future, and we are taking several steps to minimize delays and maximize output in 2003. We will improve in this area.
For quality, I'd give us a solid A. SAS is one of the most graphically rich and intense books the industry has ever seen, and our Ultimate Fan Guides require weeks of work to acquire and produce the graphics. A few of our books had some unfortunate production errors, though (even if they were the printer's fault and not ours), so I can't give us a perfect rating.
For innovation and leadership within the industry, I'd give us a B-. We had some great high-points this year, including our announcement of Magnum Opus, the point-based character creation mechanic we brought to d20 through Silver Age Sentinels, and the unprecedented co-operation/competition with DoJ/Hero Games. Unfortunately (for us), this was the year that HeroClix and d20 products ruled the industry, which reduced the effect of some of our efforts. Still, I think we are on the right track and should turn some heads in 2003.
Overall, I think we deserve a B. Next year, I want to give us an A.
THE CRYSTAL BALL OF 2003
The future is always a tricky thing in this industry. You don't want to announce many ideas too early, for fear you can't follow through in time or that someone else will beat you to the punch. At the same time, fans want to know what you have planned and announcing plans early builds hype. This is what we have already announced for 2003:
* Silver Age Sentinels products: Roll Call #1 (Jan), GM Screen (Jan), Tri-Stat Standard Edition (Feb), Emergency Response #1 (Feb), Shields of Justice (Mar), Roll Call #2: The Sidekick's Club (Apr), SAS d20: Stingy Gamer Edition (Apr)
* BESM products: Limited Edition Supplement Box Set (Feb), Uresia: Grave of Heaven (Feb), BESM Dungeon (Mar), Cold Hands, Dark Heart (Mar)
* BESM d20 products: BESM d20 Hardcover (Apr), BESM d20 Limited Edition (Apr)
* Ultimate Fan Guides: Fushigi Yugi #1 (Jan), Fushigi Yugi #2 (Mar), Fushigi Yugi #3 (May)
* Silver Age Sentinels Superhero Miniatures: Sentinel, Kreuzritter, Slipstream, Alice (Feb)
* Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne RPG (summer)
SILVER AGE SENTINELS -- FUTURE PEEK
* Criminal Intent -- The villain sourcebook (spring)
* From the Files of Matthews Gentech -- Mister Matthew's take on defeating the Guard and its associates with a genetically engineered menagerie (spring)
* Emergency Response #2 and #3 -- Adventures featuring Iron Duke and Kreuzritter (spring and fall)
* Path of the Just -- Superhero short story anthology (summer)
* Empire City -- City setting sourcebook (fall)
* Roll Call #3: Country Matters -- Featuring femme fatale NPCs from around the world (fall)
* Artificer's Almanac -- Gadgets and Items of Power from the Artificer (fall)
* Whispering Winds -- Occult and magic sourcebook (fall)
* Miniatures -- 12-20 more miniatures during 2003, featuring the iconic SAS characters
BESM -- FUTURE PEEK
* d20 Mecha -- Mecha creation and combat rules for any d20 System game (spring)
* Centauri Knights d20 -- a far-future SF supplement for d20 Mecha (spring)
* Military Vehicles -- Real-world vehicle stats for your BESM game (summer)
* Space Opera -- Star-spanning action adventure genre supplement (summer)
* BESM Classic -- A new rules-lighter version of BESM, for those who miss the days of 1st Edition BESM (summer)
LICENSED ANIME -- FUTURE PEEK
* Fushigi Yugi #4 (summer)
* Hellsing #2 (summer)
* The Slayers -- Three BESM supplements covering the three TV seasons (summer/fall)
* The Slayers: d20 System RPG -- The entire TV series presented in a core book
* Revolutionary Girl Utena -- Three BESM supplements covering all 39 episodes (summer/fall)
STUFF WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT YET
* New major licenses
* SAS surprise
* Tri-Stat surprise
* Several Magnum Opus products
* Additional SAS and BESM supplements
TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW
That's about it for this address. I hope it has given you some insight into our past, and some perspective for our future. If 2002 was the year of change for us, then 2003 will be the year of growth. To follow our progress throughout the year, please visit our website often (undergoing a major update currently), read our message boards (http://pub59.ezboard.com/bguardiansoforder44269) and subscribe to our mailing lists.
Thanks for riding along with us. Best wishes for the new year!
