Necromancer Games and Kenzer & Company are Expanding!

[GreenPiece]

Necromancer Games, Inc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Necromancer Games and Kenzer & Company are Expanding!

January 11, 2005 (LAS VEGAS, NV): Necromancer Games, Inc. has partnered with Kenzer & Company to bring more Necromancer Games products to the game table. As of June, 2005 Kenzer & Company will begin publishing d20 system adventures and sourcebooks for Necromancer Games. These will be available through Kenzer & Company's standard distribution channels.

"Our backlog of great books has simply become too big to release through our regular channels," said Clark Peterson, President of Necromancer Games Inc. "Kenzer was a logical choice for us, after all, who else besides the Hackmasters themselves would understand 1st Edition feel as well as us?" said Bill Webb, co-founder of Necromancer Games.

The partnership with Kenzer & Company has no effect on Necromancer Games' remaining part of Sword & Sorcery Studios. "We are deeply committed to our partners at Sword & Sorcery Studios. This venture between Kenzer and Necromancer Games is really just an expansion of our adventure line and a logical pairing of two of the leaders in the industry," Peterson commented.

Brian Jelke of Kenzer & Company commented, "We've always been impressed with Necromancer's high quality products. They fit right in with our own commitment to quality on our lines like HackMaster®, Kingdoms of Kalamar®, Knights of the Dinner Table and more. This partnership will produce books of which both companies can be proud."

Beginning in June with A Family Affair, and a series of adventures including the Coils of Set, The Six Spheres of Zailhhessh, The Diamond Fortress and other titles, Necromancer Games and Kenzer & Company plan to bring a series of adventures, both large and small, to the Revised Third Edition Game - including material from award winning writers such as Casey Christofferson and Lance Hawvermale.

Under the Sword & Sorcery banner, Necromancer Games continues to be hard at work bringing a number of products from the classic company Judges Guild to d20, including the Wilderlands of High Fantasy Boxed Set - complete with cover art by Frank Frazetta - to be released at Gencon 2005 as well as that most famous of all dungeons, Tegel Manor. "We are also finalizing The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps for the new revised version of the Third Edition rules, which of course will be released through Sword & Sorcery in April 2005."

Look for a more detailed list of upcoming products at the GAMA trade show!

Questions from retailers, distributors or fans can be directed to Clark Peterson at clark@necromancergames.com. See WWW.KENZERCO.COM for current product release information.

 

[DaveMage]

Excellent!

Anything that gets Necromancer products into my hands faster is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Good luck with the partnership!

 

[Cergorach]

And Trollords? Wasn't that the 'other' distribution channel?

 

[GreenPiece]

As far as I know, The Crystal Skull will likely be the last NG module going through TLG. As it seems, they're just too tied up with their own Castles & Crusades line of products.

Can't say for sure, though. Maybe there'll be more NG products through TLG once they have some openings in their schedule again. Dunno.

GP

 

[Arnwyn]

Hmm... I wonder what Kenzer's distribution channel is like? Should be interesting to see when June rolls around.

S&SS are as efficient/predictable as WotC in my area, while TLG was pretty sketchy. I'll keep my fingers crossed that Kenzer has an efficient distribution network.

 

[Nightfall]

Arn,

I think the reason is that while Necro puts out MORE products with the S&SS banner, there's only so much room S&SS/WW can accommodate. (Has other ideas about this but not going to say this here as it is just speculation). So while, yes Necro can get efficentily to a store and more over, on time and in many places, through S&SS, the trouble is S&SS has their own schedule too to deal with.

So I agree that anything that gets Necro mods and other stuff to us safe, timely and most all, with good art work, I'm all down with that.

 

[Treebore]

I think the problem, and i don't consider it to be a real problem, is that Troll Lords is run pretty much under the same circumstances as Necromancer Games. It is a hobby for these guys. It is not their job/main source of income. I am not sure if Kenzer is run much differently. Anything that strengthens Necromancers position in the RPG market is good news to me. The fact it is a partnership with the people who do Kalamar is just a big bonus to me.

So more power to all involved, and may this ensure a long presence in the market for both companies. Same thoughts to TLG too.

 

[Orcus]

Bill and I are thrilled to be working with Kenzer. They have been doing some adventures for Hackmaster of late that have been great products for them. Bill and I have been wanting to find a way to do some more pure adventure modules again and Kenzer seemed a perfect match. We are really excited about these products that we are doing with Kenzer and have been trying to come up with a way to get them to all of you.

I just want to make sure that everyone understands that Necro and SSS are as tight and committed as ever. Someone noted that there are just so many release slots per year for SSS that we share between lots of great designers--Monte Cook and his Malhavoc products, Necro products, and the other SSS lines. That is true. But yet, Bill and I have all this material we want to get out and we didnt want to have to trickle them out. So since Kenzer is so into adventures recently, we thought it would be a great avenue take those products and work with Kenzer on them. And Dave was real geeked to have us on board. I should also point out that SSS is totally behind our decision. They love the Kenzer guys as much as we do and are happy to see more Necro stuff get out.

By the way, we are still tight with the TLG guys. We love those guys. They have been real busy of late with their Gygax products and C&C, which is understandable. If you got Gygax, you gotta give that guy your focus. He is a legend. I dont want anyone to think "the TLG thing didnt work out." It did. It worked out great. Heck, one of our TLG Books (Barakus) won us a gold Ennie!!! You can't gripe about that But they have been tied up focusing on C&C for good reason.

Our decision is all about getting more great Necro gaming products to the fans and trying to find the best avenues to do that.

The great thing about this industry is that everyone is really cool and everyone for the most part knows each other and likes each other. So it is real easy to do things like this--partner up with some cool guys and put out fun gaming products. Which is really what we as publishers are all here to do. We do it with SSS (and always will). We did it with TLG. And now we are excited about oour partnership with Kenzer. Anyone who knows Bill and I know that we are all about gamers and gaming. We do this because we love it.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Clark

 

[JoeGKushner]

The great thing about this industry is that everyone is really cool and everyone for the most part knows each other and likes each other.
Clark

Group Hug!

 

[Arnwyn]

I think the reason is that while Necro puts out MORE products with the S&SS banner, there's only so much room S&SS/WW can accommodate. (Has other ideas about this but not going to say this here as it is just speculation). So while, yes Necro can get efficentily to a store and more over, on time and in many places, through S&SS, the trouble is S&SS has their own schedule too to deal with.

Oh, I know that. I've spent enough time over at the Necro boards to have learned all that. My concern was that I want to get all of NG's products (not just the S&SS labeled NG products) reliably.

So I agree that anything that gets Necro mods and other stuff to us safe, timely and most all, with good art work, I'm all down with that.

Exactly! Safe and timely is what I'm after (thus my pondering of the efficiency of Kenzer's distribution channels). I've learned a little while ago that with d20, it's all about the distribution.

This looks like good news - the more modules, the merrier!