Cubicle 7 bids farewell to Qin, Rocket Age, Yggdrasill and more…

Lord_Blacksteel · Jun 30, 2017

I was going to say something about an extreme lack of notice about this and express some surprise then I realized there was no link to the actual announcement anywhere in this article. I went to Cubicle 7's website - nothing. I went into their forums and the Cubicle 7 news sub-forum and there it is - originally announced April 7th.

When we get these kinds of news posts could we include a link to the actual announcement?

Doctor Futurity · Jun 30, 2017

I don't understand this sentence: "Some of the games may go out of print in English as lines such as Qin: The Warring States was a finite number of books which have all been available for some time so they might not be worth reprinting in the near term."

I would interpret that as a really good case for why they should be reprinted. Trying to find any of these books has been an ordeal, and I finally found a used copy of Qin which was an amazing tome....but getting buy in from my group who cannot find a copy is hard.

I didn't know about Kuro until it was already sold out. I've been waiting ever since for a copy to appear that wasn't being sold for a mint on Ebay. So....yeah, I think these are all worth reprinting.

AngusA · Jun 30, 2017

Doctor Futurity said:
I don't understand this sentence: "Some of the games may go out of print in English as lines such as Qin: The Warring States was a finite number of books which have all been available for some time so they might not be worth reprinting in the near term."

I would interpret that as a really good case for why they should be reprinted. Trying to find any of these books has been an ordeal, and I finally found a used copy of Qin which was an amazing tome....but getting buy in from my group who cannot find a copy is hard.

I didn't know about Kuro until it was already sold out. I've been waiting ever since for a copy to appear that wasn't being sold for a mint on Ebay. So....yeah, I think these are all worth reprinting.

The problem is that books that have a finite number of titles will be considered 'dead lines' by many distributors and retailers as no new material is coming out to support them. Thus they are less likely to restock the line unless it is a great seller (and after ten years of availability you might not be seeing very many sales). Whenever a new book is released for a line the company will generally see a 'bump' in orders from distributors/retailers of the back catalog of products in that line - as they have confidence the line is alive and so restock the older books to go alongside the new release.

Qin hasn't had a new book for years and no further books are planned (as far as I'm aware). Doing a print run for a hardcover book with colour templates (if not entirely full colour) is expensive and you really need a minimum quantity to make it economically practical. If you could downgrade the books to black and white then it becomes a lot more viable - and of course with the softcovers you can mitigate risk by printing off smaller runs through some of the print-on-demand services as opposed to printing higher quantities through traditional full-run printers.

Maybe a possible solution is to run a Kickstarter to reprint each line. That way the demand can be seen before reprinting and, if enough demand exists, maybe even persuade the publisher to look at bringing out some brand new material for it too.

All the books should be available in PDF though - which is always an option until physical copies can be found. I'd actually suggest making the PDFs also available to buy as print-on-demand through drivetrhu/RPGNow like the older long out of print White Wolf and TSR/WotC titles so people can still access them if they'd like without the publisher having to risk a large inventory sitting in a warehouse.

Doctor Futurity · Jun 30, 2017

AngusA said:
The problem is that books that have a finite number of titles will be considered 'dead lines' by many distributors and retailers as no new material is coming out to support them. Thus they are less likely to restock the line unless it is a great seller (and after ten years of availability you might not be seeing very many sales). Whenever a new book is released for a line the company will generally see a 'bump' in orders from distributors/retailers of the back catalog of products in that line - as they have confidence the line is alive and so restock the older books to go alongside the new release.

Qin hasn't had a new book for years and no further books are planned (as far as I'm aware). Doing a print run for a hardcover book with colour templates (if not entirely full colour) is expensive and you really need a minimum quantity to make it economically practical. If you could downgrade the books to black and white then it becomes a lot more viable - and of course with the softcovers you can mitigate risk by printing off smaller runs through some of the print-on-demand services as opposed to printing higher quantities through traditional full-run printers.

Maybe a possible solution is to run a Kickstarter to reprint each line. That way the demand can be seen before reprinting and, if enough demand exists, maybe even persuade the publisher to look at bringing out some brand new material for it too.

All the books should be available in PDF though - which is always an option until physical copies can be found. I'd actually suggest making the PDFs also available to buy as print-on-demand through drivetrhu/RPGNow like the older long out of print White Wolf and TSR/WotC titles so people can still access them if they'd like without the publisher having to risk a large inventory sitting in a warehouse.

True, but perhaps I am finally coming around to the idea that an RPG should not define its health by the brick-and-mortar distribution system's limited needs. Online sales and POD may be the best way to go for books like these. Both were so slight in their actual impact on the hobby due to the limits of the conventional distribution system that my knowledge of either system came well after the fact of their release, and via more obscure references at rpg.net and elsewhere. Kickstarter is even worse...it will cater to the closed loop of fans but without sufficient marketing (a difficult prospect) it won't reach potential buyers like myself who aren't in that loop (unless they advertise on ENWorld, I suppose).

I suppose what I am saying is that no game like Kuro or Qin need fade away simply because the old school distribution method suggests they have run out of life. Yes...and apologies as I go anecdotal here.....I live in a state where neither of these books would ever be sold or stocked by the FLGSs anyway, unfortunately, so online options remain my only best bet anyway.

(All I'm really saying is that I agree with your last comment: whoever owns/continues with Qin and Kuro, making these available in POD format somewhere couldn't possibly hurt. There's still a long tail for sales on both books, I think.)

EDIT: was checking again at ebay. Kuro is around $200 for a copy there. Sigh.

AngusA · Jun 30, 2017

Doctor Futurity said:
True, but perhaps I am finally coming around to the idea that an RPG should not define its health by the brick-and-mortar distribution system's limited needs. Online sales and POD may be the best way to go for books like these. Both were so slight in their actual impact on the hobby due to the limits of the conventional distribution system that my knowledge of either system came well after the fact of their release, and via more obscure references at rpg.net and elsewhere. Kickstarter is even worse...it will cater to the closed loop of fans but without sufficient marketing (a difficult prospect) it won't reach potential buyers like myself who aren't in that loop (unless they advertise on ENWorld, I suppose).

I suppose what I am saying is that no game like Kuro or Qin need fade away simply because the old school distribution method suggests they have run out of life. Yes...and apologies as I go anecdotal here.....I live in a state where neither of these books would ever be sold or stocked by the FLGSs anyway, unfortunately, so online options remain my only best bet anyway.

(All I'm really saying is that I agree with your last comment: whoever owns/continues with Qin and Kuro, making these available in POD format somewhere couldn't possibly hurt. There's still a long tail for sales on both books, I think.)

EDIT: was checking again at ebay. Kuro is around $200 for a copy there. Sigh.

I agree. A RPGs health shouldn't be down to how well it does through Bricks & Mortar stores. Especially as on one hand the RPG Industry is currently doing better than it has in decades with a lot of financial growth and variety of games but on the other hand many companies are struggling to get into distribution and retail stores. Kickstarter has been a game changer in some ways, not least because it's showing that there is actually quite a lot of demand for RPGs and by using KS and other crowdfunding platforms many companies are actually seeing more money than they'd have gotten by releasing the book through traditional means and also getting that money upfront so they don't have to take the risk (or try and find the money) to print the book(s). PDFs and POD have also both further helped gaming companies and there are actually a few PDF (and/or POD) only publishers who do it fulltime these days which once upon a time would have been unheard of.

It is harder for a lot of companies to do traditional runs though - especially if they're looking at full colour books - due to the initial outlay in costs (if they haven't raised the money via crowdfunding platforms and thus covered the print costs from the outset). With a game like Qin - a full color Hardcover book - the non-crowdfunding options look like being either making the game available as a POD through DriveThru/RPGNow as a full colour premium book (which will sadly mean it's almost certainly going to have too expensive a base print cost to allow a distributor margin and keep it at a reasonable MSRP so they just sell direct to the customer and bypass distribution to keep the end user cost down) or to change the format and go black & white as you can still get some very good prices on black & white books with low print runs (Hardcover as well as Softcover) and take those into retail as well as direct sales.

I personally think they should be able to fund a new full colour hardcover print run through Kickstarter though if they wanted to as they can also offer all the lines PDFs and the other books as POD versions in the campaign too which should help raise the total.

trancejeremy · Jul 1, 2017

I think it's probably hard to do licensed properties as POD and digital sales. You have to do extra accounting to make sure the license owners are paid exactly, rather than having it written out ahead of time and it's probably not worth the effort

AngusA · Jul 1, 2017

trancejeremy said:
I think it's probably hard to do licensed properties as POD and digital sales. You have to do extra accounting to make sure the license owners are paid exactly, rather than having it written out ahead of time and it's probably not worth the effort

For licensed properties you need a strong and correct paper trail. Accurate reporting is a must for accounts and royalties. You can get monthly sales reports off DriveThru/RPGNow for digital sales so that's easy enough - just an extra line on the royalty report that you'd need to cover anyway. For POD it's a case of recording and keeping every print invoice. If it's POD through DriveThru/RPGNow then that's one line on a monthly sales report showing you the details (nice and easy) if you're doing your own POD then you'd need to keep copies of all the print invoices and tally them up into a sales lines on your royalty report (and record each order on your own accounts).

But 7eme Cercle own Qin, Kuro, etc, so would just need to do their own accounts and not worry about having to do a quarterly royalty report to a licensor.

Ken Spencer · Jul 3, 2017

Why Not Games will be publishing Rocket Age from here on out. Once this (hopefully short) transition period is over the existing product line as well as new material will be up for sale. Check us out for more information: http://www.whynotgames.com