[Atlas] Penumbra Bestiary and MINIS!

[Vrylakos]

On the 3.5 topic: No, it's not. It had already been edited and laid out when the 3.5 announcement came out, and was in the process of proofreading. We put a lot of thought into deciding whether to re-edit and re-develop the book, which had already devoured months of staff time. (This sucker is BIGGGGGG! I can see why a lot of people like releasing multiple little 64-page monster books for $15 rather than 368-page monster books for $45...) Ultimately, we decided that it was not sensible to hold it back for even longer to work on 3.5 compatibility. After all, not everyone is upgrading to 3.5; not everyone will know all the 3.5 changes right away; and everyone will be getting used to using pre-3.5 materials anyhow (since it's supposed to be fully backwards-compatible).

An even bigger issue is that there are a gazillion books that publishers are holding back for release with 3.5. There are only so many dollars for distributors, retailers and consumers to allocate to game purchases in a single week, and my concern is that some D20 books released at that time will simply be lost in the shuffle (if a store didn't buy a book when it was brand new, they're not likely to pick it up later). It kind of puts us between a rock and a hard place -- risk losing sales by not being 3.5-compatible, and out only a month or less before 3.5; or risk losing sales because we're one of a flood of d20 titles being released at the same time as the three new core rulebooks.

Hm, it does seem like a rock and a hard place, but my thought would be that you'll end up with a shorter shelf-life for the PB than if you had made if 3.5 compatible. Rather than more opportunities for sales as time wears on (given that most sales occur in the first month or two), it seems to me that they will decrease due to people picking up 3.5, which seems an awfully big hit to take on a book that size.

On the other hand, if released 3.5, it would seem that you'd get stuck with the morass of other held-back books, but might eventually win through after initial slow sales.

Of course, you've already considered these things. I hope they pan out.

Would Atlas consider redeveloping it as a 3.5 version after the 3.0 sales dwindle away, perhaps doing a smaller print run for the 3.0 version? I mean, you'll have already paid your freelancers and artists by then, right, so the main cost will be printing?

Vrylakos