Flying Buffalo Being Sold?

Flying Buffalo's CEO Steve Crompton has indicated that the company is being sold to an undisclosed buyer! Flying Buffalo a tabletop gaming company founded in 1970 - published Ken St Andre's Tunnels & Trolls back in 1975 (just a year after D&D launched), and is the oldest tabletop RPG company currently in existence.

"OTHER NEWS - FLYING BUFFALO TO BE SOLD SOON Sale PENDING

I'm letting you all know now - once the new company takes over Flying Buffalo, they have told us they plan to remove many of the items that are currently on our Drive-Thru page. So get them NOW before they are gone FOREVER..."

Tunnels & Trolls was created as an alternative to D&D, with point-based magic and a d6 core mechanic. It has been through numerous editions over the decades, and is currently on its 9th edition (some of which were licensed to companies like Fiery Dragon and Grimtooth). There have been two video games based on the system.

 

[BigJackBrass]

I'll note that my hope would be Fiery Dragon. They did a great job on T&T 7E.

You and I clearly have very different memories and opinions of the 30th anniversary / 7th edition / 7.5. For me they were poorly edited and had little of the old T&T magic about them. Ken is a really interesting, creative designer who absolutely needs a strong editor, which is why 5th edition, in many ways Liz Danforth's edition as much as Ken's, is still the most coherent.

The only likely and sensible buyer I can think of is Goodman Games, but who knows? We'll find out when we find out.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The only likely and sensible buyer I can think of is Goodman Games, but who knows? We'll find out when we find out.

Goodman may be moving in that direction, after they bought the rights to Dark Tower. We'll see how much these other rights cost, though.

 

[aramis erak]

I found Steve Crompton's post over on Vin's T&T Trollbridge - link to the post:

NEW T&T Releases Info | Vin's T&T TrollBridge

Now premiering on Drive-thru! MAPs 2: Places of Legend, this book contains maps of 16 legendary locations which can be used anywhere in your campaign. Each Place of Legend is fully mapped, with major

trollbridge.proboards.com

Steve Crompton (sscrompton on Trollbridge):

The LAST Flying Buffalo T&T Bundle of holding! June 2021 This is the BIG one - the Final chance to get a TON of new pdfs solos and more from this Special Bundle of Holding offer. If you haven't picked up some of the new stuff we've put on Drive-thru now is your chance! Ken made a similar announcement recently and we are doing the same. If you want to get these out of print solos and other items this will be your last chance... Check it out! [links snipped] OTHER NEWS - FLYING BUFFALO TO BE SOLD SOON Sale PENDING I'm letting you all know now - once the new company takes over Flying Buffalo, they have told us they plan to remove many of the items that are currently on our Drive-Thru page. So get them NOW before they are gone FOREVER...

Looking back upon this, it feels like an intentional and artificial push to get people in on the BoH deal.

 

[BigJackBrass]

Looking back upon this, it feels like an intentional and artificial push to get people in on the BoH deal.

You might be overestimating how many of us are active on the Trollbridge.

 

[aramis erak]

You might be overestimating how many of us are active on the Trollbridge.

No; I don't care how many are. It feels like Mr. Crompton is creating a big buzz successfully (Morrus noted it, and put it on EnWorld, I suspect it's gone over to RPG.net, TheRPGSite, and know it's been mentioned on Reddit and RPGGeek. that's a lot of free advertisement. It was buried in a thread on Trollbridge; I put a top level about it there, not realizing it was originally in another thread. (and I read TB weekly; I just missed Crompton dumping the claim of the sky falling as part of the new products thread.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Eh. If they're really being sold, having a going out of business (for now) sale is pretty common and not especially nefarious. I wish I had loaded up on Alien TPBs on Comixology before Dark Horse lost the license and had a big blow-out sale, to be honest.

 

[Sunsword]

This is the problem with all digital rights tho. You don't actually own the digital product, you are licensed to use it. If the licenser pulls the rights to it, the purchaser can lose it. It happens all the time with digital movies, there's actually several lawsuits against apple and amazon happening right now from customers that have purchased digital movies then lost them.
I'm not defending the practice, I think it's absolutely stupid, but want to help let people know, maybe backup your digital copies before they disappear.

I appreciate the information and I hadn't considered it. I'm sure it happens far more often than I thought then which is sad.

 

[Tonybro001]

The CityBook line is probably the biggest deal to D&D players. Years before TSR tried anything of the sort, they were great, modular elements that could be dropped into your campaign -- an interesting shop here, a shady guy on the docks there.

A lot of it is pretty dated, but it oozes with old school flavor.

And, like T&T, a lot of it has a sense of humor, as opposed to the late 1970s edgelord vibe of a lot of Judges Guild material.

City books are great. I’m trying to collect hard copies as there’s nothing like the smell of vintage RPG materials

 

[IrrationalRobot]

Three video games? Does that include the cryptic "Picture on the side of a Colecovision box?"

// Kid who had a Colecovision and thought that there was a Tunnels and Trolls game coming out... about 35 years ago

 

[Mannahnin]

Three video games? Does that include the cryptic "Picture on the side of a Colecovision box?"

// Kid who had a Colecovision and thought that there was a Tunnels and Trolls game coming out... about 35 years ago

Aw.

Apparently, yes! Man, I don't even remember that. We had Colecovision as part of our Adam home personal computer. I remember heavily playing a Buck Rogers game and a Smurfs game. But the prospect of a D&D-style game would have no doubt entranced me.

Tunnels & Trolls - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the 1980s, a ColecoVision adaptation was announced but never released.

In 1990 a computer version (Crusaders of Khazan) was published by New World Computing, which embedded portions of many of the favorite old solo modules. Crusaders of Khazan is included in the 30th Anniversary Edition tin, but not the PDF version.

In 2017, MetaArcade has published Tunnels & Trolls Adventures for iOS and Android, an adaptation of Tunnels & Trolls featuring over 20 classic quests.[17] According to MetaArcade, new content will be published on a regular basis.[18]