Krug
Newshound
This week we have Joe Mucchiello from Throwing Dice Games:
1. Give us an overview of your product line(s).
I wonder what it says when you have more lines than products. In any case, Joe's Book of Enchantment, the first book, was always intended to be the first in a series of books on all the schools. Divination is currently in development. At the time I had not considered product lines. Heck, I could not even come up with a good title. JBoE is almost 2 years old and I hope to have a 3.5 facelift of it out by the end of summer. At that time it will be renamed Enchantment: Mundane and Mysterious. Hopefully Divination: Mundane and Mysterious will be ready by then and our first real line of products will finally have two products in the line. The Mundane and Mysterious line is all about the schools of magic and how they impact your campaign both with and without magic. Enchantment has lots of info regarding the use of mundane charisma and other non-magical means of influence. Divination will have a large section devoted to mundane means of
predicting the future (cards, entrails, dice, random events, stars, etc.)
Deadly Encounters is a product line containing small drop in encounters/adventures with very little background material that can be used to fill-in between other adventures or added as an encounter within another adventure. The first one appeared in Tuesday's Two-Pager number 5 (Deadly Encounters #1: Thieves' Den). The next 2 will be longer and for sale on RPGNow. Deadly Encounters #2: Orc Stew is nearly ready to release. DE3: Abandoned Dragon's Lair is in playtest. I suppose the Tuesday's Two-Pagers are also a product line. I have a few of them in the can and am waiting to get a few more done before trying to go live with them again.
The customization line has a single entry at the moment. I plan to add another book to that line involving settings. Ways to use the rules to make different levels of magic or heroism or danger work without having to rewrite the core books yourself. When that gets written I cannot begin to predict. I'm hoping my experience with Divination will help me with those predictions.
Two other product lines are in the pipe that I'm not writing (so they have a chance of seeing the light of day this year). Both are settings. One is written by Frank Carr and is called Land of the Jade Oath. It combines the core races/classes, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed races/classes, and other Oriental themed races/classes to create a setting with a strong oriental feel. The first release is big (and might end up being multiple releases) and will be followed up with an introductory adventure. This material is often previewed on diamondthrone.com.
The other setting, called Godswar, by Joe Wiesenberg, is due out in the fall/winter. It's a disk-shaped world where gods rule the major countries. This setting will also have a source book and an start up adventure. More information about will come out as its release is more imminent.
Finally, a couple family strategy board games are in the works. We are not Throwing Dice Publishing and hopefully people will like our first entry, Cliques, which involves memorization and hidden goals in silly high school environment. At the moment it needs a bit of tweaking in the scoring but I hope it will ready for RPGNow soon.
2. Tell us at length about your most recent project (upcoming or just
released).
Most recent is DE2: Orc Stew and I don't really want to discuss it at length since it is an adventure. I will say it is about 10 pages of adventure with 4-5 pages of DM crib sheets. It is also, unlike Thieves Den or Abandoned Dragon's Lair, in that there is more than one major encounter area detailed. One thing I'm hoping buyers like about it is encounter layout. I borrowed a page from Dungeon (The light, aura, etc headings they use) and expanded it. It makes the encounter entries a lot more uniform and finding information in the entries is hopefully much easier than in old style modules.
Last released was Character Customization and it still feels like a work in progress. Ripping apart the core character classes to make it possible to reconstruct your own set of classes is extremely version dependent. My initial idea of quickly releasing an update for 3.5 ran into many roadblocks. I'd like to get that finished before the ENnies deadline but I don't see it happening.
3. What is your main target audience and how much of a spread beyond
that do you feel is likely, first for your line(s), then for your most recent?
TDGs target audience is the tinkerer. The guy who's seen it all, written a few RPGs and a dozen game worlds in his spare time and is looking for more to stuff to expand his game. This is not an ideal audience because many tinkerers would just as soon do it themselves as read my books. But there are also softcore tinkerers who like having it laid out for them. They did the RPG creating and world creating in college and now they are a little older and cannot take the time to do this.
4. What is the main thing about your company that makes you most proud?
How well received the products are. The user reviews for our products
are wonderful and that makes me proud. Sometimes I wish I could crank out
products faster but then another customer puts a new review on RPGNow
and it reminds me of the value of quality work.
5. Where do you see your company one year from now?
I think the running theme of this is that I'm no good at telling the future. I would like to take the print plunge but with the current economy I don't think that will happen. Hopefully in a year we'll have the total number of TDG products up to the double digits, i.e. more than 9.
----
Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com
1. Give us an overview of your product line(s).
I wonder what it says when you have more lines than products. In any case, Joe's Book of Enchantment, the first book, was always intended to be the first in a series of books on all the schools. Divination is currently in development. At the time I had not considered product lines. Heck, I could not even come up with a good title. JBoE is almost 2 years old and I hope to have a 3.5 facelift of it out by the end of summer. At that time it will be renamed Enchantment: Mundane and Mysterious. Hopefully Divination: Mundane and Mysterious will be ready by then and our first real line of products will finally have two products in the line. The Mundane and Mysterious line is all about the schools of magic and how they impact your campaign both with and without magic. Enchantment has lots of info regarding the use of mundane charisma and other non-magical means of influence. Divination will have a large section devoted to mundane means of
predicting the future (cards, entrails, dice, random events, stars, etc.)
Deadly Encounters is a product line containing small drop in encounters/adventures with very little background material that can be used to fill-in between other adventures or added as an encounter within another adventure. The first one appeared in Tuesday's Two-Pager number 5 (Deadly Encounters #1: Thieves' Den). The next 2 will be longer and for sale on RPGNow. Deadly Encounters #2: Orc Stew is nearly ready to release. DE3: Abandoned Dragon's Lair is in playtest. I suppose the Tuesday's Two-Pagers are also a product line. I have a few of them in the can and am waiting to get a few more done before trying to go live with them again.
The customization line has a single entry at the moment. I plan to add another book to that line involving settings. Ways to use the rules to make different levels of magic or heroism or danger work without having to rewrite the core books yourself. When that gets written I cannot begin to predict. I'm hoping my experience with Divination will help me with those predictions.
Two other product lines are in the pipe that I'm not writing (so they have a chance of seeing the light of day this year). Both are settings. One is written by Frank Carr and is called Land of the Jade Oath. It combines the core races/classes, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed races/classes, and other Oriental themed races/classes to create a setting with a strong oriental feel. The first release is big (and might end up being multiple releases) and will be followed up with an introductory adventure. This material is often previewed on diamondthrone.com.
The other setting, called Godswar, by Joe Wiesenberg, is due out in the fall/winter. It's a disk-shaped world where gods rule the major countries. This setting will also have a source book and an start up adventure. More information about will come out as its release is more imminent.
Finally, a couple family strategy board games are in the works. We are not Throwing Dice Publishing and hopefully people will like our first entry, Cliques, which involves memorization and hidden goals in silly high school environment. At the moment it needs a bit of tweaking in the scoring but I hope it will ready for RPGNow soon.
2. Tell us at length about your most recent project (upcoming or just
released).
Most recent is DE2: Orc Stew and I don't really want to discuss it at length since it is an adventure. I will say it is about 10 pages of adventure with 4-5 pages of DM crib sheets. It is also, unlike Thieves Den or Abandoned Dragon's Lair, in that there is more than one major encounter area detailed. One thing I'm hoping buyers like about it is encounter layout. I borrowed a page from Dungeon (The light, aura, etc headings they use) and expanded it. It makes the encounter entries a lot more uniform and finding information in the entries is hopefully much easier than in old style modules.
Last released was Character Customization and it still feels like a work in progress. Ripping apart the core character classes to make it possible to reconstruct your own set of classes is extremely version dependent. My initial idea of quickly releasing an update for 3.5 ran into many roadblocks. I'd like to get that finished before the ENnies deadline but I don't see it happening.
3. What is your main target audience and how much of a spread beyond
that do you feel is likely, first for your line(s), then for your most recent?
TDGs target audience is the tinkerer. The guy who's seen it all, written a few RPGs and a dozen game worlds in his spare time and is looking for more to stuff to expand his game. This is not an ideal audience because many tinkerers would just as soon do it themselves as read my books. But there are also softcore tinkerers who like having it laid out for them. They did the RPG creating and world creating in college and now they are a little older and cannot take the time to do this.
4. What is the main thing about your company that makes you most proud?
How well received the products are. The user reviews for our products
are wonderful and that makes me proud. Sometimes I wish I could crank out
products faster but then another customer puts a new review on RPGNow
and it reminds me of the value of quality work.
5. Where do you see your company one year from now?
I think the running theme of this is that I'm no good at telling the future. I would like to take the print plunge but with the current economy I don't think that will happen. Hopefully in a year we'll have the total number of TDG products up to the double digits, i.e. more than 9.
----
Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com
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