Krug
Newshound
This week we have Mario Barbati of 0one Games for our Friday Five:
Give us an overview of your product lines.
Currently Øone Games produce four product lines: Master Adventures, Master Accessories, Seven Avengers and Other products.
Master Accessories: this is our best selling line of products, counting now 11 titles. The Master Accessories line features mainly maps, wonderful maps to use with roleplaying games or miniature games. Our cartography is largely appreciated (in Italy, our home country the battlemaps are published inside DRAGON magazine, Italian edition, of course, licensed by Paizo and published by Nexus). The best selling Master Accessories product are our battlemaps. They are basically single rooms shown in a top down perspective, featuring stunning detail and lighting effects you can print on a single sheet of paper, put on the game table, throw on some miniatures and play. The battlemaps are so detailed you can even build an adventure drawing inspiration from what you see on the map. Our battlemaps are top-notch (if you don't believe me download them from our website and compare with the tiles of Wotc!).
Some product, in this line deserve a mention for originality: Dangerous Dungeons, Goblins' Lairs and Customizable Battlemaps, dungeon rooms vol. I. These products go beyond the simple print-n-play pdf: they allow the user to customize the maps and make them suitable for their own games. Customizable Battlemaps, dungeon rooms vol. I is very different from a drawing program because it allow a degree of customization on a given room: no draw, no waste time, just customize your dungeon room.
The SKIRMISH TILES are also a good product, the gamers use them for miniature games since we give a plan view of the room there, plus they are tileable.
Master Adventures: The Master Adventures series is a line of generic adventures easy to plug in any ongoing campaign. All of these adventures try to follow our main guideline: a well balanced mix of combat and roleplaying, detailed NPCs and dangerous foes. These are classic adventures which do not want to be always original, but, I think, very funny and playable. All the adventures are supported by our gorgeous cartography and two of them have gained a battlemaps product to support them: that is, you get an adventure and a set of map to play with.
Seven Avengers Saga: This is our campaign setting, which is not actually a campaign setting but a chain of adventures that give a glimpse of a world you can expand and customize. Of course, some sourcebooks do exist, (upon request of the players) but our focus are the adventures which started with the first PDF D20 ever sold: The Legend Of The Steel General and continued with the shady Twenty Sides of the Evil and will continue soon (we are switching it to 3.5) with Warriors of Dream. All of these are solid and big adventures set in a low-magic world, Arthad, where you can count the wizards on your fingertips and where the magic items are few and legendary. It is a epic world where a war between the gods, before the world was born, left an heritage of death and destruction for the humankind. It is a world without demihumans but with human races with strong traits: Drakand barbarians who wear bone armors and the Nath, a rogue race who live for the espionage, to name few of them.
Other Products: Currently only one product has been published in this line: Dark Ladies, Villainesses in RPGs. It was written by Andrew Hind, a renowned freelance writer, and features 17 detailed villainesses (along with gorgeous artwork by Alessandro Cioffi) to plug in your games. Andrew have just completed his second work with Øone, Dark Masters, which will be released in May (see below).
Tell us at length about your most recent project (upcoming or just
released).
The next release will be SKIRMISH TILES, fiendish grounds, a 30-tiles set created for miniature games but well adaptable to any fantasy role playing game. These are standard 5x8 inches tiles, that allow you to build a whole battleground for your miniatures.
These tiles maintain all of the features of the maps produced by Øone: the quality of the details, created object by object with cutting edge 3d programs and rendered with superb lighting effects. This product is due on April 19.
The next month will see the release of Dark Masters, a sourcebook written by Andrew Hind, which deals with gods as foes and villains and it is not, as you may think, an epic level product. It is a highly adaptable product with gods (or would be gods) for all levels of play. Andrew wrote a mini scenario for each of these foes and you can plug and play these scenarios straight in your campaigns. Of course the sourcebook come with stunning artwork by Daniele Bigliardo (a talented and famous comic book illustrator, penciler, among the other things, of Dylan Dog comic books) and with the top-notch maps form Øone.
What is your main target audience?
As said, our best seller product are the battlemaps of the Master Accessories line, which are for sure the most appreciated product by Øone. So, our audience are gamers who like play with miniatures (playing RPGs or miniature games) and gamers who like to deploy before their players a lifelike vision of what they see. Also our target audience are gamers who like well written and good looking adventures, who we satisfy with our Master Adventures series. Last but not least I hope Øone fills a good niche with our Seven Avengers Saga, who give a good low-magic settings and a long and epic campaign to the players who do not like single shot adventures.
What is the main thing about your company that makes you most proud?
Well, as you may know Øone Games was the firs company to ever sell a D20 PDF product (The Legend of the Steel General). This was a good start but we are proud to have maintained a good quality of product since Øone was born. We are also proud to have published truly innovative product such as Customizable Battlemaps dungeon rooms vol.I and Dangerous Dungeons, Goblins' Lairs. Customizable Battlemaps combine the standard versatility of PDF products with the innovative technology of programming on PDFs. These two products witness we are an old PDF company with kicking ideas, and this is just the beginning.
Where do you see your company one year from now?
We are looking for a partnership to bring in print form our products, we had contacts with great names of the gaming industry to concretize this idea. Nonetheless we strongly believe into the future of PDF market and will continue steadily to supply quality PDF products to our gamers looking to best suit the market needs.
0one's website is at http://www.0onegames.com
Give us an overview of your product lines.
Currently Øone Games produce four product lines: Master Adventures, Master Accessories, Seven Avengers and Other products.
Master Accessories: this is our best selling line of products, counting now 11 titles. The Master Accessories line features mainly maps, wonderful maps to use with roleplaying games or miniature games. Our cartography is largely appreciated (in Italy, our home country the battlemaps are published inside DRAGON magazine, Italian edition, of course, licensed by Paizo and published by Nexus). The best selling Master Accessories product are our battlemaps. They are basically single rooms shown in a top down perspective, featuring stunning detail and lighting effects you can print on a single sheet of paper, put on the game table, throw on some miniatures and play. The battlemaps are so detailed you can even build an adventure drawing inspiration from what you see on the map. Our battlemaps are top-notch (if you don't believe me download them from our website and compare with the tiles of Wotc!).
Some product, in this line deserve a mention for originality: Dangerous Dungeons, Goblins' Lairs and Customizable Battlemaps, dungeon rooms vol. I. These products go beyond the simple print-n-play pdf: they allow the user to customize the maps and make them suitable for their own games. Customizable Battlemaps, dungeon rooms vol. I is very different from a drawing program because it allow a degree of customization on a given room: no draw, no waste time, just customize your dungeon room.
The SKIRMISH TILES are also a good product, the gamers use them for miniature games since we give a plan view of the room there, plus they are tileable.
Master Adventures: The Master Adventures series is a line of generic adventures easy to plug in any ongoing campaign. All of these adventures try to follow our main guideline: a well balanced mix of combat and roleplaying, detailed NPCs and dangerous foes. These are classic adventures which do not want to be always original, but, I think, very funny and playable. All the adventures are supported by our gorgeous cartography and two of them have gained a battlemaps product to support them: that is, you get an adventure and a set of map to play with.
Seven Avengers Saga: This is our campaign setting, which is not actually a campaign setting but a chain of adventures that give a glimpse of a world you can expand and customize. Of course, some sourcebooks do exist, (upon request of the players) but our focus are the adventures which started with the first PDF D20 ever sold: The Legend Of The Steel General and continued with the shady Twenty Sides of the Evil and will continue soon (we are switching it to 3.5) with Warriors of Dream. All of these are solid and big adventures set in a low-magic world, Arthad, where you can count the wizards on your fingertips and where the magic items are few and legendary. It is a epic world where a war between the gods, before the world was born, left an heritage of death and destruction for the humankind. It is a world without demihumans but with human races with strong traits: Drakand barbarians who wear bone armors and the Nath, a rogue race who live for the espionage, to name few of them.
Other Products: Currently only one product has been published in this line: Dark Ladies, Villainesses in RPGs. It was written by Andrew Hind, a renowned freelance writer, and features 17 detailed villainesses (along with gorgeous artwork by Alessandro Cioffi) to plug in your games. Andrew have just completed his second work with Øone, Dark Masters, which will be released in May (see below).
Tell us at length about your most recent project (upcoming or just
released).
The next release will be SKIRMISH TILES, fiendish grounds, a 30-tiles set created for miniature games but well adaptable to any fantasy role playing game. These are standard 5x8 inches tiles, that allow you to build a whole battleground for your miniatures.
These tiles maintain all of the features of the maps produced by Øone: the quality of the details, created object by object with cutting edge 3d programs and rendered with superb lighting effects. This product is due on April 19.
The next month will see the release of Dark Masters, a sourcebook written by Andrew Hind, which deals with gods as foes and villains and it is not, as you may think, an epic level product. It is a highly adaptable product with gods (or would be gods) for all levels of play. Andrew wrote a mini scenario for each of these foes and you can plug and play these scenarios straight in your campaigns. Of course the sourcebook come with stunning artwork by Daniele Bigliardo (a talented and famous comic book illustrator, penciler, among the other things, of Dylan Dog comic books) and with the top-notch maps form Øone.
What is your main target audience?
As said, our best seller product are the battlemaps of the Master Accessories line, which are for sure the most appreciated product by Øone. So, our audience are gamers who like play with miniatures (playing RPGs or miniature games) and gamers who like to deploy before their players a lifelike vision of what they see. Also our target audience are gamers who like well written and good looking adventures, who we satisfy with our Master Adventures series. Last but not least I hope Øone fills a good niche with our Seven Avengers Saga, who give a good low-magic settings and a long and epic campaign to the players who do not like single shot adventures.
What is the main thing about your company that makes you most proud?
Well, as you may know Øone Games was the firs company to ever sell a D20 PDF product (The Legend of the Steel General). This was a good start but we are proud to have maintained a good quality of product since Øone was born. We are also proud to have published truly innovative product such as Customizable Battlemaps dungeon rooms vol.I and Dangerous Dungeons, Goblins' Lairs. Customizable Battlemaps combine the standard versatility of PDF products with the innovative technology of programming on PDFs. These two products witness we are an old PDF company with kicking ideas, and this is just the beginning.
Where do you see your company one year from now?
We are looking for a partnership to bring in print form our products, we had contacts with great names of the gaming industry to concretize this idea. Nonetheless we strongly believe into the future of PDF market and will continue steadily to supply quality PDF products to our gamers looking to best suit the market needs.
0one's website is at http://www.0onegames.com
