Necromancer Games shutting down next year.(UPDATE post 93)

[PatrickLawinger]

Folks, I think some of Clark's honest musings on the Necromancer Boards have lead to a bit of overreaction.

We have a year+ worth of books in production right now. This means that Necro is planning to have books coming out through to the beginning of '08.

Fans get upset when we don't announce or talk about things early enough, but when someone decides to post some honest opinions about the future, they get "interpreted" and the "news" runs away in its own direction.

History of the gaming industry, buying cycles, etc. indicate there will be a 4th edition sometime within the next few years, but the question remains when will it be and what will it be? Necro does not have other licensed systems to fall back on, we are unabashedly an adventure/fantasy d20/DnD-related company. When 4th edition is announced, what its relation to the OGL and any trademark license might be, etc. Bill and Clark will be able to make better and more informed decisions about the future. Right now we believe we have enough products in the pipeline to take us up to the point of some sort of announcement about 4e (what, where, when, OGL, etc.). Yeah, Bill and Clark are very busy, but frankly, they love this stuff so much that the worst I see right now is a bit of a slow down in production so that a bit more time can be spent on promotion, etc.

Patrick

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Unfotunately, Necromancer got stuck relying on Kenzer for their distribution. Yeah, remember Kenzer, the company whose new stuff stopped appearing in your FLGS years ago? I guess the lead-poisoned chimpanzees (KODT fans know who I'm talkin about!) in charge of their distribution finally gave up the ghost.

I think what Clark meant is that the Kenzer and Company brand just didn't produce the results we all hoped for, not that he thinks we failed to get books or information to the distributors as we should have.

The layout, printing and warehousing services that we provide for the Necromancer books are solid. In fact, we were able to significantly reduce their production costs, which allowed the release of adventures that otherwise might never have seen the light of day, or that might have been published at a loss.

Our HackMaster, D&D: Kingdoms of Kalamar, Knights of the Dinner Table and other RPG, board game and card game lines are handled by all of the major RPG distributors, and most of the minor ones - and we solicit Necromancer products exactly as we do with our own in-house product. We're not Necromancer's marketing or advertising company, of course, but we do the best we can to make sure the distributors know about the KenzerCo/Necromancer releases!

Unfortunately, lately I've been hearing more and more horror stories of sales reps being completely ignorant (intentionally or not) about what their own employer supplies from us game manufacturers. Too many reps prefer to push big name/fast selling products (such as D&D minis) to retailers and ignore the small stuff, since their commission will be much greater. Whenever we get details of a specific incident, we jump on it immediately, but we only hear about them when customers or stores tell us.

Also, the KenzerCo fans simply didn't flock to the Necromancer books as much as we expected. We pulled back on our RPG release schedule over the last year or so, releasing primarily The Great Space Race (one of Games Magazine's Top 100 board games of the year, by the way) and Tech Support card game. We had hoped that the Necromancer books would help fill the RPG void while our upcoming products (the Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier western RPG leathered hardcover, the Kingdoms of Kalamar regional supplement "Svimohzia: the Ancient Isle" hardcover, HackMaster adventures like "Dead Gawd's Hand" and "Lost Order") came into the pipeline.

I'm very hopeful that Necromancer will continue to release the 10 or so more projects we have planned together – and since it may be a year or more before the last of these sees print, you won't be seeing the release schedule dry up anytime soon. Still, no matter what happens, I don't think you've heard the last of Necromancer Games!

 

[Zulgyan]

Necro - Best D&D 3E publisher ever.

 

[Nightfall]

*agrees with Zug*

Btw Mark I don't blame you (or Kenzer Company either for that matter) so much as I blame White Wolf for being stupid. Honestly, WW had/has a gold mine with Necromancer Games but they have flittered it away by saying "Oh lookie! We are soo cool! We must keep our coolness by being so darn gothy and edgy!"

 

[Maggan]

IStill, no matter what happens, I don't think you've heard the last of Necromancer Games!

That was a classy post. I was afraid of an intercompany shoutfest, and your reply put my fears to rest.

Now I'll just buy a few of your books to show appreciation ... no, wait, I already bought them all! Bummer

/M

 

[Maggan]

Honestly, WW had/has a gold mine with Necromancer Games but they have flittered it away by saying "Oh lookie! We are soo cool! We must keep our coolness by being so darn gothy and edgy!"

I'd rather say that if WW had a gold mine with Necro, then they have a million gold mines after teaming up with the EVE Online gang.

From an economic standpoint, not focussing their dollars on the computer deal would be stupid. Immensly stupid.

/M

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

This is a real shame and I'm truly sorry to hear it. NG was my favourite 3rd party publisher by far. In fact, they were pretty much the only one I would buy from besides WotC. I really loved their "3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition Feel" style and I have most of the adventures.

I hope they come back in some incarnation if they do indeed close their doors.

 

[Belen]

I am not sure Mark. I cannot list a single game store in my area that carries Kenzer products. I have to tell stores that Necro stuff is not associated with Kalamar in order for them to stock it.

 

[Nightfall]

Maggan,

So far I've yet to see, other than maybe World of Warcraft, any MMoRPG pay off in any significant fashion.

WW joint stuff with EVE online is just one of the things I had an issue with. The very major issue to me is the fact they basically shelved d20 in favor of NWoD which to me is silly. Since Exalted has done way better and been more widely used. They should have just stuck with Exalted and moved along with d20.

 

[Twowolves]

Since 3rd ed hit the stores, I've lived in Texas, Maryland, and Tennessee, and have hit dozens of hobby stores in each area and know what they had on the shelf and when. As soon as Kenzer took over distribution for Necromancer Games, they disappeared from the shelves. I thought "Vampires and Liches" had been cancelled, and I was waiting eagerly for it for a long long time. Stores that carried every single NG release suddenly had none, and it was timed precisely to the point that Kenzer took over distribution.

I'm not saying it's anyone's fault, but from where I stand, it's pretty telling emperical evidence of a problem with getting product to interested and eager buyers (like myself).