Neil’s Year in Review (2015)

Neil here.

It seems that I’m often so busy with the day-to-day projects that I forget to stop and reflect about what we have accomplished over the year. My annual pilgrimage to Germany is one of the times to do this.

Most of you know that Moon Design Publications is a distributed company. I live in the West Coast of America, Rick works out nearer the Great Lakes, and Jeff is in far-away Berlin. Apart from the GenCon convention, EternalCon is usually the only time we get to gather in person and plan for next year.

We spent time doing our annual review and planning for next year, and I thought I would share some of our notes and accomplishments. I’m confident in stating that this was the busiest year in the history of published Glorantha!

So what happened last year? Let’s take a look….

Behold the Guide to Glorantha!

Well the big news is that we shipped the Guide to Glorantha, all 800 pages and 13.6 pounds of it. It has been shipped to over 30 countries and six continents. We sent out the Argan Argar Atlas, many, many maps. and produced some rare collectibles, like the Greganth Atlas and the Roots of Glorantha. The support for the Kickstarter was over-whelming, and forced Jeff to more than double the expected size of the book.

Unfortunately, it was exhausting. We had never done fulfillment to that level, and learned that shipping such a massive tome across the world is not a job for the meek, especially with the nightmare of international shipping. It took a while for a small company like ours to recover, but we’ve learned so much we will be able to manage it better.

We started another Kickstarter – 13th Age in Glorantha

We partnered with some old-time Gloranthans – Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet of Fire Opal Media – to show off the mythic wonder of Glorantha to the d20 crowd. The rule book is well underway and thanks to the Kickstarter we will have a Gloranthan book – the Glorantha Source Book – that will be useful for gamers who play 13th Age, HeroQuest, and RuneQuest.

Rob and Jonathan are working away on it as I write this. With trips to Germany, Canada, and planned ones to Fargo I haven’t had a chance to do a second playtest, but I’m really looking forward to see what magic they have concocted.

We re-released an out-of-print Classic and started a new fiction line

We updated and released an annotated classic, King of Sartar, and did it in hardcover. No more will you worry about destroying your purple book when Jeff grabs it to show of a specific section of history or myth. The binding can handle it.

We had great support through pre-orders, were able to show off a few at EternalCon, and I’ve sent the first set of orders for the printers to ship out. We want this to be the first of a new line of Gloranthan fiction, including stories most of you have never seen.

If you have a chance to come to GenCon this year, I’m sure that both Greg and Jeff will be happy to sign it for you. If not, you can catch Jeff at the European cons he attends.

We released a Web-comic – Prince of Sartar

Thanks to Kalin, one of our new artists, we began telling the story of Argrath, Jar-eel, and Harrek on a weekly basis. As a web-comic, it has been a great opportunity to introduce the world we care so much about to an expanded audience.

If you haven’t seen it, you are missing something really special. Reading the comments are a treat as well, especially when the Glorantha presented isn’t always what people expect. I’ll save the spoilers until you read the comic, right Belintar?

We started a Podcast – Tales of Mythic Adventure

Jeff joined a long-time Gloranthan writer – Michael “MOB” O’Brien have started a new podcast – Tales of Mythic Adventure. Although it won’t focus exclusively on Glorantha, we do hope that it will give more exposure to other gamers.

We are already five episodes into the first season, with a lot more in the works. So far, we have had special guests like Ken Rolston, David Dunham, and Rob Heinsoo, all with a link to Glorantha’s past and also to its future.

You can check out the podcast page here. If you like it, and we sure hope you do, please leave a review on iTunes or comment on the specific podcast pages.

We released a new version of HeroQuest – just for Glorantha

HeroQuest Glorantha takes our HeroQuest 2 rules system and brings it back in focus on Greg Stafford’s Mythic World. We see how the rules can work with sorcery, shamanism, and gives a strong take on how it is used with divine cults.

The book is at the printers as I write this, and will soon be shipped across the globe. Most importantly, it is the key book that will let us produce more gaming supplements. I can’t wait to get my hands on it, and on Monday I’m actually going to visit the printers as I drive from Minneapolis to Fargo.

This is another book printed in color, something we want to continue for the major products. You can see our product quality continue to improve from the first books to what we are printing now.

We got the Stafford Library back in Print!

Rick worked his InDesign magic and we have done two things; first, get all the Stafford Library PDFs up on our website; and second, enabled people to print out their own copies through Lulu.

Check out our Stafford Library storefront.

We proved we have the best fans in gaming!

Maybe I am a bit biased about this, but I truly believe it. You have helped us keep Glorantha alive, following it during the down times and the good times. The support of other game worlds and game systems has faltered, but you keep coming back and energizing us.

We have seen HeroQuest translated in German (and some lucky people have the Finnish version), and RuneQuest into both German and French.

Thank you again, and please comment on the project you liked the most.