Severed Heads and Broken Blades: Critical Hits and Fumbles for D&D 5E and Pathfinder

The road goes ever on and on, but sometimes it gets muddy and crowded
6 months ago – Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 10:44:18 PM

The last of the print rewards went into the mail today! I apologize for keeping everyone waiting for this long, but I am still figuring out how to balance working at a real job for the first time in a while with my overhanging obligations from Ramen Sandwich Press (which I treated as my full-time job for as long as I could, until I reached the point at which I could literally no longer afford to do so). The PDFs went out back in September, so unless I have missed anyone from the print reward list, we can wrap up this campaign and move forward. If I have, somehow, missed you, please let me know.

Otherwise, I wish all of you the happiest of holiday seasons, and I intend that you will hear from me again sometime next year. I just don't know exactly when that will be. I am still trying to find my way forward; I have friends (including fellow writers) telling me that there is no reason why I can't balance a day job with writing productively. And that is true, because most writers do that. However, I am trying to balance a day job with writing and running a small press, which is an order of magnitude more difficult than just the day job and writing stuff by themselves.

I am crossing this campaign off of my to-do list, but now I have to finish up my work on GMT Games' Away Team (I'm late, and it pisses me off no end that I've fallen behind schedule). Then I have some work to finish up for another publisher, on a project that I probably should not discuss in public yet. Once that is out of the way, I can start work on my next book, which will bring the formula that I used in Book of Chance Meetings to villages and towns. Once the manuscript is close to ready for layout, I'll get the Kickstarter campaign ready and ping you all.

To make things more complicated, the line through all of those points runs through Los Angeles Comic Con, where Ramen Sandwich Press will have a small press table in the exhibit hall. I'm very much looking forward to it, as it looks like tabletop gaming is becoming a substantial part of these general fan conventions. But it's by far the largest show we have ever done and the preparations have been daunting. If you're going to be at the con, please stop by!

And of course, you can keep up with Ramen Sandwich Press through my Substack blog. I won't be blogging on the Ramen Sandwich website anymore — to be perfectly honest about it, Substack's monetization mechanisms probably constitute my last real chance to generate any sort of income through writing about the gaming hobby and industry, plus other nerdy things. I plan to put up a paywall within the next few months, but posts that directly discuss Ramen Sandwich Press will always be free. Subscribe, and you'll get emails notifying you when I post.

Outgoing Mail
7 months ago – Sun, Oct 08, 2023 at 06:41:18 PM

Just a quick update to offer some reassurance and excuses.

Shipping out print rewards will finally begin tomorrow, when most of the softcover copies will go into the mail. The rest of the reward copies and print add-ons will follow as soon as I can manage. Unfortunately, balancing a day job with writing and managing Ramen Sandwich Press is a challenge with which I am still coming to grips, and the tempting offer of extra hours over the last few weeks has not made it easier.

I hope that this is not a permanent condition, and that I can eventually get back to writing and self-publishing full-time. Whether or not I can do so depends, of course, on whether or not I can earn full-time money from said writing and self-publishing, and that is up to the whims of the marketplace as much as it is up to me.

In the meantime, I ask again that as many of you as care to do so check out and subscribe to my Substack blog, where I have been posting about playing and publishing games for the last month or so. Subscriptions are free (although I will add a paywall later for those who want the full experience) and pumping up my subscriber base makes me look good. In my next post, which goes live in a couple of days, I suck up to Monte Cook (who also blogs on Substack)!

Commence the electrons!
9 months ago – Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 08:06:44 PM

Well, that was a relief: The softcovers of Severed Heads and Broken Blades finally arrived from the printer, and not a day too soon:

Of course, it is now also the cusp of Labor Day weekend and I will be setting up at Gateway Con tomorrow. So I can't really start shipping print copies in earnest until next week. However, I'll have the books with me at the con, so if anyone to whom I owe a print copy is going to Gateway, you can stop by the Ramen Sandwich Press table in the dealers room and pick up yours.

This also means that there's no point in holding back on the PDF copies. As soon as I sign off here, I will have Backerkit start distribution of PDF copies of Severed Heads and Broken Blades, and I might as well send out the PDF add-ons as well.

So let's get to it — but not before I remind you that my blog "I Think We've Been Playing It Wrong" is now on Substack. I moved it there to try to get more eyeballs on it; eventually I hope to put some of the more extensive content behind a paywall and gin up some support for my writing, both gaming-related and not. Even after the paywall goes up, about half of the posts will remain free and public. Subscribing will cost you no more than the annoyance of an email arriving whenever I post.

Thanks again!

Time flies when you're having fun, but also when you're getting old
9 months ago – Mon, Aug 28, 2023 at 11:50:51 AM

Since when is it almost the end of August? When did this happen? How is it that summer is very nearly over?

The one thing that doesn't perplex me right now is that I owe you a book. Some of you, I owe more than one book. As I noted in my last update, we had an unexpected hang-up in getting synced with our printer. We did sort it out, although it meant giving up on publishing Severed Heads and Broken Blades in portrait orientation instead of landscape. Well, the hardcover versions arrived last week:

However, the softcover copies are still on their way, and I darned well hope they arrive before Gateway Con kicks off on Friday. As is my habit, I would prefer to have everything in hand before I start shipping; it's just easier for me to keep things organized that way. At the very least, it looks like I'll be able to start shipping rewards next week, after the convention. If you're going to be at Gateway and I owe you a print copy, please stop by the Ramen Sandwich Press table in the dealers room and pick it up! It would save you waiting on delivery and it would save me a few bucks in postage — which, for me, is not easily dismissed these days.

As I have already noted, our sales outside of crowdfunding and conventions have been very weak, mostly because our signal continues to get lost amid all the noise that's out there in marketplace. I plan to work the convention circuit harder in the coming months to raise our profile and gin up some sales. We recently put down a deposit on a small press table at LA Comic Con in December, and I'm excited about selling there. I have also moved my blog from our website to Substack, where, I hope, I will not only get more eyeballs on it but some subscription revenue once I put up the paywall. With that in mind, please have a look at "I Think We've Been Playing It Wrong" and subscribe, if you like. It's all free at the moment and many posts will remain free even after the paywall goes up; free posts will include Ramen Sandwich Press announcements, design diary-type stuff, amusing curiosities and my quick reacts to gaming-related news. Substack posts are delivered newsletter-style, as emails, but feel free to mark them as spam if you don't like the clutter; just having you on the subscriber rolls makes me look good. Hey, Monte Cook has 3,000 subscribers to his Substack, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

One last bit of news: If you chose a softcover copy as a reward, you're getting a sweet discount after all! If you recall, I had originally thought to price Severed Heads and Broken Blades at $9.99, meaning that you got no pre-sale discount, only free shipping as a benefit. However, I have been convinced to price it at $14.99, and that will be the cover price once it goes on sale to the public. You got a bargain for your $10 pledge, and that actually pleases me no end.

Thank you again for support! We'll tie a bow on this campaign and finish it up soon.

There's a first time for everything...
9 months ago – Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 05:51:55 PM

... and that's not always a good thing. We have run almost 20 campaigns in the last 7 years, and this is the first time I can recall the test prints giving us any grief. But it seems that our printer was unable to come to grips with printing Severed Heads and Broken Blades in landscape orientation. So we decided to re-do the book in good old-fashioned portrait mode rather than spend any more time trying to tweak the layout until it came out just right in landscape. August won't last forever.

This may mean that one column of the tables will have uncomfortable patches of white space, but we'll just have to live with that. On the positive side, it may mean a bit less flipping back and forth, as we may be able to fit more lines on each page. At this point, I myself am no more sure than you as to how it will look. But we'll find out together shortly!