August 6, 2003
Hi. I
thought that it was time to break down the fourth wall and talk to you guys,
man-to-gender-designation-of-your-personal-choice.
First of all, thanks for being here and reading the site. I hope that you're getting what you want out of it; I've tried my best to be eclectic and inclusive in what I post here. A little bit of everything, that's my motto. Well, actually my motto is 'Just because an idea is Just Plain Wrong doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be written up', but you get the drift.
Second, I think that it's time to come down to brass
tacks, speak truth to power, or whatever the phrase is these days: we're in a
bit of a bind. By 'we' I mean
'everybody who has a crazy love for In Nomine', and by 'a bit of
a bind' I mean 'the books aren't coming along all that fast lately'. There almost certainly won't be a new
supplement this year, and if a new one's looming on the horizon for next year,
I haven't heard of it.
This
isn't exactly a surprise to anyone, of course: the game has a pretty static
level of interest in it, and frankly a less patient and tenacious publisher
than Steve Jackson might very well have dropped it completely by now. The man's here to make a living, same as the
rest of us, and publishing books isn't exactly cheap. If they sold better, he'd publish more of them - because Mr.
Jackson's a good RPG publisher, after all.
Which leads us to third. I've had a couple people remark to me from time to time that I
should have a tip jar on this site.
Now, I'm not entirely certain of the legalities of having one, seeing as
just about everything on here draws on copyrighted material that I have been
graciously permitted to base my own work off of... but it doesn't matter,
because I wouldn't put a tip jar up even if it was. I wouldn't feel right about it - and I'm not
exactly hurting for cash. We'll also
put to one side the hubris involved.
However, should somebody actually want to show his
or her appreciation for the stuff on this site, there's an easy enough answer: go
buy the books. That link will take
you directly to the In Nomine section of SJG's online store;
there you'll be able to purchase just about everything IN-related currently
available. This is a completely
voluntary recommendation on my part; I get no compensation for it, and wouldn't
take it if offered. Or go to your
friendly local gaming store and buy the books.
If you've already got them all, go buy one and give it to a friend (or a
reviewer), or make it a prize in the next convention game that you run (you're
all running announced games at your favorite cons, right?), or donate it to a
charity, or anything else reasonable.
Now, I have noted the monstrous egotism involved in
my assuming that people might be willing to shell out $20+ just because I said
so; it's true that I am an egotist, but hopefully a well-adjusted
one. There are other (free) things that
you can do to show whatever hypothetical appreciation you might feel.
·
Start
your own website. I'd really appreciate
that, actually; my Need for new material is just as bad as anyone else's.
·
Join
the In Nomine mailing list.
The way to do that is here, for
those not already on it.
·
Use
the above two events as a reason to write, write, write.
·
Submit
the best of what you write to Pyramid
- something that I should do more, myself, but I'm too egotistical to want to
wait to see them in electronic form.
The general guidelines for that are here: Pyramid's
guidelines are here and
In Nomine's specific ones are here.
·
Run
convention games.
·
If
you haven't started a regular game, do so.
·
Win
the lottery and guarantee costs for minimum print runs of new books (this would
be one of those last resort kind of things, mind you).
And if you don't particularly feel any sort of
appreciation - which is, by the way, perfectly fine - but you love this game as
much as I do, why not do the above anyway?
And if you already do all of this, then thank you -
and, again, another 'thank you' for everyone who has read and hopefully enjoyed
what I've made available on this site.