New company: James Mishler Games

[bayonetbrant]

I've known Mish for a looooong time (like, 1993 or so) and he does great work.

From his announcement

what's coming

First and foremost, to begin with we will offer fantasy products statted for both Castles & Crusades and Labyrinth Lord. Yes, dual-statted products! We have licenses from both Troll Lord Games and Goblinoid Games to publish our products in both formats in a single product. The amount of space required to dual-stat the books is minimal; we will not publish one version in C&C and another in LL, all books will be dual-statted. We figure that between the two systems, pretty much all major Old School systems and their varients are well covered, and can readily be adapted to their use.

Our major offering is a magazine, the Hercynian Grimoire, to be published every week or every other week, as time and sales permit. The Hercynian Grimoire includes articles dealing with Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasures, the Underworld & Wilderness, and Gods & Demi-Gods. Each issue will contain 20 to 40 pages of content in addition to the various licenses and other needful pages and be priced accordingly.

We plan numerous smaller offerings of two to 10 pages, each dealing with a single subject or offering a single table or chart of interesting and useful items. These might take the form of a simple essay, a d6, d66, d100, or even d666 chart, or other form for a self-contained generic item.

We have our own campaign setting, the Olden Lands, to be detailed in the Chronicles of Mhoriedh series of products. The Olden Lands is a world of High and Low Fantasy, Swords & Sorcery and Historical Adventure, inspired primarily by the works of Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, JRR Tolkien, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, Lin Carter, Michael Moorcock, David Eddings, Robert Adams, David Gemmell, George RR Martin, Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, Bob Bledsaw, and Tom Moldvay. It is in this milieu that we will present all our fantasy products, most especially our series of adventures and gazetteers.

I should also note that I use "we" not merely as a corporate construct, but in truth and fact, for in this endeavor I am joined by my lovely wife and talented writing partner, Jodi Moran-Mishler. She is not, sad to say, a gamer, but she has played from time to time, and her interest in myths, legends, monsters, and magic go back to her early childhood. She is not merely my writing partner, she is my muse. I am sometimes relieved that she is not a gamer, as her ability to conjure up creatures and situations deadly and evil is diabolical. Her knowledge and creativity will come into good use in future developments.

That's the long of it.

how he got to this point

A number of things brought us to this moment. First, I've finally gotten the itch to write again. My previous experience with Adventure Games Publishing and the associated events rather burned me on all that. But time heals most wounds, and for some time now, I've been itching to write, as those who have followed my personal blog are aware.

Second, right now I have plenty of time on my hands. Too much time, and too little money, as I have been unable to find a job for more than four months. So, damn the torpedoes, once more unto the breach, and all that! I'm turning my itch to write into something that can hopefully bring in a little cash. I have no illusions as to the size of the market; but right now any money is better than no money at all.

And so I have started James Mishler Games for both personal and mercenary reasons. It is what it is, and it will be what it will be.

What it is, essentially, is a publishing label, more or less, for a line of PDF products. What it is not, is that it is not a print product company. One lesson I learned with the AGP debacle is that print publishing, at least at the size of AGP or JMG, is a sure fire way to lose your shirt. The margins are so fine, even at essentially what was print-on-demand, that one single mistake turns a profitable product into a major loss. So I have no plans to ever turn JMG into a regular print company. In the list of things to be considered down the line, that one will be revisited in two years time, if we are still around then.

For now, we will have PDFs available on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. If sales warrant, we'll look into expanding into other PDF venues. Right now, our PDFs are all being made with very simple, very cheap software. In order to be able to offer POD options on DTRPG/RPGNow, Lulu, and other such venues, we have to use the full Adobe Photoshop system, which costs $600, and is not remotely within our range at this point. Maybe down the road. If and only if sales seem to warrant, we will eventually acquire that package and start making our larger products available in POD through DTRPG/RPGNow, Lulu, and such. That is not something to be considered, however, for at least six months.

James does good work - if you're an RPG'er, give him a little support when you get a chance.

[Martok]

Thanks for the heads-up brant.  Will keep an eye out for his stuff.