I left late last night, as dinner took longer than I anticipated to prepare and I decided to eat before going to the store with my mother-in-law; I had to call a favor from a friend to pick up my wife at work, as the truck is still not back, but expected to be ready tonight or tomorrow. Meanwhile, my wife has been stacking tasks on my list such that I’m trying to juggle them, and will probably be leaving as soon as I’ve posted this to get some elective surgery done on her new Saturn: there’s a rattle in the rear speakers, and she wants them replaced.

On the positive front, I’ve a new product announcement. This of course means new work for me–but as it turns out, not so much new work as it sounds. Our president has been pushing for an idea along these lines for a while, and we’ve been arguing about how it should be done, but we think we’ve come close enough to a plan that we can say we’re going to do it.

Up to now, we’ve maintained a commitment to doing substantial world books, books containing seven worlds, nine playable scenarios. These are good, and we will continue to produce these. However, the demand for Multiverser worlds outstrips our ability to put these quality volumes on the shelves. We’ve thus decided additionally to publish shorter booklets. These will contain three worlds each; the worlds will be thematically related. The first will probably be three horror worlds, including the Haunted House we have run at conventions, the Slasher Summer Camp that has appeared a couple times, and Poe’s Cask of Amontilado which I ran as one of my first worlds and occasionally since then. We are also looking at a set that will include space worlds such as Starship Destiny, one that will have our Tropical Island and Mountaintop scenarios, and maybe one that will have some worlds Kyler started which are populated by decisively non-human indigs; the worlds which will go with these have been started in one way or another, so we’re confident that we can get them moving.

The advantages of course are that we can get three worlds out a lot faster than seven, particularly since none will be the massive gather worlds that are the pillars of the Books of Worlds, none will have contingent scenarios, and none will be twin scenarios. We also expect these to have a lower price tag than a world book, although pricing has not yet been examined. This should allow us to increase the selection and range of worlds in print more quickly, and so serve our fans better.

Your thoughts and comments are always welcome; at the present time we are not considering including contributions from outside the company, primarily for financial and bookkeeping reasons.

–M. J. Young