A Cubicle with a View
Standby...energise!
At the beginning of June we moved into the Rebellion HQ in Oxford. The Rebellion Group encompasses electronic games, comics and fiction publishing and other activities, so we’ve got an eclectic mix of new neighbours, which is great. It should hopefully lead to a host of new opportunities for us, so watch this space for future developments.
The move went pretty smoothly, but did make me wish that someone could just beam us there...
The REAL move
We also changed our warehousing, fulfilment and sales set-up, moving to PSI (the company that does this for Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, amongst others). PSI brings a wealth of experience and expertise and we’re excited by what we can achieve with them.
Of course, this meant that we needed to move our stock.
34,000lbs of games thus set off to Georgia, and luckily managed to evade the bandits who (my ego and paranoia tell me) were waiting for just such an opportunity. I thought that moving my game collection was bad, although this time there was no-one to tell me that I had too much stuff.
Deep thought
We’ve re-organised internally, in order to focus better on the areas we are trying to develop. Angus and I have been working full-time on Cubicle 7 for just over a year and took the opportunity to take a long hard look at life, the universe and everything (what’s been going well, what areas need improvement and where we want to be in another year’s time). In a nutshell, I’ll be running the production studio and leading on our roleplaying lines, while Angus looks after promotion, sales and board and card game development. It’s a refinement of how we have been working rather than wholesale change, but we recognised that we need to be more focussed in order to make sure that things get done on time.
New blood
Part of the restructure has meant creating new posts and bringing more people onboard in the production studio. Sarah Newton (author of Mindjammer and co-author of Legends of Anglerre) has joined as Programme Manager, looking after our Call of Cthulhu, Legends of Anglerre, Qin, other translated games, Starblazer Adventures and Victoriana lines. John Hodgson (fantastic illustrator – he did out Cthulhu Britannica covers and is working on The One Ring art) has joined as Art Director.
Both these appointments are great news for us, and they have already had a wonderful impact on our productivity as a company.
In other news
I’m wrapping up The Laundry RPG – our Lovecraft/espionage/computer geek game based on the Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross – and am terribly excited about it all! Gareth Hanrahan, Jason Durall and John Snead have done a fantastic job with this one.
Legends of Anglerre will be back from the printers soon – another eagerly-awaited title that has excited a lot of people.
We’ve also got The One Ring (our Lord of the Rings game) in the second phase of playtest, Doctor Who supplements in ongoing development (Aliens and Creatures is now out in PDF on Drivethru/RPGNow) as well as supplements in the works for all of our other lines.
Fantastic books keep coming from our publishing partners. Wild Talents is getting excellent support from Arc Dream in the form of The Kerberos Club, This Favored Land, Grim War and eCollapse. The much-talked-about Icons, from Adamant Entertainment, hits shelves in July. Savage Worlds is getting a lot of attention with Savage Suzerain, Dogs of Hades and Noir Knights from Savage Mojo and Triple Ace Games’ Daring Tales of Adventure range, Hellfrost (new book coming soon) Sundered Skies and more. The post-apocalyptic Atomic Highway has been well-received – a supplement, Irradiated Freaks, is out soon. There’s too much for a comprehensive list here, but I’ll come back to them in the future.
Getting involved
As you can see, there’s quite a bit going on that I wanted to bring you up to speed with. Now, on with the real meat of this column – how things work, and getting involved in making games.
Developing your own game and getting it published is one method of entry into RPG work, enormously fulfilling and giving you complete creative control, but it’s a huge time investment and requires a strong all-round set of skills. Harnessing your enthusiasm for an existing game bypasses that development stage and lets you focus on presenting your strongest points to people who might hire you.
The first step is getting your head around the ‘average’ way the game is presented and played. Online forum can help, talking to people at conventions, taking an objective look at how the setting is portrayed in the game line. It can be easy to focus too much on your vision of the game and head off in a direction that, while cool, isn’t what anyone else is looking for.
Analysis of the published material will also show you the sort of thing that the publisher is interested in, and also any gaps – although this might be intentional. If you have an idea that’s a perfect fit, or could really give a boost to the line, you have the basis for your pitch. If you know your own strengths and weaknesses (eg. you write great adventures, but aren’t too hot on rules) you can adjust your approach to make sure you can give your best.
The best method of approaching companies will vary, and I can only really speak for us, but we do try to respond to everyone who approached us. An e-mail of a brief pitch along with any previous experience is the most useful, and I have commissioned people who have gotten in touch this way. If the lead for a particular game is a frequent visitor to a particular forum you could also get in touch there.
Obviously there’s no guaranteed route to success, but demonstrating your enthusiasm and knowledge of a game can give you a way in, and the chance to show what you can do.
Next time
I’ve bumped the nitty gritty of putting books together to the next column, in which I will also talk about what we’ll have for GenCon.
