Notizie sul progetto Lone Wolf - Mongoose. Prima di tutto, un brano tratto dallo State of Mongoose di dicembre:

Everyone is waiting for Book 18. We know, and we apologise profusely. Our problem here is a combination of the issues described above and a valiant (but costly) attempt to keep all previous titles in print. The margins on these books are wafer thin (a new title costs two to three times more to print than your average 256 page hardback RPG book), making it exceedingly difficult for us to tie up financial resources in a print run. The problem is, as a company, we cannot simply ring fence every line on a financial level, so what happens to one line in the company can affect others. In this case, the disappearing RPG market and reduced pace of miniatures releases have both had an unavoidable effect on Lone Wolf.

We have mentioned the possibility of softback versions of these books, which would make things easier, but we have committed to doing the entire series in a hardback format and, come hell or high water, we will be sticking to that.

Book 18 is now at print (and will be landing on the mats of Megadeal and preorder customers early next year), and we are already prepping Book 19. We apologise for the delays – they are not reasonable, and we will be spending a great deal of effort to correct this in 2013. As everything else in the company starts coming together, the pressure will be relieved on this series and titles will start coming out at their original pace.

At the end of the day, we have a lot of passion for Lone Wolf here at Mongoose (these were the gamebooks that got me into gaming when I was very, very young, way before I had even heard of D&D…), and can see there is a huge potential in this setting that reaches far beyond the gamebooks. We have been speaking to Mr Dever about this, and have a couple of projects boiling that we wish to use to expand Lone Wolf and bring it to ‘modern’ gamers. However, first things first – we are concentrating on the solo gamebooks and will bring them to you in regular order before we give much more thought to anything else.

In secondo luogo, un successivo commento di Sprange sul forum Mongoose:

Just to let everyone know what we are planning here...

Unless something truly tragic happens (like the cost of paper shoots up tenfold), there are _no_ price rises planned on the Lone Wolf books. Even when we reprint, we keep the original price (which is fairly terrifying on the biggest book of them all, Flight, but we will stick with it).

We are firmly committed to Lone Wolf, have put plans in place to continue and accelerate the solo line in 2013, and have been talking to Mr Dever about Magnamund-related projects in other areas. There is _so_ much potential in this setting, and we will be pulling out all the stops to not only carry on with what we started but also to bring Lone Wolf coolness to other arenas too. more on that later, when we have another couple of books out.

To go into a bit more detail than the State did (and I think you chaps certainly deserve to know), the margins _are_ thin on the Lone Wolf hardbacks, but they always were. We accepted this as we regard resources put into these books as an investment, be it as a wider marketed softback line, or other Magnamund/Lone Wolf games. And, of course, there is a great deal of personal investment in these books, as they were the very first brush I had with fantasy gaming!

Now, the current situation is not down to Lone Wolf books or their margins - as I said, we had always planned for those. The problem comes from other markets, most noticeably RPGs (to an extent miniatures as well, as we did not get everything out in 2012 that we needed to). As the RPG market declines, this puts pressure on other aspects of the company to cover not only themselves but also fixed costs. Now, if you have something to replace a declining market (see miniatures), there is no problem. If not, then all aspects of the company have to work to support themselves _and_ the rest of the company - and that is something that, with the best will in the world, the Lone Wolf line is not currently set up to do.

The upshot of all this is that once the rest of the company starts flowing smoothly again, Lone Wolf books will automatically fall back into step. We are putting things into operation that mean it won't be very long into 2013 when you start seeing this happen.

For now, I can only apologise profusely - we know there are issues, and we know they are not acceptable. We are making sure that this is reversed and does not happen again.

Io ho i primi 12 e basta, gli altri costano troppo e sono a tiratura limitata, alcuni non sono neanche più disponibili ufficialmente... salvo poi spuntar fuori sottobanco se qualcuno manda una mail ai capoccia Mongoose...

Le cover già uscite da 13 a 18 mi pare siano tutte di Quidault ma dal prossimo si cambia artista.

Cmq non menzionano mai, mai, mai l'ebook, strano...

No, un attimo.

Ma non avevano detto che i proventi dei soli Mega-Deal avrebbero praticamente finanziato l'intera serie fino alla fine??

Adesso viene fuori che i guadagni su ogni copia sono risicatissimi perché ognuno di quei libri costa il triplo di un manuale RPG da 256 pagine??? Waddafukk??????????


Mi piace che adesso hanno anche un'ulteriore scusa per non tirare fuori i paperback - che ricordo, qualche mese fa sono stati dati per in uscita imminente, certissima, croce sul cuore e cascasse il mondo...


Ma lo sapete che questa operazione è davvero la peggio gestita a cui io abbia mai assistito in vita mia? Non ho MAI visto un altro prodotto accompagnato da così tante scuse, ritardi, bugie, false promesse, annunci dati per ufficiali e scolpiti nel granito e smentiti dopo mesi di silenzio, giri di parole e censure verso gli utenti che chiedono lumi.

Ma siamo sicuri che...

... Matthew Sprange non sia una donna? Spiegherebbe molte cose... 




Sugli ebook: se già le copie stampate gli danno tanti problemi e guadagni minimi, con gli ebook ci sarebbe da fare una giostra infinita di diritti, formati, autorizzazioni degli store, aggiornamenti... non riescono a stare dietro allo stampato di testi di 20 anni fa, figuriamoci. E ricordiamoci che questa è una Collector's Edition: l'ebook le toglierebbe la sua natura di oggetto di lusso. E i proventi sarebbero ancora inferiori, perché dopo tutti questi anni, l'unico modo di dare un senso agli inediti è la stampa. Senza il cartaceo, gli eventuali volumi 29-32 non venderebbero nemmeno la metà di quello che si potrebbe prospettare per la copia fisica. Anche per i numeri 21-28, che da noi si sono trovati come noccioline per anni ma in America e USA sono il Graal dei librogame; la gente vuole i cartacei. Se li fanno in ebook, la gente li manda affanculo dopo il primo numero.

Senza poi dimenticare che se fanno gli ebook, uno compra una copia, la mette in torrent, e ciao vendite.

L'UNICO modo che hanno di portare a termine 'sta cosa è la Collector's Edition. Scordiamoci i paperback e gli ebook. L'unico modo che Mongoose ha di farmi ancora comprare qualcosa sarebbero gli inediti, e un numero 28 "restaurato".

non faranno mai parte della mia collezione...per i motivi elencati sopra da EGO.
(preciso che pensavo ciò prima di leggere il suo commento quindi non sono stato in alcun modo influenzato! )