Steve Jackson has a habit of releasing a "Report to his Stakeholders" every year. The general idea is to just sum up everything going on with his company and assess the past year, for the benefit of anyone who feels like reading it. I find this sort of thing to be quite nice, both as something to read, and a way for one to collect one's thoughts. So I'm going to be starting in on the same sort of idea. Why in March and not in January? Because I'm usually making the most progress on these things in February.

So, where have we come since this time last year? Most significantly, The Massive Vs. The Masses made the jump from almost-finished to actually released. We also released Glistening Chests, for whatever it's worth. Several other games have also been brought up to release worthy status, including two other MvM sets, Collision, and most significantly Red Shirt, which we'll most likely be posting a large number of updates on over the next few months.

So, as a developer, things are going well. As a publisher, less so. The costs involved in bringing The Massive Vs. The Masses out were, quite frankly, horrifying. Business wise, paying this debt off is the current priority, and the only real thing standing in the way of the release of several other games. The game itself has been phenomenally well-received at what cons I've brought it to, but the costs of hitting those cons are off-setting any direct sales made at them. Better exposure to the game is clearly needed. Glistening Chests meanwhile is selling roughly as well as one should expect for what's essentially just a 53-page joke at the expense of bad fantasy art, but could probably use some promotion of its own.

Looking to the future, here's a quick rundown of where every project in the works is currently standing.

The Massive Vs. The Masses has one game in the series out (Gamorzilla the Giant Monster Vs. The Army), as anyone reading this must know by now. Once it finally begins to turn a profit, it should be joined by both Dr. Vernemo's Digging Machine Vs. The Molemen, and Zeke McGee- Survivalist Vs. The Undead. Both make for very different experiences, and occasionally make the rounds with me at cons for those who want an early taste.

My Party RPGs experiment is still in its early stages. The notion is to make a variety of simple RPGs, based around very specific and esoteric concepts and sold on the cheap. The idea is that these would never be played on a serious, regular basis, but make for a great break from the usual for one-shot games, particularly at cons or parties. What do I mean by very specific and esoteric concepts? Well, the first in the series, Glistening Chests is based entirely on rationalizing the sort of trashy swords-and-sorcery artwork commonly adorning fantasy novels and RPG source books for which it's entirely inappropriate. All characters are either sword-swinging barbarians constantly needing to make saving throws against falling in love with any female generals the evil warlord might have, or scantily clad slave girls with gold bikinis as their best option in armor. If interest in the notion ever develops, you can also look forward to a game where all the PCs sit around playing RPGs. The PCs mind you, not just the players themselves.

Red Shirt is the shining beacon of hope for the next year. Early demos have been going over great, we have a celebrity guest artist attached whose style is absolutely perfect for it, and it's going to be released at a much more easily affordable price than MvM.

Collision has also been going over real well in the land of demos, and might make it out later this year too, but there's a few hang-ups there from a budgetary standpoint. Expect it to debut once I find the proper balance between price and devastation from slight table bumping.

Moving along to the projects not currently featured on this website, slow and steady progress is still being made on Legends of Ardeas, my serious RPG effort. The core rules have long since been finished, and the main campaign setting is starting to solidify into something nice for running games in. All that really needs doing is the obsessive research it's going to take to flesh out the specifics of a number of concepts most games fail to address, some illustrations, and the stars to properly align to make for a viable market for this sort of thing. Don't expect to see much on this subject until I've had a few more years to obsess over everything.

Starship Kyuceus has received an awful lot of my attention over the last year, particularly relative to how much I've discussed it in public. Simply put, it's my obligatory stab at the wargaming genre. I'm building it up slowly, making sure the 7 factions are all balanced against each other both in small-scale skirmishes and in big sprawling full-out wars. So far it's shaping up nicely. I have never discussed this game in public before, so let me just get off topic a moment here and discuss a few highlights that hopefully set it apart from similar games. First and foremost, while I would like to reach a point with this game where we can sell you all sorts of really intricate minis, I am adamant about this not being a requirement to play the game. I fully encourage players of this game to raid minis from any other game they have on-hand, and I'm backing that up with a few sources of essentially free minis in infinite supply. Other features of the game include the rather kitchen sink-y races (part of what got me started was my essential problem with games forcing me to choose between orcs, skeletons, and space vikings so SK features a race of Undead Orcish Space Vikings for example). Then of course, mechanically speaking, I'm trying to do a few things with it that maintain a high degree of strategy, but avoid the need to constantly look up obscure charts, carefully measure distances, and roll 3 times to resolve a single attack.

Seven Seats of Power is the other game in the works I've never mentioned. Someone observed once what a problem it is when you have 7 people who want to play a game, since there's essentially no games designed for exactly 7 people, and it's an awkward number to split up and play 2 different games, as 3 player games are also rather rare. I decided to take this as a challenge. It has a little bit of the same feel as Citadels, but plays quite differently. We could potentially get this out this year, but quite frankly, I'm not sure if the market for this sort of thing is big enough to take the risk right now.

Moving forward into the next year, our goals at this point are rather simple. Get onto the radar of more people. Get into the black financially. Bring out Red Shirt. If we finish early, release some of the other games mentioned above. For extra credit, there's a number of internet based projects I'd like to see get off the ground, and there's honestly a few projects for the Nintendo DS it would be interesting to see happen, but the resources that would involve aren't likely to become available any time soon.

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