RedBrick joins Flaming Cobra -> Classic Earthdawn

C

Cut

Mongoose
Now these are great news:

Mongoose Publishing is pleased to announce that we have signed
contracts with RedBrick Limited to publish new editions of the Earthdawn, Fading Suns, Blue Planet, Age of Legend 4e, and Equinox game lines under our Flaming Cobra imprint, already famous for such popular games as Dragon Warriors and Spycraft 2.0.

Under this arrangement, RedBrick Limited retains full creative control of writing, design, editing, and layout. Mongoose Publishing will handle printing, marketing, sales, and distribution.

The first RedBrick Limited products to be released under the Flaming Cobra imprint will be available in game stores worldwide from July 2009, starting with Earthdawn Third Edition, before moving into the product release schedules for our other game lines.

More information on RedBrick’s product releases will be published at the start of next month on Mongoose’s web site at http://www.mongoosepublishing.com and RedBrick's company web site at http://www.redbrick-limited.com.

RedBrick Limited is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. Age of Legend4e™ is a trademark of RedBrick Limited. Equinox™ is a trademark of RedBrick Germany. Earthdawn® is a registered trademark of FASA Corporation. Fading Suns™ is a trademark of Holistic Design Inc. Blue Planet™ is a trademark of Biohazard Games. Flaming Cobra™ is a trademark of Mongoose Publishing. All used under license.

Is anyone else thrilled by this?

Finally Earthdawn will be widely available as an ordinary book and not only by printing-on-demand.

Looking forward to this sommer, indeed :)
Source: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/news/news_item.php?pkid_news=299
 
Darn tootin! Great news. Got the PDF'S from Drivethru, will be fab to be able to get the printed books at a normal price instead of spending double the amount on postage from lulu. :)
 
This is a new edition of Earthdawn? Not the same as the big red books that Redbrick did through Lulu?
 
Hi,

EDG said:
This is a new edition of Earthdawn? Not the same as the big red books that Redbrick did through Lulu?
Click to expand...

The "big red books" are referred to as Earthdawn Classic (EDC for short). The RedBrick releases under Mongoose's Flaming Cobra imprint are Earthdawn Third Edition (though they will retain RedBrick's red motif). It is indeed a new edition.

Kind regards,

JAMES FLOWERS
Managing Director
 
EDG said:
Any word on what the differences between the old and new edition will be?
Click to expand...

This and a bit more has been adressed by RedBrick in a statement over at Earthdawn.com a few days ago.

For your convinience I copied&pasted the posting here:


RedBrick & Mongoose: Questions and Answers, Part 1
By James Flowers • Published: March 17, 2009

Since news broke about our partnership with Mongoose Publishing, we’ve had a lot of comments and feedback. This list is nowhere near comprehensive. And, like all good responses, won’t answer all of your concerns or questions. However, we hope it provides you with some additional thoughts and considerations as you continue (or not) to interact with RedBrick Limited.

We will post up more of these over the next few weeks. Some questions specific to particular game lines will be dealt with in the forums, but the areas of current focus are around fans of Earthdawn Classic, who are most affected by the recent announcement.


Why is RedBrick partnering with Flaming Cobra and Mongoose?
After Lulu, our print-on-demand partner, raised its print prices in October 2008 (and more so when their shipping prices increased unexpectedly), we started looking at options. The print price increase meant increasing the prices of our books again (you will note that we haven't done this—by example, the hardcover Player's and Gamemaster's Compendiums were slated to move to USD$59.95 each), which we really didn’t want to do. Even though we know how much is packed into these "tomes" the per unit price was getting untenable. The shipping increases were really the icing on the cake and the main catalyst for a move. The upshot of this was a major review of our business model and looking for alternatives.

After a lot of emails and phone calls, we put together a revised model which we felt would be both progressive and meet our long-term requirements. However, the additional overhead of migrating to this model meant it was something we couldn’t do quickly. Enter Mongoose. Mongoose Publishing had contacted us some time ago about their Flaming Cobra imprint. At the time, things were working well with Lulu, and we felt that it wasn't something that RedBrick wanted to pursue. Of course, since then, Mongoose made some forays into print-on-demand, without success. But they had moved on from this, learning valuable lessons (as businesses do). And we had to do the same from our Lulu experiences. So we entered discussions with Mongoose and things moved very quickly from there. Approvals were sought from our licensors, contracts reworked, numbers crunched, and terms of business negotiated and agreed. And here we are at the beginning again.

What does Mongoose and Flaming Cobra bring to this relationship?
Many things. Our businesses are surprisingly similar. Mongoose started earlier than RedBrick, but their business model is based on taking gaming properties and supporting them well. Runequest and Traveller are prime examples. Experience. Mongoose have a lot of experience in the industry. Support. And they are happy to share that experience (one of the reasons for the Flaming Cobra imprint existing). Distribution. Mongoose have an extensive distribution network covering Europe and the USA—no reasons for gamers not being able to get our books! Marketing. Conventions, advertising, and their own “house” magazine are more good reasons for RedBrick to be working under the Flaming Cobra's hood. Quality. The quality of their books is excellent (we have performed due diligence). Independence. And, most importantly, we can continue to produce our own high-quality products autonomously. Though we now have to work to a production schedule.

Overall, for RedBrick, this is a huge step forward to becoming a larger business. And, while we are sure that it will take us some time to get used to working in a more regimented manner, it means that when we do step up to the task, we will be a better organisation for that.

You announced Earthdawn Third Edition as being the first release under Flaming Cobra. Why a new edition of Earthdawn?
Good timing is a rare thing in any industry. Timing isn’t on our side here either. We hadn’t planned to release a new edition of Earthdawn this soon, but the main reason for doing so is really very simple: to avoid retailer confusion. With Second Edition officially “dead”, it is important that Earthdawn Third Edition be clearly represented as the “current” edition. We had already experienced enough confusion about Earthdawn Classic—what it is or isn’t—and we wanted to avoid that with this release. Of course, it is no great secret that we have been working on a Third Edition of the game for some time now. The decision to bring that release forward ultimately comes down to timing and market presence.

Of course we recognize that this decision may be unpopular with fans of the game. The pace of moving to Flaming Cobra meant that we had to make some very difficult business calls. And this, unfortunately, was the most difficult to make. Therefore, we felt it was important that we let people know about our new business partnership with Mongoose Publishing as soon as possible, that a new edition of Earthdawn is coming, and that there is no ambiguity or rumor-mongering about what we are doing.

Ultimately, the success of any publisher is determined by its customers. We really don’t want to upset any Earthdawn fans with this announcement. But we recognize that we will. For that, we can only ask forgiveness. We want to ensure the longevity of all of our games. That can only happen with commercial support for those games. And the partnership with Mongoose opens up more opportunities for gamers to be exposed to our products and, ultimately, more opportunities to do other things in time. Where we go from here can only be judged by our fans (and history will tell if this was an overall good or bad decision).

But what about my Earthdawn Classic books? Are they redundant now?
From a supported game line perspective, yes. From a useful product perspective, no. There is more crammed into the two core Compendiums than many game lines see in their lifetime. As with ED1 and ED2, and like other games that have come and gone, this is just another step in evolution. Be aware that, in terms of printed books, our best-selling individual book (the Player’s Compendium) sold just over six hundred print copies—softcover and hardcover combined—over the last three years. From the perspective of a print-on-demand success story, it definitely was. Overall, this isn’t much more than a small print run would sell. Personally, I would consider these to be in the realms of “collector’s items” now. Useful books to own for their consolidated approach, imminently self-contained and playable as is, but once we pull the plug on Lulu, they become collectibles, a piece of Earthdawn history.

So, what happens now? Can I still get Earthdawn Classic books in print?
For the moment, yes. Apart from some select products (novels, for instance), we plan to disable the Lulu print lines before the end of June. This is to accommodate anyone who wants to take the opportunity to grab another copy for their gaming group, assuming they don’t plan to move to a different game line or adopt Third Edition Earthdawn when it becomes available. If sales completely dry up, we may terminate print titles sooner. Regardless, we will post a News item to our web sites notifying customers that these books are no longer available.

Note that some titles will remain available on Lulu. Notably, novels will be kept as print-on-demand at this time.

What about Earthdawn Classic eBooks?
We are working on this. Owners of Earthdawn Classic ebooks will most likely receive a discount coupon toward the Third Edition-equivalent ebooks. Downloads will still be available for current customers from your account at OneBookShelf. Novels will remain unchanged as eBooks. Everything else will be removed to make way for Earthdawn Third Edition.

The release process stemming from our partnership with Mongoose Publishing will follow their process. Generally, eBooks are released about a month after print books become available. This is the complete opposite of how RedBrick have worked in the past and again is a condition of the change to retail distribution. In many ways, however, eBooks become more valuable for us and for you as a means to ensure that you have access to a regularly errata’d master copy. Because of the nature of retail and distribution, we cannot update print books as easily.

Well, I’m really unhappy about all this. Now I have to weather yet another change and spend even more money on books that I already have much of the content for. It sucks.
Again, reiterating that this decision was not an easy one and we knew going in that it would draw the ire of many fans, thinking that we had betrayed them. And as a consequence, losing trust and respect that we have spent a lot of time trying to build. We’re not doing this to be money-grubbing capitalists (though we would understand if you think we are). We simply have to evolve to ensure the ongoing viability of both RedBrick and our game lines. Times are hard. We all know that. We do this as a labor of love, but that love wears thin sometimes. In these hard times, hard decisions have to be made and we have to stand behind them, for right or for wrong. Ultimately, we do what is best for our licensors and our fans. But we recognize that there will be a lot of anger at this time. Sorry.

On a personal note, as Managing Director of RedBrick Limited, I feel bad for my development team, who have to weather this as well. If there is any one person to direct your scorn and rage, please, that would be me. I made the final decision, and the responsibility for it lies with me alone. However, I do ask that you consider the other members of Team RedBrick who have to work extra hard now to achieve new targets. The workload for them got a whole lot bigger from this partnership and they are the ones who deserve your ongoing support.

Thank you for sharing your concerns and providing us with feedback. More responses will be posted over the next few weeks.

I myself had hoped to get my hands on the highly praised two Earthdawn corerulebooks done by Redbrick (both more than 500 pages strong!) in a nice printed version done by Mongoose, like Spycraft 2.0.

But now I have gathered from various posts on diverse Earthdawn forums, that those two titles (Gamemaster's and Player's Compendium) that had been available as ebooks and Printing-on-Demand items won't make it over and will be abridged for a third edition release.

I am a bit dissappointed by this and would like to ask both companies to reconsider. Give us those huge books, please!
 
It should be interesting to see what they did with it. I liked some of the stuff Living rooms games did with their own 2nd ed of ED and I wouldnt mind seeing a melding of the two different versions if at all possible.
 
I'm absolutely ecstatic!

Earthdawn in my opinion is without doubt the greatest rpg ever. I have some majorly good memories from our exploits in the lands of Barsaive.

I have but one minor complaint, the amount of data a GM has to write up for a single npc, what with armour rating, defence, talents, skills, stats etc is too much.

But what a game, and a revival? I can hardly wait. Any news, about the content, rules changes, art, page count, supplements...anything....please?

Good luck guys, here's to a new earth dawning :lol:
 
Hi,

Well, it's been a metric ton of work, but we are off and running with the first of our Flaming Cobra releases. Files for the first two Earthdawn Third Edition rulebooks are now with the excellent folks at Mongoose Publishing.

There is a news announcement (and a sneaky peek at the new covers) at the main Earthdawn web site, here: http://www.earthdawn.com

Previews and such will appear over the next few weeks. And, as we continue to see how many bricks will fit in a mongoose's tummy (hee hee ... just kidding), this is just the start of what we know will be an excellent and ongoing "game business" relationship between RedBrick and Mongoose Publishing.

I take my hat off to our amazing development team and to Dammi and Kathy for their long hours and intensive work, and also to Matt and the rest of the Mongoose Team for their patience and trust.

Still work to do, but as they say, "the first one is the hardest."

Take kaer,

JAMES FLOWERS
Managing Director, REDBRICK LIMITED, AUCKLAND, New Zealand
www.redbrick-limited.com | www.earthdawn.com | www.fading-suns.com | www.blueplanet-rpg.com | www.equinox-rpg.com | www.ageoflegend4e.com
 
I was excited before, but now I just about wet myself. Those are the coolest covers ever. Can't wait to see more over the coming weeks.

Anunnaki said:
Hi,

Well, it's been a metric ton of work, but we are off and running with the first of our Flaming Cobra releases. Files for the first two Earthdawn Third Edition rulebooks are now with the excellent folks at Mongoose Publishing.

There is a news announcement (and a sneaky peek at the new covers) at the main Earthdawn web site, here: http://www.earthdawn.com

Previews and such will appear over the next few weeks. And, as we continue to see how many bricks will fit in a mongoose's tummy (hee hee ... just kidding), this is just the start of what we know will be an excellent and ongoing "game business" relationship between RedBrick and Mongoose Publishing.

I take my hat off to our amazing development team and to Dammi and Kathy for their long hours and intensive work, and also to Matt and the rest of the Mongoose Team for their patience and trust.

Still work to do, but as they say, "the first one is the hardest."

Take kaer,

JAMES FLOWERS
Managing Director
REDBRICK LIMITED, AUCKLAND, New Zealand
www.redbrick-limited.com | www.earthdawn.com | www.fading-suns.com | www.blueplanet-rpg.com | www.equinox-rpg.com | www.ageoflegend4e.com
Click to expand...
 
The covers are indeed great.

But I hope that we'll see a reuse of the best Earthdawn Cover Ever: The Parlainth City cover, available as Wallpaper over at Earthdawn.com.

That pic is just shouting out adventure and gives me the creeps and a million adventure ideas everytime I look at it!

So go and use that one later on another product, will you please? ;)
 
This may seem like an odd question, but bear with me. Can anyone honestly inform me if I would be better served waiting for Third Edition to get back into Earthdawn or buy the current books while they are still available?

Thanks for your time

Aric
 
Personally?

I love Classic-- I do. They are great, beautiful books with reams of information and a wonderfully nostalgic feel. But, for the most part (excepting the adventures and Kratas, which was not printed, only PDF'd) they are things you've seen already, in ways you've seen them. There is new material on almost every page, but it is done in service to the original. You asked about getting BACK into EarthDawn... and I think that means you want to see what's new... what's better... not what's been seen before. [I mean this as no slight to RedBrick... they worked HARD on the Classic books, and it shows. But they would be the first to tell you that what they have done in that line is a re-presentation, not a renovation.]

The other up side to waiting for 3rd edition is that you can buy it locally (if that's an option) and make it possible for a new ED community to flourish by virtue of discovering the books on local shelves. That's ALWAYS a good reason to do something... perpetuating the hobby.

I bought Classic, of course... and will be buying 3rd from Mongoose. But since most everything done in Classic will be retooled for use in 3rd, if you DON'T want to buy everything twice... I'd stick with 3rd and that way you can enjoy all the things that have already been done, as they are retooled, and the NEW things, of which I am sure there will be many!

(I hope that was helpful.)
 
Hiya,

That was a great summary PenAgain, thanks.

The ED3 core rulebooks are, essentially, retooled off the Earthdawn Player's and GM's Compendiums (the bricks), but broken into four books to better fit a retailer-friendly model. The rest of the line will be a (further) retooling of the EDC books. And, of course, there's new stuff in there as well (and ahead).

Take kaer,

JAMES FLOWERS
Managing Director
 
This is exactly what I was looking for. You have really given me a lot to think about. I really would like to revive Earthdawn in my area with a regular game at my FLGS. At the same time I have drooled over the "bricks" for quite awhile.

PenAgain said:
Personally?

I love Classic-- I do. They are great, beautiful books with reams of information and a wonderfully nostalgic feel. But, for the most part (excepting the adventures and Kratas, which was not printed, only PDF'd) they are things you've seen already, in ways you've seen them. There is new material on almost every page, but it is done in service to the original. You asked about getting BACK into EarthDawn... and I think that means you want to see what's new... what's better... not what's been seen before. [I mean this as no slight to RedBrick... they worked HARD on the Classic books, and it shows. But they would be the first to tell you that what they have done in that line is a re-presentation, not a renovation.]

The other up side to waiting for 3rd edition is that you can buy it locally (if that's an option) and make it possible for a new ED community to flourish by virtue of discovering the books on local shelves. That's ALWAYS a good reason to do something... perpetuating the hobby.

I bought Classic, of course... and will be buying 3rd from Mongoose. But since most everything done in Classic will be retooled for use in 3rd, if you DON'T want to buy everything twice... I'd stick with 3rd and that way you can enjoy all the things that have already been done, as they are retooled, and the NEW things, of which I am sure there will be many!

(I hope that was helpful.)
Click to expand...

I am glad to hear that the material from the Players and GMs companions, but if they are now going to be spread over 4 books, what will I not be getting with the initial Players and GMs Guide in ED3?

I know that I plan on picking up ED3, especially after seeing the covers.

Can you tell us if you plan on releasing a intro PDF for ED3 similar to Kaer Tardim?

Hiya,

That was a great summary PenAgain, thanks.

The ED3 core rulebooks are, essentially, retooled off the Earthdawn Player's and GM's Compendiums (the bricks), but broken into four books to better fit a retailer-friendly model. The rest of the line will be a (further) retooling of the EDC books. And, of course, there's new stuff in there as well (and ahead).

Take kaer,

JAMES FLOWERS
Managing Director
Click to expand...

Thanks again

Aric
 
Hi,

All should be revealed in the forthcoming Previews. After those are up, we can address any further unanswered questions.

Take kaer, James
 
Curse you, Mr. Flowers, with your preview teasing!

Wolfx, if I had to wager, I'd say the first 2 books (the Guides) will make playing through the 8th Circle an easy affair, while the more advanced rules (high Circle talents/spells/etc, enchanting, Spirits, etc.) will lurk in the second 2 books (the Companions)... much like playing 1st edition with only the core book vs. playing 1st edition with the Companion & Magic: TMMS sourcebooks.

But that's idle speculation. Rumor persists that the game will have more transparent/useful design systems than ever before (creature design, spell design, etc.) and most of those things would likewise be in the Companions, if I were to make a guess.

*I'll stop speculating now, honest!*
 
Hiya,

Not bad speculation, PenAgain. You won't have to wait long for the previews, however, and they should explain what's been "tweaked" from the EDC edition.

Take kaer, James
 
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