Conan Country

If you corner me and tell me about the “really weird dream” you had last night, chances are you will  see me smile and nod a lot doing your recounting. Every once and a while you might notice that the nod is at an off time, the smile a little too quick.

I'm not listening.

Last night I had this really weird dream. No, no wait stopping nodding and hear me out. Last night I dreamt that I was running this convocation in the sleepy little West Texas town of Cross Plains, home of “Two-Gun Bob” Howard.

In part it was a gaming convention, in another seemingly inexplicable part it was some manly man contest. I'd finish running a gaming session (who knows what, maybe that TSR Conan rpg from the 80s I like so much) and then run off to ref a Fight Club-like bare-fisted slugfest. I think your grandfather was in it too and then he turned into an artichoke.

It's not the first time Cross Plains has crept into my dreams. It's not because I am a raving REH fan—I have an on and off again love/hate thing over the years with the writer—but because I had a personal connection there for a time in my life.

Back up to the early 90s, my gaming—nay my entire geeky—past was buried and covered over with six solid feet of Austin slackery (seriously my friends and I were straight out of central casting of a Richard Linklater movie). For about five years solid I played on a city league team with a group of guys I mostly knew from alternative journalist rags and other DIY projects.

About two weekends a month, late on a Friday night we'd jam pack a couple cars, crank up the maudlin AM country stations and head out to one of our friend's family ranch right off the road between Cross Plains and Brownwood.

The ranch's guest house was a rough limestone and timber business, charming even in its rustic simplicity and 50's cowboy kitsch. By day we'd spend our time walking the ranch, shooting at old bottles, swimming in the lake, and sleeping off hangovers. Nights were spent slow grilling steaks, drinking, dancing (if we brought the girls), making bonfires, and more drinking.

There were a lot of quiet moments too. Quiet moments spent reading and feeling something primal and Texan out there. Many of those moments, when they weren't spent just watching the heavens free of light pollution slowly mosey by, were spent reading through a dusty stack of books at the house.

Those books were almost to a copy, cheap vanity press affairs. The kinds of local histories where the town amateur historian weaves half a book of deadly dull genealogical type material in with half a book of pure lurid mythology. And when you are in a place like Cross Plains, where the sheer violence of frontier life stuck around later than many places, that kind of local history is amped up really loud.

There were countless tales of Comanche abductions, scalpings, and small-scale massacres. The more honest (and less obviously racist) books also recounted the massacres and raids from Anglos that egged those incursions. 

Those tales didn't just stop with the point after the Civil War when the Comanches were finally defeated as people in the area, it kept marching forward with the account of a gunfighter here, a massacre there over the barb wiring off of common grazing lands. Later you'd hear about the brawls and murders of passion of the oil men.

Reading all that it was impossible not to think of Howard's life and writing. Not to think of the frontier, not that far distant from the time of his writing, that so many others have talked about as his greatest influence. The haunting influence of the ghosts of the land around you—and the titillation of those stories.

From those moments on for me, Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and the others became characters that had one foot in the wildest flights of fantasy and another in a very real and earthly place that I seen, touched, and ruminated on. It has made those books a bit rawer and more uncomfortable in my mind, but something closer and more visceral.

And isn't that what the best and deepest of fantasy should do?

A Hydra Rises

The publishing co-op is off to an exuberant start. With 29 members (curiously a quarter of whom are in the UK) we had a tidal wave of introductions and discussion on the list serve—so much indeed that we had to move to a new private forum board just to keep up with the topic tangle.

Although I had to fight a moment of “what monster have I unleashed”, I am more excited than a cathouse on a Saturday night. (With my grand dad off to the Elysian Field, I feel like I am going to have to step it up with my bombastic Texan colloquialisms.)

Nothing is really set in stone yet as far as vision and structure—like any new voluntary project there is always some hashing out to do about what “it” is exactly. The fact that we DIYers tend to be more like a herd of cats than a bee hive only underscores that need.

Still it looks like we heading to some rough consensus already on a few things. Courtesy to -C we may have a mascot—and a logo shortly from some of the more artistically inclined—the dreaded and entirely appropriate hydra.

Again if you are interested in participating in this brave new world of cooperative DIY hanky panky, drop me a line at kutalik dot gmail dot the com and I will set you up with an introduction to the list and forum.  

Artistic rendition of our actual founding meeting.

Next Steps for the Publishing Cooperative

Before I start answering the lengthy and thought-provoking comments, questions, and concerns from yesterday's discussion—thank you, one and all--I wanted to give a quick update on what we are doing to move the project forward.

Currently I have 22 people who have asked to be included in the new dedicated list serve for the project. I will be setting the list up on Yahoo groups before this afternoon. Again if you want to be included in these founding discussions don't assume I know you are interested and have your email—please send me an email at kutalik at the gmail dot the com with a subject header with “co-op” in the title.

After answering comments today here, I am going to move the lion share of the discussion over there with a kick-off email that frames some leading questions.  

Why Build a Publishing Coop?

In yesterday's round of out-loud-thinking and discussion around the possible launch of a rpg publishing coop, DH Boggs raised the kind of tough and honest question that helps clarify what we are on about.

He asked:

“The idea, as I read it, was to pool together the talents of several persons of related interests to publish OSR material--the bulk of any profits going to the author. So far, that is no different than a number of the small hobby publishers out there (Brave Halfling, or Autarch, for ex).

But, it will be a non profit and a coop--meaning participants will have to pay a membership fee in either cash or service or a combo of each. Now that is different, and interesting, but what precisely do you see as the advantages over the traditional "for profit" route? Membership (i.e. commitment) would seem to be one. What else?”

Indeed, what else? Why bother?

For starters, I don't want to over-sell it, in the main because we are still in the process of trying to figure out "it" is. And none of this is not to knock all the good people toiling away in small companies or solo operations. I won't support those that I currently support any less for trying something like this.

But off the bat I do see a few differences from the small company model:

Larger Pool. A coop has the potential to build up a larger pool of talent. Forgive (and correct) me if I am talking out of my ass, but many of those operations have very few people doing the hands on work. While I would think we'd want to keep it relatively small and tight in the beginning, I still think we are looking at something like 20-30 designers, writers, editors, artists, programmers, etc.

Entry-level Access. Most of the businesses are primarily focused on promoting the systems and products of their owner/designers--or a very small collection of people close to them--which is great, but other than starting yet another operation of your own it's difficult for a newcomer to break in. Not only can we have the luxury of a wider door (while still trying to maintain quality standards I should add), but we can assist in being as much or more about the development of coop members as we are about the products.

Greater incubation and collaboration. Lee raised this excellent point: “ One way a Co-op could differ is members could ‘pitch’ projects at the idea stage. If accepted the Co-op works on it from the start rather than at the end of the creative process.” In other words by building stronger working relationships we are highly likely to not only be helping people finish or improve their existing projects—we could be launching new “staffed-out” collaborations.

Removes the For-Profit Barrier. Many small rpg companies have strong hobbyist roots--and we all know no one is really making money more than a glorified beer fund—so I don't want to build up a 99 percenter argument here (we have a movement for that elsewhere), but I do think there is a psychological barrier to fuller participation by folks who aren't fully comfortable with the commercial-hobbyist hybrid we often see. 

That's four off the top of my head. Undoubtedly others can provide some more—and tough questions to clarify the discussion more.

So what's next?

First of all we need more discussion with an eye to answering tough questions and moving closer to a consensus about what “it” is. Unless someone has a brighter idea, I am going to set-up a Yahoo or Google list serve to channel the discussion better and hopefully get me out of the center a little.

If you are seriously interested in participating in launching this co-op--I don't have everyone's email who chimed in yesterday (and likely today)--please email me at kutalik at gmail dot the com—so I can at the least put everyone together on an informal CC.

Day of the Dead

We do Dia De Los Muertos up big here in San Anto. Not Mexico big, but plenty big with a month of lead up down here in the Southtown art district and then the day of festivities and remembrances of ancestors past. Everywhere are the grinning skulls, the calaveras.

It is said that Dia came about as the product of old-fashioned Catholic-pagan syncretism. The death festival of Mictecacihuatl, the queen of Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, blending with the conqueror's All-Saints Day. The Lady of the Dead kept watch over the bones of those who passed thus the iconography. 

The Hill Cantons has been having its own Dia tribute...well at least the husband and wife team that play the long-time campaign pillars of Mandamus and Uma. Check out their altar complete with some Warhammer skeletons on loan from Desert Scribe's army.

It's a day later than the mopey remembrance holiday of my neurotic Czech ancestors, but I readily embrace the Dia's magical realism—and the chance to remember and celebrate those close who went off to trip through the Elysian Fields or ask Crom the riddle of steel (or something or other).

More on the RPG publishing coop a little later today.  

Time for a DIY Game Publishing Coop?

Good conversations stick with me for long spells. Slowly over months they seem to percolate and build until they find some kind of public expression on my part. 

About a year back I had a marathon conversation with a fairly well-established (albeit close to the bottom-rung) crime fiction author at a union convention. One of the most interesting topics we hit on in that wide-ranging talk was the evolution of writers' circles.

He floated the notion that the increasing sophistication of print-on-demand and distribution services was causing a veritable revolution, transforming a few of these circles from simple self-help (and commiseration) groups into something closer to a full-fledged DIY publishing coop. Members were going from being sympathetic shoulders and sounding boards to providing rigorous editing, layout help, publishing advice, etc.

I could tell from his increasingly glowing, animated tenor that the idea of such a transformation driving a stake into the heart of the traditional publishing industry—or at the least chipping away at it's outer edges—clearly was an idea near and dear. Having worked on both sides of book and publication publishing I could only nod my head vigorously and mutter things to the effect of “right on, preacher man.”

Months later with my own feet starting to dip into the slackeriffic world of hobbyist game designing/publishing I find myself longing for some stake-driving. Let's face it about the mainstream of the rpg industry: it deserves to have a vorpal blade go snicker-snack on it.

The problem is, what's the alternative? In some ways we are already seeing it, a bewildering constellation of single-person outfits and micro-companies. All well and good, let a hundred flowers bloom and all that.

But what about something like those transformed writers' circles to also help chip away at the edges? What about something that combines the best of that rugged independence with a larger pool of skill sets and co-equal work?

What about a DIY game publishing coop?

It's not an entirely new idea. Indeed my favorite hex-and-counter wargame company of the late-90s was the Canadian-based cooperative outfit called the Microgame Design Group, which produced a stunningly creative array of highly affordable microgames relying on then revolutionary technology of desktop publishing. 

What I am thinking of—and this is thinking out loud more of a baseline for discussion than a concrete proposal--is something like this:

1. The coop would need to be a reasonably cohesive group with a healthy amount of trust and expectation—at least as much as we can get out of the herd of cats that I know and love out there. It would need to be fairly self-selective about who can be a member: people with drive and/or talent who have a lot of heart for putting out creative DIY rpg products.

2. A member would give something like this to the coop:

Annual donation. Should be modest and affordable, but something to help build a psychological sense of ownership and to have a small base of funds. Can be waived in favor of more work as below.

Work. X amount of work hours per month helping do distribution, layout, line editing, copy editing, technical work, illustration, or what ever their core competency takes them.

And the member would receive something like this from a coop:

Work. X amount of work on a project. Type of work as enumerated above.

Quality Control. Critique/feedback/editing from a pool of like-minded souls on your manuscript or other project work.

Distribution Channel. The coop would run a group distribution and printing channel. Perhaps through a Lulu storefront or other print on demand at first and then traditional printing and distribution later if it takes off.

Income. Member keeps the lion share of the profit of sales after modest cut for coop (10-20%?). At any rate it would have to be something much higher than the industry standard for royalties.

Product. Members will be able to obtain copies of coop works at the production cost of the product.

Lay off the crack pipe, Chris, or something worth thinking about?