Well it has been over 100 for several days now here in Vegas and the people walking around are only half way clothed. Summer is officially here! With this season of heat and sweat, we typically see a drop in the activity from both the RPG side of things as well as my day job in the CRE industry, so hopefully this will allow for some time with my thoughts and writing, in between the drunken adventures that will ensue I’m sure. To help me focus though, I figure I will write out some goals for myself that I may or may not follow over the next couple months.

Summer Goals

1. Increase Morbidgames Affiliate Sales – This has been something I’ve never focused on, and while our sales have remained consistent I feel we could benefit from pushing the Affiliate side of things and helping out many of the other publishers out there as well. I’ve started on this by auto-feeding every 6 hours a new product from the RPGNow as well as Drive Thru Fantasy on my Twitter (should start later tonight). I’ve also redone some of the links on this site to include our affiliate link and any posts from here on out will include these ID’s. What I’d really like to do though, which I think would also help out other publishers would be to have more frequent updates on my blog or Twitter about other products I like or recommend. If you’re a publisher and would like me to review and comment on your products, please let me know, though I currently have a few in my mind.
2. Finish up with Alice. This has been a constant struggle and I really am hesitant to even continue the project now that Tim Burton is doing an Alice movie, but I really do want to do something with this world with a good read and a fast play type of game session. Something will come out of this chaos of ideas I have on my desk.
3. Increase Morbidgames Exposure. Having a page on every social and bookmarking site out there may generate a fair amount of traffic, but I’d really like to see a lot of people out in the real world talking about my games. I don’t know how exactly I may do this, but one idea I have is to start visiting the local book stores in Vegas again and pitching the core book, perhaps they could at least carry my sales flyers or a product catalog.

Lore: Forgotten Mythos is a collection of stories, places, monsters and people within the world of Ave Molech, written by aspiring authors and fans of the game. Each of these additions is designed to flesh out the world and will continue to help GM’s and players of Ave Molech with ideas for their own campaigns.

While the book can be read without having extensive knowledge of the world of Ave Molech, it does assume some familiarity with the campaign setting. Key words of places, beings and technology are used, though the average reader may be able to grasp their meaning or influence.

While these stories take place in the world of Ave Molech, they were written by fans of the world and some elements in them may vary from what is found within the Ave Molech Campaign Setting.

Available for $2.00 at:
Morbidgames Emporium | RPGNow | DriveThru RPG | Drivethru Fantasy | YGN | E23 | Paizo

Tags: Ave Molech, forgotten mythos, lore, Volume 2

During the Last War, a creation forge near Darguun led the way for the creation of the modern warforged race. The forge’s overseer, however, was also interested in necromancy and combining that art with Cannith’s artifice.

So it looks like SE is giving another go at MMO’s http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6211125/

My first thoughts…I’m not impressed yet. Having played FFXI when it first came out in the states and getting a level 55 Mithra Dragoon/thief in a few pieces of tier look I can tell you that unless they’ve added “fun” into the game it won’t be a success. When FFXI first came out in the states I believe it did very well, but mostly because it was part of a huge successful franchise and all other popular MMO’s at the time, such as EQ, DAOC and Lineage all required you to find up to five other people each willing to play a specific class role to kill a monster or two for three hours in order to level up or they were a completely unbalanced PVP game that lost it’s appeal after a few months. Of course there were also some just riddled with problems, such as SWG.

What FFXI did have was a lot of great ideas poorly implemented that they just never fixed and need to be if they want to actually compete with WoW. If you don’t like WoW, that is ok, but it has the most subscribers of any game ever 10 to 1, so it’s obvious that they are doing something right and if you prefer FFXI over WoW then there is clearly something wrong with you.

So what would FFXI need to fix? Where to begin… Every item in the game had a use, there was no “vendor” trash as everything could be used by some type of crafter. I really liked this, however, crafting itself sucked as you could try making a bone earring (starting bone craft item) for hours upon hours, failing, losing your items n the process and NOT getting a skill up. This made it very annoying to craft unless you were a high level character or had a friend who was that could farm your mats for you. Honestly, it would be annoying even at high levels having to farm up enough mats to skill up when you knew about half the time you’d fail.

I loved their linked auction house ideas – WoW totally stole this from them I’ll give you that. I also liked how, similar to crafting, every item in the game could be reused – why? because with one character you could switch “jobs”, read “classes”, by going into your “house” – another aspect I really liked, decorating and growing plants in my house that affected my abilities out in the world. These were all great ideas.. So what else sucked then?

De-leveling to complete in past instances – annoying, but I could live with it. De-leveling from death – considering it took me three hours of killing one monster over and over again with a team of six people to get that level and in one death I lose up to 20% of my experience sucks and is nothing more than a time sink. I also found it annoying that monsters would not leave me the fuck alone as I ran through an entire zone and when I finally did zone out, they would stay behind and kill all the lowbies passing through that zone entrance – brilliant. Need five other specific jobs was annoying as well, if they had been more lenient with the class make ups or allow for solo (like WoW does) it would have made killing the same monster over and over again for hours easier to do… Also killing the same monster over and over for hours is stupid.

I have no comment on the PVP aspect of the game as it was introduced after I had sold my account.

Honestly, all this new FF online would need to do to compete with WoW is make it so it’s players could solo and still progress, obviously allow groups to level faster as well as get better rewards, and make crafting not about failing for hours and wasting your time. In addition make death not such a penalty in the ass. I know this may not sound like much, but it was very fun breaking in my opinion.

Tags: final fantasy, final fantasy rant

So I had done this a while ago, but I don’t think I ever put it up on here. You may have seen the cover thumb, this is the inside layout I am thinking of using. Note the text inside is just there for filler purposes so I can see how things will look once I have something worth putting in there. Alice Wonderland Layout

Also I have been contemplating changing up the cover and inside artwork to include…live action photoshopped work..ya I know, I have bitched about how I don’t like that stuff before, such as the photos used in the Book of Erotic Fantasy – which I still hate most of…but I think for this book, something similar, might serve a purpose…also…it’d give me a chance to try out something new.

At some point I may be looking for models for this…I’ll keep you all posted. I haven’t actually made up my mind on this yet.

Tags: Alice, layout

Sent out the first draft to the writers yesterday and I’m printing out a copy now to look through. All in all I’m hoping for a release mid June or sooner, depending on how soon people get back to me. I’m actually really excited for this release now that everything is together and looking good.

In other news, if you are Paizo subscriber, you may want to bookmark this page, for future reference, Ave Molech and supplements are in queue to go up within the next week or two.

Update: I’m up on Paizo now YAY

Tags: Ave Molech, d20, forgotten mythos, RPG, Steampunk-Fantasy

It’s up and available here – Just another site that will be carrying our PDF products.

To date Ave Molech is on:

OBS Network – RPGNow, Drivethru, etc.

Your Games Now

Steve Jackson’s E23

e-library.net

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

And More

Tags: Ave Molech, promotion, Scribd, vote

Ave Molech: History & World is a 37-page version of our Second Edition Campaign Setting. This condensed setting removes the game mechanics, classes, occupations and most artwork to give prospective GM’s and players a look into the actual world, races and organizations within Ave Molech. In addition, this product should help those who may not want or be able to print out larger sized PDF’s or find shorter PDF’s easier to manage.

Important: If you own Ave Molech Second Edition you have all of this information.

Available for FREE from the MORBIDGAMES Emporium or at these online retailers for $2.00
MORBIDGAMES Emporium You can also get it the 16th here too!

YGN

RPGNow

DriveThru RPG

Drivethru Fantasy

Tags: Ave Molech, Emporium, Free Download, History & World

It’s been a while, but I finally just printed out the first initial draft for the book. It’s 60 pages after my initial chopping with no artwork so far. I may only add artwork to the section covers, or I may end up splitting the book into two parts and just do one inside title cover page for both. I’m not sure yet. I also haven’t include any of the stuff I had been working on, primarily because I don’t want this book to be too long, but at the same time I may end up including at least a couple items. All in all I’m really happy with what has come in and I’m excited for the book. To give you a taste of what is in the book I feel I can go ahead and list the table of contents so far which may change before the actual release as I include or exclude content for later.

Rob Manning – Campaign Ideas, NPCs & Monsters

• Maggach
• Citizens of the World
• What Kind of Shop
• Monsters of Legend

Nik Harper – Untold Creatures & Stories of Ave Molech

• Mudfolk
• Vintner
• A Faire to Remember

Jared Cunningham – Campaign Ideas, NPCs, Items, Monsters & an Untold story of Ave Molech

• Items, Monsters, Places & People
• Adventures in Gobo Sitting

Tags: forgotten mythos, Jared Cunningham, lore, Morbidgames, Nik Harper, Rob Manning, untold legends

A theory that Google’s AdWords increases the organic results of AdWord users is being conducted. The results after two days of testing have been posted with some interesting results so far. The article also does some comparison with Facebook Ads, but ultimately this continues to perpetuate the theory that you can buy Google search results, without actually having to spend money by 0.01¢ and other low bidding tactics. Essentially, just using the service to gain impressions over click rates increases the organic search results of any sites used in your ad campaigns.

http://www.lasvegascrenews.com/?p=3408

Tags: Busy, Emporium, hold, holiday, price cuts, Site Update, Store