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Tabletop Adventures Q&A (Part 1)
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Recently, I had the good fortune of posing some questions to Daniel Brakhage, company president of Tabletop Adventures, and Vicki Potter, their senior editor. Tabletop Adventures continues the fine tradition of game publishers located right here in the Midwest.
William: Please tell us about Tabletop Adventures and the kinds of products you sell.
Tabletop Adventures: Tabletop Adventures primarily publishes supplemental material for roleplaying games (RPGs). Most of our products can be used with many different games and are designed to make life easier for the Game Master (GM), the person who comes up with many of the ideas and guides the direction of the game. We also publish one independent roleplaying game, a Vatican horror game entitled Against the Darkness.
William: How long have you been in business and what made you get into the pen & paper (PnP) game industry?
Tabletop Adventures: The business was founded in July of 2004, and our first product was published five years ago this month (October). Two of our company members had been GMs for decades and we thought we could publish some of the material we’d written over the years. As it turns out, we’ve had so many new ideas that we have yet to get to any of our previous material!
William: What are your thoughts about the state of the industry today?
Tabletop Adventures: Some of the members of Tabletop Adventures have been playing roleplaying games since there was only one such game in existence, and so we’re still sometimes astounded at the incredible variety of games and game supplements available today. People who want to play can find a game to suit nearly any interest. Want to be a wizard, spaceman, investigator, superhero, vampire, ninja, priest or caveman? There’s a game for that. It can make things confusing for people who are not familiar with the industry; a participant needs to take time to find out what games might appeal to him or her. However, the opportunities for fun will more than repay any effort.
William: Back in the day, most gamers went to a brick and mortar hobby shop to buy their PnP games. Today, a lot of these games can be bought as PDFs online. How has this affected your business as a publisher and your marketing strategies?
Tabletop Adventures: Tabletop Adventures started by publishing our products in electronic form on one of the RPG industry’s oldest electronic download stores, RPGNow. These days we sell through five different electronic stores (one of which is in Europe) and various other sites affiliated with one of the above. Since we were selling online, most of our marketing was also done online, through forums and e-mail and the ubiquitous banner ads. These days we have some of our products also available as printed books and we sell those primarily at roleplaying game conventions such as the nationally known GenCon, in Indianapolis.
William: There seems to be some debate about how much publishers are affected by torrent sites that illegally post game PDFs online, effectively giving them away for free. Do you think this is a major problem and how much do you think it’s affected your legitimate sales?
Tabletop Adventures: This has been less of an issue for us than it has been for some other, better known, publishers. We try to make it easy for people to make legitimate purchases of our material and we appreciate the ongoing support we receive from our customers.
For more information about Tabletop Adventures, visit their website at www.tabletopadventures.com.
Go to Part 2
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