The Celestial Realms - New RPG Sourcebook

By sndwurks, in Legend of the Five Rings: The Roleplaying Game

1 hour ago, Diogo Salazar said:

Sent an inquiry to drivethrurpg, they don’t have any information when Celestial Realms will be available online... I am not putting my hopes up at least until December.

Thank you for taking the initiative and doing this.

On 10/9/2020 at 1:15 AM, Diogo Salazar said:

Sent an inquiry to drivethrurpg, they don’t have any information when Celestial Realms will be available online... I am not putting my hopes up at least until December.

Thanks. I guess I know what I'm getting myself for Christmas...

By the way, it’s been 5 days now that I asked FFG directly through their customer service about this and they haven’t answered yet.
I’ll keep you posted if they finally answer me and what the answer was.

Quote

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us. It is great to hear that you love our games so much! We're sorry to say we have no additional information to share about any upcoming releases for the L5R RPG. Please follow our studios online for the latest announcements, updates, and spoilers on upcoming content and reprints!


So, it feels like whoever answered me was an intern and who doesn’t know who to ask to up the chain of command. Because if that truly is the answer. **** that. Do I have to go to Edge Studios to ask that?

Lol. And of course edge studios website is nothing but a placeholder with not even a “contact us” link. Seriously, asmodee/ffg has truly become the eletronic arts of board games.

Quote

Hello,

Thank you for your message, we do not know when or if a digital copy of the Celestial Realms book will be available . Please follow our studios online for the latest announcements, updates, and spoilers on upcoming content and reprints.

F**k me!!!

1 hour ago, Diogo Salazar said:

F**k me!!!

image.png.a3281d6f0a1c566adc15fce406136c70.png

Edited by FelixFenix

Amazon in the US has the physical book as available on November 20th...

58 minutes ago, Scott McFarland said:

Amazon in the US has the physical book as available on November 20th...

Technically the physical format has been available since August. This whole thing and Edge Studio taking over but apparently FFG still being responsible for two more books makes everything look so sloppy.

FFG actually usually holds back Amazon releases about as long as they do the PDF, so that gives me some hope that the PDF will still come - I doubt there is that much extra effort in a digital release to warrant dropping it during the reorganization, but the COVID stuff And the reorganization has probably played merry Jigoku on their work pipeline. EDGE doesn't really seem to have coalesced their presence either, so you can't really ask them if they're gonna speed this up or anything either.

Edited by UnitOmega
13 hours ago, Diogo Salazar said:

Technically the physical format has been available since August. This whole thing and Edge Studio taking over but apparently FFG still being responsible for two more books makes everything look so sloppy.

Not in Europe it hasn’t. I suspect the delay with the PDF and the book’s failure to make it to markets outside the US may be related.

The book is out in Europe, it seems. Just placed my order at my 'local' webstore.

One month later and nothing. They gave me the same answer as before: thanks for giving us money but we don’t know when it will be available...

48 minutes ago, Diogo Salazar said:

One month later and nothing. They gave me the same answer as before: thanks for giving us money but we don’t know when it will be available...

Are you aware that all of the existing FFG roleplaying products got moved to the EDGE publishing store on Drivethru RPG in the last few days? I can understand why FFG customer service would know nothing now.

20 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Are you aware that all of the existing FFG roleplaying products got moved to the EDGE publishing store on Drivethru RPG in the last few days? I can understand why FFG customer service would know nothing now.

Lol
Okay, I WAS NOT AWARE OF THAT.

I didn't even know EDGE was finally taking the lead on this considering their website is still a placeholder with no contact information whatsoever.

I mean, seriously... 😞

Edited by Diogo Salazar

I think it was spotted because all the old books were suddenly in the New Releases again. I have, obviously, put EDGE onto my DTRPG watch list and another set of items were put up yesterday. I don't know enough about Genesys to know whether they're new or re-releases. Part of me thinks that it's the public-facing studios being messed around by Asmodee - the responsibility wasn't planned to change until after the Lion books were released, AFAIK - leaving both of them looking foolish.

2 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

EDGE does have a twitter now though.

https://twitter.com/edge_english

Ewww ;)

4 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

EDGE does have a twitter now though.

https://twitter.com/edge_english

🤮 that means I have to join Twitter to ask them something?

I prefer joining an expedition to retake Shiro Hiruma

33 minutes ago, Diogo Salazar said:

🤮 that means I have to join Twitter to ask them something?

I prefer joining an expedition to retake Shiro Hiruma

Seconded.

Okay, I used my wife’s Twitter account as proxy to ask them, let’s see what they say.

I mean, is it too much to have this book available in PDF before Christmas or am I being unreasonable?

I am seriously asking, my wife is saying I am being too harsh.

4 hours ago, Diogo Salazar said:

is it too much to have this book available in PDF before Christmas or am I being unreasonable?

I am seriously asking, my wife is saying I am being too harsh.

Given that it's usually a few months from dead tree release to .pdf, creating a publishable .pdf is not instant or free, but getting it done by the end of december is achievable, and it will represent a chunk of sales that EDGE won't get otherwise.

6 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Given that it's usually a few months from dead tree release to .pdf, creating a publishable .pdf is not instant or free, but getting it done by the end of december is achievable, and it will represent a chunk of sales that EDGE won't get otherwise.

😆

The **** you talking about?

The books for the game are being set up Adobe in InDesign CC 2017 on a Macintosh and the PDF is being created using a pdf optimizer tool that can be purchased on the internet. I could even tell you the exact fonts they are using for the game. I don't even know why they use a second optimization tool since Adobe CC already comes with everything you need to make the PDF. Beyond the cost of the programs, which were paid 3 years ago, creating the PDF is completely free and requires about 4 clicks of the mouse and maybe about 20 minutes of waiting. Maybe more if the computer is rather slow (I mean-- they are using Macs-- they overpaid for whatever performance they get)-- but you can just walk away or minimize the window and it will be finished eventually. Yes-- even though it is a couple hundred pages. Sure, that's not "instant", but close enough.

If the company wanted to, they could put out a PDF a good month or two before the Publisher manages to print up the thousands of books, ship them to bookstores/gameshops all around the world and the actual proper release date comes around. The only thing that would explain a delay is that they might have an agreement with the publisher to give them enough time to sell out their stock of books as much as they can before a pdf becomes available for half the price or less. If people buy a pdf instead of the physical book, obviously the publisher makes less money.

But making the pdf is both nearly instant and absolutely free.

Oh yeah the PDF delay is not tech based, it's entirely to try and drive sales of physical product, especially from stores. It's probably the same reason why Amazon doesn't personally get stock in FFG products for like a month. There's all kinds of outfits out there who publish rapidly in PDF day one, if not preview PDFs and stuff ahead of time.

As @TheHobgoblyn put it, there’s no logistical or production reason whatsoever for this day and age to not have simultaneous release of digital and dead tree formats. Of course there might be economical reasons but honestly, if someone is going to buy digital only, they will not go to a LGS to buy a book anyway, so it is kind of a 🐮 point (showing my age with that one).

Me and my group were waiting to get the book and probably play with a shadow brand but unfortunately we let that go when it became clear the pdf was not going to be released in September. Anyway, mostly I am irritated with the lack of communication shown in these fora. The only “official” person I see posting around here is Mr. Laderoute when he writes something but as far as I understand he is a freelancer writing stories. So it’s not like he has any actual say about anything.