Probably the best thing about 2021 is that it’s nearly over. Looking back, Shewstone does have much to be grateful for. Our customers are at the top of that list. We’re proud of the welcoming, gracious community that is taking shape.
The Fool tarot card from the Rider-Waite deck, pictured above, is an optimistic card about a new beginning, tempered perhaps by the realization that one has encountered unforeseen challenges before.
Magonomia® Core Rules is Published in Print!
Our flagship RPG, Magonomia, is published! Last year’s year-end update said we were aiming for May 31. We managed to publish the PDF on August 2. The print-on-demand edition had to be delayed until December 2 while we were troubleshooting the color balance of the illustrations, at a time when the printer was experiencing delays (presumably due to supply chain problems).
The important thing for our customers is that you can buy a hardcover copy of Magonomia Core Rules now!
Getting a print product out the door is a milestone achievement for us. We’ve leveled up again. That makes us a fifth-level publisher, if you’re keeping track. Under 5E / Pathfinder rules, we could now cast fireball!
We promise to only use our powers for good, never for evil.
Print + PDF Guarantee
If you purchase a PDF of a Shewstone RPG product and later want to buy a print copy, contact service@shewstone.com and we’ll give you a discount code that credits your PDF price toward a print-on-demand copy.
If you purchase a print copy of a Shewstone RPG product, email proof of your purchase to service@shewstone.com and we’ll provide you a digital copy of that product.
Color Printing and the School of Hard Knocks
My one regret about Magonomia Core Rules is that the page count is so high, print-on-demand costs about $25 per unit. That means when a customer pays $60 for the book, the biggest share goes to the retailer (rightly so: they have overhead of their own), the next biggest share goes to the printer, and the publisher and authors get to divide up the small portion that’s left. Black-and-white printing is a lot more cost effective at low volume.
We’re not planning any more huge, full-color books. They take too long to break even. Magonomia Core Rules has some gorgeous original interior art, which everyone can now enjoy. Future products will be black-and-white or half the size of Magonomia Core Rules, or both.
Big publishers like Wizards of the Coast, Pelgrane, and Modiphius profitably sell big, full-color books all the time because they use offset printing instead of print-on-demand. Offset printing becomes cost effective at a volume of thousands of copies. Maybe five or ten years from now, our business will have grown to that point.
Overcoming Barriers to Play
For Magonomia to really become successful, we need to get gaming groups actually playing. That means we, as publishers, need to make it as easy as possible for a GM to convince their gaming group to try it.
There are inherent barriers to picking up a new tabletop RPG. The GM has to either get a group together, or convince their group to try an entirely new system instead of whatever they played last time. To enable that, Shewstone needs to do three things:
Get people excited to play an all-wizard party wielding Renaissance themed magic in Enchanted England. This is the easy part.
Make the game easy for the GM to learn so they can feel confident running it for the first time.
Provide appealing, ready-to-play adventures so the GM can prepare for a session on short notice.
It’s now clear that our marketing strategy for 2022 needs to focus on items 2 and 3.
The really scarce resource is time at gamers’ tables. Most adults can only get together with their friends for a few hours a week. To get them to spend that time on Magonomia instead of on another TTRPG, or instead of multiplayer computer games, board games, or bowling for that matter, requires us to level up in marketing and product design.
Podcasts, Videos, and Web Features Still on Hold
In 2020 through mid-2021, we had big plans for promoting Magonomia including regular web features (Tales of Renaissance Wizardry), a podcast, and actual play videos. We went so far as to record a couple of games on our YouTube channel, and two podcast episodes which we never finished. We paid one of our great freelancers to develop a few pages of new spells, which we’ve not yet published.
All of what we were doing and planning has value, but it didn’t support the primary strategy that emerged during the year: overcoming barriers to play.
I have to admit, we had less energy for podcasts, videos, and features than expected. The pandemic is still weighing on us. I thought a two-month break from making videos would be enough, but that would have had us back to work on promotional content in October. I’m no longer setting an arbitrary self-imposed deadline or making promises before the work is done.
Shewstone Domain
Around the middle of the year, we acquired the internet domain shewstone.com for $250 and migrated our online presence to that domain. Please see our contact page for updated email addresses.
Forecast for 2022
We’re really a fully functioning (fifth-level!) TTRPG publisher now. Keeping in mind the lessons learned from past half-baked plans, I can say this much about our 2022 products and events:
We’ll be strongly focused on overcoming barriers to play. I’m starting work on a new Quick Start Guide that is more lightweight than the current Starter Rules and contains a short (two to three-hour) intro adventure.
Release dates will be hard to forecast because we have a shortage of playtesters. Email andrew@shewstone.com or join our Discord server if you’re interested in playtesting Magonomia products!
Our first Magonomia supplement, a Bestiary of Enchanted England, is in the works.
We’ve realized our convention adventure Queen Elizabeth’s Astrologer is Missing! is better expanded into a multi-session scenario. Development on the expanded version will start in 2022 but we’re not sure it will be finished with playtesting in time to publish during the year.
Join our Newsletter
2022 is full of exciting prospects, but also a lot of uncertainty. To follow how our strategy and products take shape, as well as to get notifications about online events, you’re invited to our approximately quarterly newsletter, the Shewstone Scryer.