A mini-update Feb 21 2006

[Kevin]

Wow, what a crazy last 7-8 days.

Working day and night, and through the weekend, to finish up Rifts Arzno – Vampire Incursion; getting yelled at by Wayne for stopping to spend a few hours on Tome Grotesque (I just had this great idea I had to get down), and a bunch of business stuff. Just a packed week – and then the message board fiasco.

The message board trouble came outta nowhere.

It seems our server was purchased by another (bigger) company, and they were physically moving the old server unit from one place to another. Rather than shut the boards down for a week they whipped up some plan to keep them up (kinda), but that only caused mass confusion and trouble. To complicate matters, they didn’t inform us first, so we were in the dark as much as anyone. Yeesh.

And no, this isn’t what Thom was talking about when he posted here a few days before the trouble. It was pure coincidence that the boards went down shortly after he warned there might be message board problems (that change is still comin’ down the road).

Anyway, we’re back and we appreciate your understanding about the confusion and all.

I still have a bunch of stuff to catch up with so I’ll rant and rave about Rifts® World Book: Arzno-Vampire Incursion in a few days. Let it suffice to say that it is another great book, full of adventure ideas, bad guys and strangeness. Wayne went crazy over the Waste, Ghosts of the Waste and Thumpers, and Alex loved everything! Arzno is mapped and interesting, and there are new TW gizmos, new artists, nice art by old artists, and lots of cool places, villains and adventure ideas. The John Zeleznik cover should be up on the website someplace.

The Best of the Rifter® should arrive from the printer tomorrow, February 22, and ship to subscribers and distributors. Those of you who have yet to take advantage of the great subscription offer (4 issues of The Rifter®, a copy of The Best of the Rifter® plus a free $15-$20 gift) are crazy if you don’t order by the end of next month. I don’t think we’ll ever have a deal this good again! That’s something like a $65 value for a cost of only $36 bucks!

The Palladium Open House is also developing nicely. At last count, I think we already had something like 23 gaming events lined up, Scott Johnson and Wayne Breaux have joined the guest list (something like 25-27 at this point) and Jolly Blackburn, author and artist behind the Knights of the Dinner Table (and long time pal), told me he’s going to try to make it to the Open House as a very special guest (should know for sure next month). This is the biggest line up of Palladium creators ever and the list is still growing!

Now back to Tome Grotesque and coordinating art and production on Rifts® Madhaven (New York City).

Muttering, Murmuring – Kevin Siembieda, President and Stuff