April Fools!

[Kevin]

April Fools’ Day Fun

I hope you guys and gals enjoyed our April Fools’ Day prank regarding the merger of Palladium Books with Ferkelberger Industries.

It was, of course, an April Fool’s Day joke. And from the posts I saw, everyone had fun with the silliness. Cool.

I really appreciate the friendly spirit and good humor of all the posts. They put a smile on our faces when we could use a laugh.

Credit where credit is due:

I don't know if he wanted people to know this, but the whole thing was Ratbastard’s idea (aka Tom Nelson and for April Fools’ Day, aka Percy and Penelope Ferkelberger too). He came up with the one announcement and the names of the new company, Ferkelium Books, as well as game titles like Hygiene of the Megaverse® and Flooper’s Revenge. He also played the role of himself, Percy and Penelope Ferkelberger (although I’m the original Percy Ferkelberger from The Rifter® #9½.). Tom contacted me about a month ago with the idea, I loved it, and gave him the green light to go ahead. Others joined the fun.

Wayne Smith changed the company name on the front page, and I wrote Palladium’s “official” Press Release. NMI gave us a helping hand.

A bit of Ferkelberger History: Percy Ferkelberger and family was a goofy idea that sprang from the imaginations of Kevin Long and myself, years ago. For a long time, the Ferkelbergers were an inside, running joke between me and Long about this fictional game publisher and “how he’d run things if he had an RPG company.” I can’t tell you how many Ferkelberger jokes flew during late night paste-up sessions, especially when we were punchy. Then, for a while we thought about Palladium doing a line of humor RPGs and sourcebooks under a different company name and using the Ferkelbergers’ as pen names. But that never happened. Finally, the Ferkelbergers saw print in The Rifter® #9½ – our April Fools’ Day special and joke on Wayne Smith in April 2000. (We did an entire issue of The Rifter® without Wayne knowing it and then asked him how somebody could have done this!? The look on Wayne’s face was priceless.)

I wanted to be more involved in the April Fool’s Day joke, but the passing of Kathy Simmon’s Sister, Cindy Bailey, Saturday morning knocked the fun and playfulness out of us. But we did appreciate the fun and humor of those who played along. Thanks.

I hope you enjoyed the playful joke and that we gave you a little chuckle. Ratbastard, you did an awesome job, thank you. I hope you enjoyed yourself.

I hope nobody actually thought Palladium was sold/merged. And I sure hope nobody is waiting for us to publish Hygiene of the Megaverse®! Although . . . it might make a nice companion book to D-Bees of North America. Hmmmm. Hey, Percy, what do you think?

Sincerely,
Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, President, Writer, and Silly Person
© April 2, 2007 -- The Ferkelbergers are TMs of Palladium Books Inc.