> I cannot help thinking 2 years is too long to wait. Would the > market take more than 4 books per year. Has David Chart got > the resources to commission, write and process more than 4 > releases a year. I think 4 per year is a pretty good schedule. First of all, the core game is pretty complete in itself; strictly speaking, no one needs the supplements. Having said that, supplements succeed by selling to as many of the game's fans as possible (so that the books make a profit, and allow us to continue to support the line in the future). So our objective is to publish books that: (a) are appealing and useful to as many fans as possible (a sourcebook focused entirely on a narrow topic -- say, Sicily 100 years before the canonical date of 1220 -- is not so good; something on topics such as the Realms and the Houses, which will affect every saga, is much better) (b) are spaced so that it's not unreasonable for most of the active fans of the games to keep up with the line without busting their entertainment budget (one $30 hardcover per quarter = about $10 a month to keep up and maintain a complete library of ArM5). Unfortunately, by definition, if we want all of the books to be appealing and useful, some of the topics that someone would find really useful today won't be covered until some date in the future (such as the Realms of Power: Faerie book, which is probably going to be a 2008 release; I think it will make sense to do a Magic Realm book before, since there were two previous Faeries sourcebooks, one of which is available for sale as a PDF). -John Nephew President, Atlas Games
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