Missive 15 - publishing, parkin, paranormal
Mid November 2024
Greetings Horizoners,
Apparently I haven’t written for six months. This is Very Wrong of me and I apologise. Surely you want to hear from Far Horizons. Well, here you go.
Far Horizons exists to “““disrupt””” how publishing companies have traditionally done things in this space. I understand that process to look like this:
X as is identified by owners/shareholders as profitable
X is instructed by project leads
X is created by salaried creators
X gets marketed by salaried marketers
X gets distributed by contracted distribution networks
X gets sold by retailers (or sometimes direct)
Each of those steps, as well as expending energy, also expends money, so necessarily money passes up the chain: retailers to distributors, distributors to companies, companies to creators, marketers, project leads, and ultimately owners. The relative share of how that gets distributed depends on the business model (looking at you, WotC).
Far Horizons doesn’t operate like that. Instead, we do this:
X is proposed by project lead (usually a creator)
X is volunteered for by creators
X is created and marketed in arrears
X gets sold via sales platforms
Sometimes we get distributors and retailers involved, but typically we’re producing either digital-only or PoD books, because these take a lot of trouble of out of things. We do print zines and sometimes we do this in earnest, but in general we’re reducing our costs by cutting physical out. When we do go for physical, we try to generally sell direct to retailers or go for consignment models where our cut can be even more favourable.
This generally means that money flows: customer to platform, platform to FHC, FHC to creators. There are fewer steps, but there is more risk, and the greatest risk is that in general we’re creating stuff in arrears, as mentioned above.
There’s two ways we deal with this in-house. The first is that we’re moving towards a process where we make a cool game, and then market it through crowdfunding platforms in order to get people paid for their labour. We’re doing this right now for Paranormal Freelancing - the game is basically done, but we’re raising money to get the creators paid as soon as possible. We’re hoping that this will be within three weeks (Kickstarter’s clearing time) of the Kickstarter being done.
The second is more nebulous, but it’s an important consideration because it’s built heavily into the way we do things at FHC. And it’s right there at the top of the second process we identified: nobody is identifying things as profitable and instructing us to make them. Our games are, not to be too wanky about it, considered as art. We’re making things for the love of them, not always to maximise profit. We’re making things that we want to exist in the world. Occasionally we’ll make something that might not sell millions, but it means something to the creator, and it might mean something to you, our audience.
And now for something completely (?) different.
The other day I watched The Great British Bake Off, which I understand has a different name overseas for some capitalism-related nonsense reason. Judge Prue Leith instructed them the make a vegan parkin cake covered with icing. Now, my mum is from Yorkshire, and it’s where I live now, so believe me when I tell you that I have strong feelings about this.
Vegan parkin is fine, and actually it’s not really that much of a divergence from the base recipe. The milk and fat in parkin is there to carry the flavour, which is GINGER and TREACLE and all things nice. On the other hand: Parkin with icing is not something that somebody from Yorkshire familiar with this cake would countenance. It’s not an acceptable modification to the base recipe. I’m sure they all tasted delicious, but sometimes disruption to expected norms goes too far.
At FHC we disrupt the model of production because the traditional way of making things results in less money in the pockets of creators, and we think that that’s unacceptable. It also means that projects don’t get made for their own sake, and we think that disadvantages marginalised voices. So we stand up and say, yo, fuck that. We’re making vegan parkin.
But we’re still there making cool games that (we hope) people want to buy and play. We’re not doing special editions with custom dice, or aiming to raising half a million dollars in crowdfunding, or building a hype train that runs for days and sucks the oxygen out of the indie TTRPG room. We’re not putting fucking icing on parkin. We’re making amazing games and reaping the benefits, together. That’s what FHC is about.
I told you it was different.
Project Updates
Paranormal Freelancing
The Far Horizons Co-op is running its Kickstarter for Paranormal Freelancing!
Paranormal Freelancing is an action-oriented urban fantasy tabletop RPG about characters called "Freelancers" who act as the right hands of sorcerous beings likes witches, warlocks, vampires, and more. Their patrons, as they're called, don't have the time or energy to deal with every little problem on their own, so they need mortals to send out to get things done for them. It doesn't hurt to have a little plausible deniability, either.
Of course, the players don't represent the dregs of recruitment; they're not minions, no, they're the seasoned renfields and acolytes who know what they're getting into, and their masters don't want to lose them. So they get enchantments, repeatable spells, magical objects, and stolen weaponry to use while hunting down that patron's rivals.
It's a short campaign in celebration of spooky season, so come check it out before it fades back into the aether on November 19th!
We Dig Giant Robots
Kamala Kara Arroyo, creator of hit TTRPG Friendship Effort Victory!, is in the final stages of production for We Dig Giant Robots, a robot/mecha TTRPG which is a love letter to Megas XLR. It’s coming to Kickstarter before the end of the year, and that’s a promise. Watch this space!
Bare Your Soul
Kyle Tam’s game Bare Your Soul of fashion, clothing, and rebellion, will be released ASAP. It’s in the final throes of layout. I can’t wait for you to see this one, it looks amazing.
Far Horizons Guide to Mysterious Locales
Don’t quote me on the name, but I bet it sticks. Anyway, as well as running the campaign for Paranormal Freelancing, Falco has also been busy running the project for the next Guide: it’s a collection of weird and spooky locations for a city in your game.
Folks, as well as writing about haunted rivers, I’ve also been the editor for a delightfully chilling banquet hall, and a commerce district that’s a thinly-veiled reference to how capitalism fucks everything up (who would have guessed).
The FHG2ML (gosh) will be going to crowdfunding when we’re ready with it. It’s in the layout and illustration phase now, so it won’t be long, te lo juro.
That’s all there is. Remember: make cool games. wage class war.
Marx // F.H.C.