1 Week of FMC!

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Extremely humbled by the reception to my OD&D + Chainmail retroclone, Fantastic Medieval Campaigns, released last Monday on 10/9. Within the first week, there were 1,629 downloads and 84 purchases of the print versions. To reiterate my mission statement or whatever, I am not seeing a single penny out of this. My work was for the satisfaction of seeing this project through to its completion, and to offer something useful, interesting, and provocative to the public. To that end, I wanted to give thanks again to everyone who contributed to this project: artists, readers, and encouraging voices. FMC would not have been possible without all y'all. I really hope y'all in particular enjoy the final product.

It didn't take long for word of FMC to spread beyond my circles, so I wanted to acknowledge explicitly that FMC might be a 1:1 retroclone of the 1974 manual, but that is ultimately a medium for the message it contains and the questions it poses. It's not without reason that I've been posting the secret postface on my blog and socials—if you feel tricked, that's on you! The presentation is part of the 'bit' and I have made no efforts to hide it! On the contrary, I've taken every opportunity to display it because it is to me the point of FMC as a project. Exercise your little gray cells and interrogate your inclinations. Believe it or not, it was addressed to liberals, not conservatives. If that sweetens the pot.

Anyway, I feel so relaxed now that FMC is done. I think that's the last time I'll do something like this because I happened to announce that I was working on FMC before going joker mode (see also) about commodification in the hobby space. As much as I feel like the way I chose to distribute FMC was itself a statement against this, I also feel like the form that it took—what I sometimes refer jokingly to as "a text with a Christian name"—is one that reflects a culture oriented around commodity production. FMC, at least in its totally free digital form, is basically an item produced like a commodity that is not distributed like one. It's funny! But I want to explore other forms of media, especially ones produced for direct use like webpages, print-out worksheets, or GM binders.

Enjoy FMC! Let me share the secret postface one last time, for good measure. It's a blank page, after all!

Comments

  1. KaiqueOctober 19, 2023 at 10:29 AM

    The intentionally left blank page was perhaps my favorite one.

    "Print-out worksheets or GM binders."
    Love this kind of stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 20, 2023 at 1:18 PM

    Really liked your postface and the two blank pages, I constantly like your ideas, the experience of finding someone who was thinking a little bit like the images I was formulating. Looking foward to more of that :) [blogger is not letting me log in properly, I don't know why) - Pedro

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Marcia B.October 22, 2023 at 8:04 AM

      thank you pedro!! that means a lot :)

      i have had issues with blogger as well, what worked for me was disabling an option on firefox to block third party cookies---but that feels very weird to do.

      Delete

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