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Sad news: German Subpublisher cancelled Support

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 12:27 pm
by Zulgolra
I don´t want to spread "doom and gloom" or anything like it, especially since I said that it has been a little bit to quiet for my taste - so don´t take me wrong, this is not about Cubicle7, everything is fine there!

Sadly I saw the announcement, that the publisher of the german version of TOR (Uhrwerk Verlag) cancelled the further support of the line yesterday.
They told in a statement, that the line sold well but the investment for production and translation was to high to keep things going...

Since this is an english spoken forum, this will probably not matter to most of the members here. But we have to keep in mind, that not everybody understands english well enough to read rules or longer texts in it and then understand what they ment...
And overall the french, german, spanish and italian(? if i recall correctly?) players who play with there native version of TOR are still "TOR-players" spreading the word...

So i would hope, that another german publisher will be found and that this will not be the end of the german support of TOR, because more TOR-players is always better, no matter what language they use..!

Re: Sad news: German Subpublisher cancelled Support

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 2:38 pm
by Falenthal
My sincere support.

In Spain there's been a underlying rumour for a long time that the sales are not as good as they should be. The publisher has never said anything about cancelling the line, but I guess it's one of those products that are kept in their agendas more out of love of it than of monetary benefits. Some of the people implied in the spanish publisher have openly said that they love the game, and that it's a personal bet of them that it has to be translated to our language.

But we all know that rpg publishers are not Apple, Google or any other megacorp. If sales are too low, or the company risks some financial edge, TOR would most probably be one of the first products to go away. Not that it has happened, but we spanish fans fear everytime there's a new release to read a statement saying "we are dropping the TOR line".

In fact, Journeys & Maps has not been published because the price of printing it, and the selling price, are considered too risky. The publisher has decided to jump from Riders of the Riddermark and Erebor directly to Adventurer's Companion.

Re: Sad news: German Subpublisher cancelled Support

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 4:11 pm
by Zulgolra
For the recod, I am not a real victim of this process, because I buy everything from Cubicle7 directly, but because I realy like this german publisher and because not all of my friends are that used to english reading I also bought the german versions...

And I probably did the right thing, or it might would have ended even sooner..! (well, ok, it does not depend on me alone)

I hope that your spanish publisher keeps up the support, especially since there are millions of people more speaking spanish around the world, than german! So this alone could be a good argument for producing a spanish version.
Support to all translated versions, making TOR bigger!

The product line here ended with "horselords" and a PDF only version of "journeys". Questions about keeping the PDFs on the market are not answered yet. But even if they would keep them available, there is no version of the core rules on PDF available in german, because they worked on the revised edition, when they cancelled it now...
And that realy is a kind of "leaving the german line out there mutilated to die..." methaphoricly spoken.

Re: Sad news: German Subpublisher cancelled Support

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:30 pm
by Hirobumi
That's really sad news. I think that the quality of the German version books was astonishing. I bought the limited edition core book and it is one of the best roleplaying books I own.
I bought all the The One Ring releases in English and in German. It was always nice to rely on the German versions for example for the translations of rhymes and songs and I didn't have to look up all "official German names" by myself.

Re: Sad news: German Subpublisher cancelled Support

Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 3:38 am
by Zulgolra
Yes, it was good to have them available...

I asked "Uhrwerk" some questions about keeping the PDFs in program and if there could be a solution fore the missing core rules (this solution would be to use the unrevised rules for a core rule PDF). And they said, both of this would be up to Cubicle7 agreement...

So at least there is some hope, that the already published line could be kept available (and with the core rules could even get somewhat better), if there is no new publisher and if Uhrwerk and Cubicle7 wan't to make it happen...

So this is not great, still the line itself would stay cancelled, but it would be some kind of silverlining...