Horror on The Orient Express reprint?

[sgtscott658]

Howdy-

Will Horror on The Orient Express ever see a reprint?

 

thanks

[MOB]

43 minutes ago, sgtscott658 said:

Howdy-

Will Horror on The Orient Express ever see a reprint?

HotOE will eventually be back in a new edition—most likely in a slipcase rather than a box—sometime in the next several years (no firm date yet).

[Honest]

The sooner the better!

Honest

[TwiceBorn]

I would gladly splurge for a reprint of the boxed set!

[Defile959]

I have the boxed set... but would happily pony up again if Horror made the jump to Roll20. 

I'm happy to have one shots and shorter scenarios to choose from, but I also feel like the longer campaigns would really lend themselves to the platform

[Rick Meints]

LATEST NEWS:  We are very close to having a Print on Demand (POD) version of Horror on the Orient Express ready. By "very close" I mean in a month or so. It's not going to be a big box full of 6 books and bling. We have redone the interior layout of the FIVE original main books and combined their contents, without cutting anything, into two books. Each of those books is about 360 pages. The first volume is a combination of Book I (Campaign Overview), Book II (Throughs the Alps), and Book V (Strangers on the Train). The second volume is a combination of Book III (Italy) and Book IV (Constantinople). The original Book VI (all the handouts done single sided) hasn't changed, and will be available as an optional purchase. This new "version" is not a full color treatment like you see in our latest books. It's a modest reworking of the original B&W layout, no new art, and a few typos corrected. The full color poster map of the campaign will be available on redbubble.com as well. We'll also have a POD version of the small Traveller's Companion booklet (it's already done).

We will do an updated full color version of HotOE some day, much like we did with Masks of Nyarlathotep, but that is far down our production schedule. It's in the queue behind Gaslight, Dreamlands, and Beyond the Mountains of Madness, which means it's at least 2-3 years away. 

Lastly, we intend to make more older CoC titles available via POD. Unfortunately, that's not always as easy as it sounds.

[MrJorgensen]

Everything in the above post makes me happy. Especially the information that Beyond the Mountains of Madness is in the queue. 

[Travern]

3 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

LATEST NEWS:  We are very close to having a Print on Demand (POD) version of Horror on the Orient Express ready. By "very close" I mean in a month or so.

That's great news!  Could you please let us know who the printer/vendor is?

[Mark Morrison]

This is fantastic news, Rick!

Thanks so much for getting the Blue Train back on the rails.

Cheers,

Mark

[klecser]

Wow. That's impressive. I appreciate the work that would go into redoing the layout, arranging for the POD, and other tasks that I'm sure I can't imagine. Chaosium rocks.

[Travern]

23 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Lastly, we intend to make more older CoC titles available via POD. Unfortunately, that's not always as easy as it sounds.

That's similarly great news, though it doesn't sound easy to begin with.  Even the black-and-white titles have to be scanned at high resolution, cleaned up, and formatted for printing (and that's if Chaosium can put their hands on clean physical copies that they're willing to sacrifice to this process).  In any case, we look forward to seeing more POD titles.

[AlonsoAguilurk]

Amazing news! I'm one of those people who got into the game after the initial release of HotOE and isn't willing to pay the eBay prices. Are the books being planned to be made available as hardcovers? 

[Closterphobia]

I think I’m goign to hold off until the new edition comes out in 2 - 3 years. I’m sure the POD version will be great, but I just bought Harlem Unbound and will nab Malleus Monstrorum  when it’s available in hardcover, and man I still need to eat.  There’s a lot of books out now on my wish list, I’ll never “catch up.”

[klecser]

16 hours ago, Closterphobia said:

I think I’m goign to hold off until the new edition comes out in 2 - 3 years. I’m sure the POD version will be great, but I just bought Harlem Unbound and will nab Malleus Monstrorum  when it’s available in hardcover, and man I still need to eat.  There’s a lot of books out now on my wish list, I’ll never “catch up.”

We have this terrible problem with them continuing to churn out great releases. Man, I hate Chaosium. 😜 

Edited August 15, 2020 by klecser

[Rick Meints]

1 hour ago, klecser said:

We have this terrible problem with them continuing to churn out great releases. Man, I hate Chaosium. 😜 

Thank you! I now have the Erasure song I Love to Hate You stuck in my head... 🙂

[Rick Meints]

To provide some more info based on the above responses:

We chose to get HotOE back into print for a few reasons. First, we were getting asked at least once a week if there we had any spare copies lurking around somewhere. Second, the book was already laid out in InDesign so adjusting the layout, although it took some time, was easier than having to scan, OCR, and re-layout a book from scratch. Thirdly, it's already set up for 7th edition, so nothing to convert. Lastly, while we say it will be at least 2-3 years before it gets a full color treatment, please note the phrase "at least". Alas, it could be longer than that. 

We will probably print a batch of HotOE for our warehouses for direct sale, and then see how it sells before solely offering it as a POD title. The copies we sell first will probably be hardcover, although for POD we might offer softcover too. We haven't decided on a price just yet, but the books are 368 and 388 pages. We are doing a small bit of checking for typos and such, and then it's off to the printer. If we do a batch print we will probably print it in the US and in Lithuania.

As for other older titles, how quickly we get to them depends on a number of factors, largely similar to the ones listed above. There are some that we definitely do not have a good electronic layout file for. Those are potentially a lot more work.

[klecser]

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

Alas, it could be longer than that. 

Anyone bothered about that news needs to learn to see the forest for the trees. Call me crazy, but game companies can only work on so many products at once. Chaosium has a "good problem:" an extensive back-catalog of excellent work. And everyone will have different favorites. It only makes sense that a product with a "less than ideal" recent reprint needs to go to the back of the line for the "super deluxe" reprint. I would much rather have BTMoM in hand before that, given that it is even harder to find and sells at untenable prices on a secondary market.

You're doing good work, Rick.

[Closterphobia]

4 hours ago, klecser said:

We have this terrible problem with them continuing to churn out great releases. Man, I hate Chaosium. 😜 

Love to hate yes.  I haven’t seen a CoC book they’ve published that doesn’t spark my interest. Great problem for Chaosium to have.

[Videopete]

Just a reminder, this is the box set that damn near killed the company. So I can understand the great hesitancy to reprint it in all its glory.

[klecser]

4 hours ago, Videopete said:

Just a reminder, this is the box set that damn near killed the company. So I can understand the great hesitancy to reprint it in all its glory.

?

It was the shipping decision that was the problem, not the product itself.

[jasonconlon]

On 8/15/2020 at 11:10 PM, Rick Meints said:

...We will probably print a batch of HotOE for our warehouses for direct sale, and then see how it sells before solely offering it as a POD title. The copies we sell first will probably be hardcover, although for POD we might offer softcover too. We haven't decided on a price just yet, but the books are 368 and 388 pages. We are doing a small bit of checking for typos and such, and then it's off to the printer...

If you could reprint the HotOE Keeper Screen as well, that would be awesome!

[Rick Meints]

8 hours ago, klecser said:

?  It was the shipping decision that was the problem, not the product itself.

The HotOE Kickstarter suffered from a number of poor decisions and the problems they created. Yes, vastly undercharging for shipping, especially overseas shipping, was the largest problem, but by no means the only significant problem. Anyway, this new printing of it in a revised format will mainly alleviate the scarcity situation. It's a fantastic campaign, and it shouldn't have to be purchased at collector prices by people who just want to read or play it. 

[klecser]

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

It's a fantastic campaign, and it shouldn't have to be purchased at collector prices by people who just want to read or play it. 

Absolutely. More access in gaming.

[The Ancient One]

On 8/13/2020 at 9:54 AM, Rick Meints said:

Lastly, we intend to make more older CoC titles available via POD. Unfortunately, that's not always as easy as it sounds.

 

On 8/15/2020 at 6:10 AM, Rick Meints said:

As for other older titles, how quickly we get to them depends on a number of factors, largely similar to the ones listed above. There are some that we definitely do not have a good electronic layout file for. Those are potentially a lot more work.

In regards to POD CoC titles will you also be including previous editions of books that have been made for the 7th edition? Like the first edition of Terror Australis, some creatures featured in the bestiary of that edition (such as the Ninya) did not have an entry in the 2nd edition (they were mentioned in the Dreamtime songs though). 

As well as the second edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, which contained an interesting section on using time travel in CoC. 

[Rick Meints]

17 hours ago, The Ancient One said:

In regards to POD CoC titles will you also be including previous editions of books that have been made for the 7th edition? Like the first edition of Terror Australis, some creatures featured in the bestiary of that edition (such as the Ninya) did not have an entry in the 2nd edition (they were mentioned in the Dreamtime songs though). 

As well as the second edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, which contained an interesting section on using time travel in CoC. 

If we have a new edition in the works, which is the case with Gaslight, we are not going to prioritize getting an earlier edition of it available via POD. If we currently have a new edition of a book available, like Terror Australis, we are also not going to prioritize doing POD for earlier editions. We have PDFs for sale of many of those older titles, so it's not like the material is unavailable. It's a shame that those PDFs are not very good for printing out, but that's the situation. If you really want a printed copy, I suggest looking on eBay.