Wow, that's quite a lot of questions! I'll likely have to ponder those and get back to you.

I suppose my first answer will be to point out the mission page was out of date , based on some discussions we had earlier in the summer( I've slightly fixed just now).

Edited to add: Check out the key threads page for background insight

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Hi Sami! I'd be happy to answer your questions, although maybe not all at once! I'm sure you'll get a range of different answers from us all at various points, but make sure you prod us if we miss something out.

I'll start with who I am. I'm Andrew Kenrick, 26, from Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, England. I've been publishing my own stuff via Steampower Publishing (Dead of Night, the Lemurian Candidate, Future Soldier and so on) for 4 years now, but it's a hobby rather than a profession.

When not writing for myself I freelance for some of the bigger rpg companies (most recently for Black Industries for the Dark Heresy rpg), a fact my fellow designers joke about! I'm also a freelance editor, and when not doing all that run an IT helpdesk for a college here.

If you're interested in sales figures, we're all pretty open about them - check out the individual publisher forums here to see our various sales figures. I think it's safe to say that Cold City sells the most of all our games, but we all do pretty well, especially at conventions where we're all present.

I can't speak for others, but I tend to get my books printed in batches of 25-50 at a time. Much easier that way and less money tied up in stock at any one time.

We started back in Autumn 2006. The rest of the Collective had all been to Gencon Indy and there was a real buzz about british indie games - Best Friends, Contenders, Covenant and Cold City had all gone down really well over there.

The indie gaming scene had really taking off in the US at this point, both on the Forge, through IPR and at smaller, local conventions all over the US.

A few of us had the same idea at the same time - wouldn't it be great if we could start something similar over here. Not just a design community, but a way to spread the word about these great new games.

And this is what we came up with - initially an attempt to make our own design community coupled with a way to attend as many conventions as possible and get people excited about our games.

We debuted at Dragonmeet in London, December 2006, and hit the ground running. We took nearly £1000 in sales ($2000 or 1500 euros I think) in one day, and created a huge buzz around our stall. We've tried to attend as many cons over the past 9 months, both in the UK and abroad, and are slowly working out what it is we stand for and what we want to do.

The conclusion we came to was to foster a home grown design community, and create a successful indie gaming scene within the UK, as well as to help designers publish successful games both here and abroad. We're a long way from achieving that goal, but we're getting there slowly, one post and one con at a time.

I think Andrew has done a pretty good job of telling you what we are about, so I will just fill in all my own details.

Iain McAllister, I am in retail outside of gaming and interests include writing songs and fiction, watching films and reading. I am a bit of a computer game nut as well my current game of choice being City of Heroes.

I have had one game published so far, the just released Mob Justice, and am working on a couple of projects for release at Dragonmeet in the Uk.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Beginnings are interesting, cos although it really solidified at GenCon 2006 lots of stuff brought us there.

I mean it's five years since I did an interview with Malc about the upcoming A|State for the Realms Ezine. I seem to remember pointing him at the Forge at that time...

Then there was Dragonmeet 05, when a load of guys who liked Indie games finally met up. Or Conpulsion 06, when the first UK indie games track happened.

But yeah, Gen Con 06, a load of UK guys turn up on the Forge Booth, realise they have a lot in common, realise the US has an "Indie Scene" that really feeds into the success of games, and decide to build something of our own.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

And of course up until Dragonmeet 06 I was very much an outsider - you guys all knew each other, whereas I only knew Malcolm via email, and then not very much!

Hi Sami,

For my part, I'm currently an itinerant wanderer and man of leisure (which mainly means I'm backpacking around the world for year).

One sad thing about this is that I can't take as direct a part in the activities of the Endeavour as I would like to. Of course, this is only temporary! However, these forums do allow me (and other people from all over the place) to communicate and talk about design and play.

Perhaps the best thing for me about the Collective is the spirit of mutualism that has been fostered. At conventions, everyone is just as keen to talk about others peoples games as they are about their own games. There's no favouritism or any games not receiving enough attention. And we're keen for that to grow. Having people talk about design and play and getting their games into a form that they are happy with and that fosters the kind of play they want to see is a major goal.

As others have said, Gen Con Indy '06 and Dragonmeet '06 were probably the two key events in the creation of the Collective. The first event showed that we all wanted to band together with a common goal, the second showed that we could do that, and do it successfully and enthusiastically.

Oh, and if you are interested in sales figures for Cold City, they are all here in this section of the forum

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Okey-dokey, I’ve been reading different threads from the forum (thanks to Matt for the links), so this is the image I got: In the beginning there where five rpg designers, who met in the US, were all excited by the Forge and realised they’d like to do the same in the UK. And so they did. In order to get a single table at different conventions, they came up with a name: Collective Endeavour. The endeavour part was also realised in their mutual help in game design and publishing issues. Now, a year later, the question is whether it’s an open society. The answer is yes, if you can make friends with the CE. In other words, the founding fathers of the CE will support your game design if they have time and interest in it. Make something lousy stuff, lack the skills to support others, and you are out – being a part of the collective requires that you can actually be a part of the collective. The CE seems to be a meritocratic society just like its model The Forge. The thing about being "UK-based" is just a practical application of being a part of the CE. Folks are more interested in what their own citizens are doing, and all the advice is directed being active in the UK (like publishing a small print book might be a little different thing in UK than, say, in China).

So, as mentioned, the CE is a name for a common booth. Therefore it’s no use asking what the CE actually does. The question is what its members do. For an example, Joe seems to have some rpg design theory stuff on his web page. Someone else might be writing an article about the UK indie games to a gaming magazine. Another member might use rpgs as a tool in education. There’s no point saying that the CE does any of these, it’s the individuals. Does the CE (its forums, mainly) assist in designing games? Kind of. The members are a bunch of friends, so of course they help one another. On the other hand, they would’ve helped just the same, whether there was a public forum called the CE or not. The reason to cooperate varies among the members. Someone might be in for the enjoyment to do something with his friends. Someone else wishes to promote the UK’s indie gaming culture. Yet another one might be in to boost his own game sales.

And when it comes to the question of how it works in the real life, the question remains unanswered for the time being. In other words, so far there have been no problems or misbehaving. There have been no great disagreements, which would call for the clear authority / control hierarchy. There seems to be some attempts to foster guidelines in beforehand, but since there are no problems, the attempts aren’t carried to any conclusion. So far it’s been enough to comment on others’ games in the forums and share the booth at the conventions. With a word, at the age of one year, the CE is still in progress and looking for its final identity (or, as a journalist would state it: "The CE is a fancy name, but no-one really knows what to do with it"). Or, even more accurately, the CE doesn’t mean a thing in itself. It’s just a name, a title, under which a group of men work. As I see it, it can be compared to Box Ninja and Gregor Hutton. I would be insane to interview Box Ninja and ask about its cultural and political statements and somehow not realizing that it is Gregor in person, who’s doing all the talking.

How precise my deductions, interpretations and guesses are?

I'm not sure it's a case of "becoming friends" with the CE. We help anyone who posts on our forums with design queries, and our aim is to help as many of those people to print and publication as we can do.

I guess it is a meritocracy though - I don't think we'd have anything like the amount of respect we do for one another if we didn't truly believe in each other's games. And I hope that if one of us put something down on paper that was a bit pants, we'd have the balls to say so and, this is the key bit, help them make it good. We never want to lose the ability to stand on our stall or post on a forum and praise our fellow games and actually mean it.

We never say "you must be british" or "you must live in the UK", but if you don't, you won't get the full benefits of membership. For designers living here in the UK we can help you take your idea all the way from conception, through design and playtesting (including at our playtest camp that we ran in May at Spodley Grange), all the way to publication and selling your game alongside ours at a convention. If you're not in the UK, you can still get design advice, but you won't be able to take advantage of the physical community that we're trying to foster.

Hope that clears some stuff up!

Yeah, let’s correct that a bit. My discussion with Eero, who is a long-time Forge activist cleared my thoughts some bit. The Collective Endeavour offers feedback, advice and a sales booth at cons. That’s what it does and therefore it is not just an empty name. My initial reaction underestimated this, because I didn’t consider it as much: anyone could do it. But when I look at the Finnish rpg scene, do we naturally do the same things? No. There’s probably several reasons to why Finnish rpg designers work alone, but that’s the fact anyway. There’s neither common representation in the cons. Eero and Mike both published their games in the last Ropecon, but they demoed their games in different floors. This is how it has been for a couple of years now. So clearly the CE has achieved something, but whether it is something we Finns could adapt, is a tough question. Maybe we just don’t like cooperating or maybe we don’t see any benefits in it. Interesting considering my article.

Hi Sami,

yeah, don't underestimate the power of people getting together and helping each other. Mutualism is the new capitalism (how's that for a soundbite?).

The thing is that a group of small publishers is a much more useful unit than an individual. For a start you piggy-back off each other's success. If one game attracts lots of interest, you get a halo effect and all the games get a boost.

For example, retailers don't like to deal with a single small press guy, they have no idea of the quality of your work. But if there's a group of you, suddenly they're more willing to take a few books, because there's more than your word backing it up.

Also you can share skills. I edit your book, you edit mine. I know about web design, you know about print design. This is a wonderful cost cutter, that can help the small guy.

And yeah, anybody could do it, but lots of people don't.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I think mutualism is the key. I couldn't afford to go to Dragonmeet on my own, not to mention Conpulsion, Games Expo and all the rest.

And even if I could, would we get the same sales if there were 6 tiny stalls scattered about? Or does us pooling our resources and getting one massive stall with 6 enthusiastic people on actually make it more than the sum of it's parts.

I'd like to add something of value to this interview, but tend to agree with everything that's been said. Sami you seem to have a good handle on us.

We endeavour to be a mutual collective!

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Good to see you here. I'll try and condense my thoughts and post on Monday, rather than subject you to my usual verbose self.

-Gregor

I just sent the interview / presentation article to the editor-in-chief. We'll see what he's going to say about it, but I'd say it's a good piece of writing. Thanks a lot to you all!

Even though the deadline was today (the last of August), the article won't be published until the December issue. How about if I'd send you a copy of that issue? Not that you'd understand much of the Finnish article, but at least you'd see the result - and a single issue of the Finnish role-playing magazine. I need some sort of address for this, if you (or even just one of you) are interested. If you don't like to post the address on a public forum, use the email.

...Eero's shop has a really nice page for our books: Brittiläinen indie.

So if you're from Finland we certainly encourage you to order them from Eero.

Wow, Eero really went to a lot of trouble to cut out the werewolf head from the DoN cover, blood-covered spittle and all! Nice job!