The Ravens Nest

Venger Satanis Closing The Doors On His Independent Publishing

Today is a sad day for me. I just got this news…which was posted while I was at work and missed it.

This deeply saddens me for the reasons that, if you look at the books from the first photo, yes, those and the Custom X-Cards for Cha’alt are mine.

During one of Venger’s last kickstarters, I went HAM and backed the highest tier because I wanted to get the three hardcovers for my friend Mootz who was excited about the books based only on what I told her. She now has all three hardcovers and PDFs as well.

I’ve also reviewed The Cha’alt Trilogy and gave you the rundown on this strange, dark and vibrant world that Venger created.

I love the books. I love the worlds and, if you’re wondering what The Outer Presence is, it’s a Lovecraftian adventure set in the 1970s so you and your friends are riding around in a big conversion van getting two miles to the gallon investigating cosmic horror. Seriously, this one is worth picking up if you’re as much of a fan of Lovecraft as we are in this space.

Venger goes on to clarify the reasons why in his own blog post where he talks about the financial hardships due to the economy basically tanking thanks to inflation and he tells us that he’ll still be in the hobby itself, just not in the industry.

Like The Stranger played by Sam Elliot in The Big Lebowski, there was a strange comfort in knowing that Venger was out there producing material with a group of people out there, decentralized, creating third-party material for the game, featuring independent luminaries such as LordMatteus, The Red Room and Paddy from Paddy’s Parlor Games just to name a few.

Honestly, this is what I was afraid of most. I’ve been saying that games are a luxury and the problem in tabletop RPGs as an industry is that you write and publish a book, the players and GMs buy that book and …that’s kinda it. This being a niche hobby only compounds that problem for writers and publishers. In order to make any money, they have to, you guessed it, write more books and release them and hope they do as well as the previous book. If the book fails to land, then the money doesn’t come in, thus, fewer materials and support will be provided until, eventually, the run ends.

It’s a great thing for players. Buy one book and keep going back to the well for years, for the publishers…not so much.

We all know there are indie companies that are still doing well and that’s great, I wish them nothing at all but the best. I wish the whole indie sphere nothing but the best in their endeavors but our economy is in the toilet, people, including myself are now looking out there for what they require most and leaning on their current libraries rather than purchasing a load of new stuff for new games.

It’s a sick and sad situation. Under better economic circumstances, this wouldn’t be an issue.

The biggest disappointment is that I’m unsure whether we’ll see that fourth installment to Cha’alt. If I’m wrong and we’ll see it, then I think that’s one we should all dogpile nine ways to Sunday in order to ensure that this game stays in the current zeitgeist. If Venger and Kort’thalis are going to go out then it should go out in a blaze of tentacled, chartreuse-splattered glory.

There is good news out of all of this though. You can still get Cha’alt in hardcover and the best part is you’ll be getting great, quality books at a great price that will put the pricing on the upcoming D&D 2024 to shame. You’ll spend only $120 and that’s including PDF files that you own. The rules are extremely light, using Crimson Dragon Slayer d20 (free!) and many other goodies right here and I encourage everyone who hasn’t checked it out to do so today. I think the PDFs will always be available but the hardcovers won’t be. Venger says he still has a basement full of them. I would take him up on getting the hardcovers one at a time if you have to. Added bonus to the Hardcovers, they’re signed, numbered and include some type of original artwork in the form of a cool doodle in the book itself.

From all of us here at The Raven’s Nest, Venger, we’re deeply saddened to hear of your struggles and the fact that you have to step back. We understand and we hope things turn around. We hope those bigger things are coming and we hope this setback leads to a much bigger comeback.