Post by okgamer on Dec 21, 2021 19:09:07 GMT -5
Hi All,
I'm Ed. I work for Webbed Sphere, the company that purchased Flying Buffalo. I'm the new brand manager for Flying Buffalo.
So some background on me. One evening in '77 my dad and I headed to the local coffee shop( The Bandersnatch) to play some chess. When we got there, there was a group of adults playing something in the backroom that piqued my dad's curiosity, and he sent me back to investigate. Being 7 at the time and somewhat introverted, I did a quick peek, and definitely didn't ask any questions. I saw a stack of poker chips, and reported they were playing poker. My dad was a fairly decent player, so he headed back to see what the stakes were, and that is how he discovered Dungeons & Dragons! (I'm guessing the poker chip was to mark who was carrying torches) That weekend we picked up the Holmes Box Set and we never looked back. Dad was pretty much an AD&D player for the years. He moved on to Harnmaster, and dabbles in Call of Cthulhu as well. I played a very large variety of rpgs, Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Rolemaster, Traveller, pretty much all the Fantasy Games Unlimited line except Chivalry and Sorcery, along with numerous other games. We played Tunnels and Trolls, and I remember wandering through City of Terrors solo module.
Shortly after discovering D&D I also discovered board games beyond the standard monopoly, and fell in love with those as well. Starting with Avalon Hill titles, and moving onto the euro titles of the late nineties and early 2000s.
In 2000 I moved to Oklahoma and ran a game store for 2 years. It wasn't a great location, and at the end my partner and I had just about broken even. In 2006 I came to work for Troll and Toad as their boardgame specialist, which also grew into rpg specialist. Troll and Toad was owned by Webbed Sphere. In 2012 I moved to Toy Vault, which at the time was not a Webbed Sphere company, though there was many connections. There I worked on board game titles, and was the project lead on The Princess Bride RPG, written by the wonderful Steffan O'Sullivan and edited by Ann Dupuis who I leaned on very heavily. After fulfilling the game, Toy Vault shut the doors and was bought by Webbed Sphere. I moved on to a different project, Mchezo Puzzles! I still am the brand manager for Mchezo, which produces jigsaw puzzles.
Earlier this year, I found out Webbed Sphere was in negotiations to purchase Flying Buffalo, and it looked likely to happen. In August, I helped a bit with the transition, and then in September I attended GenCon to help run the Flying Buffalo/ Mchezo/ Toy Vault booth. Finally at some point this month I was put in the position as the brand manager for Flying Buffalo.
So now the part you might be interested in, what is going to happen at Flying Buffalo?
I can't talk about it.
Oh that is a crap answer. Ok I can talk about a few things! First, not much is going to happen externally for at least a quarter or so. We've just received the inventory from Arizona this month, and it was 27 pallets. Our first priority is to sort through that stuff and get it up on an actual retail site, as well as to solicit to distributors. Ideally, this means stores should be able to stock Deluxe T&T and Nuclear War, in the first quarter of 2022. The website is getting a massive overhaul. Inventory will be tracked, you can actually purchase items through the website, and shipping will go through the Webbed Sphere fulfillment, which means stuff will go out quickly when ordered. If you were paying attention, you saw a brief demonstration over Black Friday (There were some hiccups, luckily no major ones.)
PDFs: PDFs will not be going away in the foreseeable future. One of the projects I'll be pushing for is to continue to update older scenarios with updated content, get them in-print and also offer a fully hyperlinked pdf.
Prices: Most of the catalog is priced at 1980's and 1990's dollars, expect a mild increase of the older modules to standardize pricing at what the current modules are going for. We want to encourage play, so we are also lowering the MSRP of the core book to $39.99 for now.
T&T Future: While I'm the Brand manager for Flying Buffalo as a whole, Tunnels and Trolls will be handled by our CEO with my assistance as needed. His goal for 2022 is to introduce a robust organized play system for T&T as we both firmly believe that growth of T&T is rooted in traditional friendly local game stores.
Communication: I've got a lot on my plate, and just can't follow every possible place for information on Flying Buffalo or Tunnels and Trolls. The best way to find out about Flying Buffalo and by extension T&T is to use our Facebook page, and mailing list. There are a bunch of different facebook pages, of which we have control of some but not all. Ours:
www.facebook.com/Flying-Buffalo-Inc-532205286852148 or www.facebook.com/tunnelstrolls/
You can sign up on the mailing list on the flying buffalo website. I will be on this board sporadically as well. I'll certainly be on tomorrow, as I imagine there may be a question or two coming my way?
Transition: The transition between ownership of a company is always a bit rough, documentation for a fifty year old company, and with Rick Loomis passing, made it very tough. Having it bleed into Christmas season gave it an extra bit of difficulty as well. Steve Crompton has been the main contact, and has been very helpful. I really didn't do much of the work on the transition so I cannot comment on any particulars, but at this point I believe it is mostly resolved.
Some fun things coming up: There are a lot of cool treasures buried in the boxes of inventory, and I'm going to try and get some video going through these, I think it'll be a nice bit of history! I've already found some neat items.
So what would you like to see Webbed Sphere do with T&T?
I'm Ed. I work for Webbed Sphere, the company that purchased Flying Buffalo. I'm the new brand manager for Flying Buffalo.
So some background on me. One evening in '77 my dad and I headed to the local coffee shop( The Bandersnatch) to play some chess. When we got there, there was a group of adults playing something in the backroom that piqued my dad's curiosity, and he sent me back to investigate. Being 7 at the time and somewhat introverted, I did a quick peek, and definitely didn't ask any questions. I saw a stack of poker chips, and reported they were playing poker. My dad was a fairly decent player, so he headed back to see what the stakes were, and that is how he discovered Dungeons & Dragons! (I'm guessing the poker chip was to mark who was carrying torches) That weekend we picked up the Holmes Box Set and we never looked back. Dad was pretty much an AD&D player for the years. He moved on to Harnmaster, and dabbles in Call of Cthulhu as well. I played a very large variety of rpgs, Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Rolemaster, Traveller, pretty much all the Fantasy Games Unlimited line except Chivalry and Sorcery, along with numerous other games. We played Tunnels and Trolls, and I remember wandering through City of Terrors solo module.
Shortly after discovering D&D I also discovered board games beyond the standard monopoly, and fell in love with those as well. Starting with Avalon Hill titles, and moving onto the euro titles of the late nineties and early 2000s.
In 2000 I moved to Oklahoma and ran a game store for 2 years. It wasn't a great location, and at the end my partner and I had just about broken even. In 2006 I came to work for Troll and Toad as their boardgame specialist, which also grew into rpg specialist. Troll and Toad was owned by Webbed Sphere. In 2012 I moved to Toy Vault, which at the time was not a Webbed Sphere company, though there was many connections. There I worked on board game titles, and was the project lead on The Princess Bride RPG, written by the wonderful Steffan O'Sullivan and edited by Ann Dupuis who I leaned on very heavily. After fulfilling the game, Toy Vault shut the doors and was bought by Webbed Sphere. I moved on to a different project, Mchezo Puzzles! I still am the brand manager for Mchezo, which produces jigsaw puzzles.
Earlier this year, I found out Webbed Sphere was in negotiations to purchase Flying Buffalo, and it looked likely to happen. In August, I helped a bit with the transition, and then in September I attended GenCon to help run the Flying Buffalo/ Mchezo/ Toy Vault booth. Finally at some point this month I was put in the position as the brand manager for Flying Buffalo.
So now the part you might be interested in, what is going to happen at Flying Buffalo?
I can't talk about it.
Oh that is a crap answer. Ok I can talk about a few things! First, not much is going to happen externally for at least a quarter or so. We've just received the inventory from Arizona this month, and it was 27 pallets. Our first priority is to sort through that stuff and get it up on an actual retail site, as well as to solicit to distributors. Ideally, this means stores should be able to stock Deluxe T&T and Nuclear War, in the first quarter of 2022. The website is getting a massive overhaul. Inventory will be tracked, you can actually purchase items through the website, and shipping will go through the Webbed Sphere fulfillment, which means stuff will go out quickly when ordered. If you were paying attention, you saw a brief demonstration over Black Friday (There were some hiccups, luckily no major ones.)
PDFs: PDFs will not be going away in the foreseeable future. One of the projects I'll be pushing for is to continue to update older scenarios with updated content, get them in-print and also offer a fully hyperlinked pdf.
Prices: Most of the catalog is priced at 1980's and 1990's dollars, expect a mild increase of the older modules to standardize pricing at what the current modules are going for. We want to encourage play, so we are also lowering the MSRP of the core book to $39.99 for now.
T&T Future: While I'm the Brand manager for Flying Buffalo as a whole, Tunnels and Trolls will be handled by our CEO with my assistance as needed. His goal for 2022 is to introduce a robust organized play system for T&T as we both firmly believe that growth of T&T is rooted in traditional friendly local game stores.
Communication: I've got a lot on my plate, and just can't follow every possible place for information on Flying Buffalo or Tunnels and Trolls. The best way to find out about Flying Buffalo and by extension T&T is to use our Facebook page, and mailing list. There are a bunch of different facebook pages, of which we have control of some but not all. Ours:
www.facebook.com/Flying-Buffalo-Inc-532205286852148 or www.facebook.com/tunnelstrolls/
You can sign up on the mailing list on the flying buffalo website. I will be on this board sporadically as well. I'll certainly be on tomorrow, as I imagine there may be a question or two coming my way?
Transition: The transition between ownership of a company is always a bit rough, documentation for a fifty year old company, and with Rick Loomis passing, made it very tough. Having it bleed into Christmas season gave it an extra bit of difficulty as well. Steve Crompton has been the main contact, and has been very helpful. I really didn't do much of the work on the transition so I cannot comment on any particulars, but at this point I believe it is mostly resolved.
Some fun things coming up: There are a lot of cool treasures buried in the boxes of inventory, and I'm going to try and get some video going through these, I think it'll be a nice bit of history! I've already found some neat items.
So what would you like to see Webbed Sphere do with T&T?