Guardians of Order is a fine RPG company that, among other things, publishes the Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) and related Tri-Stat system RPGs (including the supers RPG Silver Age Sentinels). They also are the current publishers for Nobilis, and they’re the current distributors for all the Phage Press Amber (ADRPG) stuff. And those are just the things I’ve played; they’ve a large amount of other good stuff, too.
They’re based in Canada, which usually raises all sorts of funny jokes about Canadian vs American dollars. But the joke is on the other foot now, which is causing them a world of hurt:
We have demonstrated that we can weather lower sales, but we cannot combat the US economy. As a Canadian company, we incur the majority of our overhead costs – salaries, rent, supplies, utilities, taxes, and much of our printing – in Canadian dollars, but the majority of our sales income is in US funds. In early 2002, one American dollar could be exchanged for $1.60 Canadian dollars. Then the US economy began to collapse as the twin deficits (trade and monetary) skyrocketed, and in turn the US dollar started to weaken against all foreign currencies. We saw our USD to CAD exchange fall from $1.60 to $1.50 to $1.30 to our recent low of $1.16 – a drop of about 30%. We lost many tens of thousands of dollars in the exchange rate discrepancy over this recent two-year period, and were forced to mangle our business plan and seek financial assistance to survive. We tightened our belts, spent hours each day micromanaging our finances, and survived … at the same time that our sales were dropping due to the aforementioned RPG downturn. We though we could “wait it out,” but there are no signs of imminent US economic recovery that will correct the American dollar to a more sustainable level. Unfortunately, nothing comes for free and we now have to make good on those investments and promises. One might say the sharks are circling.
So, in a crash effort to raise USD 50K, they’re offering all sorts of specialized swag (autographed this and that, discounted remainders, bundled products), as well as their usual fine fare.
If you’ve been thinking of supplementing or trying out some GoO gaming stuff, now would be a fine time to do so. I, for one, will be looking at supplementing my Amber t-shirts …
(via BoingBoing)