@tragedyjones said:
Also, I don't believe OP markets to brick and mortar stores at all. The only products they ship to them, AFAIK, are demos for Free RPG day. And I don't think they even do that every year - don't see them on the list for 2015.
Their business model doesn't support this, no. Considering I've heard horror stories from buddies in the old WW about an order being a day late, and the order itself getting cut by half (and so books are left on a pallet in a warehouse because they have no buyer at that time), or overprinting and having scads of books left over, I can't blame them. Plus the PoD business model seems to work, and we get good print books, which allows them to try something different here and there.
Free RPG Day also probably just doesn't have an offering this year; they had a Blood & Smoke demo that went out last year, but without something immediately on the horizon, they may not have anything they want to put out that's in that level of readiness. They also have a pilot program/beta test thing for FLGSes to order PoDs with a discount to get new WW stuff on the shelves.
@Arkandel
Alright, second trick question with a little follow-up then. Do you think they know we exist? If so, do they care?
I'd say they know about WoD MUing and just don't care. It's like WoD chatgames; people advertise their chat games (and I think I've seen MU ads too) on their forums, both when it was WW as an entity and now as OPP. Chatgames and such are listed on various meetups, facebook groups and tons of other sites.
It's not a blip on anyone's radar, CCP or otherwise, really. We are not violating their IP (typically) and are using it for the intended use. I don't think they have enough time or care to really go 'here are rules for crossovers for those games that want them'. They had a hard enough time with OWoD books trying to do tabletop stuff and then cram MET stuff in them when MET took off.
@tragedyjones said:
They know we exist - or at least that we did. I know there was mention of MU way back when in SOME book, probably oWoD. And during the Golden Age of WWGS, they of course had a much larger online gaming presence. A Palace Chat, New Bremen, etc. Hell I remember they used to have newsgroups.
I know of at least one of the MET Journals that I have a copy of, which was an MET publication, that talked about a couple of WoD MU*s in conjunction with making a Shining Host (Changeling LARP) MUSH and that was more or less it that I can recall from OWoD books.