Letter to Decipher

[Ineti]

This reminds me of a book my 3 yr. old nephew has, called something like "If you invite a pig to breakfast."

If you invite a pig to breakfast, he'll ask for flapjacks. If you give him flapjacks, he'll ask for butter. If you give him butter, he'll ask for syrup. If you give him syrup, he'll ask for eggs. And on and on and on.

Moral of the story--the pig is never satisfied.

(Note that I'm not using "pig" as an insult. It's just the character in the book.)

[rant]
Quit yer bellyaching and play the damn game. The products will come out when they come out. Either support the company or don't.
[/rant]

[Salinger]

What kind of low, hateful person would serve anyone (pig or not) flapjacks without AT LEAST butter and syrup?

I want to see the books that haven't been released yet too, and I am frustrated by the communications black out. I think when people are upset about something, they'll grumble and complain. It's a fairly common reaction I think.

And, I think if someone waits and waits and waits for something, and then it doesn't live up to their expectations when they FINALLY get it, of course the reaction will be, "I've been waiting for this?"

For those that are complaining about the complaints, just stop reading the thread. For those complaining, it probably don't do any good as far as the Decipher situation goes...but I hope you feel better.

Sheesh...

Marc/TheDuck

[Dan Stack]

I like bacon with my pancakes.

Seriously, I can't see any problem with a letter to Decipher. Seems more productive then venting understandable frustration on a message board.

I myself wish I knew what the situation was - at the very least I want to know which printer they are using in case I ever need to publish something.

Hypothetical question... Is it possible for something to be at the printers without the printer being told to print?

[Sarge]

(C5, USS Constitution was NCC-1700 according to the Franz Joseph blueprints. I think the USS Constellation from The Doomsday Machine was NCC-1017.)

[qerlin]

Originally posted by Sarge
(C5, USS Constitution was NCC-1700 according to the Franz Joseph blueprints. I think the USS Constellation from The Doomsday Machine was NCC-1017.)

yup

[Ronin84]

Hallo,

What is frusterating to me as a player/ref/fan is that this is exactly the kind of waiting game that went on before and some of us (at least me) may be tired of the wait and see game.

LUG is good and so is CODA, but for those of us who are fans of a games that are long gone, you will lose customers/players if new product does not come out as promised.

I am not slamming anybody just trying to figure out what is making the patient so...upset.

Ronin84

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

I will finally comment on this situation.


Okay I am not going to wait for Decipher to do anything. Let's see I have made two complete alien sourcebooks whether people care or not! I have made around 100 different starship classes whether they are canon or not. I made several planets and several systems.

We have the rulebooks so use them. Maybe I am old school but you can play using just the core books and still have a good time.

I am sick of seeing thread titles that put down Decipher. Just play with what you got.

To guote AslanC: "The corebooks are the potatoes and the rest is just gravy!"

Get over it and create stuff or is our society to lazy to do that!?

Edit: Grammar

[StyroFoam Man]

This message has been removed on request by the
poster

[Salinger]

Sheras, my Andorian security chief of the USS Titan (or the Endurance...I can't remember if we're the USS Endurance, a Titan-class starship or the USS Titan, an Endurance-class starship), is actually doing quite well with only the Players and Narrator's guides to keep him alive. Actually, the GM hasn't seemed impaired at all by the lack of narrator's screen. The players in general seems to be handling the life of Starfleet officers without using the Starfleet Ops book. We've got a unique alien species in our current episode that didn't need to come out of any alien book.

The game is actually quite viable with only the books on the market right now. The rest would be nice, but you can run the game without it.

If you just can't manage to play the game without the other sourcebooks, then...well...there are plenty of books out for the D20 system. If you really need a game with lots of books...

Quack!

[C5]

Thanks for the correction, Sarge and qerlin. I'm always mixing Constellation and Constitution

[MrZoink]

I don't think it's a matter of whether or not we already have enough materials to have a good game. Of course we do.

It's just that the "we know we/L.A./the printer has problems" responses are getting old. We, as consumers, are already aware that somewhere in Decipher's production chain, there is a problem. What we are looking for now is some sort of confidence building measure.

Sure, the last thing they want to do now is to let another release date slip by. That's why they're not going to give us anything hard and fast. Decreasing our expectations seems to be the plan.

What Decipher failed to account for, is that by decreasing our expectations, they are frustrating their own market.

I have faith that the company will eventually release a high quality product. If they say that it'll be out in a month, I won't believe them. If they say that it'll be out in six months, I won't believe them. Their credibility is long gone as far as forecasting release dates, and I don't really care if that is Decipher's fault or the printer's fault.

The thing is, when they have further 'hiccups' in their production queue, someone will forecast doom because of this current problem. Decipher just won't have the street cred to pull another "the problem is at the printer" in the future, even if that's the solid truth.

The bottom line is this: Decipher is a company. They almost certainly don't care what we think of how they handle their business. They do care about how many units they sell, and this whole fiasco probably hasn't affected their long term sales too much. They know that when new products roll off the production line, we'll buy them, end of story.

After all, giving us a plain explanation, without room for misunderstanding, couldn't possibly be a good idea. ; )

[First of Two]

The book is "If you give a pig a pancake."

Interestingly enough, it's the sequel to "If you give a mouse a cookie." There's also "If you give a moose a muffin" and "If you take a mouse to the movies."

It's point it not never being satisfied, however. Everything in the book is a natural, logical progression from the thing before -- in a humorous manner, of course.

I mean, really. If you give a pig a pancake, you should EXPECT him to ask for syrup, or butter, or something similar. It's a foregone conclusion. Who eats pancakes without syrup?

Yes, I've heard "You can play with the books already out." entirely too much.

To be frank, that's not the point. The point is that something was promised, and that promise has not been kept.

Promises must be kept, or damned good reasons must be given for not keeping them.

SIX MONTH "printer delays" are not a damned good reason.

If you want an appropriate children's literature correlation, try "The Boy Who Cried 'It's the Printer's Fault!'"

or maybe Hillaire Belloc's "Matilda, who promised RPG products and was burned to death."

[Capt. Chris]

If there was no complaining this board would have no posts

On a real note I have to agree with first of two. When I first asked about the delay back in early Sept and heard it was a printer delay I was fine with it and waited patiently till the end of the month. Then I was a ltttle frustated, but still waiting. By the end of the next month came I got annoyed.

Why you ask, even many printer errors and mistakes could have been corrected in two months, or even pulled from original printer and sent to another for printing in that time. So I started thinking (yes I know that is scary) that the reason I was given even if sincere by the messenger was not true to some point.

I used to be a rolltender on printing presses (did it for a year). I did not print books often but I know what the process is and how long it takes to do it. Even a small press should even with major problems be able to get Deciphers order out in a month if not, another press would love to jump on it and steal the business from the inept printer to get it out in a rush.

If I could print 20,000-40,000 multipage (12-24 pages) glues salepapers booklets completely done in one hour on one of the presses I worked on. Even on the slower sheetfeed presses and with the higher quality needed for books,you should be able to get out deciphers order easily in less than a week once all problems are corrected as long as it is under 10,000-20,000 copies (press and bindery speed dependant)

I also know you can play with what you have and don't "really" need the other stuff. I agree to a point. First I have a busy life and don't have time to create everything myself so having these "extras" give me more time to play with my friends, instead of spending the time by myself creating things that should have been put out by now.

So I am annoyed and my gaming group decided to play a game that has more support out. I will still most likely buy deciphers stuff because I like the game and feel it is a quality game but my plyers will not be and that has cost decipher some sales they would have had. It also make me a lot mor cautous and unsure if i should layout the big bucks for the limited adition if or when it comes out.

I want decipher to do well with both ST and LOTR ( like both) but these long delays have shaken my confidence of do they really want to support thses games and even if Decipher is on real solid ground , it makes me wonder how the company on a whole is doing. It is decipher that needs to convince me that buying its books will be a worthwhile investment on my part. To do that support is necessary. Especially when you give release date, you got to do your best to make them and if you don't give a decent reason why not, even if it makes you look slighly bad, because a poor reason that doesn't satify your customer base will have them looking elsewhere in a short time. You may keep most of the diehards (which most on this board maybe classified) but the new or possible buyers will leave.

[Eric R.]

First off I long for the days when something just showed up on the shelf and surprised me, the days before mass trade magazines and the internet,

Business has to run a certain way usually its product + Purchase = profit = more production and so on. How can a division of any company continue when it produces no product on the shelf for nearly two straight quarters? Someone has to pay to keep the lights on don't they? Deciphers RPG division is not some government sponsored think tank like RAND who pays its employees to sit around and come up with great ideas. At the same time Decipher is not being fair to its writers and creative people who put great effort in their product to make sure its the best to only see it be at the wprinters for six months or more and deny them the extra sells profit off their work.

To those who say the core rule books are enough I will only mention the books so long waited for are additional rules for Starship, alien and planet creation. I am sorry but after about four weeks the basic systems in the core book wore out on me and I want more depth. The Core books are not the Potatos they are the meat, the creation books are the Potatos and anything else is the gravy.

[Sawyer II]

... mind you, I haven't read in depth all of the posts in this thread, so if this has been covered, my apologies.

That being said: The answer here is US!, the readers and participants of TrekRPG.net.

What's missing from CODA Trek? Narrator's screen? Okay, somebody design one, put it on a PDF and send it to the Webmaster so we can download it and print it to card stock for ourselves.

Anyone at Decipher gonna say we can't do it? Well, they may not like it, but then it's not like we're making money off of it, and probably won't decrease any sales that would come from it.

What else is missing? Adventures/missions? There were lots of then designed for LUG Trek. Why did y'all stop writing and submitting them? Were we told by LUG to stop? As if we were cutting into their market? I don't really think so. We won't be cutting into Decipher's non-existing market of adventures that are on the shelves right now.

Come on, stop complaining about Decipher's printer problem. To paraphrase Animal House: Face it, we screwed up, we trusted them. They haven't produced anything since the Core Books were released. Now it's our turn.