Emergency Summoning of the Brethren Court - the future of LotHS is at stake!

[Furt]

Hear ye vagabonds, pirates, corsairs, buccaneers and ne'er-do-wells.

It has come to my attention through a recent post on the LotHS Yahoo Forum, from the honorable Dan Angelino, that Warhammer Historical will not be producing any LotHS expansions. This is an insult and blot on the good names of all cut-throats the world round! Please read the Rob Broom Q&A here http://warhammer-historical.com/articles/rob-qanda.asp for the full story.

Anyone who has played LotHS knows it is an enjoyable and fun game in a genre which has proven extremely popular throughout time, not to mention the recent pirate mania. The interest LotHS has generated on other forums is proof of the popularity of this particular pirate rule set. Personally I would like to see more development in this line - LotOW certainly got it's fair share of expansions - I don't see why LotHS shouldn't be the same. There is a lot of room for expansion.

I have dropped a line to Rob Broom (RobB@games-workshop.co.uk), titled "LotHS Expansion" in the hope of showing my support for future LotHS supplements and would urge any others who agree to drop him a similiar short, polite message. Maybe the powers of the Brethren Court can sway Mr. Broom!

Are ye with me or against me? ARRGH!

[joroas]

Ha, In my experience letters to Rob Broom go unanswered. 

I asked him when Divine Wind (remember that?) was due out - no reply. 

I'm still waiting for all the scenarios from the various books to be put online, that he he told me he would do years ago.

[Mad Doc Morris]

Was really sad when I read that. The questions arose from another German forum I'm visiting. I looked forward to the expansion as there were so many great ideas around on the web and esp. the Yahoo group (a sophisticated campaign system, first of all). Don't know why they are cutting a promising sapling.
Okay, it goes with some very awkward decisions from Mr Broom these days. I'm a fan of the GW systems - but absolutely not of the Historical-section's recent politics.

[joroas]

GW seem to have made huge cutbacks in the last year or so. Even the Specialist website has now been frozen and I fear Historical warhammer gets little more than lipservice, after all they don't sell the expensive figures or £30 rule books..............

[meanderthal]

Sounds to me like it's time to work out your own expansion material.  Develop new character choices, write your own scenarios.  Prove we don't need no stinking GW!

[Captain Blood]

After my last larrupping, I'm wary of chipping in here, but think what this tells us is that GW are in trouble.

They've dropped from a £13.5M pre-tax profit in 2005 to a £3M pre-tax loss last year. They slashed their dividend by 75%. Their share price has collapsed from £8.00 GBP in 2005 to as low as 116 pence a little while ago. In part this is due to the general woes of the stock market, but GW's share performance is significantly underperforming the market as a whole, which tells you that analysts and major investors see problems now and troubles ahead. It's been a long time coming. The LOTR movies and licensed ranges gave GW a massive fillip for a few years, and staved off the inevitable - but that particular rich seam has now been mined to extinction. Can they hang on for the Jackson / Del Toro Hobbit movies due in 2011/2012? I'm doubtful, and in any case that doesn't affect the long term prospects for GW, or the profound structural issues with their business (too big, too fast? One trick pony?) and market (shrinking fast in the face of video game technology and a squillion other things for teenagers to spend their money on... )

Cutting back on new product innovation and retrenching in your core market would be one logical strategy to try to dig oneself out of this hole. So we have probably seen the zenith of Warhammer historical - at least for a while - and look out for GW shops in 'non core locations' starting to close down.

Maybe we will all be saved by events from future arguments about 'GW - good or bad for the wider world of wargaming...'

Or maybe they'll stage a miraculous recovery... Looking at the numbers right now, I wouldn't invest.

Time will tell. 

[Plynkes]

Odd, they've just opened a new shop in the town where I was born (20 miles south of here). Even out here in the sticks we have a Games Workshop now.

[psyberwyche]

He doesn't exactly say that there won't be any expansions, just that they won't be expanding into other settings (yeah, I know they amount to pretty much the same thing...)

And if someone does write extra expansions for the web, then that's free content, so yay (I'm clearly a 'glass half full kinda guy).

And there's another naval game coming out soon, so not all bad news.

[Captain Blood]

Odd, they've just opened a new shop in the town where I was born (20 miles south of here). Even out here in the sticks we have a Games Workshop now.

Hm. Therein lies the problem one suspects. Maybe GW thinks it can expand its way out of trouble, but GW has almost certainly overreached itself in the last 3 years by expanding into 'sub-prime' high streets where there simply isn't the market to support the costs of acquiring, fitting out and running a shop.
GW has a pretty well defined (what marketers like to call) core demographic.
It's not all teenagers that buy GW product - only a certain subset of teenagers. And that audience is only present in sufficient numbers in certain high streets. GW almost certainly now have too many shops in high streets where there are not enough of the right kind of teenager...

[lethallee61]

Sounds to me like it's time to work out your own expansion material.  Develop new character choices, write your own scenarios.  Prove we don't need no stinking GW!

My thoughts exactly - that's why I have already begun some preliminary work on "Legends of Darkest Africa"....

[joroas]

But there is nothing to attract older gamers.  I will buy a new dark Elf book, as I bought the Dwarf one, but UI will not buy any new figures.  They need to bring out something new.  If all figure manufacturers did was to resculpt every few years they would soon go out of business. 

With LOTR I tend only to buy those things that were in the films, not their creations.  The local manager was taken aback when I asked why the axemen of Lossarnach had halberds and not axes!

[meanderthal]

Sounds to me like it's time to work out your own expansion material.  Develop new character choices, write your own scenarios.  Prove we don't need no stinking GW!

My thoughts exactly - that's why I have already begun some preliminary work on "Legends of Darkest Africa"....

You too, huh?

[meninobesta]

Cheers for the team who made loths! not only did they manage to do a good work, but they also have:
1 - put a great number of sails in the sea, and for now on we the players are the responsible ones to get the vessels into good port!
2 - prove that this game system can be used in a lot of wargame settings, from the interstellar campaigns in alpha-centauri to the davis cup matches in wimbledon!

 

[Lowtardog]

It is a pretty versatile rules mechanism, I have adapted and used others adaptaions for all sorts of stuff and therein lies the nub of the problem methinks. What can be done has already been done to a greater or lesser extent, well done or otherwise etc.

So why publish official books would be my thought.

Now a sponsored community would be ideal with "chapter" approved amendments, expansions perhaps in pdfs or why not put it into White Dwarf instead of flogging the LOTR rules like a dead horse, that would surely boost sales of the magazine and open the Sci Fi and fantasy guys into other genrees which would open their market instead of re-cycling WFB and 40K

[Aaron]

I think Lowtardog has an excellent idea there. To be honest, I was initially very keen on the LotOW book, but I was a bit disappointed by the supplements. Both seemed like 3-4 pages of reall meat with a lot of garnish. Nice, but not value for money IMO.

A nice compromise would be to put out "approved" PDFs and then combine them into a print annual.