At the end of 2014 the future didn’t look so rosy for The Warden’s Broken Ruler Games. He wrote on the company’s Facebook page;
The End of This Chapter
All stories must be able to move forward and doing so requires them to reach their inevitable conclusion. Sad to say that the story of Broken Ruler Games has come to that point. Effective immediately, BRG is no more. But man did we have a good run.
The Warden went on to highlight the success off Killshot and explained why Broken Ruler would be closing. He said;
My decision to bring BRG to an end is solely a creative one. Publishing is a demanding mistress, one I could court during the early days when it was the sole focus of my days. Now that I have returned to the working world, those demands are more than I am willing to invest because they come at the sacrifice of my true passion: designing games. There is a vast, VAST difference between designing and publishing. I am in love with the former, but not the latter. And the more I attempted to keep this affair with publishing alive, the more it threatened my marriage to my true love.
Today, Mystical Throne Entertainment announced a solution. Broken Ruler Games would be handing over all that publishing bother and the marketing to them.
The Warden will now continue developing products. In a press release, he said;
Mystical Throne Entertainment has been a long-time supporter of my work and it is an absolute pleasure to work alongside Aaron and his team,”
“It allows me to continue doing what I love doing: designing tabletop games that stretch the boundaries of how we play. This partnership provides BRG with the flexibility to focus on creating new material and pushing the imagination further while simultaneously aligning the Broken Ruler Games’ catalogue with an established and reliable publisher like MTE.”
There will be changes. Mystical Throne Entertainment will absorb all current and future Broken Ruler Games products into their catalog across all distributors. This means Broken Ruler Games will be moving to Mystical Throne Entertainment on DriveThruRPG and Paizo over the next few weeks. On the MTE webstore the products will be listed in the “Optional System” header.
The Warden will produce new books for Killshot, develop a new espionage RPG and the new system ScreenPlay.
Aaron T. Huss, owner of MTE, said;
This is a great opportunity to not only add a modern action and espionage RPG, with a new system to boot, to our catalog, but an ENnie Award winning developer as well,”
“I look forward to what The Warden will be able to develop throughout 2015 and the plans he’s outlined for 2016.”
These changes sound simple and mean Killshot continues and The Warden keeps writing. All good. This blogger, however, wasn’t quite able to get his head around all the details. Is this a merger? What happens to the Broken Ruler Games brand? Why does Mystical Throne Entertainment need to move Killshot over to their corner of DTRPG? I mean; how is the revenue split going to work? In fact; how do they work out how much money to spend marketing Killshot?
I put the first of these questions to Aaron at MTE. He got back to me with some clarification;
Broken Ruler Games is moving from being a full publisher to a development house. Mystical Throne Entertainment will be handling their publishing and marketing. To do this, MTE needs control over BRG’s catalog.
In any case; it’s all good. MTE has enabled The Warden, aka Todd Crapper, continues to support his ENnie Award winning Killshot.
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