  |
While I hope to get the comic up on Monday and Wednesday, note that the schedule listed at the top of the comic specifies "usually" Monday and Wednesday. This past Wednesday, I had to drive back to NY for an unexpected funeral, so the comic didn't get done. There's a new one now, though, so you're still getting two this week. Well, as unpopular announcements go, this one will probably top the list. You may have noticed that there was no comic on Friday. The fact is that I got bogged down in a very important deadline for an OOTS product, and made the decision that the product had to come before the online strip in my priority-o-meter. See, without the books and other merchandise I produce for OOTS, I couldn't afford to continue to make the comic full-time, and if I failed to meet this particular deadline, I was going to be in deep trouble in terms of successfully earning my yearly budget. Since the justification for going to the three-day-a-week schedule was because I was able to devote the time I previously devoted to my Day Job, I figured that anything that threatened that was enough reason to cut back to two last week. I wasn't sure I wasn't going to get one out late Saturday, but the deadline kind of bled into the entire weekend, and I only just finished the bulk of the work this morning. The problem arises when I realize that I have additional deadlines for the entire remainder of May and June--followed by three major conventions in the space of six weeks. Now, I'm not foolish enough to think that I won't once again be in the situation of not being able to get both the online strip and my other work done at the same time. I don't think it has escaped anyone's notice that the strips are being posted later and later every day, something I am not happy with but have been unable to seem to correct. So, for the summer, OOTS is returning to a twice-a-week-schedule temporarily, effective immediately. Unlike before, it will update (hopefully) on Mondays and Wednesdays, so it will just be as if I took Fridays off. Mind you, if I find myself with a copious amount of free time, I may post a comic some Fridays anyway, but don't expect them. Consider them bonus strips if they appear. The point is, I would rather tell you guys up front that I will not be able to manage three strips a week until after GenCon in August. At that time, I will ramp back up to three--heck, I might even do a few seven-in-a-row weeks in the fall to make up lost ground. Again, I can't stress enough that this is temporary, and I thank you for your patience. For those who may have missed it, I was lucky enough to do a guest strip for Scott Kurtz's webcomic, PVP. You may not get the joke if you don't know PVP, but then again, you might. PVP was, incidentally, the first webcomic I ever saw, so in a sense you can thank (or blame) Scott for the existence of OOTS in the first place. So sit back for a moment and prepare to hear a harrowing tale of conventions gone wrong: We were invited to MidSouthCon last year sometime, and we decided to drive there. Plane tickets were offered, but we had two books and t-shirts and assorted booth paraphernalia to take with us, more than would fit in checked luggage. After all the problems I'd had with shipping stuff, I decided I trusted only myself to get my stuff to the con. Things began badly, though, as proven by the fact that Wednesday's strip was posted late, even for recent trends. Friday's strip wasn't done yet, but I figured, "Hey, the convention doesn't start until Friday afternoon. Even leaving a few hours late, we can get into Memphis at 6:00 am, enough time for a nap and to draw and post Friday's comic." So we left Philly at 10:00 am Thursday morning. A mere 22 hours later, we roll into Memphis, Tennessee. (Note that MapQuest pegged the trip at about 17 hours, and we only stopped for 2 one-hour meal breaks.) It's now 8:30 am, Friday, local time, and we walk up to the desk at the convention hotel to check in. Only, they canceled our reservation for not showing up. Despite the fact that the con staff had told them we would be checking in late. The front desk rudely informed us we could try back at 3:00 pm, their normal check-in time, when they MIGHT have a room. We can't get a hold of the con guest relations person, since I was an idiot and copied her cell phone number down wrong. Faced with exhaustion and the need to shower, nap, and prepare for the dealer's room to open at 4:00, we drive around until we find another hotel with an available room that will let us check in early. We find one. We check in. I take a three-hour nap, then get up and draw Friday's comic; I finish it at 2:30 pm. I go to hook up to the wireless internet--and discover that this hotel, unlike the convention hotel, doesn't HAVE wireless internet. They have wired internet--only, their system more or less assumes you have a PC laptop, not an iBook, and I don't even have a port on my computer that matches the cable coming out of the wall. After showering, I bring the laptop with me to the convention hotel, where I find out that, oh, no, the wireless internet there is down. (As point of fact, it remains down for every point in time at which I had my laptop with me during the entire convention.) A quick phone book survey of the neighborhood reveals that there are no internet cafes, Kinko's, or similar services anywhere near the hotel. I give up, and call Ray to tell him to post the filler that graced the Comics page for the last few days. Once the entire weekend had passed without the convention hotel's internet access ever being available, I decided to just wait until I got home. I left Memphis on Monday afternoon, and made it into Philly at about 6:00 pm Tuesday, at which time I posted the strip immediately, then started writing this post. The convention was a lot of fun, despite these problems. None of it was MidSouthCon's fault; the hotels were awful, and the hotel staff was rude and unhelpful. So, regarding the comic: Today's comic is actually Friday's. Tomorrow night, you'll get a double-sized comic, representing Monday and Wednesday of this week. This Friday's comic will post as normal. So there won't be any shortfall of comic, merely a more compressed schedule for them. Two months since I updated the News...that's got to be some sort of record. OK, well, let's talk about things. There's a lot of work that's piled up on me, thanks to having a few deadlines from the Spooooky Wizard and the added stress of certain personal crises. That would be part of why you're not looking at a brand new site design right now, despite the fact that I announced it in January. The other part would be that the new site will feature an architecture that will make it much easier for me to add to the site—which will encourage me to update the News more often—but said architecture isn't done yet. Sigh. Well, at least we'll have a decent selection of articles and stories to choose from when we launch. Looks like we're going to be at a convention this weekend: MidSouthCon, which is, predictably, held in the Mid-South. Memphis, Tennessee, in fact. I think this will be the only time I make it south of Maryland this year, so if you're interested in getting a signature, a t-shirt, some buttons, books, whatever, come on over. They also have me scheduled for three different speaking panels, one on each day of the con. For fun, you should come and listen to my voice squeak and scratch and crack as I struggle to overcome a nasty head cold that I've been struggling with for the last week. It doesn't take a future psychic to know that we're wrapping up the current story arc in OOTS. It has been...interesting...to say the least. I'm very happy with some of it, less so other parts, but for good or ill, it is what it is. There will be some nice and overdue changes of pace after it wraps up, too. Expect to see an announcement soon about the next book, including the title and release date. (Hint: You'll be able to score it early if you happen to see me at a convention this summer. No, not the one this weekend, I don't work that fast.) In case you didn't notice, our lag problems seem to mostly be behind us. We've been running smoothly for three comics in a row now, thanks to some hard work on the part of Ray and the ISP folks. For those of you who don't read the Convention Calendar, I'll be appearing at MarsCon in Williamsburg, VA, this weekend. I have a few panels, an autograph session, and a top-secret event for a few lucky fans who want to get a sneak peak at The Future, Today. Should be fun, if you're in the South, take a drive on over and visit. There will be books and t-shirts and buttons on sale at the autograph session, too, in case you lack something tangible on which I can scribble Sharpie for you. As we reported before, GiantITP.com seems to be under deliberate Denial of Service attack. This attack is very different in nature than our usual posting day lag. We have made some attempts to battle this attack, and we hope to make more permanent fixes this week. For the time being, some of you with slower connections may have trouble connecting to the web servers (If you have friends with slow connections complaining that they can't connect, share this with them, since they won't be able to see it). Ray/RAWBearNYC will be monitoring the situation and tweaking settings to maximize our ability to service the largest number of you as possible at any given time. We apologize for the inconvenience. Update: OK, tonight we've upgraded to a new server better protected from this kind of thing. Due to DNS changes, some of you may experience a disconnect in site content. Thank you. I'm sure you all noticed that the site was all-but-inaccessable this past Friday. My webmaster, Ray, tells me that GiantITP.com was the target of a deliberate Denial of Service attack, and had been the previous Monday as well. We normally have a little lag for a few hours after the new strip is posted as everyone rushes to read it, but Friday's shut down lasted for more than 12 hours. Anyway, Ray is working hard to figure out a way to keep this from happening again, but keep in mind that until we have this solved, there might be some days you can't access the site. If you happen to have any information about who might be doing this to us, feel free to email me with it. Also, the last News post has gotten a lot of interested parties emailing me regarding writing content for the site. So to try to head as many of them off as possible, here's the scoop: Yes, I will be accepting submissions for gaming articles and fiction. However, I am not doing so yet, so please do NOT send unsolicited work to my email at this time. Official guidelines for submitting work to GITP will be posted within the month, probably on or slightly before the site redesign goes live. (By the way, stopping this DoS thing will take precedence over the redesign for Ray's services, which might push it back a week or two into February.) Further, keep in mind that I will be looking for authors to tackle new articles/stories, not simply republishing existing work you may have done. Thanks to all of those who donated to Child's Play. Tycho and Gabe announced that they raised more than $590,000 in gifts and cash. I know only a small portion of it was from OOTS fans, but still, I'm happy we were able to help out. Well, it's the end of another year. And kind of the proverbial rollercoaster of one at that. As is traditional when the calendar turns, let's look back on the good and bad of 2005. This was, more than anything else, the Year of the Book for me. It pretty much dominated my life, from the ordering frenzy in January to the first shipments in April and through to the utter fiasco of lost books that ate most of the summer and autumn. If I had it to do over again, I'm pretty sure all of the problems could be avoided. I would have kept all of the shipping in-house and avoided using a third-party provider that couldn't live up to their hype. I would have used shopping cart software that didn't thwart me at every turn and make it nearly impossible to process orders in bulk. I would have known about the USPS Global Priority flat rate envelope. But then, I now have the benefit of perfect hindsight. Who knows, there may be a day when I take another stab at self-distribution, but for now, I'm OK with Paizo handling my orders. At least if there's a problem, they have people who's sole job it is to fix it. Me, I was always juggling managing the problems with continuing to produce the comic and trying to work on secret projects like On the Origin of PCs. The book wasn't the only story, though. The second book led to an unbelievable showing at GenCon Indy, with hundreds of people lining up to buy. This in turn led directly to OOTS appearing in Dragon Magazine, which, if nothing else, is a tremendous personal victory. I've been reading Dragon on and off for 20 years; the very first D&D product I ever bought was an issue of Dragon. (I confess that my purchase was driven more by the painting of the hot fantasy chick on the cover than any knowledge of D&D. What can I say? I was an 11-year-old boy.) So, this all begs the question: What about 2006? Are you just going to churn out more of the same old crap? Of course not, gentle reader; we have ALL-NEW crap to churn out! I've hinted at this a bit on the message boards, but the beginning of 2006 will herald major changes for this website. We'll start with a complete site overhaul, including new visuals and a greatly-improved interface. And yes, an RSS feed is part of that plan. The new year will also feature the return of new non-OOTS content to Giant in the Playground. Many of you have written me to ask when there will ever be new gaming articles on this site, and the answer is, "very, very soon". But that's not all; in an effort to make GiantITP.com your one-stop site for gamer entertainment, GITP is going to feature a new section devoted to fantasy fiction, in the form of short stories and ongoing serialized novellas. You'll be able to get weekly fixes of fantasy writing right here, starting when the redesign goes live. "But wait," I can hear you saying, "You can barely handle updating OOTS three times a week, you're now going to write a new gaming article every Tuesday and a new story every Thursday?" Well, not exactly. See, in order to expand GITP from being my personal site to its own company, I'll be bringing in a hand-selected group of new authors and game designers to help contribute material. Some are names you'll know from WOTC products or Dragon Magazine, some are long-time friends of the site (*coughAmbercough*), some are the last people you'd ever expect to write for my website. Don't worry, though, I'll be editing all articles personally, as well as contributing many myself when my time allows, so expect at least the same level of quality as the existing articles. No hard-and-fast date on these changes yet, but all indicators point to February 1st or so. There will be another announcement when I'm sure. And hopefully, we can weed out some of the technical problems that are slowing the message board down at the same time. Other things to look forward to this year: The third OOTS book (Volume 2, technically) should be available for preorder sometime in early spring, all things going as planned. And due to the stunning success of On the Origins of PCs, GenCon Indy will likely see another all-new OOTS book (subject to be determined later). Also, don't be surprised if a game of some sort finds its way onto your gaming store shelves later in the year. I could say more, but there are spies everywhere. OK, so another tradition is that I also tell you how I'm doing personally. I'm not going to lie, this year has been very difficult for me, due to some health issues, moving twice within six months, and the stress of shipping problems. But you know what? All of the angry customers, all of the missed updates, all of the heaping piles of crap that get dumped on me by a small segment of the fanbase are totally worth it. Because I get to draw a comic strip for a living now. Right now I am working in my living room, wearing my PJ's and eating toaster pastries. And sure, I didn't actually GO to sleep last night because the comic was due, but that's neither here nor there. My goal for 2006 is to stop letting the negative aspects of what is essentially a dream job get me down. Part of that will be distancing myself from the message boards and a lot of the arguments that go on there. Part of it will be just trying to relax more and keep my health up. 2005 was a year of some very rocky transitions, so I think 2006 should be about building on the foundation I've already established. The Order of the Stick is one of the biggest webcomics there is; we have over 100,000 readers every new strip, plus who-knows-how-many readers in Dragon. And it is because of the affection that so many fans have for these silly stick figures that the strip has grown into this massive movement. The occasional cranky tirade aside, I ultimately appreciate every one of you that has supported and encouraged me over the last year. My New Year's Resolution is to remember to thank those fans that appreciate everything I do here and ignore (rather than confront) those that don't. I have no doubt the latter part won't be easy for me, but I owe it to those of you who love the comic as it is to try. So there you go. The Giant in the Playground "State of the Website" speech. Here's to a great year for all of us, and to another 150+ comics before December 31st. OK, so thanks to all the well wishes about my recent health issue. The bad news here is that in addition to missing Friday's comic, I was unable to get ahead in my work in order to cover the upcoming Christmas holiday. I was planning on doing strips all of this past weekend, and instead was stuck in bed. Which means that there is a comic today and a comic on Wednesday, but Friday (12/23/05) and Monday (12/26/05) there will be no new OOTS. We'll return on Wednesday (12/28/05) with a new strip. Also, only two more days to donate to Child's Play and get the special holiday OOTS wallpaper. C'mon, go buy a toy for a sick child. OK, the comic's latish and I'm running out the door to AnonyCon, but I just wanted to point you all to our new line of black CafePress t-shirts. Here are just a few of the more than a dozen all-new designs:
You can find more details here, or go right ahead to our CafePress store to order them! So I got an email from the Red Cross asking me to donate again, and it reminded me that I never told you guys about the results of September's Red Cross fund-raising drive. The OOTS wallpapers raised $4029.38 for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Actually, I'm not naive enough to think that every person who donated did so strictly because of my offer to send them OOTS wallpaper, but $688.00 of that money came from my account on the "I'll send them half of whatever you donate to GiantITP.com" plan, so that's money that really might not have gone to good use otherwise. Sincere news post or shameless attempt to soften my image after the last one? YOU decide! Please stop sending emails with complete translations of Haley's garbled speech from the comic. You are not the first person to do so. You would be at least the 534th person to do so (as of this writing), and there are more translations on the message board. You are not especially clever or unique because you can solve it and you will not get a special prize if you let me know. You also are not the first person to notice that some letters are used twice, and you don't need to "just let me know" that you noticed. Thank you. OK, I've been slacking on the News again, so I have a lot of catching up to do. There are going to be some big changes coming to the site soon, and one of them is that I will be updating the News more often. So that's something. First, the first issue of Dragon Magazine with OOTS in it is on the stands NOW. The December issue, #338, features a full-page OOTS on the last page of the magazine, the spot once held by the legendary Phil Foglio. Which is kind of awe-inspiring, and scary at the same time. I mean, I'm no Phil Foglio, but there I am instead of Phil & Dixie. Weird. In other print news, OOTS apparently has a review in this month's Comic Buyer's Guide (#1613). I assume it's positive, but I haven't seen it yet. From the book front, Paizo is shipping On the Origin of PCs now, and some orders of Dungeon Crawlin' Fools. Expect more orders to ship as they get the stock in from Philadelphia. It's been brought to my attention that the Convention Calendar was woefully out of date. We are NOT going to be at GenCon Southern California after all. While it would be fun, the expense was a little more than we could afford, and some personal business came up that will keep us from making a week-long trip to the West Coast in late November. However, we WILL be at AnonyCon in Stamford, CT, from December 2nd through the 4th. We will have books, t-shirts, and buttons for sale, but since they don't have a proper dealer's room, you'll need to come to one of the events where I'm scheduled to speak in order to score swag (and a signature). The current schedule has us speaking from 10:00 am to 11:30 am and from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm on Saturday, but I might horn in on other panels, too. I'm just that kind of jerk. First, I forgot to post about UberCon last week. If I ever decide to run my own convention, I'd hope it's a lot like UberCon. Seriously, these people treat their guests very, very well, and I got to talk to lots of fans, new and old alike. It's definitely a gaming con first and foremost—-while the playing tables were packed, the webcomic panels were sparsely attended—-but the whole thing was just fun. A lot better than BaltiCon was last spring, that's for sure. Plus, as I wasn't the only webcomic guest in attendance, I got to talk shop with a few of my notable peers, such as Pete Abrams, Onezumi, Rob Balder, Phil Kahn, T Campbell, and Chuck Rowles (who wasn't a guest, but hung out for a while anyway). Fun was had by all. Next: Regarding Paizo shipments of the Origins book, I got this email from Vic Wertz of Paizo: On Wednesday, Paizo received a small shipment of both OOTS books. We received enough to fulfill about a quarter of the preorders for On the Origin of PCs, and a slightly smaller percentage of the preorders for Dungeon Crawlin' Fools. We're starting to ship them today; customers will receive notification by e-mail as orders are shipped. If you're not in the first shipment (and most of you aren't), fear not! In the next week or two, we should be receiving enough additional copies of both books to cover all remaining preorders. Any questions or comments can be directed to this messageboard thread or to customer.service@paizo.com. I would add that the remaining Origins books are being shipped to Seattle even as we speak, so the preorders should be going out the door very soon. Maybe I should try to send out the rest of those Elan buttons this week... I will be appearing as a guest at the UberCon VI gaming convention this weekend in East Rutherford, NJ (that's the Meadowlands, for those unfamiliar). I will have both books for sale, as well as Haley and Xykon pins—Belkar and Elan pins are sold out now. I will also have a supply of the blue "Basic Set" t-shirts I sold at GenCon. Now, they have me at the dealer's room at a table, but as I am also a Guest, I should be doing a few panels here and there, and I think they have me scheduled for Celebrity Pictionary with the likes of Pete Abrams and Rob Balder. At any rate, UberCon has an admission price, but if you register in advance at their site, type in the code OOTSUCVI to save $10. If you already registered, umm...sorry I didn't post this news earlier. In other news, people have been asking me a few questions about the Paizo deal. Here's a few of them, with handy answers attached. Q: If OOTS is going to be in Dragon Magazine, will the online version disapper? A: Of course not. OOTS is, first and foremost, a webcomic. The online version is the definitive OOTS, and having a strip once a month in a magazine isn't going to change that. Q: Will I need to buy Dragon in order to know what's going on with the online version? A: Nope. The strips in Dragon will be "stand-alone" gags, without any connection to the plot of the online version. The characters will remain the same, of course, but will exist in a sort of idealized alternate universe where the events of the online comic don't happen to them. Thus, for example, in the Dragon Magazine comic, Roy isn't wearing Xykon's crown and his sword is intact, but he's still ultimately Roy. But I can't get Dragon Magazine in (Nation X)! A: Yeah, you probably can. Any store that can order gaming books in the first place can order Dragon Magazine. Go to your local gaming store and bug them until they carry it. Q: Will you ever compile the Dragon Magazine strips into a book? A: Probably, but not for a long time. Not until either I have enough for their own book, or until I'm on Volume 3 or 4 of the regular book series. Q: Can we buy the cool t-shirts you sold at GenCon through Paizo? A: Not yet, but soon. I need to reprint the black shirt and determine how many of the blue shirt I will have left after UberCon. Plus, I'd like to branch out to do 2 or 3 new designs at the same time. Hopefully by the time the Origins book is on sale for real (instead of for preorder), there should be some shirts to buy. I intend to make up for the lack of News the last two weeks (due to illness) by dropping one really big News bombshell: Giant in the Playground Games has entered into a strategic alliance with Paizo Publishing, LLC, publishers of Dragon and Dungeon, to publish and distribute The Order of the Stick books and other products. You can read the full details here. Then, you can go and preorder either book from them here. Yes, I said EITHER book; On the Origin of PCs is now on sale over the internet for the first time. (It's a preorder even for the older book because the actual stock is still in transit to their warehouse.) I am officially out of the shipping business, I'm just finishing up the reshipping and that's it, the GITP store will close. All book orders will be handled exclusively through the very professional, very capable www.paizo.com. Oh, and OOTS? Will be in Dragon Magazine starting in December. I am so sick. I am, like, redefining the meaning of sickness in the modern age. And when I say that, I mean I absolutely am not doing anything even remotely similar to that, and in fact just have a bout of the flu. But my head weighs 3000 pounds and is made of solid concrete. Except, that it isn't really. Anyway, combined with being a transient, that was what resulted in there not being a comic Friday. The good news is that I will have a place to live, starting October 1st. Yay for having a home! Except for a few odds and ends, the outstanding orders have been shipped. I'm now waist-deep in the reshipments--those books that I am sending again to those customers that requested them. Those that have shipped so far have gone smoothly, showing up less than a week after they're sent. So, just a little more patience for those waiting for their replacement books, I hope to have them finished this week. And then, I'll be out of the book shipping business. Around the end of the month, I'll be announcing a new deal for book ordering that will leave me with more time to do what I'm best at: creating comics. And yeah, it will include information on how you can finally order Origin of the PCs over the internet. OK, so, the quick version of why there was no strip on Wednesday? The fact that my landlord broke in twice in two weeks has caused a chain reaction that has included police reports, apartment searches, and three days of rushing to pack up an entire house and put it into a storage unit. I am now moved out of my rented house and staying with my girlfriend's parents until we find a new home. The downside for you is that they don't have internet access here, so the strips will be posted when I am able to get out to a Kinko's or a friend's house. This might go on for a few weeks, too, so don't be surprised if the posting time varies wildly. For that matter, this means I can only check my email irregularly as well, so if you are contacting me about something important, it might take a while to respond. The good news is it gives me plenty of time to pack outstanding shipments, plus begin to pack the reshipments for overseas customers. Of course, the emails telling people that their shipments are on the way will be delayed, so you might get your book before you hear about it. Now, I've had a pretty rough week, but I watched the news last night and realized that I've had it pretty easy. The people in New Orleans have lost their home in a far more permanent way than I have. While we were watching, Margie turned to me and asked if there was anything we could do, and this is what I've come up with: Anyone who donates online to the Red Cross should get an email receipt from them. For the month of September, forward that receipt to GiantITP@gmail.com, and I'll send you the OOTS wallpaper that I've been sending to people who donate to the site. (It might take a few days to get it out, due to my email issues). Or, if you still want to support OOTS, donate directly to me, and I'll send half to the Red Cross. It may not be much, but if I can give one person sufficient incentive to donate something, then I'll feel it was worth it. So yeah, there was supposed to be a new OOTS today, but we came home from GenCon to find that our house had been broken into. Luckily, I still had the guest strip I should have posted yesterday but couldn't because we were on the road. It's from Bernie Hou of Alien Loves Predator. Since I missed posting links to all of them, Monday's comic was by Liz Walsh of The Tao of Geek, Friday's was by Jeff Mumm of Obscured by Species, and Thursday's was by Abby Lehrke of The Green Avenger. And GenCon? It was good. Exhausting, but good. More details later, but suffice to say that all Thursday morning, the line to buy the new OOTS book stretched from my booth back to the wall and over to the doors. I'm just happy the printer was able to get us a few more than the 1000 books I had originally announced!
|
RSS Feeds: 
