Shane Hensley’s End of Year Address
2022 has been a momentous year for Pinnacle Entertainment Group!
More people are playing Savage Worlds than ever before, our sales continue to grow, and now that we’re able to have different teams working on different lines, we’re finally addressing one of the things that has always bugged me the most—supporting all our releases.
Darrell Hayhurst’s excellent Maw of Oblivion for Deadlands: Lost Colony is a great example of that, with two more Plot Point Campaigns on the way so you can finally finish off those pesky Reckoners. Hey, it only took 26 years!
Hell on the High Plains and Blood Drive, both for Deadlands: the Weird West, hit this year as well, and the Abominable Northwest plus a SUPER cool boxed set I get to write are on deck.
Curse of the Crimson Throne is at the printer, marking the second big Adventure Path translation for Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds as well as the very crunchy Advanced Player’s Guide.
The Rifts® bookshelf is beginning to bend with Atlantis and the Demon Seas and the incredibly exciting Terror on the Dark Frontier boxed set—the first ever boxed campaign for Palladium’s amazing world—crowdfunding right now on our own site!
We also got the Super Powers, Fantasy, AND Horror Companions out this year, and even a few BRAND NEW settings like Tim Earley’s incredible Holler and 12 to Midnight’s Pinebox Middle School.
WHEW! That is a lot. But it’s not all!
We also branched out from Kickstarter to our own, scratch-built crowdfunding platform, “GameChanger.” This was a big gamble as creating it wasn’t cheap and came with a few headaches for you early adapters, but we’ve about got all the kinks worked out and it seems to be running more or less smoothly.
GameChanger is critical to us because with our additional teams and more releases we can’t take everything to Kickstarter. More importantly, it integrates with our entire Pinnacle store. This is great for backers because it allows you to grab any products you missed in one larger shipment, which saves on shipping.
Pinnacle also invested in Outland Entertainment who have already delivered the first few comics and more are in the works, along with BRAND NEW graphic novels like my own Rise of the Black Circle, which features the return of Ronan Lynch, Velvet Van Helter, and Bad Luck Betty McGrew! I can’t wait for you to see where this series eventually takes us!
We also finally got “married” to our long-term partners at Sigil Entertainment, both the services and entertainment arms, and got to help our buddy Aaron Acevedo and his crack team with some SUPER SECRET stuff that’s gonna blow your mind when we announce ’em next year!
Our friends at Soundbooth Theater created incredible audio versions of our Wendigo Tales, including an audio version of my self-published THIRD volume of my Christmas narco-horror series, Kringle Down!
At the end of last year, we celebrated the Deadlands 25th Anniversary in beautiful Deadwood, South Dakota! We ran and played a TON of games, ate like Hunger Spirits, toured the town, and even got a sneak peek at some VERY cool projects in the works for Deadlands! (We’ll have a fantastic update for those of you who attended early next year. Can’t wait to tell you the latest!) We’re also looking forward to celebrating Savage Worlds‘ 20th Anniversary in 2023 with another in-person event!
Of course not everything has been so positive. Shipping continues to be a massive point of friction for all of us, which (along with the pandemic) is one of the reasons our VTT sales have been skyrocketing in the last couple of years. That’s a problem we keep working on—looking for new ways to reduce those costs for our fans, especially those overseas friends—and we’ve had some success, but it still feels like chewing glass every time we seek out new alternatives.
Things were also rough for me personally. I lost my wonderful mother-in-law, father, and mother this year, along with several other cherished family members and even a few friends. It was devastating and I’m still dealing with the heartache. I was always sympathetic to my friends who lost their loved ones, of course, but understand it far better than I wish I did these days.
So, what’s next? Wow. So much! For Savage Worlds, you’ll see the long-awaited SWADE version of the Science Fiction Companion AND FINALLY, John Goff’s magnum opus, Deadlands: Dark Ages!
You’ll also see more regional sourcebooks and campaign boxed sets for Deadlands, the Reckoner saga continues in Lost Colony, Necessary Evil III: Cosmic Crisis FINALLY comes out, the Legend of Ghost Mountain returns in a new and expanded format, new Rifts® books are already in conversion, AND the next Adventure Path for Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds is on the schedule!
Our editing team has also opened the doors to smaller, PDF adventures you can buy, read, and play in a single session. We’ll talk more about these soon, as well as how you can contact us about submissions.
We hope to debut our first BOARD GAME under a new company logo called “Ghost Rock Games” in the spring of 2023! Doom Guard features a team of heroes AND villains fighting existential threats, from massive alien invasions to Cthulhu and more! It’s got minis, quests, interchangeable buildings, and is AMAZINGLY fun! You already got a taste of the Doom Guard in the Super Powers Companion, and you just might see some more RPG material for it as well. And yes, once we get our feet wet in board games we’ll bring out that big Deadlands game we’ve talked about for years. ;)
Finally, we hope to share some big licensing news for Deadlands next year, and maybe even some of our other properties as well.
The last ravages of the pandemic, inflation, and rising shipping costs have hurt our bottom line for sure, but thanks to YOU we’ve still managed to grow despite these difficulties. We know just how lucky we are to make games for a living, but far beyond that is something we’ve talked about since the early days of Pinnacle… how lucky we are to have the fanbase we do. I don’t know how we got so lucky, but the vast majority of people who play our games are amazingly creative, friendly, and supported. I know every company says stuff like that, but we genuinely believe it. If you’ve met me, Jodi, Clint, Darrell, or any of our team at conventions or events you’ll know we think of all of you as friends. It’s nice that that feels good, but it also drives our work because we don’t want to disappoint you. We want you to love every single game we ever make, and when we fall short it hurts. But we also learn from it and try to do better. Looking back at my initial work and what our team does now is inspiring and humbling, and I can’t wait to see what you think of what’s coming next year.
Shane Hensley
December 27th, 2022
