So treat your Storytellers to lunch, or even better, run a one-shot for ‘em.

Download this handy guide to reading the upcoming antagonist entries and keep an eye on those feeds for those rascals. They’ll sneak up on you if you aren’t careful!

Lulu.com is offering a sale!

That means you can get your copy of Vanished Lands d20 for 20% off. And if you purchase even more at Lulu, totaling over $500, you can get 25% off. Just use the following codes:

Enter coupon code TRICK305 at checkout and receive 20% off your order. The maximum savings for this offer is $100. Enter coupon code TREAT305 at checkout and receive 25% off your order of $500 or more. The maximum savings for this offer is $500. Only available for customers in the US.

Also copies of our second book, Vanished Lands: The Storyteller Archive Vol. 1 are still available at many online book sellers.

Our Vanished Lands d20 is now on sale at Lulu.com. You just need to apply the coupon code FALLREADS when you check out to get a %40 percent off the current price. That lowers the price of VLD20 down to $19.99! Pick up a copy now to stash away for a holiday gift or grab it and start up a game now!

Also pick up a copy of Vanished Lands: Storyteller Archive Vol. 1 at your favorite online bookseller to complete your Vanished Lands collection.

So we were at Ruminant Productions wanted to bring to your attention another week that we think is pretty important. It’s called Banned Book Week and it runs this week, Sept 25th through Oct 2nd. It’s purpose is to celebrate the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

And while we’re a Roleplaying Game company, we’re also a collection of authors, artists, and creators, who believe in the freedom of expressing your ideas. So we invite you to learn more about censorship, how it works in America, and why we should oppose it.

This week is primarily sponsored by libraries across america as well as various library associations in order to help educate people as to why censorship is harmful to all. In this vein, we here have collected various links to other sites that will educate you more on Banned Book Week and Censorship. Please take the time to look through these links, perhaps attend an event at a participating library, or just read a banned book.

Primary Sites

Banned Books Week Main Website

American Library Association on Banned Books

American Booksellers Association

American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

The Association of American Publishers

Blog Posts

Galleycat on MediaBistrio By Maryann Yin (has a puppet video!)

On Banned Book Week on I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty

Banned Books Week by Dan Wells

Vanished Lands: Storyteller Archive Vol. 1

This 100 page gaming supplement to the Vanished Lands role playing game contains within it a hundred pages of stories of adversities, dangers, and wonders that adventuerers of the Vanished Lands encounter with frightening regularity. Written from the perspective of the characters who live there, this supplement is a must read for players and storytellers alike, filled with ideas for your own Vanished Lands Adventure.

And the best part is, you can order it right now! It is available at several online book sellers including both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. Grab one. Tell you’re friends. This isn’t a book you’ll want to skip on when completing your Vanished Lands collection!

We will be premiering this new era in the Ruminant Production website with the Hard Times Diaries! The Hard Time Diaries is a literary work set in the world of Vanished Lands. Taking place right after the Vanishing, the Hard Times Daries will focus on an intrepid heroin, Jane, as she chronicles the fall of society.

Other content, along with the Diaries will be posted regularly on the website, so keep an eye on your feeds and make sure to come visit us now and again. We’re looking at releasing encounters and adventures for your Vanished Lands D20 games, as well as other useful supplements and props that will help you tell great stories with your friends. Best part about it is, it’ll all be free and easily findable here at RuminantProductions.com.

Also keep your eyes peeled on other parts of the site. You might find goodies for you to take back to your own computer here in the near future.

DragonCon is a huge convention in Atlanta Georgia that runs Labor Day weekend (September 3–6, 2010).

Also keep an eye on the news and feeds. You might see something interesting coming very soon.

So we here at Ruminant Productions would like to call attention to a neat idea. It is called Read an RPG in Public Week and it just so happens to be, this week.

http://www.theescapist.com/readrpgsinpublic/

The idea is to actually call attention to the the roleplaying game hobby. Sit outside, read an RPG book, let curious people who see you ask about it. We, of course, would love it if you read your Vanished Lands book out in public for all to see but in the interest of the hobby in general, whatever book you feel comfortable discussing!

Happy Reading!

I am happy to announce that we now have news feeds available for your consuming pleasure! Its a new page on the website which lists all the current feeds we’re supporting for you to plug into your favorite feed reader. That way you don’t have to constantly keep checking back at the site to check for the latest news, just check your feeds and click on through! Enjoy.

We like to think that.

But then there are these guys. These guys who contribute their time and skills towards making our products even better! As if they could help fix perfection right? Right? Guys?

In all seriousness I’d like to announce the Ruminant Productions Contributor’s Page. This page highlights the people and companies who have helped get Ruminant Productions where it is today. We’re glad to have had their help in the past and hopefully in the future as well.

So now you’ve taken a look at the page and gone. “Wow. Those guys are kinda cool. I want be up there on the list too.” Well in the near future we’ll be rolling out a contributions page telling you exactly how you can help us to make some awesome games. In the mean time though you can do your part by telling your friends about us and Vanished Lands and participate in our contest!

Yes I said Contest! Ruminant Productions has rolled out its first contest. Entrants who take this survey are entered to win one of our awesome books for free. The contest runs until March 14th so take the survey soon!

Those of you who wander the site regularly might see a bit of dust and debris about. We’re in the middle of phasing in some new pages and content and re-structuring some of our old content. Because of that we might spill a little paint here and a bit of ASCII there. So please, don’t mind our dust. And feel free to point out any scratches in the paint you might see here or there. You’d be doing us a kindness.

Stay tuned. There is always more to come!

Also this year will be having a new GM and a brand new adventure. I’m actually working on the pre-generated characters as you read this! (Unless its 4am CST, and then I am likely asleep!) We’re looking forward to seeing you at the convention.

Remember Aggiecon is not on the Texas A&M campus this year but is instead in the Hilton. You can find directions here.

We’re getting the ball rolling early this year, starting in beginning Feburary rather than our usual March! Only 3 weeks away!

Note:  This is a tentative schedule. We’re investigating attending all of these cons right now but we will keep you updated as to our activities and where we will be so keep an eye out.

Aggiecon

February 5-7 2010

College Station Hilton, College Station,  Texas

Aggiecon, our traditional convention, has been moved this year due to an unfortunate event of the Memorial Student Center closing for massive repairs. Which means that the convention also had to change dates.  So it is earlier this year! But still we will be attending Aggiecon and running several games of Vanished Lands. No dealer’s room table this year unfortunately but be sure to get to gaming early to sign up for the games we’re running.

ConDFW

February 12-14, 2010

Crowne Plaza Suites Hotel, Dallas TX

ConDFW is a Literary Sci-Fi Convention in Dallas, Texas, and a regular hangout for those of us here at Ruminant Productions. This is actually an unofficial convention as Ruminant Productions will not be having any official presence (no games, dealer’s room table, panels) at the convention. But keep an eye on the program book for a possible surprise. That being said a large number of us are attending this convention so come on over and see if you can find us. Hint: Check gaming or the bar.

OwlCon

Feburary 19-21, 2010

Rice University’s RMC/Ley Student Center, Houston, TX

Hotel Information

OwlCon is a gaming convention in Houston’s Rice University. This will be our first year at Owl Con and we’re looking into getting a table. Which might mean we’ll have something to sell you. Hint hint. But you’re going to have to show up to find out! Unfortunately we missed the deadline for running games at this con but we’re confidant there will be plenty of other cool games to try out. This Con doesn’t have a dedicated hotel to warn you so the helpful staff have listed several hotels nearby. I’ve posted the link above.

Other conventions we’re looking into:

• ApolloCon (June 25-27, 2010)
• CONvergence (July 1-4, 2010)
• DragonCon (Sept 3-6, 2010)
• GenCon (August 5-8, 2010)
• MarsCon (March 5-7, 2010)
• MiniCon (April 2-4, 2010)
• Origins (June 22 -27, 2010)
• ProtoCon (Sometime in the Fall of 2010)

More info about those cons as we get closer to them!

If you have any suggestions where we might spread the word about Vanished Lands and Ruminant Productions, please comment or contact us.

Yes Vanished Lands fans, that means you can pick up the current copy of Vanished Lands D20 for a whopping $25 dollars!

Don’t you think your gift giving this year should include cowboys, demons, magic, and no corpses whatsoever? So do we! But the code only lasts until December 31st so get to ordering quick! Enjoy!

We here at Ruminant Productions take the holiday of Halloween very seriously. It is a time of trickery, and a time of treat…ery. And while we all love getting treats, remember that a good trick will make that chocolate taste all that much sweeter.

I wish I could say that we have some new an interesting content for you to peruse over while waiting for your game to start but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) we are still hard at work on getting our newest Vanished Lands book ready for publishing. Once that is off to the publisher you will likely start to see a lot of changes around here, so keep your eyes peeled.

And remember. Stay out of mist banks, beware of Ferals, and don’t let yourself vanish! Muahahaha!

Take a look around and tell us what you think. Like any major redesign, I expect a few of the skeletons in our closet have gotten up and decided to wandered around, so if you see them, please tell us so we can quickly sweep them under the rug. So dig around the site and see what you think, and don’t be shy to give us some feed back, even if its bad. We can take it.

And like our main page says, we may be small but we have a lot of big things planned. So keep an eye on the site and see how we grow. You will find something you like.