And now a break for some commercial messages... (not really)

... though it is an advertisement of sorts.

I don't usually do this but I thought I would for this. So, an unpaid and unsolicited testimonial.

I posted a few weeks ago to say that it was my birthday in January. One of the things I received, from my brother, sister-in-law and nephew, was the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System (the hardback rulebook) from Autarch Press.

A very fine book it is, and I expect that parts of it might see their way into my campaign at some point in the near future. After the current campaign is finished I may even run the next using ACKS.

Anyway, I noticed that it says on the back 'buy the hardback get the pdf for free', or words to that effect. That's not so unusual, the same is true of the Carcosa book from Lamentations of the Flame Princess that I was also given for my birthday.

However, because ACKS was bought by my sister-in-law, I needed to either get her to sort out the download or find which email address was linked to her account and yadda yadda. She's a bit busy so I thought it was easier to do it myself. Anyway, I emailed Autarch, and Alex from Autarch said yes, no problem, I could have the pdf. He seems like a cool guy, the email exchange we had at least shows he has a sense of humour. And I was told that I'd shortly get the download information.

Unfortunately something went wrong - I don't know what but I didn't receive the information for some reason. It possibly wasn't even Autarch's fault. But for whatever reason, I didn't get the download code. After some more weeks had passed, I contacted Autarch again to say that I hadn't had it, and could they re-send. Alex immediately emailed to apologise and said he'd be straight on it, and as a goodwill gift because I'd had to wait, said he'd give me access to the download of the Players' Companion book too. Sure enough in not-very-much-time, I had the codes and downloaded the main rulebook, the Players' Companion and something called Domains at War too.

Things go wrong. It happens, life is rarely perfect for long. What separates good service from bad service is how companies deal with things going wrong. Autarch could have made it much more difficult to access the downloads. They could have taken the view that the missing codes were not their fault and blamed DTRPG or Yahoo or anyone else. On the contrary, they took the view from the beginning that it was their business to sort this out and I think went above and beyond to make something right that might not even have been their fault.

So thanks Autarch (and Alex particularly)! I've already mentioned what I think are their excellent production values, and I can now say that I think they have excellent customer-service values too. They didn't have to be so awfully nice, even in terms of getting me the pdf they could have made that business much more complicated. They not only went beyond the minimum necessary, they went beyond it by a long way in my opinion, so hurrah to them. It's certainly left me with very warm and fuzzy feelings towards Autarch.

That's all, a return to the normal service of scratching my head and grumpily wondering what the hell I'm doing will resume shortly.