Everyone in the game hobby is probably aware of the Trump administration's tariffs (import taxes), even if it's hard to stay abreast of changes that happen almost every day. I wanted write a note to explain how this affects Ars Magica Definitive Edition, and hopefully provide some reassurance.

We can divide campaign rewards into four categories:

There is some chance that counter-tariffs could affect #3, but it seems unlikely given that most countries are aiming at specific American industries for maximum political impact. There are no tariffs to worry about for #2 and #4.

This leaves us with Definitive Edition itself. As we have said from the beginning, we anticipated split fulfillment because we thought it was likely that Definitive might need to ship separately from other items.

Some publishers are confident that the tariffs as written do not apply to books. This may mean that we're in the clear. Yay! Or maybe that's wrong, and we'll be subject to the current 145% tariff on imports from China. Or maybe there will be a different rate for books and printed materials. I'm not putting much effort into finding out because whatever it is TODAY, it may be completely different TOMORROW. (Check out the breaking news this weekend about off-again/on-again tariffs and semiconductors, for example.)

If you are a non-US backer, we probably will need to use a fulfillment method that never clears formal US customs entry, thus never is subject to the import tax. We may do this by using a non-US fulfillment partner to handle all international packages. We are also exploring possible use of Duluth's Foreign Trade Zone to process and re-export goods without tariffs.

So that avoids tariffs for international customers. Since the books are Made in China, reciprocal tariffs on US-made goods should not apply to them either.

For US backers, Atlas Games MIGHT take a hit in terms of a tax we have to pay on copies we import in order to send them to you. This would be a harsh blow to our profit margin.  However, it's worth noting that we originally planned this book as something that we could sell to wholesale distribution (meaning at a 60% discount to the cover price), the campaign did better than our conservative projections, and a lot of the campaign is outside of tariffs (international backers plus categories 2-4 above).

If I had to decide today (which thankfully I don't), I would print barely more than enough copies of Definitive to fulfill our backer rewards and pre-orders, and not offer the book for wholesale distribution beyond our campaign's existing retailer backers. It's a tremendous lost opportunity, but we might be able to reprint it with a 0% import tax rate at some point in the future.

If you're anxious on our behalf, you can help us hedge against uncertainty by encouraging folks who missed the crowdfunding campaign to pre-order Definitive Edition. They won't get as good a deal as our campaign backers did, but pre-sales mean more copies we can definitely add to the print run (and, in the case of international buyers, keep outside the US to avoid the tariffs altogether).

Meanwhile, work on Definitive continues in our scriptorium!

Thanks everyone for your incredible support and patience in these trying times.

-John Nephew
President, Atlas Gmaes

P.S. Have you checked out the 3rd party Ars Magica Open License publications lately? I was browsing the category over on DriveThruRPG this morning and there's a lot there now, and more coming! It's so exciting to see this creativity unleashed.