Sounding Board for Hardback/Softcover dilemma
iago:
$75? Ahhh, you've got a color interior. Man, that's rough. Color is not friendly for print on demand, and the sales volume I'd expect you to do out the gate really wants you to do stuff on a POD scale.
I'm simply concerned for your shirt, and the potential losing of it. :)
Ron Edwards:
Hi Louis,
You're still saying "my book" and describing the object as a set-in-stone thing, as a synonym for publishing your game. Why is it a 400 page full-size interior colored object? That is not obligatory. It sounds as if you have even gone so far as to establish files meeting this description - and if so, it's still not obligatory. You may be a bit stuck in the idea that the book must look a certain way or be presented in a certain way, as a fixed part of "publishing."
I won't offer suggestions for all the different alternatives, because those decisions rightly belong to you, and they are so many and so various that whatever subset I pick will probably be mis-read (by someone, not necessarily you) as an exclusive or preferred or recommended list. My real point is that you can keep all your files and images and that beautiful tome you've been dreaming of for years ... as a later step, something to move to, rather than the only and first and perfect way that the game can even exist as a product.
I appreciate all your points about PDFs and the industry and the mainstream ... and as it happens, I think all of them are invalidated by observation and experience, and I'm glad that your phrasing implies you're trying to shake these assumptions rather than hold to them.
I'll begin with the concept of "mainstream," which I think you're using in the widespread reversed way which is common in hobby/fan culture. I wrote about this extensively in a series of threads called the Infamous Five, a few years ago; the relevant one is Mainstream: a revision. (The full record of the Five and their spawn can be found in The Infamous Five.)
If you're interested, check it out. I am not sure whether this subject would jack your thread, so I'll leave it up to you to decide if you're interested in pursuing it here. Otherwise, we can stick to the book cover issue.
Best, Ron
hoefer:
Just an update to put things in perspective or whatever. Let me describe my "game" and my current vision for the "book" to see how this matches up with my proposed publishing approach.
The Game:
The game is a Vicotrian era roleplaying game designed to take adavantage of all the great types of adventures you could have in this setting (this both hurts me because it is somewhat generic, but it helps too in that a group of players can wonder through multiple adventures with different themes and feels: Old West, Shelock Holmes-Style Mysteries, Pulpy 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-type fare, Gothic Horror tales, etc...). It really stresses character development, progression, and even regresssion (as over arching goals in an adventure are succeeded/failed). Esentially though, to my credit or discredit, it is a good old fashioned RPG. That's not to say the mechanic isn't unique (I get alot of postitve responses about it). Just that, a lot of the games discussed on this forum are going somewhere different in regards to how role playing is done -mine is not. Because of this, I think it has a general apeal, but not the sort of appeal that draws in hard-core fans out of nowhere right off the bat (the kind that lovely acept ashcan products because they can see teh "cool" factor in the game itself). I've been working on it/revising it for 5 years (I know, this is nothing compared to some). Its current state plays almost exactly how I had originally wanted it to (genrally fast and cinematic, with just a small buffet of options to add depth for rolling and strategizing). I've done longer runs of play testing to check character advancement. I got it in the hands of every type of gamer (even non-gamers) you can imagine. It seemed to appeal to most, however, the power gamer in our test group liked it but wasn't thrilled (the characters in the game are somewhat average people) -This actually made me happy... At the cons, I get a good mix of players; lots of women compared to other RPG tables. It does not seem to appeal to gamers under 16 initially, but with one test group I ran we had 2 players between the ages of 12-16 who were (at the outset) fanatic about it. I've tried to fill it with historical (I'm a history teacher) context as well as literary references, characters, and settings. The game requries a few charts to play, but character creation delves into a selection of a lot of Knacks and Limitations which make for a hefty printout (since we're talking about PDF). The setting info and the "Fieldguide of Dangers" (monster entries) are (I suppose) fluff, but somewhat crucial to demonstrating the wide canvas the setting provides the GMs ("Wow, look an entry for Nobel Island (Dr. Moreau)... Wow, look a write up for an Apache war band... Look, a section on 'The Brotherhood of Ex-Confederates'... Oh cool, it's got a rough map of Castle Dracula in it..."). ...What else... I want to put the game out as a big initial release of info, followed by a comprehensive beastiary, then a narrator's pack (with a screen and lot of generic maps for on-the-fly gaming -Victorian houses, Indian Camps, Budhist Temple, etc.), and perhaps periodic releases of adventure collections (in the size and look of an old dime novel). The items listed here are in very early states of development (mostly stuff I created while testplaying and the such). I have other ideas for where I would like to go but as you can see I've already surounded my self with a dreamworld of success and products that probably aren't intially realistic. ...and I have 2 other un-related products I want to work on as well (LOL)
Now the book,
Aside from the cover options (hard or soft), My vision (and Ron I'm working toward stepping back from it, but I don't know what else to do that I think would sell this type of game -I will be reading the posts you suggested in a momment) is an 81/2 x 11 format, no bleeds, no color interrior, full-color custom cover, 400 pager (My publsihed 80-page demo booklet suggested that about 250 of these pages are absolutely necessary to nail down the mechanic and the supplemental rules -you know diseases, falling, combat options, dealing with material items and machines, etc.). It uses a reasonable amount of art (about 1-2 pictures every 3 pages -much of which was public domain).
I'm not sure, but maybe this info would be useful in understanding why I think the book needs to be the way I've presented it, and maybe help steer me to another format of release...
guildofblades:
If your book has no color interior pages, then why would it cost $75 on Lulu? It shouldn't.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
Eero Tuovinen:
It seems that you have a pretty definite vision of not just the game you want to make, but the product as well. Although I definitely encourage you to question your assumptions regarding the big-book approach, also keep in mind that this particular approach might offer just the benefits you are looking for in publishing in the first place. If what you want is to make a big-book roleplaying game, then that's what you need to do.
However, if you decide that it's the game that's important and you're not wedded to the big book, then consider carefully how else you might be able to publish this particular game. We'd have to take a look at the actual game to give any really specific feedback on the topic, but as an illustrative example, consider The Shadow of Yesterday. It's a traditional fantasy adventure rpg that clocks in at over 200 pages, small pages as they might be. However, when I started writing a new edition of the game, I decided that this one-book approach was not serving the game as it is actually played: the game's rules are used for all sorts of things that have little to do with the fantasy setting in the book. So what I did was, I published a very, very cheap version of just the rules, to be followed by a separate setting book that would deal with the game's default setting. Part of the picture is also the fact that the game is licenced under a Creative Commons licence and thus available in the internet, for free. And my edition is the third for the game, and they all are pretty different from each other. So the "whole game" in this case is actually an indiscrete bush of internet materials, three web sites ran by different people, three different rules-sets, five print runs of the game and so on. It started as a "big book" (if not as big as yours), but I'm busy trying to break it down into parts that each are functional for their purpose. What makes this possible in this case is the already existing player-base of the game that is quite able to pick and choose their sources.
So that's one example of a relatively traditional game published in a rather untraditional manner. Without knowing anything about your game there are many similar things you might choose to do if you decide to detach from the big-book model. For example, if I guess the sort of game we're discussing here correctly, then the exception-based rules-material and ready-made character stat blocks take quite a substantial bit of that 400 pages. So one thing you could easily do is to publish all that stuff for free in in the Internet. Put it in a wiki, too, to allow fans to participate in improving the material. Then what you have left is what, 150 pages of game? That's what you publish, with instructions to go to the website for the crunch. The players will want that stuff in electronic form anyway to faciliate chargen and such. What's more, after you've made some name and a player base, nothing prevents you from publishing all that exceptions-based crunch in book form, either reprinting the full rules or just putting the crunch into its own codex.
Or something like that. Depends on what your game is like and where you want to sell it.
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