Author Topic: Director's Briefing - September 2015  (Read 7503 times)

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Offline NicholasHMCaldwell

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Director's Briefing - September 2015
« on: September 01, 2015, 04:24:07 PM »
Welcome to the fifty-second Briefing and the ninth scheduled Briefing for 2015. September this year for me means being overwhelmed by research consultancy work bids and degree revalidations at the same time as my due diligence on a new module and module updates. So if you get a very succinct answer to a query from me, it just means that I am answering emails on the train or on a short break.

Rulebooks in Colour or Black & White?

At some undisclosed point, I will feel comfortable that regardless of any additional improvements to be made to RMU, it is in a position where we can start commissioning artwork. As you have undoubtedly noticed, all of our enhanced Shadow World sourcebooks have had colour interior art and have only been available in colour print editions. Conversely, all three enhanced HARP Fantasy books and HARP SF were only available in black&white, with HARP SF Xtreme trialling premium color in order to better support the vehicles and vehicle combat chapters, but also available in black&white.

Printing in premium color via OneBookShelf / Lightning Source costs ten US cents per page, printing in standard color costs 3 cents per page, while printing in black and white is 2 cents per page. Premium color is therefore not sensible for most folks' budgets, but the differential between black&white and standard color is modest.

We are minded that RMU should have standard colour interiors for its rulebooks. What do you think?

What about HARP? Should future HARP supplements such as HARP Folkways, HARP Bestiary and so forth embrace colour? Should we colorize the existing HARP and HARP SF books in the future, perhaps at the same time as performing an errata cleanup?

I realise that there is a significant fraction of our fan base who only buy rpg products as pdfs and ebooks now. Would you prefer colour interiors?

Tell us what you think on the forums.

HARP Bestiary

I have written all the Undead text and Overlay mechanics for HARP Bestiary. I still need to generate example instantiations for each type of Undead, i.e. apply the Skeleton Lord overlay to a standard Fighter, a Lament overlay to a Harper, a Sorcerous Head overlay to a low-level mage. The complete set of Undead to appear in Bestiary are as follows: Apparitions, Blue Men, Corpse Candle, Gaunt, Ghost, Ghoul, Lament, Lich, Mummy, Phantom, Sandspirit, Skeleton, Skeleton Lord, Sorcerous Head, Spectre, Vampire, Wight, Wraith, and Zombie. I have been inflicting various of these on my players in my Cyradon playtest campaign.

I have also made substantial progress on the Elemental chapter, adjusting text to fit in its new home of Bestiary rather than the original Something Wicked chapter. My remaining tasks are rejigging the Elementals themselves, and subsequently modifying the Elemental Heritage and introducing generic Elemental Overlay mechanics. I intend to donate the Elemental Creatures to my coauthors for use in non-Elemental forms and chapters.

Until next time

Despite my real-world deluge, I hope to sneak some time on the train for Elemental writing amongst other editing and organisational tasks. The next Briefing will be in October.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd
Dr Nicholas HM Caldwell
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd
Publisher of Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Shadow World, Cyradon, HARP & HARP SF, and Cyberspace, with products available from www.drivethrurpg.com
Author: Mentalism Companion, GURPS Age of Napoleon, Construct Companion, College of Magics, HARP SF/HARP SF Xtreme

Offline jdale

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2015, 08:22:52 PM »
I like color interiors, even for a little more. It looks nice and can be used tastefully in a way that helps enhance organization and layout. I imagine it's not actually 50% more as the price is not just the per-page costs. For PDFs, I see little reason to keep it in black and white, if you are already commissioning color art.


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Offline Cory Magel

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2015, 12:55:49 AM »
If it's not much more expensive to commission color art, I say go color.  Then, if you do, definitely color on PDF's. While colored ink is an expense people can just print the PDF's in black and white if they want to.
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Offline egdcltd

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2015, 04:07:29 AM »
I've got colour, premium colour and black and white. The colour looks far better than the black and white in print version, and in PDF, but the difference between colour and premium colour is pretty negligible. You could always have both colour and black and white PoD options, but converting colour images to black and white doesn't always work well without tinkering - one book I own had a colour map converted to greyscale, and it looks bad in comparison.

Say, is there an update for Shadow World this month?
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Offline Jinor

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #4 on: September 02, 2015, 04:17:21 AM »
I would rather buy colour whether it be in printed or PDF form.
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Offline craggles

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #5 on: September 02, 2015, 08:42:05 AM »
Say, is there an update for Shadow World this month?

Yeah - still waiting for that damn artist to finish some of the Eidolon art and then the Eidolon book will be ready to go to PoD and PDF!
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Offline markc

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #6 on: September 02, 2015, 09:51:55 AM »
Can you give us some price points for various product lengths?


Also in the past (may be too long ago) the main reason for color was to prevent photo copying/printing the book (but you could always chose the b/w option) as it often increased the cost above that of just buying the book. Now with PDF's it is sort of moot.
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Offline egdcltd

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #7 on: September 02, 2015, 10:32:53 AM »
Oh, if anyone hasn't seen the differences, here are some images.

Shadow World Players Guide (Premium Colour)
Emer III (Colour)
Parsantium  (Black and White)
Parsantium (comparing black and white printed map with colour image map)
Book of Taverns (Black and White).
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Offline Wolfhound

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #8 on: September 02, 2015, 01:29:12 PM »
Personally, having a choice between color and black/white is good if the cost of doing artwork is not too much higher doing both.  Just so you have a cheaper price point for those who don't have a lot of cash to spend.  But as someone pointed out, there could be added costs for modifying the color to B&W due to straight conversions not always being very clear or good.  The old black and white advertisement artwork that used to be in Dragon Magazine decades ago was very good in my opinion, so it is possible to do very nice black and white artwork.

Although personally I would likely buy the color versions if the price difference was not more than 50% higher. 
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Offline 5th Knight of Xar

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #9 on: September 02, 2015, 01:37:07 PM »
From an artists point of view, I'd love to take on some color illustrations, but they will most likely demand 2-3 the amount of time which a greytone illustration takes to create. Payment/image should increase also due to this.

From a gamer point of view, I think greytone interior art has a certain charm that I will miss if the books start coming out with colored interior art.

Offline caeaston

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2015, 01:38:07 PM »
So I'm a traditionalist. I'm used to Black and White but also enjoy the color images (premium seems like its a little much). So are there any options available to do both? Make the printed copies in B&W and any PDF's in color?

Offline Justin

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2015, 02:20:26 PM »
I would prefer color over b/w, and I would most likely be buying real books. However, I would likely also get pdf, and if the data content of pdf is illegible in b/w(for cheap printing or photocopying) I don't think that'd be good.
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Offline joel.lovell

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2015, 03:13:15 PM »
I absolutely think it should be loaded with color artwork, and I would LOVE to see HARP SF updated with color art and errata! :)

Offline markc

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2015, 11:57:20 PM »
I am glad others have brought it up as there are a lot more things that go into a products price besides printing, ie price of color art vs gray scale art. And as the artist said above for hi it is about 2-3 times the amount of work, which could have a dramatic impact on a products final price.
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Offline Cory Magel

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #14 on: September 03, 2015, 12:46:24 AM »
It also depends on how much of the books cost is due to the art.  If color art was going to raise a book, say, 25% I'd be cool with that ($20 book is now $25), but it was going to raise the book more like 50% or more, I think I'd rather the black and white.  While color is nice, in the long run it's just eye candy in a book for a game that will be played without an open book.

Actually... one exception to that might be the monsters book.  I still have the AD&D 2nd Ed Monsterous Compendium exactly because it has such great artwork and it's in color.  So, since I am more likely to use those for graphic representations I'd likely be willing to pay more for that book compared to others.
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Offline Ironmaul

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #15 on: September 03, 2015, 02:02:54 AM »
Artwork pricing is determined by several factors. The main ones are size, b&w or colour, and most important, rights to the artwork. The standard for colour work is twice the amount than b&w art and the price can rise from there pending on detail and skill.

Offline 5th Knight of Xar

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #16 on: September 03, 2015, 09:14:32 AM »
A nice example for me would be:

A standard A4 full page, full detail and color would likely take me 2-4 days to complete, depending on image content, painting it from scratch in photoshop.
A greytone A4 full page takes maybe 1-2 days, painting it from scratch.

Painting an image for a whole A4 page for a client, I usually charge between $200-500, for a full color, full detail image. I do not think I would be comfortable painting a colored full page image for less than that.

I'm unsure how much the cost for each book would go up, considering the current price paid for a greytone/line art vs an increase for colored illustrations. Maybe Nicholas has some thoughts about this as well.

Offline baalreshef

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #17 on: September 04, 2015, 05:30:11 AM »
I'd go for colour too :d

Offline Peter R

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #18 on: September 04, 2015, 10:04:34 AM »
I only buy PDFs now. I do print some pages from them but nearly all my gaming runs from a cheap 10" tablet. I would vote for colour PDFs so I can choose whether to print in colour or greyscale.
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Offline 5th Knight of Xar

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Re: Director's Briefing - September 2015
« Reply #19 on: September 04, 2015, 01:50:43 PM »
A bit off topic, but here are a few color interior illustrations I've made for the Rolemaster Mentalism book, German edition: