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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 3, 2014 15:43:06 GMT -6
Thanks, bea, I'll check out those sites.
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Post by scottenkainen on Dec 3, 2014 18:44:20 GMT -6
Some more feedback:
My experience with Pay What You Want, and I know one other self-publisher can back me up on this, is that you're essentially giving people permission to take it for free. I tested the PWYW waters by leaving one product available that way for, I believe, 2 months. Everyone took it for free, except for one person who wanted it for half-off the suggested price. If you were Stephen King, or even Cory Doctorrow, then maybe people will feel like they owe you for your work, but if you're not a big-name author then people don't seem to feel that way about our hard work.
You can want people to talk about your products on blogs and such, but that doesn't mean they will, or that anyone will pay attention. Hype is an elusive beast; sometimes you wonder how some products get so much of it and why others that deserve it don't get any, but that's just the way it is. Hype is going to be just a bonus for you, not something a self-publisher can count on.
In addition to Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry is available to anyone to use on their own products. When I started using it, I asked Matt Finch for permission and that entitled me to use the then-"official" Swords & Wizardry logo -- but you could still use S&W without asking and now I don't think anyone else even uses the logo anymore (though I just recently saw a contest to make a new one).
~Scott "-enkainen" Casper
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Post by Vile Traveller on Dec 3, 2014 21:17:09 GMT -6
Yeah, PWYW is a way to let people show they really like your project, most won't pay. I'm showing about 2,500 downloads of BLUEHOLME Prentice to date, off which I've taken about $100. It's mostly a way of not putting only free products on DTRPG which they understandably don't like because you're using their services for nothing.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 3, 2014 22:59:04 GMT -6
Good point on Pay What You Want. I haven't checked out any of the products, but I suspected that would be the case.
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Post by scalydemon on Dec 3, 2014 23:31:15 GMT -6
Cool thread Much good advice already given. For my 2 coppers I will add my thoughts from some experiences of selling a product and specifically to your question on 'hype' Here are some things I have found (in no particular order) don't overhype your own product or people get annoyed/turned off. If it is good people will sort of hype it for you by talking about it in various ways.. such as reviews. Even somewhat negative reviews can actually have a positive effect on your sales if they are detailed as they will usually point out some elements that someone may like , and the things the reviewer may consider a negative may be a plus for another person. I have never given away a product to have someone popular in the OSR blogosphere to review or discuss the product, but some do this and I think it works. Some people have alot of followers, or people that trust their opinions etc. Some that come to mind are Brycelynch and the Tenkars tavern guy and OSRtoday blog. And I think the Arrows of Indra <?> guy can't recall his name. I personally frequent forum boards such as this, DF etc mostly, but have found more people actually exist(old school gamer folk and buy product that mainly hang out in places like google+ and the blog world. If you don't already have some type of presence in those spheres and want to sell products you should create one. Anyways hope this helps in some small way and good luck
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 4, 2014 1:25:06 GMT -6
Thanks again, folks. Lots of good advice here. Also a lot of things to remember.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 5, 2014 5:20:27 GMT -6
Shameless plug: I posted a link to a couple of my short stories in the Traveller section (see the Near Future Campaign thread). Think of it as a free preview of what my SF setting will be like.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 9, 2014 16:02:58 GMT -6
Question for you guys. What type of fantasy/SF adventures do you like? Any interest in swashbuckling or martial arts settings? How about hard science fiction?
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otiv
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 133
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Post by otiv on Dec 9, 2014 22:33:12 GMT -6
Question for you guys. What type of fantasy/SF adventures do you like? Any interest in swashbuckling or martial arts settings? How about hard science fiction? Genre transgression! Let's see martial arts plus hard science fiction.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 9, 2014 22:53:12 GMT -6
I can do that. I've done swashbuckling martial arts fantasy. No magic, but lots of swordplay and karate. Martial arts can be integrated in a hard SF game, although it would more likely be a realistic campaign instead of a cinematic one.
Also, my hard SF uses bullets instead of lasers. I also based my space forces on the Air Force instead of the Navy; some folks in another forum reacted like I'd broken all ten commandments at the same time.
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otiv
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 133
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Post by otiv on Dec 9, 2014 23:23:14 GMT -6
I imagine shooting a gun on a space ship or space station would be a bad idea for the same reason shooting a gun inside a plane or a submarine would be a bad idea. They probably wouldn't even give out guns to space colonists for the same reason they don't give guns to people working in Antarctica. I can imagine melee combat coming up frequently in that sort of SF game.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 9, 2014 23:48:08 GMT -6
Most colonists in my setting don't have access to firearms. Even the police are not allowed to have them in most colonies. Not much fighting inside spaceships in my campaign; you don't have space pirates or marine boarding actions.
There are a couple of Martian colonies that may have domes strong enough to withstand a bullet. One line I thought of for an adventure went:
"Hah! This dome was built to withstand micrometeor strikes. Do you think a bullet would even scratch the paint?"
Someone on another forum pointed out that even if it did, the dome could be repaired before the damage done became a problem for the colonists.
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Post by grodog on Dec 13, 2014 10:10:57 GMT -6
Thanks for the replies, folks. I'll refine my work and try to get some folks to review or playtest my adventures and settings. Playtesting adventures is a key process that many publishers (amateur and professional) don't bother with anymore, and is one reason that product quality can vary so much (even within products published by the same author/publisher). Playtesting with multiple groups will reveal holes in your adventures, tricks and traps that are too hard, and help you to compare new monsters and treasures against standard ones. If you're able to have other DMs to run your adventure (vs. you running it for multiple teams of players), your insights will be even more valuable because those DMs don't already know what's in your head, only what's on the playtest manuscript page. Another thing I need to consider is whether to make the product generic or system-specific. If I choose the latter option, who would I need to contact in order to get the proper licences? I want to avoid any legal entanglements. If you're OSR inclined, you can publish with OSRIC, S&W, BF, and various other OSR-friendly systems using the license info/terms on their sites. OSRIC is @ knights-n-knaves.com/osric/ and S&W is @ www.swordsandwizardry.com/ and I'm sure google will find the others for you I have written up rules for the Highlander movies and TV series for the HERO system, but I didn't publish it as an official product, and I never sold it. ThunderCastle games published their CCG for the Highlander license throughout the 1990s into the early 2000s, and had developed (but never published) an RPG for it, so Gaumont and Panzer-Davis are at least open to game publishing licenses for the property.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 16, 2014 17:00:37 GMT -6
Thanks, grodog. I definitely would playtest my stuff, since I will need a lot of feedback. I'm surprised to hear a lot of folks skip this step.
Some of my products may be OSR-related, but I have a few scenarios which may use game systems other than those based on D&D. The Highlander write-up I did had to be unofficial because HERO doesn't try to acquire licences for movie/television adaptations.
Right now I'm leaning towards generic games, so folks can adapt them to their system of choice. And I'm more interested in developing my own setting than adapting a movie or TV series.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 18, 2014 2:33:47 GMT -6
I ran one of my SF games using the Traveller system last weekend. I got a lot of feedback, including where I should add more details and plot hooks.
Also, I found a couple more setting ideas I created. Maybe I can publish them.
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Post by grodog on Jan 4, 2015 14:39:11 GMT -6
Good luck, and keep us posted
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 5, 2015 16:45:12 GMT -6
Will do. I've been lax about working on my settings lately, but I'll restart my work today.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 8, 2015 4:14:51 GMT -6
Another thing I need to consider is whether to make the product generic or system-specific. If I choose the latter option, who would I need to contact in order to get the proper licences? I want to avoid any legal entanglements. I have written up rules for the Highlander movies and TV series for the HERO system, but I didn't publish it as an official product, and I never sold it. Is anyone interested in taking a look at this? It would provide a free preview of my work. Again, I don't own the rights to the franchise; this was a work of an avid fan.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 9, 2015 20:03:02 GMT -6
As requested via PM, here are my rules for Highlander HERO. It wasn't written for OD&D, but it's a fair example of my work. Any feedback is appreciated. Please let me know if you have trouble opening the file. Highlander HERO
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 21, 2015 14:33:13 GMT -6
I'm stuck trying to make a digest book using MSWord.
What desktop publications software would you recommend for a MAC user that only wants to make a nice digest booklet of his house rules?
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 21, 2015 15:30:32 GMT -6
Some advice I got elsewhere:
* Have a platform (blog, Facebook, etc.) to help you get the word out.
* Find a program to turn your work into a PDF document.
* A nice cover page is essential.
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 21, 2015 15:42:05 GMT -6
tkdco2, thanks. MSWord can create PDFs easily. I would like to print the thing out (or share it for others to print out) as a digest sized booklet. I can't get MSWord to do this for me (that is to say, arrange the pages so that, for example, the last and first page are on one side, the second to last and second to first on the other side, and so forth). What publication software for MAC would folks recommend for something like that?
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bea
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 133
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Post by bea on Jan 22, 2015 0:49:21 GMT -6
tetramorphIf I were you I wouldn't attempt to rearrange the pages in Word. From my experience you'd have to do the math on what goes on what page yourself, and then it gets really messy when you want to edit it later Things like that are best set in the print settings when printing. I used to do that by using some sort of "Print to PDF" that installs itself as a bogus printer, but instead of printing it just converts your document into a pdf file. I'm not sure that's still a viable option considering most programs export to PDF directly these days, but it could be worth looking into. Oh! I just found this, too. Could be exactly what you're looking for!
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 22, 2015 4:09:29 GMT -6
Thanks! I'll take a look.
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bea
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 133
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Post by bea on Jan 22, 2015 7:21:24 GMT -6
Apparently the Free Trial only does the first 16 pages of a document. The website doesn't tell you that
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Koren n'Rhys
Level 6 Magician
Got your mirrorshades?
Posts: 355
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Post by Koren n'Rhys on Jan 22, 2015 10:41:11 GMT -6
Create your document in Word, using a page size setting for digest. When complete, save/export as a PDF - the pages will be in order, so if you've included a cover, you'll want to include a blank page 2 to push the text to page 3.
Open your PDF in your PDF reader software and select the option to print it as a booklet, on letter-size paper. Done.
Adobe Acrobat Reader does booklet printing - not sure if the default PDF reader on a Mac will or not.
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Post by tkdco2 on Feb 3, 2015 14:06:32 GMT -6
Update: I've sent my work to a couple of proofreaders/editors for review. I also found some public domain art to use.
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Post by tkdco2 on Feb 12, 2015 0:48:15 GMT -6
What fonts do you folks like to see when reading documents? I used Courier for my rough draft, but my proofreader said it was hard on the eyes.
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Post by capvideo on Feb 12, 2015 11:23:58 GMT -6
You probably want a proportional serif font of some kind. I like Adobe Garamond, but Baskervilles, Palatinos, and such are also good choices. And if you want to buy fonts, try searching on “good fonts for books” for advice.
Two books I found to be good references many years ago are Looking Good in Print and, especially, The Non-Designers Design Book. The latter is a very easy and informative read.
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Post by desertscrb on Feb 12, 2015 12:03:34 GMT -6
What fonts do you folks like to see when reading documents? I used Courier for my rough draft, but my proofreader said it was hard on the eyes. Never use Courier. Or Comic Sans. I suggest a sans serif font like Century Gothic for an old-school vibe.
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