"Best Of" Collections

[Nathan P.]

Apparently there's some interest in a new thread about this...

In Lines vs. Authors I said

Once a publisher has a number of titles out, even if they're published in a variety of "looks", how cool would it be to pull them all together under one cover? I mean, I would pay good money for "The Vincent Baker Collection" down the road, with edited and revised editions of kpfs, DitV, Red Sky AM, Dragon Killer, etc etc. Now that would be a full-size glossy hardcover worth every penny.

I mean, if you're interested in publishing enough games to make a line out of yourself, that might be an alternative to same-looking them - publish them idiosyncratically, and then package them together every so often (a row of Best of Clinton R. Nixon, Volumes 1 - 3, would be awfully sexy on the bookshelf....). I know fiction writers do this (I'm thinking of Steven Brust's The Book Of X series here). The No Press Anthology is similar to this too, and that's a wonderful collection.

Thoughts? I can see myself doing this, sometime down the road. If you plan for it, you could basically try to hit a sweet spot between having your games be all linked by You, and having them all stand alone as independent works that happen to have been written by you.

Also, a true "Best Of: Story Now!" (f'rex) compiliation would be pretty freakin groovy, as well. I'm sure it would involve some serious organizing, but just throwing out another related thought.

[Josh Roby]

"Best of" anthologies really only serve one purpose: repackaging content that is no longer selling.  As long as Sorcerer, Dogs, TSOY, (Insert Other Games Here) are still selling, there's no real need to repackage and sell as a compilation.  I mean, I agree it would be very cool to have on my bookshelf, but until there's a market need to fill, going through the headache of synching up trim sizes and repaginating the damn thing isn't going to be worth it.

[Andrew Morris]

Hmm. I was about to write an "I'd buy that" post, but then I thought a bit more about it. I realized that I've self-identified as an "indie games buyer," so I'm an easy sell. I know that if most of the notable designers here put out...well...anything, I'll probably buy it, even if I've heard nothing about it. And that made me think, are most people who buy indie games in that same group? Have all the great indie games (and the Forge) created, without conscious direction, an "indie brand," along with a measure of brand loyalty?

If that's the case, a "best of the indies," with only the cream of the indie crop included, might sell even better than compilations by author (or CA, or theme, or whatever else). For those who already have indie brand loyalty, it's an almost automatic sale, as it allows them to consolidate their collections, freeing up their old books to pass on to friends to interest them in indie games as well. For those who are interested in the indie brand, but haven't yet dipped their toes into the market, such a "best of" compilation could well swing the balance into a sale. For those who know nothing about indie games, having something that looks like a traditional RPG book might make them more comfortable in making a purchase.

Just thinking out loud, here.

[Eero Tuovinen]

You guys aren't considering usability issues, here. I've pondered the collection as a format several times during the last couple of years, but there's no getting out of the fact that for actual play separate books are superior in all ways. With very short and lightweight games like the NPA participants the logistical problems of book printing justify the format (even then each of those games, perhaps excluding Snowball and WTF!, would have been better with it's own publication in appropriate format), but with even a MLwM size book it's entirely viable to do it as a stand-alone, which bleeds the justification from any hypothetical collected work.

Note: the above holds true more or less for the book publishing industry, but still compilations are made and sold. Why? The two reasons are:
- Entrance sales: somebody wants to finally read Shakespeare, so it's much easier to get the collected works rather than pick and choose where to start.
- Price: compilations are sold for substantially cheaper, sometimes for as much as five times less than the same material in single editions.
The first of those is really only a factor with perennial, established stuff, while the second works only with economies of scale and properties that don't sell for full price anymore. Neither of these is really relevant for roleplaying games, I'd say.

Considering the above, here's a couple of examples of potential compilations and why I think they're feasible. In each case the reason is very specific and unlikely to be repeated:
- A Sorcerer compilation: this would work because practically all the supplement material is directly relevant for Sorcerer play. For some purposes a single book is even better than four, especially when you could reorder the material for a compilation and thus improve the navigation.
- Emily's relationship games: I'm actually waiting for these a lot, I think it'll be our first example of a series actually designed for compilation. Each is relatively lightweight, intented for slightly different circumstances and firmly tied together by subject matter. Thus it's not so much a matter of separate games but three separate viewpoints on one issue.
- The Dragonlance compilation: this really happened, a reprint of the AD&D Dragonlance modules in one book. The key factor here is dated material you can't sell without substantial discounting and repackaging. Of course, there's also the synergy thing I mentioned with Sorcerer, but it'd work without. I could see a big OGL reference tome on cheap paper; the strength would be as a huge reference you'd only use rarely, not as an active play aid. The phone book approach could work even with non-dated material if the usability would be hampered enough: you could potentially sell the same material twice to fans who want a central reference as well as practical books for actual play, while selling both separately to people with more distinguishing taste.

But a compilation tied together only by the author? I'm a gargantuan Lumpley-fanboy, but still I wouldn't want a Dogs/kpfs compilation. When I wanted to play Dogs I'd have to lug around puppies, and vice versa. What's the sense in that? And it'd only get worse with more games, those of you who have read big compilations know how hard it is to even read the book when it's thousand pages of small text and you can't lift it without a truck. We'll have to wait fifty years for Vincent to become a classic, then it becomes sensible: you can use it as reference to Vincent's works, it's a cheap edition to begin your Lumpley-hobby with, you don't have to decide what to start with... all the reasons I outlined above for the existence of Shakespeare collections. But Lumpley's no Shakespeare, yet.

[Saxon Douglass]

If a "Best of Indie" was put out i'd buy it in a heartbeat! I havn't bought any indy RPGs yet because I'm not sure what to buy and in what order. If the top 5 (probably decided by a poll here) were put into a compilation (either 1 book or a seperate book each with same look) it'd be a must-buy for me. Having DitV, TOSY, Sorceror, etc. all in one book or set is something i'd easily pay $100 for.

Ofcourse the question arises of who would manage the whole thing. I'd obviously vote for Ron Edwards and make it a "Best of Forge" collection. It'd promote indy games and the forge both at once! But the chance of such happening is very slim I guess because you'd need to get all the authors to agree on the changes necessary to make them the same size and style. The other problem is if you make it any cheaper than buying them separatley (the major draw of compilations) you might lose money you would have made from buying each separaltley. I just know that a nice compilation of Forge works would make me dig deep in my pockets.

[Nathan P.]

Personally, I love the No Press Anthology, precisely because it's not a huge tome, and I can grab it and have all the games at hand - no forgetting small-format books b/c they slip in under or between bigger things, and the like.

But this is getting into "my opinion" territory, I think. And, when you get right down to it, it's up to each designer how they would offer their work. So, to slightly refocus:

For those who may be thinking about such a project, what are the things to consider in terms of publishing pros and cons? So far we have:

Cons: Less $ than selling titles seperatly. Has a "can't sell this individually" vibe. Less portable, less usable. A lot of work to re-format. Could be a lot of hassle if you want to put something together that includes the work of different designers.

Pros: Indie fans would buy it. Can bring together a cross-section of different games. Good entry-level for new players. Would be sexy on the shelf.

Others?

My thoughts on usability: I would offer such an edition coil-bound with some kind of bookmarks (cardstock, ribbons, whatever) seperating each game. I just think it would make it way easier to play multiple games out of the same book.

[komradebob]

It sounds like an absolute nightmare to organize from the publisher/business end, at least for an anthology of different author's works.

Having said that I would love to walk into a game shop one day and see a high production value hardback indie anthology. It would give me good " In your-face-mainstream-game-companies! IN YOU FACE!" vibes.

[tj333]

The game anthology does not overly appeal to me in general. If it was something like best of Iron Chef or a collection of other shorter works that I could see getting.

Now a boxed set of best of the Forge/Author/Genre I could see buying. Being able to treat the books as group in the box but use them individual seems to hit the best of both worlds for me.

[LordSmerf]

There's another interesting problem anthologies ocassionally run into, and I think it would be especially true for (most) roleplaying games: simple user-value statements.  A lot of games (especially around these parts) are highly focused and can be summed up in just a sentence or two.  Further, I can explain what the game is about and why someone would want it in just a sentence or four.

The same is not true for (say) all of Ron Edwards' work.  I mean Sorcerer, Trollbabe, Elfs, and It Was a Mutual Decision are all great fun, but there's no unifying theme at work other than Ron Edwards being the designer.  That means that a compendium of his work would have to be marketted around name recognition.

Eero made a solid point regarding Emily's relationship games too: It's not that you can't design games for compendiums, it's just that for a number of reasons it has to be done intentionally.  I think the problem you'll run into is that the market for compendiums based on authors (assuming no unifying theme) is going to be constructed almost entirely of people who already own the most of the games in question.

Thomas

[JarrodHenry]

Hmm.

I would definatly love a "Forge Best of" anthology, but I can understand that it might not be that easy, and would cut into profits of the great designers already.  That said, though, it would be interesting to meet things half way.  For example, I've been following the Ronnies very closely (and with much amusement).  What would be the problem/issue with taking the Ronnie winners, revising them up, and publishing them through Lulu.com?  The proceeds could go half to the authors of the winning games, and half to the Forge.  It wouldn't exactly be the Best of the Forge, but seeing the best of the one-off games of a 24 hour competition could be very educational.  (Plus, we can even have Post-Mortems in there, where the various authors, after their games, describe their thought processes.) 

That'd be VERY handy to have.

Jarrod

[Eero Tuovinen]

Well, anthologies of mini-games from competitions is again another thing. I think books like the NPA are quite feasible (if quality standard is kept up; I feel NPA fails in this regard), because a small enough game isn't cumbersome just because it's in a book with a bunch of others. Usually the game's simple enough so you don't have to reference the book during a game, and the book itself is small enough because the games are small, and often you can just keep it open on the relevant page anyway. Lots of reasons why I think a small-game anthology is feasible where a larger one is not.

But, even then, a significant number of potential canditate games would benefit from separate publication. For example, while we could do IGC compilations, most IGC games are feasible as single publications as well. Polaris and The Mountain Witch are not special cases in this regard. So with a compilation you run into the necessity of selling short a lot of games, even if they can be further revised for individual publication later on.

Ultimately, however, I think the greatest hurdle for mini-game collections is the lack of motivation. It's well and good to say that you'd buy it, but that's no use if nobody's selling. There's lots of folks here at the Forge with the experience and connections to put together mini-game collections (around several different themes, to boot!), but we're (yeah, I'm pretty confident I could do it) busy with stuff we think more important, apparently. So in the final calculation I think this isn't a matter of inventing the form, it's a matter of nobody being interested enough. Perhaps this will change when the industry grows and we generate a backlog of product.

--

Another form of collection I forgot to mention before: this has not been tried before in roleplaying, but in the field of literature different digest concepts sell well for certain target audiences. So one could explore the possibility of an indie game digest: greatly simplified/narrowed/sampled/scenariorized versions of fan favourites shrunk into 20-40 pages per game. Depends on the game whether it'd be a big sampling with no playability, a simplified version, a treatise on the central tenets and best rules or a one-shot adventure or what. The digest market is a very special beast, though, so I doubt this kind of book would fare well for a while, yet.

The next step of course is no more even a digest, but a "Guide to indie games" with extensive quotations from single games. That kind of guide would mainly benefit two audiences:
- Retailers who want to know what's what.
- Newbies who want to get to know the indie scene in one fell swoop.
You'd have to update the guide every couple of years, but this is a product I could see the usefulness of, unlike the various compilations already discussed above.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Another issue no one's brought up yet: Appearance.

Take the hypothetical Vincent Baker collection: Do you redesign the layout and typeface of Dogs in the Vineyard to match kill puppies for satan? Do you change kill puppies for satan to match Dogs? Or do you put these jarringly different designs one after another in the same book? Or do you translate both to some common, neutral typeface that loses both the relaxed-yet-oldfashioned feel of Dogs and the uncapitalized ravings of puppies?

And we're not even talking about illustrations, here.

For a lot of combinations of games, this isn't an issue. But for the books that are the most beautifully designed as objects, the look of the page helps convey the tone of the contents.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

These are design issues. You deal with them in any book.

The question is, will this sell more books, or fewer? Will it make the designers more money, or less?

My suspicion is the latter.

[Nathan P.]

For what reasons, Joshua? Anything in addition to whats already been said?

Also, the box set is a cool idea. Anyone have any experience with actually getting such a beast published? Is it feasible for the routes that we tend to take?

[Veritas Games]

What I'd recommend instead is a Forge Discount Card.  You spend $X on the card as credit toward future purchases and it gives you a Y% discount on those purchases, all of which must be from Forge authors.

So, $50, and you get free shipping on all products to addresses within the continental U.S. (if buying physical items) or 5% off the cost of PDF products.

For $100 card you get free shipping and 10% off the cost of the retail cost of physical products or 15% off of PDF products.

Something like that might be attractive.

It's probably a lot better than carrying around some multi-hundred page beast with tons of games in it that you may or may not play.  And it will let people pick and choose what they buy.