Presentation - As important as system? (split)

[Skallagrim]

hello all, a long time lurker here..

Well speaking strictly from a consumer point of view (as most of my ideas continue to die in conceptualization stages)...

This may seem completely pointless or "well, duh" to some of you, but I have often felt that either I as a gamer didn't appreciate the designer's vision, or that they had no appreciation for my fact I wasn't going to use their product in exactly the manner they did. Gamers, role-players especially, tend to be a diverse, creative and opinionated bunch. We will make "house rules" and "patches" not only to bits that may "broken", but also to the bits we don't like, don't understand, or simply disagree with... but thats going down a design philosophy tangent...

My experiences with presentation: I had long enjoyed a certain writer's PDF teasers that he variously released in his design blog about his upcoming product. I was effectively hyped, even pre-ordered the book. Was thrilled when it arrived, cracked it open and said to myself "what the hell is this?" While I'm sure he had intended to spruce up the book by using bright-white high-gloss pages; when combined with an uncomfortably diminished font size (around a size 7 font), the book became nearly unreadable under all but the most awkward of lighting conditions. The sad fact is that even though I loved the actual content of the book, the presentation of the actual artifact was so terribly executed I was unable to convince other people in my circle to give it a read. A dear friend of my summarized it quite succinctly when he said "I just no longer have the time or ambition to play a game despite it's ugliness"

Now I have shown the original pdf teaser's to a few of my friends and they were marginally turned around, when the page was zoomed in to fit the width of the screen and they weren't competing with the light source to see the words.


-Skallagrim Grimkjellson

[Miedvied]

A comment that occured to me while Ryan was discussing releasing a free PDF in order to garner interest in the print revision:

Has anyone seen any affect on sales of a print version when offering a free PDF copy to purchasers of the print copy? I know TSoY can be gotten for free altogether, but I mean releasing it only to purchasing customers. I recall a lot of people used to download illegal copies of WW books, even after buying them, solely to be able to "search" for particular passages and print selected rule pages for their players. It seems to me that the addition in utility for little overhead cost would boost sales. But I'm just speculating; so, like I asked, has anyone actually tried this?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The above two posts were split from Presentation - as important as system?

Miedvied, a new poster often takes a little while to learn about posting here and not resurrecting older threads. But as a more experienced member, you should pay more attention to the posting dates and not compound errors before they're fixed. It sends a mixed message.

The present discussion is a fine thing and I encourage everyone to continue it here.

Best, Ron

[Miedvied]

Truth be told, I didn't even notice the original discussion dates. Just saw this one on my heap of unread posts. I'll have to be more careful about that in the future - sorry.

[Ron Edwards]

Gahhhhh!

An apology upon being moderated! I hate that! Would you apologize to the cop who busts you for speeding? Would he care?

Teeth gritting ... the only thing to do here, in this thread, is to discuss ... the thread topic ...

Gahhhh!!

Best, Ron