[Forge Midwest] Official Thread, Part 2 of 2

[Eric J.]

Hello!  It's been 1.5 years in the making.  Living Alchemy is a crunchy system about playing an adventuring scientist driven to accomplish something at any cost.

This is a protoguide.  It is the first draft of the game and probably entails a lot of confusion. It has several in-your-face editing mistakes.  I'll get around to fixing them next weekend but I also would like to get some reactions from the work as a whole as well.  If any one would play test it, I'd be very happy.

www.wingsoftime.net/downloads/living_alchemy.zip

May the wind be always at your back,
-Eric

[GB Steve]

Shooting the Moon has been given the game of the month award for April by the French gaming portal roliste.com.

In particular they say:

	Logged

[David Artman]

Hi, all;

This one's for the POD publishers and ethics pundits in general....

I am hoping to release the full GLASS rules via POD ("shot GLASS" will be a rule-only player book that's a free PDF).

I am considering one of the following pricing strategies, to encourage game stores to buy books to resell them:
* Set the POD price at ~20% less than the MSRP printed on the book (and in the bar code, if I include one)--"wholesale via POD".
* Offer a POD price for 5 or more that is ~20% less than the single copy POD price--"bulk discount via POD".

My questions are, basically:
1) Are either of those option even possible with POD providers; will they do it?
2) Is there any ethical issue with either method (really more concerned about the first one; bulk discounts are fairly common and accepted).

Thanks;
David

[GreatWolf]

I got to playtest Dirty Secrets<THINGS I LEARNED

First, I want to thank my fellow players.  The experience of teaching the game was quite helpful to me, especially in figuring out how to run an effective demo of Dirty Secrets<RULES CHANGES AND TWEAKS

[MatrixGamer]

I've just had a Matrix Gamer in England join my yahoo MG group who has been playing MGs since the late 90's. He came across the rules that were posted around 1992 on a web page called "Giants of the Deep". That page used the rules I had put out earlier that year. So there was a 5 year delay between posting and his picking it up and then a 10 year lag between his starting to play and finding me (the author of the rules). I sent him out copies of the present rules and invited him to join into our on line games.

Here is what he wrote:

"Thanks for the email,  At the moment I'm just content on mooching about and
picking up whatever is new (to me at least ) in the world of matrix gaming.
I came across an early set of your rules (this would be around the late 90's I
think) and used those rules along with some modifications I came across on a
site which I can no longer find (It was a mythical world creation called
giants in the deep!) with some friends for a strategic wargame campaign based
on a mythical world built (if that's the right word) from the rules.  We did
that off and on for a few years until for job reasons we moved apart to
different parts of the UK.  After that I didn't have anyone to share in the
gaming experience until now.  I came upon it by accident even though I had
searched for 'matrix' on Yahoo groups (You'd be amazed just what gets thrown
up when you do that!).  So I've finally found the place I'm looking for and
would love to get involved again especially with a fresh bunch of likeminded
souls." 



All in all a very cool contact. Sometimes bread crumbs on the water do come back.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[Jarx]

[Jarx]

[Jarx]

[Matt Wilson]

So in the GAMA thread, Ben was talking about needing to raise his prices to accomodate retail rates, and it set me down a whole line of thinking.

First I thought, Dude, why are you paying $11/copy to get Polaris printed? It would cost less at Kinkos.

Then I thought back to Gen Con 2005, when I had my revised version of Primetime Adventures done, and Luke was giving me the big-print sales pitch. I remember being terrified of the idea. Maybe of Luke, too. He gets going with gestures and stuff.

But long since I've done me a big print run, and I can't recommend it enough. It more than halved my original cost per book, and it resulted in a really nice, quality book. Thanks Luke! Now Ben may have many reasons why he doesn't do a run of a thousand, but he's a great example of a publisher who could (and ought to, man, seriously). And I've been thinking about big runs in terms of a benchmark.

The thing about POD printers, and especially ones like Lulu, is that you can fix all kinds of errors and make revisions and it's all seamless. Click, and the updated version is good to go. But why is a product that's potentially full of errors available for sale in the first place? If you don't know what might be wrong with it, why are you hawking it as a complete and finished game? I ask the me of 2004 that same question, don't doubt it.

A run of a thousand copies (plus sweet, sweet overruns) cost me just over $2000, including shipping to my house. And that was roughly half up front, half prior to shipment. That's for a 112 page digest size game. Do the math in your heads accordingly and imagine how much your game might cost. Then think about how much more you'd make per book. Then make sure the reason you aren't doing it is a lack of confidence in the product.

This site in part is set up to discourage would-be publishers from printing ginormous runs of books, then getting stuck with a basement full of them; however, I'm proposing that a not-so-ginormous run be an excellent goal to strive for. Consider your finished game to be something that you'd confidently print a thousand of (plus sweet, sweet overruns).

Not to knock the Lulu stage* by any means. POD printers like Lulu are also an awesome resource, maybe a crucial one. I'll leave that for another thread.

And Ben, by the white suit of Ackbar, get those per-book costs down! Down I say!

* I will, however, knock the people who work for Lulu. One of them didn't show up for FM, and I have now made him my sworn enemy. Sworn! The deadly past participle of swearing!

[gds]