To get straight to the point..
let's say I want to print, bind, and publish a book. Complet with artwork.. the whole 9 yards. How much content is enough? How much is too much?
In my particular case, I've got a game I'm considering creating a book version for sometime in the future. Luckily for me, I've got two talented artists (relatives :smile:) who are willing to do as much art as I need. Right now I'm at around 60 pages of text.
My game is very setting heavy and I'm sure I could do a good 10 full page graphics and probably 3-4 half page, and even still add in around 10 small pictures throughout the text. I could do that.. but then it's a picture book with a role playing game built in. So what's the happy medium?
I know that "as long as it's original and GOOD and the consumer/distributor/blah" will like it then it doesn't matter. But honestly... If I have a 20$ bill and I go to my FLGS to by "something new" and I see this game laying there clocking 60 pages for 10 bucks, and next to it is this other game clocking 180 for 19.99 I'm automatically going to forget years of playing (more isn't better! more is NOT better!) and start saying.. "hey this one is big. Big is good. Must buy" and forget about the smaller game.

Like I said, art isn't a problem for me. So what's a few suggestions. Especially from those of you who have published your games. What's a decent Text vs Art page count?

T

Oh God, man, no one knows. That's the point: NO ONE KNOWS. There just isn't any market-based understanding of what customers do and don't like, nor any theory-based understanding of what (or how big) the necessary components are.

Sorcerer is too expensive. No, it's too cheap. It's too slim. Hardcover is pretentious - no, it's perfect. The game isn't "complete" (no sourcebook). Is it just a system, or a game? (That one lets me know I'm dealing with an alien being.)

These claims are like a soccer ball being kicked all over the field. No one knows.

Best,
Ron

P.S. I also want to point out that customers, distributors, and retailers all have different priorities, and collectively speaking each one (understandably) is out to maximize bang per buck. A lot of stuff gets derailed at the distributor or retailer level without ever really getting tested in the consumer market.

On 2001-08-20 16:34, Ron Edwards wrote:
Is it just a system, or a game? (That one lets me know I'm dealing with an alien being.)

Jesse,

That would be a private email/message thing, I think. See you there, OK?

Let's get back to the Man of Super-filthiness ... I really hated to post such a bummer punt previously, but that's my take on the situation.

Anyone else? Anyone else more constructive than, say, me?

Best,
Ron

Ron's point is pretty good: nobody really has an answer for that.

However, make it GOOD art. Average art doesn't piss gamers off, but bad art does. The problem with that is the Big Money has really raised the standard in the production department. If your game looks ameteur, you lose.

Don't get your friends to draw for you. Hire a professional. Like Tom Denmark. :smile:

Carpe deus,
John

Hey,

I just thought of something told to me by a Very Renowned game designer/author. It's not really an answer to the question at hand, but it breaks down the relevant points to consider.

1) A major function of illustrations in RPG texts is as place holder. Most people, looking up stuff in an RPG, do not use the Table of Contents or Index. They go by page layout and illustrations - "It's somewhere about 2/3 of the way through, past this picture of the naked demon, but before this chapter heading ... ah! here we go."

So in thinking of illustrations and design, think about visual signposts across many pages that lets a person do this.

2) Another major function is to inspire - "Wow, that's cool. I just got an idea." John's point is dead-on here, because in order to inspire, art must be good (kind of a tautology there, actually).

3) And finally, on a related point to the above, the art's job is to legitimize - it demonstrates that SOMEONE put creative effort and money into the game. That's not a trivial point! At the moment, many folks will buy cheap stuff for gaming, but only if it's funny. If it's more serious, then people seem to like evidence of commitment, and that means good layout and good art. Again, John's point applies in full.

Best,
Ron

Hrm. How much is enough? I guess it depends on how dense you want your book to be, how gratuitous you want your margins, how much art you want, and how many pages you're aiming for.

You can do this: take your handy dandy layout program. Lay out a page full of garbage text (like cutting and pasting responses to your query on a bbs) with your margins and maybe a little test art. Count up your words, and try to make an estimate.

I can make some raw estimates based on books I've written for. An SJG splatbook runs at 550-600 words/page at 128 pages. The general target area for a complete book is 70,000 words +/- 5,000, subtracting your 10 pages for index, toc, phone numbers of your enemies, your speech for the Acadamy, etc. They tend to cram alot of crap in there. A WW splatbook runs 400-450 words/page at a variable number of pages, but let's call it 128 for a splatbook. That will run about 50,000 words on a good day, and they like to use art. A BESM splatbook, at a digest size, is 30-35K, and a full size is 50-55. At 50, they're cutting art.

I'd say, just to be rough and pretend you know what you're doing, go with the WW numbers of ~450 words/page, 50,000 words for a 128 page book, 75,000 words for 192 page book. If you're at 60 pages of "typed" text in Word, you're at about 30 pages of your book, maybe -- you need to outline, look at what you're doing, and budget for space.

This is just my experience. I'm sure others here can give you other numbers that are just as wiggy as mine.

quote:
Let's get back to the Man of Super-filthiness
endquote


Now I've got to get into news-media just so I can hear that phrase spoken. :razz:

seriously though
thanks for all the info.
to touch a few points..
~hire a professional artist...
Hah! well, I may have to. At least they'd come CLOSE to hitting the deadline. So far I'm a month overdue.. but it's okay it's free. (and good, brother and his roommate are both art majors) I digress though.
The main point I wanted to hit on was the page count/word count. What I've gathered is that, within the parameters of a farily general wordcount, a 128 page book is a good default? Or am I misinterpreting here?
A little preface might be in order. I'm not even 'considering' at the distro/pub. level yet. My considerations have risen to a free .pdf printable with the possibility of ordering the game for a small fee in printed format from a website. I still, however, want to have a printed product that is well formatted and worth the time to order. (I've read all the other posts on materials, etc. etc. very very helpful). So At another junction I'll get into a blather about "making people other than consumers happy"

Thanks again

T

Oh I noticed in my very first post I used an example that was based upon consumers purchasing from a local gaming store. I'm sorry about the confusion. Like I said, I'm not at the stage of wondering about distro/pub.

yet.


I'm a bit daffy on BB.

T

My advice is to outline for 50,000 words. Of course, if you're already writing and now asking for word count, you're probably kind of coned...

actually.. word count is never a problem :smile:
I always write waaaayyyy too much stuff and end up cutting 20-30% of what I write anyway. So I can also trim down to, or beef up to a target number.

As an aside (and I'm not really sure if I sure start a new thread or not)
Since I do cut so much stuff.. are expansions and extras really plausible? I've seen alot of postings here that have a negative take on expansions.

T

I don't know how much is enough, but I do know how much is too much. Don't put any art in your product, even if it looks nice, that makes the text difficult to read. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but White Wolf does it all the time with faint graphics behind the text or with squirrelly fonts.

Quote:
I don't know how much is enough, but I do know how much is too much. Don't put any art in your product, even if it looks nice, that makes the text difficult to read. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but White Wolf does it all the time with faint graphics behind the text or with squirrelly fonts.
End Quote


You lost me there.
Sounds like you are talking about watermarks and text formatting. I have no desire to watermark my pages or use "squirrelly fonts". I'm speaking about having cover art, a few full pages pictures, and few discriptive pictures to accompany certain text areas.
A (simple) example would be:
Say you've just made the world's newest Mecha combat game.
Your cover: Big robots fighting
Then you have your text..
Intro:
This game is blah blah blah
(corner of the page has a picture of a guy fixing a robot)

list of skills:
blah blah blah
(has a full page picture of a guy working on the wires on of a robot)

combat tables:
blah blah blah
(has a small picture on the right hand side of a page that has two robots shooting at each other)


I think we were crossing waves somewhere. Hope this clears up what I meant, otherwise you are going to have to clear up what you meant.

T

Filthy,
Art in games should be a window into that world as a means to communicating your own vision (emotional or physical) as to what the game is all about. It's a good way to help a player's and GM's imaginations.

Ron said it best; 'sign-posts'

Don't worry about word count. Make it as long or short as it needs to be.

Jeff Diamond
6-0 Games

These last few points have been very good, but they are also off topic. If this is my fault, I'm sorry. My original question concerned quantity not quality. Me personally, and I'm sure most others, would much rather have a little brilliance than alot of bull.. but there must be a happy medium when it comes to product. No matter how hard you fight it, you want something that gives the slight impression of professionalism when you "create" a "product". Therefore, what I wanted to know was not how good, or what type of format to use, but how much text/art/wordcount would be considered "decent". I know it's subject to interpretation, and I truly appreciate all the advice.. it's just I hate to see this get off on an appreciation for art or not- tangent.

T

emily's comments made something clear to me that I hadn't conceptualised before: using an outline

this not only gives you a good indication of structure/planning/blah, but hopefully helps make sure you've referenced and described everything you've mentioned

I can't make any suggestions about an exact wordcount, but I know that different books have had different "feels" of completeness -- mainly related to how well they've covered the elements they've mentioned, and the hooks they provide for GMs and players to latch onto and expand

example: I came away from the first Dark Sun box set with a strong impression of the setting and the variety of ways in which players could fit into it -- most questions I had could be answered by fantasy stereotypes/expectations or extrapolating the DS approach to them

(of course I was terribly disappointed by the first adventure which upturned the setting, to my mind... and don't talk to me about the novels -- I catalogue all of it as just another GMs take on the core material)

example: I got a good idea of the atmosphere of an UnderWorld game from the UW book, but was nagged by the feeling that I didn't have an idea about day-to-day living -- I like the sketchy/framework setting, but for me at least, the environment itself wasn't made concrete

unfortunately, though, this is quite a subjective call -- I happen to ask "so, where do they live?": Dark Sun answered this, to my satisfaction, and UnderWorld didn't

with a outline or other indexy reference tool you can at least make sure you finish up/link up anything you mention

Kwill, Emily

In reading over all these posts.. the outline idea really does make good sense to me. I started doing something like this, and now I'll be able to do it even better. I started out inspired and just wrote my little heart out. Now I've started writing sections completely by themselves as other files. Then I read back through and insert them where they should go, then I start the editing process all over. It's tedious and time consuming, but if I reference my (new) general outline I avoid babbling in the text and I also find out which areas need better explanation. Thanks a bunch everyone who posted you've all been very helpful.

Gotta love the Forge!!


T

*Em smacks herself in the forehead.*

Hi. Okay. I just got done negotiating with Ron, and as soon as I can find time, hopefully really freakin' soon, I'm going to contribute a few articles to the Forge on how to write your game. Not what to put into it, how to go about the grungy process of doing it. One of the big things is - tada - the outline. That handy-dandy tool that will get your game from conception to completion.

So just hold on to your pants, and let me have a day at work when I don't come home completely exhausted, and all will become apparent.

It's much easier than pontificating in a little tiny box on a BBS, and the articles don't age out.

eek -- the forge is my refuge from varsity and, for example, learning about the software development process in comp sci -- now we're getting the game development process on the forge!

weird and twisted :>

Quote:
eek -- the forge is my refuge from varsity and, for example, learning about the software development process in comp sci -- now we're getting the game development process on the forge!

weird and twisted :>

Endquote



Shh! It's my refuge from work. If I could count how many times a day I gotta minimize this screen cause the boss is walking by...

more on topic though.. I think it's awesome that we are getting some basic guidelines. I'd love to see some of the people who have made some of these popular games (Ron, Jason, I'm looking at you) talk about the creation process (fundamental methodology, not inspiration) more often.
I mean when I go back and read my game, Any Town, U.S.A. I can't help but think "this is my little indie game" whereas when I thumb through Sorceror or Little Fears I get this "this is a big-time game" feeling. I dunno.. it might be a modesty affliction, (yeah right) but I think it's more of I'm fumbling around with these ideas, whereas alot of others appear to have just "known what to do" when the inspiration struck them. Any of you Filthy Superpublished Authors care to comment?

T.

Not to fly in the face of the "nobody knows" idea... I definitely have no direct line to the future... but I'll be happy to give you what I use as a guideline.

1 art per 5 pages. Voila. Seems simple, right? Well, first you have to make certain each of those pieces is good, fits the text near it (or generally near it), and is spaced properly with the text. Not too bad, but there it is.

For cover, as I believe John has said in the past: blow most of the nut there. If you are going traditional distribution, that is. If not, do what thou wilt seems to be the rule.

As text, we print in 10-point font and can average between 800-1000 words per page. I stress "can". As mentioned above, 500-600 makes it easier on the eyes, and spaces a bit more nicely.

Quick piece of advice: layout is every bit as important as flashy-cool art. Most don't believe me. Look at Last Exodus, then look at Sorcerer. Nuff said.

If you want to steal layout and spacing ideas from someone, try Sorcerer, you could do much worse. Much worse. Little Fears does a nice job of keeping things organized as well.

D&D and... well... Obsidian... do not have the same level of great organization. Organization counts (take it from someone who has taken it on the chin about this one).



All in all, costs, depending upon how you are going to print/bind/everything (hardcover, perfect bind, stiching, etc.) makes the big difference. Added to this are also the number of books in the run.

To give you an idea, Obsidian had a preproduction cost of about 5,000 before printing. Not much, I agree, but we utilized every damned resource we had, and did most of the work on our own. I am just saying here that you CAN make a decent, professional-looking (content is your apple) book for not a truckload of cash. It takes some time, effort, and a lot of calls to various people with a whining and pleading voice. But it can be done.

Dav