Agentorange

Mmmm...not sure I agree. I'd say give people a variety of options from opulant to budget friendly and let them choose the option that suits the state of their finances

I certainly don't think it's "just" fluff ( perhaps I was being a little harsh there 😁 ). as I said the new RQG artwork is generally a thing of beauty and very evocative ( leaving aside the ongoing tendency to show female figures with their baps out - indeed a whole other conversation ! ) But if push comes to shove you buy a rpg for the rules and the game, the artwork is nice, but you don't play the artwork you play the game, i suppose that's what I meant by saying that ultimately art is fluff I suspect like most folks I'll give a big sigh and accept that I'll be paying extra for what I want to buy. I've been very impressed by the quality of the JC stuff that I've bought both POD and PDF and I love the whole idea of the JC. It just means I won't be buying as much or as often

I'd agree , but in this case it's not the creative people that are getting the extra money - it's the print company. I get that they need to pay for new machinery but as i said to Nick elsewhere if the price hike is 45% and the inflation rate is 1.5 % ( in the UK at least ) and peoples wages haven't gone up by 45% then you find yourself going " that seems kind of steep " Now ,the machinery costs what it does and the printers have to make their money back...but the other factor is for me are we going to see a 45% improvement in print quality ? If the improvement in print quality, vividness of colour, stunningness of artwork,clarity of layout etc is 45% better then happy days...but if I'm paying 45% extra for a 5% improvment on the quality of the work it's not unreasonable to ask " what exactly am I paying for here ? " I like artwork in books, some of the new RQG artwork is lovely...but ultimately I buy books for crunch not fluff, and ultimately artwork is fluff. So if prices go up by 45% for a premium colour hardback and there's a standard colour or black and white option softback that's cheaper, that's probably what I'll end up buying

Would paperback be viable ? Although hardback is nice it's not essential - a lot of my RPG books are that 'glossy' paperback style ( is there a technical term for this ? ) and they've stood the test of time pretty well. In some cases much better than some of my hardback books.

45% was the figure mentioned in another thread. That's the Lightning Source price hike, whether DTRPG passes the full cost along to customers remains to be seen...

You might want to look at some of the BRP adventure collections over at DTRPG, there's PDF and POD. Basically they were part of the monograph line: BRP adventures submitted to the annual competition and then collected for publication - covered all sorts of genres.

I sort of see what you're saying workwise, simply pointing out that if people go "45 % ?....they can jog on ! " then both DTRPG and lightning source will have less work coming in overall. I guess lightning source have many other print contracts and DTRPG aren't their only customer so if they lose the business they can make it up elsewhere....unless those other customers also think a 45% price hike is too much as well.

Upto 45% ? Seems a bit harsh when the UK inflation rate is about 1.5 % I know my wages haven't gone up by 45 % Ironic really, in another thread Nick Brooke was discussing ways that Chaosium were using to reduce the POD workload for DTRPG, I suspect that these will no longer be needed, Lightning Source will be reducing their POD workload for them with a price hike like that😆

I guess because most of my gaming has or is part of the d100 family of some description I tend to forget that runequest, mythras etc etc are only a small part of the overall games market...... Imagine an alternative universe where RQ etc had proved to be as popular as D'n'D/d20 😄

Does this mean that Chaosium will eventually be looking to phase out it's own print and PDF deals on DTRPG , for example things like Queensguard, Highway of Blood and so on. If we have the money should we be buying them whilst we still can ? I take it we're talking about complexity of work here as opposed to volume of work ? But if a creator/author is happy to put in that work ( and presumably soak up any costs incurred ) would that not be their call to make ?

What did you reckon to The last Barrow ? the artwork looks lovely and I do like the look of the whole thing. What stuff did you buy from Lulu out of curiousity ? I do think PDF's have their place, for me they excel in the shorter pieces or publications - the sort of thing where it's just not economically viable to do a print copy, yet the idea itself is a great one and deserves to be out there : Denarius the Minter, Blue Moon White Moon , Petty Spirits are all ( imo ) good examples of this

I'm surprised they generally sell poorly, Overall I've been very impressed with the stuff I've bought, obviously from my subjective point of view some are better than others but the general standard has in my opinion been pretty high.

All of which seems reasonable. Just for the sake of argument if DTRPG went " Argghh ! enough of this POD business a curse upon it all " and said they they were only going to do PDF's would Chaosium allow people to do POD etc via someone like Lulu ? It's clear there is a market for POD products, so far I've bought: Six Seasons in Sartar The Duel at Dangerford The Rostakori Clan Sandheart Vol 1 Treasures of Glorantha Vol 1 Valley of Plenty The deciding factor for me was that there was a POD product for each of these. I've gone straight PDF for some of my shorter purchases: Monster of the month, Petty Spirits etc etc

tl/dr ?

Excellent news !

It's probably to do with the transfer of the heroquest trademark to hasbro. Once that was agreed the stuff was only going to be available for a limited time before they ran into copyright and trademark issues. The article at the top of the page will give you the full lowdown.

All sounds like good stuff - being old fashioned I'll probably hang on for if you do some kind of POD/PDF combo. I know soltakss is working on a POD version of Secrets of Dorastor which I keep checking on in case it's become available.

As a total aside the chaos volume of The Book of Drastic Resolutions had a load of good Dorastor material.

Yes , but more of it 😁

Indeed, a fine supplement. I was never quite sure if Lords of terror was instead of Gods of Dorastor. I'm sure I read somewhere that Gods Of Dorastor was going to be more in depth - extra material for all the gods concerned, more spirit and hero cults etc. I guess we'll never know

I don't think so, I never saw or even heard of it being published. It was mentioned at the back of the Dorastor book somewhere wasn't it ? Along with a supplement called Gods of Dorastor which also never saw the light of day.

Somewhat of a sideways comment....but have you looked at Wurm ? if so what did you think ? I keep thinking about buying the PDF but haven't quite got round to it.....

I always rather liked Land of Ice and Stone, sorry to hear it didn't do that well. Suprising in a way, RQ is quite low tech in it's approach and I think the Balazaring culture from Griffin Mountain was meant to be a stone age culture wasn't it ? A revised edition would be nice , are you open to suggestions for extra material ? I'd like to see: Expanded bestiary - there's a few more creatures from earth history that could be statted up expanded shamanic rules, maybe around the animal totems idea ? Possibly given the Good Berry spell different plants could have different totemic spells, For example there could be a willow spirit useful in fighting fevers and illness and so on I did like the cave painting style artwork, I felt it suited the subject matter pretty well, but extra artwork would also be nice - but not essential