M Helsdon
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Posts posted by M Helsdon
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I am working on an art book of Mark Smylie's art, featuring many but not all the pictures from Ships & Shores, covers, and preparatory drawings. It will be about the same size as Visions of Myth, and probably only available as a POD. This gives an opportunity to present many of the 'half-page' pictures as full-page pictures, affording a better view of the extensive detail.
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5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
I hope that people will be publishing oceanic adventures now that you have provided all this background material. I certainly have thoughts about that. We already have the cult of Ygg in the back of The Lightbringers,, and probably this winter we will have the water cults book from Chaodium. We do currently have the East Isles in PDF through Jonstown Compendium. That's a lot of tools.
There's a lot you can do just along the Genertelan coast, or just Choralinthor Bay.
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17 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
Ships and Shores is 24 U.S. cents per page in premium color
and The Lightbringers is 24 U.S cents per page print industry standard professional 4-color process color printing,
That's very interesting. Thank you.
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I strongly suspect that there are Issaries way shrines on many trade routes, which receive offerings from passing caravans. These are probably inhabited or become inhabited by Issaries spirits and become the protective spirits of the way.
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5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
Maps. Mirrorsea poster, and deck plans. And anything else added in the future,
My only planned 'addition' at present is the next update for typo correction of the PDF.
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15 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:
Oh right, is that the way that it's supposed to work? You buy the print edition, and you get some of the digital content? That's cool. I'll give it a go (when I'm back from holiday, don't want books getting wet on the doorstep).
No, I updated my answer. I'm told the POD gives no access to any digital content.
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35 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:
If I just buy the printed book, what am I missing from the digital version?
The digital extras.
It may be possible for me to manually send the extras, but it's not automatic.
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57 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:
Good news!!!
Both qualities look the same on your pictures. Is there a major difference?
The colours are a little more vivid in the Premium print.
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Ships & Shores POD now ready to sail. Available as Standard and Premium.
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Pictures by Nick Brooke (my copies are somewhere in the UPS system).
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18 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
The other category, spirits of commerce and communication, seems vague to me. What do I get if i get a spirit of commerce?
A deceased merchant's spirit would be a spirit of commerce; a deceased herald would be a spirit of communication.
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Tracking has just changed from 'creating a label' to 'on its way'.
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Something is coming, but I don't know if it is the Standard or Premium print. Looks like it is shipping tomorrow.
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On 5/17/2024 at 1:53 AM, jajagappa said:
The book is an Electrum best seller, which is doing very well. There are only just over 20 books that have reached Gold status. I think you have to judge by that, not based on Armies & Enemies, which was one of the first books available and has now been out for like 5 years.
Yes, the market is now saturated with Jonstown and Chaosium products, which is a good thing for the hobby. When Armies came out there was very little available for people to buy. Armies achieved Gold fairly quickly, and has stood the test of time fairly well - there are only one or two things that are now contradicted by canon.
On 5/17/2024 at 3:41 AM, g33k said:As Jaja says, it's selling quite well as JC titles go, and you can hardly consider AaEoDP a fair comparison with its' several years more cumulative sales... also, recall that you spent quite a long time prior to the JC release talking about the project and showing art, and generally creating quite a substantive appetite for the book, when it finally came out!
Armies was the result of four or so years of work - Ships maybe three. I am now deliberating turning my current project into a 'part work' or one I gradually expand, with the first issue in six months or so.... As it expands the price will increase....
In many respects Jonstown creators work in something of a vacuum, and the only way to gauge impact is sales and reviews.
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1 hour ago, AndreJarosch said:
Do you see your product as a de luxe item, on the hig her end of the price range, which is intended to be for the "rich and powerful" (Rolls Roys)?
Or do you see your product as an item that everyone that is interested in having one should be able to afford (Ford Model T)?
It´s your choice to make (but IMHO the best way is to be somewhere in the middle).Until I see the test prints I can't really assess the look and feel of the book.
It will probably be available as standard and premium. I don't have any control over the base price, and would like to at least maintain the existing margin. The PDF is very cheap considering the page count and art.
The book hasn't sold well, but that's perhaps because it is niche and outside the core area of Dragon Pass and Prax, though if you intend playing in Esrolia, especially Nochet, or in Heortland, it would be very valuable. It also has excellent art by Katrin and Mark.
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7 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
"Never" seems to me to be an unreasonably long payback time. What do you need to charge to break even if it sells 250 POD copies plus 500 PDF? Don't tell me, just think about it. 🙂 🤥
Increasing the cost would reduce sales.
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50 minutes ago, AlexS said:
I know that on the map this huge area is described as the ‘Hendriki Kingdom’, but I wonder to what extent it was actually a unified Kingdom, much less an ‘Imperial’ polity. After all, most of what we know about the Hendriki is that they are generally pretty devoted to the principle that ‘no one can make you do anything’.
Imperial was an intentional eye catcher.
51 minutes ago, AlexS said:Or possibly like the Norman lords of Southern Italy in the 11th century before the foundation of the Kingdom of Sicily? In other words, a collection of warlords ruling local power bases within a shifting pattern of alliances and feuds with each other as well as with different indigenous / non-Hendriki elites.
Sadly, I don't know. I suspect it was a sort of 'franchise' kingdom outside the core Hendriki area.
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9 hours ago, Myrkvil said:
Is there a rough estimate for POD prices?
I haven't decided yet - the PDF is very cheap, I'm told, for its page count and content. It will never recoup the cost of the art, which was a known risk, as the book is niche and things outside the core area of Dragon Pass amd Prax mostly don't sell very well.
It's a big book, so the base printing cost isn't cheap.
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52 minutes ago, Joerg said:
I get the impression that much of the time, the Adjusted lords of Esrolia paid little more than lip service to the distant Hendriki king, unless that king took a personal interest in the Esrolian affairs or their needed his assistance. Possibly a bit like the Norman lords of Ireland during the Hundred Years War.
Other than the material in the Guide and History the nature of the Adjusted Lands is unclear.
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20 hours ago, metcalph said:
Probably Yusando (History of the Heortling Peoples p88) was King of Velebar. The Uzendi who then join are actually on the Heortling Lands Map p12 in what is now Tarsh.
Yes, I saw this when reading through History, but sadly there's no cultural information about Velebar.
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Test prints ordered....
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Looking through the Guide to Glorantha, this map, c. 1100 ST Catastrophes this map, after the fall of the Middle Sea Empire and the Empire of the Wyrm's Friends, and before the Dragonkill, is particularly striking: the realm of the Hendriki was, for a century, huge, covering much of what is now Sartar, and almost all of Esrolia!During the ensuing political and economic anarchy after the collapse of the empires, in 1035 King Andrin of the Hendrikings sent his brothers with an army to seize large parts of Esrolia, most of his forces, I suspect, striking south from Elmalvo down along the valleys of the Runnel and the Lyksos, others crossing Choralinthor Bay by boat or flying across the waters. Through cleverness, marriage and, sometimes outright conquest they took the coastal cities of Rhigos and Amonel (my supposition - the city appears on some maps near to where Storos is now). Nochet to the north retained a precarious independence. Andrin was acclaimed by his warriors and given the epithet of the Conqueror.King Finelvanth, I believe, conquered much of Esrolia and won Nochet through marriage. Then it went sour when the Queen of Nochet divorced him and everything fell apart. By the end most of the Hendriki had lost their holdings in Esrolia, save some around Rhigos, and, I believe, the people of Porthomeka had exchanged Hendriki warlords for Caladran warlords.Now what I find interesting, and this is only my supposition, is that although the Only Old One ruled the Shadowlands, his authority to stop his tribute payers fighting seems non-existent - maybe the trolls came by night and ate the fallen of the battlefields. There's also how this impacts modern relationships, though it was several centuries ago.There are also two Orlanthi political entities within the Shadowlands distinct from the Hendriki: the Firetop tribe, and Velebar (about which I know nothing....) I imagine that when the Golden Horde arrived, the Velebar and Firetop people either fled south, or fought and were slain, were enslaved, or died in the famine caused by the enormous northern army, or later when the dragons depopulated the Pass of humans.It also casts the Hendriki in an interesting light.We often see the Hendriki and their later offshoot the Sartari as victims of Lunar imperialism, but from 1035-1166, they were the invaders.
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The files now await approval from DriveThru RPG and Lightning Source.
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Work on the POD is underway.
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Ships & Shores
in RuneQuest
Posted
There is art in Ships & Shores that isn't in the art books - I'm trying to keep their page count under control. The book of Mark's art will include a picture from my current project as a preview. There are a few other extras.