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Production values of the new line and my wallet


Daedalum

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Hi Chaosium and fans. Im curious about the new designs of the CoC line going forward. I'm pleased to hear that Chaosium are aiming for high production full color hard case books. Its the type of values that will encourage me to purchase Pulp Cthulhu. 

In fact as much as I enjoy the design of the KS keepers and players books, is there any possibility of updating it to the level of Pulp Cthulhu? It is just that bit more polished, without an excess of distracting borders, overly dark drop shadows, tighter asthetic. Moving forward, I predict the core books will lag behind the quality of the upcoming line and be that bit harder to actually read.

In complete contrarian backflip to this quibble on perfection (awsome work Badger) I also really enjoy the clear economical & classic design of the BW Nameless Horrors.  Softcover BW scenario collections (with fewer but higher quality illustrations) are the kinds of books I could afford and enjoy playing from. Otherwise Im going to struggle justify purchases beyond rulesbooks and pdf. 

Ideally Id like to be able to purchase the  books in such a format as a cheap POD or similar plain soft cover alternative to the amazing Hard Backs which I fear I won't be able to justify. I mean scenario are kind of consumables.

So there you have it, I want my cake and to eat it thrice - a typical RPG gamer.

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I love the boxed sets because of the props. I also really like having black and white photos of NPC's (as opposed to illustrations).

I'm surprised Chaosium doesn't use B&W photos more, given that:

  1. there is so much public domain material from the era 
  2. there are plenty of fans that would love to have their photos (of themselves or their props) used (for free)
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On 8/17/2016 at 6:24 PM, Daedalum said:

Ideally Id like to be able to purchase the  books in such a format as a cheap POD or similar plain soft cover alternative to the amazing Hard Backs which I fear I won't be able to justify. I mean scenario are kind of consumables.

Have you checked out Chaosium's section at DriveThruRPG? Their POD stuff is good quality and the price is really good too.

Even better, there's currently a sale going on.

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On 21 August 2016 at 0:46 AM, barrelv said:

Have you checked out Chaosium's section at DriveThruRPG? Their POD stuff is good quality and the price is really good too.

Even better, there's currently a sale going on.

Are we alowed to Print in Demand Chaosium pdfs we have purchased? Or is that an infringement?  Also I guess the combination of purchasing the pdf and the pod cost would render it a bit unjustifiable for an inferior end product. 

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10 hours ago, Daedalum said:

Are we alowed to Print in Demand Chaosium pdfs we have purchased? Or is that an infringement?  Also I guess the combination of purchasing the pdf and the pod cost would render it a bit unjustifiable for an inferior end product. 

It would be pretty hard to stop you printing out your PDF as a POD book (at Kinkos or wherever), and if it's for your personal use that's perfectly a fine (albeit expensive) thing to do. Although if you really wanted physical copies, you'd be far better off just buying the print version (which comes with the PDF included). Now if you started offering the POD versions for sale - that would be an infringement. 

Edited by MOB
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DTRPG offers its POD service to publishers, but it is on a per title basis, so the publisher has to set it up.

POD also requires more work by the game company, since we have to send "printer ready" files for the cover and internal pages separately. They also have to be formatted differently than what most large scale printing companies require. It's not a huge amount of work, but it adds up when you have to do this for each title in your catalog.

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Hope that Helps,
Rick Meints - Chaosium, Inc.

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Thanks for the explanation gents. I certainly dont want encourage erosion of the CofC production values just when you are redefining the line, but down the track, modest POD options for the back catalogue could have a market. 

Edited by Daedalum
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