100+ pages of goodies per month

[NeverCool]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I earn my living as a copy editor. With an electronic manuscript, the first thing I do is spell check. But then I read it, line for line, looking for mistakes the spell checker didn't catch. I almost always find some. Never rely on a spell checker; if your language skills aren't good enough to outdo one, find a friend who's better and have them scan all your manuscripts.

Bill Stoddard

I would never put my full trust in the computer; 'their' and 'there' are both spelled right, but easily mixed up in a hurry! If you notice the bottom of my posts, you will see plenty of "Last edited" notes, with my obsession on getting things written correctly.

[Xenmas]

Sorry, I got in on this thread a little late.

I have to reiterate what a lot of other people have said in this thread. You are selling yourself short at $1.50 for 100 pages of an ezine. I'd pay that price for a 10-20 page ezine monthly, if the content were good. I'm not doubting that you can put out 100 pages of good material every month, but I think you should build up to it.

Start with a 20 page product, at $1.50/month. After a few months (6-12), if your subscriber base is getting strong, offer an "upgrade" to a 50 page product at $3.00/month. You subscribers will bite, it's more info for the price they pay. Occasionally offer a 100 page Special Edition at $5.00.

A 20 page ezine might sound small, but look around a bit at your competition, and look at what is in print. When you take all the advertisements out of an issue of Game Informer (Which I am paying approximately $2/month for, but on an annual subscription), it is about 30 pages of good articles. Making your product available on the web shouldn't make it cheaper, just more convenient.

Also, I would look into getting a really good (and legitimate) copy of Acrobat. There are methods to copy protect your work with the program. It is not fool proof, but it will at least keep honest people honest.

Just my 2 pennies, but I think you have a really good idea and I would really like to see you make a success of it.

[elShoggotho]

I like it. I'd buy some issues of it if you can keep the quality and darkly humoristic value of Reich-X. It's far too great to use it only as the campaign BBEG for my time-travel campaign. It spawns too much great adventure ideas in my head... but I'm ranting. Keep it up, and I'll be your first subscriber.

[NeverCool]

(EDIT: Just to let people know, a name for the magazine has now been chosen. It will be revealed with the release of Issue 1!)

@Xenmas: I am beginning to see that my offer is better than first expected. The idea is to get a lot of people hooked, both fast and over a longer period; the offer no one can refuse! As stated, I will be doing a slightly more expensive Bonus Issue every month, with an added humoristic (but still very useful!) article, hoping that people take a chance on the non-bonus issue and then think "what the heck, I'll go for the bonus". I intend to keep the cheap version around, and see what I can do to expand the bonus concept, allowing me to finance better stuff ahead.

But it is really comforting to know that my offer is looking good to others :-)

@elShoggotho: You are going to love the mag. I just finished the Right Hands of Evil article; 30 pages or so on how to make villain henchmen really deep and (possibly) freaky. But Issue 2 will have you spinning... It's a full Halloween issue, with the darkest and weirdest stuff you ever saw..... (insert sinister laugh)

I have a love of dark humor and strangeness myself ;-D
EDIT: And Reich-X (revised) will become an article in issue 3, allowing future issues to explore the world further!

[Necrocute]

Would the magazine be available to be shipped over to the UK in print format. I'm such a fool I'd actually prefer it that way even thought it would likely be pricey.

As a constant wannabe writer however it does me good to see someone making a go of it, with a sensible enough attitude non the less! Good luck with it all!

[NeverCool]

Originally Posted by Necrocute

Would the magazine be available to be shipped over to the UK in print format. I'm such a fool I'd actually prefer it that way even thought it would likely be pricey.

Yes, I will POD publish under Lulu. Each issue will be $12-14 plus shipping.

As a constant wannabe writer however it does me good to see someone making a go of it, with a sensible enough attitude non the less! Good luck with it all!

I know the feeling, I was that for years. And thanks for the compliment. By the way, once things look stable, I will open up for guest articles, and once things are financially stable, I hope to actually be able to pay for quality articles :-)

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by NeverCool

Whenever I say that I do not want 'filler' material, those things pop into mind. [...] The pull-quotes.... let's just say I'm not a big fan. The non-pull-quotes are still a grey zone for me.

Wel, I recommend them, and large chapter titles, and significant margins, and illustrations, too. I've had a couple of attempts at reading TAYDS. It has a lot of very interesting discussions of things, as well as a game system shoved in the middle there (though, despite the promise on p.120, no large character sheet). But the thing is just a big chunk of dense text, 272 pages long. There's no way I'm reading that in pdf, and I probably wouldn't read it in a printed book, either - my days of reading long textbooks are long gone, I only read that many pages in one go with good novels.

I think it's good to break up the text of any rpg piece with,

• chapter titles
• sub-titles
• pull quotes
• illustrations
• whitespace
• charts and tables (hey, we're gamers!)

I mean hey, even that wordy bugger Tolkien had fancy fonts for his chapter titles and pretty maps inside the covers.

Breaking up the text like that allows the reader a small mental break in which to focus, and then return to the text refreshed and ready to absorb more.

I really want to read TAYDS, but it's just too dense for me, I get lost. If your zine is the same way... and I'm far from unique in this. You can guess that from looking at the game books which sell well.

[NeverCool]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

Wel, I recommend them [...]

Hmmm.... Good point, and good suggestions (I am not alone in my love for bullet lists, yay!). I do not think the pull-quote angle will ever be something I feel good about, and a great number of illustrations will compromise the resources available for content, but something like framed story segments for 'literary illustration' (?) and various minor illustrations might be worth more focus. The magazine will be more broken up, but it might not be enough, something I will have to look closely at.

As for TAYDS, what you read is actually TAYDS OC, the Original Concepts. And it is very heavy at times. It is highly concentrated and with little room left for casual filling; it is 272 densely compacted Stuff (capitol S). Basically, you were drinking your orange juice distilled and concentrated, and that is a kick. This is why I have not yet truly marketed it, it is for people truly obsessed with angles on roleplaying etc. I will be doing a slight revision of it (some parts, like the Human Template, got miscalculated in the last update before it was made available), but I am also planning an actual core game book for sensible, less fanatical gamers.

Your advice will be taken very serious in the magazine and the upcoming TAYDS Core Handbook. The OC remains for the truly obsessed nuts for some time to come :-D

[Kyle Aaron]

I've had a closer look now and can say a few things about TAYDS, both about the style of the thing and its substance.

Its substance, for that we should have some kind of game design thread. If you start one I'll join it and help move it along. That can be at any blog you have, or if you're happy for some quite vigorous and sometimes rough discussion, at therpgsite; you'll find me there as "Kyle Aaron". I've also added you to my MSN IM. I would not advise having the discussion about TAYDS's substance here because looking through the archives I can see there's some drama and baggage associated with it which is best avoided. You won't find me on The Forge.

Its style may be more relevant here, because if that's your writing style then that's your writing style, and will be so in your zine, too. You mentioned liking bullet points - use them! That's especially so for a document which people can read online.


People don't read monitors, they scan them
On monitors people tend not to read but to scan. When they come to a website, they're not looking for pretty pictures and fancy javascript, but for information. And so they scan through to try to get that information. People often do the same with textbooks - and your rpg is a textbook, and instruction manual on how to play the game. That's why we see lots of chapter headings, paragraph headings and so on. If it's a long block of dense text then they just won't read it.

This fact of scanning and not reading leads to a few things about writing style and layout.

Chapter and topic headings are useful, even in a long post like this one, let alone in a 272 page book. The person can then scan to find their information. I'm sure you've experienced many times with rpgs flipping through the pages saying, "where was that rule about...?"

In a short piece on a screen, or a long piece in print, italics are good for emphasis, and GURPS books are well-known for using them a lot. But in a longer piece on a screen, bold writing is better for emphasis, because when people scan down the text, bold stands out while italics may be missed.

Tables and charts help lay out information clearly, and also stand out when your reader is flipping through the text.

Line breaks are useful also. My own preference for writing is for no line space between paragraphs, but with the first line indent, as in old books. But that's my preference, that's not what works best for all! What works best for all is a mixed style, as you see in GURPS books. Pick one up now and have a look through it. You'll find that they have indented first lines with no breaks in little chunks, but when they develop an idea, they put in a line break and then a mini-heading, the key word of the first paragrah being italicised to make it stand out.

Let's take for example GURPS Characters, p.B35. See, "Absoute Timing". Firstly they give us a mini-heading in bold italics. Then the first paragraph briefly describes what the Advantage is. Then they give us a line break and go on to the two examples of it, Absolute Timing and Chronolocation. It's easy for you to find the Advantage, to glance at the first paragraph to see what it's about, then to find the different versions of the Advantage within its description. It's easy to find the information we want without reading the whole text. You've done some of this in TAYDS but can do a lot more!

Your writing style may be formal or conversational as you prefer. It depends on what effect you want to have on your readers. For example,

It has been found that formal writing distances the reader from the text, but is better for things which must be stated definitively, such as complex rules.
vs
You'll find that formal writing turns people off, but works well for when you're talking about complex stuff.

The first example focuses the mind of an attentive reader, but turns off someone scanning through the text. The second is conversational, it's like having your friend the GM sitting next to you explaining the rules. What you find then is that more complex rulesets like GURPS and Hero and D&D3.5 usually have more formal writing, but lighter rules have more conversational writing. Your TAYDS rules are light, so I'd recommend the more conversational writing.

Whether a text is what you call "highly concentrated" - it needn't be dense. There is density, and then there's distilled essence. Have you heard of the "Reader's Digest" versions of books? Those are condensed, they get the story and characters across, but they're not dense and hard to read - on the contrary, they're often scorned by purists who say they're not the "true" version of the book - a bit like GURPS Lite, yeah? The distilled essence may have a lot in it, but it's not necessarily hard to consume, as anyone who's ever had calvados can tell you.

Lastly, a word about promotion. You need to promote your game and writing, whether it's being developed or completely finished. This gives you feedback and gets people to feel invested in it, so when it's finally published they'll want to buy and read it. You're doing well here but can do more, judging by the limited results I got from googling TAYDS.

Promote your website. What I used to do when strongly promoting d4-d4 was to make every mention of it a link to it. I've done that with TAYDS in this text. Hammer your website's location into people's minds by sheer repetition. Make it easy for them to click on or to remember. So for example when I mention Game Circle, it's always GameCircle.org which they can type straight into their browser. That way if I'm ever not around to tell them where it is, they can easily remember.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head this Sunday morning...

[NeverCool]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

Just some thoughts off the top of my head this Sunday morning...

Just the top of your head? I need to see what is below that top, then!

Seriously, very interesting stuff, I will need to read through it a couple of times to get all of it digested. I do prefer the conversational style of writing, so it is nice to see that it fits the relatively light TAYDS rules. I do need to do more dividing into sections and headings, having a habit of extensive details in my writing. Currently, I am trying to cut down on the length of my sentences, though, but more overall segmentation will have my full attention when I edit the first issue, and definitely when I do the TAYDS Core Handbook!

The promotional part is another matter entirely. I will be doing promotion, and the whole link-in-text part is a good suggestion, I will keep that in mind. But I still spend time trying to figure out how to do promotion without sacrificing too much of my productivity. I am not the most dedicated marketer, so it is very draining on my resources. This is one reason I make the magazine such a good offer (IMHO), to make it easier to sell. Future revenue should hopefully catch up on the early discount (does that make any sense to others?).

Oh, and I started this thread on TheRPGSite to discuss the substance of TAYDS. Everybody is welcome to participate (I think they use the exact same layout as the SJG board), though I will not be migrating my roots away from SJG forums, just this discussion on TAYDS substance (don't know what the threads you refer to getting in trouble are, but I don't need to know, either. Better safe than sorry).

I think that will be my initial response. Still need to chew through the whole thing a few more times.

(and I accepted your MSN. I did wonder who that was....)