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Old 08-06-2010, 03:55 PM   #41
Kromm
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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Originally Posted by Johan Larson View Post

Editorial and overhead costs are quadratic with length? That seems rather strange. Care to elaborate? Costs of most types are either fixed or linear.
Unless your publication is one big list of uncorrelated words, it will have internal structure, including cross-references, blends and reuse of concepts, worked examples, and straightforward parallelisms that relate each section to many others. There will also be rules, values, technical terms, and expressions used "just so" that must be employed consistently, and these tend to be introduced and reused in proportion to length. Very roughly, then, N sections relate in N(N-1)/2 ways. Making sure that all of these correlations point to material that actually exists, draw connections correctly, use the same technical terms and stats, are offered in a consistent formatting, etc. makes up much of the work on the book.

There's also a human factor. Attention spans are limited. People tasked to process long manuscripts lose efficiency with time as boredom sets in. It would be nice if that weren't true, but it's pretty much a universal complaint among people in the publishing business. Whatever departure from the quadratic you might argue should occur owing to sections not being correlated with every other tends to get wiped out by this effect.

It's pretty clear from labor costs that a 128-page book takes a lot more than four times as long as a 32-page one to edit and produce. The actual factor isn't 16, but it's far closer to 16 than to 4. I'd put its value between 10 and 12 when those working on the book are aware of these effects and doing their very best to mitigate them.
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Old 08-06-2010, 03:56 PM   #42
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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There's a reason many successful GMs "houserule" for their campaigns.
Which is a good way to think of DF – as a set of house rules for an old-school fantasy pastiche.
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Old 08-06-2010, 09:08 PM   #43
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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Unless your publication is one big list of uncorrelated words, it will have internal structure, including cross-references, blends and reuse of concepts, worked examples, and straightforward parallelisms that relate each section to many others. There will also be rules, values, technical terms, and expressions used "just so" that must be employed consistently, and these tend to be introduced and reused in proportion to length. Very roughly, then, N sections relate in N(N-1)/2 ways. Making sure that all of these correlations point to material that actually exists, draw connections correctly, use the same technical terms and stats, are offered in a consistent formatting, etc. makes up much of the work on the book.
This is a lesson I learned several years back when compiling GURPS Advantages, the compilation book from the infamous 50-point Abilities thread. The more items that were submitted, the more complicated the editing got! (Not to mention that some people kept submitting using multiplicative modifiers and I had to recalculate a bunch of the abilities... a couple of these still might have slipped through.) This is why there was never a later version of the book, even though people kept posting in the thread.
I have a new appreciation for the effort that goes into editing these books now, especially the ones with lots of stat blocks or charts. Good job, guys! Good job, Kromm!
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Old 08-07-2010, 02:38 PM   #44
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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Storm of Metal
Storm of Wood
Storm of Void
Good stuff. I just added these to my "Unofficial DF Addendum" PDF -- the file that I print out and shove in the back of my DF binder. There it shall join your "temple healing prices" and Em's Racial Comparison Chart. I did cut the bit about 1-in-6 chance of a Wood vitals hit, though, just because that's not a general rule I use in DF, and I don't think it's fair to use it selectively here.

(If anyone wants a copy of said PDF, feel free. I just threw it up on MyGURPS today, when it occurred to me that others might like it.)
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Old 08-07-2010, 06:33 PM   #45
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

RPK -- that is a really useful file. Thank you for compiling it.

Presumably it will be updated as others post neat ideas like that to the forums. Any chance you'd be willing to make a thread, like the forthcoming rumors thread, that would let everyone know when it has been updated? I'd volunteer to do it myself, but you would know when you update it better than anyone else could...
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Old 08-07-2010, 06:42 PM   #46
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

For what it's worth, I'm slowly working on a project to create a full version of the height chart, showing all of the races as described. Dwarves are proving troublesome to depict convincingly. They're really freaky stumpy-squashed and I keep ending up with them looking... well... squashed. I may give up and just make them "all squashed" and be done with it.
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Old 08-07-2010, 10:46 PM   #47
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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Pretty much . . . 40 Artifacts describes many items in this general vein, and calls them all "found gear" with no point cost. While you can charge points for them, as Power-Ups implies, this doesn't buy any guarantees and is more of a fine for acquiring artifacts at whim when the GM hasn't decided to put them there as treasure. Normally, they're just stuff, and come and go with no effect on point totals, like other stuff.
My take on such items has been (for quite a while) that while you-the-GM may have calc'd out the points for it (I'm rather fond of doing such), the PC doesn't pay for it with points. However, his "Assumed Point Value" does go up, since his general capability has improved.

If you find a ring of fireproofing, you're more capable than you were before, even if you might easily lose that ring. The GM should keep it in mind when planning adventures, if only for as long as you have that bit of help.
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Old 08-07-2010, 11:30 PM   #48
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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My take on such items has been (for quite a while) that while you-the-GM may have calc'd out the points for it (I'm rather fond of doing such), the PC doesn't pay for it with points. However, his "Assumed Point Value" does go up, since his general capability has improved.

If you find a ring of fireproofing, you're more capable than you were before, even if you might easily lose that ring. The GM should keep it in mind when planning adventures, if only for as long as you have that bit of help.
Well... and I certainly remember old school D&D and AD&D characters for whom such items became fully as much a part of the character's legend as anything else. Not that such items were never lost after they'd been gained and seen the character through many adventures, but when it did occur, it was about as traumatic as losing a body part. In fact, sometimes it was losing a body part, if the artifact had something like 'Vecna' as part of its name...
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Old 08-08-2010, 01:35 AM   #49
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Default Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups

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RPK -- that is a really useful file. Thank you for compiling it.
De nada. (Okay, I can't lie -- I compiled it for myself a while ago. It only occurred to me this week that, "Hey, others might like this, too!" Sometimes I'm slow like that.)

Quote:
Presumably it will be updated as others post neat ideas like that to the forums. Any chance you'd be willing to make a thread, like the forthcoming rumors thread, that would let everyone know when it has been updated? I'd volunteer to do it myself, but you would know when you update it better than anyone else could...
A thread? No. That's kind of spammy. I update my website changelog every time I change a page (modulo simple typos, etc.), including this PDF. If you want to keep an eye on that, you can use WatchThatPage.com to monitor http://www.mygurps.com/changelog.html

For significant changes, I'll also update my sig (note the update below!).
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