[DF] What a load!

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Actually, I was referring to the ones that take up the second half of the book, the Chapter Two Equipment Sheets. That's 24 pages. I can see the use, but is it worth the extra $2?

Is DF priced by the page in the first place? It's an electronic product, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand pages as long as it doesn't require any more typesetting and editing than 32 page book.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Is DF priced by the page in the first place? It's an electronic product, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand pages as long as it doesn't require any more typesetting and editing than 32 page book.

From what I understand page count and man-hours of a book are roughly related, making page count a hand rule of thumb for setting the price. I imagine there are fixed costs that don't go away no matter how simple the PDF is.

[giant.robot]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Actually, I was referring to the ones that take up the second half of the book, the Chapter Two Equipment Sheets. That's 24 pages. I can see the use, but is it worth the extra $2?

Yeah, I'm a little bothered that the book was doubled in size with what I would consider filler. I didn't find the sheets very useful in MH Loadouts either.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Is DF priced by the page in the first place? It's an electronic product, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand pages as long as it doesn't require any more typesetting and editing than 32 page book.

IIRC, e23 products use page count as the primary method of determining price.

As for typesetting and such, the book is formatted like GURPS Loadouts: Monster Hunters. That is, each equipment list appears twice. The first time, it appears in the context of notes and introductory material, and it may break over columns or pages. The second time, it appears in a format designed for printing to use at the gaming table. It's the same list of items and their stats (mostly; there's at least one printable sheet which contains two sets of equipment combined into one, which isn't in the main text), but they don't have the introductory material, they don't break over pages, and there's often blank space intentionally left on the page, which the player can use for making notes. There's definitely additional layout and production work in producing those printable sheets.

[ArmoredSaint]

Ouch!

Somehow, I had misunderstood and was under the impression that these loadouts supplements would include the armour rules released in Low-Tech.

I now regret my rash decision to buy this item. :(

[Steven Marsh]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

IIRC, e23 products use page count as the primary method of determining price.

Primary, yes... but we also take production expenses into account.

In this case, Loadouts took a lot of editorial resources to get together. That's no slight on Matt or his efforts; these kinds of supplements always take a lot of work to bring to completion. Really, there is no fluff in the first 28 pages of the book; it's practically wall-to-wall items, stats, numbers, calculations, etc. (Obviously, our editorial costs are much higher on an all-math supplement than one with blocks of background info or other statless material.)

If we were to release this without the sheets, it's likely the price would still be at least $8.99, and possibly even remain at $9.99. (I remember needing to nudge the numbers to keep this at $9.99, so hopefully you all prove my instincts right and buy a bunch of copies...) :-)

And ideally a number of folks can use the sheets! Although not as "expensive" as pages of full stats, they still took a lot of effort and coordination to be useful and attractive. The whole point of these types of supplements -- and, indeed, the Dungeon Fantasy line -- is to be as pick-up-and-play as possible. With the sheets, someone can go from "I need to equip my hero" to "I'm ready to play" in just a few clicks of the mouse and a checkmark in the box.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Possibly...

It's early yet, so if I can get just enough players to vote for "make Peter's life easier" over "lighter armor" I'll be okay. :)

I'll have to play on the busier guys in the group for votes.

BTW, the book looks nice. I'm not sure we'll use the printable sheets or not yet, but the loadouts themselves are helpful.

[Kromm]

As Steven explained, the price tag would have been $8.99 at the minimum owing to editorial expenses, and the job costs ended up consistent with $9.99. Both figures reflect reality before considering the equipment sheets. Those sheets weren't added to let us raise the price; they were added because they were almost free to generate, and we felt that adding them would give people better value for the $8.99 or $9.99 they would have to pay either way.

In other words, we did the accounting and said, "Aw, crud, this is going to be $8.99 or $9.99 for less than 30 pages. How can we add value without raising costs?" The answer was, "Well, equipment sheets are speedy and better than nothing, yeah?"

Books in the Low-Tech and Loadouts series will indeed use the rules in Low-Tech. Dungeon Fantasy is intentionally a "light" series that doesn't require gamers to own lots of costly hardbacks, like Low-Tech, Martial Arts, Powers, and Thaumatology. As a consequence, it duplicates simple things from those books, but omits rules that require lengthy essays, tables, etc. to present. The rules for armor in Low-Tech are definitely in the latter category, so we couldn't include them, which meant that we had to do without them to avoid requiring a hardback. Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor will be another matter . . . in effect, it will be a Low-Tech supplement. Dungeon Fantasy 13: Loadouts isn't a Low-Tech supplement, but a Dungeon Fantasy product.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor will be another matter.

There's gonna be a Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor?! Joy!

[Hannes665]

Originally Posted by ArmoredSaint

Ouch!

Somehow, I had misunderstood and was under the impression that these loadouts supplements would include the armour rules released in Low-Tech.

I now regret my rash decision to buy this item. :(

Yes, same here.