GURPS On Demand: Your Experiences

[Anders]

Today my POD versions of Voodoo and Swashbucklers arrived* and they look good. I am pleased.

* Technically they arrived on Tuesday, just as promised, but I didn't pick them up until today.

[beetle496]

Is there printing on the spine?

Strictly B&W interior, correct?

[namada]

Originally Posted by beetle496

Is there printing on the spine?

For all the 3E books, certainly. For a few 4E books it's the fact that POD printing requires a larger page count than offset printing that some of them don't have printing on the spines.
Spaceships, How to be a GURPS GM, and Mass Combat are too short & don't have printing on the spines, for example. IIRC, the breakpoint is 90 pages.

Originally Posted by beetle496

Strictly B&W interior, correct?

Yes, all GURPS POD books have B&W interiors.

[tbone]

* Have you ordered GURPS On Demand books?: No, not yet. I may do so in the future for DFRPG Magic Items 2 and Compendium 2, to give on-demand a try (as I can't get these books overseas from the Kickstarters). But I'm not too interested if they're going to be B&W . . .

* If you did, how fast was the delivery?: N/A

* If you have not, why?: I have older GURPS books in print, but for newer stuff, PDF is good. Search, even across multiple books, is so convenient on the desktop. For game play, a tablet with PDF (and print-outs of frequently referenced pages) works pretty well. And I love that all those books take up no physical space.

Bonus: What other books would you like to see released as a part of this program?: No suggestions for now.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by namada

Yes, all GURPS POD books have B&W interiors.

Is this true for DFRPG Monsters 2 & Magic Items 2? And will it be true for DFRPG Companion 2? I know all the other books were B&W, but had assumed that these would be in color.

[dsoukup]

* Have you ordered GURPS On Demand books?
No. I obtain out of print books from the second hand market (e.g. eBay and Amazon).

* If you did, how fast was the delivery?
N/A

* If you have not, why?
I do not want black-and-white books. I appreciate the desire to reduce costs and make more titles available more quickly to more people, but I am absolutely willing to pay more (perhaps even double?) for a fully color book. The colored page edges/tabs greatly enhance the usefulness of the books, and I am afraid certain blurbs/text boxes/tables would be harder to read in black-and-white.

Bonus: What other books would you like to see released as a part of this program?
I am new to GURPS...only started within the last year or so. My GURPS library is very small. I would be in favor of ANY 4e book in color, but especially the Tech and Magic/Thaumatology series. I would even be willing to buy an On Demand title I already own which was sourced from the secondhand market either to replace the used copy with a new one or simply to support the program!

[beetle496]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

I know all the other books were B&W, but had assumed that these would be in color.

The 4e hard cover books have a fair MSRP. But many are out of print. So the choices (for those out of print editions) now are:

• MSRP minus $10 for PDF only version
• MSRP minus $5 for Amazon POD version, but that is softcover (color) with B&W interior

Neither of the above two choices are very appealing to me at all. Which makes me happy I bought several hard cover books early!

If the 4e POD books were interior color, and still at $5 less than the hardcover version, it think that would represent a fair value. I would still want to know about the paper quality though.

[namada]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Is this true for DFRPG Monsters 2 & Magic Items 2? And will it be true for DFRPG Companion 2? I know all the other books were B&W, but had assumed that these would be in color.

I haven't ordered any of the DFRPG stuff as POD other than the original DFRPG Companion, since I missed the initial kickstarter for that, so all I can say is that the Companion is B&W interior.

I also don't consider DFRPG to be GURPS, but rather a separate game, though I can understand others might argue it is, particularly SJG. RPG vs RPS makes the difference rather obvious, or so I thought.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by namada

I haven't ordered any of the DFRPG stuff as POD other than the original DFRPG Companion, since I missed the initial kickstarter for that, so all I can say is that the Companion is B&W interior.

I got the Companion as part of the Kickstarter. Not only was it in B&W, so were the three PDFs it was made from. This is not true of Monsters 2 or Magic Items 2 from the Kickstarters; both books were in full color, print and PDF.

But I don't know about the POD (I assume that SJGames is getting the copies for the Kickstarters from the Amazon POD given their quick turnaround, but don't know for sure). I'll probably be getting Companion 2 in POD because I just didn't have the money during the (short) kickstarter and hope it'll be in color.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

I got the Companion as part of the Kickstarter. Not only was it in B&W, so were the three PDFs it was made from.

Yep, the print DFRPG Companion from the Kickstarter has a color cover, but the inside is all B&W. Which means . . . the book was printed through Amazon POD for the Kickstarter? I don't know.

The PDFs of its three component books are also B&W. Which is a mystery to me: why would PDFs not be produced in color? There's some reason, I'm sure.

In the end, I expect DFRPG Magic Items 2 and Companion 2 (which I humorously mis-title Compendium 2 above) will arrive with color covers and B&W interiors when I get around to ordering them from Amazon POD. That'll be a small disappointment, but oh well. They won't look completely out of place, thanks to the existing Companion. : )