Gaming Ballistic - Posts other than GURPS (PotG)

[Armin]

Hello.

I have been reading Dungeon Grappling a bit lately, in the hardcopy form I got from the kickstarter. I never read Technical Grappling for GURPS, so it's all pretty much new to me, and I find it pretty interesting.

On a non-content front, I have a request: for future books, please make the inside margins a little bigger. I don't crack the spines of my books, which means that when I read them, the pages bow quite a bit toward the spine. Usually, this is just fine, but with Dungeon Grappling the small inside margin makes it harder to read the text, because the words keep disappearing into the interior gutter area.

(I know most people may not care about this, but if I don't mention it, you won't know to think about it.)

Thank you.

Armin

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Armin

Hello.

I have been reading Dungeon Grappling a bit lately, in the hardcopy form I got from the kickstarter. I never read Technical Grappling for GURPS, so it's all pretty much new to me, and I find it pretty interesting.

Glad you bought it; glad you are reading it and finding it worthy. I hope it makes your games better.

On a non-content front, I have a request: for future books, please make the inside margins a little bigger.

I will keep this in mind. The current practice from my layout guys seems to be about 3/4" from the book center to the first text box. I'll see about bumping this up by a bit. I'm not sure I can give a full inch, but I might be able to nudge up to 7/8".

The Dragon Heresy book, if it does well (very well) will hopefully be smyth-sewn, which should help. the Venture Beyond SFRPG is likely to be perfect-bound and digest sized, so paying attention to interior margin is a good nudge.

[Armin]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Glad you bought it; glad you are reading it and finding it worthy. I hope it makes your games better.

It's certainly something for me to think on. Grappling gets avoided a lot in our games, so I'm pretty interested to see if I can grok and share enough to make it work for us.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I will keep this in mind. The current practice from my layout guys seems to be about 3/4" from the book center to the first text box. I'll see about bumping this up by a bit. I'm not sure I can give a full inch, but I might be able to nudge up to 7/8".

Thanks for considering it. Personally, I can lose a bit of the outer margin; my thumbs always end up on the text, anyway (but are also easy to move out of the way).

But, in the grand scheme, I know this is a relatively minor issue. Some days I'm just more easily annoyed than others.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

The Dragon Heresy book, if it does well (very well) will hopefully be smyth-sewn, which should help. the Venture Beyond SFRPG is likely to be perfect-bound and digest sized, so paying attention to interior margin is a good nudge.

I'm looking forward to seeing these, too. I'm currently planning to back them both.

I'm pretty impressed with what you've done with Dungeon Grappling as your first release.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Armin

Thanks for considering it. Personally, I can lose a bit of the outer margin; my thumbs always end up on the text, anyway (but are also easy to move out of the way).

FWIW, inner margin limits seem to be set more by the printer's bleed limits (and this doubly so with Amazon Createspace, the . . . GRAR! . . . margins for whom are kinda strict).

I'm pretty impressed with what you've done with Dungeon Grappling as your first release.

Danke. I needed to make sure that when I come around and ask for rather more money for each of the next two projects (VB will probably end up wanting around $23,000 to 25,000; Dragon Heresy is really, when push comes to shove, a $125,000 project), folks needed to see me (over) deliver on a small one.

[DouglasCole]

A very neat article by Brandes Stoddard (presumably no relation) made me think more about feats in Dragon Heresy.

https://gamingballistic.com/2017/04/...dragon-heresy/

[DouglasCole]

Nifty video taken by Western Martial Arts practitioner Roland Warzecha looking at cutting clay with the "cast blow" technique using a viking sword. As always, "all models are wrong; some are useful," but it was a great weekend and a fun test.

Clay Cutting with Viking Swords – Cast Blow test

[DouglasCole]

It's once again Monster Monday, and today we've got some monsters of the human variety for you. Between other parties of adventurers, as well as bandits and other riff-raff, early encounters in Tanalor may well be fellow humans; certainly in situations focusing on the internal politics of Torengar or the Neveri wars, they will be.

Monster Monday: Human Opposition Sampler Pack

[DouglasCole]

Goodbye, my friend (Digression)

[DouglasCole]

A bit over a week ago, I was joined by David Kenzer of Kenzer and Company. In fact, I was originally joined by Jolly Blackburn and Steve Johansson as well, but after nearly 90 minutes of great conversation, I had the horrifying discovery that I had 90 minutes of video . . . and no audio whatsoever.

Fortunately, David had the time and grace to do it again. We covered some of the same, and a lot of different topics the second time around, though Jolly and Steve were unavailable.

It was a good chat, and we covered topics ranging from the history and product portfolio of Kenzer and Company, to the production and design of Hackmaster, to the current Kickstarter for Aces and Eights Reloaded.

GB’s Firing Squad welcomes Kenzer and Company

[DouglasCole]

I saw some art in progress the other day, and it made me think of how my amateur efforts in art direction have been helped by the obvious: clear reference images either created or found. This is especially important if, like myself, one cannot draw.