GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 19: Incantation Magic

[Refplace]

Not a detailed review but positive press nonetheless.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Not a detailed review but positive press nonetheless.

Awesome. That's a blog I'd've not expected to show up on.

[benz72]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

At a high level (and with many of the details) Sir Pudding has it right.

The customers will only pay a certain amount per page, regardless of the information conveyed. There's room for nudge on this, but not much.

Silly example: you find a way to get all of the information in both volumes of GURPS Basic Set - all of it, all 500 pages or whatever - in a single 11x17" printed page. This requires a lot of editorial and graphical and textual support, though. That kind of conciseness is hard. But you do it, and you pay for it, behind the scenes. Iteration with graphical artists, with the editors, with the layout folks, and marketing. All of it.

You feel that while the books are currently $80 or so, technically the single page document is worth MORE. It certainly cost more to make. But fine, you say, I'll only charge $50 for it.

Great. Your customers will pay $0.20, because it's "only one sheet of paper."

I've gotten a lot of flak over my noting on Google+ that Dragon Heresy, the SRD5.1 game I'm doing, is going to need two volumes to do "right," because right now I'm pushing a total word count of 450,000. Probably 720 laid-out pages.

"You suck," says the internets.

But the internets have also spoken: they want character creation ideas (lots of them), well-balanced powers, a full bestiary, combat rules and options, low-detail options, high detail options, a fully-worked setting, setting-free options, PDFs, print copies, experience point progressions, advancement by plot point, advancement by treasure, and full adventure support.

And they want all of that for something like ten to twenty cents per page, and will grouse if it's more.

Editing, indexing, and writing are usually paid for by the word (my benchmarks are about 2.5-8 cents per word for editing and writing, and about $10 per 1,000 words for indexing). Layout is still a tetch opaque to me, but seems to run something like $2.50-$5 per page. Art is something like $200-250 per 8.5x11" in full color . . . or more if you're hiring well-known, popular, sought-after artists.

Balanced against the prices customers are willing to pay, and the opportunity costs that if they're spending a lot of staff time (assuming you have staff) doing Project M and not Project D, then Project M can pretty quickly get in a hole out of which it cannot dig itself.

I am sure your (plural, didn't multiquote the thread) rationales and explanations are correct. I do not doubt the experts. I suppose I am simply surprised that there is such a large amount of non-automatable work in the editing and layout. Had anyone asked me to estimate what it took to layout something like this I would have supposed an afternoon with a template and some cut & paste shuffling would be plenty. Clearly I do not understand the effort involved. This is certainly not a comment on 'what ought to be' but rather a revelation of my ignorance about what really happens to make these products (or at least, make them so well). Thank you to all involved for doing those things and making the products I enjoy so much.

[Kalzazz]

The idea of lobbing 6d attacks like clockwork doesn't bother me, as brawny weapon masters can easily get into that weight class

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

The idea of lobbing 6d attacks like clockwork doesn't bother me, as brawny weapon masters can easily get into that weight class

Indeed, 6d is 3d+10, and a starting knight with weapon master can do that, possibly multiple times per turn (rapid strike, if you consider that ST 15+Striking ST2+Weapon Master doesn't leave enough points for extra attack). Eventually, such knight will deal more damage than that up to 4 times per turn (rapid strike/dual weapon attack + 2 extra attacks)...

[GodBeastX]

---- Please Remove, wrong thread ----

[Kalzazz]

Well a ST 17 WM is swinging for 3d+5 pre weapon . . . so he needs a sweet weapon which he likely won't afford with starting wealth

Fine balanced tempered glass dwarven axe is sweet and nets what, 3d+13? 5pts in Sig gear gets you one if I did math right

[Wavefunction]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Well a ST 17 WM is swinging for 3d+5 pre weapon . . . so he needs a sweet weapon which he likely won't afford with starting wealth

A halberd will get you up to 3d+10.

An Ogre Knight with ST 25 and Weapon Master can clock about 5d+9 base swing damage, +5 for a halberd and you're looking at 9d (5d+14), and that's right at the start of the game. With a Very Rapid Strike you can do that 3 times.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

A halberd will get you up to 3d+10.

An Ogre Knight with ST 25 and Weapon Master can clock about 5d+9 base swing damage, +5 for a halberd and you're looking at 9d (5d+14), and that's right at the start of the game. With a Very Rapid Strike you can do that 3 times.

Or the human knight could use a Fantasy Tech Zweihander for 3d+11, with fencing parries and reach 3 for little more than his starting cash...

Once you get into ogres and half ogres, damage goes up by a lot ;)

[Kalzazz]

If we go Ogre Barbarian (Savage Warrior) we can eventually have WM combined with SM+2 weapons and there will be much rejoicing

I haven't internalized Incantation Magic at all yet, but one of my groups favorite things with RPM is granting 'per die' damage bonuses, but if that is allowed in Incantation Magic we can make our parties ogre mucho happy happy