GURPS Magic

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

It's about a half that if you go with B&W. Less than $10 if you go with soft-cover B&W.

And that's 256 pages, so you can stuff some other PDFs in there - Magical Styles or Plant Magic or Death Spells (or some combination)?

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Try running the PDF through a virtual PDF Printer, such as Bullzip. One of the advantages of doing this is that you can clip off pages you don't want to add to the project (such as the cover pages or the e23 Information page). I was just messing around with Lulu to see what Magic + Magic Spell Charts would cost in softcover and the Spell Charts were erroring because the fonts weren't embedded; running it through Bullzip embedded the fonts and fixed the issue I was having.

I'll give that a shot, thanks.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by kmunoz

I'll give that a shot, thanks.

I will note that I tried setting up a Lulu book today and it errored out without explanation. They may have done something that breaks it for SJGames PDF files. It has been a couple years since I made my POD books through Lulu.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Bruno

And that's 256 pages, so you can stuff some other PDFs in there - Magical Styles or Plant Magic or Death Spells (or some combination)?

A 280 page B&W Soft Cover book is being quoted as $9.80 for me. That's an extra 40 pages, which will fit Magic and the Spell Charts, or one to two of the other PDFs you mentioned. The cost for B&W Soft Cover appears to be $1.40 + $0.03/page. With Softcover I wouldn't go much bigger than the 280 (even that's a bit large). OTOH you could do two ~240-280 page books for about $20, and that will fit all of Magic and most of the Magic/Thaumatology extra PDFs.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

I will note that I tried setting up a Lulu book today and it errored out without explanation. They may have done something that breaks it for SJGames PDF files. It has been a couple years since I made my POD books through Lulu.

OK, After some more messing around it looks like the reason it was erroring out has to do with transparent/multiple layers. Which means that the way to fix it is to flatten out the layers. When you print to Bullzip click the Advanced button in the Upper-Right of the print dialog and select 'Simulate Overprinting'. This forces the document to flatten out, which eliminated the errors I was getting.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

OK, After some more messing around it looks like the reason it was erroring out has to do with transparent/multiple layers. Which means that the way to fix it is to flatten out the layers. When you print to Bullzip click the Advanced button in the Upper-Right of the print dialog and select 'Simulate Overprinting'. This forces the document to flatten out, which eliminated the errors I was getting.

I really appreciate the testing you did! At last my quest for a hardcopy Thaumatology will end in success...

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

It's about a half that if you go with B&W. Less than $10 if you go with soft-cover B&W.

Yes. I was just trying to pick options to match the SJG binding.

For a lot of people, RPG books are as much collectors' items as working reference tomes to be worn out at the table. (For pure reference, it's hard to beat the searchability of a directory full of GURPS PDFs.) The physical factors might matter to those that are picky about their physical books. Other people might prefer the lower price (even more books!). One of the advantages of using third-party print shops is that everyone gets to suit themselves in that regard, rather than SJG having to choose one format for everyone. Or drive up costs yet more by doing multiple runs in different formats, with all that extra inventory or smaller print runs that themselves cost more per book.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Yes. I was just trying to pick options to match the SJG binding.

Understandable, but at the same time if the problem is that the item is not in print and available for anything resembling a sane price it's worth noting that it can actually be had quite cheaply. The Softcover B&W actually matches up with the last reprint or two that Magic did get, and doesn't look too bad. It actually looks pretty much like a 3rd Edition GURPS Book; somebody posted pictures in one of the previous PoD threads of 6 or 7 books he got done at Lulu next to one he bought new, and you really couldn't tell the difference without picking them up and looking closely. OTOH it is true that Color Hardbacks is what is popular with all the kids these days, but back in my day...

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by kmunoz

I really appreciate the testing you did! At last my quest for a hardcopy Thaumatology will end in success...

Glad to be of help. It irked me that things weren't working easily when I'd done several books (and set up a couple others just messing around), and I am pretty handy with these things.

A couple other things to note about using Lulu:
1) Do not print to grayscale. Send them a color PDF and let them print to grayscale. When you convert to grayscale this tends to darken the images, and POD printers have printed rather dark for me. This means that the double-darkening may make the images too dark to be of use
2) When you go to make the cover it's worth making your own image. The built in cover creator wasn't the most versatile when I tried it way back when, but more importantly it forced you to put a barcode on the image. While you'll have some control over where the barcode goes it's not going to look right; if you upload an image you don't need the added barcode. You'll also have more control with color matching the background color (SJGames uses an off-black for backgrounds), cover text, the binding text.

[spelledare]

I might have found a Magic 2nd edition for GURPS 3rd edition, and as I understand it, the difference is not that big?

Would you recommend me to buy that or recommend me not to?

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by grislatin

I might have found a Magic 2nd edition for GURPS 3rd edition, and as I understand it, the difference is not that big?

The GURPS 3rd Edition book contains about half as many spells as Magic for GURPS 4th Edition, which included pretty much all of GURPS Grimoire too. Since Grimoire was a later addition it didn't contain too many of what you might call "core" spells, so not having those spells wouldn't really adversely affect your average fantasy game. The rules changes are pretty minor, and the Magic 2nd Edition book would probably work just fine in a 4e game.

Originally Posted by grislatin

Would you recommend me to buy that or recommend me not to?

If you really want a printed book then I say go for it. OTOH, for about $35-40 you can buy the PDF and get it printed in B&W Softcover via Lulu, which is going to be roughly the same overall quality as a GURPS 3rd Edition softcover is.