More on Printing and Folding

I am 90% done with the latest Patron Book, but I have one more page of flavor text that I have been slowly working on that I just can't seem to get right.

I am include a link to a post by Matt Jackson on making booklets because it is inspiring and I didn't want to have no post in the month of February.

http://www.msjx.org/2014/06/diy-step-by-step-booklet-making.html

Do Not Let Your Players Watch This Video

I have no idea if this is real, but this video will have every player trying to convince their DM they can:

·         Jump in the air grab an arrow out of the wall and fire it before they land

·         Jump up into the air from behind their companion’s tower shield and fire at the enemy in front of them

·         Shot their bow at the poor sap across the table while seated in a tavern

·         Make 9 attacks in a five second combat round (or over a hundred in a AD&D 1 minute combat round)

·         Get an AC bonus for using a bow by splitting opponent’s arrows

Heck most of these were probably 4e abilities that I called ridiculous.

I Found this on: http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/23/7878129/bow-video-games-lars

 

Booklets

I am in the process of adding PDF versions of my books to DriveThruRPG.

the Patron books are free, and I am going to revise the PDF documents to make it easier for printing booklets like this. Make sure your PDF version has a blank page after the cover and before the back cover if not you have an early version and the below will not work.

This is a fairly simple process, though stapling can be a pain if you do not have a long reach stapler (check your office).

I have included screen shots from two different printers as my home printer and fancy work printer do this slightly different.

1. Load the paper you intend to use as the cover to feed first. I use thicker tan card stock for the cover and regular copy paper for the rest.

2. Select "Booklet" and Landscaping

or if you have a fancy work printer "Booklet Printing"

3. Make sure if you can't print double sided to pick "front side only"

or if you have a fancy work printer it prints both sides so hit print and your done.

5. Flip the paper over and you are ready to print the other side just pick "back side only", its ok if it shows a blank page this is the empty cover of the interior.

 

As you can see very easy. If you don't have a long reach stapler you can using two staplers, using one as the base and one as the stapler, I would suggest practicing on some scrap paper first. 

 

Best of luck and enjoy!

 



Slow and Steady

Tonight’s game was postponed till tomorrow giving me time to work on the finishing touches of my second Patron Book.

This one is for the All Mother, a good equivalent for the druid. It required additional formatting due to the numerous sidebars with charts; stats for animated trees, summoned elementals, and animal forms. This has four more pages, but only two real pieces of “art”, plus some clip art of leaves and vines I took from openclipart.org and the cover I took from an open source piece on wikipedia.

I just finished, so haven’t printed a test yet, but I really need a better stapler to make my booklets. I also need to see if I can get my editor to take a pass over these.

Oh well tomorrow I game.

Two for One

I have added my first Patron Book to the “Plunder” section. I picked the Order of the Crimson Sun as this is the Patron most closely associated with the Cleric as presented in B/X rules system. This book includes all the rules for using patron magic (divine or cleric) as presented in the Peril and Plunder Playing Guide. The rules in this patron book (and all other that will be added) can be used in other OSR rules systems as an alternative to the standard Cleric rules.

I have added both a standard (page in order) edition and a version ready to be printed and folded into a booklet (print and fold).

I am very happy with the booklet edition; I suggest you print the cover in color on higher weight paper, probably a tan, and the remaining pages in black and white.

Personally I need to go buy a better stapler to bind my copies. I intend to send some out to my players as gifts.

I expect to have two or three more patron books out before 2015.

Test Printing

I have worked my way through the over 200 Patron Invocations and I will take advantage of the holiday discounts on Lulu to print out a copy of Appendix One: Sample Patrons.

Once it arrives I am sure I will find 1,000 items to re-edit for layout, clarity,etc.. But now that spells are done I can work on print, fold, and play PDF copies of the Patrons so players can have a 8 to 12 page book dedicated to their character's spell lists to use at the table.

I did a proof of concept of this about a year ago for one of my play-testers and it worked out well.

I will offer these as free products, and will start adding them as links on the side.

Why does WOTC only make one RPG ?

I think the same question applies to Pazio as well.

 

In the “Good Old Days” the game company TSR had its flag ship, D&D, but owning the world’s first roleplaying game made them the de facto authority and they used that to promote other systems. The first game I owned was Gamma World (the second edition from 1983), sure my first game was Moldvay Basic, but my brother owned that I just got to borrow the books. The games we played the most were D&D, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret. And we bought those games because they were from the makers of Dungeons and Dragons, TSR made D&D so in our minds they were the authority on roleplaying games.

 

I had seen Palladium and Tunnels and Trolls systems growing up, but they looked like cheap D&D knockoffs to a kid like me, If D&D was Transformers, they were GoBots. I can’t remember ever seeing Traveler or Call of Cthulhu or Warhammer other than in adds. I do remember see Runequest, but the Ducks soured me on taking that game serious. I would have loved to play Twilight 2000, Red Dawn holding such a treasured place in my childhood, but it was not something my brother or I would risk spending our hard earned money on when it could be used for a TSR product instead. We put our trust in TSR.

 

I think the first non TSR game that I played was Shadowrun sometime around 1989. I know my brother and his friends played Cyberpunk, but I was never invited to those sessions. Once I embraced Shadowrun I had broken the chains of TSR, and went on to play numerous games by numerous companies in the 1990’s. But TSR was still making more than one game, I never played Alternity more than once (I didn’t like the system) but I know people who did, I bought the Amazing Engine system books and still would like a chance to play Bug Hunter. Fasa was making Shadowrun and Earthdawn, West End Game had Star Wars and Torg, White Wolf had a whole range of games. Companies put out multiple games using multiple systems.

 

So what happened? Why does WOTC just make D&D and Pazio just make Pathfinder?

 

WOTC had the license for Star Wars and judging by the price of the books online it is still semi popular and they made D20 Modern, but both of those were just reskinned 3.5 edition D&D not unique systems. The D&D 4e spin off for Gama World got decent reviews, but I never purchased it (The gonzo style of Gama World probably fit the zany power system of 4e better than a fantasy game, but that is only my opinion). Top Secret, Alternity, Amazing Engine, Marvel Superheroes, didn’t use the D&D mechanics they were their own game. WOTC has not tried to make another game system just houserule the current version of D&D to other settings.

 

Pazio has done even less. They have Pathfinder, a very extensive house ruled version of 3.5*. Personally I think Pazio has the following to at least attempt to design an original game. They make very attractive books and have a large following. The Pathfinder Basic Box was an amazing product, so good I have a sealed box waiting to give to my children someday to introduce them to Role-Playing. Why haven’t they tried to make something original? Craft a system, build an adventure path around it, and see if it sells. People love adventure paths (I hate them but I see the appeal), so why not make a post-apocalyptic quest through a broken southwest or a high adventure space opera? Build a system not based on d20 to run more modern settings and see what happens.

 

Why do I care?  I am just curious. The mussing above are directly related to my own gamer ADD. as I put finishing touches on the Peril and Plunder: Appendix One Sample Patrons I keep thinking about crafting a simple western game to run as a one-shot. I will stay focused; I just wonder how Pazio and WOTC can put out the same game year after year.

 

*Peril and Plunder is a extensively house ruled version of D&D, I think everyone should have their own version of D&D, it is not a knock on Pazio just a statement of fact