Official ICE Forums
Gamer's Corner => General Discussion => Topic started by: gog on November 06, 2015, 05:22:38 AM
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I've got hold of a number of older ICE books second hand over the last couple of years, and now am seeing that a lot of them seem to be 64 pages long. This got me wondering why. I'd guess that it was the most economical page count to print at (length v content wise). However as said just wondering?
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I think its the next cost bracket is 88 pages. So, I think you try to trim a book to 64 pages if you can- and the maybe release some free errata. Many of the SW older books for example we made as stand alone modules so a lot of the history etc was re-printed in each one; i think a lot fo this is just generally available now so you can trim it out of an individual publication.
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I think it has to do a lot with the binding of a physical book but I do not know the official why. But other factors can be price point, $ outlay to authors, time, quality of material, etc.
MDC
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If I remember correctly from my early purchasing days, it is related to single sheet printing/folding/cutting. A single sheet of paper folded twice ends up having 8 faces; folded 3x yields 16 faces. The standard book size is set so that standard printing presses can generate 16 pages per print. This makes 64 a magical number as it requires 4 print sheets. The 88 page is probably from a 2-fold printing process yielding 8 pages per print. There are different size presses and paper stock. Then there is the binding, which is lots of different formats and processes - but effectively if your book it too big or too small, you lose some of the options because they simply won't work. I am sure there are a lot of others in our membership who can speak with greater expertise than this - but for the basics this is the way I remember it.
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If I remember correctly we were given a limit of 96 pages for the Channeling Companion, which holds true to the x16 number.
We had a lot more stuff we could have put in there if it were not for being given a limit.
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If I remember correctly we were given a limit of 96 pages for the Channeling Companion, which holds true to the x16 number.
We had a lot more stuff we could have put in there if it were not for being given a limit.
Any chance of that seeing the light of day with RMU now with digital publishing?
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If I remember correctly we were given a limit of 96 pages for the Channeling Companion, which holds true to the x16 number.
We had a lot more stuff we could have put in there if it were not for being given a limit.
Any chance of that seeing the light of day with RMU now with digital publishing?
You'd have to get that answer from an official ICE (Guild Companion Publications) representative. I'm sure it's a long way off and it would need some slight conversion but I, personally, don't see why not.