Official ICE Forums
Iron Crown Enterprises => ICE News and Discussion => Topic started by: NicholasHMCaldwell on September 01, 2015, 04:24:07 PM
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Welcome to the fifty-second Briefing and the ninth scheduled Briefing for 2015. September this year for me means being overwhelmed by research consultancy work bids and degree revalidations at the same time as my due diligence on a new module and module updates. So if you get a very succinct answer to a query from me, it just means that I am answering emails on the train or on a short break.
Rulebooks in Colour or Black & White?
At some undisclosed point, I will feel comfortable that regardless of any additional improvements to be made to RMU, it is in a position where we can start commissioning artwork. As you have undoubtedly noticed, all of our enhanced Shadow World sourcebooks have had colour interior art and have only been available in colour print editions. Conversely, all three enhanced HARP Fantasy books and HARP SF were only available in black&white, with HARP SF Xtreme trialling premium color in order to better support the vehicles and vehicle combat chapters, but also available in black&white.
Printing in premium color via OneBookShelf / Lightning Source costs ten US cents per page, printing in standard color costs 3 cents per page, while printing in black and white is 2 cents per page. Premium color is therefore not sensible for most folks' budgets, but the differential between black&white and standard color is modest.
We are minded that RMU should have standard colour interiors for its rulebooks. What do you think?
What about HARP? Should future HARP supplements such as HARP Folkways, HARP Bestiary and so forth embrace colour? Should we colorize the existing HARP and HARP SF books in the future, perhaps at the same time as performing an errata cleanup?
I realise that there is a significant fraction of our fan base who only buy rpg products as pdfs and ebooks now. Would you prefer colour interiors?
Tell us what you think on the forums.
HARP Bestiary
I have written all the Undead text and Overlay mechanics for HARP Bestiary. I still need to generate example instantiations for each type of Undead, i.e. apply the Skeleton Lord overlay to a standard Fighter, a Lament overlay to a Harper, a Sorcerous Head overlay to a low-level mage. The complete set of Undead to appear in Bestiary are as follows: Apparitions, Blue Men, Corpse Candle, Gaunt, Ghost, Ghoul, Lament, Lich, Mummy, Phantom, Sandspirit, Skeleton, Skeleton Lord, Sorcerous Head, Spectre, Vampire, Wight, Wraith, and Zombie. I have been inflicting various of these on my players in my Cyradon playtest campaign.
I have also made substantial progress on the Elemental chapter, adjusting text to fit in its new home of Bestiary rather than the original Something Wicked chapter. My remaining tasks are rejigging the Elementals themselves, and subsequently modifying the Elemental Heritage and introducing generic Elemental Overlay mechanics. I intend to donate the Elemental Creatures to my coauthors for use in non-Elemental forms and chapters.
Until next time
Despite my real-world deluge, I hope to sneak some time on the train for Elemental writing amongst other editing and organisational tasks. The next Briefing will be in October.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd
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I like color interiors, even for a little more. It looks nice and can be used tastefully in a way that helps enhance organization and layout. I imagine it's not actually 50% more as the price is not just the per-page costs. For PDFs, I see little reason to keep it in black and white, if you are already commissioning color art.
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If it's not much more expensive to commission color art, I say go color. Then, if you do, definitely color on PDF's. While colored ink is an expense people can just print the PDF's in black and white if they want to.
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I've got colour, premium colour and black and white. The colour looks far better than the black and white in print version, and in PDF, but the difference between colour and premium colour is pretty negligible. You could always have both colour and black and white PoD options, but converting colour images to black and white doesn't always work well without tinkering - one book I own had a colour map converted to greyscale, and it looks bad in comparison.
Say, is there an update for Shadow World this month?
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I would rather buy colour whether it be in printed or PDF form.
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Say, is there an update for Shadow World this month?
Yeah - still waiting for that damn artist to finish some of the Eidolon art and then the Eidolon book will be ready to go to PoD and PDF!
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Can you give us some price points for various product lengths?
Also in the past (may be too long ago) the main reason for color was to prevent photo copying/printing the book (but you could always chose the b/w option) as it often increased the cost above that of just buying the book. Now with PDF's it is sort of moot.
MDC
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Oh, if anyone hasn't seen the differences, here are some images.
Shadow World Players Guide (Premium Colour)
Emer III (Colour)
Parsantium (Black and White)
Parsantium (comparing black and white printed map with colour image map)
Book of Taverns (Black and White).
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Personally, having a choice between color and black/white is good if the cost of doing artwork is not too much higher doing both. Just so you have a cheaper price point for those who don't have a lot of cash to spend. But as someone pointed out, there could be added costs for modifying the color to B&W due to straight conversions not always being very clear or good. The old black and white advertisement artwork that used to be in Dragon Magazine decades ago was very good in my opinion, so it is possible to do very nice black and white artwork.
Although personally I would likely buy the color versions if the price difference was not more than 50% higher.
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From an artists point of view, I'd love to take on some color illustrations, but they will most likely demand 2-3 the amount of time which a greytone illustration takes to create. Payment/image should increase also due to this.
From a gamer point of view, I think greytone interior art has a certain charm that I will miss if the books start coming out with colored interior art.
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So I'm a traditionalist. I'm used to Black and White but also enjoy the color images (premium seems like its a little much). So are there any options available to do both? Make the printed copies in B&W and any PDF's in color?
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I would prefer color over b/w, and I would most likely be buying real books. However, I would likely also get pdf, and if the data content of pdf is illegible in b/w(for cheap printing or photocopying) I don't think that'd be good.
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I absolutely think it should be loaded with color artwork, and I would LOVE to see HARP SF updated with color art and errata! :)
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I am glad others have brought it up as there are a lot more things that go into a products price besides printing, ie price of color art vs gray scale art. And as the artist said above for hi it is about 2-3 times the amount of work, which could have a dramatic impact on a products final price.
MDC
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It also depends on how much of the books cost is due to the art. If color art was going to raise a book, say, 25% I'd be cool with that ($20 book is now $25), but it was going to raise the book more like 50% or more, I think I'd rather the black and white. While color is nice, in the long run it's just eye candy in a book for a game that will be played without an open book.
Actually... one exception to that might be the monsters book. I still have the AD&D 2nd Ed Monsterous Compendium exactly because it has such great artwork and it's in color. So, since I am more likely to use those for graphic representations I'd likely be willing to pay more for that book compared to others.
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Artwork pricing is determined by several factors. The main ones are size, b&w or colour, and most important, rights to the artwork. The standard for colour work is twice the amount than b&w art and the price can rise from there pending on detail and skill.
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A nice example for me would be:
A standard A4 full page, full detail and color would likely take me 2-4 days to complete, depending on image content, painting it from scratch in photoshop.
A greytone A4 full page takes maybe 1-2 days, painting it from scratch.
Painting an image for a whole A4 page for a client, I usually charge between $200-500, for a full color, full detail image. I do not think I would be comfortable painting a colored full page image for less than that.
I'm unsure how much the cost for each book would go up, considering the current price paid for a greytone/line art vs an increase for colored illustrations. Maybe Nicholas has some thoughts about this as well.
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I'd go for colour too :d
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I only buy PDFs now. I do print some pages from them but nearly all my gaming runs from a cheap 10" tablet. I would vote for colour PDFs so I can choose whether to print in colour or greyscale.
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A bit off topic, but here are a few color interior illustrations I've made for the Rolemaster Mentalism book, German edition:
(http://www.digitalartwork.no/Rolemaster/Mentalism_a_01.jpg)
(http://www.digitalartwork.no/Rolemaster/Mentalism_b_01.jpg)
(http://www.digitalartwork.no/Rolemaster/Mentalism_c_01.jpg)
(http://www.digitalartwork.no/Rolemaster/Mentalism_d_01.jpg)
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Hi Raymond - excellent images as usual! :)
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Hi Raymond - excellent images as usual! :)
Hiya Craig, long time no see :-)
What happened to the freelancer forum, did it just silently die off?
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I'm not seeing too much of a difference between color and premium color. Is it just me? The SW player guide is gorgeous, to be sure, but I wouldn't say it is worth 3x-5x the price.
One further issue is the considerable length of some of the RMU books, especially Creature Law. Unfortunately, that is the one book that really demands a lot of illustrations. If Creature Law is all going to be one book... well, that is going to be one expensive book!
Personally, I think you could do fine with just B&W interior illustrations for all the books except Creature Law. Ideally, you could give consumers the choice of color or B&W, but since you have to pay the artists for the color, you may as well go normal color for them all. Premium color I think would be a little too expensive.
Just my 2 cents (per page) :)
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Yeah, the entire reason I still own my D&D Creatures and Monsters book is because it has an illustration for every creature. That's just not realistic for RM's Creatures and Monsters book.
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Creating a Creature Law book with an illustration for each of the creature/monster in it would most likely end up with a version that has close to double the number of pages of today's version.
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What might be an option is for a 3rd party book of "pictures for monsters", if it was reasonably priced.
MDC
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Not every creature needs an image. I know what a skeleton looks like and a zombie because they are part of popular culture but a Wight may be completely unknown to players coming from Sci Fi roleplaying to fantasy for the very first time.
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Hiya Craig, long time no see :-)
What happened to the freelancer forum, did it just silently die off?
Is that not still going? Chronic Migraines have kept me away from many things. :(
Not every creature needs an image. I know what a skeleton looks like and a zombie because they are part of popular culture but a Wight may be completely unknown to players coming from Sci Fi roleplaying to fantasy for the very first time.
I agree. Except for the basic ones you've mentioned, I think at least every 'type' of creature needs a image but not necessarily every 'sub-type' unless they're vastly different from one another.
For instance, we only need to see 1 Troll image, we don't need to see a Hill, Mountain, Sea, Stone etc. as well. However, the Demons are a completely different to each other and will need several images.
Although I would really love to see ALL creature images but I understand that it's probably not feasible.
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One of the problems I have with images is that RMU is at present contextless. The rules float in space with nothing to ground them. What I mean is that say a Warhammer Orc looks like this http://images.mmosite.com/warhammer/images/races/choppa-look-01.jpg (http://images.mmosite.com/warhammer/images/races/choppa-look-01.jpg) but a Tolkien Orc looks like this http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/21/38/76/photo-du-blog/orcs-et-autres-gobelins/orc.jpg (http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/21/38/76/photo-du-blog/orcs-et-autres-gobelins/orc.jpg)
I think I saw a reference in Creature Law to a four armed orc which may or may not look like this http://garagehammer.net/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/topher/DSCN3069.JPG (http://garagehammer.net/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/topher/DSCN3069.JPG) Who knows?
As soon as you put an image on it then you change the nature of the beast. Think of the difference between Oriental and European dragons as another example.
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Could some of the images from earlier books be used? I know there are images of Lugroki, and the original C&T had lots of images. Would they still cost the same, or does ICE have the rights in perpetuity? Just wondering.
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Painting specific creatures/monsters sounds more reasonable yes.
Speed painted 4 armed orc just for the fun of it: (http://www.digitalartwork.no/Rolemaster/orc_4_handed_a_07.jpg)
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Some people are sickeningly talented aren't they.
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One of the problems I have with images is that RMU is at present contextless. The rules float in space with nothing to ground them. What I mean is that say a Warhammer Orc looks like this http://images.mmosite.com/warhammer/images/races/choppa-look-01.jpg (http://images.mmosite.com/warhammer/images/races/choppa-look-01.jpg) but a Tolkien Orc looks like this http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/21/38/76/photo-du-blog/orcs-et-autres-gobelins/orc.jpg (http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/21/38/76/photo-du-blog/orcs-et-autres-gobelins/orc.jpg)
I think I saw a reference in Creature Law to a four armed orc which may or may not look like this http://garagehammer.net/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/topher/DSCN3069.JPG (http://garagehammer.net/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/topher/DSCN3069.JPG) Who knows?
Can't you decide? I find the Warhammer look to be, at best, comical, and if that's the look adopted, then I'll second-guess whether the stats are appropriate for my setting's orcs. Right now the orc is setting-agnostic, and for a creature that people are already familiar with and have plenty of images of, I'm not sure that's a problem. It might be a strength instead. Likewise, say, dragons, unicorns, etc. I think the ones that many players have never heard of are more likely to be issues. RM has plenty of unique creatures.
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One of the problems I have with images is that RMU is at present contextless. The rules float in space with nothing to ground them. What I mean is that say a Warhammer Orc looks like this http://images.mmosite.com/warhammer/images/races/choppa-look-01.jpg (http://images.mmosite.com/warhammer/images/races/choppa-look-01.jpg) but a Tolkien Orc looks like this http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/21/38/76/photo-du-blog/orcs-et-autres-gobelins/orc.jpg (http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/21/38/76/photo-du-blog/orcs-et-autres-gobelins/orc.jpg)
I think I saw a reference in Creature Law to a four armed orc which may or may not look like this http://garagehammer.net/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/topher/DSCN3069.JPG (http://garagehammer.net/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/topher/DSCN3069.JPG) Who knows?
Can't you decide? I find the Warhammer look to be, at best, comical, and if that's the look adopted, then I'll second-guess whether the stats are appropriate for my setting's orcs. Right now the orc is setting-agnostic, and for a creature that people are already familiar with and have plenty of images of, I'm not sure that's a problem. It might be a strength instead. Likewise, say, dragons, unicorns, etc. I think the ones that many players have never heard of are more likely to be issues. RM has plenty of unique creatures.
As I said earlier I don't see the need for pictures of a unicorn because they are a common image in pop culture. An orc on the other hand has many different interpretations and a player coming from a Warhammer background may be seeing something completely different to a player who likes the Lord of the Rings films.
Maybe I shouldn't have chosen orcs as an example but then I guess at a rough guestimate there are 30 warhammer 40k players for every one Rolemaster player. My idea of an orc could very well be a minority view.
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I prefer the option for both. Money seems to always be tight therefore I'd like an option to purchase either.
As far as the illustrations for the creatures. I think that is desperately needed. The pictures don't have to be so large that they almost double the size of the book but just big enough to get an idea of what the creature looks like. The starting adventures for Belynar in Cyradon do an "ok" job of this though a few of the pics are way to small but they do work.
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To be more budget friendly, I don't think all of the pictures should be full color.
The cover wil be color of course.
Only maybe one main color picture per important chapter at the beginning. The rest can be greyscale. A few color background repeated images can be used to fool the reader into believing their is more color in the book than there really is. Icons and mini pictures can be grayscale or black and white. Some B/W images can even be trimmed to where the color of background surrounds the black and white images.
Races can be either. The problem I have with color race pictures is that they are less generic.
For pictures of weapons, there is no need to add color to them.
Even then, larger picture scenes can be cut up into portions and repeated in chunks throughout the chapter and book, zooming in on specific portions of the main picture.
Most emphasis should be on the Char & Arms and Creatures Laws. Mixing Color, B/W, and Grayscale images can be done strategically to mix up the variety. Focus on unique RM monsters. No need to do skeletons, bears, and common stuff.
Spell law needs very few pictures. Treasure law will mostly be charts, and maybe a few pictures of equipment which can also be used in the Char Campaign equipment section. No need to fill the alchemy section with very many pictures. They can be B/W or greyscale.
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When it comes to interior artwork, I personally prefer greytones, probably because that style still reminds me of the old Angus McBride greytone illustrations in MERP back in the days. There's a lot of mood that can be packed into a greytone image, compared to pure black/white I think.
I've been part of the "team" of freelancers illustrating for several HARP remakes these last few years, I thought I'd share a few greytone examples in this post:
(http://pre05.deviantart.net/dfc5/th/pre/f/2012/055/f/7/interior_art_for_harp_by_ironcrownenterprises_by_shockbolt-d4qt2k9.jpg)
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Those are cool and rock even without color. It gives it more of a generic feel. Like the elf could be almost any elf, or 50% of male elves. If you add color, it becomes more of a specific named elf.
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Hmmm. I had said do color and people can just print it out in black and white if they want, but often forget that black and white art publishes differently than color art which has been printed out in black and white.
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Is that not still going? Chronic Migraines have kept me away from many things. :(
Major ouch about the migraines, I've been suffering from the same stuff for the last 20 years myself...luck is that with the years, the migraines are further apart with me..
I've been in there for the last 2 years, bumping the shoutbox chat up to 2014 and 2015...by next year I expect to see nothing but cobwebs in there..
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Is that not still going? Chronic Migraines have kept me away from many things. :(
Major ouch about the migraines, I've been suffering from the same stuff for the last 20 years myself...luck is that with the years, the migraines are further apart with me..
I've been in there for the last 2 years, bumping the shoutbox chat up to 2014 and 2015...by next year I expect to see nothing but cobwebs in there..
I abbreviated - it's chronic migraine & cluster headache with constant daily headache. Unfortunately, in my case, it's just been getting worse as the years go on. :(
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I prefer color, but would happily purchase either, and am willing to pay more for color. That said, I'd really prefer the books to be done rather than artistically perfect, so that may lean towards black and white.
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These days I buy the Premium edition of RPG books when I can. They just look better in my bookcase.
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Color please!!!!
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color!