Topic: Sea Law returns!

[markc]

This supplement was written with RM2 in mind, correct?  Would someone who owns this and plays RMFRP (or knows system well) tell me how much adaptation I would have to make to use this in a RMSS/FRP game?

 It is written for RM2 but I will have to get back to you on the amount of adaption it would take to use with RMSS/FRP as I do not know right off the top of my head.
MDC

[intothatdarkness]

This supplement was written with RM2 in mind, correct?  Would someone who owns this and plays RMFRP (or knows system well) tell me how much adaptation I would have to make to use this in a RMSS/FRP game?

 It is written for RM2 but I will have to get back to you on the amount of adaption it would take to use with RMSS/FRP as I do not know right off the top of my head.
MDC

I wouldn't think it would take much. A handful of new spells and such were introduced, but for the most part it's a sea combat system and campaign design book.

[markc]

This supplement was written with RM2 in mind, correct?  Would someone who owns this and plays RMFRP (or knows system well) tell me how much adaptation I would have to make to use this in a RMSS/FRP game?

 After taking a look IMHO very little. It has a ship combat section that is War Law like but without skills to convert or add. You do not need War Law to use the book. The book also ship construction, magic items, some good examples and info on ships in general.
 One section that may be a problem is that the monsters and crew sections are RM2 but IMHO that can be easily solved by other RMSS/FRP books and conversions. The only other thing I see is that some of the material is Shadow World oriented and one of the magic items has a bonus of +50 which is a little high in RMSS/FRP. I also just remembered that the War Law like ship to ship combat uses the War Law RM2 tactical sequence but IMHO in a War Law/Sea Law game it does not matter. 
 Other that those above I do not see any problem and would recommend the book to those who want to add some background about sailing ships to their game or want to have some tactical rules for ship to ship combat.


I hope that rambling helps a bit I feel by bronchitis kicking back in and fogging my brain.
MDC

[intothatdarkness]

One of the original design restrictions on Sea Law was that it had to have the Shadow World focus, which led to the creation of those monsters and such. Much of it was intended as example, though, so it could be easily adapted to any setting. The intent was also to keep new skills and other additions to a minimum so that GMs could quickly integrate the systems into their campaigns without having to re-tool or redo characters.

[smug]

I think the key thing with physical products is that there needs to be a reason for it to be a physical product.  A coloring book, a pop-up book, a book of art photographs, or a book of fold up buildings is still viable.

A book where the main draw is the text isn't.

Games Workshop gets away with it because the physical quality of the presentation is key to the product.  I don't think any games company has understood and implemented the integrated visual identity of their product so fully and it pays off for them.  And even then they struggle though, I think their key assumption that they can increase their prices ad infinitum without consequences has probabably cost them money.

There's loads of RPG companies that still produce books as physical product, for various reasons. The main issue, as I understand it, is expecting to sell enough to get a decent price-point. It's not like you have to be Wizards or Paizo to produce physical books, either: Troll Lord Games, to pick one, does and their product is an old-school semi-retroclone and the associated adventure modules. For that matter, Adamant and other Savage Worlds publishers (like Triple Ace) have been getting physical product made. You don't even have to do it yourself; people like Cubicle7 act as printing partners (or if you're not going to sell enough to interest them, as to-order printers). Some indie games have been breakout successes in print (Dresden Files, to pick an example; first run was, I think, 5000 of each and they made their money back almost on the pre-orders, let alone when the entire run sold out*).

I'm not saying it'd be right for ICE, as I don't know what sort of numbers they can reasonable expect to sell, but it's not as if physical product is only for items where the primary value is non-text, or for companies like GW, WotC, Paizo, etc.

*5000 is a lot, particularly for large quality-layout and colour illustration products like DFRPG. My understanding is that a print run of ~750-1000 is pretty much necessary to get value from a printing order or else you just go PoD.

[markc]

One of the original design restrictions on Sea Law was that it had to have the Shadow World focus, which led to the creation of those monsters and such. Much of it was intended as example, though, so it could be easily adapted to any setting. The intent was also to keep new skills and other additions to a minimum so that GMs could quickly integrate the systems into their campaigns without having to re-tool or redo characters.

 I agree that it can be easily adapted to any system and does have a SW focus but that is easily put aside, IMHO. It is also one of mt favorite RM2 products.
MDC

[intothatdarkness]

To the original question (or one of them)...you can actually use Sea Law without the map. Any sort of hex paper will do fine, so long as you have scale that's similar to the one provided in the rules. It should also be possible to use it without any map at all...just a ruler to determine distance for movement and combat (that was one consideration during initial design, but the combat system ended up taking on a more Wooden Ships and Iron Men kind of feel).

[frnchqrtr]

PDFs are not going to be the only offerings. They are working on Print on Demand copies where that is practical, as anyone who has been following the announcements well knows.

Yes, I read that they are going to be offered sometime in the fog-veiled future.

Also, I've been reading that "print is dead" since the '70s.  Also, I've been reading, for about that same amount of time, about the 4 day work week.  Well, I can still walk into very large, book-filled B&N stores and buy a book, or saunter into Best Buy and purchase LPs with the money I earn from my 5+ day a week job.   

FWIW, my initial post possessed a generous amount of tongue-in-cheek snark, but underlying it was the grain of truth that books are still viable, and even necessary if you want shelf space in game stores.  Of course, if you've decided to concede the game stores to WoTC, Goodman, Chaosium and Fantasy Flight, then yeah .. PDFs are the way to go.  Well, they're the  way to go if you're just going to publish rules and forget about decent maps and playing pieces for board games .. like Sea Law.  Yeah, Sea Law is essentially a table top game.

Obviously, I'm just old-fashioned and love to chop down trees.   

[GrumpyOldFart]

I don't think anyone is claiming "print is dead". But I think it's valid to claim that hard copy print is seeing an entirely new form of competition, and in a practical sense has already lost that battle. Horsemanship and seamanship aren't dead either, and the sailboat industry isn't going away... but Mitsubishi isn't going to be shipping cars by sailing ship anytime soon I bet. And looked at in that light I not only think it's entirely reasonable for electronic media to be top priority and hard copy to be second for a publishing company, I think it'd be irrational to do otherwise.

That's not to say hard copy shouldn't be a priority at all, far from it. The point is to get the media to those who want it badly enough to pay for it, in a form and at a price that allows everyone on all sides of the transaction to feel like they got the best of the trade. But B&N, Blockbuster and lots of other forms of media sales (think about music companies and what they're going through) are all having to seriously rethink the economics of entertainment because information in electronic form is still introducing changes at least as sweeping as those brought on by the automobile. That's the real world, and even the guys who think up our favorite games are going to have to live in it.

...or saunter into Best Buy and purchase LPs with the money I earn from my 5+ day a week job.

Really? You can still get music on vinyl? I honestly didn't know that. However, I'll bet that if you walk over to the electronics section, assuming you're able to find a turntable to play that vinyl there at all, at any price, you won't find it front and center. I'll bet there's a lot of music that's flatly not available on vinyl as well. The world turns.

[GrumpyOldFart]

But to get back to what I feel like is the main point...

I've created a scan of the counters page and added it to the product bundle. The map is an A3 hexagonal grid. I could scan that quarter by quarter but not sure how good that would end up. Open to suggestions here.

It seems to me that the only realistic options are:

1. Leave it out of the bundle entirely.
2. Put it in as 4 A4 hex grids.
3. Put it in as 1 A4 hex grid.
4. Put it in as a file that can be taken to a print shop and produced on A3 at a reasonably low level of price and hassle.
5. Try to work a deal with a company that produces large map grids, your product bundle includes credit with them on one of their large map grids.

Each of those has its nice points and its "well that sucks" points, which I'm sure you can spot at least as easily as I can. I won't say those are the only options, but those are the only options that I can spot.

[Marc R]

Trust the old fart to come up with common sense answers.

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

PDFs are not going to be the only offerings. They are working on Print on Demand copies where that is practical, as anyone who has been following the announcements well knows.

Yes, I read that they are going to be offered sometime in the fog-veiled future.

That future is a lot closer than you think. Both HARP SF and SWPG are already being validated by OneBookShelf/LightningSource. HSFX is being prepped for four different print-on-demand options (hard vs softcover, colour inside vs b&w inside).

FWIW, my initial post possessed a generous amount of tongue-in-cheek snark, but underlying it was the grain of truth that books are still viable, and even necessary if you want shelf space in game stores.  Of course, if you've decided to concede the game stores to WoTC, Goodman, Chaosium and Fantasy Flight, then yeah .. PDFs are the way to go.  Well, they're the  way to go if you're just going to publish rules and forget about decent maps and playing pieces for board games .. like Sea Law.  Yeah, Sea Law is essentially a table top game.

But print runs for old books such as Sea Law are not viable nor are they viable for any book that has already been published and available for years. As for game store shelf space, that battle was lost years ago, and it will take time before GCP/AA can get the product lines back to a place where they can go back into distribution and stores.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[frnchqrtr]

...or saunter into Best Buy and purchase LPs with the money I earn from my 5+ day a week job.

Really? You can still get music on vinyl? I honestly didn't know that. However, I'll bet that if you walk over to the electronics section, assuming you're able to find a turntable to play that vinyl there at all, at any price, you won't find it front and center. I'll bet there's a lot of music that's flatly not available on vinyl as well. The world turns.

Turntables at Best Buy.   

[Thom @ ICE]

OK - that works for the turntable, what about the vinyl records themselves?  Are you getting them at a local music store?  (similar to the movie "High Fidelity")   

[frnchqrtr]

OK - that works for the turntable, what about the vinyl records themselves?  Are you getting them at a local music store?  (similar to the movie "High Fidelity")   

In my area, they're available at Best Buy.  They're also available in record stores, and of course, through the internet.  I'm not talking old LPs, but new releases are still be produced.  Are they nearly as popular as CDs?  Of course not, but they're almost as easy to buy.