We're well into January, with elevenish months left in 2013. Here's my question for you: what's keeping you from publishing something this year?

By publishing, I'm casting a wide net, from full-on pro hardcover to self-publishing a PDF.

GMs: You're full of good ideas. Your players love your campaigns. What keeps you from writing up your best stuff and selling a PDF?

Designers: You've got a great set of tables for X, a great new mechanism for Y, and they'd be perfect with your setting Z. What's keeping you out of the Drive-Thru?

Small Publishers: You're already publishing something, but surely there's even more that you're not publishing. What's in the way?

I'm not looking to start a moan-fest, I just want to know the sticking points and the sources of friction that keep you out of the market. I recognize that these things are *hard*, but what, specifically, is hard to you?

Finishing writing all the nitty gritty parts is the only thing. If I can get it done, I'll be publishing Phaserip this year.

Quote from: TristramEvans;619993Finishing writing all the nitty gritty parts is the only thing. If I can get it done, I'll be publishing Phaserip this year.

What do you consider "the nitty gritty parts"? I wonder if these aren't different for everybody.

Art is stopping me. I know a lot of layout tricks, but bespoke art is expensive and takes a lot of work to make sure the artist's vision matches my own, not having been fortunate enough to find one whose cogs mesh with my wheels. So, more expensive and time consuming, too much so for a labour of love.

So, my solution as usual is to learn how to do it myself. I was stymied in my efforts last year because I invested a couple of hundred in a completely useless Wacom Inkling, the thing produces a triangle when I draw a square. However I picked up an Aiptek tablet on the cheap this week, and the results I've been able to wring out of it have been nice. Quite nice, I really enjoy using it.

Fingers crossed that the learning curve and other factors combine to make this happen, I wouldn't want to release anything less than a professional product, which is no mean feat for a one man band doing it part time.

Discipline - still writing to do.

Art cost.

Layout cost.

Working on all three, albeit slowly.

Quote from: eykd;620000What do you consider "the nitty gritty parts"? I wonder if these aren't different for everybody.

well, in the case of Phaserip, I've got around 500 power descriptions to get through. I've made a serious attempt to include any concievable superpower ever, and even though its more generalized than say, a spell list( "energy generation" vs fire/electricity/radiation generation as individual powers, frex), its still a big and somewhat tedious undertaking.

But the game I envision is probably a bit more elaborate than what would be considered for a core rulebook these days. I'm basically doing it as a one-volume with everything you need to play ever type thing. The system itself is only about 10 pages long. The rest is well, lemme see...

a sanity system, 2 magic systems (one for superhero-style magic and one for occult magick, the second one still needs a bit of work), cybernetics, expanded martial arts options,  Psionics, Supertech, Mecha and vehicle construction, Headquarters construction, space and sea travel, playing various historical periods and sub-genres of supers including the various ages of comics and their associated tropes, , 3 methods of chargen, natural disasters, city planning with typical building lay-outs/blueprints and random-roll city creation, gadgeteering rules, a comprehensive beastiary, investigation guidelines, dimensional travel and sample dimensions, and, well, as you can see, alot of stuff that would normally be relegated to planned supplements, if dealt with at all.

I don't choose to turn my hobby into work.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;620013I don't choose to turn my hobby into work.

This.

I just don't have the desktop publishing skills.

Honestly it wouldn't take long to polish my notes but I just don't know enough about publishing to make it happen.

That and interest in learning. Don't have that either

Quote from: eykd;619983Small Publishers: You're already publishing something...

Yep, see my self-promotion secti- er, sig.

Quote from: eykd;619983...but surely there's even more that you're not publishing. What's in the way?  

Enough playtesting. Where The Heart Is is both playable and publishable now, but I don't want to be the Bill Gates of publishing, i.e. put it out anyway, what the hell, we can just send out patches if something goes wrong. Not good enough; I don't want it to be perfect (it never will be) but I do want to know that I've playtested it enough so that any bugs will be entirely (or mostly) unforeseen. Actually, getting a proper playtest schedule in place for Where the Heart Is will be the priority once Sc-Fi beta Kappa is published. Mind you, how much playtesting is enough playtesting........?

I will be publishing. You just won't hear about it.

Quote from: The Traveller;620002Art is stopping me. [...] So, my solution as usual is to learn how to do it myself. [...] Fingers crossed that the learning curve and other factors combine to make this happen, I wouldn't want to release anything less than a professional product, which is no mean feat for a one man band doing it part time.

A part-time one man band--I can resonate with that. The learning curves can be killer--I usually go for the simplest thing that could possibly work. But tackling art without background or talent truly intimidates me. More power to you!

Quote from: VectorSigma;620011Discipline - still writing to do.

Art cost.

Layout cost.

Working on all three, albeit slowly.

No substitute for discipline--I'm still (re)learning that. No substitute for good art, for that matter.

Layout is crucial, but IMHO easy to learn. Reading through The Elements of Typographic Style and practicing a bit will get you basic competence pretty quickly.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;620015

Quote from: Black Vulmea;620013I don't choose to turn my hobby into work.

This.

Quite so. We all need a retreat, and publishing a game is an entirely different beast than running one. Still, I wonder if desiring to publish is not so much a choice as it is an itch.

Quote from: Piestrio;620016I just don't have the desktop publishing skills.

Honestly it wouldn't take long to polish my notes but I just don't know enough about publishing to make it happen.

That and interest in learning. Don't have that either

The skills required are legion, and require time to learn or money to substitute, as noted further back in the thread. To tip my hand a bit, I'm wondering how to ease the pain and lower the threshold.