Quote from: JohnnyWannabe;232015Yes, and please, if you release it publically, give us a black and white print version. Not all of us are eccentric billionaires like Clash.

True - some of us are Canadian newspaper publishing magnates who go to the US twice in August and NEVER SET FOOT IN GENCON WITH THEIR OLD BUDDIES!



-clash

It's been a long time coming but I've finally got my sticky fingers on the Icar Elements book. The quality of the print is very high indeed. I think I need to improve the DPI on the pictures but the book itself rocks! 88 pages for £10 and then £3 postage and packing. Hurrah!

The image looks more washed out on the pictures below because the cover is glossy and I was taking the photo in very diffuse light. The colour of the actual book is much more vibrant.


Graphics inside are ok when they are natural or space scenes (the space scene pictured is particularly good) but when there are sharp lines, it shows up too much. Fortunately, they are renders, so it doesn't matter.


Once I have improved some of the graphics, I will be setting up the Elements for anyone to buy. It won't be cheap but for the keen, I think it's worth the money. The PDFs will always be free.

I will be making a super budget version which will have three books (Rules, Background and the Scavenger Setting) that will only have colour covers (B&W inside). It's very easy in Lulu (as you all know), so it won't be any hassle. It's a little way off yet but now that I'm convinced Lulu can do a good job, it's definitely in the pipeline.

An added thanks to Clash for raving on about Lulu over the years, without that kind of endless bleeting, I might not have dared to upload it!

Quote from: Rob Lang;232255It's been a long time coming but I've finally got my sticky fingers on the Icar Elements book. The quality of the print is very high indeed. I think I need to improve the DPI on the pictures but the book itself rocks! 88 pages for £10 and then £3 postage and packing. Hurrah!

The image looks more washed out on the pictures below because the cover is glossy and I was taking the photo in very diffuse light. The colour of the actual book is much more vibrant.


Graphics inside are ok when they are natural or space scenes (the space scene pictured is particularly good) but when there are sharp lines, it shows up too much. Fortunately, they are renders, so it doesn't matter.


Once I have improved some of the graphics, I will be setting up the Elements for anyone to buy. It won't be cheap but for the keen, I think it's worth the money. The PDFs will always be free.

I will be making a super budget version which will have three books (Rules, Background and the Scavenger Setting) that will only have colour covers (B&W inside). It's very easy in Lulu (as you all know), so it won't be any hassle. It's a little way off yet but now that I'm convinced Lulu can do a good job, it's definitely in the pipeline.

An added thanks to Clash for raving on about Lulu over the years, without that kind of endless bleeting, I might not have dared to upload it!

Awesome, Rob! Let us know when we can get our hot little hands on it - or in Bill's case, paws... It looks gorgeous!

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;232036True - some of us are Canadian newspaper publishing magnates who go to the US twice in August and NEVER SET FOOT IN GENCON WITH THEIR OLD BUDDIES!

Yeah, well...it's true. Next year I'll keep that spot on my calender open.

Wow Rob, your cover looks very slick. Love the minimal design.  And Moo cards rock! Must order some more!

Praise indeed, Jon. Had a butchers at your portfolio and it rocks! Inspirational stuff for people (like me) who are just starting out with digital painting.

Not one to leave anything well enough alone, I've created a new front character sheet. Icar needs lots of bits of paper to run, characters end up with a portfolio of bits and bobs, rather than a single sheet. I've also included it in the main rulebook (rather than a JPG to print) because it prints in beautiful 300DPI with lovely sharp text. Here's a JPG (low quality) for a look:



And here is the old one for comparison. I can't look at it now.

Very cool looking, but probably way beyond my ability to comprehend.

Thanks mate, it's all explained in The Elements (core rules) and is a bit complex. I designed it as a reaction to having a lots of boxes and numbers on a sheet. I didn't like that so I went slightly different, then a long way out.

I'd say it was a "barrier to entry" but when using it, you definitely know you're playing Icar.

Right, bit of an update time. After some inspiration by a chap from Mongoose at GenCon UK, I've decided to make Icar (nearly) one book and call it version 4. Here's how it's going to be different:

• All the books in one, system, setting, background, technology (except downloads) and GM section.
• B&W images inside.
• Smaller font, better use of space and paragraphs.
• Standard skeletons (core character classes)
• New bionics system (which is mostly written, just needs graphics)
• Page numbers moved so it looks good printed double sided.
• 300dpi images (rather than 72).
• Fewer images but of a better quality.
• Binning space combat as it doesn't fit. I'll put in guides on how to roleplay it but I don't want Icar to become quasi-wargamey.

A sneak preview of one of the new pages:


And I've had to do some new images too:


If you have any other ideas on how I might improve Icar, then please do let me know!

One book - best!

But how many pages would that work out to be? Remember most people are going to be stuck with their bloody inkjet printers...

As I wrote to some gaming mates today...

article on D&D bloat

"D&D has grown from three small books totaling 110 [A5] pages to a  monster of a game with over 8300 [US letter] pages in the 3.5 edition.  4th Edition has (including planned releases) over 2200 pages already and  by one prediction, could top 10,000 pages. Has all this extra material  made a better game?"

A lot of pages just to kill things and take their stuff! Don't be like that!

Kyle, you raise a very good question. At the moment, I've no idea how bit it will be! Keeping the equipment separate will certainly keep the page count down, as will the font and formatting changes.

Perhaps the best way to avoid bloat (see if you agree) is to launch the free PDF and before making the Lulu book available, see if the general cogniscente say "Not going to print that fucker, mate. It's bigger than a sumo!" then I can look at reducing bloat. Poor old D&D never had that opportunity.

If size is unavoidable because of the core material being rather extensive (I fear it might be), I will include a 'Print these pages list' in the front where people can copy and paste a list of pages into the print dialog box that are really useful to run the game. Rather than printing out all of the close combat examples, all that will be required is a subset of pages. This can then help the free-download-and-print-myself crowd (of which I am one) not cause their printer to catch fire nor a forest to be decimated. I'm actually pretty good at cutting out flowery bollocks because I'm an AI academic by training and peer reviews really don't let you spout nonsense. Of course, forum posting aside.

How does that sound? Risk mitigated or should I consider something else?

Just aim at a particular pagecount.

What's the pagecount now? I can't recall. Let's say it's 400 pages. Begin by trimming it to 200pp. Then 100pp. Then 50pp. Then 25pp. Pass around each version and see how readable it is - pass it around to those who don't know Icar.

Set little goals for yourself. It's something I've been trying to do with my rewrite of the SixLetterSystem - attribute and skill descriptions in 25 words or less. With 6 attributes, 3 features and 54 skills that should be 1,575 words for them all at most. Sounds like a lot, but with 14pt subject headers, 10pt body text and line breaks rather than paragraph indents it's less than 2 pages. Not bad for all the attributes and skills.

Rather than 250 words of example, better 25 well-chosen words of the rule. It's always tempting to make things super-clear, but really we have to assume our readers aren't complete muppets.

It's a good system. I'd imagine that there is a balance to be had between verbosity and accessibility. There must be a sweet spot where any more or less text makes it less accessible.

I'll look at setting goals for myself. For the mechanics, I'd imagine it will be easier to do as there are lots of sections that obey similar a similar set of rules. However, for setting and background, it might get a bit tricky. I do have to curb my use of images. As nice as they are, they aren't all neccessary.

Although writing The Free RPG Blog has been taking up a fair amount of my time, I have still been hacking on with reforming my Icar books into a single, hi res book, Version 4.

My process has been that when I get to something that is either low res or just does not fit anymore then I redo it and move on to the next thing. I've also been re-reading all of the rules with new eyes and sharpening some of them up. Here's some of the new graphics I've done...

This is 'Character sheet two', which contains skills and equipment carried.


This is the Body/Armour sheet (now called Character Sheet 3), which contains the hit points and armour rating for the different areas of the body.


Finally, a remake of an incidental graphic showing Hoppers, automated robots carrying space crates, which form the mainstay of any trade operation. It's just a shame that the graphic in the rules is in B&W.


So, that's me for now. I've had some holiday, so managed to get a whole load done.