B for big. G for gold. B for book or brick.

Quote from: Stainless;666033B for big. G for gold. B for book or brick.

Oh, Gold. It always looked more like plain old yellow than gold to me, hence the confusion.

Personally, I prefer to call it the BYJ, for "Big Yellow Joint".

It's first nickname "the Yellow Brick" was semi-officially denounced over at BRP Central. It wasn't dignified enough:D

Now it's BGB - Big Gold Book.

Quote from: daniel_ream;665840A minor quibble: I find the layout amateurish.  I'm not sure if the physical book is a digest or what, but the main body font is very large, the font size and kerning is wildly inconsistent in the section headings and by all the unholy gods of typography, celtic uncial is not a headline font.  The text flow seems to jump all over the place.  I found it surprisingly difficult just to read the book because the layout kept distracting me.

This. I was extremely interested in MW but I opened up a copy of the physical book (it's regular 8.5" x 11", FWIW) at my FLGS and realized that I'd never be able to actually read it for any sustained period of time, owing to the layout. The body font is an incredibly poor choice for both readability and economy of space. Why not just use Minion (as in CoC6e), or Goudy (as in the BGB), or Garamond? You know, I actually have to read the book before I can use it...

My BRP variant of choice for fantasy is a houseruled OpenQuest with a few bits stolen from Legend, and I'm working on a steampunk-flavoured post-apoc implementation in my spare time.

KoOS

Well Ben Monroe wrote MW for free and as a homage to Lynn Willis, so I assumed the style was retro on purpose. Personally I have no issues with it.

Quote from: Stainless;666105so I assumed the style was retro on purpose.

The layout and typography is clearly trying to ape the layout and typography of Elric!, at least, but it's just violating a lot of rules of basic design.  As I said, I consider it a minor quibble because I understand the limits most RPG writers are working under.

I've doinked around with InDesign a bit, and it strikes me that some of the people in the storygame movement (say what you like, they know how to lay out books in an attractive and usable way) ought to write up some simple docs on how to lay out a basic RPG, maybe produce a CC-licensed template or two.  RPGs are somewhere between books and magazines, so grabbing an existing Adobe template often isn't effective.

Quote from: AkrasiaYeah, MW could have had half the page count with a proper font and better layout. [...] I believe that Chaosium is planning to publish a separate book with all the cool additional magic stuff from E!/S5 (demon summoning, Bronze Grimoire, Unknown East, etc.), compatible with BRPGB.

This is the meat of my problems with MW: I would rather have seen a book that incorporates all the stuff from E!/S5 that didn't make it into the BGB and is also out of the ordinary for fantasy gaming.

Anyone know why Magicworld hasn't been offered for sale on DTRPG? I really hate ordering pdfs from seperate sites.

Quote from: daniel_ream;666142This is the meat of my problems with MW: I would rather have seen a book that incorporates all the stuff from E!/S5 that didn't make it into the BGB and is also out of the ordinary for fantasy gaming.

MW was meant to be a stand alone book specifically for fantasy roleplaying, not requiring the BGB. And while the additional sorcery/magic would have been nice to include, it would have made the page count tremendously higher. My playtest/proofreader copy of Advanced Sorcery is 114 pp without any illustrations or other layout/font stuff - just simple text and headers, and minimal charts.

Ian

Quote from: Vagabond;666221My playtest/proofreader copy of Advanced Sorcery is 114 pp without any illustrations or other layout/font stuff - just simple text and headers, and minimal charts.

Ian

Would you say it's on its way to a GenCon release time frame?

Quote from: Stainless;666243Would you say it's on its way to a GenCon release time frame?

From Ben back in April:

QuoteWell, it's completely written and edited. I believe there are two books ahead of it in queue for layout/art. I also gather that one of those books is nearly done, and that some art has been chosen for AS.

My -hope- is that we'll see AS this summer. As a bonus, I beleive (since they're easy to put together), they'll be fast-tracking the GM Screen pack to come out shortly before or after. So, with luck, by GenCon, Chaosium should have two supplements out for it.

And Kaiu, they are working on getting it to DTRPG as of about a week ago.

Ian

Quote from: Vagabond;666251From Ben back in April:



And Kaiu, they are working on getting it to DTRPG as of about a week ago.

Ian

much thanks, looking forward to it.

Quote from: K Peterson;664483Monster Island is yet to be released. It's a "setting, sourcebook, and bestiary".

For those who are interested, Monster Island for RQ6 is now available for pre-order from the Design Mechanism store. It will ship at the end of July/beginning of August, but you'll also receive the PDF version, free of charge, to download immediately.

Its a pure Sword & Sorcery sandbox setting with enough material to last years of play. Our homage to Griffin Mountain, inspired by Burroughs, REH and CAS amongst others. :cool:

Quote from: Pete Nash;667197...
Its a pure Sword & Sorcery sandbox setting with enough material to last years of play. Our homage to Griffin Mountain, inspired by Burroughs, REH and CAS amongst others. :cool:

Sounds brilliant! I'm looking forward to getting a copy.

As an update to this thread, my players plan on picking up RQ6 at Gen Con Indy this year (several of them prefer it to purchasing online, and I admit, there is something special about convention purchases).  I've been working through the combat aids and handouts, and I'm really excited to see how the system plays. Given the preliminary brainstorming of types of characters my players want to play, I think character creation is really nicely set up for the sort of early Iron Age/mythic/Greek/Viking mashup we're going for.

I also have Monster Island on my to-buy list, once I have a bit of extra funding, and I'm waiting to hear something on the RQ6 hardcover kickstarter that sounds imminent.

Quote from: daniel_ream;666142The layout and typography is clearly trying to ape the layout and typography of Elric!, at least, but it's just violating a lot of rules of basic design.  As I said, I consider it a minor quibble because I understand the limits most RPG writers are working under.

Yeah, the font choices and layout of Magic World are poor. As a plus, though, the pdf reads well on a tablet due to the large font.

Magic World still hits the spot for me, though. Great though RQ6 is, it has a large page count and requires some GM work to select magic systems, create cults etc. It feels like a Serious Game while MW feels like something to whip up some sword and sorcery fun.