Thanks for the beta SineNomine.

Okay I read a bit of the beta and things are certainly epic.  You got your wars in heaven, slain gods who imbue mortals with godlike powers, hosts of revenge seeking angels turn devils, worlds that are splinter of worlds, and that is the top of the iceberg.  This is more epic than Exalted for it is only one world.  You sir had created a untold number of worlds.

Quote from: Snowman0147;866554So when we pay a POD we also pay to set up the press for that book every time we make a order?

Yep. Of course, Lightning Source, the company that handles OBS' POD orders, has the tech to streamline the process and make it as automatic as possible with a file, but that comes at a cost in flexibility, and is one reason why Lightning Source is so notoriously finicky about getting a good print file. It's also why you can get more particular about offset print job paper/binding/sizes than you can with POD. I also have to assume that Lightning Source does at least a day-by-day batching process for their books to run all their orders for a given title once a day or some such, and you can get up to a 20% discount if you order 250+ at a time, but the losses in economies of scale are always there.

Quote from: Snowman0147;866565Okay I read a bit of the beta and things are certainly epic.  You got your wars in heaven, slain gods who imbue mortals with godlike powers, hosts of revenge seeking angels turn devils, worlds that are splinter of worlds, and that is the top of the iceberg.  This is more epic than Exalted for it is only one world.  You sir had created a untold number of worlds.

Yeah, it looks very promising. I also really appreciated how there's a one-page handout for players and GMs that shows the map and gives a brief description of each region and its people so they can get a quick overview before making characters. That's extremely helpful.

Quote from: SineNomine;866535Unfortunately, this is not the case with extremely long premium color POD books.

To print a hardcover premium-color POD book of 650 pages through DTRPG/RPGNow, for example, costs about $75 as an absolute minimum. Every page you add beyond that adds another 10 cents to the print cost. That's the absolute floor price you must charge just to get the book printed.

Against this you have to amortize the production cost of the book. If you pretend that writing, editing, and layout design are free- which they are not- that leaves you with the big-ticket expense of art. If you make a very modest budget of $200 per full-page illo and put a quarter-page worth on every two-page spread, that 650 page book is going to cost you a bare minimum of about $16,000, and the reality will inevitably be worse.

Now, if you're a runaway hit, you're going to move 2,000 copies of that doorstop, and so if you're of a congenitally optimistic disposition, you can assume that the book's going to move 2K copies through its reasonable lifespan. That means you've got to amortize $16,000 over 2,000 copies which means a minimum of $8 added to each of the print prices, so you're at $83 here apiece just to not fall into the red, with extremely optimistic numbers and a willingness to sit in the red for months while the initial sales start paying off your art investment.

If you put a hundred-dollar price-point on your book, that means you're earning about $12 profit per sale. If you put $120 on it, you're earning a whopping $24 profit per book on 2,000 copies for $48K gross, pretending for the moment that writing/editing/layout was free. Trim off a minimum of about 35% for taxes in the US, and your titanic labor of producing a 500,000-word megatome has earned you $31,000 to split between you and your collaborators. After the book sells 2,000 copies, whenever that may be. Thus, producing the word output of a fat fantasy novel trilogy is not enough to live on for a year unless you do this monster job solo.

This is not to say that the market doesn't have a firm idea about what an RPG book should cost. It's true that they want to see $60 color hardbacks and $40 b/w books. But if that's the case, then they had also better want to see books of under 200 pages, because the economics just stop working at those prices if the page counts climb. This may be totally okay with a lot of people, but those who want monster megatomes that contain three books worth of writing are going to have to pay three books worth of price for it, too.

I think art, editing and layout should be paid by the 700k $ kickstarter. I managed ERP projects for less money!

For 50$ I get a FFG Star Wars Core book and that has a lot better production values. Ars Magica is 40$, also a lot better etc.

I'm most interested in seeing the PDF hit a more general release to get some diverse reactions and evaluation. The backer pdfs mostly went to the more hardcore fans (Some willing to spend 1000+ bucks). I'm curious what a more general audience might think.

Quote from: Efaun;866598I think art, editing and layout should be paid by the 700k $ kickstarter. I managed ERP projects for less money!

Yeah, in Exalted's case the KS pays for the production cost, but that just peels the theoretical $8 out of your per-piece costs. You're still looking at a book that costs $75 to print, and there's no way to use your KS money to defray that cost. Huge premium-color POD books are always going to be brutally expensive in the current environment unless Lightning Source somehow figures out how to cut their costs dramatically.

Allow me to slightly derail this from Exalted, but with reason. I recently bought and received a copy of Degenesis: Rebirth Edition. I mention this because sixmorevodka (SMV), those who produce it, know how to run a business and make a game. There might be ways comparing them to OPP isn't solid from a business perspective, but I'm speaking from a customer's perspective.

First, it's GORGEOUS! The art is evocative and fits the setting very well. However, it has full-frontal nudity, so SJWs beware. Penises are scary. Or are breasts bad. Fuck. I'm confused. Anyway.

The layout, something OPP said would shake the universe to atoms in Exalted, is actually, truly fucking great! Does it shake the universe to atoms? No, because we're still here. However, it's very, very well done.

The binding and physical books are very well-made. The spine is separate from the binding, so you can open it without stressing the thick, glossy (but not too glossy) pages. And there's a bookmark ribbon. Neat.

Now, Degenesis may not be your style and it is expensive (obviously worth it to me) but it apparently took two years to write, layout, playtest, etc. It was out in German first and the English version just came out. Oh, for a German to English translation it has less typos than I've seen in most WW books. Is it perfect? No, of course not. Are there things that are at times unclear? Yep. However the staff is active on the forums and very, very helpful. I've had solid answers within moments. It's awesome.

When I ordered the books I didn't receive my tracking number and two of the staff (to include Marko, the Head Guy) responded. I was given not only my tracking number but a screen shot of its latest placement was attached to the e-mail.

They did a Black Friday sale for all English products at 50% off. Some people who preordered it were upset that the sale happened so soon after the English release, feeling if they'd waited, it would've been better. The staff immediately responded and within days, fixed it. They're now giving everyone who preordered the English book the English PDF for free and 10% off the first supplement/PDF bundle. They genuinely cared. They were polite. They didn't hem and haw.  

I guess my point is, I've been following the Exalted hellstorm and have seen so many instances of OPP being complete tools. I've read enough of the new edition to say I feel they lied. It isn't new, it's the same old and worse. There are some neat things, but nothing worth slogging through the megaton of rules fuckery or Jenna Moran's writing.

I think Rich and Friends went to the GMS School of Making RPGs...

Anyway, I guess it's nice to see a true professional RPG undertaking made by very nice people who care. I'm by no means saying SMV are the only ones or that Degenesis is The One True RPG, it just struck me as of late as a stark contrast to OPP and Exalted..

Oh, Godbound looks fucking awesome! Totally KSing it!

Wow didn't know Degenesis did another English version.  I got the older edition then.

It did! I never played the older edition. I've heard from those in the know that the current rules are much better. SMV put a lot of love into it. I'm hoping it gets some traction; it's great post-apocalyptic!

I think I've learned a little about how the different (and apparently victorious) fans viewed Exalted and how their preferences differed from mine. But the one thing I still don't (and probably never will0 get is the incredible need to make mortals "credible threats" or even the odds or whatever. The game is Exalted not Mortals and occasionally some guys that glow.

Its a setting with mad gods, demons, undead, spirits, invaders from Chaos and many other threads. Why does Joe the local Bandit King or some hedge mage witch have to be as "credible threat" to the Chosen of the Gods? Particularly with adding like 5 more types of Exalted. There aren't enough threats in Creation for GMs to work with? The idea that a character is worthless if they can't smack around PCs just seems weird to me. Maybe its because I play allot of Supers games where the PC are head and shoulders above most of the world?

Quote from: Nexus;867072Its a setting with mad gods, demons, undead, spirits, invaders from Chaos and many other threads. Why does Joe the local Bandit King or some hedge mage witch have to be as "credible threat" to the Chosen of the Gods?

That does seem to go against the original appeal of the game.
Long ago I had a spark of interest in Exalted's setting but not so much in running Exalts themselves... more like running ordinary mortals struggling in a world full of roaming demigods and stuff that's vastly more powerful than even the best mortal warrior.
But then, I'm a fan of Call of Cthulhu so maybe that's plays into why I like that idea. But having PCs who could punch Cthulhu in the face... and live to tell about it... would similarly be missing the point. Yet there's always some element of folks who want to play it that way.

Quote from: Simlasa;867075That does seem to go against the original appeal of the game.
Long ago I had a spark of interest in Exalted's setting but not so much in running Exalts themselves... more like running ordinary mortals struggling in a world full of roaming demigods and stuff that's vastly more powerful than even the best mortal warrior.
But then, I'm a fan of Call of Cthulhu so maybe that's plays into why I like that idea. But having PCs who could punch Cthulhu in the face... and live to tell about it... would similarly be missing the point. Yet there's always some element of folks who want to play it that way.

Sometimes I think its the same thing happened with Aberrant. Its difficult to get Storyteller to work at that power level and easier to get people to buy that's never want "the game was intended to be".

Honestly, I do think Exalts should be able to punch Cthullu in the face and live to tell about it. Not easily or casually but that was the reason they were created in the first place. And they did it. Its not easy to reconcile that outlook with the current concept of "anyone and everything must be a deadly danger or its not with having."

Quote from: Nexus;867081Honestly, I do think Exalts should be able to punch Cthulu in the face and live to tell about it.

Yes, because, IMO at least, they're on that level with Mythos entities... rather than the ordinary mortal investigators of CoC. But the most valiant farmer isn't going to put a scratch on either of them.

Quote from: Simlasa;867086Yes, because, IMO at least, they're on that level with Mythos entities... rather than the ordinary mortal investigators of CoC. But the most valiant farmer isn't going to put a scratch on either of them.

At least not in massive numbers.

Then again, there seems to be a line of thought that if you don't constantly throw enemy exalts at the players they are just going to walk all over the mortals.

And that this is somehow a bad thing.