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joshua
– Admin
2:45 am – December 15, 2009
posts 167 |
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Well, porny barbarian. I mean, all sexed up is good. But none of the female barbarians seem to be doing anything other than be naked. At least Jongor can fling negro-analogs while defending a helpless woman while naked. It's like the female barbarians can't multitask as well as he can. There was one riding some sort of giant puma in there somewhere, but I don't know your feelings about nipples on the cover.
OK, let's see. Purple but punchy.
Enter worlds of savage sorcery and adventure in this exciting tale of brutal horror!
I have to post this:
It seems like barbarians have a pretty limited set of phonemes to pull from.
Anyway, let's pull from Thongor here:
Sorcery and savagery — and mortal peril
for the mightiest of warrior-heroes!
Or this:
Swords, sorecery, spine-tingling fantasy — a marvelous, magical chronicle
I just wanted to put this in because of the guy's name.
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Simon C – Member
3:26 am – December 15, 2009
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Mm, I'm gonna have to chew on your juicy crit for a while.
Thongor is totally bizzarre. Lin Carter was involved in a lot of Conan rewrites and authored a lot of semi-canonical follow up books after Howard's death. Thongor is shallow aping of Conan.
I have pretty strong politics about the objectification (read “dehumanisation”) of women. I'm not fundamentally opposed to a sexy image on the cover, but I think the way people read images of naked women means that you can't really have a naked woman on the cover without it being an act of objectification.
So I'm cool with an attractive woman on the cover, as long as she's clearly a powerful agent, and that's the dominant reading of the image. So, nothing tricky.
As for the tagline, those examples are way punchy. Should it say that it's a role playing game? I guess I want to say “not an AD&D clone” on the cover. Does it work to just stick “collaborative” and “game” in there somewhere, or do they stink up the place?
Sorcery, savagery, and mortal peril – a story-telling game of mighty warrior heroes
Good? Stinky? (To be honest there's not much mortal peril in the game. Mostly the player characters beat everything)
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joshua
– Admin
3:36 am – December 15, 2009
posts 167 |
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So I'm cool with an attractive woman on the cover, as long as she's clearly a powerful agent, and that's the dominant reading of the image. So, nothing tricky.
Yeah. It's all about the agency. James V. West is pretty good about that, but he's more Bodé than Frazetta. Right time, wrong feel.
I don't know if you need to say that it's a story game, or a game at all. Let your audience members pick it up and turn it over if they want to know. You'll either be selling it online where it will have context and a bigger blurb, or in a game store, where people will pick it up and look at it if they're into that stuff.
Good? Stinky? (To be honest there's not much mortal peril in the game. Mostly the player characters beat everything)
How mortal was the peril Thongor experienced?
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Simon C – Member
3:43 am – December 15, 2009
posts 89 |
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It would be kind of fun not to say it's an RPG on the cover. Maybe someone on Story Games would get mad about it and then I'd be laughing all the way to the bank.
Of your examples, this one is my favourite:
Sorcery and savagery — and mortal peril
for the mightiest of warrior-heroes!
But the double “and” is kind of bugging me.
Sorcery, savagery and mortal peril – Mighty warrior heroes face thrilling adventures!
Maybe?
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joshua
– Admin
12:56 am – December 18, 2009
posts 167 |
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I think the double 'and' works just fine. The list of three things seems static, where the em dash and 'and' is like you haven't planned out the sentence and are just blurting out what's exciting.
That's actually a rhetorical trick. Republicans use it all the time to sound like they're not prepared. Jimmy Stewart did it all the time.
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Simon C – Member
3:16 am – December 21, 2009
posts 89 |
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Sorry, I took a little while away to mull some things over, and work on some other parts of the game.
I see what you did there with the double 'and'. Interesting. I'll give that a go on the cover and see how it looks.
So, I've changed the text and it's fucked my layout, as I expected. I know I should settle on the text before I do anything with the layout, but doing both at the same time keeps me motivated when I'm not making progress on the text or when the layout is driving me crazy.
Anyhow, I'm working super hard on another layout sample, which I'll have up soon.
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joshua
– Admin
7:50 pm – December 24, 2009
posts 167 |
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I look forward to it!
So, I've changed the text and it's fucked my layout, as I expected. I know I should settle on the text before I do anything with the layout, but doing both at the same time keeps me motivated when I'm not making progress on the text or when the layout is driving me crazy.
Well, keep your experiments localized to the first chapter or whatever. It'll keep you from having to redo stuff too frequently.
How did it fuck your layout, exactly?
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Simon C – Member
11:35 pm – December 26, 2009
posts 89 |
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Oh, it just pushed things onto new pages, left lots of paragraphs split weirdly over pages, and put illustrations in strange places.
Oh, I had a specific question. I'm trying to put in an ornament thing to section off my examples from the main text. I want something that looks like this:
I snipped that off a cover of a Clark Ashton Smith novel, but it was a low-res image so it looks like shit. Is there a better way to do it?
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joshua
– Admin
12:29 am – December 27, 2009
posts 167 |
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Oh, it just pushed things onto new pages, left lots of paragraphs split weirdly over pages, and put illustrations in strange places.
Ah, yeah. That'll happen. For the illos, when they need to be near a particular piece of text, try pasting them inline with the text like they were words.
Paragraphs split weirdly might be fixable by dealing with widow & orphan control. I can't remember exactly where to set that in InDesign.
Oh, I had a specific question. I'm trying to put in an ornament thing to section off my examples from the main text. I want something that looks like this:
I snipped that off a cover of a Clark Ashton Smith novel, but it was a low-res image so it looks like shit. Is there a better way to do it?
Yeah. You'll want a vector version. Try a dingbat font or get some stock vector images if you can't just draw it yourself.
Can we see the text block as it exists right now?
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joshua
– Admin
12:30 am – December 27, 2009
posts 167 |
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Oh: you could also scan an ornament out of a book at high resolution — 1200 dpi B&W — and insert that.
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Simon C – Member
8:42 pm – January 5, 2010
posts 89 |
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Hey Joshua (and others),
I'm almost done on the new layout sample. Expect it shortly. I'm very happy with how it's looking, but I'd like some feedback on it.
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Simon C – Member
11:24 pm – January 9, 2010
posts 89 |
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I did it! Sorry about the wait.
 
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/116449…..ayout2.pdf
I'm still not 100% happy with it. I'm not sure about the divider for the examples. I'm not sure about the header font. I'm not sure about the spot illustration.
Advise me please!
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Simon C – Member
4:06 pm – January 10, 2010
posts 89 |
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I don't know how this happened, but the pdf is displaying the thing in Times-Roman, rather than Times. Consequently it looks fairly hideous.
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joshua
– Admin
4:59 pm – January 14, 2010
posts 167 |
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I'm not sure what's going on with that. You might want to change fonts altogether. What software and OS are you using again?
Also, watch your word count. You've often got ≥12 words per line, which makes it harder and harder to follow as the lines get longer.
Consider where you want to put the text block on each page, as well. Right now, you've got it floating in the center. Traditionally, more space is left on the outside and bottom to leave room for thumbs, but there are other possibilities, as well.
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Simon C – Member
12:31 am – January 15, 2010
posts 89 |
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Thanks Joshua,
I'm using “Pages” on a Mac running Leopard.
Will look into the issues you've raised.
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joshua
– Admin
9:49 am – January 15, 2010
posts 167 |
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Pages is probably the best starter page design app ever.
See how it looks in Garamond, Jenson, and Caslon. It might be a little too… classy, but it also might be evocative of another age.
There's also a free font called Medio that I haven't really tried. Those hair-thin serifs might disappear at text block sizes, but the font is quite nice.
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Simon C – Member
6:48 pm – January 15, 2010
posts 89 |
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Post edited 8:22 pm – January 16, 2010 by Simon C
Here's the layout now:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/116449…..ut%203.pdf
I've shifted to A5 pages, and the pdf shows a two-page spread. There are a lot of orphans and such vecause I haven't finalised the text.
EDIT: Tried Medio, and it made the spaces between the characters go really bizarre. Garamond is nice, though. I'm not sure if it suits my style better or not.
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joshua
– Admin
11:50 am – January 25, 2010
posts 167 |
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This is looking quite strong.
I'd suggest trying different places to put the page numbers, or maybe just giving them a little more space. But this is looking really good.
The examples that are the width of the ornaments work very well.
I'd also suggest more ornaments like the skull. You can probably find a whole page of them on istock.com for a few dollars.
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Simon C – Member
7:05 pm – January 25, 2010
posts 89 |
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Thanks Joshua,
I've still got a lot of fiddling around to do. Printing the thing out makes everything look slightly different, so I'm playing around with that.
With the ornament, do you mean more variety, but the same locations, or more variety in more locations?
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joshua
– Admin
2:44 pm – January 26, 2010
posts 167 |
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I mean, more variety, same location. I think it would be neat if you had a whole pile of skulls, for instance, but think about what you might want to put there, whatever it is.
Printing stuff out definitely makes things look different. Print them and fold them over to get a good idea of what a spread looks like.
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