What items would you like when you buy an RPG book?

[Sacrosanct]

Let's say you are interested in an RPG product, which of these options would you like to see included? Assume that if you buy a hard copy, you also get all of the digital options as well. The poll options are digital-only, as those are easy to distribute. If you want to see a physical product, select other and state why.

 

[Gnosistika]

I'd add to my preferences, included under the Readability option, an option for the dyslexia font, since I have players that would need it. To few companies bother with that and bigger font. I mainly stopped buying printed book because the small fonts use - old gamer problem.

 

[Blue]

This is rather tough to give a considered answer. All of these add various amounts of labor to the end product, which should be translated into price.

Okay, bookmarked PDF is the baseline. And it's actually perfectly fine - it's a viable product. If paired with a physical product it's not forcing redo of layout and such, just an afternoon bookmarking.

I play online and in-person. My prep is done with the help of a computer, and for the RPGs I own with PDFs being able to cut and paste is really useful. I'm going to mark the RTF file, with the assumption that it's light additional work. But really I'm looking at something in the PDF and it's likely less work to cut and paste from there and clean it up than to open another document and find the correct spot.

Along the same lines, a printer-friendly PDF would be handy at times, and seems a low-add'l-effort add on. Heck, I might use that in preference to the fancy PDF when using as reference to make it easier to read.

I homebrew adventures, so I didn't mark any of that seemed to be primarily for that type of product. But printable images of unique-to-this-RPG creatures would be a boon if the normal images are too embedded around text to show players. On the other hand, I don't need another picture of a bear.

Though along those lines, my friends who purchase adventures on VTTs want maps and tokens and everything and are willing to pay a premium to have it all there.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This is rather tough to give a considered answer. All of these add various amounts of labor to the end product, which should be translated into price.

If it helps, if I were to break down the time and effort into percentages:

93% of time spent (work) I've done is the core product. This includes the writing, layout, corrections from editors, etc.
1% of time is spent creating a printer-friendly version
2% of the time is spent on creating the RTF version
1% of the time is spent running images through a batch process to make them printer-friendly
3% of the time is spent creating tokens and mark down files.

So to be honest, those things are just a minor increase in work. The vast majority is the initial writing. The rest is just basically cutting and pasting into different formats. Honestly, I'm not sure why more publishers don't do this as standard.

*edit: I have done a readability version before, and that took me over a week, because I had to redo all of the formatting and layout from scratch. Still, that's only a week or so worth of work, compared to months of writing it to begin with.

TLDR version: it takes 6 months to write and layout the core PDF/book, and only an extra 2 weeks or so to create all of the above extras.

 

[Jer]

In addition to the various PDF options I also marked "Other" because I'd love for publishers to make their "printer friendly version" also a version that has all of the Bookmarks and other content from the full version but just with lower resolution artwork and no backgrounds.

Not because I want to print the "printer friendly version", but because what I really want is a "skinny" PDF that loads naturally on a tablet, rather than stalling out on each page waiting for images to load. I know that publishers really want their PDF versions to show off how great the book looks, but when I'm actually trying to use a book from a tablet - or even just read it - jumping to a page and then having to wait for the page to render because of the size of the images used in it just makes for a frustrating experience.

 

[JarooAshstaff]

So to be honest, those things are just a minor increase in work. The vast majority is the initial writing. The rest is just basically cutting and pasting into different formats. Honestly, I'm not sure why more publishers don't do this as standard.

This is not the first time you have been admonishing other publishers for not doing what you think should be "the standard".

However you haven't gone back and done this "standard" for all your other products, like Chromatic Dungeons.

I'm guessing.... because its too much work.

Anyone who says they want a RTF version is lying.

 

[Yora]

I'd prefer a lower price instead of stuff I see no use for.

 

[delericho]

They all sound like they'd add value, but the only one I'd really like is the PDF. In fact, these days I'm more likely to buy the PDF than the physical product for almost everything.

But it does need to be a PDF, and not some other ebook format (even one that's 'better'). Because the main use I'd make of it would be for a game I run at work, using my work PC. For very good reason, they've blocked pretty much all gaming sites, and of course I can't justify installing dedicated software for a game on my PC. But I can justify a handful of PDFs, and we have a reader already.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This is not the first time you have been admonishing other publishers for not doing what you think should be "the standard".

Wow, there's a lot to upack here. I guess I'll start here. I'm not admonishing anyone. I'm simply stating that from my perspective and experience, the cost vs reward analysis makes me wonder why more people aren't doing this. Especially when feedback seems to support it.

However you haven't gone back and done this "standard" for all your other products, like Chromatic Dungeons.

Actually, yes I have. Next?

I'm guessing.... because its too much work.

Nope.

Anyone who says they want a RTF version is lying.

So all these people who say they want it are liars? Well, that's awfully presumptuous of you. Several people actually like it. When TSR did it with the CD Core Rules, a lot of people liked it because it was a format that was super easy to cut and paste those items you wanted. Or to resize the fonts so it was easier to read.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'd prefer a lower price instead of stuff I see no use for.

What if I said none of those added options would increase the price? I.e., if 93% of the time and effort is spent to create something costing $10, adding 7% wouldn't be enough to increase the price. I can only speak for myself, naturally, but as a publisher, I wouldn't increase the price to $10.70 just to reflect the added effort amount. I'd just keep it at $10. If the work effort was significant, like adding 25% of time and effort, then maybe. But you're not adding extra costs other than your own time (except STLs, I forgot I had that as an option). You've already done the writing, art, editing, etc. All you're doing to create the other options is spending time.