Gate Pass Gazette What is the intention of the Gate Pass Gazette?

noodohs · Jan 21, 2022

And I don't just mean the obvious, which is to give us cool new options every month. What I mean is, is it supposed to be sort of like Unearthed Arcana where we get some mostly finished new material every month that will eventually be collected into proper sourcebooks or are they intended to be the "only" release of the things that are in them? Furthermore, are they going to be part of the SRD and eventually added to the web tools and VTT integrations?

In the first case:

We are essentially paying for playtest content. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, you guys aren't a big company like Hasbro and need some income, but on the other hand...
When the things are eventually added to sourcebooks, we have to pay for them a second time. Maybe patrons could get a discount?
This implies that the material in the Gazettes will eventually be revised after additional playtesting/feedback. I like that because it gives a much longer period of time to really work out the details and address issues.

In the second case:

We are paying a very reasonable price for new, finished content.
However, the content is released every month and that's really not enough time, in my opinion, to develop, playtest, revise, playtest again, and finalize new content, especially things like whole classes. I worry that the content will feel rushed and unfinished and the monthly release schedule may not leave time for the team to revise things after release.
If it's not collected into sourcebooks, there are now a lot of PDFs and/or mini books to sort through to find things.

So before I decide to back or not, I'm just curious what the intended purpose is and what I should really expect from them going forward.

Morrus · Jan 21, 2022

noodohs said:
And I don't just mean the obvious, which is to give us cool new options every month.

Honestly, that's basically what it is.

noodohs said:
What I mean is, is it supposed to be sort of like Unearthed Arcana where we get some mostly finished new material every month that will eventually be collected into proper sourcebooks or are they intended to be the "only" release of the things that are in them?

We have no current plans beyond what we've announced, but if we make any plans we'll be sure to let everyone know! We haven't even launched it yet.

noodohs said:
However, the content is released every month and that's really not enough time, in my opinion, to develop, playtest, revise, playtest again, and finalize new content, especially things like whole classes. I worry that the content will feel rushed and unfinished and the monthly release schedule may not leave time for the team to revise things after release.

Ah, but what makes you think we commission, write, illustrate, playtest, edit, and layout each issue one at a time in one month? An article you read in September might have been commissioned in January. Magazine publishing doesn't have to be all done from start to finish in four weeks; that's just the release schedule.

noodohs · Jan 21, 2022

Morrus said:
Ah, but what makes you think we commission, write, illustrate, playtest, edit, and layout each issue one at a time in one month? An article you read in September might have been commissioned in January. Magazine publishing doesn't have to be all done from start to finish in four weeks; that's just the release schedule.

For sure, but that just means your splitting your focus across multiple things at once and I'm not sure that's really any better. Quarterly releases would still give you more time to flesh things out, I imagine. As a case in point, the finalized capstone feature of the artificer wasn't even playtested, as far as I know, since it was added after the playtest period was over. That's the sort of thing I'm worried about.

Morrus · Jan 21, 2022

noodohs said:
For sure, but that just means your splitting your focus across multiple things at once and I'm not sure that's really any better. Quarterly releases would still give you more time to flesh things out, I imagine.

I don't really know what this means? We have multiple people working on things. Articles get published when we're satisfied they're ready, whether that takes 4 weeks or 4 months. We have no plans to go to quarterly releases; sorry.

noodohs · Jan 21, 2022

I'm simply saying that based on what I have seen so far, it felt rushed. There are many things that aren't very clear even now after your revisions and it really feels like more time would have helped. I'm not really trying to dwell on that, I've already addressed that in other threads, but I guess I will have to take a wait and see approach with future issues. I've already put quite a bunch of money into the system, so I do hope they live up to the hype of the original books. I'm just still not really sure how they fit into the system yet or if the content is even going to be accessible outside of the PDFs.

Micah Sweet · Jan 21, 2022

noodohs said:
I'm simply saying that based on what I have seen so far, it felt rushed. There are many things that aren't very clear even now after your revisions and it really feels like more time would have helped. I'm not really trying to dwell on that, I've already addressed that in other threads, but I guess I will have to take a wait and see approach with future issues. I've already put quite a bunch of money into the system, so I do hope they live up to the hype of the original books. I'm just still not really sure how they fit into the system yet or if the content is even going to be accessible outside of the PDFs.

First of all, I love the heck out of Level Up and am not interested in any option that gives me less content.

Secondly, I think of the Gazette as something like Dragon Magazine. A cool source of new content that comes out every month, so if you don't like the theme of one issue, you don't have to wait for long to get another one.

noodohs · Jan 21, 2022

You don't want quality over quantity? Sure, if we can have both, I'm all for it, I just want to make sure that quality isn't sacrificed for quantity. For example, the sheer number of subclasses for some classes in O5e vs the number of them that people actually want to play is a pretty big difference. And fair enough, I never subscribed to Dragon so I don't have much context there. I think the two main things I want to be certain of are that a) the Gazette content will be added to the web tools/SRD/VTT integrations and b) that it will be updated/tweaked/outright revised as needed based on community feedback. As long as the monthly release schedule doesn't make it subject to less scrutiny than the main books, I have no complaints.

Micah Sweet · Jan 21, 2022

noodohs said:
You don't want quality over quantity? Sure, if we can have both, I'm all for it, I just want to make sure that quality isn't sacrificed for quantity. For example, the sheer number of subclasses for some classes in O5e vs the number of them that people actually want to play is a pretty big difference. And fair enough, I never subscribed to Dragon so I don't have much context there. I think the two main things I want to be certain of are that a) the Gazette content will be added to the web tools/SRD/VTT integrations and b) that it will be updated/tweaked/outright revised as needed based on community feedback. As long as the monthly release schedule doesn't make it subject to less scrutiny than the main books, I have no complaints.

See now, I don't use online tools, and am happy to homebrew if a mechanic isn't working right for me. But that's just me.

jphinney · Jan 21, 2022

noodohs said:
You don't want quality over quantity? Sure, if we can have both, I'm all for it, I just want to make sure that quality isn't sacrificed for quantity. For example, the sheer number of subclasses for some classes in O5e vs the number of them that people actually want to play is a pretty big difference. And fair enough, I never subscribed to Dragon so I don't have much context there. I think the two main things I want to be certain of are that a) the Gazette content will be added to the web tools/SRD/VTT integrations and b) that it will be updated/tweaked/outright revised as needed based on community feedback. As long as the monthly release schedule doesn't make it subject to less scrutiny than the main books, I have no complaints.

I'm surprised you think that after all the work put into A5E that they would create poor quality supplements. They have said that they will limit the amount of content for each issue. I'm with @Micah Sweet , this reminds me of Dragon Mag and all of the wonderful content. You were free to choose what to use and what not to use. Just loads and loads of supplemental information. I wouldn't expect content in GatePass to change core rules.

Steampunkette · Jan 22, 2022

To give you a little peek behind the curtain:

There are a -bunch- of writers working on one article at a time. Like 30 people each writing one article.

The first issue comes out in March. It takes, like, 2 weeks to go from rough draft to ready. During which playtesting occurs. And then it'll be another month and a half before Issue 1 drops. Time and a half for more playtesting, reviews, revising, editing, and prep for print.

And since there's only 4 articles in that 1 issue, there's 26 people playtesting their articles in advance of April, May, June, July, Etc.

There's time for Quantity -and- Quality when enough people are working together to see things done right.