Guildcraft: Anyone using this Bastion sourcebook?

[Iron_Chef]

It's Todd Morasch that did the art so many people (including myself) object to. It's just garish, cartoony and amateur-looking in most cases. It's hard to screw up drawing inanimate objects, but Morasch manages to do so repeatedly when it comes to armor (less so with weapons), making them look as unappealing as possible (see the Grotesque armor for just one example). His monsters and people are generally even worse. To make matters worse, whatever he's using to ink his work is really cheap looking too.

Artwork aside, Arms & Armor is probably Bastion's best book in terms of overall utility for players and DMs alike. Spells & Magic is primarily only useful if you want different styles of magic, as most of the book is made up of alt.spellcasters like the dragon mage, rune caster and mirror mage, etc. There is very little in the way of new spells and items. Probably the best feature is the item class called Strange Brew, some kind of alt.potion (memory's a little foggy here). Alchemy & Herbalists and Pale Designs appeal to so narrow a market that I don't see them being all that useful, especially when a decent selection of such items is available elsewhere. Ink & Quill, their free online book, was well written but of such limited appeal that there was no point in publishing a print version, I'd wager. Minions and Villains were both really unimaginative and a poor value compared to books that give you more bang for your buck, like Creature Collection II, Tome of Horrors, Secrets & Societies, The Wise and the Wicked, etc. Heck, even Enemies & Allies was a better investment than Villains.

 

[Jim Butler]

Just picked GUILDCRAFT up last night. Overpriced and needlessly full color glossy for its low page count like most Bastion Press products (they charge $24.95 for something that should be $14.95 and B&W standard paper interior like FFG's School of Illusion, Necromantic Lore, etc.)

I hear comments regarding pricing every now and then, but they get more and more confusing each time. On average, Bastion Products cost $5 more than WotC products (and they're full color, and many times have a higher word count per page than a WotC product).

For instance, WotC charges $19.95 for their 96-page splat books and $9.95 for each 32-page adventure. We're $5 over that, in exchange for full color.

As a small press company that sells considerably fewer copies than WotC, I'd never be able to price my products under what WotC charges. They just get too good of a deal on printing costs due to the large number of copies they print. Sometimes, economies of scale just suck...

...Todd Morasch fill it up with the garish cartoons that ruined their debut effort, Arms & Armor. The cover is better than usual for Bastion, too.

Our debut product was actually Minions, a full-color monster book that Todd did most of the artwork for. He also did a lot of the artwork for A&A.

I did listen to everyone's concerns about artwork, though, and we've worked to mix a number of artists together on our future products.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Hi Jim,

I suppose I should make my comparison gripe clear: I'm not comparing your stuff to WoTC; nobody can be expected to compete there. I'm comparing them to FFG, AEG, Mongoose, Green Ronin, SSS, Atlas and the others. Their products are generally much thicker and hardcover for the same price or an extra $5.

Compare Minions to other creature books like Creature Collection 2, Tome of Horrors, Monsternomicon... They give you around 200 pages, hardcover with vastly superior art and content, all for between $25-$30.

Compare Villains with SSS's Secrets & Societies which is softcover and the same page count but has superior artwork and content and retails for a very reasonable $13.95.

Compare Spells & Magic with FFG's School of Illusion: softcover with superior art and content (if more narrowly focused), retailing for $14.95. Or a better comparison might be FFG's Spells & Spellcraft or Path of Magic, which are hardcover with superior art and all around more useful content for the same price and around 80 extra pages. If it's alt.magic a person is after, Atlas has their HC Occult Lore book, or there's Natural 20's Elements of Magic on the pdf front.

Another product to take note of is Green Ronin's Plot & Poison (drow book), which is around 200 pages, softcover (B&W/non-glossy), with nice art and phenomenal rules content for $24.95. The book is amazingly good and an excellent value that blows away Ed Greenwood's Drow of the Underdark and Goodman's Complete Book of the Drow, which were both excellent resources but nothing by comparison.

I appreciate the desire to make Bastion's books all full color and glossy beautiful, but the content in most cases (IMO) just hasn't measured up to this deluxe treatment when other publishers are selling meatier, crunchier and/or cheaper books. You're not competing with WoTC really; you're competing with these other third party publishers. (Most) everybody is gonna buy the latest WoTC release regardless, and then they go spend their remaining dollars on other companies products. So you'll never outsell WoTC, which I know you don't expect to do. You need to outsell or at least successfully compete against the FFG's, the Green Ronins, the AEGs, the Atlas, etc. These are the real competition, I think. Of course, you're in the biz so you might know many things I don't, but the fact is I tend to ignore Bastion releases because I anticipate they are going to be expensive and slim in page count with bad art and dubious utility. On the other hand, I eagerly await anything from FFG because I feel they give the best value for my dollar (I buy most everything they put out). Other companies I study more closely before purchasing, and Bastion products I read even more closely before buying because they cost so much I can't afford to take a chance on them or buy them for just a few useful bits like I can with other companies. $24.95 for 96 pages is a LOT of money.

 

[Ghostwind]

Spells & Magic is primarily only useful if you want different styles of magic. Alchemy & Herbalists and Pale Designs appeal to so narrow a market that I don't see them being all that useful, especially when a decent selection of such items is available elsewhere.

One of things you are doing are comparing books that were published at different times. Spells and Magic was one of the first books that highlighted different magic and came out over a year before FFG's School of Illusion and even AEG's Magic. S&M has considerable useability among the spells it offers in my opinon depending on your personal campaign. The same may be said with Villains which was also published over 6 months before SSS's Secret Societies and Wise and Wicked. I think Villains has more use than those from SSS because I don't have to remove any Scarred Lands references, but again that's for my campaign. Outside of SSS's Creature Collections, Minions was one of the first third party monster books (being released in the fall of 2001) and is probably one of the most sound books in terms of game mechanics and stat errors.

Alchemy & Herbalists and Pale Designs have both received highly positive reviews and have been strong sellers despite being 'niche' products. They both provide a solid collection of information that is scattered in small bits and pieces in other products but are complied together in these books. Even though you do not feel they are useful, I can show you many gamers who disagree and embrace them wholeheartedly. In the case of Pale Designs, if you do not use poisons very much in your campaign, then the book will likely not have much value. However, if you do then the book may be invaluable for its comprehensive collection (as many gamers told me last weekend in Michigan when I was there). It all boils down to your personal tastes.

The $24.95 pricetag is actually a good investment for most folks when you look at the content that other publishers offer (such as Goodman Games' Complete Guide series - 32 pages for $11.00). But in the end, it all depends upon the needs of the individual and his campaign.

 

[Psion]

Deposit 2 cents.

I really dislike the approach of guildcraft. Essentially, their guild thing is 2nd edition multiclassing!

The best bastion books, based on content:

Arms & Armor
Airships
Spells & Magic

In approximately that order.

Also good, but need a little tweaking:

Alchemy & Herbalists
Minions

I also like that Bastion opens most or all of their products.

I share people's concerns about the art in Bastion books. Spells & Magic and Plains of Penance have pretty decent art, and Allies & Adversaries has fantastic art (but is not so great on content.)

 

[The Sigil]

My 2 cents...

1.) I don't particularly like Bastion's artists' style. Too sinewy and "silly-looking" for me in many places... though it seems to be improving over time.

2.) I like pretty much everything else about their books. I think you need to compare their products, as has been mentioned, with "contemporary" products, not "similarly priced" products. Arms & Armor is still great, Spells & Magic remains among the most useful alternate magic systems in my library and I have a soft spot for Alchemy & Herbalism - two skills that got short shrift in the Core Rules.

3.) I REALLY like their OGC designation.

4.) Minions and Villains have been released as cheaper, $10 PDFs - with bonus content (check RPGNow.com for Minions: Rebirth and Villains: Rebirth). Some may not like the PDF format, but the price:content ratio is pretty solid, IMO.

Are Bastion's books a little more expensive? Yes. But for (a) the full color and (b) more importantly, the "re-usability" factor based on the amount of OGC they contain, I have found they are among the most valuable pieces in my d20 library. Good work, Jim!

--The Sigil

 

[DaveMage]

My 2 cents...

Are Bastion's books a little more expensive? Yes. But for (a) the full color and (b) more importantly, the "re-usability" factor based on the amount of OGC they contain, I have found they are among the most valuable pieces in my d20 library. Good work, Jim!

--The Sigil

I'll second that. I wish *more* d20 companies would do full color. I *really* wish some of the Scarred Lands stuff was in color. Black and white interior is so drab. I don't mind paying more for a color product-it enhances my reading experience.

-David

 

[Iron_Chef]

I liked Arms & Armor and got good use out of it. My only complaints about it were the price and the horrible art, which almost made me not look closely enough at it to form an opinion about the content and whether or not to purchase it anyway. "Sinewy" and "silly" are the terms I was looking for, thanks!

I too really like their OGC content and wish more publishers would follow suit. That's one area where nobody does it better than Jim, and you can't take that away from him! It also makes legal issues much easier to sort out, LOL.

The revised $10 pdfs are a good idea (I love pdfs), though having read through both books before, I still wouldn't buy them as they just don't work for my campaign needs... and the art kills me. Moreso than Arms & Armor, where I can use my imagination to fudge item images to something cooler, it's much harder for me to do the same for people and critters. They must look cool in their listing or I'm not gonna use 'em in all likelihood, nor will I probably even read 'em in the first place.

I think it's great that Jim is listening to his customers (and potential customers) by changing the artists and covers. That's the mark of someone who cares (as with the OGC issue he's way ahead of everybody else on). Guildcraft was so much nicer looking than Arms & Armor and the cover wasn't all cheesy like prior books with their Core rip-off design (not that Jim's the only one guilty of this practice, he's just one of many, and who can blame him---but others have done it much better).

As to comparing his books with later releases, maybe it's not fair on my part (I'm no expert on release dates), but there's "first" and then there's "best". It's hard to be both, as whoever comes out after you has the ability to stack theirs up against yours before ever going to press, but it's not impossible. I probably won't be buying WoTC's Arms & Equipment Guide because I already have Jim's Arms & Armor which is incredibly comprehensive and full of neat stuff I haven't gotten to use yet. Plus, so many other books I own have various weapons, armor and equipment that I don't think I need WoTCs. I didn't buy Mongoose's Ultimate Equipment Guide for the same reason, though it looked good. I already gave Jim $25 for Arms & Armor a year or so ago (brilliant, him releasing that way ahead of the pack), so why spend $35 on Mongoose or however much WoTC's is now? That's an example of where "first" can be "best", though maybe not in the same way as I meant earlier in this paragraph, LOL.

Bastion's books are more expensive and are in a much nicer deluxe format, but I question whether they really need to be when everybody else is offering similar content for much less or more content for the same price or a little more (and often in hardcover). That--and Todd Morasch's art--are my main complaints about Bastion's products (Jim's already taken care of the Morasch issue). Still, the format does easily distinguish their stuff from the sea of competition, so maybe Jim is right. After all, he's still publishing... and I'm (occasionally) still buying.

I hope it didn't sound like I was trying to tear into Jim or anything, because that wasn't my intent at all, though I worry that I might come off wrong over the internet. I think Jim's a good guy and an even better one for publishing books for my favorite game, LOL, we just seem to disagree on pricing and format, that's all. I'm glad he stopped by to make his case in such a civil, friendly manner, and that's one more reason to like him. He listens. Thanks, Jim!