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Looking Back To The 80s With The "Realism" of KABAL!
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<blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7715416" data-attributes="member: 6779310"><p>Blue was also a common mimeographic ink color.</p><p></p><p>It was also a popular color for ditto machines (aka spirit duplicators).</p><p></p><p>Most small press games used mimeo back in the day; judging from images on scribd, the text is too clean for mimeo, so it's likely offset and in non-photocopy blue, rather than mimeo or spirit.</p><p></p><p>Photocopy prevention was not the typical reason for blue inks - inexpensive ink was. Kabal, however, does look to be due to anti-copying, as it strongly looks to be lithographic or offset printing, from what was a probably optically transcribed cut plate. (note that optical transcription to cut plates was lat 19th C... TA Edison, 1880.)</p><p></p><p>Kaball was actually fairly high production values for the time. FGU and several other companies also used optically transcribed typed manuscripts; it was a standard for many publications outside the games industry as well. Most universities had a plate cutter which would take the manuscript pages, and cut a matching plate. This was the most expensive part of the process. Many places, the plates were assembled by casting lead for impression printing; some companies cast lead for page creation, printed a handful, then had those used for art layout, which was then sent for optical transfer to lithographic plates.</p><p></p><p>TSR, Avalon Hill, and a few others were exceptional in their product quality... but the early TSR products show signs of having been typewritten with proportional spaced typewriters, then optically transferred to plates.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="aramis erak, post: 7715416, member: 6779310"] Blue was also a common mimeographic ink color. It was also a popular color for ditto machines (aka spirit duplicators). Most small press games used mimeo back in the day; judging from images on scribd, the text is too clean for mimeo, so it's likely offset and in non-photocopy blue, rather than mimeo or spirit. Photocopy prevention was not the typical reason for blue inks - inexpensive ink was. Kabal, however, does look to be due to anti-copying, as it strongly looks to be lithographic or offset printing, from what was a probably optically transcribed cut plate. (note that optical transcription to cut plates was lat 19th C... TA Edison, 1880.) Kaball was actually fairly high production values for the time. FGU and several other companies also used optically transcribed typed manuscripts; it was a standard for many publications outside the games industry as well. Most universities had a plate cutter which would take the manuscript pages, and cut a matching plate. This was the most expensive part of the process. Many places, the plates were assembled by casting lead for impression printing; some companies cast lead for page creation, printed a handful, then had those used for art layout, which was then sent for optical transfer to lithographic plates. TSR, Avalon Hill, and a few others were exceptional in their product quality... but the early TSR products show signs of having been typewritten with proportional spaced typewriters, then optically transferred to plates. [/QUOTE]
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Looking Back To The 80s With The "Realism" of KABAL!
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