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Synnibarr vs WotC
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8787512" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Back in the '70s and '80s there was a lot of that sort of thing. Actually publishing a real book/game product was no easy feat! TSR and other early publishers, and even those up into the mid-80s had the virtue of there being very low production standards simply because it was a new sort of thing and there's not a lot of money in it, generally speaking. So, for instance, we had our own 'RPG' back around '75-77 or so because it was hard to get (as a younger person) the official books, and they were in short supply. So I had a notebook in which I either hand copied or sometimes photocopied bits and parts of various books, added my own stuff, and pasted it all together. Then I would make a copy and give it to someone maybe. It was certainly NOT a 'game', but there was a lot of stuff like that floating around. Arduin Grimoire was of this sort as well, though it rose up to being a bit more substantive. </p><p></p><p>Later in the late '80s my friends and I had a large Sci-Fi space battle game that we had developed. It got several editions in exactly the same way, we would update the rules and material, and then print it all out and photocopy it, maybe with a bit of paste up. Actual printing was a wildly impractical idea, my brother worked for a printer, it would have cost us months of salary at our, pretty good paying, jobs to make a viable print run, and we had no idea how to really sell it. Not an RPG exactly (although we did do some RP with hacks of various systems in the 'Universe' we invented for the game) but its pretty much the same kind of idea. Nothing we did was all that inventive in a rules or game design sense (though reading over my copy of 'Fleet Command' it was fairly solid work) but the milieu was kind of fun in a wonky sort of way (there were Dark 'Elf' space pirates, a race of constructed warriors, ancient ruins, etc. etc. etc.). Again, not very original, but kind of uniquely idiosyncratic.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8787512, member: 82106"] Back in the '70s and '80s there was a lot of that sort of thing. Actually publishing a real book/game product was no easy feat! TSR and other early publishers, and even those up into the mid-80s had the virtue of there being very low production standards simply because it was a new sort of thing and there's not a lot of money in it, generally speaking. So, for instance, we had our own 'RPG' back around '75-77 or so because it was hard to get (as a younger person) the official books, and they were in short supply. So I had a notebook in which I either hand copied or sometimes photocopied bits and parts of various books, added my own stuff, and pasted it all together. Then I would make a copy and give it to someone maybe. It was certainly NOT a 'game', but there was a lot of stuff like that floating around. Arduin Grimoire was of this sort as well, though it rose up to being a bit more substantive. Later in the late '80s my friends and I had a large Sci-Fi space battle game that we had developed. It got several editions in exactly the same way, we would update the rules and material, and then print it all out and photocopy it, maybe with a bit of paste up. Actual printing was a wildly impractical idea, my brother worked for a printer, it would have cost us months of salary at our, pretty good paying, jobs to make a viable print run, and we had no idea how to really sell it. Not an RPG exactly (although we did do some RP with hacks of various systems in the 'Universe' we invented for the game) but its pretty much the same kind of idea. Nothing we did was all that inventive in a rules or game design sense (though reading over my copy of 'Fleet Command' it was fairly solid work) but the milieu was kind of fun in a wonky sort of way (there were Dark 'Elf' space pirates, a race of constructed warriors, ancient ruins, etc. etc. etc.). Again, not very original, but kind of uniquely idiosyncratic. [/QUOTE]
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