Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Digital to Print-on-Demand is working

It's like this.  HHSOLO1 passed the officially, mathematically profitable mark already, while I wasn't even paying attention.  So, uh, WOOT, I guess.  Well, better to say that it's no longer a loss in terms of overhead, unless you factor in work time.  Note: I don't think this is a good measure of success - the way I heard these high school kids took off with my working copy, and some good reports I've gotten from FB and G+ community - that's success.  Funnily, I see now why I probably could never ever ever do publishing for a living, but it's a fun and interesting hobby and once you get some steam going, I mean, hey.  Could be worse.  My wife said something like: "I know you're not in it for the money...  But if you could be in it for the money a little, that would be great."

Where is the POD, the guys all say?  Lulu?  The way I set that thing up, it was easy to make some changes to text and content, and have the InDesign spit out a new digital thing pretty easily when changes were made.  This is in 8.5 x 11, nostalgia-nerd boner for TSR's treatment circa BSOLO (what I was aiming at/for)


It's tedious to suck all that text out and convert it to 6x9 print.  Conversely, it makes it easier to place interior art (except the Russ Nicholson piece), and it happens to break the cover into smithereens.  NOW, it feels like maybe what you get when you picked up a copy of SORCERY!, if you get my drift.

Dreary cut 'n' pasting, but the upshot is, maybe you could get an actual DCC solo gamebook in your actual hand by Christmas-time or whatever your Yule-like equivalent is, but I think it'd be white-knuckle layout for yours truly.  Gotta figure out how to work the Table of Contents, also...



Work so dreary, it could make one Irascible but OOO a tasty gemstone!
Almost done but so much professional stuff to attend to by January's end, I can't even tell you (also, probably a law suit over this borrowed dwarfsney)

Sunday, November 23, 2014

How to Host a Dungeon

I think i may have posted this a while back, with my iphone - not exactly clear.

Maybe I scanned it from work, but I found it again and it got my dungeoneering (Space Dungeoning?) thoughts going, again.

Dear Reader, if you give a shit, I been worried about many non-gaming things, and anyways, sorry if I've been away from our mutual little space fantasies.

This is from the free version of HTHAD, which you can get here but if you can generate all these thoughtbombs with a free thing, shucks, you may as well spend the coins.

It was started by Dark Elfs, obviously, and then the monsters ran amuck and the gold ran out, and the Great Cities that Groan to the Skies Below become mostly empty, with bands and gangs of Dark Elf raiders the only occupants, long lived and bored and sulky as the Great Wyrm Foronax dug his way into the Corruption Pits.  They have degenerate duergar and beastmen to dig the mines out, always searching for the blue-green crystals that pepper the Aereth, here.  They hoard them, but don't know why except greed and obstinacy.  Any adventurers they come across are obviously flayed and put to death in the Sacrifice Pits.

Maybe I can include this in the setting for Halthrag Keep's little Kingdom of Thrend

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