While making some minor updates to the text I finally hit the limit as to what I can squeeze onto 42 pages and so the next cut of the Beacon book will have more. Right now it's 44 pages because of the way I wanted to lay things out without making it unattractive by changing fonts or squeezing stuff in where it logically didn't belong. A terrain effects in combat chart should be in the combat section and not tacked onto the blank half page in the Druid spell section. There is now a bit of white space with the extra pages to move things around and that I can use to include some additional charts - I'm thinking of a skill point by class chart - something that you could figure out easily enough, but having a chart might make it easier. I might even put a picture in somewhere.
I really do want to make the content fight for that real-estate however. I'm going to draw a line in the sand right now to avoid ever going over 50 pages. I'm not in the business to teach people how to role play or explain how a 4 sided die works.
And yes the title is just about the page count. I haven't heard any stories of someone busting out Beacon at a convention or on a G+ game - however I would LOVE to hear about it if it did happen.
And yes should have made a joke about giving it some Deep Thought. But I didn't.
While I appreciate brevity/lack of bloat, you don't want to cram stuff in too tight. A wall of text on every page isn't appealing or conducive to engaging with the material.
ReplyDeleteI like it when new sections start at the top of a new page. Unrelated stuff shouldn't be together, as in that chart and the druid spells.
And what size is your font? I'm betting a large portion of your target market is reaching that age where printing is just so SMALL.
Restraint is good, but if 52 pages is better than 50, wouldn't it be silly to go with 50 pages?
Yes, your line of thinking is pretty much mine as well. In the end I'll make it as big as it needs to be, however I'm thinking that 50 as a ceiling should be adequate for a long time. It's just like with computers, I can't image anyone needing more than 10MB of disk storage. It'll never get used up. Anyway since I just cracked 42 and I'm actively battling the bloat, I'll have a while to go before it hits 50, if ever.
Delete