"Beautiful Game Books: Endangered Species?" Topic

Steve Gill, writing in Battlegames, magazine, lamented about a beautifully printed book, "an object of great beauty," and expressed his fears:

…as we hurtle toward digital damnation, kindlepads in hand, I wondered if it may be among the last of its kind.

Do you foresee "beautiful" printed game books becoming extinct?

Wow! No, not at all.

I thought what has happened is that the simple printed rules booklet has gone, killed by the "kindlepads" and the pdf. Beautifully printed books are becoming more common now, if anything.

Glossy books is the only thing that can make it in stores, so they aren't going anywhere.

I do however see future archaeologists referring to us as living in the dark ages if they cannot reproduce our technology.

Interestingly enough, Barnes & Noble were reporting that young Adult customers are buying more physical books. Something they're calling "Digital Blowback".

Though as they're market skews more and more towards the Geek Culture, I have to wonder how much of those books are manga.

Young people are also pretty likely to commute a lot, and I'd rather bring a 2 dollar book than a 50-100 dollar tablet or e-reader on public transit.

$50 USD-100 tablet or reader?

Have you seen these kids? they take their screens *everywhere.* I'd rather take 1 5 ounce reader than a 12 ounce book anywhere…

"Digital Blowback"? Nope, just the result of most of the major publishers deciding to jack up digital prices.

Of course they could just go back to the twelve dollar black on white with useful diagrams included.

I just wish the beauties didn't start sat $40. USD

Bill, you sure have a knack for finding cranky old farts in gaming zines to start a discussion around.

I remember when game books were digest-sized and saddle-stapled, or full-sized and stapled at the corners. The AD&D rulebooks were a huge thing because they were hardcover books, still with B&W internal pages.

Now I'm looking at the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. It's 576 pages. Full color throughout, glossy paper. (am I the only person who hates glossy paper?) And the verdammte thing set me back fifty bucks.

At least as far as "beautiful game books" they're far from an endangered species -- instead, they seem to have become the norm. It's the simple, straightforward, saddle-stitched or perfect-bound, B&W softcovered books that are endangered.

I've been reading Project Gutenberg since you bought it on a CD. (since it FIT on a CD!) I'm an early adopter of ebook readers -- I bought my first Sony PR-505 new. (I won't own a Kindle because I don't want a library that a bookseller can come into and take books off my shelves if they decide to -- which Amazon has done) iBooks is probably my most-used app. And I have, conservatively speaking, 3,000 physical books around me. I bought two more today.

I have game stuff in PDF, on dead trees, in some cases both ways … and I really don't see that changing any time in the future.

Electronic books are great for something you're reading sequentially -- your average novel, for instance. (note: I refuse to buy DRM-locked ebooks out of principle) Dead trees books are great for reference, when you need to flip back and forth between sections readily. Both have their uses.

As for the person mourning the loss of "beautiful" books: He's missing the point. He's putting the idea of book-as-art above the idea of book-as-information.

Certainly there is a feeling that goes with opening a dead-trees book … but there's also a feeling that goes with opening the leather cover of my e-reader, thumbing the power switch, and settling down to read a book where I turn the pages with a pushbutton. It's its own thing. But I would never let either one outweigh the most important reason I read, and own, all these thousands of books: for the information that is inside them, not the covers that are outside them.

There is still a market for elaborate, beautiful, well-bound books among those people who see them as art and want to enjoy that aspect of them. But suggesting that everyone should have to pay for (and allocate space for!) books like that because those connoisseurs prefer them is like saying that nobody should be allowed to have a transistor radio because some people love old tube-based cathedral radios (and FM is right out).

It comes down, really, to supply and demand. Publishers will sell what the customers want to buy. Looking at the number of cubic feet, pounds, and dollars represented by the RPG books just within arm's reach of me right now, I'd say there's no sign of dead-trees rulebooks going away any time soon.

Though … do they really HAVE to have those glossy pages? Seriously, they cause eyestrain! DCC has it right.

No, they will not disappear.

They'll be gone in 20 years.

In a word… NO!

I read that a recent study showed that Milenials read more than baby boomers, so that might indicate the books are here to stay a while. If they can afford them.

I got rid of digital blow back by eating less cauliflower. I love glossy pages.

No

Rule books should teach/explain the rules with B&W diagrams or possibly B&w photos. Extras are excuses to jack up the price. I want a rule book, not a coffee table book.

No, not everyone must use a computer to game. It would be stupid to assume that there will be connection ability at every location that you will want to game. So players would be stuck without the ability to refer to rules.

Those who fondly remember mimeographed rules with craft paper binding always have and always will hate professionally produced rules. "Rules aren't books! Why should they look pretty!!!" Etc blah blah.
So they latch unto dubious predictions of the demise of professionally produced rules with the fervor and joy of church goers who hear that those lowlifes on the bad side of town had their meth lab raided.

I have old B&W side-stapled rules, hardbound high production value books, full-sized paperback rules with limited color inside, digital rules of various stripes. Each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages.

I am much more interested in what is in them rather than what they are on.

No, not everyone must use a computer to game. It would be stupid to assume that there will be connection ability at every location that you will want to game. So players would be stuck without the ability to refer to rules.

I'm a little unclear on where this is coming from -- and I'm a person who sells GM-aid software. (just taking a break from debugging, actually) While, technically, an ebook reader is indeed a computer (as is my watch, my car, and my microwave oven) I think it's more reasonable to use "computer" to denote a general-purpose computer such as the one I'm sitting in front of right now, or a laptop, etc. In that case a smartphone probably qualifies, but an ebook reader does not.

But what does connectivity have to do with it? Why should it matter any more for an electronic book than a dead-trees book? The big difference between having rules in, say, PDF format on my ebook reader and having them in dead-trees format on my shelf is the former is a LOT easier to carry about. (however, the latter is a lot easier to refer to, hence the groaning shelves)

I'm with Mute Bystander, though: I want rulebooks, not coffee table books. I want simple, clear, well-laid out explanations of the rules for the game I'm playing, in a nice readable font, with adequate whitespace, and clear, simple diagrams where needed. I can even see a use for color in some of those -- "the red arrows show player 1's move, and the blue ones player 2's reaction" -- but, really, full-color paintings of random scenes from someone else's game? Pages that are glossy, to the detriment of READING them, solely to allow decorative borders? D&D 3e with those freaking underlines for which the graphic designer can never be hurt enough? That doesn't contribute to the product -- it detracts from it.

It's what I call the gee-whiz factor. I'm a website designer, or at least I was until TableMaster took over my life again. As such, I look at websites very analytically. And one thing I've noticed: many, many websites are designed to sell the product the designer is selling -- websites -- rather than the product the client is selling -- widgets. So they're all glitzy and flashy and colorful, and things move and blink and fly around and make noise, and in the process they've produced a bloated mess that makes it harder, rather than easier, for the customer to buy a widget. But the guy in the corner office saw the site in the designer's presentation and he said "gee whiz! that' looks great!"

Same thing with rulebooks: on first glance, one with glossy full-color pages and lots of art and whatnot looks great … but when you come to actually try to use it, plain matte finish paper and black-on-white text would serve the purpose much better.

I like my rules saddle-stitched or perfect bound, it's true, because the stapled ones never held up very well (the covers always tore off for me), but in terms of content, Goodman Games gets it right: a serif font, black on white, matte paper, and it's all about the text.

I have lots of art hanging on my walls. That's where it belongs … not making it harder to read and use my game rules.

I just realised that while I buy almost all of my games in PDF, I buy all of my history books in dead-tree. :-)