Switching Horses in Mid-Stream

After some consideration, I've decided to temporarily shelve the Character Generation book I've been working on, between other work.  That project has suffered from numerous setbacks, not the least of which has been a growing resistance to "get into it."  That's undoubtedly a very bad attitude on my part ... and yet I've often considered my ability to procrastinate as a sort of gift.  Who knows?  If I'd really dug in, I might be in a position to actually publish the thing in time to get screwed by the new OGL.

That is, of course, the reason why I'm stepping back.  I've taken steps for it not to rely on D&D rule-making to manage it's content, but just now I think it'd be best to see what stability gets achieved in the coming months.  I understand Disney is pissed at Hasbro.  That's not an atmosphere into which I want to publish material that might break some copyright law.

So ... let's talk about the poster I never made.

Fundamentally, three problems arose.  While the written material was unquestionably interesting, I had no practical solution to the artistic question that arose.  IF I included all the content I meant to include, even IF I'd found an artist there'd be no place to put the art.  We considered some kind of clever background that would have suited the overall feel, but without an artist to do the work, or discuss it with, we were at odds on how to continue.

Secondly, the size I'd selected, 48 inches by 36, could be printed, but we could locate no company that would take an object of that size as a print-on-demand product.  My books are sold through Lulu as print-on-demand.  This means that when someone buys a book of mine, I get paid and Lulu gets paid.  I never see the book, the reader receives a mint copy and I'm not stuck with hundreds of books I'm trying to sell.  When I want to do a game con, I buy a bunch of personal copies at a reduced rate, as I'm only paying Lulu, and then I do my best to get rid of them all at the table.

This solves all my problems with the mail and packaging.  I love it.  And the idea of having to make a pile of physical posters, to try to sell them online personally, was in no way fiscally practical.

Finally, I hated being bound by the poster's limitation of space.  I had more than enough content to fill a huge poster ... in fact, I have vastly more than the poster could handle.  And so I began to think about creating a splatbook instead:  The Streetvendor's Guide to Worldbuilding ... a compendium of normal, practical information on goods and services for use in fantasy role-playing games.

The idea would be to amass a content that would do more than include a list of things to buy.  It would explain what the things were, explain where the materials came from, and provide numbers and details on buying the raw materials as well as the finished products.  In addition, an effort would be made to have the details be reasonably accurate, so that the book would serve as a jumping off point to any subject the reader might care to investigate further.

A work like this would be very, very different from the material normally ejected by game companies, who are more interested in churning out magic items and servicing the rule of cool.  I have no interest in doing this.  I think it matters to know the real facts about things, such as how much a horse eats, or how long it takes to groom one; or how long does it take to make an arrow, and what woods work best; or how is perfume made; or how is a wagon put together; or what is the best cloth to wear in what sort of weather; or anything else regarding the great mass of human knowledge and how it affects the everyday D&D game.

I recognise the company doesn't care about such things.  I recognise that most players don't, either.  But I think it's a truly great opportunity to introduce Dungeon Masters to the actual, empirical world they might be interested in running, if only they knew anything about it.