Deluxe full colour Traveller main rule book

E

Eponymous

Mongoose
I want a Deluxe full colour Traveller main rule book. Something which has presentation values on par with Catalyst studios or GURP’s Traveller Interstellar Wars. I don’t want to touch the cover. The cover is perfect. Internal art needs a major upgrade. I don’t want a rule update either really, just errata the existing rules.

I was looking over my 'Goose-Travller first printing. Ohh the art was sooooooooooo bad. My later printing book with the newer art is a bit better. I'm not a big fan of the cartoony comic book style art. For line art I'm a Mike Vilardi, David R. Deitrick, Caswell and that other guy who used to do Challenger Magazine and all the D6 Star Wars and TORG stuff I’ve forgotten his name.

If you have a look at the Interstellar War book or Cthulhutech, Shadowrun Anniversary ed, or Eclipse Phase just to mention a few, the humble Traveller tome looks a bit dowdy. Honestly if I wanted old school I'd just get my "Black-Books" out...

Anyone else feel like this?
 
I tell you what they could look at - a special edition with a black leather cover....

Is there any relevant anniversary coming up? At all?
 
Keep the color, and the price down.
I dont want flash....

Easier to read and to locate what I need is tops. (And a logical layout, with EVERYTHING i need in the table or the chart, not hidden in a sidebar text)

I can do better art than whats in these printings...

I would prefer no art to bad art.

I second Dietrick.....
 
Yeah - love the pocket editions - oh and a cover that doesn't curl like its in a competition!

I prefer crisp high contrast text - which goes better without color. Color would make the art look more cartoonish to me.

Color adds direct costs in design and production - moneys that could be better spent on writers and keeping Matt and Mongoose financially motivated :)

I love photorealistic sci-fi images - have gigs of them on my computer and a number of books on the shelves and lots of movies.

I'd much rather MGP spend its energies on content, editing and themselves.
 
Wow,

Traveller players - the cheap skates of the rpg world... :oops:

I, for one would really pay to have an integrated beautiful art + rpg text book. Happy to pay top price for it even as a limited print run.

I'm not saying this should be the only book on offer. far from it. I'm sugesting it be a Deluxe option, like a collectors book if you will.

Honestly if you only want the pocket books then thats what you buy. Fine.

I'd like the option to go for a sexy look and a hardcover full colour book.
I dont have that option presently with Traveller I think that is a pitty.

Given the spectrum of rpg product out there right now and the generally high product quality of the same, its a pitty Traveller is on the lower side of the curve.

take a look at the lame art on the Trav GM screen. The "inside' of the ship is ok I guess but what the hell are those blobs of colour outside the "window"? I'd like to see a general improvement in "art" for the Traveller game. There are Traveller fan sites with better art then the core rule book. See the Distant places blog as an example.
http://ccgi.knowledgebase.plus.com/wordpress

If the fans can do this then Im sure Mongoose can get good content and then charge me for it - at a premium for a collectors run. I'm an old man now :!: I have money I want to spend it on my hoby :)
 
Cheap? More a different set of priorities...

You want a piece of art you can put on a shelf or preserve away in a wrapper - that's fine. :P

I'd rather they improve the print quality of the deckplans (now many of those are almost unusable - and that is a technical issue mostly - so future fixes would cost very little).

To be fair - the Distant places blog is an extreme rarity - and he has been working on that excellent content for quite some time (if you want to offload some money - why not donate it to him)! You know of any other fansites with that level of quality you want to share?
 
If they got top notch new art and put a faux leather cover on it like the new Runequest II I think I am sucker enough to buy it.

It doesn't necessarily have to be full color, good, evocative greyscale art would make me happy.
 
personally I am happy with the book as is... I've got full colour books (having a full collection of WOTC books) and i PREFER the art in my MGT books.

I dont use deck plans so not a problem, if I want photoreal 3d images I can find them on the net, and i will pay for them if i can.

but what i do not need is an artists representation of what traveller looks like, i have my own head for that!

Chef
 
Actually, I just thank my lucky stars that Traveller's back at all. As much as I love to read books, I love writing them more. :)
 
Given that full-colour printing has increased in cost recently to the outrageous level... how much would you fork out for such a "presentation" book in leather covers?

$75, or $100, or even $125 a book?

(cost also to include better quality colour artwork)
 
Lord High Munchkin said:
Given that full-colour printing has increased in cost recently to the outrageous level... how much would you fork out for such a "presentation" book in leather covers?

$75, or $100, or even $125 a book?
Click to expand...
Charging more than about £20 for a book is never in the best interests of the publishers.

Only the biggest libraries have the cash to be able to afford expensive books like that, and that includes academic libraries who might accept a single copy because it happened to have been written by an author who's a Professor in that institution or some such.

I occasionally catch academic reviews of books which come out in print with unbelievable price tags - £125 on up. One book, a comprehensive tome on Vedic mathematics, was recently listed in a local book store's catalogue with a price tag of £225.

Alan Moore's graphic novel "Lost Girls" came out in three volumes in an ornate violet slipcase with a £50 price tag in 2007 / 2008. Last year, I spotted a smaller, softcover single volume edition retailing for £20. The retail price was £35. Beside it sat one of the slipcased original editions. Three months on, and that one's still there, even with its price tag down to £30.

One set of books I'm well aware of occasionally filters down to The Works. It's a huge leatherbound tome of the complete works of Shakespeare. Original price £75; asking price, £19.95 in the remainder store. It just sits there on the shelves, because people are grabbing the smaller, cheaper "complete works" Shakespeare tome next to it, a softcover retailing for £9.99.

(I've got one of the hardback Shakespeare books from The Works, actually. It cost me a tenner. And don't ask me how I came by my slipcased "Lost Girls" for £25.)

I know that the writers and artists all need paying for their work, as to the editors, the publishers, the distributors and the people who sit behind the counter in the bookstores. And for that, they need the books to sell. The more copies they sell, the more cash comes in, and everybody's happy. A book that ends up selling just one copy is not going to make anybody in the chain very happy.
 
I very much prefer to keep "artbooks" separate from "workbooks", main-
ly because I treat them differently.

A (usually expensive) artbook is something I handle with care, while a
core rulebook is something I work with, and which therefore gets "worn
out" pretty quickly. My Mongoose Traveller books do already show ob-
vious signs of usage - signs I would very much dislike to see in an art-
book.

I would definitely not buy a combination of artbook and rules, to me this
would seem like a shovel with a golden blade - useless, unless one ac-
cepts to destroy it by using it.
 
So the consensus is, it seems, that a full-colour 'Traveller' book is a non-starter.

I'm not surprised. The days of full-colour games books (unless there is access to cheap artwork and/or mass volumes), is pretty much over.
 
I think the basic model of small no nonsense, inexpensive pocket books and to an extent the hardback, larger alternative is the right one for the game.

Nevertheless, I do think there is a case to be made for a limited release, special edition, for hard core fans.

...oh, and do note that some of the setting books are full colour, hardbacks...
 
Lord High Munchkin said:
The days of full-colour games books (unless there is access to cheap artwork and/or mass volumes), is pretty much over.
Click to expand...
In my view full colour makes sense for games based upon some license
that includes lots of colour illustrations, for example a movie or TV license
like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, or a cartoon license like Judge Dredd.
There you have as many colour pictures "for free" as you might want, and
it would be logical to use them.

For games without such a "colourful background" one really has to be sure
that thousands of customers are ready to part with their hard earned cash
in return for some very expensive "pretty pictures" made specifically for
the game, and I know only a hand full of roleplaying games that can take
that risk, for example D&D or GURPS.
 
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