EDG said:
msprange said:
I'll take you up on that wager!
I'd be interested to see how you think you'll be able to get accurate numbers for who exactly is buying your books (i.e. whether they're old or new fans).
Plus, today's market generally expects books to be all fancy looking and glossy and colourful (at least, that's what you publishers keep telling us) - if 70's minimalist aesthetics worked today you'd think more books would look like they were made in someone's garage.
So I stand by my observations. And there are other people who have voiced the same opinion and expressed their distaste for the 1970s look - I think you'll find that outside the skewed world of the internet (where you're more likely to find the frothing fanboy who'll take anything you throw at them) that they're going to be the majority.
My my, aren't we condescending? I like how you phrased that so that anyone who states that the minimalist design works well is automatically a "frothing fanboy". Perhaps you're frothing a bit yourself, there?
I note that you're also contradicting yourself. Traveller fans are at the same time "neophobic" and unwilling to accept anything new and fanboys who'll take anything you throw at them. I should think each individual Traveller fan could only possibly be one or the other.
Now, considering that the Beatles didn't do too porly with The White Album and Metallica did pretty well commercially (<- understatement) with their black album, I think it's safe to say that a minimalist cover won't necessarily do any worse than a cover that lives up to the public's expectations of what such a product should look like. If anything, it's likely to generate more sales. In an oversaturated marketplace you need to stand out and it's tough to do that by looking the way everyone's come to expect such a product to look since the reason people have come to expect this is because everything else looks this way.
Especially when Classic Traveller has probably sold more copies than any of the subsequent editions that did away with the "boring 1970's" cover that came after that (MegaTraveller, TNE, T4).
The whole "Traveller fans are neophobic" has become a mantra but I don't really have the impression it's accurate. Over on RPGnet, the previews released thus far from the blog have had the Traveller fans raving about how great it sounds. So I doubt the relative lack of success of those subsequent editions has had anything to do with Traveller fans being "neophobic" and has had more to do with qualities of those products.
MegaTraveller had MegaErrata and many felt the rebellion changed the universe into something different. (I loved it - does this mean I don't qualify as a "grognard"?) People preferring CT to MT isn't really neophobia. MT simply wasn't what had appealed to them in a sci-fi game in the first place. Note that it somehow failed to attract any significant number of new fans in spite of the colorful covers.
TNE was T2K set in something only barely recognizable as the Traveller universe and suffered from errata problems on about the same scale as MT. It moved the timeline ahead far enough that you couldn't really keep playing with the same characters even if you did think of a way to convert them over as they'd have died of old age. No neophobia, just a really poor game. It's a Traveller that contains none of what appealed to the fans in Traveller and everything that didn't in T2K2. Colorful Zeleznik cover.
T4 was just an ugly mess. Again, fans didn't reject it out of neophobia but because it was a bad game and the Chris Foss painting on the cover (as well as the many interior color plates by same artist) didn't apparently bring in the new fans in significant numbers.
GURPS Traveller, now that did bring in some new fans (and some of the old too!) and no wonder! It was a solidly written product and a very good version of Traveller. I'd be very surprised if it hasn't been the best selling version of Traveller since CT even though many of the old CT fans dismissed it for not using anything recognizable as the old Traveller system. Oh, and it went with the CT look for the core book.
Generally, if you have one of the best selling and most popular properties within a given category on your hands (in this case sf rpg's), it's a bad idea to scrap the things that are most distinctive about said property.
You'll also find that the look of the LBB's isn't really especially 70's - they don't look like any other RPG from that period. The minimalist cover has prevented them from looking dated. Look at practically any other RPG from that period and you'll find loads of artwork with bell-bottoms and wide collars that date it very, very badly. Try to look like an 00's product now and chances are the book will look dated and embarrassing once we get to about the middle of the 10's.
Man, I'm just going to stop now. I've already rambled on for long enough.