EDG said:
To be fair, and just to cut into the argument, unless either of you are a publisher or distributor with their finger on the pulse of the market, it is unlikely either of you has the full facts
So it would appear Mongoose will publish first:
- Thread starter Bygoneyrs
- Start date
To be fair, and just to cut into the argument, unless either of you are a publisher or distributor with their finger on the pulse of the market, it is unlikely either of you has the full facts
TrippyHippy
Emperor Mongoose
Care to enlighten us?
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
Dear All,
As a professional visual artist, I have a totally different opinion on the cover - an aesthetic one....
Looking at the visual balance of the cover, one thing that strikes me as a tad wrong, is the thickness of the horizontal line - it's a wee bit too thick.
Apart from that, I'm not too keen on the "hook" - but it doesn't bug me (apart from being too thick), and besides 'Optima' is a hard font to beat....
Regards
As a professional visual artist, I have a totally different opinion on the cover - an aesthetic one....
Looking at the visual balance of the cover, one thing that strikes me as a tad wrong, is the thickness of the horizontal line - it's a wee bit too thick.
Apart from that, I'm not too keen on the "hook" - but it doesn't bug me (apart from being too thick), and besides 'Optima' is a hard font to beat....
Regards
Lord High Munchkin said:
I agree. Well, generally I don't agree about optima being a hard font to beat but it looks good here. I love the general aesthetic but I don't feel that it's really carried through quite well enough on the version of the cover posted.
The horizontal line is too thick and the hook kind of messes with the general aesthetic.
Furthermore, the balance doesn't seem to work as well as on the originals which had the line further down the page and the title underneath it all the way to the right with "Science-Fiction Adventure..." immediately under that and the title of the specific book above the line all the way to the left as a sort of balance.
Having the title in the middle of the completely black page makes it look less like a deliberate design choice and more like you were too cheap to pay for cover art. Placing it further down and thus creating a larger homogenous black surface makes it clearer that it's deliberate.
I sketched up a quick example of what I'm talking about here.
(The font used for the title is a beaten-into-submission skia. It would probably look better if the top of the v were made horizontal rather than slanted. And perhaps the bar on the t could be merged with the horizontal line? The cover being not quite black is the result of importing a CMYK file into an RGB working space. )
Matthew and friends are preparing a new Traveller core rulebook and a line of supplements for both the OTU and other settings.msprange said:To be fair, and just to cut into the argument, unless either of you are a publisher or distributor with their finger on the pulse of the market, it is unlikely either of you has the full facts
Ad Astra and MegaMinis are producing new lines of minis for Traveller, including the first capital ship models (!).
BITS, Avenger/Com-Star, and QLI are producing modules and supplements in a variety of mileus - the Traveller OGL will make it possible for these publishers, and others, to continue supporting the game in the (far) future.
Even if it's true that the Traveller fanbase has 'dwindled' to a bunch of "frothing fanboys,"* apparently that's enough to capture the interest of quite a few publishers and minis manufacturers. However, something tells me that's not the case here, that the market is deep enough with both old-timers and newbs to make it a worthwhile investment, or these companies wouldn't bother.
* :roll:
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
Dear All,
Hmm, Skia is after all perhaps not the best choice... too different as a font. One of the advantages of the existing Optima is that it is a classic-non time specific typeface that has been used continuously since it's conception. Linking up the "T" so it hangs might also date after a while - it was a very late '80's/'90's style.
A thing to consider with that mock-up is that there would need to be a further margin around the sides - as it is there is not enough room allowed for trim or binding.
That said, it does stand out a lot from all the other multi-coloured RPGs on the shelf. As well, although it is a result of colour-shift, I like the deep blue-black - almost the near black of space.
Regards
Hmm, Skia is after all perhaps not the best choice... too different as a font. One of the advantages of the existing Optima is that it is a classic-non time specific typeface that has been used continuously since it's conception. Linking up the "T" so it hangs might also date after a while - it was a very late '80's/'90's style.
A thing to consider with that mock-up is that there would need to be a further margin around the sides - as it is there is not enough room allowed for trim or binding.
That said, it does stand out a lot from all the other multi-coloured RPGs on the shelf. As well, although it is a result of colour-shift, I like the deep blue-black - almost the near black of space.
Regards
I thought I would comment on some of the discussion taking place.
It's not my place to stifle the discussion between EDG and Trip. I would note that since February is not that far away, I would expect that the decisions on the cover for the core rules have already been made. I could be wrong - Mongoose Matt being the final word and all - but I expect that at this point the discussion is moot.
Of course, we all understand that EDG doesn't think it will sell and Trip thinks differently. I think we're entering dead horse territory on that one.
My own FLGS says that the reprint books do sell well, though they have tapered off since they first appeared. That's all anecdotal, of course. Either CT is great because it sold all those copies originally (hundreds of thousands of copies) and will do so again or it has saturated the market and no one will buy it. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Waaaay back in the olden days, when I was a wee lad, the cover was mysterious; it didn't look like a SF cover, it looked like nothing else on the market. That approach was deliberate, along with the idea to not use 'Star' anywhere in the titles. The approach paid off then, and we'll only have to wait four months to find out whether it will work again.
It's not my place to stifle the discussion between EDG and Trip. I would note that since February is not that far away, I would expect that the decisions on the cover for the core rules have already been made. I could be wrong - Mongoose Matt being the final word and all - but I expect that at this point the discussion is moot.
Of course, we all understand that EDG doesn't think it will sell and Trip thinks differently. I think we're entering dead horse territory on that one.
My own FLGS says that the reprint books do sell well, though they have tapered off since they first appeared. That's all anecdotal, of course. Either CT is great because it sold all those copies originally (hundreds of thousands of copies) and will do so again or it has saturated the market and no one will buy it. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Waaaay back in the olden days, when I was a wee lad, the cover was mysterious; it didn't look like a SF cover, it looked like nothing else on the market. That approach was deliberate, along with the idea to not use 'Star' anywhere in the titles. The approach paid off then, and we'll only have to wait four months to find out whether it will work again.
andrew boulton
Mongoose
msprange said:
I think reusing the old names will be needlessly confusing.
dmccoy1693
Cosmic Mongoose
andrew boulton said:
Forgive me, I'm unsure what you're confused about. If High Guard was the book of ships back in CT and High Guard is the name for the book of ships in Mongoose Traveller, how is that confusing?
andrew boulton
Mongoose
dmccoy1693 said:
First, if someone who knows about Traveller sees it in a shop they may think it's just a CT reprint and ignore it (especially if it has a CT-style cover).
Second, when people are discussing Traveller, and someone mentions, say, High Guard, there will be confusion about which version they mean.
TrippyHippy
Emperor Mongoose
Except that the Traveller reprints are all softback, in landscape and clearly labelled "Reprint", of course.
I'd credit Traveller fans with a bit more perspective skills than that!
I'd credit Traveller fans with a bit more perspective skills than that!
dmccoy1693
Cosmic Mongoose
I think if you tell a retailer, "You know, the new Traveller, from Mongoose," they'll be able to figure it out. :wink:
andrew boulton
Mongoose
TrippyHippy said:
When The Traveller Adventure came out, I didn't buy it 'cos I thought it was - like The Traveller Book - just a reprint of earlier stuff...
So, do you mean that I'll have to wait for some time after I'll get the main book until I'll be able to design ships? That's somewhat bad news, as most other versions of Traveller had a simple ship design system in the core-book to satisfy our gear-heading desires for a while until the expanded design system came out...msprange said:
TrippyHippy
Emperor Mongoose
Knowing the typical release schedule for Mongoose games, you won't have to wait for long after the core rules release.
qstor
Banded Mongoose
Deniable said:
I dislike that. I won't get Mongoose Traveller stuff if its a rehash of CT. From the little I've seen, that's all it appears to be. I'll only get new stuff that adds to the OTU. I won't use the main book for combat or PC generation thats for sure.
I like the B5 RPG material based off of D20. Too bad Mongoose missed the boat on the D20 license for Traveller years ago.
Mike
qstor said:
Even if it is better? Not saying you are wrong, but that is a bit of a blanket statement for something that has not been released yet
qstor said:
We didn't miss the boat, we reviewed T20 intently to see if we could base B5 off of it. We did not proceed because the licence behind T20 was crippled and would have greatly limited what we could do.
