Re: Animist Cults of ST

From: tim_at_...
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 13:35:33 -0000

While Tradetalk, YBoT or Unspoken Word are all good places for these rules to appear on paper they do have a big disadvantage as "ultimate repositries". Not everyone who buys Hero Wars will be aware of them. Not every games shop carries Fanzines (Mine does, but then the owner is a Gloranthan fanatic...), and one of the aims of printing HW in the "Trade Paperback" was to sell it outside of the traditional hobby shops. (Has it worked? Has anyone seen the book for sale in a "regular" bookshop?) People who are introduced to the game through this route might never be exposed the 'Zines at all. The "print life" of the zine is likely to be shorter too. Early editions of TotRM were out of print before RQ went out of print, so the "official" material that was in there was unavailable to the latecomer.

Thats not to say I'd object to seeing any of the material in any of those magazines, but I'd hope to see it subsequently consolidated into a "core book" of some sort. (How about a "Spirit Book" - The New rules for Animists, the Kolat & Earth Witch traditions cut from ST, the Telmori tradition as a sample Hsunchen tradition, expanded Grazer Tradition(s) and maybe sample Praxian or Lunar Spirit Traditions (which will save them from being cut from the future Lunar and Praxian books!)

I can see the Fanzine publishers not wanting the "offical" material they are printing to be simultaneously available on the Internet, in case it hurts sales, or gives the impression that they are just reprinting information from the Website, but in order to stop the material from "vanishing" maybe it should be posted to the web when the following issue is released, the issue containing it goes OOP or after 12 months regardless? (Fanzine purchasers get the advantage of hardcopy, latecomers don't get told "Oh the rules are in a fanzine that's OOP now....")

Powered by hypermail