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A fan podcast celebrating (mostly Swedish) RPGs including, but not limited to: Coriolis; Forbidden Lands; Symbaroum; Tales from the Loop; and, Alien.
Hello, and welcome to episode 287 of Effekt Sole Publisher. I'm Matthew.
Dave:And I'm Dave. And today on today's show, we've got the usual stuff. We've got a little bit of World of Gaming to talk about. A few bits and bobs there that might interest you. And our our main feature is publishing one zero one.
Dave:Matthew is gonna tell us all about how to get yourself on the first step of the ladder if you want to do a bit of self publishing in in the gaming industry, which will be really interesting. And I'm I'm wondering how many how many times you're gonna slag me off for how bad I've been at it in the past. But we will see. We will see.
Matthew:You've not been bad at it at all. In fact, I sing your praises except one fatal
Dave:That's a first. One fatal error. Not not one minor error.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Fair enough. Fair enough. But yeah. So that's that is our lean and mean show for today.
Matthew:Yeah. We can get this in in a tiny tower, can't we? We always do.
Dave:We'll find something else to talk about. We always do. But, yeah, first things first. Do we have any new patrons to thank this week?
Matthew:We do not have any new patrons this week. Although, I do wanna bring up the fact remember, last time, we interviewed I've got my head entirely. What's his name?
Dave:John Hicks. John Hicks.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. And he was saying that somebody had pointed out that he'd got his alien law wrong in Yes. It turns out that our new patron of that very week that I think we welcome to the Discord that very week was the Alien fan that had pointed that out.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. I I think as they described themselves, the Alien fan who's nerdier about Alien than John Hicks is, which is quite a challenge.
Matthew:Well, we should as we discovered, yeah, that that's quite quite a high bar to to cross.
Dave:That is a high bar to get over. But, yeah, he'd he was the one who went back to Free League and said, hang on a minute. This doesn't work. Which I think, absolutely, Thomas would definitely appreciate. Because I guess if we didn't get the fans telling us us, Free League, Fox might.
Dave:Yeah. So or maybe Fox and we almost
Matthew:Fox have missed it themselves.
Dave:Might might might miss it. In which case, yeah, everyone looks a bit of an idiot. Yeah. But yeah. So well spotted.
Dave:Well spotted.
Matthew:Well spotted. And this is the quality of fellow patron that you can join if you join our Patreon. And I remember we we we nagged him to join the Discord, and so he did. And he's been great on the Discord ever since. So Absolutely.
Matthew:Welcome a second time.
Dave:Yeah. And thank you to all our patrons. Yeah.
Matthew:All our patrons, because we can't do this without your support. Right. I think that means it must be time for me to flag up the world of gaming.
Dave:Indeed. Flag up the world of gaming.
Matthew:I'm I'm just pressing a little flag button on my recording device here.
Dave:Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. Fine. Fine.
Dave:Well, mean, you don't have to say out the, like, administrative backroom stuff.
Matthew:No. But if we we we're talk we're little bit behind the scenes on publishing in this episode, so maybe we're a little bit behind the scenes on on podcasting as to at some point, we'll do a how to podcast.
Dave:Yeah. Okay. If anybody's interested in howl. Yeah.
Matthew:Phone your mate up, talk bollocks for an hour, record it, together.
Dave:And and find find against all the odds that some people actually enjoy listening to it. I mean, it's a yeah. I don't know how that happened. But yeah.
Matthew:Right. So, anyway, in terms of talking bollocks, I think the first bollocks is is yours, Dave. This is
Dave:We're not talking about my testicles here, I'd like to say.
Matthew:Alright. Okay. Alright.
Dave:But yeah. So the first thing on the list yesterday, I was just having a little look online, and I came across heroic deeds, deeper dungeons and five e compatibility for Garblag's game, Heroic Deeds, which they kick started originally a couple of years ago.
Matthew:I vaguely remember that. It's a d 12 game, wasn't it, I think?
Dave:Oh, I don't remember. I didn't I didn't back it at the time. Sorry, Pete.
Matthew:No. No. No. I didn't back it either. There's only so many games one can fit in one's life.
Dave:That that is that is right. And I've got too many, so I'm I'm having to actually think about what I'm going to sell. So I'm going get into the realms of vintage, which your wife is going send me like an invite link to, but it never appeared.
Matthew:I I will I will chase you on that one. I I just
Dave:sold I get I can go there anyway, but
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:If you want if she gets a benefit from me joining and her recommending me then
Matthew:I'll I'll make sure. I'll I'll see what she sent it to. But, yes, we I just sold three books, or rather, my wife just sold three of my books yesterday, and so we're gonna wrap them up and put them in the post today. Anyway Yeah.
Dave:So, Heroic Deeds. I think I think it's a d 20 system, but they add things like a deed system for experience and trying to get the old school feel with a, yeah, a more modern set of mechanics. Yeah. So it actually
Matthew:yeah. I think it was d 12 d 12 in the first edition. I think the purpose of this current Kickstarter is to do a five e compatible version of it. So it's d 20 now. But with the theme Oh, yeah.
Dave:They're right. It was a d 12 dice pool. Yeah. You're right.
Matthew:I'm just reading it now, you see. Yeah. That's So am I.
Dave:Again, another insight behind the curtain of how we know so much when we're talking. It's because we're looking it up online as we speak. Anyway, carry on.
Matthew:But the key the key thing is this heroic deeds idea of advancement. Yeah. So you you get it it's class based, and your class gets a number of things that they have to check off effectively. And if they've done this thing five times or four times or whatever, then they can get the fancy footwork advance Yeah. With it yeah.
Matthew:It it looks like a a a fun system. I'm guessing Pete is feeling the not enough people are playing it, and therefore, he needs to expand it into the five e realm to get get
Dave:some A more. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, the the the kickstarter that he did back in 2024 was was was modest.
Dave:He he succeeded, but it was like like a 150 backers for £7,000 of a £5,000 target, which is brilliant. The kickstarter this time is is slightly more ambitious. So aiming for a 10,000 goal, and again, at the moment, they've got 88 backers with fourteen days to go. So they're not quite there yet. So if you are interested in a slightly new take on hero on on on on fantasy role playing, or you like the deeds idea and you would like to see that in your Dungeons and Dragons games, go to Kickstarter.
Dave:Heroic deeds is there. It's got fourteen days to go, and, yeah, give it a little back and and let's get Pete across the line.
Matthew:Yeah. I guess for our listeners, we ought to say, if you've got friends who enjoy five e
Dave:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Put them through.
Matthew:Because I guess this is since this is very much a kind of five e conversion kit, you want to you want to point people towards who are playing five e towards that. I guess most of our audience don't, but good luck, Pete, on on getting the end of your goal and getting that out because that that's that advancement system looks like it could be quite good fun. Now Absolutely. But it's not what everybody's talking about. Everybody currently on I say everybody.
Matthew:Everybody in our social circle on Blue Sky seems to be talking about seven part pact. Mhmm. And seven part pact is a kind of GM less game or rather it's a rotating GM game. But all the players and you can have, get this, up to seven players. See what they did there?
Matthew:And you take on a role as one of the seven great old wizards that pretty much run the world. Very
Dave:is Is this more of a board game than a role model game? Or is this a board element to A melange of the two.
Matthew:Yeah. No. I it's I think it's very much a melange of the two because as one of the seven old wizards that run the world, you have each of you has your own personal board game to play that is like administering your realm.
Dave:Okay.
Matthew:Be it the realm of the dead or whatever. So you've got that board game to play while also working with or maybe sometimes against the other players around the table to do things. And there is still a GM who but that GM rotates in a mechanical way. Can't remember how. Okay.
Matthew:From game to game. And it looks like it's very much a campaign game. So it's not just a one session game. You know, you sit down then for a number of sessions. And yeah.
Matthew:And play it that way. It looks intriguing. It's coming from Steve Jackson Games. It's on not Kickstarter, BackerKit or one of those.
Dave:I'll No.
Matthew:I think
Dave:it is. It is no. It is Kickstarter.
Matthew:It's Kickstarter. Right. Yes. It is Kickstarter. Yeah.
Dave:They're doing they're doing they're doing very well. They've they've smashed their goal already. They've got twenty five days to go. So it's obviously popular. But it's also think there's another is there another company involved called Possum?
Matthew:That yes. Yes. Possum Creek? So I think probably Possum Creek is the and and and I think that might be the company name of somebody who's quite big in one of the bigger APs, like Dimension twenty or something like that.
Dave:Right.
Matthew:Oh, I didn't put that in body gaming, but just we might briefly talk about politics and APs in a bit.
Dave:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. So it's been getting it's been getting quite a lot of chat on one of the interesting things is being a great old wizard kind of implies that you're all male. And to some extent, the game is about toxic masculinity, apparently, according to the chatter. Okay. But that doesn't actually preclude that doesn't actually necessarily mean that everybody does have to be male, but but it's interesting.
Matthew:It's it it looks like an interesting game. I guess check out the Kickstarter. I'll put a link in the show notes, because I always knew it was a Kickstarter. It was never anything else it was on. And yeah.
Matthew:And check it out for yourselves. Looks Yeah. Bloody gorgeous.
Dave:It does look nice, isn't it? Yeah. Again, it's not one that I'm good at backing.
Matthew:No. No. Do you see the There prices of are a lot of
Dave:components. I haven't even looked, actually.
Matthew:And the backer level is quite high. It is almost in the realm of invisible sun cost.
Dave:Oh, wow.
Matthew:They're back.
Dave:Okay. So you're you're kind of yeah. Kind of your entry level past the PDF is a $150. Yeah. So that is, yeah, that is quite pricey, isn't it?
Dave:But I mean, they're doing well. They've got, like, $370 pledged already, so that's not putting off many people by
Matthew:the way. And you're getting a lot of books for that. There's
Dave:there's You're getting a lot of stuff, aren't you? Yeah.
Matthew:Every every wizard has their own rule book, apparently, and their own board game, effectively. So so there's a lot of stuff that you get for your 150. But, yeah, it'll be interesting
Dave:too. Yeah. It's an interesting trend, isn't it, that games are now you know, the the the innovation in role playing games is now looking at the role of the GM a lot more. Yeah. And either taking it out entirely and having it as a GM less game that either the players share the duties like in in in in seven part pact or whether something else fulfills that role wherever you need it.
Dave:And I'm I'm a bit I mean, I've not So I have played GM less games, or pretty much GM less games. I mean, 10 Candles is the one I keep coming to. Mhmm. It's a superb game, but it's a one it's definitely a one off thing, it's it's definitely a very specific kind of game experience, which I love, but I wouldn't want to play every week. So I'm just it could be like what was that?
Dave:My brain Children of Time. Again, I think it's they're they're they're touting that as as a GM less game. And again, I'll be interested so I need to again, it's particularly interesting for children of of time, as you, you know, as people all know, you and I were interested in exploring getting that IP. I think the the way that we were perhaps looking at it in the first instance, I mean, we didn't do a lot of development, but we had a few ideas, was taking it in a different way to the direction that Robin Rook and Deckard have taken it. Yeah.
Dave:Now, I expect it I expect it will be very good, because Robin Rook and Deckard are very good. Mhmm. But I but I wonder just how some of these innovations are going to going to land and how well they're going to stick. It'll be interesting to see to see how they how they how they manage that innovation and still keep the game as engaging as, you know, a a a kind of standard game can be where you have a GM who is ensuring that engagement is still, you know, is maintained. That'd be interesting to see.
Matthew:Yeah. I was just thinking, actually, that we we have a game that, although I'm the permanent GM, we could effectively rotate GMs on Spectaculars.
Dave:On spectaculars. Yeah.
Matthew:Because what we could have done, if we if we wanted to devote, if you like, all our sessions to spectaculars, each of us could have been GM for one of the series. So currently, I'm doing Streetlight Nights. But, you know, you could be the GM for the galactic scale one or whatever. And Andy could run one of the other ones. And then every session, we do an episode from a different story.
Matthew:And sometimes, you could do crossovers and things like that. But anyway, they are just it just suddenly dawned on me that that rotating GM thing is a thing that you don't necessarily even need a game written especially for it.
Dave:Well, I think the way Spectaculars is written works really well for that because, again, you know, you you you collectively build the story and the and the environment and
Matthew:Yes.
Dave:The law and all the rest of it as you go through the game. So you the, you know, the the outcomes or the the situations you're going to face, they're preset a little bit because obviously you've got your your your one or two page summary of what's going on. But actually, the detail of that is not preset at all, and you then decide that either with a dice roll or with discussion amongst the group. And so actually, something like Spectacular is is is written very well to to be a rotating GM game because it seems to me anyway, you can correct me if I'm wrong, that there isn't, like, an overarching campaign with a huge secret that the GM knows from the start. Well,
Matthew:definitely not with a huge secret that I know now. I wonder whether as I get to the end of the the the series, as it were, because we're I'm going through a pad of adventures. Yeah. So it's a low prep game as well in that you read a couple of pages off this pad and make a couple of decisions and you're sorted. Or even get the players to make some decisions Yeah.
Matthew:And you're sorted. Maybe when I get to the end of the pad, it'll say, and this was the plot all along. I'm like, oh, that surprised me as much as it will the players. But we'll we'll wait. Yeah.
Matthew:So then
Dave:but then that way, you can you can share the GM ing duties if
Matthew:you wanted
Dave:to of that particular story because you're not you're not revealing something to the players that is going to damage the playing experience
Matthew:No. By GM ing.
Dave:So That's very true.
Matthew:Yeah. Anyway, talking of games that we play, we played around the table last week last weekend, in fact. We played
Dave:l five r?
Matthew:L five And German Tony is our GM for that, and he's our GM every time we play it. We don't rotate the GM there.
Dave:But But not for the games. Nope.
Matthew:Tony took us all out to sea on some strangely Gaijin vessel, which we didn't approve of at all, being loyal Wakagani samurai. However, a a deck plan was required. Tony started sketching out a I'm gonna be honest here because it's on the floor, just opposite where I'm sitting, having fallen off the table, a not very good deck plan of a ship. And I went, hold on. I've got some deck plans of ships in my Pirate Borg starter set.
Matthew:So Indeed. Brief break when I got the starter boards Pirate Borg starter set, picked out the bigger of the two ships that have got deck plans in there, slapped out of the table, and we had a great game. That worked really well, didn't it?
Dave:Bob's uncle. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And and Tony is is kind of, you know, well known and renowned for his shit maps.
Dave:I mean, he said that his shit maps weren't very good. Let's let's be honest. They're But they do give you enough, as a player, theatre of the mind to fill in all the gaps. Yeah. So maybe they're not maybe they're actually just they're elegantly sufficient maps.
Dave:That's what they are. It's an elegant sufficiency of detail on his
Matthew:map. So let's see. Maybe. Maybe. But anyway, what I wanted to write was how good the Limithron ship maps are.
Dave:Yes. Yeah. They were very that was very good, isn't it?
Matthew:Yeah. And then I wanted to segue that into Limithron are doing a pirate map collection on Kickstarter. So this isn't a Freely associated thing as far as I can see. Even though Freely co publish Pirate Borg alongside Libython, this looks like it's all Libython's work, but it is a great big box of maps and counters, a little bit like you get in the starter set, but many more of them. I will put a link in the show notes.
Matthew:And moving on, because we're running out of time. You're friend of mine. Yep. Go on.
Dave:Let's get on with it.
Matthew:Tell me what your best contributor, Shana Jermaine, is writing a new game based on Rebecca Roanhorse's I'm gonna call it pre Columbian fantasy series between Earth and Sky. Mhmm. This is interesting. It's a series of books I hadn't heard of before, but I I did ask about them in our Discord. And one of our one of our patrons, Michael, says he's very much enjoyed the entire trilly, an entire trilogy.
Matthew:And I've read the or I've not read. I've been listening on Audible because I thought this sounds interesting. So I downloaded it last night, and I started listing it to it in bed. The first chapter I thought was gonna have a very horrific shock ending and it didn't have the shock ending I thought, but it did have another, I think, very horrific shock ending. It Got me hooked.
Matthew:I started going on to the second chapter, but then fell asleep because I was listening to it as I was going to sleep. So I need to start the second chapter again. But, yeah, I'm intrigued by it. I'm intrigued by the setting. I'll let you do some talking now, Dave.
Dave:That's okay. So I I mean, I haven't heard of this series before. I had a very quick look on Wikipedia to just get a sense of what it was about. And it yeah. It sounds really interesting.
Dave:Yeah. Obviously, Monte Cook Games have a long storied record of producing excellent games. And collaborating with Coyote and Crow again, I mean, I think this this this set of stories is very, you know, it's kind of set in that sort of sort of sort of native culture. You know, I I I don't get the sense that it's, like, in the modern world. It's in its own in its own world, I think.
Matthew:Yeah. And I don't even think it's in this is I don't think it's in historical fantasy. Think it's Yeah. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. In in the real world, but in their own their own version. But, yes, it looks it looks interesting. They are they are they're up and back kits. They are not launching it until later in the year.
Dave:They're it says September 26. So you can go on to back kit and register your interest to get notified if if this is your bag. Again, as with many things, I I I'm I'm not backing very much stuff at the moment for, you know, financial and space reasons. I do need to start clearing some space in my house, which I'm sure will please my wife very much if I start selling stuff. But yeah, it looks it looks really interesting, and all I've heard about the Between the Earth and Sky books has been very positive.
Dave:So yeah, go and have a look on Backekit. Put your name down and get notified when they launch.
Matthew:Cool. Now, you've you've had something delivered that I haven't had delivered, but I have had shipping.
Dave:You're notified.
Matthew:Notification.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. So I got I got my review copy of Invincible through the door yesterday, and I have to say, I'm very pleasantly surprised. It's it's absolutely lovely. For some reason, I kind of thought it was gonna be coming in a Morgborg, Outgunned style book.
Dave:I don't quite know where I got that idea from, but it's come in a full proper sized RPG game book. The artwork, as I guess you would expect, because it's all based on the comic, is is super. The the layout is great. The smell the smell is really good. Obviously, I'm a man who requires a good smell test.
Dave:And it's very I think I said before, it's very reminiscent, very nostalgic for me of the feel of Phil and Zivigilantes in its look in its look and feel. Obviously, the mechanics are gonna be very different, but as a as a very strong nostalgia blast for me, it I'm I'm very impressed with it. It looks great. I think that it's it's slightly simplified, so you have your attributes, but you don't have skills. You know, you have powers and you have talents, and then you roll your attribute dice as as a dice pull to see how you succeed.
Dave:You can push. The problem with pushing is stress. I haven't looked into exactly how they make stress work in this one. I think that maybe disappointed me slightly, because I thought they could have done something maybe a bit more interesting Super heroic. Well Yeah.
Dave:I mean, maybe stress works works well for it, but I they're usually stressing quite a lot of their games now, and and I just I just thought maybe this is an opportunity for something else.
Matthew:Yeah. I I Yeah.
Dave:Go
Matthew:on. So Invincible as a storyline is quite stressy. So it may be good for that, but not necessarily good for the widest superhero genre. I've gotta say, it's gonna be hard for me to find a better superhero game or a more enjoyable one than Spectaculars.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. So actually, think I like it. Stress, I think you have a you have a health and you have a resolve
Matthew:Mhmm.
Dave:Stat, and stealth takes points off your resolve. Yeah. Stealth stress takes points off your resolve. So, it's kind of a damning, you know, you can then push as many times as you have points in resolve minus one, unless you want to get broken on resolve. So, fairly, yeah, very straightforward.
Dave:If you're familiar with, yeah, other free league games, this will be very familiar in in mechanics as well. I didn't look in great detail. I only had a flick through. I haven't looked in great detail about how the powers work. But, anyway Yes.
Dave:It almost made me want to have have a play. Not in the Invincibles world, I don't think, because that I know nothing about it and it there's a lot to you know, it goes a lot further than Earth as far as I can I can gather, which again takes it into, you know, more sci fi fantasy than superhero fantasy? But that's just me. But it looks lovely. Maybe I will get it to the table one day.
Dave:The other thing, they they they use our approach to for reputation. So you have a reputation score, and when you turn up somewhere and you roll your reputation dice, if you get any sixes, somebody's recognised you. Cool. A nice simple way of of managing managing reputation. I like that.
Matthew:Yeah. But, yeah Always that how was there always that a hangover from
Dave:Forbidden Lands.
Matthew:Forbidden Lands.
Dave:I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure. I might
Matthew:It's so long since I've been running Forbidden Lands. I've forgotten that, but that might be a rule that we get from Forbidden Lands.
Dave:Forbidden Lands. But I might just have a quick check whilst we're on.
Matthew:We don't wanna claim
Dave:innovations. Because I felt like that was our innovation. But it's it's quite possible it isn't. You're absolutely right.
Matthew:Yeah. No. I'm I'm just wondering. I mean, we've expanded it a bit to then have both fame and reputation, as it were. But which I don't wanna take
Dave:I don't wanna take credit for
Matthew:Oh, in fact, hold on. Hold on. Is it from Coriolis? You got a reputation score in Coriolis.
Dave:So that that is how reputation works in Forbidden Lands. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Not our innovation at all.
Dave:It does it does say you must be you must be introduced by name or have a truly distinctive appearance for this to happen, which we've Mhmm. Scrapped. We don't have that. But, yeah. And, yeah.
Dave:So, my my blase claiming of credit for something was absolutely wrong, and I recant that entirely.
Matthew:Okay. That at least is truth coming out of this podcast, which is full of truth. Full of truth.
Dave:Full of some full of something. That's for sure. Full of grim.
Matthew:Yeah. So shall we move on to our feature?
Dave:I think we should. Absolutely.
Matthew:It all started when Jed, one of our patrons, said in our patron exclusive Discord, if only there was an award winning game designer stroke publisher who could offer a master class on kick starting and publishing your own gaming product. Now kick starter is a whole different thing, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. But then friend of the show and reg regular year zero but then friend of the show and regular year zero and especially tales of the old west convention GM, Dan, are something similar. It struck me that while Jed is an accomplished publisher already on drive thru RPG and an excellent professional layout artist, there are many people like Dan who are neither. And Dan ran two reportedly excellent tales of the Old West adventures that I think deserve a wider audience.
Matthew:So it is with people like Dan in mind that I put together this introduction, 01/2001 to becoming an RPG publisher. So first of all, follow the link in the show notes to our license agreement and branding download. Read through that. It's a pretty open license. Given the rapid growth of AI generated slop, we might amend it soon to specifically forbid that, but otherwise, there is a lot of flexibility.
Matthew:Then, more practically, decide where you want to sell your product. Let's keep things simple at first. Plan to produce only PDF products to begin with. If this really is your first toe dip into publishing, you want to minimize risk and build a reputation so that if enough people like your work, they will demand print products and support you through crowdfunding to produce the splendid hardback you always wanted. Drive thru is the most popular place, but is it the best?
Matthew:There is that new Australian startup, which we'll link to in the show notes, rpgtrader.com, which is getting a lot of praise from creators and reported sales for indie publishers too. I personally don't have any time for itch.io, which a lot of independent publishers use because it's really for computer games, and I think that discoverability is shite. Given that we are on drive thru and neither itch nor RPG Trader, you might be safe to assume that people looking for tales of the Old West stuff would look first on drive through. There is nothing to stop you signing up as a publisher with two or even three platforms. But be warned, drive through at least take a larger cut if they're not your exclusive platform.
Matthew:Anyhow, get yourself set up as a publisher on one, two, or all three of them. I'm not gonna tell you how to do this because they all have help pages, but I know Drive thru has a helpful Discord community. It will take you a bit of time, so you should probably start doing it before you have anything to sell. Now let's turn to your product. You might not yet have got it in a publishable state, but you should have a bunch of text.
Matthew:You're going to need to make those notes or that dense essay and make it into something that is accessible to read. And for many, that's the scariest thing. Don't worry, though. I am here to hold your hand through the process. The first thing is to count or estimate the number of words that you think you will have.
Matthew:Then divide this by 500 to get an estimate of pages that you will need. Is that number divisible by four? If not, add enough to make it up to a number that is. Why four? Because that's how books are made.
Matthew:A sheet of paper folded in two makes four pages. Now you might be thinking that we recommend you start off making PDFs. You might also be thinking that PDFs are not made of folded paper. So why am I banging on about making sure your total number of pages is divisible by four? To which I will reply that you will want this book to be a success, and successful books might get to be printed later.
Matthew:So if you are disciplined about it now, you will be rewarded when you hit the big time. The next thing you want to do is lay out a flat plan. Imagine or even draw a front cover single page and a back cover, and then between them, the whatever number of two page spreads. The front cover will be just that, your store icon, the thing that attracts people to your product. But write down what you are going to fit where on the other pages.
Matthew:Front matter often includes a title page. This is inside, not the cover, which features the full title, a subtitle, the author, the publisher, maybe a dedication. A brief note that the author is thanking or honoring and somewhere a copyright statement, which includes a copyright symbol, publication details, and an ISBN. Maps. Do they need a whole page or half a page?
Matthew:Then look at your text so far and the things you want to add and go through noting which goes on which page. The intro here, the characters here, etcetera. You might decide you need more pages, and that's okay. It was always going to change. The 500 words per pacing was only ever to get you started.
Matthew:But remember, if you add or take away any pages, do so four at a time. This flat plan is not set in stone. It's a working document, a useful thing to refer back to, but also a thing that you might change as you work through the layout. It's useful to have though as you're thinking about illustrations. Please, please don't use AI to illustrate your work.
Matthew:It might seem free, but it comes at a cost to working artists and to the environment. There are plenty of public domain images of the Old West that you can use if you spend a little time searching online. There are images from the Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons, etcetera. Or get an artistic friend to do something. Maybe do a deal where you and they split the income from sales.
Matthew:Layout can look like a scary job, but it's not. If you use a word processor, you can do layout. Hell, even Dave did a reasonable job on his Coriolis planetarium, though he did it on 41 pages. And he's useless at that sort of thing. He made that document in Word, and the truth is that's all you need.
Matthew:You really don't need to be paying Adobe Kidney for InDesign, and you don't even need to invest time in learning something like Affinity unless you want to. Using a word processor works especially well for Tales of the Old West because we deliberately set up a precedent of using a simple traditional two column design for the core book. So you can make something look very similar in Word without too much fancy InDesign functionality. You're unlikely to have access to the same typefaces, of course, Clarendon and Caslon, because we license those, but there are plenty of similar typefaces you can use. Georgia, for example, is freely available.
Matthew:Indeed, there is every chance that you already have it on your computer. Two key tools to making the job of layout easier are parent or master pages and paragraph styles, and to a lesser extent, character styles. With parent pages, you can layout elements that appear on every page, like page numbers. The real trick though is to use paragraph styles to define body text, headings of every level, lists, how the text in tables appears, all in advance. Then after you've flowed the text in, you can simply go through allocating paragraph styles to each.
Matthew:If you just then if you decide you want to use an entirely different font for, say, main headings, you edit the paragraph style and all the main headings change automatically. You can use character styles for things like, for example, in our core book, putting talent names or what we call level four headings in small caps. But it's hard to explain. So I've spent a little time creating a template for you to use. And to make sure it's accessible to all, even Linux users, I have created it in the free to all LibreOffice software.
Matthew:You can configure LibreOffice to look like your favorite word processing software. It even opens, though it doesn't look as good, in Microsoft Office. So if you really want to use that, you can. I've left helpful notes all over the template too. So if you want to have a go, download the template from effectpublishing.com.
Matthew:Make sure you have Georgia on your computer, Download LibreOffice if you don't have it already, and fire it up. We would love to see what you produce. Obviously, this is written with a mind to encouraging people to produce their own tales of the Old West supplement using our using our license, the made in the Old West license. I I only realized that listening back to it and realizing, hold on. I just launched into first of all, check out the licensing arrangement.
Matthew:You don't if you're doing your own stuff, mate, you don't need to come to
Dave:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:If you've got your own, I don't know, brand new superhero game or something, then, obviously, you don't need to check out our lives. There will be a link to it in the show notes if you're if you're, you know, if you're just introducing stuff that is compatible with Charles of York West.
Dave:Yeah. Cool. No. That's a really good chat. There's a a couple of things I'll just sort of, you know, make an observation on.
Dave:I mean, firstly, yes. Well, when I was doing the planetarium, I didn't have a handy how to guide to help me. So, I didn't even think about the number of pages. I just did the content. So if somebody had told me make it divisible by four, I'd have made it divisible by four.
Dave:But nobody did. So it's your own silly fault for not telling me. But, yeah. I mean, it's
Matthew:I I feel I've brought it up in this podcast many, many
Dave:times Yeah. But that was long before many, many times before.
Matthew:Okay.
Dave:Anyway.
Matthew:Okay.
Dave:Anyway. Or as usual, I don't really listen to what you're saying and just do do my own thing anyway. But I mean, I I mean, for me, all this kind of stuff is a bit of, like it's a bit of a dark art. I mean, I I don't really know where to start. So so, you know, this is this is a really good, you know, first step on the ladder for somebody who who doesn't really know what they're doing and and, you know, give them a a pointer about how to go about doing it.
Dave:And some, yeah, and some handy tips for obvious mistakes that those of us who aren't trained in this kind of thing would very easily make. But no, that's it was really good. No, I thought it was excellent. I did I think so when you talk about the number the the word number for pages, I think actually, our estimate for Tales of Old West ended up being 400 rather than 500 per word per page. But I think 500 was the standard we'd been advised earlier No.
Dave:By the likes of Middiffian.
Matthew:Actually, it was 700 was the standard
Dave:we've been advised. No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. No, I'm pretty sure it's
Matthew:400. But we ended up Yeah. I mean, we've been
Dave:having the conversation with Chris and others. Yeah. But I think we ended up with 400 was our was our That's certainly the target I've been working on when I've been doing page estimates.
Matthew:Cool.
Dave:Yeah. But yeah, I mean it's up to, you know, that number isn't set in stone, obviously. It depends on how you want to present your your text, and how you want how much space you want on the page, and how many how much art and imagery you want, and all that kind of stuff. So, it will be it will vary from from product to product, absolutely.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. You're not boring me, Dave.
Dave:No more than usual. Hope I do I do intend to bore you, frankly.
Matthew:And we we we intentionally had quite a lot of white space in Tales of the Old West because, a, we wanted to have quite a lot of white space, but also we wanted to make the we wanted to use a relatively old fashioned typeface, a serif typeface and they are his we have learned that there it's relatively challenging to people with dyslexia and stuff like that. Yeah. And so we've got it quite large and quite spacey to make it a bit more accessible. Yeah. And so, there are decisions you could make, but I guess if you're trying to follow our lead and make something that looks a bit like it tells the old Westbrook, then, yeah, maybe 400 is a better estimate than five
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the other things I'd say so with all with all of these things, and I'm I'm not I'm not really accusing you of this, although maybe a tiny little bit. There is there is a sometimes the the the the writer or creator can have a an assumption of previous knowledge on the person reading it. So the one thing that I picked out here was towards the end, you said, after you've flowed the text in, and everything, how the fuck do I flow the text in?
Dave:What's all that about?
Matthew:Copy and paste the text in.
Dave:So again, I mean yeah. So I just thought I'd I'd I'd flag that out because I thought it is is it just copy and paste where you want it?
Matthew:Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're absolutely right because
Dave:because I'm
Matthew:sure you've
Dave:talked about I'm sure you've talked about, like, things like InDesign or, you know, Adobe Yeah. Where you press a button and it flows the text in for you or something. I was wondering whether there's a technical thing you need to do or whether this is simply means taking the text from your text document and putting it into your
Matthew:No. That's a that's a that's a worthy catch. I mean, copy and paste the text in. Yeah. There there are the flowing is a thing that that can be done.
Matthew:It's a kind of generic term. It doesn't there's not a flow button, but there is
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:There is a way of flowing text into DGP programs, which basically means that it creates pay you you kind of say, put the text in here, and it creates enough pages for all the text to go over, which Yeah. Generally doesn't happen. Well, it does happen kind of like that in word processing, but
Dave:Right.
Matthew:But they're formatted pages in DTP.
Dave:It basically saves saves
Matthew:you I bunch of should have used
Dave:it Saves you a bunch of time when it when you're doing that, presumably. It's a it's a labor saving
Matthew:Oh, saves me a bunch of time. I will argue that and and people who know how to use DTP programs, it saves a bunch of time. But some some people, it doesn't do that. DTP stands for? Desktop publishing.
Dave:Desktop publishing. There you go. Another But
Matthew:you don't need any
Dave:of that. Another another assume knowledge.
Matthew:Word processor.
Dave:Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I kind of got that sense from what you were saying about the fact that you could even do it my candid way of using Word if you wanted to.
Matthew:Yeah. I remember. This is a long time ago,
Dave:but I You did a lot remember you work say to make that good though, didn't you?
Matthew:Can you teach me how to use I can't remember. Affinity or in InDesign. It must
Dave:have InDesign. It was. Yeah.
Matthew:And I said, well, I can. But
Dave:Well, I think you kind of said no.
Matthew:Have you got three years?
Dave:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I did have a look at it thinking, I'm gonna teach myself this, because I'm interested in this kind of stuff.
Dave:I think I might be quite good at it. And I looked at it, and I just turned it off. Oh, fuck yeah. I need someone else to do it. I do not have that amount of time in my life to learn how to do that stuff to the level I would need to do it to do it well.
Matthew:Yeah. And that is that's that's a key point. I think most people know their word processor better than they know this. Desktop publishing tools like Affinity and InDesign are great if you put the work in and if you've got the time, there's nothing to stop you doing it. I'll kind of discourage people to do it.
Matthew:But if they're seriously, if you're sitting around saying, I have got all summer to learn this, and I'm going to make that my objective. Yeah. Then fill your boots. Yeah. Lots of DTP people have done that.
Matthew:Learn to use it properly. And the thing that gets me is the number of people who say they can do layout, and I find they haven't defined their paragraph styles. Really upsets me.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:So that's the thing. If you're going to learn how to do these things, start off by learning paragraph styles and how to edit those.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Mean, I would like to I would like to know how to do it. I would love to know how to do it. But again, I just absolutely don't have the time.
Matthew:But again, of course, you could use, you know, there's paragraph styles in Word and stuff like that.
Dave:Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Matthew:There's no reason why you shouldn't use that. What gets me is where people go, right, I've gone through the book, you know, and every every word in bold, I've bolded or whatever. That that irritates me.
Dave:As opposed to doing this. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I've learned I've learned some of the basic stuff about how to produce a text that is easier to then put into into layout.
Matthew:Yeah. Actually, of course, we're working with Freely. First of I would moan at you, but now Freely could moan at you in a slight Of course, the issue is every publisher has their own way. They want their text presented.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:But now you're doing a lot plainer text with a lot less formatting in what you're doing there that won't screw up the formatting when it's floating. Yeah. Exactly. When it's copied into the into the document.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:And and So it sounds like saying
Dave:So anyone can do that. There's just a bunch of conventions you need to follow. It's really easy.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. And it's just a bit of discipline. And knowing
Matthew:knowing knowing the right convention. When you've got an idea about whether heading should be, you know, a main heading or a subheading or whatever, don't format it as such in in your manuscript. Do things like h one that says Exactly. Top heading. Yeah.
Matthew:Or h two or h three.
Dave:Precisely. Yeah. And it's easy as well. I mean, that makes life easier because it then does formatting for you. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. Cool. Cool. No. Good stuff, mate.
Dave:Well done. Yeah. Excellent. I hope I hope Dan and others will will go and make great use of it. So yeah.
Matthew:Cool. So Dan has I I thought I ought to check with him. I produced this template for him
Dave:Yes. A while back.
Matthew:Yeah. And I said, you know, have you started using it? And how's it going on? He's using it in Word. It's designed for, as I say, LibreOffice.
Matthew:And it's my first time using LibreOffice. But that's got a bunch of functionality that is really good fun.
Dave:Right. Okay.
Matthew:Like, you can make a nice front cover. I have, in the template, made a nice old book looking linen covered front cover for template for people to adapt to their own use. That doesn't come across when you do it in Word, sadly, because that Right. Sort of page background functionality doesn't work the same way. But, anyway, I I said I'd hold Dan's hand as he gets into doing that.
Matthew:And if anything else comes out of that conversation, maybe we'll return to this topic and talk about what we learned with Dan and I doing it together.
Dave:Yeah. That sounds great.
Matthew:Well, rather me making Dan do it, but making him learn how to do it.
Dave:Yeah. No. Cool. Cool. Good stuff.
Dave:Good stuff. Right. Well, we've probably talked enough for one day, don't you think?
Matthew:Yes. Yes.
Dave:What's what's the plan for next time?
Matthew:I'm not entirely sure what the plan for next time is, but it might well be a return to Coriolis and 3rd Horizon. Did you see Kevin's messages to us on Facebook? I didn't. Your your
Dave:It was a while ago, wasn't it? It was a couple of weeks ago, at least.
Matthew:Yes.
Dave:Yes. So I did, but I it didn't lodge. So, yes. Absolutely. Let's get Kevin back on.
Dave:He was great.
Matthew:Yeah. I I well, we need to check out time is with him and when he's doing his Kickstarter and stuff like But so it might not be the next episode, but it might be. So that's what I'm gonna say now.
Dave:Okay. Cool. And if it isn't him, we'll think of something else equally entertaining and insightful to talk about. Yes. Cool.
Dave:Good stuff. Well, in that case, have a great couple of weeks everyone, and it's goodbye from me.
Matthew:And it's goodbye from him.
Dave:And may the icons bless your adventures.