Forums: Forums -> It's Been Awhile...

Wow. Almost five months since my last post in here. I'm getting *bad* about this.

I've been a busy beaver with my campaign setting document. It's becoming tantalizingly close to finished or near-finished status - formatting is being worked out, remaining sections being filled in, nebulous rules being fleshed out and clarified.

In fact, the largest task left (soon, at any rate) is going to be artwork for it.

Thanks to a closed (useless) bank account, I've got a few hundred dollars in liquid assets right now. My mom got a coupon certificate thingy to the University bookstore as part of her work. Put the two together, and I got a copy of Adobe CS3 (yes, the WHOLE Creative Suite) for a final cost of about $300 after the certificate. So... when I'm done with my tinkering in Microsoft Word, I'll be taking the Teltesh CS into Adobe In-Design and see what I can do with it.

But the CS... it's coming along nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I'm wondering where to go after I do finish it.

I could try getting it published through Wizards. Unfortunately, that has a whole host of problems associated with it: Teltesh is a pretty big departure from 'standard' D&D, and I slew a few golden cows along the way. The document is enormous already - even in a half-finished state it's 300 pages, and Wizo's doesn't seem to like printing large books, especially anything over 200 pages (it drastically increases printing costs, I imagine). But my biggest concern is two-fold. One, Wizards does NOT like to open things up for OGL... and I've decided to make virtually everything in the Teltesh setting OGL. Two, if I do submit Teltesh for consideration to Wizards... I'll never be able to do anything with it again. Wizards has a strict gag policy about things submitted to it; even if they ultimately decide not to use what they receive, the creator(s) are still legally obligated not to do anything. Just look at the volume they received as part of their campaign contest, and even the losers were basically forced to write off their own IP to corporate interests. And if they do decide to take it, well, you're still not allowed to do anything with it - the information gets locked up into Wizo's R&D, and on any further products they don't exactly fast-track input from the creator (look at Eberron... hell, look at FR, or even Greyhawk - how often do they get the original creators back into the R&D process?).

I could try getting it published third-party. That has the problem of "it's not WotC," which would pretty quickly gimp any potential audience (say what you want to the contrary, but whose gaming books wind up in your local Borders or Barnes&Nobles? Ain't White Wolf or Legends and Lairs). I'd be more likely to get a fair shot at publication... but then, I might not. Third-party seems to exist in its own little universe sometimes.

There's also the online option. I couldn't sell such an enormous document online - no one's going to pay money for a pdf of an unpublished CS (especially if they're already inclined to piracy). And there's still the issue of reaching an audience; I think I could possibly count on the good folks here to support me a little, but beyond that I dunno. It would give me the greatest control over my own work, but at the cost of reaching everyone I'd like to reach. And, honestly, it just wouldn't stoke the ego as much as a printed book with my name on the cover.

Basically it just comes down to choosing whether or not to get screwed or remain obscure. My ego would like to see it go through Wizo's, just for the opportunity to walk into a major bookseller and see my work there on the shelf. But that same ego doesn't want to see years of personal, heart-fueled work crushed by being locked into Hasbro/Wizo corporate hell for the rest of eternity.

Horns of the dilemma. [WOMBAT] it all if I can't figure out which end to get gored by.