DwD Studios
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FrontierSpace RPG update
Tue, 01/24/2012 - 11:14am | 
Bill Logan
For those of you who have been asking about it, the FrontierSpace RPG is coming along nicely, but we made a design choice: divide the monstrous book up into 3 separate softbound books...
- a light player's handbook (everything needed to create, play, and develop a character)
- a technology handbook (all the weapons, defenses, gear, vehicles, buildings, robots, computers, and spaceships you can hope for!)
- a crunchier referee's handbook (all the rules and optional stuff)
This choice has nothing to do with profit, and has everything to do with presentation. New players might be potentially frightened by a 400 page behemoth, even though half of it is tech/equipment. Also, the majority of the Referee's stuff no player really needs to see, so why have it in the face of the players? Would promote rules-lawyering and contest the design paradigm of an authoritative hosting game master. So there it is... have to commission more cover art, etc. Blah.
Although this was our design choice for the core game product, what are your comments about also offering a large single core rulebook, maybe hard-cover?
Tags: 
A 400-page book can be a problem, both as a hard copy and a pdf...
If it is a hard copy, better make sure you have a good publisher. I have too many hard back RPG books that fell apart after a few times turning the pages. The bigger the book, the more difficult the work can survive being handled by players (bending back the book, stuffing it into backpacks, etc.).
As a pdf, it can be a real problem to load, especially for older computers. If a master book is warranted, I would suggest that there should be an option to have the work broken up into separate pdf's for each chapter (like Paizo Publishing) as well as a big PDF...
Just my thoughts.
This looks awesome, one book or three doesnt matter to me. Any ideas of when it will be ready?
Having the option to buy three books AND a single book would be terrific.
I'm not turned off by a 400 page book... but its not a good idea because when actual play occurs you want one book behind the GM screen and another on the side of the players.
Will you offer the game in PDF ? When will it be available ?