Playtesting Printing

[Sarim Rune]

Hello,

I need to get some playtest copies out to my playtesters. I want a very small handful of them for a Live game. Say 10-20 of them.
Obviously I don't need any sort of professional publishing. But what I do want is a book format rather than this whole, printing it out on my Ink Jet printer and handing it the playtesters.
Does anybody have a suggestion? I was thinking of getting them sprial bound but I'm not sure how much that would cost and if it's an effective method or not. (Like do they use tougher paper so it doesn't all just rip?).
The book is currently sitting at 210+ pages.
And cost effective would be ideal.

I would appreciate any help you can give.

[Lord Iron Wolf]

Here's a few ideas,

Go to a copy shop and copy your master on three hole drilled paper and double side it. Leave an inch to inch and a half margin for the paytesters to write in. Put extra paper in the back for the playtesters to write on in the back of the notebook . If you don't have a table of contents, use numbered tabs to seperate sections.

If you will be rewriting and then inserting new material as you improve it, a 3 ring binder is hard to beat. Get the binders with a clear sheet on the front so you can insert a colored front cover and spine sheet. If you want to go fancy, put a back blurb for the back cover.

As an alternative, I would go with plastic coil, a vinyl back and a clear front cover with a full color sheet under the front cover. It 's roughly the same as the full cost of a three ring binder and inserts and it looks more professional but it is hard to insert new material.

Keep all your reciepts, they will come in handy when you become a business and have write-offs for research and development. (I hope you're doing this already!):D

[Sarim Rune]

I looked into a spiral binding and everything looks great. Thanks.

[NPC Chris D]

Originally posted by Sarim Rune
Hello,

I need to get some playtest copies out to my playtesters. I want a very small handful of them for a Live game. Say 10-20 of them.
Obviously I don't need any sort of professional publishing. But what I do want is a book format rather than this whole, printing it out on my Ink Jet printer and handing it the playtesters.
Does anybody have a suggestion? I was thinking of getting them sprial bound but I'm not sure how much that would cost and if it's an effective method or not. (Like do they use tougher paper so it doesn't all just rip?).
The book is currently sitting at 210+ pages.
And cost effective would be ideal.

I would appreciate any help you can give.

Well, you've said below that spiral works for you; still,
others reading this thread may want to check out
InstantPublisher (http://www.instantpublisher.com). They have a minimum order of 25 books, but the prices are
fairly reasonable for that (~$15 each for 256 page, 8.5x11,
and they offer perfect, spiral, and three-ring binders), which
is probably at least competitive with copyshop prices.

Chris Dicely

[Sarim Rune]

fairly reasonable for that (~$15 each for 256 page, 8.5x11,

Hmm, I looked into Staple (in Canada, of course) and it looks to be about $7.80 (CDN) per book. The book I've got is 185 pages, but double side will half the actual number of pages. Then a binding with a stock card front and back brings it to that price.
So it should work out to $5.2 US. That's not bad at all. Of course it's pretty low quality but for playtesters it should be fine.

[Sarim Rune]

I looked a little more at that site. The one advantage is that they give you a perfect binding. To me that is a lot more professional looking than a sprial binding.

But it's still US pricing, and I can get that sort of stuff cheaper in Canada.

[Lord Iron Wolf]

Just a few notes, you will want to give yourself an inner margin of at least .625 inches (5/8) and I would suggest an inch to be safe. Be sure to use mirror margins and leave some area for the playtesters to write in. I might do 2/3rds of a page for live text and the outer 1/3rd draw light lines down the page to allow the playtesters to make notes it.

Be sure you have an email address in the book that they can contact when they have a question and ask for any home rules they come up with.

Your first page in a book might be a letter of instructions for what you need and a thank you note.

Try to get some illustrations in the book too just to give some flavor.

[Sarim Rune]

The letter of instruction and thank you note is a good idea. I had done that for the first couple of playtests (my Alpha tests). This will be my first official Beta test (in the hands of other Storyguides) so that's a good idea. I would have forgotten to put include it.

As for the margins, that's a good idea, but with large margins, then I'm pushing the book size up even more. And I've done a lot of formating in the documents (Word) already so that if I screw with the margins, I fear that I will have to do a lot more work. I believe that I could get them to photocopy the sheets smaller but I'm already using 10 pts Times New Roman fonts, and I get complaints from some people that this is already too small a font to read comfortably.
Something to think about.

I've already got pictures taken from the first two tests, but I'm not very good at photo editting. But I've sprinkled in a couple of pictures here and there.
My avatar (the little sword) is my logo, btw.

Thanks for your help.

[Lord Iron Wolf]

You'll have to provide somewhere in the book to place notes. A few lined pages at the end of chapters or sections would work out fine. You may also wish to do this in a different colored paper

You may wish to post a question and find out what type of programs a printer wants you to submit a published document in. Don't make their job difficult--it costs!

MS Word should be considered a text editor not a final publication program (unless it's web published or PDF) and MS Publisher should be used for nothing beyond a simple brochure or pamplet/ booklet.

One hint, whatever your final page count it be sure it is divisible by 8! This is for ease of printing and your cost.