Thanks for the kind words about the layout, Chris! I'm blushing.
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Originally Posted by Destriarch
One thing I noticed when looking through the preview of the book is that, although it is only digest sized to begin with, the font seems quite large and the lines are practically double-spaced, making it seem like there is very little information in the book. It's the one thing that's really put be off buying the game. Could you provide a little insight into this?
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I made those layout choices, so I'd like to comment on them...
First, a nitpick: this is a 6"x9" game, not 5.5"x8.5" (believe it or not, that half inch per side actually makes a difference), so it's not *quite* digest formatted.
The font I'm using is DW Fell Pica, at 10pt size. Yeah, the leading's reasonably close to double-spaced, save for things like some example blocks, stats for the monsters, etc. I chose the font -- which is several centuries old -- because I liked its rough-hewn readability, leaving it feeling a little "archaic", fitting well with the primitive vibe I was getting from the tribal setting. I'm not sure I'd call this "quite large", but you're right that the lines are spaced out a bit.
I made the spacing choice in part because of that aesthetic vibe. With a bit more space, it felt more like something from out in the wilderness; get the text tighter, and it starts to feel more urban. But beyond that, I find a lot of the text in most RPGs to be far too densely packed. By giving the text more room to breathe, it ends up a lot easier on the eyes.
I could have made the spacing tighter, but while that would have reduced the page count of the product, I think it still would have been fairly priced at $20. If anything, my layout choice eats a bit more into Christian and Lisa's profit margin here, because they're paying for the higher page count. But we all agreed that this look and feel was friendlier to the reader and easier on the eyes. The space also gives you a chance to better perceive the trick we're doing to help identify each chapter with a different tattoo embedded into the background.
In the end, regardless of whether you agree with my layout decision here, I'm still going to tell you that the book -- at 150 pages, the way I did it -- definitely delivers the $20 value it's priced at. It would've done delivered $20 of value at 100 pages with tighter spacing, too, but I think your opthamologist will thank me for the way we went with it.