Iāve rather gone off the notion of ācollectiblesā. Collectible RPG books are special because they canāt meet the demand. We canāt all have a copy of those original D&D books, or whatever swanky thing White Wolf brought out with the expensive full-page art.
In this vein, Iāve been making the campaign book - āMissions in Maitavaleā - less collectable while I rework it.
- All copies are available forever, so anyone can have any version at any time.
- It is not a pdf, the pdf file you download simply lets you get the book by printing it.
- All monster statblocks have boxes next to them. If a room has ā4 Goblinsā with ā5 HPā, then there will be a goblin stat-block with 4 rows of 5 boxes, so the Judge can easily score through the HP as the goblins die, and I encourage them to use a pen.
- Iām going to leave space at the bottom of every page for the Judge to take notes.[1]
- And every handout now sits inside the book.
That last one took more hours than it should have. I had to tell LaTeX to remove the page numbers, then to clear everything to the next right-hand page (meaning āthe next page with an odd number). But Iād just removed the page numbers, so LaTeX fell over and shat the bed, while screaming something about \hboxes.
But itās worth it.
As you can see, at one point the page-tabs stop, and the handouts begin, one-sided. Whenever the players find a map, or secret note, the Judge will have to lay the campaign-book on the table and tear a piece out to give to the players.
BINDās not a collectible, itās a consumable. Playing a campaign should compel the players to rip, mark, deface, and change the physical book.
Now Iām going to see if LaTeX has a package for edible paperā¦
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[1] Upon further reading, I discovered that verbose footnotes already cover the bottom of every page, leaving no room for anyone elseās notes. Oh well, first come, first served.