Lago's Kickass D&D-Book Marketing Strategy!

[Lago PARANOIA]

What's wrong with actually hiring a German translator or three onto the actual Shadowrun (or whatever) staff, translating the book in-house, and then kicking it to the publisher in Germany? What's the advantage to giving the draft to another intermediate company to translate it and letting them have a cut of the dough?

I understand that translating books in-house expensive as hell (I've like 5 cents per word is an excellent deal) but if you already have the artwork and playtesting done ahead of time, it seems like a huge return on your books if you have the audience for it.


Moreover, even if the revenue stream for the books is small there's still an advantage in licensing it in the first place. Videogames and animated productions and all that crap. Just getting a 5% cut of a replay journal is pretty much free money.

[Windjammer]

I understand that translating books in-house expensive as hell (I've like 5 cents per word is an excellent deal) but if you already have the artwork and playtesting done ahead of time, it seems like a huge return on your books if you have the audience for it.

Haha, funny, try again.


No offense intended. The going quota is 1 Euro cent per word. For a Shadowrun core book at 275 k words, that's a one off $ 3.656,18 you pay your translator. He walks out the door, you never see him again, don't have to pay him social and health insurance etc. I guess you can see why you wouldn't want to move the guy in-house, right?

And you can all guess how that "going quota" translates (har har) into the end result. German translations of RPGs are predictably bad, some atrociously so - as in, Google Translator could give you something BETTER.

So why the low pay, you may ask. Well, the audience for licensed product unable to pick up the original one (in English) is rather small, the licenses more expensive than you'd think (e.g. German D&D 4E was terminated because WotC asked too much for the license).

Not sure how many of you can read German here, but the actual topic is being actively discussed, as in, now, here:

http://tanelorn.net/index.php/topic,54797.0.html

[Lago PARANOIA]

Wink No offense intended. The going quota is 1 Euro cent per word. For a Shadowrun core book at 275 k words, that's a one off $ 3.656,18 you pay your translator. He walks out the door, you never see him again, don't have to pay him social and health insurance etc. I guess you can see why you wouldn't want to move the guy in-house, right?

Yeah, for one book you'd probably want to kick them to the curb and it might even be a good strategy for Shadowrun where you don't need that many books, but it's dumb that WotC or whoever picks up the D&D license won't bother to pay the bread for a GOOD in-house translator.

5E D&D, if it happens, has a lot of catch-up to play. Their first objective should be towards growing the pie higher rather than trying to soak fans--both in NA and overseas. This means making an earnest effort to get the product exposure to other languages. There's no reason why Dungeons and Dragons shouldn't have a bevy of GOOD Spanish, Brazilian Portugeuse, Japanese, French, and German translators on standby to translate their core books and the best of their NA products. I know it costs serious dough but if you have a genuinely good product (or even a mediocre one--Sword World sucks shit and it's still hot in Japan) your gambit will seriously start to pay off in four to five years.

I mean, honestly.

[Fuchs]

Most of the target audience of RPGs can use english books. Not only does everyone learn english at school, but the MMOGs and the internet make it easier to learn the language.

[Lago PARANOIA]

And just what is that assertion based upon, Fuchs?

I personally find that hard to believe. Imagine all of the trouble native-English speakers have trying to decipher the rules. And each rulebook is the size of a goddamn novel. Unless you're already a proficient English-language speaker there's no way you're getting through these things.

Modern rulebooks are already notoriously hard to get through and that's when you already speak the damn language. Why include yet another obstacle for non-English speakers to overcome? I could see you making an argument not to make translations of D&D books because they're not popular enough overseas, but saying that we shouldn't spend the dough needed to get a Spanish copy of the Player's Handbook because those suckers can just jolly well learn English sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Like our rules are just so awesome that people should be grateful for the chance to play them and should learn another language.

[Username17]

I Czech Republic, people play RPGs in English. The grab D&D books and Star Wars and Vampire and whatever else, because the only Czech RPG blows.

-Username17

[Murtak]

And just what is that assertion based upon, Fuchs?

I personally find that hard to believe. Imagine all of the trouble native-English speakers have trying to decipher the rules. And each rulebook is the size of a goddamn novel. Unless you're already a proficient English-language speaker there's no way you're getting through these things

Speaking for me and my group, all of our RPGs and 90% of our tabletop games are in English (a total collection of at least 50 games). Yes, I read a little slower than in German. But is not really an issue. I do know one RPger (yes, exactly one) who actually has issues with English rule texts. "Issues" meaning he needs to look up the odd word. The other dozen or so gamers I know do not.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Do you think that more people would pick up D&D/SW/Vampire if it was available in Polish/Russian? Or hell, if such a thing was possible (which it probably won't be, since like only 15 million people speak Czech) do you think that printing a Czech-language translation of D&D 5E would boost sales? And if so, how much?

[Ganbare Gincun]

I Czech Republic, people play RPGs in English. The grab D&D books and Star Wars and Vampire and whatever else, because the only Czech RPG blows.

So why does the only Czech RPG suck so badly? Bad writing? Bad math?

[Username17]

In Czech Republic, people play RPGs in English. The grab D&D books and Star Wars and Vampire and whatever else, because the only Czech RPG blows.

So why does the only Czech RPG suck so badly? Bad writing? Bad math?

Bad production values. Damn thing looks like it was run together on an underground Soviet-era mimeograph machine. I don't own a copy, and my medieval terms Czech isn't super good. But I flipped through it and saw AD&D style charts and terrible, late 70s black-and-white layout and put it back on the shelf. I really should get a copy and do a full rant.

-Username17

[Windjammer]

Do you think that more people would pick up D&D/SW/Vampire if it was available in Polish/Russian? Or hell, if such a thing was possible (which it probably won't be, since like only 15 million people speak Czech) do you think that printing a Czech-language translation of D&D 5E would boost sales? And if so, how much?

Did you know that the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook was translated in and published in Russian? I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a copy crop up on Ebay Germany some time last year, as I hadn't ever known the thing existed. A couple of hours later I could even find a freaking pirated PDF of the thing. You wouldn't believe what they did. They didn't just translate the whole thing (and by God, I can't read Cyrillic script), no, the Russin publisher exchanged all the interior art work so that the fantasy illustrations would strike nearer home for their Russian readers. THAT was a sight to behold. It was roughly like the Wayne Reynold pics for the book on Mongol warriors ... see e.g. this.

[Zinegata]

Do you think that more people would pick up D&D/SW/Vampire if it was available in Polish/Russian? Or hell, if such a thing was possible (which it probably won't be, since like only 15 million people speak Czech) do you think that printing a Czech-language translation of D&D 5E would boost sales? And if so, how much?

Did you know that the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook was translated in and published in Russian? I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a copy crop up on Ebay Germany some time last year, as I hadn't ever known the thing existed. A couple of hours later I could even find a freaking pirated PDF of the thing. You wouldn't believe what they did. They didn't just translate the whole thing (and by God, I can't read Cyrillic script), no, the Russin publisher exchanged all the interior art work so that the fantasy illustrations would strike nearer home for their Russian readers. THAT was a sight to behold. It was roughly like the Wayne Reynold pics for the book on Mongol warriors ... see e.g. this.

Cool.

[Starmaker]

Wait, what? I just downloaded a PDF of the official Russian PHB 3.5 (AST Press + Hobby Games), and the intended differences between it and the original 3.5 are: [*] Russian player names (so when the English text goes "Monte wants to create a new character", the translation is "Mikhail wants to create a new character"),
[*] monster names stupid enough to inflict WIS drain,
[*] a dictionary section (with typos),
[*] and a unit conversion table (the book itself uses ft and lbs; no effort to make that aspect more accessible was made).

Plus, lots of editing mistakes, spells missing, spell descriptions missing, fucked up class tables (okay, ranger's d10 for HD is an improvement, rogue's 4 skill points per level is not).
No new art at all. So I have no idea what you've seen.

[Fuchs]

And just what is that assertion based upon, Fuchs?

I personally find that hard to believe. Imagine all of the trouble native-English speakers have trying to decipher the rules. And each rulebook is the size of a goddamn novel. Unless you're already a proficient English-language speaker there's no way you're getting through these things.

Modern rulebooks are already notoriously hard to get through and that's when you already speak the damn language. Why include yet another obstacle for non-English speakers to overcome? I could see you making an argument not to make translations of D&D books because they're not popular enough overseas, but saying that we shouldn't spend the dough needed to get a Spanish copy of the Player's Handbook because those suckers can just jolly well learn English sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Like our rules are just so awesome that people should be grateful for the chance to play them and should learn another language.

English is the language of the Internet. And of the online games. And of business. Anyone with the capability for it is or will be learning it. It is the most important language, currently at least.

And since my government is not totall stupid, they got that, and implemented the consequence of that fact. Over here, you are supposed to learn English. No matter what school you are taking, you are learning English.

In my group, everyone speaks enough English to both use RPG books and play MMOGs on US servers. I do not even know a single local RPer who does not speak English.

That's part of the reason why German SR sourcebooks always have something special in them that US books do not have - otherwise people would buy the US books, since those usually come out early and everyone can read them.

[Korwin]

I personally find that hard to believe. Imagine all of the trouble native-English speakers have trying to decipher the rules. And each rulebook is the size of a goddamn novel. Unless you're already a proficient English-language speaker there's no way you're getting through these things.

My mothertongue is german, but the english D&D 3.5 is easier (for me) to decipher than the german "Das schwarze Auge"...
(And DSA has worse balance problems than D&D, but thats another problem...)

[Fuchs]

Some of us learned English with gaming books and novels...

[Windjammer]

No new art at all. So I have no idea what you've seen.

Fascinating. Sadly, I've got no proof of what I saw, as I didn't save the file, and I've got absolutely NO means to retrieve it or find it again. See, the way I found it back then was by googling the ISBN that the guy included in the Ebay auction.

[FatR]

Do you think that more people would pick up D&D/SW/Vampire if it was available in Polish/Russian?

I very much doubt that, unless something can be done to make Russian versions significantly cheaper (in $ equivalent), and distribute them through general bookstores. Otherwise, the hobby will remain restricted to hardcore geeks who learned about RPGs through word of mouth and usually know at least enough English to generate characters. And even they will find purchasing books from Amazon seriously easier than getting to one of the 1-2 obscure hobby stores in their city. Assuming, of course, they won't pirate everything they need from torrents (everyone here, myself included, started playing with pirated copies, simply because either nothing else was available at all, or prices were rather prohibitive by the standards of 90s-early 00s teenagers).

[Crissa]

Since Hasbro took over, D&D has been distributed through general book chains. However, I'm led to believe that's much more difficult in Europe than in the US and Asia where a handful of megabookstore chains in each country control some majority of book sales in that country.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

I don't own a copy, and my medieval terms Czech isn't super good. But I flipped through it and saw AD&D style charts and terrible, late 70s black-and-white layout and put it back on the shelf. I really should get a copy and do a full rant.

I'm sure I could get you a game group for it, if you brought it back with you this summer ^-^

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

So anyway.

Book layouts.

There has been some noise on the board lately about word-count inflation of RPG rules and how this is bad for the game. And I'm unfortunately forced to agree.

Going again with my assumption that people should drop some serious dough for artwork, if you decide to replace rules with artwork/comics instead of boring written text about how much and where could you save space?

[Username17]

So anyway.

Book layouts.

There has been some noise on the board lately about word-count inflation of RPG rules and how this is bad for the game. And I'm unfortunately forced to agree.

Going again with my assumption that people should drop some serious dough for artwork, if you decide to replace rules with artwork/comics instead of boring written text about how much and where could you save space?

The obvious of course is poetry. I get a headache after reading a substantial amount of italicized (or any other "eyecatching" font) text. As such, I have never gotten through the whole fiction piece at the beginning of any nWoD piece. I don't feel any less of a man for that being the case, so I feel safe in saying that those pieces could be profitably dropped. "A picture is worth a thousand words" isn't just a trite saying - it's literally true. A full page picture can replace a thousand words of story text and often make the game world more immersive.

But that doesn't explain Dungeons and Dragons and the sorry state it is in. Basically, they just have an incredibly wordy format. The basic rules of 4e D&D are nearly half a million words, even before we get into the sample monsters. There's no reason for that. aWoD is less than a third of that, powers and all.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

3E and 4E D&D have so much wasted space it's just ridiculous.

First of all, exception-based design needs to go. The power-card format, while profitable, also needs to be rethought from scratch. I'm not saying that we get rid of them because unfortunately those things are convenient and eye-catching, I'm just saying that we should get rid of the idea that people don't need to have a good handle on the game as long as they have their character sheet on hand. 3E D&D's idea to have a glossary in the back of the book and also have a section explaining just how the broad categories of spells worked was just GENIUS. Yes, it's an extra section that 4E doesn't have but in the long run it cuts down on arguments and more importantly saves space. Scuttling exception-based design lets your game effects be more varied since you don't have to worry about losing people with a new power.

This is very good. 3E printed tons of illusions in the PHB and in sourcebooks and we were able to completely put 4E to shame because we knew ahead of time when we said that something was a phantasm we knew how it worked. This not only let our powers be much more interesting but it allowed us to save space.

Now while I understand the motive in making things so that a newbie can look at any person's character sheet and figure out exactly what they and their other characters can do is really convenient... that's why we start people off at low level. The thing about people having to master the ins-and-outs of the magical effect glossary is also an unfortunate artifact of the archetype of the Do Anything Wizard--limiting peoples' schticks will go a long way towards reducing the amount of reading new people will have to do.

So combining the two ideas, when we do the keyword sections this is when we start breaking out the diagrams. There is absolutely no reason why we can't have a short comic that shows Nimue the summoner demonstrating the difference between a summon spell, a calling spell, a sapience-granting spell, and a possession spell.


Another idea, we really need to remove slathering flavor-text all over the pages. Honestly, fireball doesn't NEED a pithy two-sentence description. I don't even know WHY you would want to give a spell like Mnemonic Enhancer stupid flavor text. Not only is it a waste of fucking space but it also limits creativity. Just describing Secure Shelter as a cottage or lodge mentally eliminates kickass uses for the spell like creating a bar or a fortified chokepoint in the middle of the desert or dungeon.

For spell effects that are hard to visualize or have some really jawsome SFX such as prismatic wall or stone to flesh they should get some artwork, obviously, but on the whole most game effects don't need more than crunch.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Or going back to the creativity angle, since this is what really leads to so many stock effects of 4E powers, the more you state ahead of time that a power that 'tricks the enemy into doing what you want' is actually a standard effect then the less of them you will get.

Now while actually assigning a broad category to most spells ahead of time won't prevent people from doing shit like printing 4 1st-2nd level powers that basically mentally tell a guy to go pound sand for a short amount of time (charm person, sleep, hold person, command), doing things in this way will stop people from printing up ten (yes, ten) fucking 1st-level powers that push a character back 1 to 5 squares.

[Doom]

You sure it's only 10? I was looking over the paladin encounter powers the other day (making sure that 3W and up powers were fairly uncommon), and couldn't help but notice that the high level powers didn't look much different from the low level powers.

Oh wait, you only said level 1. Yeah, probably only that many at level 1.