Tome of Trade

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:45 pm

...is up on kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566 ... e-of-trade

I didn't see anything connecting it with the Den Tomes though. The timeline suggested that it's all written and just needs to go to press; we'll see how that goes.

My expectations are pretty low; on the other hand it's probably not worse than default 3.5. I'll grab a copy and review when it comes out.

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:42 pm

that pic they use is beyond horrible.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:53 pm

zugschef wrote:that pic they use is beyond horrible.

It looks like it was drawn in MS Paint. It looks like the cursive script was also hand-drawn in Paint.

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:00 pm

the colors are the worst part.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:24 pm

Apparently he has and artist, as "The biggest issues we could stumble into is either problems getting the website set up, or our artist being slow."

So, it's placeholder art, but if the artist being slow is a concern, I wouldn't hold out hope for much better.

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:39 pm

if he'd only used a well-established font and no graphics at all it would've been better than this shit.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 7:24 pm

Uh-oh, slow artist. I've heard that song before.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 7:45 pm

This was up on GitP a few months back as a free thing, and has 0 relation to Frank and K's Tomes. It looks like it's been pulled though.

bosssmiley · Post by **bosssmiley** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:54 pm

What's the USP of this book? Any reason you'd buy this if you already have something like Magical Society: Silk Road?

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:54 pm

Why would you have new classes for this kind of book? That's six kinds of awful.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:21 pm

Whatever wrote:Why would you have new classes for this kind of book? That's six kinds of awful.

Because while a modestly well written book will have as its most favorited segments pieces of fluff, people pick up books in the first place because of crunch. The most popular part of the Tome of Fiends is High Adventure on the Lower Planes, which is a fluff segment. But the book gets eyeballs because of the Summoner and the Conduit.

If K and I were to write such a book, by which I mean expanding the Economicon to a sixty thousand word supplement, it would have classes in it. One of them would be called "The Merchant", but there would probably be some more esoteric things in there like maybe a Fiend Bargainer or an Alchemist.

People read books because of crunch. And in 3e, "crunch" means base classes, prestige classes, feats, and spells. Your book should have some of each of those. Not because it'll be anyone's favorite part of the book, but because if it doesn't have those things no one is going to read it at all.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:30 pm

Whatever wrote:Why would you have new classes for this kind of book? That's six kinds of awful.

The Tome of Fiends wrote:Thief of Souls
"What would I possibly want with your money?"
...
Soul Merchant:
Upon death, souls pass to the Outer Planes. Evil souls go to the Lower Planes while good souls go the Upper Planes, and some souls wander the places between, but each has a value to the beings that live in those places
Where there is value and profit to be made there is a merchant; in the soul trade, that man is the Soul Merchant. Slaver, procurer, and arbitrator, the Soul Merchant is ultimate middle-man in the market of stealing, selling, and buying souls. Like any successful merchant, he enjoys special privileges with his clients.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:46 pm

bosssmiley wrote:What's the USP of this book? Any reason you'd buy this if you already have something like Magical Society: Silk Road?

USP?
I'm getting it because it's three bucks, will entertain me for a couple hours (more if it's especially bad or good), and then will be fodder for a review.

On top of that, I like kickstarter in theory and practice, I strongly approve of the low price point, I prefer products which have been distilled into a publishable book, and I'm willing to put money towards encouraging those things because it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Post by **fbmf** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 6:25 pm

fectin wrote: I'm getting it

We expect a full review.

Drinking during the review is optional.

So is pulling the ripcord once you've jumped out of the plane.

Game On,
fbmf

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 7:06 pm

Running a shop sounds promising. From a drunken review point of view.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:45 pm

Running a shop Reccetear style? You can be a capitalist ho!

(See what I did there?)

bosssmiley · Post by **bosssmiley** » Thu Mar 07, 2013 3:16 am

fectin wrote:I'm getting it because it's three bucks, will entertain me for a couple hours (more if it's especially bad or good), and then will be fodder for a review.

On top of that, I like kickstarter in theory and practice, I strongly approve of the low price point, I prefer products which have been distilled into a publishable book, and I'm willing to put money towards encouraging those things because it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Fair enough. Looking forward to your review.

qwertyu63 · Post by **qwertyu63** » Thu May 02, 2013 5:16 pm

Digging this up to state the art-free PDFs were sent to the backers a couple of days ago.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sat May 04, 2013 12:48 am

Yeah, I was going to wait for the art though. It's not really fair to talk about production values otherwise. As such I've avoided even looking at it.

I'm not even irritated though. You get what you pay for, the guy said art was most likely to cause a delay, and he distributed the text in the interim.

The flip side of that is, if it takes long enough that I think it's taking too long, I'll just pan the production values.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 04, 2013 6:22 am

I'm actually more interested in the contents than the production values.

-Username17

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Sat May 04, 2013 6:42 am

Yeah, nowadays with everything having a pdf preview or "look inside" feature, judging a book's production values isn't hard. Determining whether it has content worth reading is the real purpose of a review.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Sat May 04, 2013 5:31 pm

Is there any reason why someone would bother to do this. All running a shop sounds like it do would either be a way to get wealth real easy or slow down the campaign.

At worst it could potentially derail the campaign with things like "Sorry, i can't adventure today, I have a day job."

Owning a shop kind of sounds like the thing that would be relegated to flavor or at best maybe obtaining fixed amount of GP every so often...

Then again, if you build a campaign around merchanting, which is what the book probably suggests...

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sat May 04, 2013 7:25 pm

Wiseman, Penny Arcade has your back:

Eh, I'll look at doing a review soon then. In my opinion though, how a text is presented is key to how that text is received. The entire fishmalk thing, for example, came out of a picture, not from text.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat May 04, 2013 7:35 pm

I'd imagine it to be intended exclusively for a "shopkeeper campaign" where the whole thing is about running a shop and going forth to smite monsters in order to secure new goods to sell to people and getting into merchant house wars.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat May 04, 2013 8:09 pm

Wiseman wrote:Is there any reason why someone would bother to do this. All running a shop sounds like it do would either be a way to get wealth real easy or slow down the campaign.

At worst it could potentially derail the campaign with things like "Sorry, i can't adventure today, I have a day job."

Owning a shop kind of sounds like the thing that would be relegated to flavor or at best maybe obtaining fixed amount of GP every so often...

Then again, if you build a campaign around merchanting, which is what the book probably suggests...

with old being new again and looking back to where PC parties built keeps and strongholds and made their own kingdoms, you got to start somewhere.

also all the treasure you get you might want to do something with other than jsut convert to GP and act like it works out that someone buys it, but in reality a DM doing that discards the treasure and doesnt bother to look back to see what it was.

maybe making a base in a town as a facade having a shop to run to see what is going on in a town as PART of an adventure. it really depends on the players. a case of you dont know what players will do.

the purpose of the shop could be to gather information like the Inn of the Last Home served to do.

you could inherit a shop, win it while gambling, kill an evil merchant and claim his shop as treasure....

like most "strange" material people write for gaming, it isnt for the reason you CAN think of that it is written, but for those you CANNOT think of.

a DM comes across people that want to run a shop, or want to know how a shop is run by NPCs, could probably use it without having to do much work.

this would all really depend on what is in the book, but the idea remains possible.