Now that I've got my hard copy of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game box (woot!), I can look at it as a physical product, and I'm quite happy with it.
Consider, for a moment, the GM screen:
Currently available images of the screen don't do justice to it as a physical object. We'll ignore the art and such for the moment (I'll be coming back to it). This is a substantial item, made of thick cardboard under those glossy covers. The four-panel display stays up quite nicely on its own and is unlikely to be collapsed by passing breezes.
The cardboard heroes are made of the same sturdy material. These are designed to fit into the manufactured stands, a significant change from the original version made form sheets of thick paper/thin cardstock, designed to fold up into triangles. The fold-up-triangle approach was certainly viable, but they were still easily knocked over by drafts and inadvertent table collisions. These are heavier and less subject to the vagaries of the gaming table environment.
So, back to the visual components, then. I like Brandon Moore's art, but there's something I like even more than that: color.
The use of color in the DFRPG isn't overwhelming: top and bottom borders, larger headings, backgrounds of boxes and some table rows, and illustrations. The bulk of the space on any page is black text on white pages. But that same layout in standard B&W GURPS books feels more textbook-like than the modestly colored versions on glossy paper in the DFRPG. It's easy to read and interesting to look at without being overwhelming or distracting. Indeed, I've been spending most of my time in monochrome GURPS PDFs for so long that I'd forgotten how nice a little bit of color was. I know there are good and sufficient business reasons not to use color, but I'd really love to see more of it in future products.
So, then, not only is the DFRPG a good game (which I already knew from the text), it looks good and feels good, too.
Consider, for a moment, the GM screen:
The cardboard heroes are made of the same sturdy material. These are designed to fit into the manufactured stands, a significant change from the original version made form sheets of thick paper/thin cardstock, designed to fold up into triangles. The fold-up-triangle approach was certainly viable, but they were still easily knocked over by drafts and inadvertent table collisions. These are heavier and less subject to the vagaries of the gaming table environment.
So, back to the visual components, then. I like Brandon Moore's art, but there's something I like even more than that: color.
The use of color in the DFRPG isn't overwhelming: top and bottom borders, larger headings, backgrounds of boxes and some table rows, and illustrations. The bulk of the space on any page is black text on white pages. But that same layout in standard B&W GURPS books feels more textbook-like than the modestly colored versions on glossy paper in the DFRPG. It's easy to read and interesting to look at without being overwhelming or distracting. Indeed, I've been spending most of my time in monochrome GURPS PDFs for so long that I'd forgotten how nice a little bit of color was. I know there are good and sufficient business reasons not to use color, but I'd really love to see more of it in future products.
So, then, not only is the DFRPG a good game (which I already knew from the text), it looks good and feels good, too.
Comments
I will likely never print a GURPS PDF again
(Handouts, reference guides and so on are an exception, but they probably would be what I would most like to have as a colour print out).