Writing Gygax In Tehran

[princeofcairo]

So with all that in mind, how did I do with Tehran: Nest of Spies? (Also available at Paizo, e23, RPGNow, and IPR, should you prefer those estimable outlets. He hinted.)

I'm honestly asking, here. In my initial estimation, I figured it would be a six-page product, not including the double-sized map of Tehran. At our DAR layout, that's about 4,200

Comments

[bunj]

Tehran is such a foreign setting to most of your readers that you had to do a lot more explanation (of tea houses, for example) then you probably originally expected. I did feel it was a bit underwritten, or exactly written, being, really, the bare minimum length for the setting.

Of course, Memphis may end up similar length. It may be more familiar to most, but not all, so you may still need to explain barbecue or country music, for example. Oh, and I'll be very disappointed if you don't include Silver John.

[zonemind]

For a lot of the time I played GURPS, I used the various real-world books as "interesting and game-worthy" research aggregators. A lot of the material wound up be cycled into non-Earth-based games. The fall of the Roman Republic set on Coruscant, for instance, with Darth Sidious as Julius Caesar. Additional detail could be researched (I dragged in a lot of later-era Byzantine history for the fall of Coruscant), but having a chapbook of "the good bits" was worth $25 to me then, and still would be today if I was actually running games.

You're right that in this day and age research is easier than it was even ten years ago, let alone twenty (when I was travelling by bus across a state to use a card file approximately the size of a house to research maritime history at a naval academy). It's really handy to have a foot on the ladder already, however, especially when that first rung has been selected by someone with a keen eye for weirdness and coincidence.

[alcimines]

Personally, I thought the length of TNoS was about right. About the only thing I thought should be done different was a somewhat larger bestiary. So I guess I'm actually voting for a (slightly) larger word count!

Memphis, Tennessee is up next? Cool! When TNoS came out, I recall thinking that while it was quite good, a book set in the US would have been a bit more approachable for most players -- pardon my obvious US-centrism.

[eric_hinkle]

I'll have to look at this. Not many gamer books floating around covering the last remnants of old Eranshar...

[skington]

I appreciate that every word needs to be copy edited, typeset, accompanied by art etc. but surely you could issue a secondary PDF of e.g. "too hot for Teheran!" or something similar, with the stuff cut for space? Like SJGames used to do in Pyramid?