Where's the new stuff?

[Lars Porsenna]

The datacards thing is a GREAT idea! I remember demoing Battleground WWII several years ago, and at that time I wasn't impressed...except for the playing card sized datacards each unit or vehicle had. Made things a lot easier than to look up tables or some sort of vehicle book ("No, no, thats an Aufklarungspanzer 38(t), not a Panzerkampfwagen 38(t), so its in the RECON book Vol. III!").

 

As far as promoting the series, I think an animated show is definitely NOT the way to go. How many people here has seen the Heavy Gear TV show? Not me! How about the Battletech one? Get my point?

 

Instead, I think a better direction would be to start a series of high-quality novels (I know there's already one out...) that showcases the game and the setting. I think a big part of the success and continuing interest in Battletech is the almost 20 years of successful novels.

 

Damon.

[KAMUT]

I've seen both, and both were dismally done. but I feel with the right people it can be done, just have to get away from the "commercialism" and get into a real solid story; The designer's work speaks for itself, and being the models are Pmeshes, much of the "modeling aspect" was already done when the minis went to print.

 

Seriously check out some of the stuff these guys have done, I think JBR has the best eye for design, Blitz has some serious Animation skills, and Roadkill is a monster with his texturing. (And from what I understand, dude is just starting) -Didn't forget about you Questar and Jimbo, I love your creativity.

 

The Talent is already there, same with writers. but I feel a product can sell better with visual representation to the mass market, as opposed to words in a book. One look is usually enough to say, whether a product attracts your interest or not, books only reinforce that interest.

 

Also for novels, the company is already losing money everytime something is brought to print. thats tough to call, but again, the same applies, with the right people it can be done.

[blitz]

Oh, if only you knew the things that I've been storyboarding in my head.

 

Someday there will be time, someday...

[Spartan6]

One look is usually enough to say, whether a product attracts your interest or not, books only reinforce that interest.

Yep...

 

Mike Ploogs crappy art almost killed CBT all by itself. It's also probably why I never had any interest in Shadowrun.

 

Luckily Saint Michael of Stackpole spake unto the masses with good words and saved it from complete ruination.

 

Okayyyy..Loren Coleman isn't bad either

[KAMUT]

one can only imagine, Blitz.........

 

One of my major goals is to get into some kind of screenwriting.

Have tons of stuff already penciled out.

[nadinbrzezinski]

I have some ideas for novels... that said...

 

 

This is a general comment affecting the GAMING INDUSTRY. (So if it fits that is fine, if not, it will fit somebody)

 

Over the last ten years the quality of writing in Gaming has gone down... only excpetion, it seems, is GW... but that is only because they have the money to pay Dan Abnett who is not a Hack Writer... just a Nebula Nominee and Winner, as well as the british equivalent. Oh and by the way, it shows... his Inquisitor series was extremely good (even if formulaic, as expected...and it was NOT 80K words either, but each averaged 130K words... incidentally this went against the trend in gaming)

 

Secondly I have mentioned that gaming writing is formulaic, and it is... partly that is the nature of the beast... but over the last ten years the QUALITY of ploting, character development and craft has gone DOWN. Many of you are familiar with BattleTech, and that is a good example. But it is not limited to Tech. The same problem can be seen in oh.. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance series, as well as White Wolf and almost anybody else out there.

 

I have theories that have to do with this. First off major publishers, such as Roc and Baen no longer want to do any space opera or formula fantasy in anything longer than 80K words. Second problem, not even WoTC (they have their own pulbisher) wants or can publish general fiction over 80K words, because this has become the accepted standard. Wide spanning fiction, of the epic kind for the most part no longer sells and companies will not risk it with the new kid on the block, whether this is the new author, or the new company peding a series... and yes at least a trilogy should be ready to go.

 

Now CAV could and should in time move to the written word. But here is the problem doing it on their own, at least from what I have seen, does not work. But getting a contract with oh... Baen (Roc does Tech) woudl not be easy, and you need a minimum number. The other problem is that trade paperbacks do not make that much money, and 40K words cannot do it, as this is a NOVELLA not a novel.

 

Personally I see developing the story line as an investment in the future, regardless of what form it takes... but both the HG and Tech toon series came way after the games were established (and they were succesful insofar that they attracted new players in the target market... even if we old foggies may have had a heart attack over the so called poor story telling... they were complex enough for the target audience and no we are not it) Video games are also a good idea, but again that should happen WELL AFTER the game is established. Otherwise it will seat there... no I do not count on this being another Frontline... and for each Frontline how many crappy Mecha games really do not get out of the box?

 

The Written word is the way to go, but novels will be hard to sell right now... why? Go to your bookstore and check it out... lemme see, if I am Barnes and Noble, why exactly should I carry CAV Novels? I mean those things in the cover look like them Tech and MW DA crap that is NOT selling. (Go talk to store managers... it is amazing what they will tell you) From their point of view, for ROC, or BAEN, this is another formulaic gaming book that does not sell well and has a very limited print run... with some exceptions (The kerensky Trilogy comes to mind) So now that I have put forth all the problems, time for all to think of solutions... the way to go is to publish paper product that moves the story line forwards and pushes the sales of metal. It is also important to realize this... at least my observation over the years... paper product best case breaks even... the good stuff is in the metal. But alas the paper product is needed to move the metal... and a dynamic and exciteing story line is also necessary.

 

Now speaking of story lines....

 

 

I have my own to work on.

[General308]

I don't think establishing CAV in a word format. But it doesn't have to be done in a novel or a 10 dollar novela. The cheapest simplest way is to give us CAV stories in a novel format is electronicly. Yeap novels bye PDF would extremly cheap with minimal risk of lose. Heck you could even sell the novels on a CD-rw. That way Reaper would only have to make as many or few disk as needed.

 

From what I have seen less game stores are carring novels anyways. It would also be easy to atract a publisher down the road with a established track record that the novels for a line would sell.

[Lars Porsenna]

From what I have seen less game stores are carring novels anyways. It would also be easy to atract a publisher down the road with a established track record that the novels for a line would sell.

While that may be true, most people don't go to game stores to buy novels! Just go to Waldenbooks (or similar chain bookstore) and look in the SF/Fantasy. At my Waldenbooks there are TWO shelves devoted entirely to genre fiction, and Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms stuff is prominent (along with other stuff, like SW, ST, MW, etc).

 

I remember reading on the Battletech forums that a very significant segment of the genre fiction buying public do not play the games at all, but still enjoy the fiction.

 

On a personal level I would hate to see pure PDF versions of books (ANY books), mainly because I hate to have to sit at my PC, or even use a PDA, to read. I enjoy the tactile feel of a book in my hands.

 

Damon.

[nadinbrzezinski]

From what I have seen less game stores are carring novels anyways. It would also be easy to atract a publisher down the road with a established track record that the novels for a line would sell.

Correct, less and less FLGS are carrying the novels. And the ones that are carried at the most popular and best selling lines... aka DnD and GW.

 

I agree wtih you, electronic release has the fewest risk, followed quite closely, for those in the I need to curl up to my book feel (and I happen to agree), with Print on Demand

 

Now the Wadlens and Borders and all the rest DO CARRY genre material, but again this is a comment affecting ALL LONG gaming fiction. The quality has gone down over the last ten years. It has to do with craft and characters. Yes ALL gaming fiction will have elements of plot that are quite formulaic... (for example in a Dragonlance novel the heroes will be very powerful, in a Tech Model well Mechs will feature prominently, in a Warhammer Novel, an Inquisitor or your Space Marine, will figure prominently, wth chaos being the bad guys. I think this is self evident)

 

Now there are people out there who read the fiction for reading it purely. But, those are not a significant proportion of the readers. In fact most of the gaming fiction is designed to advance a story line and SELL product.

 

The Tech novels are a good example, as the cycle came with releases time wtih them. And FASA was a newbie, GW is still "exploiting" the Inquisitor Novels (which were meant to push, not too succesfully the Inquistor game... btw I found out why it failed.. after much cursing and muttering I put together Sergeant Stone for a painting competition... the bandage on his left hand is to hide the fact that there is no way of getting it to fit.) Anyhow, look at the Inquisitor series by Dan Abnett and good reads them are. What has come after that?

 

1.- Inquistor the game (released at the same time)

 

2._ Deamon Hunter Codex (and models)

 

3.- Eye of Terror Campaign, for BFG.

 

Ok, so lets look at TSR, back in the days... when they released many of the Elmister books, there was a lot of support in Dragon and many a scenario. They used to be timed together... now they have developed some distance, and its to the point that if the book is not written by Wiess and Hickman I will not even give them the time of day, and it has to do with quality... or rather lack off

 

And yes I agree, having a track record MAY, and this is a big if, help with getting a book contract. What it gets to get a book contract with any book publisher is complex to put it midly. But I would have a trilogy ready to go... Anyhow, back to writing... Lord of the Rings in the background, good movie, extended version. Nothing on the tube these days.

[Crusoe the Painter]

Speaking of 3d printers, Stratasys makes them, and they are local. Seems they have a new system that allows them to print ABS and Polycarbonate plastic parts. Wow! Pretty neat, no more uber-brittle prototypes. They show a working plastic trike toy for kids made from printed ABS plastic parts.

 

Anyways,

 

Many companies have gone out of business investing in animated series or books too soon. They think they can do it, before they have the experience, the background grist, and the good writers/producers lined up. CAV doesn't yet have the market pentration to support a TV series. The BT one was horrid anyways.

 

It would be cool, yes. Having the 3D models sitting around on media somewhere means it would be very easy to produce a series, when the interest and capitalization is there

 

The reason Reaper has survived is they make the moves when they are ready. They buy the 3d Printer when the have the cash. They make a new game line when they get the cash. Slow and steady, which I appreciate. It helps that Ed Pugh is a CPA. ;)

 

The reason Reaper has lasted so long is that they avoid fads. We all know how well Creepy Freakz did... ;)

 

Novel wise, I could care less until Reaper lines up a better author. The Last Dance was pretty bad.

 

Now, a deck of playing card sized data cards for CAV would rock! Plastic coated so you can use dry erase on them, I'd buy them.

 

 

 

.

[Froggy the Great]

Yeah, that'd be cool.

[KAMUT]

Many companies have gone out of business investing in animated series or books too soon. They think they can do it, before they have the experience, the background grist, and the good writers/producers lined up. CAV doesn't yet have the market pentration to support a TV series. The BT one was horrid anyways.

 

Yep. So something like what was suggested is Waaaaaaay down the line, like when Reaper can afford a 3D Printer without going bankrupt. Basically, I'm saying I wouldn't make that kind of move until these lines were well established, Novel, novella, or animated series, One of these formats should be getting the public aware on a larger scale.

 

On a lesser note, Why not use the animation to tackle smaller projects, like animated shorts. While Reaper gets its feet wet, maybe use these smaller projects to help advertise the product or even the CAV Galaxy itself.

 

For example, (and I know it can be done now) Blitz, why not do a Mil-Net "commercial" for the Steel Griffins. Sonething like MW4 did for the opening of Black Knight Legionares.

 

The Reaper Vision is a great idea, how about "JoR Online". Use the models to give the reader a technical readout of the unit. make that part of the CAV HQ. To really sell the effort, do a quick 3-5 minute short of some of the popular units during combat testing.

 

example, I would love to see the classic Assassin versus Dictator or Ogre versus Rhino scenario. Those would really be neat to see.

 

example, a quick UCOR commercial, like SyRaM going through the various versions of the Starhawk, until the screen displays the StarHawk 6. End it with the SyRaM logo, and a brief catch phrase "SyRaM, our name speaks for itself..." this could be shown on the CAV HQ, or better unit, a marketing aid to attract new players to CAV, especially if you could get it to play as an ad on MSN.

[nadinbrzezinski]

The idea is good but we still have the problem that there is this sneaky suspicion out there that the game is not doing well... and it has to do with lack of paper to suport the Metal releases.

 

You see how GW does it... this is what people expect... rightly or wrongly this is what people have been conditioned to expect over the last 20 years.

 

And this also implies a dynamic story line.

[General308]

Look bottom line CAV has great looking minis but mini's alone in a Scifi Universe are not enough. You need a Universe that develops. CAV is not doing that.

 

A SciFi game isn't like a historical game were the fluff is built in because it is based on real events. It isn't like a fantasy game were alot of it is Generic. I SciFi universe is very Specific. While you can use any Fantasy mini in your DnD game you can't use just any mecha peice in any mecha game units are not Generic like in a fantasy world.

 

The way CAV is now if you like to play Campaigns you are out of luck. CAV is currently a Universe of peace with not much info on were things are going.

 

I have been extremly out spoken about how good the CAV game and minis are. I have been extremly outspoken about how there is a great Universe there to be devloped. I have been patient for 3 years to see the Universe to begain to develop and it hasn't. Reaper has said we are going to see a number of fluff related products but all we have really seen is mini books. That is all the JOR is for to sell the minis. Me I need more than a mini fluff book to bye minis. I need the other products we were supose to have.

 

It is a shame really because with out the rest I belive CAV is in real trouble. I don't want to see that I have to much money invested in the game.

[KAMUT]

The way CAV is now if you like to play Campaigns you are out of luck. CAV is currently a Universe of peace with not much info on were things are going.

 

Hmm, I must have missed that one.........

 

Seriously, its tough to find a few people who agree on "proper campaign rules" and I've been pretty fortunate to work out a few to keep ours going, for the past few months.....

 

But most of that was logistics management, stuff a lot of players wouldn't want to get into. Save for that, Orbital Artillery Support and TACOPS, we're playing the same game you are, and its part of a campaign. and yeah, I'll pitch.

 

Within the next week, Lone Wolf Company will be recruiting for merc groups which will comprise "Task Force Pennsylvania" about to land on Cassini. For everybody that whines about not enough fluff or campaign rules, I expect to see your name on the list.........

 

 

Edit: http://www.mil-net.net/commstation/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1694

 

just went ahead and did it

not a flame, just a point.