One of the weirdest things about the kind of things I make is that at a convention it’s very hard (read: impossible) to get people to engage with the bulk of what I do. I write! I write a lot! But people don’t buy words unless they’re stuck to a bit of a tree, hammered flat, a system that seems dreadfully inefficient.
I’ve been experimenting then with ways that I can make small, printable, books, something I can pump a few out before a con and sell or give away as promotional devices for my games, or maybe some microfiction (do I do that?). This first idea is one that I saw first on Twitter as a kind of suggestion for making tiny comic zines, and that idea is pretty cool.
I don’t make comics, though, I make game rules and words and I found this design really neat. However, it’s sometimes hard to find – I search for ‘gay robot kiss’ and dig through my retweets, for example – so I made a template and a place to show it where it can be easily accessed.
Another thing to bear in mind is you wind up with 6 faces the size of a card, more or less, and that means you want a font size around 9~ish. It depends on the individual font, of course, and how much text you’re putting in. So far I haven’t experimented much beyond finding limits – the amount of text I can jam in, which hovers around 550 words or so. That’s pretty sensible – it’s about what you can fit on a single page, too.
Some things I’m considering putting in this format
- catalogue of card games I’ve made
- popular blog posts
- a single short prestige class or paragon path
- a spellbook for a D&D character
- a micro RPG
- an RPG seed or scenario
- a character background guide
We’ll see what comes of these ideas!
After the fold is just my template for this, to make it easy to find by searching for ‘small booklet’ or ‘personal zine’ or ‘a4 booklet.’
