I am really amazed at the lack of role-playing game published for kindle and/or similar reading devices. I mean, I know that for too many years there has been a competition running on to see who makes the fattest game around. I hope you know what I mean: extensive backgrounds that hide your text, enough illustrations to draft a grafic novel, tons of rules that not even Sheldon would care to effectively use in a game and an enciclopedic equipment list where it’s hard to find anything that looks remotely useful.
So, yes, I can understand why the guys behind a fat game would not love to see on e-ink. There’s only text and some b/w images, any kid with some imagination, gaming experience, guts and a mithril resolve could do as well. In other words they cannot stand out from the competition with the sheer strength of their graphic designers. (And don’t get me wrong, graphic design is cool).
But there are still many great games out there that would stay great on e-ink. (To be honest, in some cases, they would look better, as the typography would be readable).
And let’s look at if from the gamer’s perspective. With a kindle or a nook, or even an smart phone, I, as a player could bring to the table my entire collection of rules. On some devices I could even have my dice, and my campaign, characters sheet, everything.
Yes, we have pdfs. But you know what? PDFs don’t look great on a small screen, especially if they are filled with two-column text, complex tables, images and so on. Even if converted to a format more friendly to small devices, they are still a pain in your dice to read.
But do you know something? If your game is simple, if your game is lean and is content with providing your players the tools they need to play and just that, then that e-ink could be your opportunity. Are you missing it?
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I feel the same, to the point where I converted the Eclipse Phase Quick Start to Kindle format. There are certainly advantages and disadvantages, but the difficulty with layout — especially poor table support and spacing control — can just about make it more trouble than it’s worth. Tried it with Traveller, for instance, and gave up. All the internal hyperlinking, speed and readability are big pluses for what are, essentially, reference books. If I could just eek out a bit more control over presentation, I’d be all for more of them. But if I were doing my own game from scratch, I might have to consider that a special PDF sized for the 3.5″ x 4.75″ screen might give more satisfying results.
I agree we need to explore different approaches. However, I have found that the simpler you arrange your content, the easier is to adapt it to anywhere. Sometimes I wonder if we should abandon tables completely –I don’t know how to do that effectively– or reduce them to a minimum.
I have quite a few pdfs for my Nook Color. Sometimes the graphics aren’t placed properly. But on the whole, I have no problems or complaints about reading RPG books inb pdf. Most look pretty good. Having said that, I’d like to see some epub formats (Pathfinder strikes me as the most ‘friendly’ of the big companies equipped to move that way.
I’ve never been that succesful on my kindle, and I have been considering buying the kindle DX. But that’s a pretty smaller niche, so as a publisher, I still think we need to make it as friendly as possible. But it’s great to know, thanks!