Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 tsukinousagi Jan 26, 2011 11:34:19	Sitting here beside one of my books (it's not a rolegaming product though) and I was pondering, I wonder, would the books not be better if they were made with THIS manner of paper and not the glossy stuff that has become the norm it seems in gaming literature. And I have to wonder, why the heck are they even using the glossy stuff? So I speculated, maybe the glossy stuff is also thinner, and thus better on thickness maybe? Nope, just checked. Players handbook is identical in thickness to my other matt dull surfaced papered book Is it the ink? Well I call it the nose test. Take your finger, rub your nose, then rub a section of page, and does the ink smear. I found my Players Handbook will smear, and my expensive military non fiction softcover printed in 1983 smears if I do the same thing. I am just assuming it is a printer printing process thing. But I have nothing to back that up. I do know this much, glossy being glossy, is too damned light reflective and a nuisance to read some days on the table as eventually the light source in the room will hit the page in the right angle to make reading it require moving the book around. Dull matt surface pages are immune to this. I actually envy my buddy for his Palladium books for this matt paper advantage he has on me. Does anyone have any concrete knowledge of why they use glossy pages in the books? I'd sure like it if they used the industry standard for normal hardcovers sold to the usual book trade for fiction titles
#2 Style75 Jan 26, 2011 12:16:12	My guess is the artwork. Most full color art with high detail (like in all the 4e books) looks better on high quality glossy paper. Good pictures sell more books. It's probably that simple. For plain text, nothing beats matte paper. But D&D books havn't been plain text since 1979.
#3 tsukinousagi Jan 27, 2011 8:36:24	"But D&D books havn't been plain text since 1979." I suspect D&D hasn't really been D&D since 1979 as well. But that's another thread. I don't like the artwork myself. To be honest, I hated the mostly brownish look and the business of the page in 3.5 that I doubt I could get interested in a set of the books of 3.5 for free. I don't mind that the powers in my players are colour coded for fast reference, but, then again, you can do a lot of things with greys too. First thing I do with a pdf file, is delete all of the art work. No Wizards, this gamer considers your damned art a waste of paper and only serves to make the books bigger than required. Maybe they wouldn't cost so &%*&# much if they were 200 pages instead of 200 pages spread over 300 pages with pictures taking up extra space. Yeah might make the books potentially more dull to the easy bored, so what. Personally, I'd find a book with 150 pages and efficiently condenced content more attractive not to mention I'd even let them still have 75% of the current price. The art work rarely contributes anything meaningful.