This will go on the Atlas website on Monday, but I thought you might want to see it earlier.
There are links further down that you might find of interest, particularly the layout preview.
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That is a very generous and encouraging preview. 
I was very glad to see the expanded House descriptions, and in general the expanded content such as the Mythic Companions. And the whole thing just looks better edited and beautiful.
Some art nitpicks:
- In the intro spread (page 2), don't the hands look weird? The wizard's bottom hand appears to have five fingers with no thumb, and the bard's upright hand's posutre is ... weird.
- The scrolls in the background of the Code of Hermes (page 11) appears too artificial. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe it's the perfectly-parallel upper and bottom rolls, or the fact that both scrolls are perfectly identical.
- The art on page 17 is beautiful, but does not depict any of the templates, which is a waste. Likewise the art of the (Ex Misc?) magus on page 21 (I seem to recall in from The Dragon and the Bear; a very good piece, but one that does NOT scream giant-blooded Terram-focused ex-misc).
Also,
- On page 29 second column, the explanation in parenthesis on the score of 1 being counted in the 90 XP even though you aren't paying for it in XP is not clear.
They look fine to me. The wizard's hand is foreshortened, and the thumb and index finger overlap. The thumb is pointing forward from his perspective (I think), but you can't see the lower joint because there is insufficient contrast against the index finger behind it. And the bard is grabbing an arrow between two fingers so, yes, that is not a position you would often find your hand in — but how often do you do that?
Even with the crowdfunding, the art budget is not unlimited.
That sort of change is out of scope at this point in production, I'm afraid. Well-defined errata and simple typos will be done, but text will not be rewritten.
That's unfortunate. I would have imagined stretch goals could be used to replace art pieces. If I am not mistaken the art itself should not cost more than a few hundred dollars, and it won't harm the editing and layout as the picture could be comissioned to have the right proportions to just be replaced.
When will the license become active? I have a thing ready to go, which was just waiting for the license text to be dropped in (and a quick once-over to make sure I'm in full compliance with it).
Also, is there any issue with converting the Ars Magica open license logo to greyscale? It's pretty, but I'm not doing colour cover art...
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It will be after the crowdfunding, because the details of exactly what it covers will be determined in the crowdfunding.
I can't speak to the logo. It isn't covered by the open license, so Atlas will have to answer. A greyscale version would be helpful, though.
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I was sorta hoping mMF (Certamen) was going to be swapped out, for Tremere's benefit. It's very limiting (this is even acknowledged in Against the Dark), doesn't really provide you any benefit in normal play, and doesn't actually match up very well with the current spirit of the House in my opinion. House Tremere magi are politicians, but they are also soldiers, architects, diplomats and logisticians; none of those roles benefit from Certamen. The only two magi descriptions in AtD that include Certamen at all include it to mention that the magi in question are bad at it.
I'm guessing that at this stage it's probably too late to make changes like that, and that even if it isn't, there's an argument to be made about it already being mentioned in other books, but I think I'd be a bit of a coward if I felt this strongly about it and didn't at least try to bring it up. Hope you're having a good evening; apologies for the slightly meandering message.
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8 posts were split to a new topic: The Latin Name of the Oath of Hermes
Not going to happen in this, as it would be a substantive change rather than an erratum. It's not a new edition.
It is, however, a change that I might well make for my personal sagas.
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There are several occurrences of Swaps of Verditius and Tytalus symbols.
The symbol swap is already being sorted out; thanks for pointing it out.
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We really need some place for people doing third party stuff to talk A thread or subforum or something.
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They could be given alternatives to Certamen, like how House Flambeau got more options for their house virtue in HOH:S. Perhaps even allowing them to choose any minor focus. This would represent how the house pushes its members toward specialisation in a role, but also forces them to develop outside that role (so they're blocked from taking a major focus).
"Any minor focus" is a very strong and flexible house virtue which might be problematic for the game if it was given to another house, but House Tremere magi start out with a lot of obligations and social expectations.
There's a Discord.
My favorite solution is to give Tremere magi either the Skilled Parens virtue (representing the House aiding in their training) or my own "House Support" virtue (gain a few Build Points' worth of lent items per year, which can stacked for bigger items, with vis sources granting vis pawns to spend).
So, I just had the time to sit through the preview PDF. While I expect that some of it is subject to change, I wanted to get a couple of things out of my chest.
- Firstly, the layout is fine, but I honestly was expecting a lot more readability. I am a short-sighted nerd, so that might be the reason, but the text in a lot of places doesn't seem clear to me. Fonts are ocasionally too small, and the 'medieval' feel sections are honestly hard to read. I hate to compare, but if you look at the spanish/french edition... it becomes aparent which one is clearer and more readable. It's the same with the Hermetic Oath illustrations.
- The art needs a touch-up. I think it's fine and dandy to have a good cover drawn by a prestigious artist, and I also know that the art budget is not unlimited, but honestly it shouldn't be that expensive to just hire artists. The decision to recycle 20-years-old illustrations like the infamous Darius ex Flambeau is, to me, inexcusable. At least for what is being offered: an heirloom-quality product. In my honest opinion, better to not have illustrations at all, than having a new person seeing this Gollum-looking guy and thinkin 'Is this the type of character I can make in this game?'. Again, hate to compare, but the french/spanish edition has double page illustrations for every magi, which gives you an immediate idea of what is cool about this game. I won't be lying when I say that a lot of us in the spanish community got drawn to the game because of them.
- This is a matter of accesibility, and I relay this feedback from the Discord servers. The PDF preview is 80MB, which rougly translates to almost 1GB weight for a full 600+ pages PDF. If the physical book will make your wrists hurt when you hold it (as it should,) at least the digital versions of this edition should be as lightweight as possible, to support its readability in as many devices as possible. It is not uncommon in this day and age that a storyguide plays with 3-4 PDFs open in their laptop/tablet, and the same goes for players. At least a lightweight B&W version should also get released if trimming down the weight of the original is not possible.
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The faux parchment needs to be lightened up quite a bit. It's too dark of a background for the text to be readable, however pretty one might think it will look. It's just awful for readability. Particularly since the font sizes are already rather tiny and there are sections with House symbols and other artwork behind the text, too. It just looks muddy and dark.
Whatever version of Goudy Test the titles are in is good for titles... rather poor and somewhat illegible in red as intro paragraphs, and just too much when its used for an entire text box.
Although this is the Definitive Edition of a medieval-inspired game, it should not be as unreadable as an actual medieval manuscript. The idea is that it will be one location to look up all the things you need to reference often in a game -- please don't make it so damn useless for people who might be vision impaired. Just reading this as a pdf would give me eyestrain.
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Readibility is also a concern of mine. It is probably too late to change.
(For the record, medieval manuscript, especially high end ones, are incredibly readable because they have a lot of empty space for the words and marginalia to breathe.)
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In general, or in the inserts specifically?
I am taking these concerns back to the team, because we do want people to be able to read the book. I find it all easily readable at full size, and entirely adequate at tablet size, which is why this sort of feedback is valuable.
No, it isn't. Layout is still in progress. (Which is why it is too late for major textual changes.)
I find the current English layout more readable, FWIW. The Spanish/French has darker backgrounds, with heavier images, and uses white text in the inserts.
It is. Feel free to go to a forum frequented by artists and tell them that they are overpaid. But hide your offline identity…
PDF optimisation has not been done at this time. If Atlas try to put out a 1GB file, I will be having words, believe me.
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The faux parchement in general -- all the pages -- is just too dark. The mottling overlaps into the text columns and reduces the contrast between text and background. With a small font size it really needs a lot more contrast.
Since the parchment pattern looks like it's the same on every page I'm guessing it's a separate layer. Maybe try +20% brightness?
That would also help make the House symbols also behind the text more distinct, because currently they aren't. And use less ink making dark blotches.
The text boxes with the lighter background are much more readable. But,they seem to overwrite the parchment mottling on the pages. [the yellowish text box on p111 for the Houses Summary is, however, worse. particularly where the mottling overlaps into the Benefit column.]