I'm pretty much at the three year mark of having worked on this Chronology - countless hours spent. I haven't made any significant changes or updates since April release of 2.50, which was significant and also put us in line with open license requirements.
While I always did this mainly for my own and troupe's enjoyment, I always like free sharing within the hobby community, I'm still considering releasing this in a more 3rd party formal manner now that we have the capability to actually do that.
I'm not likely to have the energy to do another sweep of the entire set of released books, or fix all the remaining things as per appendix but there are certainly also things I didn't think of.
My questions to you are:
What remaining in this Chronology should be fixed before a final more static version?
Help is always welcome as per above, you can freely comment directly in the google doc too!
Still gauging the interest of the community in 3rd party release on itch/drivethru or something. I generally freely share my stuff as I have no real need of the money, but I'm considering the best approach and model here. Also there's a not significant amount of work, I'd not be adverse to cooperation with someone already doing a lot of this (sidenote: I also have >1000 pages of raw material of various kinds written for my own saga that I've been considering putting bits and pieces of out there as well).
Who would be interested in print-on-demand option? I'm thinking a nice hardback that's player-facing friendly would be fun to have at the table and available to players as in-game, i.e. cutoff at 1219 and extraneous information & appendix stripped.
My own troupe would love it (they already have a specific stripped version in digital, with a few entries campaign-loaded, version they've received in-game and are exchanging letters and pleasantries with the Mercere compiler)
Any suggestions for release-pdf and perhaps physical print-on-demand option formatting (I've tried a few approaches, but I wasn't happy with any really). Any volunteer help would also be considered (@Red-Shadow-Claws you kindly offered before, but at that time I was more challenged on development needs than I am now). Nevertheless I'm comfortable sorting it out on my own, but it may just take a wee bit longer.
I think that's up to you, if you feel this version is mature enough to sand on it's own. After all, even if you do publish it in PDF, you could still make update to the file, and IIRC, DriveThruRPG sends an update that the file has been updated.
There is an interest, but since you've already published the word document for free, I feel it's best to do it as a Pay What You Want kind of deal.
I have no idea how to gauge how many would would to do a print-on-demand, but browsing DriveThruRPG's website about it, it can be quite costly, since YOU have to buy one copy, to make sure it's printing well, and there's more work making the PDF, so it would need to be priced for that. But if you want to do that. then by all means, do, and let us know how many you've sold.
Also, I sent you a private message with a PDF for review.
I am reading the Chronology and it is great! I am suggesting some spelling & grammar corrections, etc. It's going to take some time to get through, but one thing I would suggest right now... It would be a big help to indent the beginning of the italic commentary. (I believe some versions of the Chronology did this?) In the current version, lacking an ident makes it harder to distinguish the two texts. The difference between the regular and italic text - especially in some fonts - just isn't enough.
Thanks!
Unfortunately I suspected as much. It would be just as much for my own sake though :). Thanks for sharing. It might be the case that the Chronology POD would have slightly more appeal to have a physical copy in hand at the table.