War and XPs and Start of Darkness now available in PDF from Gumroad

[The Giant]

Well that didn't take long.



War and XPs Digital Edition and Start of Darkness Digital Edition are both available for purchase on Gumroad.

A new bulleted list of features:

• PDF format that works great on the tablet of your choice!
• Art is still in its native vector format, allowing you to zoom in with no loss of quality!
• Updated lettering to match last year's Blood Runs in the Family and current strip dialogue!
• War and XPs features all-new essay tidbits, "After the War" looking back on the old material with maximum nostalgia!
• Fully bookmarked and hyperlinked to each strip referenced in the commentaries!
• No digital rights management—just a single watermark on the front cover!
• Some typos fixed, others almost certainly introduced!
• Digital delivery allows lower prices! Just $19 for War and XPs, $12 for Start of Darkness].

A lot of questions about the PDFs have been answered in the previous two threads about the release of DCF/OTOPCs and NCFPB, respectively, but if you have any additional questions or concerns (or technical issues), then feel free to ask them here. Thanks!


Expected FAQs!
I can't figure out how to buy them!
You can get to the new books by clicking here for WAXP or here for SOD, or on the big cover pictures above, or you can get to the Giant in the Playground profile page at Gumroad (which lists all the products we have one page) by clicking here.

Will the rest of the books be coming out?
Yes! Unless sales really fall off a cliff or something, I have every intention of releasing all the regular books in the series as PDFs, eventually. (Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales will probably remain an Ookoodook-exclusive until we sell out of the last paper copy.)

When will the rest of the books be coming out?
Uncertain, as I need to juggle the relettering with other work, but my goal is to get the rest of the series out before the end of the year, if not sooner. Obviously, these two books came hot on the heels of the previous one, but don't necessarily expect the next release to happen so quickly.

How do I get my PDFs?
You'll get an email with a download link a few minutes after ordering. Keep an eye on your spam folder, just in case.

What does the watermark look like?
It's on the first page (the cover), and it's a small grey ribbon-shape with the Gumroad "G" logo, next to which it says "Sold to" and then the email address that you gave when you purchased the book. So don't buy using your top secret email.

Why does the listing say that War and XPs is 292 pages when the print versions is 288?
The page count includes the front and back covers, inside and out.

Why did you reletter the old comics? I like Comic Sans!
For the same reason I relettered Blood Runs in the Family—because they were created on an old version of Adobe Illustrator, and updating to the new one caused them to burst their balloons slightly. Since I had to touch each one manually to fix it, I decided I might as well use the current font.

Why did you change the typography on the commentaries?
The original layout for both of these books was done in Quark Xpress 3.3—a program I don't have access to anymore, so I couldn't even open them. I needed to lay them out from scratch in Adobe InDesign, which is what I've used for the more recent books. That meant retyping the old commentaries.

Did you make any other corrections to the art?
A few really egregious errors that had slipped by, though I probably missed some yet again. Not much else.

Why are you using Gumroad instead of (insert name of other company)?
Because they charge the lowest commission, which means I could lower the price more. Plus, most other companies that offer a watermark service add it to every single page, which seemed like overkill to me. One page is enough.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or technical difficulties, feel free to post them here (though I don't know how much help I can be with the technical stuff; we may have to wait for Gumroad customer service for that).

[The Giant]

And yes, there will be a comic later today. I'm still working on it.

[Grey Watcher]

And yes, there will be a comic later today. I'm still working on it.

But discussing the update schedule is against the Rules!

[CoffeeIncluded]

Woo-hoo! Guess I'll be all caught up now--thanks!

[nachoted]

Great Thanks GIANT!!! Two more added to my library, thanks again for making them available in pdf format.

[Armitage]

You keep on delivering, we keep on buying. The age-old promise still holds true.


I wonder, could you at some point share some information abut how the PDFs sell? I'm not talking about absolute numbers, more along the lines of 'the prequel books outsell the others at a rate 2:1' or suchlike.

[The Giant]

I wonder, could you at some point share some information abut how the PDFs sell? I'm not talking about absolute numbers, more along the lines of 'the prequel books outsell the others at a rate 2:1' or suchlike.

Sales trickle over time, but based solely on the first two books that were offered together, the prequel outsells the compilation title at a rate of 4:3. Whether that's based on price or the fact that none of the content is online, I couldn't say.

[infinityman]

That didn't take long indeed! A great surprise for Monday! Guess I know what I'm getting myself for Easter...

[Morquard]

Yay, that is great news! Thank you!

[Porthos]

Well this is a welcome and unexpected surprise*.

* Yeah, yeah. " How, exactly, can a surprise be expected?" Bah. You know what I mean.

Ordered and downloading.

====

EDITED TO NOT DOUBLE POST:

Found an error in W&XP, I'm afraid.

In the Vaarsuvius Chalkboard recap, the first page has a comic title that says 'Comic Title' while the second page says '121x "Ominous" Would Have Worked, Too".

Neither are in the print version of W&XP, as the space where there are titles were both blank in the book. The 121x looks to be an artifact from NCftPB. as that was the title of the first extra strip in that book.

[The Giant]

Found an error in W&XP, I'm afraid.

In the Vaarsuvius Chalkboard recap, the first page has a comic title that says 'Comic Title' while the second page says '121x "Ominous" Would Have Worked, Too".

Neither are in the print version of W&XP, as the space where there are titles were both blank in the book. The 121x looks to be an artifact from NCftPB. as that was the title of the first extra strip in that book.

OK, this is fixed now. If you already bought it and want the new fixed file, just go to the email you got with the download link and download it again. Since it's such a minor change I'm not going to bother to update the version number (only about 20 people have the incorrect version already, and it doesn't really impact the book's readability or anything).

[ChillerInstinct]

Nice, been waiting for SoD since this PDF thing started. Will have to make a point of picking it up once I've got the spare cash.

[ChristianSt]

Mh. Currently it seems that I cannot pay with PayPal :/.

I found a blog post on Gumroad saying that this might temporarily happen. Has anyone any experience with this (best an ETA on when it is back again)?

I want to buy the books but I vastly prefer to buy with PayPal (especially since I previously used PayPal for Gumroad)

[hymie]

Thank you! Purchased. Moar pleez.

=====

So can somebody please remind me what is the "proper" order to read the books in, so that spoilers and background happens in the correct order?

I want to say that each "extras" book appears between a set of "strips" books, so

Dungeon Crawlin' Fools
On The Origins of PCs
No Cure for the Paladin Blues
Start of Darkness
War and XPs

(I like to rename my books so that they appear in my file listing in the proper order.)

Is this correct?

[Arkku]

Instant buy.

Great stuff, really looking forward to being able to read all the comics on the iPad Pro. =)

[Armitage]

So can somebody please remind me what is the "proper" order to read the books in, so that spoilers and background happens in the correct order?

I want to say that each "extras" book appears between a set of "strips" books, so

Dungeon Crawlin' Fools
On The Origins of PCs
No Cure for the Paladin Blues
Start of Darkness
War and XPs.

That should be correct.
To be sure: Just read the forewords by Rich. for each of the two prequels he spells out when they should be read to avoid spoilers.

[ti'esar]

Well, I'm not sure I can afford them just now, but this is nonetheless great news.

[_Jarlaxle_]

Are Start of Darkness and On The Origin of PCs are really only in Black and White or am I reading this wrong?

[NerdyKris]

Yes, they were done in black and white to save on printing costs. The original artwork was done in black and white, not color, so making them color would require redoing the entire book.

[Armitage]

Saying they're in black and white might give the wrong impression (even if it's technically correct). They are in gray-scale. So black and white and all colors in-between, as long as they can be reproduced using only black ink :)

[Elkins]

So can somebody please remind me what is the "proper" order to read the books in, so that spoilers and background happens in the correct order?

Personally, I prefer the order in which they are listed at the front of the books:

Dungeon Crawlin' Fools
No Cure for the Paladin Blues
On the Origins of PCs
War and XPs
Start of Darkness

I think that the information flow just works better this way. The revelation about Haley's father, for example, is better presented in No Cure than in Origins IMO, and War in XPs' slow unfolding of unexpected facets to Redcloak's character are much more powerful and intriguing when they actually are "unexpected" and a "slow unfolding," neither of which they are at all if you've already read Start of Darkness.

But the order in which you listed them will also work.

(I can't believe it was this question that finally made me delurk. I'm a sad, sad case.)

[nyjastul69]

Saying they're in black and white might give the wrong impression (even if it's technically correct). They are in gray-scale. So black and white and all colors in-between, as long as they can be reproduced using only black ink :)

Except that gray-scale means little to most people. Black and white means much to many.

[Lissou]

Mh. Currently it seems that I cannot pay with PayPal :/.

I found a blog post on Gumroad saying that this might temporarily happen. Has anyone any experience with this (best an ETA on when it is back again)?

I want to buy the books but I vastly prefer to buy with PayPal (especially since I previously used PayPal for Gumroad)

I bought both using Paypal, so it's working for me at least. I have no idea if that means it's working for you again but it might be worth re-trying?

[achan1058]

Love your comic. Bought both of them with Paypal. There's 1 minor complaint though. The size of the files are huge, compared to Origin of PC v3 and Dungeon Crawling Fools v3, even on a per page basis. Is it possible to make them smaller?

[JT]

Expected FAQs!
...

WHY DON'T YOU JUST TAKE MY CREDIT CARD AND BE DONE WITH IT????

That's the question I really want answered. It'd be easier to just hand it over, but no, you insist on taking it a little bit at a time.

:) :) :)

[ArnaudBo]

happy to see them already available :)
and even more with the really wanted "Start of the Darkness" <3

[The Giant]

Love your comic. Bought both of them with Paypal. There's 1 minor complaint though. The size of the files are huge, compared to Origin of PC v3 and Dungeon Crawling Fools v3, even on a per page basis. Is it possible to make them smaller?

Unfortunately, no. The reason the files are much larger is that they contain crayon drawings or other "raster" artwork, which leads to much higher file sizes when included at high resolution. The first two books do not have that kind of art in them at all, while Paladin Blues and Start of Darkness each have 11 pages of crayon drawings and War and XPs has the big 2-page shot of Roy leaping to the zombie dragon with lens flare (a raster effect), as well as just being a much longer book to begin with.

The raster artwork is already heavily compressed by various methods—the crayon drawings from SoD take up 347 MB uncompressed! The only way to further reduce the size of the final PDF files would be to lower the quality of the images. Since part of the reason people are buying these PDFs is for a "hi res" experience with the vector art, it would be jarring to switch from the crisp lines of the regular art to crappy 72-dpi web images.

[Random Poster]

Well that didn't take long.

No kidding; I was expecting you to take at least a couple more months to get these books ready. Of course, it's always nice to have my expectations crushed in a positive way.

I bought both books as soon as I saw the announcement. I started with Start of Darkness since I that was all new material to me, and... wow. Just wow. Although the book can't make quite the same impact now as it did when it first came out, since some of the major plot points (like the fact that Redcloak has lied to Xykon from the beginning) have been revealed in the main comic, it's still pretty impressive. There's one thing I can't help wondering: if Xykon hadn't hooked up with Redcloak, what would he have done? I kinda think he wouldn't have become a lich, at least; he's not exactly the kind of person to plan too far ahead, and while he obviously likes to kill people for no reason whatsoever, I doubt he would ever have bothered to go to the trouble of making himself immortal just so that he could keep doing it forever. On the other hand, Redcloak would of course have found another high-level arcane caster to help with his plan, and since that caster probably wouldn't be someone who's already targeted by a Blood Oath of Vengance, it would make things much better for him and the goblinoids, and much worse for the rest of the world.

When will the rest of the books be coming out?
Uncertain, as I need to juggle the relettering with other work, but my goal is to get the rest of the series out before the end of the year, if not sooner. Obviously, these two books came hot on the heels of the previous one, but don't necessarily expect the next release to happen so quickly.

Yeah, I for one would actually prefer you to work on creating new content instead of redoing old content, but that's just my opinion which you are free to ignore.

[lothos]

Hello,
just bought both .pdfs. Wonderful.

Rich - I was kind of hoping you might fix the small mistake in start of darkness that I posted about here :-)

It's in the last panel of page 90, where the modifier for 17 strength is +4 instead of +3, it's +3 for 15 STR instead of +2 and it's +2 for 13 STR instead of +1.

Again though, it in no way diminished my enjoyment of the book in paper format and it won't here in the .pdf.

Thanks again for making these available in a format I can carry around on my iPhone.

[PallentisLunam]

I thought we'd have to wait another month or two for this...

TAKE MY MONEY TAKE IT NOW!!!! GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!!!