Moving to B & W

So Dark Passions is at the printer for real. It's been there for a while, but we've had to figure out whether the whole thing was going to be in color or not. We've opted for black & white after looking at the profit numbers, because we are a start-up that needs capital to keep all of our lovely artists happy.

This book in terms of manufacturing has had its own challenges. Originally, the vision I had for Dark Passions (which was originally named and advertised as the Cult Companion) was a small book with an accordion-fold reference booklet that was supposed to be like a game screen. I personally am not a fan of game screens, so I wanted to have something that was like a folding pocket reference. The reason for the small book was that the Core Book was such a mammoth undertaking that we wanted a supplement that we could complete easily before moving on to the chunky Vade Mecum (which was originally named and advertised as the Companion).

After completing the Core Book and going back to see what I could put in a reference, I realized that there really wasn't all that much in Framewerk that I could put into a reference without basically reprinting the conflict chapter of the book. The basic rules of Framewerk are simple and there's very little else you're going to have to reference all that much and anything you will have to reference is all in once place. The accordion-fold looked less and less likely. So the idea was to shrink-wrap in a booklet that was all the necessary sheets (character, mecha, supporting cast) and some other handy reference so that you'd have something to easily copy. Then that idea got shot down because Mongoose's printing facility isn't really ready to do that yet. So then the booklet was going to be bound into the book. That made the book half black & white and half color.

Which brings us here. It just makes sense to have the whole thing black and white and it doesn't make the reference any less useful. Plus, we're going to give the reference sheets as a free .pdf to anyone who buys Dark Passions, both in color and black & white.