seodude wrote in Dumb Question/Idea:I remember a thread about Acaeum members hiring an artist to do "exclusive" Acaeum art prints or sketches or something.  I also seem to recall it involved an interminable wait for the artist or artists to come through(and no idea what the final or current status of the project).

So as I see Erol, Jim Ward, Frank M selling off their collections on ebay, I started wondering if these guys had one last module/adventure kicking around inside their heads.  I would gladly front the "cost" of an exclusive module written by Frank and illustrated by Erol and/or really any combination of godfathers who have one more module left in them.  Personally I would value this above any Artist print as it is something that could be played/shared with others, and enjoyed by more than just the owner of a print.

Has this been done before?  Would be interested in thoughts or comments about such an endeavor.

Creating a special adventure and art has not been done by this community with Frank and/or Erol(that I know of), but it has been done with Tracy Hickman.  A great group from the Acaeum approached Tracy regarding finishing his Daystar West series and his planned adventures, Eye of the Dragon and Brimstone.  He agreed to complete these two and limited copies of each were produced and sold.

The Limited Edition Art prints continue to be produced and we're currently waiting on Clyde Caldwell to submit to us his print.  We've been waiting years, and hope he comes through soon.  

I will tell you from my own experience serving on the committee that put together the limited edition art prints that pulling off something like this is more difficult than it appears.  For one thing, getting people on these forums to agree to something is like herding the proverbial cats.  It's probably best to have a small group of people, or one person, just create/organize something and then produce and sell it to anyone who is interested.  It's not a dumb idea; it's a difficult idea.   Good luck!  

I'm sure that is something the community would get behind.

The question would be, is it worth the time and effort of the participants given the remuneration offered?

If we're talking about 200 copies at $50 a pop, that's $10K which you cannot divide between a notable artist and a notable author and expect to hire the level of attention and dedication needed for polish and excellence. Maybe you can with 100 copies at $500 a pop, but I doubt you'll sell that many copies at that price, and you'd need an experienced team of layout artists and editors to deliver the quality needed to justify the $500 expense, and do justice to such a project.

It's definitely something I'd pay for.

The other option would be to put the money in and have the product produced, but do a general release at a normal retail price and dollar cost average down based on the volume of sales you believe you could get. The problem with that hypothesis is, if a classic Frank Mentzer adventure with an Erol Otis cover were believed by those who already publish shedloads of modules a year into the community, at a viable cost to publisher, author and artist, it would have been done by now.

So I'm up for it.

An alternative Kickstarter/GoFundMe may be a community collection of funds aimed at buying out the rights to Castle Zagyg and bringing that to publication with TLG. But again, if TLG thought that were viable financially, they would have proposed such a venture. They are in the best position to estimate the value of the CZ IP, and know the extent of the unpublished work that could bolster a reprint, and the expected financial return that would or wouldn't justify such a venture.

Wasn't something like that attempted to raise funds for the Wu-Tang Clan's album, Once Upon a Time in Shaulin? Or was that just an idea that was floated online?

As I see it, the questions are....

Is this a $10K, $20K, $40K or $100K project?
Is this a 16pp, 24pp, 32pp, 64pp adventure?
Is this comparable in quality of presentation to the best of today's hardcopy published works, or in the style of the best of the works of the 80's and 90's?
Who is going to deliver on presentation/layout, copy editing, etc?
What is the division of costs between implementation/managing the deliver of the project, the production of the product, and the payments to the cover artist, the interior artists(s), the cartographer, and the author?

To put this into perspective, Ernie Gygax never managed to succeed in publishing his rendition of the hobby shop dungeon with no notable authors or artists and about $80K to spend.

This is certainly an interesting proposal and something I'd be keen to watch.

...

As an aside, I wonder what happened to the guy who has been talking about reprublishing the Islandia series for the past five years?

Sign me up.  I missed the last one.  That won't happen again.

-SKA

Great idea! I would be interested.