Sketch 2: BLACK SEVEN in Print
Some things are simply commercially unviable. This sketch is one of those things: my dream of a print version of BLACK SEVEN
Elevator Pitch
BLACK SEVEN is awesome. But wouldn’t it be more awesome in print? Not as a boxed set, but a manilla envelope containing all you need to run the game for friends and at cons.
What Is It?
I have a surprisingly concrete idea of how I’d love to do a BLACK SEVEN physical version.
The whole thing’s in a large manilla folder containing:
- Two copies of the Agent Briefing, bound.
- One copy of the Control Briefing, bound.
- Ten (or twenty) A5 Agent Records, blank, as a peel-off pad.
- Ten (or twenty) A5 Facility Records, blank, as a peel-off pad.
- A USB key with electronic versions of everything.
- One “BLACK SEVEN Field Guide”, containing the introduction, example of play, and options from the corebook, bound.
Operation: GREY UNICORN is in a half-size sealed envelope, with appropriate logos and decoration, containing
- Operation: GREY UNICORN, bound.
- The example Agent Records.
- The example Facility Records.
Where things are noted as “bound”, they’re done as A5 stapled booklets, with appropriate logos, design, and layout, with colour-coded cardstock covers.
Where Are You At?
Ahahaha. Because of the variety of components, the cost to produce individual units would be verging on the extortionate, and that’s assuming that I can get volume discounts. BLACK SEVEN hasn’t sold enough for me to get volume discounts on the PDF, let alone on a physical product. It’s a light game, and ain’t nobody going to pay shitloads of cash for less than fifty pages.
Current Hurdles?
The whole thing’s a bit batshit, so this Sketch is rather more a dream of what could be rather than anything that actually happens. Maybe in ten years or so I’ll be in a position to do this kind of thing.