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I'd love to see and buy a book detailing all that goes into making an adventure path. But then again I love making off books since they show and explain just what goes into making some products.
It could be an idea for your overworked monkeys :)
What I'd like to see in it is, from outline to what goes to the authors and back to the editors. From art outline to finished artwork. Brainstorming ideas, (with pictures from the beer coasters with ideas :)
We could all pitch in to this thread and offer suggestions and show them who all would be interested.
Personally, I prefer to only ever see a final product. To give autopsy to an artform is to strip away its breath, and though such surgery has its place for students of the craft or afficionados who simply crave that sort of thing, when a work has touched or amazed me I do my best to avoid such dissections for fear of losing the wonderment that comes with not knowing every little detail. Behind-the-scenes features reduce the work, usually designed to be seen as a whole, to a collection of parts, and such collections, though deserving respect for the craft and effort involved, strike me as academically chilly and divorced from feeling. Kind of like learning a song. They're magical when you hear the ones you love, but once you learn to play and sing them, they're somehow a different thing altogether; a collection of notes and precise executions that, after a while, seem to carry more of your own scent than that of the original artists.
That's how it all boils down for me anyway.
Personally, I prefer to only ever see a final product.Clearly you're a Vorthos; we Melvins like to see how the sausage is made.
Groggy after an accidental nap. I hope this makes sense.
I had a little trouble wading through the Magic: The Gathering references because I've never played, but I believe the information there to be quite a subtle and astute take on understanding what makes certain audiences tick. I'm not always a Vorthos.
As a writer, composer, and carpenter I'm quite used to the inner workings of things. Deconstructed literature, cheated my way through far too many songs, ripped sheetrock off the wall only to witness the slime-drenched horrors that writhe behind. It's fascinating and educational and I understand enjoying it on that level. But to give too much study to the "man behind the curtain" makes me forget about the reality of the Wizard of Oz himself. I don't generally engage a book or movie to see the man behind the curtain. I want the wizard. Once I pull a curtain, the awe of the wizard ceases to exist in my universe. This is not to say that I don't have room for both wizards and charlatans behind curtains... but being that it's art I prefer to enjoy it as art first and foremost, as an experience rather than as a lesson. Besides after a few billion behind-the-scenes features I've found that such dissections are so similar to one another that there isn't all that much left for me to learn. I've got thirty good trade books about the different technical aspects of filmmaking. When I see night shot a certain way I know "They shoot right at dusk to get night to look this good. And when it's gone a few minutes later, they have to wrap it up and wait for the next dusk to continue." I guess that's worth knowing when making a film, but the technique announces itself when I see it now and kicks my suspension of disbelief over like an under-Camaro carjack. I miss that SOD (no, not stormtroopers of death).
we Melvins like to see how the sausage is made.
I used to love Sesame Street, when they'd take you into a factory and show you how things were mass produced on the lines. And then there was that strange gent who painted numbers on things before becoming Mr. Bentley on the Jeffersons. COOKIE!