The Gaming Den

Judging__Eagle wrote:Sometimes it's not that a character farts out a level of "Class".

It's that your average "high level" adventurer, could seriously be thousands of years old. Either from drinking the blood of outsiders, 'hanging out' with outsiders, or being given "special dispensation" by an Power; or you know, being Hob Gadling.

Yeah, but they weren't talking about high level. They were talking about low level. No one here has a problem with a several thousand year old high level character.

It just starts to stretch the willing suspension of disbelief that the several thousand year old dude is only level one. What did he do for those past millennia?

Judging__Eagle wrote: Personally, I like the idea of playing a 40+ thousand year old human. Who thinks that the 800 year old vampire is a "pup", and that the "300 year old" Elf is "kid".

Dude, are you always two-bags of shit* guy?

*I had an acquaintance, years ago, that earned this nickname through his constant, unceasing efforts to one-up everyone around him about anything and everything. He would also engage in this sort of dismissive, "nyah, nyah!"-type bullshit, specifically to annoy other people.

So, JE, should we start calling you Two-bags?

D&D characters go up levels by being involved in adventures. By default an adventure is not something that happens all the time, therefore I personally have no problem with an old level 1 character. As long as theres some kind of background explanation its fine.

I mean how many times have you seen the old retired hero who's so rusty that he can barely swing a sword, but over the course of the (movie/book/comic) he regains his mojo and kicks ass again? Thats a fine level 1 to level 10 arc right there.

How, other than cutting the Spells out, did we go from 548 pages in build 99 to 437 pages in build 139 but get an extra 12 pages (plus two lines) by the end of the Magic chapter?

and how's that holding pattern before 0.8 going?

so I've now got a nook, and tried looking at the tome on it...

Apparently the nook doesn't like tables and columns. How easy or difficult would it be to do a version of the tome with the tables as either unformated text or converted into images embedded in the pdf, and nothing done double column?

Edit: Ugh. I was thinking I might be able to do it myself... but after seeing the rigamarole that was the discussion on converting it to .doc or.rtf.... yeah... same issues I'm sure..

On the other hand, I just noticed that the free program I'm using to convert stuff for my nook, Calibre, can convert to rtf. So... there you go fbmf, if you still need it.

Prak_Anima wrote:How, other than cutting the Spells out, did we go from 548 pages in build 99 to 437 pages in build 139 but get an extra 12 pages (plus two lines) by the end of the Magic chapter?

I have no idea how that happened; I have very little time for comprehensive overviews. (In other words, your guess is as good as mine). You might ask Utterfail; he typeset the section. See below.

Prak_Anima wrote:and how's that holding pattern before 0.8 going?

Poorly. I'm working full time, moderating on another board, and about to move cities and change careers. I also don't play D&D hardly at all anymore, and visit this forum rarely, so my mental time given over to it is much less than it used to be. My enthusiasm for this project is dying.

What we need is good fluff/explanation to pad out the SRD material, and then several someones to go through the whole thing and edit for consistency and clarity.

Please note that knowing LaTeX is not required, just helpful - people who can't write can typeset, and vice versa. People who do both, like myself, are in short supply.


Calibre will do fine as an after the fact sort of thing; I'm sure if you wanted an RTF version you could bump LaTeX and it would output that instead of PDF.

Or, get something that displays PDFs as they were meant to be outputted - iPad, for instance.


EDIT: Also, THIS, specifically K's point about a new edition.

(AKA, why bother? He's right. Either we are happy with the changes that we've made and the Tomes as they stand, or we need a new edition. I realize it's not quite that harsh of a line, and the ideal middle ground would be to get something like Tome 3.25 with backwards compatibility out, but unless more people start working on it, we're not going anywhere).

I started working on this project almost three years ago, for fuck's sake. What has been done in that time? Most of my contributions have been haranguing other people into doing work, and setting up an actual manageable version control system that can be accessed by anyone and passed down as people see fit to take up the reigns. I've added and reorganized things, sure, but it hasn't really gone anywhere.

Our last stable version was almost a year ago. We've been in development hell for a version that was supposed to be "complete" or "whole" for at least that long; I'm almost tempted to call the Tome PDF vaporware at this point. We've essentially punted on shipping a finished version of 0.7; no one's committed code in 6 weeks, and that was all minor edits for shits and giggles.

I dunno, Prak. You tell me how we're doing.

Dude, I can't blame you. I'm growing increasingly disenchanted with this board and may be moving on soon myself. This could use people, but people seem too caught up in bickering to care. I've been thinking about downloading LaTex and giving it a shot, and maybe I will, because an ipad ain't happening any time soon.

Good luck on all man, and thanks for all the work on this.

I dunno, it seemed to me we had a lot of material made this last year. Not necessarily the work originally planned, but some fairly solid community material.

Plus there's been discussion of errata for the Tome as well, which K weighed in on.

I don't know if all that's been done is fit for the file, but I'd wager some is. I can't really call it wasted time.

Prak_Anima wrote:This could use people, but people seem too caught up in bickering to care.

Well, I try to avoid bickering. LaTex, right? I can try to learn it, I think.

Alternatively Prak. Some people choose to spend their productive time writing material instead of learning latex and editing into a pdf material that is already freely available online.

I don't care about bickering; we've had arguments about content before but that's nothing new.

At this point we need people to write fluff more than we need community material committed, and for editors to go back through and unify formatting and correct errors, just so we can have something that we can point to as a stable non-beta release that doesn't have the "death of a thousand cuts" problem. (i.e., 1.0).

There are seriously three dudes working on this right now, and we're all busy with real life too. It's hard to devote lots of time and energy to something unless it's your job or making you money, or it's your passion - and this is unfortunately neither for me right now.

It's pretty simple; if you get HTML you'll get LaTeX.

Meikle641 wrote:I dunno, it seemed to me we had a lot of material made this last year. Not necessarily the work originally planned, but some fairly solid community material.

Plus there's been discussion of errata for the Tome as well, which K weighed in on.

I don't know if all that's been done is fit for the file, but I'd wager some is. I can't really call it wasted time.

I didn't say the project was a waste of time, I was just commenting on how much peripheral stuff was just bickering now.

Kaelik: Pdfs are useful. Though honestly, yeah, just using the web may be more so.

Aktariel: not talking about arguments over content.
What do you mean by fluff, exactly? I wrote up a couple paragraphs about familiars and revising the rules for loss of them that I don't think anyone ever even commented on. Do you mean actual game world fluff?

Prak_Anima wrote: What do you mean by fluff, exactly? I wrote up a couple paragraphs about familiars and revising the rules for loss of them that I don't think anyone ever even commented on. Due you mean actual game world fluff?

Here's a problem:

There is no fluff that will be universally used. People make their own settings, handle different things in different games. Treating -any- fluff as The One True Way to handle it is a failure (see: the 13 million ways to handle Law and Chaos).

But what -can- be done is come up with several reasonable ways to handle it, a la Tome of Necromancy's take on Negative Energy.

No, I mean fluff as opposed to crunch. In this case, we need something better than just the barebones mechanics. We need an actual introduction. We need sentences that are more than just "this is how it works." We need a page about what the Tomes are vs 3.5 D&D, and we need to also explain that it will work just fine as a standalone game.

We need to have people go through and write little things to fill in the cracks so that it's a game and not a patch. Fluff is probably the wrong word.

do up a list of "fluff" pieces you think are needed, and I'll see if I can write anything up.

. . .

seriously. . .?

I think one of my main points so far has been "I don't have time for this project anymore, nor the enthusiasm." So, I don't have a list handy. If you feel so inclined, go through the PHB and see what it has that we don't in terms of fluff, minus the suck, and go from there.

This is the first time I've visited the forum in three weeks, even to just read; the only reason I'm posting on this topic so frequently is that people are finally responding back.

What do you think the Tome PDF needs to be a full system book, Prak? Start making that happen. I'll give you commit access to the subversion repository and you can go to town.

Hell, anyone who wants can have commit access. I'll hunt you down if you fuck it up, but that's the reason we have Subversion: to cover for people's incompetence in maintaining a codebase.

Here are a few things off the top of my head that the tomes need to be a complete standalone game:

• Character creation rules. The ones that currently exist are all under WotC's copyright, so we might need a workaround if we can get this at all. If not, tell people to ask an experienced player.
• Foreword for the project, with a statement of design philosophy, balance point, target playstyles, and so on.
• Straightforward DMing advice for how to organize a campaign, straightforward statements of DM philosophy and how to make various kinds/styles of games fun, including the commonly-maligned ones (Monty Haul, railroading, and so on). Contradict all the bad advice in the DMG and DMG2, and reinforce all the good advice.
• Maybe a starter kit, but that's been a pet idea of mine for a while. Some characters, an adventure or three, and so on, using the various unique things of the Tomes.

Basically, what we have now is an excellent system of game supplements that replaces a good chunk of the foundation of the game. But the Tomes are still written for people to come to them by playing D&D for a while, being dissatisfied, and picking them up, or by playing with someone who's already been through the process. So what's left is to build an entry to it so that new people who have never played D&D3 before would be inspired to pick up Tome D&D.

One of the people DMing in my RPG group has made the Shadow Plane skull-blastingly boring. I've tried convincing him to put interesting stuff in there, but I'm not having much success. If someone wants to try writing up High Adventure on the Shadow Plane, that would be pretty cool, since he seems to have more regard for official-looking stuff. Posting here since that's where we got the last bunch of new HA articles.

IGTN wrote some of those up for his Book of Elements project. Have a link: http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Book_of_ ... _Shadow.21

Thanks, that should make a good starting point.

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If anyone has some thoughts on gnarly ways to implement Pathfinder-style Kytons (part of their own brand of fiends dwelling primarily on the Shadow plane, but sometimes allied with Baatezu), those would also be welcomed. Since one of the big things about Kytons is tormenting peeps, I'd like to use something like the below philosophy to make them less one-dimensional and more of something the PCs might conceivably consider working with or against, depending on circumstances.

( from http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49740& ... sc&start=0 )

Flagellant's Morality: The Good in "Essentials"

The idea is that Good is appreciating life. Suffering and the denial of what are normally considered rights actually serve the cause of Good because they make you appreciate things like air to breathe and the absence of pain. Empathy for others is important because it lets you appreciate what they have. Taking something away from someone is Good if they are able to better appreciate regaining something like

The idea might be that since making other people suffer to enjoy life better is good, making yourself enjoy inflicting suffering is doublegood. And enjoying suffering yourself is doubleplusgood, since you win at appreciating life no matter what. That could let smart adventurers use the Kyton philosophy to persuade them to do stuff. It also might let one repurpose some of Planescapes material on the Sensates, since I vaguely remember there being some cool stuff on them somewhere.

Also, just this morning I added some more Plane of Shadow stuff here, but then my computer started making funny noises and smelling like burnt plastic before I could announce it. I also have some stuff in this part that touches on the Khayal genies that live in the shadow plane.

That is also cool. Thank you again.

[url=http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Book_of_Elements_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/High_Adventure_on_the_Inner_Planes#High_Adventure_in_._._._The_Plane_of_Shadow.21 wrote:Book of Elements[/url]]"I need to know what color this is by midnight. I'll pay you well for it."

The pure awesome is giving me shivers.

Hey guys do we have like... an open game license section 15 entry to stick on stuff? If I wanted to include Tome work in an OGL game, what, if anything, would I put in the copyright section? Or do I just say at some point "this includes TOME material, thanks to Frank and K and TGD" and such and I don't put in a line in the copyright section?

Lokathor wrote:Hey guys do we have like... an open game license section 15 entry to stick on stuff? If I wanted to include Tome work in an OGL game, what, if anything, would I put in the copyright section? Or do I just say at some point "this includes TOME material, thanks to Frank and K and TGD" and such and I don't put in a line in the copyright section?

Frank (presumably also speaking on behalf of K at least in this instance) has previously stated that he doesn't care if people use all, part, or none of the Tomes without any attribution whatsoever, even if they blatantly steal a big chunk of it and try to sell it, as long as they don't actually try to prevent other people from using it

So you can put something about Frank and K, but you don't have to.