The Gaming Den

Pathfinder did pretty well and it blows.
The tomes are far superior, and the most fun I've had with DnD.
Lets finish this thing and get it to the world!

:]

This has been suggested. The simple fact is that while AS was easy enough for Frank to put in a sellable form, there isn't a cohesive, coherent way to do that with Tome. Pathfinder also had a lot going for it, like name recognition (Paizo's), and timeliness (WE'RE SAVING D&D!!!!), that Tome just doesn't have. Plus the Den doesn't have a great reputation.

AS is sell-/buyable? Or do you mean Printable.

I think there would be a cohesive way to do TOME. I mean you rip off every word of the SRD that you aren't changing and then edit shit you are changing. Create a kickstarter to get a short run of the products printed and then sell that bitch

deanruel87 wrote:I think there would be a cohesive way to do TOME. I mean you rip off every word of the SRD that you aren't changing and then edit shit you are changing.

The problem is that there are a bunch of typos and unclear rules in the SRD, not to mention the cases where the PHB/DMG/MM version is different from the SRD version. So you either go through the entire fucking document, line by line with a fine-toothed comb, and try to fix things (not as much fun as it sounds), or you fix one or two things and leave a bunch of known errors in your product. Pathfinder and Dreamscarred Press have taken the latter approach, sadly.

deanruel87 wrote:Create a kickstarter to get a short run of the products printed and then sell that bitch

I think the "d20, but better!" market is getting a bit crowded, but there might be a few more bucks to be made in it.

I was trying to do do that for a while, starting with just 3 races and 4 classes and building a pocket-sized core book. Then I ran into "what do I do with the economy?"

maddd0g wrote:Pathfinder did pretty well and it blows.

Do you know why it does well, despite blowing?

OgreBattle wrote:

maddd0g wrote:Pathfinder did pretty well and it blows.

Do you know why it does well, despite blowing?

Awesome art and timed right when 4E was turning out to be crap.

virgil wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:

maddd0g wrote:Pathfinder did pretty well and it blows.

Do you know why it does well, despite blowing?

Awesome art and timed right when 4E was turning out to be crap.

That, and as Prak mentioned: name recognition.

I tried to put it all into one thing that you could reference as a single rulebook one time http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11833524/Tomes- ... rkness.pdf

But there's just soooooo much of it that I essentially gave up and moved on in life.

I totally support the idea of someone putting out The Tomes as an official product. Sure, there have been threads about it, and it seems general consensus is that it won't happen, for decent reasons. But... I still think someone should give it a go. The comment regarding the Den's reputation is spot on and hilarious, but I say... go with it! That can be the selling point. "From the hateful bastards who love game design more than life itself." Or something. If (fingers crossed so so hard) Antipaladin Blues comes out soon, I'll definitely be playing up the "cursed" angle, and the "imploding publishing house" angle. Hell, maybe I'll try to ride the Den's infamy coattails as well. "Not a complete pile of shit according to The Gaming Den." There's a blurb for ya.

OgreBattle wrote: Do you know why it does well, despite blowing?

Decent adventure support. In fact, PF exists only so that Paizo can have a currently supported system to write adventures for.

And make no mistake, this forum greatly exaggerates PF flaws. It is guilty of missed opportunities for improvement and maliciously making things different just to remove backwards compatibility with 3.5, but it is not worse than 3.5. I'd say that taking core only it is actually better, as far as an average group is concerned, no clue about supplements.

Lokathor wrote:I tried to put it all into one thing that you could reference as a single rulebook one time http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11833524/Tomes- ... rkness.pdf

But there's just soooooo much of it that I essentially gave up and moved on in life.

Awesome! This is a great start, as is the other pdf (Tome of Awesome)

What we need now is:
A good website with articles on game design, why tome is good, etc, a good playtest adventure (Complete with prebuilt characters, inventive magic items to show off our new magic item system, some cool mobs, and a compelling but classic story.), and some people to post on forums and hype this thing up. There is enough traffic on certain DnD forums that I think we can pull in some visitors. The SRD can be free, with a full art PDF Rulebook, MM, DMG, and a few level 1-5 campaigns to get people started.

madd0g, why do you want release rules that are incomplete by the authors' own admission as well as make the necessary line item adjustments to 3.5 to both fix the bugs and line-fit with Tome instead of just designing a new game?

Do you realize how much effort your pie in the sky dreams will take? For no real benefit? For all that work, you (or we) can honestly make a new Kitchen Sink Fantasy RPG and not be relegated to sub-Paizo heartbreaker status.

Many other people have asked for this and the answer is always why bother?

JigokuBosatsu wrote: "Not a complete pile of shit according to The Gaming Den." There's a blurb for ya.

Bah, as soon as one of us comes out an' says it's not a complete pile of shit, someone else will say that it is in fact a double complete pile of shit.

Mask_De_H wrote:madd0g, why do you want release rules that are incomplete by the authors' own admission as well as make the necessary line item adjustments to 3.5 to both fix the bugs and line-fit with Tome instead of just designing a new game?

Because there's a known (if small) market of people who will buy "3.5, but better!!!1!" games

Mark_De_H wrote:Do you realize how much effort your pie in the sky dreams will take?

I think by "Let's do it!" he means "Someone else do it, and I'll help (sort of)!"

Josh_Kablack wrote: Bah, as soon as one of us comes out an' says it's not a complete pile of shit, someone else will say that it is in fact a double complete pile of shit.

I'm going to hold you to that.

As far as MdH's concern- one of the charms of The Tomes isn't just the rule tweaks that it lays out, but the funny philosophical discussion and intriguing exploration of what D&D's rules imply for narrative. All of it comes as a reaction to D&D, so that aspect is important. I considered that perhaps The Tomes would be better served with a whole new system from scratch- but then I thought, why not both? Could a Tome publication serve as a sort of metaRPG? You could have all the discussion and rules tweaks, and then offer a complete new-system alternative.

To me, the "wisdom of the Den" is less about a few balanced classes, and more about a bunch of hardasses grinding out a philosophy of game design. If there were a Tome publication, I think it would have to reflect that, and not just be a collection of houserules. Maybe that would make the project more of a pipe dream, but so be it.

Actually, that gives me a thought. Godlike is a supers game set in WW2, it has it's own system, but then it also has an appendix with "if you want to play with a certain d20 utilizing system that (at the time) just came out, here's how you do it."

What one could do is create a new system, whole cloth, with Tome as the basis, and then put the "fix 3.5" version of tome as an appendix.

If you are going for a commentary on D&D, then what would be awesome is having the PHB 3.5, but only on every other page. The other pages would be commentary, with the consequences of each, character advice, and with shit parts obviously crossed out or circled with "this is awesome" beside it.

Almost by definition it would end up at least twice as long as the PHB and have all sorts of legal issues, but would be pretty awesome.

maddd0g wrote:

Lokathor wrote:I tried to put it all into one thing that you could reference as a single rulebook one time http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11833524/Tomes- ... rkness.pdf

But there's just soooooo much of it that I essentially gave up and moved on in life.

Awesome! This is a great start, as is the other pdf (Tome of Awesome)

What we need now is:
A good website with articles on game design, why tome is good, etc, a good playtest adventure (Complete with prebuilt characters, inventive magic items to show off our new magic item system, some cool mobs, and a compelling but classic story.), and some people to post on forums and hype this thing up. There is enough traffic on certain DnD forums that I think we can pull in some visitors. The SRD can be free, with a full art PDF Rulebook, MM, DMG, and a few level 1-5 campaigns to get people started.

It took me two years, but I did the entire player's handbook, the magic item section of the DMG, and started on the Monster Manual. In the interest of full disclosure, Toem rules are mixed in with houserules and spell revisions, many of which would be controversial 'round these parts I am sure.

Then I started grad school so I've only done a few sessions of playtest. It is all formatted and pretty, but it is still very much in beta.

Game On,
fbmf

Game On,
fbmf

I think parody and fair use would cover it ok.... K could probably tell us

I think that's for excerpts. If you're publishing their whole work as half of your work...

I suppose one could contact WotC about buying the rights to publish the 3.x core books. If anyone does, would you inquire about buying the rights to Hecatomb, too? I'd love to see that come back...

Yeh, 3e/d20 is huge, 5e is almost here and might well be easier to fix, once the bugs are uncovered.

By huge I mean it's a million words of huge. Pro authors do around 10k words a day if they're the sort to be able, first draught quality. Six months full-time work for a draught copy. Anyone wants to put up, maybe NZ$10000, I'm cheap, should be worth a shot, complete line-edit, fixed mini-games (stealth, scry, 'porting, stacking, multi-classing, ...), player numbers match monster numbers, skills that work for what they're used for. Then you can hire an editor, artists, layout person.

Someone wants an economy? Ugh. Would d20Modern do? I mean, I can fix the infinite loops, WBL, and Xmastree bullshit, but what are the target numbers? Hell, are castles and armies valid things?

Though I can't honestly see the point in doing a game that doesn't basically work with 3e/PF era modules as-written, compatibility is quite important for people spending money on it. I'm not keen on de-powering Tome material to Pathfinder scales, in part because PF is a touch inconsistent there, and they might convert to 5e anyway.

I think there's a meaningful extent to which Tome really needs to be cleaned up, polished, probably even scoured before it's a cohesive final product. Even as it is, a lot of its standards have been really inconsistent, in terms of the capabilities of classes, what a feat's supposed to do, and other such things. Power inflation has pretty inarguably occurred at this point. Something should be done to make this more consistent than it is now, because the inequality between a soulborn and a fiendish brute is an elephant in the room, to me. As well as some ambiguity when it comes to backwards-compatibility with the wish economy and the magic item system. Or ambiguity as to how they're supposed to work *in the first place*, I'm pretty sure as it is most people who have any system at all for handling that crap are using something partially made up.