New Frank & K Tome pdf

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:04 am

Hick's items don't mesh with BoG or the generally agreed design goal of items not adding large amounts of vertical power. I think they should be kept out of the Tome.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:36 am

ubernoob wrote:Hick's items don't mesh with BoG or the generally agreed design goal of items not adding large amounts of vertical power. I think they should be kept out of the Tome.

Wait, you mean you don't want level 10 Tome Characters to solo level 20 WotC Wizards? What's wrong with you.

We need to stack as much vertical power on everything as humanly possible!

(I haven't done any serious consideration of Hicks items, this is just me bitching about the way every new thing has to be twice as good as whatever is similar in the tome for people to feel like it can be used.)

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:29 am

Oh yeah, looks like enchantment and transmutation are unrepresented too. But like I said, if you think of a more balanced spell level 9 ability, tell me and I'll include it (or even feats covering those other schools). And its funny you should mention the spirit shaman and psion, my players have been eyeing them, so I intended to eventually include them for selfish reasons. The backgrounds I'm going to include in the character creation section when its finished, they havent been ditched. Same for the rules on magic items from the Book of Gears, it'll get a proper section eventually.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 6:48 am

And this is where we run into "Who gets to say what goes in?" problem.

Code forking is fine. Code splitting-so-many-times-everyone-has-their-own-version is not.

I for one am going to see about finally creating a flexible enough \newcommand to include Koumei's video game magic items, and then maybe some more of her prestige classes from Tome of Virtue.

Then on to other reasonably well received things on the ULTIMATE LIST OF STUFF.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 10:19 am

I believe that a while back Frank said something to the effect of "It isn't what you put in your game, but decide doesn't make it that makes it good or bad."

The tomes need some regulation so that they have a semblance of balance to them and there's no obvious bullshit. Hick's magic items fall under the "obvious bullshit" category.

We need one of two things:
A) A [Community] tag on all the shit that we're adding without vetting. The original PDF's biggest outlier was probably combat school. Community material needs a note that it hasn't been proofread and should be used sparingly. ESPECIALLY community tome feats. Those things for the most part are all balanced against Combat School, which is a god damn outlier.
B) A real way to vet shit and make sure it IS balanced before adding it in. This is more work and people will probably like having some "untested" options to springboard off of more than nothing at all.

Really, I'd like the Tome to be something that I can suggest someone use without having to tell them in advance that part isn't usable.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 5:47 pm

ubernoob wrote:"It isn't what you put in your game, but decide doesn't make it that makes it good or bad."

...

The tomes need some regulation so that they have a semblance of balance to them and there's no obvious bullshit.

...

Really, I'd like the Tome to be something that I can suggest someone use without having to tell them in advance that part isn't usable.

Pretty much that.

Thank you.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 5:56 pm

Perhaps this would be a good use for footnotes? Have a footnote for all of the 'unvetted' indicating that the class or feat or whatever may lack balance.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 8:09 pm

Utterfail wrote:Perhaps this would be a good use for footnotes? Have a footnote for all of the 'unvetted' indicating that the class or feat or whatever may lack balance.

That's a possibility, and a reasonably workable one, given that you're still trying to include everything.

But why do you want to include everything? Sit down and really think about it for a moment. I know that when I picked this project up for the first time, i wanted to add as much community material as possible because it would give more and better options to players of Tome games. After a while, I dropped that idea because so much was either unfinished, poorly integrated, poorly written, or poorly balanced. Yes, even here on the Gaming Den.

Please understand, I'm not calling people out for writing bad things; I'm simply pointing out and trying to argue for some consideration of the material slated for inclusion.

Putting everything into one book is missing the point of the Tomes in many ways, I feel.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 10:08 pm

Quantumboost wrote:My thoughts: we could have a separate PDF for each of the Tomes (meaning the first four would be completely static, and the other four if/when we get the content finished) and an expansion work acting as the Community Material.

Sure. I thought about doing that; the only issue there is that there's no way to link documents to each other with those tasty tasty hyperlinks in PDFs. (You can't, for example, have a link from the community material to the combat rules in the main Tomes file). Other than that, it would make changes a lot easier - we'd just have to do some code reorganization, but you wouldn't have to print a new 300 page document out every time we did a point revision.

Quantumboost wrote:If you need a hand with anything like formatting up new content etc., I have a pretty good grasp of the formatting stuff from the aWoD stuff, and could help out with whatever.

Know LaTeX? That's really the most tedious part - converting the board formatting into compilable markup language.

Even if you didn't want to code by hand, you can use OpenOffice to export it to LaTeX, and then send the files to me for final review.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:40 am

Marked for inclusion in the trunk release of Tome 0.6.1:

-Iaimeki's Arcane Archer, Bladesinger, Dragon Disciple, and Eldritch Knight PrCl's (Rage Mage Take 1&2, Mystic Theurge, and others, left off due to people thinking they were crazy fucktarded - and they were a little strange).

- Koumei's Sohei, Tome of Virtue PrCl's, Knight Prestige Classes, and Video Game Magic items (but no promises).

- FrankTrollman's Spirit Shaman

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:52 am

Aktariel wrote:Know LaTeX? That's really the most tedious part - converting the board formatting into compilable markup language.

Yup, learning LaTeX was my primary goal with the aWoD stuff.

I've been slowly converting potential Tome-content stuff in the links thread over the past few days, I'll send them off as I finish.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:29 am

Is there any particular reason you want a PDF of each Tome? I figure the wiki handles all that pretty well.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:39 am

As in, why do I want the PDF in general, or why do I want to split it up?

I want the PDF's because they're nicely formatted, they're organized, they lay things out in a reasonable manner, and most importantly, they're offline. They're also damn easy to convert to dead tree format.

Offline is a big one - very often I'm in places where I don't have internet access that it would be nice to have this. And sure, I could webcrawl the wiki and keep an offline copy, but it has other stuff that isn't Tome in there.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 3:18 am

Aktariel, my reasons for including the things I do are, really, selfish in nature. I'm including things mostly on a "I want to use this" basis, for the exact purpose of having a complete set of rules for me and my group of friends to use and enjoy. My ultimate goal is to have a whole system in a nice pdf so I can print it out on glossy paper, go down to the local crafts store, get some supplies, and bind it into a nice hardback book that I can lug around to sessions and use without needing to reference a PHB or DMG. Something I could hand to somone and say "Read this and make a character". Any third parties that happen to enjoy using it would be a happy side effect. I think the next thing I do will be to take the Combat section of the srd and LaTeXify it, while replacing the relevant parts with the F&K material.

As for magic items... I havent seen any that really seem perfect to me yet. So I'm holding off on that.

Lastly, ubernoob, the more I see your avatar, the more it creeps me out.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 3:29 am

Send me that source when you do it, and I'll put it into the repo.

Then we can talk about branching.

I understand that your reasons are selfish - hell, mine are too. But I might as well make it as usable as possible for everyone else while I'm at it.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 3:45 am

I intended to, and I sort of lied. The next thing I'm doing is really going to be learning to use subversion so I won' need to actually send them.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:19 am

Yeah, I'm still getting the kinks out too. All you really need to do is read chapters 1 & 4 of that book I linked you to, and you should be mostly set.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:27 am

Alright. Finally managed to set up a stable repo at Google Code, and maybe now with help work can start getting done.

Additionally, for people who want the latest copy or feel like proofreading (editors always welcome), you can grab the latest version here. I'll try and post updated builds every couple of days at least. (Or someone else can, if they so desire.)

Hopefully, we'll be seeing more point releases, and more releases more often period. (0.6.1, 0.6.2, etc.)

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 3:49 pm

On the same note, i've begun doing the same thing with my "Less Filling" tome PDF. Although right now there's not much of a reason to grab mine over Aktariel's.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 2:33 am

And now, for something pretty much the same:

Tome 0.6.1
(via our very own googlecode repo)

Changelog:
Version 0.6.1
* Iaimeki’s Arcane Archer, Bladesinger, Dragon Disciple, and Eldritch Knight prestige classes added to community section
* Koumei’s Knight and Sohei prestige classes added, as well as her Sohei base class (thanks to Quantumboost for typesetting the knight classes)
* credits finally updated to reflect the creators of the new material
* Mister Sinister’s armors added to fill in gaps
* Stone fiendish sphere fixed
* As always, minor/moderate typo/formatting/grammatical/consistency fixes
* Imported source code to a Subversion repository and began committing changes

This is the last "pure" release, inasmuch as it can still be called pure with all the community info; from now on, the community material is going to be integrated inline with the rest of the writings, and material from the SRD will make it's way into the PDF - probably the combat and magic rules, and the core classes that don't suck (Cleric, Druid, Rogue, Wizard).

Calling writers of all kinds - we need you to flavor up the dry SRD text with that famous Gaming Den witticism! No crunch edits, just tons and tons of fluff (which by weight is a very large amount).

Don't want to write? No worries! Just find royalty free CC licensed art! Or make your own!

Don't want to do any of that? Fair enough. Just enjoy the Tomes.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:33 am

I've added a branch to the source to contain the individual Tome PDFs, as opposed to the collective single PDF above. That should hopefully give a better overall look at what's been done and what needs to be done.

I'll add links to the downloads etc. after I've got that part finalized.

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 4:41 pm

Just a friendly reminder than some of the stuff is now a bit broken as written. Example: the Holy Crusader gets a [Celestial] Feat at levels 3 and 5, but no [Celestial] feats are printed.

Sorry, but I have no time to contribute. I may this coming winter for break, or this coming summer.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:45 pm

There are actually [Celestial] feats; check the google code page for the latest version (0.7); they got rolled into the [Fiend] section.

Arijkos · Post by **Arijkos** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:27 pm

Hello Gaming Den!

I've been a lurker on this board for a while now and finally decided to register, so I can say thank you to everyone involved in the creation of your mighty Tome PDF, especially to Frank an K.
It is truly a masterpiece and continues to entertain and inspire me since I read it first time. I am going to use material from it in an upcoming 3.5 game (introducing some newbie people to RPGs in general and D&D in specific), and even if I'm not using much of the races/classes/whatever material, reading the Tome makes me think about putting stuff together in a way that makes more sense and more fun compared to many printed supplements.

Again, thank you for that.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:42 pm

Arijkos wrote:I registered because of shadzar.... sort of.

OH no!

Don't blame me for you getting involved with this crowd!

Welcome.