[Tome] AwesomeTome v2 clarification

[codeGlaze]

Original Post

Edit: As an aside, who all has actually said they'd like to start working on another revision? So far I have codeGlaze, Lokathor, and myself.

Another Edit: Anyone else feel the Tome grapple rules feel slightly... incomplete? I like the simplicity of the options present, but it feels like "hold down" is somewhat vague as to what actually happens, and doesn't really cover all aspects of a traditional wrasslin' match. You go straight to pin your opponent, he can do nothing. Should there be another thread for discussing the editing/changing/inclusion of specific Tome rules/classes/things?

@Edit1 : I'm up for helping out in a new awesomeTome iteration, especially if we're going to be adding in recent tweaks, clarifications, modifications and content.

@Edit2: I think that should be one of several thread discussions to get some significant changes under way.

That being said, here are some things I've been thinking about.

1. I think the project should be recreated under a DVCS-centric system like GitHub or BitBucket. I've worked with both Git and Mercurial, pretty easy to pick up. I really like the ease of GitHub's forking and pulling, I haven't worked too much with BitBucket. I can set it up if/when people are ready.
2. I think that keeping a compilation of original, unedited, material and the work-in-progress polished one-stop-shop awesomeTome is a great idea. Having raw history available is always a good idea imo.
3. It's time we decide which new material is going in to fill the gaps of the Tome source. Discussions should be created and tagged in an easy to find manner. [awesomeTome] ?
4. Should discussion about this stuff happen in IMOI or IMHO?
5. Sourcing the author(s) of inserted classes/edits/materials could/should be done on the page of that material.

[Sigil]

1. I think the project should be recreated under a DVCS-centric system like GitHub or BitBucket. I've worked with both Git and Mercurial, pretty easy to pick up. I really like the ease of GitHub's forking and pulling, I haven't worked too much with BitBucket. I can set it up if/when people are ready.
2. I think that keeping a compilation of original, unedited, material and the work-in-progress polished one-stop-shop awesomeTome is a great idea. Having raw history available is always a good idea imo.
3. It's time we decide which new material is going in to fill the gaps of the Tome source. Discussions should be created and tagged in an easy to find manner. [awesomeTome] ?
4. Should discussion about this stuff happen in IMOI or IMHO?
5. Sourcing the author(s) of inserted classes/edits/materials could/should be done on the page of that material.

1. I don't particularly have a preference there.
2. Makes sense.
3. It's as good a tag as any.
4. Probably IMOI.
5. Agreed, the lack of proper crediting definately annoyed me at times. I'd say the end of each chapter should have a credits, and should note who contributed what.

Here's what I've been thinking about, we should be aiming to produce three separate documents.

• Complete Tome: A document in the style of the OGL SRD. Should contain only 'core' items.
• The Community Codex: Exactly what it sounds like. A collection of classes, feats, items and whatever from this forum that are of good quality but are off-tone compared to the Complete content, are a bit rough around the edges, or are optional rules systems.
• The Ravings of Madmen: A collection of the essays of Frank & K.

[Lokathor]

[*] I think the project should be recreated under a DVCS-centric system like GitHub or BitBucket. I've worked with both Git and Mercurial, pretty easy to pick up. I really like the ease of GitHub's forking and pulling, I haven't worked too much with BitBucket. I can set it up if/when people are ready.

Google code supports Git, so, whatever I guess.

[*] I think that keeping a compilation of original, unedited, material and the work-in-progress polished one-stop-shop awesomeTome is a great idea. Having raw history available is always a good idea imo.

I have LaTeX of Necromancy and Fiends already formatted very basically. I've also got Dungeonomicon and Races of War "in" the PDF but unformatted. If we wanted to put that up as just a historical document then sure.

[*] It's time we decide which new material is going in to fill the gaps of the Tome source. Discussions should be created and tagged in an easy to find manner. [awesomeTome] ?

At minimum, the main PDF needs to be something approaching a complete and playable RPG book, akin to the PHB/DMG/MM trio, or the SR4A book, or the After Sundown book. Additional non-necessary content can be inserted with the main content and just increase the chapter count, or can be moved into different PDFs, or something.

[*] Should discussion about this stuff happen in IMOI or IMHO?

Humble Opinion is for discussion and working, so we should keep it here.

[*] Sourcing the author(s) of inserted classes/edits/materials could/should be done on the page of that material.

I guess maybe? Myself I'd put credits at the end of the PDF, in an index-like presentation. LaTeX allows for multiple indexes, so it wouldn't be a problem at all.

[Sigil]

Alright, I've briefly gone over what chapters need to be in the Complete Tome pdf. Green means that we already have this chapter in pretty much a complete Latex format of that chapter already, and only require minor editing to finish. Orange means that we have the chapter in a partially completed state, or that we need to do some heavy editing. Red means that the chapter pretty much needs to be created from whole cloth.

1. Introduction: Pretty much the same as every RPG introduction ever. What is an rpg, a brief history of the Tomes, basic terminology, etc.
2. Character Creation: A two or so page chapter that tells the reader how to generate a character.
3. Races: Needs to have the standard OGL races and the Tome exotic races. Some more 'exotic' races from the OGL, such as kobolds, could probably be tomified.
4. Base Classes: We could pretty much insert the core classes section from the awesometome PDF and call it a day if we wanted, but there's been discussion of altering some classes.
5. Skills: Just needs to be formatted, fortunately Lokathor has already done this once in his own PDF, so we have the relatively minor issue of merging them.
6. Feats: We probably need to examine feats for quality, and may even want to include more feats. Anecdotally, I've found that sometimes the same Tome feats tend to get selected over and over by multiple people, so more options is only good as long as they're up to snuff.
7. Equipment: Weapons, Armor, and Gear. If we aren't using stock 3.0 or 3.5 weapon rules, we need a set of rules of our own. The armors probably need another revision. Lokathor has the goods and services Latexified, so that's a bonus.
8. Exploration: A combination of the adventuring chapter from the PHB and some stuff normally found in the DMG, such as damaging objects, and harnesses of things, etc.
9. Combat: Pretty much done already in the awesometome. Cut out the mass combat stuff and stick it in the essay collection PDF.
10. Magic: Lokathor has this one in Latex too, need to merge.
11. Spells: Needs two things done. Tome spells need to be inserted into the spell lists and entries. The Large tables for spells like detect evil need some heavy formatting.
12. Magic Items: We either need to finish the skeleton of the Tome system, or adopt one of the systems from this board.
13. Prestiege Classes: We have a good amount of Tome PRCs, but many of them probably aren't suitable for a Core PDF. Even the inclusion of all the F&K necromancy PRCs would seem weird in a document not focused on necromancy. We'll probably have to format some new ones, and select from the already formatted ones.

[codeGlaze]

I can do the svn port Tuesday. Hitting the road again atm.

[Lokathor]

Skills: We need to worry about what's being Tome-ified and what's being left alone. There's a whole lot of "Tome up the skills" stuff floating around here, we need to decide what's appropriate and what's not. Same thing as with Feats basically.

Exploration can be Orange. Unless we're going to alter things ourselves we can stick to the SRD exploration rules in a lot of places.

[Sigil]

On the skills, I'd imagined we'd be pretty much going with standard SRD, or doing some minor skill reduction similar to Pathfinder (but absolutely not just copying the pathfinder skill entries). But I am not opposed to using or creating a Tome skills system.

Exploration is now orange. The only thing that should need to be tomified is probably materials. Since DR got retrofitted into 5 categories (Adamantine, Iron, Silver, Stone, Wood) we could instead just create a new materials system (which is already a small subsystem, and should not take much time), that accommodates these supergroups of materials.

On another note, I was looking at the 'core' classes from the PDF, and the Knight is sort of an odd duck. Even though it's one of the "official" Frank and K classes, it seems odd to include a base class that doesn't go to level cap in a document that supposed to be something like an SRD.

By the way: I won't be contributing much mondays through thursdays, I have 10 hour workdays followed by a 4 hour night class. I might not even post every day Mon-Thur.

[codeGlaze]

Skills have a few interesting Tome-inspired remakes.
If skills WERE to be swapped out, would more complicated/pseudo-magic be the way to go? Or would something simple be better? A la Shatner's USE system?

[fbmf]

On the skills, I'd imagined we'd be pretty much going with standard SRD, or doing some minor skill reduction similar to Pathfinder (but absolutely not just copying the pathfinder skill entries). But I am not opposed to using or creating a Tome skills system.

Exploration is now orange. The only thing that should need to be tomified is probably materials. Since DR got retrofitted into 5 categories (Adamantine, Iron, Silver, Stone, Wood) we could instead just create a new materials system (which is already a small subsystem, and should not take much time), that accommodates these supergroups of materials.

On another note, I was looking at the 'core' classes from the PDF, and the Knight is sort of an odd duck. Even though it's one of the "official" Frank and K classes, it seems odd to include a base class that doesn't go to level cap in a document that supposed to be something like an SRD.

By the way: I won't be contributing much mondays through thursdays, I have 10 hour workdays followed by a 4 hour night class. I might not even post every day Mon-Thur.

In my Tome game, I've combined skills so there are fewer. I'd be willing to email someone/ several folks the chapter but can't be assed to format it for typing.

If anyone is interested let me know. If not, I am not offended.

Game On,
fbmf

[Darth Rabbitt]

I'm interested, fbmf.

[codeGlaze]

I'm trying to condense in my games, too. So I'd like to see your work fbmf.

@Sigil: I don't see a big problem with your schedule, I post and fiddle when and where I can. This year has been pretty hectic but things are starting to even out again, so I should have some free time for this. atm though I'm in the middle of pennsyl-tucky with intermittent service, be back to normal Tuesday after work. xD

[Wiseman]

On the skills, I'd imagined we'd be pretty much going with standard SRD, or doing some minor skill reduction similar to Pathfinder (but absolutely not just copying the pathfinder skill entries). But I am not opposed to using or creating a Tome skills system.

Exploration is now orange. The only thing that should need to be tomified is probably materials. Since DR got retrofitted into 5 categories (Adamantine, Iron, Silver, Stone, Wood) we could instead just create a new materials system (which is already a small subsystem, and should not take much time), that accommodates these supergroups of materials.

On another note, I was looking at the 'core' classes from the PDF, and the Knight is sort of an odd duck. Even though it's one of the "official" Frank and K classes, it seems odd to include a base class that doesn't go to level cap in a document that supposed to be something like an SRD.

By the way: I won't be contributing much mondays through thursdays, I have 10 hour workdays followed by a 4 hour night class. I might not even post every day Mon-Thur.

In my Tome game, I've combined skills so there are fewer. I'd be willing to email someone/ several folks the chapter but can't be assed to format it for typing.

If anyone is interested let me know. If not, I am not offended.

Game On,
fbmf

Definately interested.

[Sigil]

Even if we don't end up using anything directly, I'd like to see it fbmf. It'd be nice to see a non PF condensed set of skills that is actually in use.

[Bihlbo]

Here's what I've been thinking about, we should be aiming to produce three separate documents.

• Complete Tome: A document in the style of the OGL SRD. Should contain only 'core' items.
• The Community Codex: Exactly what it sounds like. A collection of classes, feats, items and whatever from this forum that are of good quality but are off-tone compared to the Complete content, are a bit rough around the edges, or are optional rules systems.
• The Ravings of Madmen: A collection of the essays of Frank & K.

I wholly agree.

However, what constitutes "core Tome"? Only the things Frank & K put out? What about the instances where it's incomplete, like weapons? Does that get broadened to the things F&K have given approval?

Personally I'd rather see the "core" defined thus: That which works best with the rest of the rules to produce a whole, complete game. This means community material has to be considered, but I'm of two minds on that:
1. F&K are the original authors and if we're setting out to make a more usable Tome reference object then let's produce the original material into a single body, then expand off that.
2. F&K have said they aren't going to get butthurt by someone using the Tome material for no-profit, credited work like this. That means that if the final product is "Den's Tome" and with the expanded material produces a better, more usable product, then the only reason not to do it is the extra effort of deciding what's "core" and what's not.

Which brings me to another topic: who's in charge? If it's all open source, get the work done how you want it, when you can, etc, then it would be nice to know that up front. My preference, FWIW, is that someone wears a "producer/creative director" hat (preferably made of folded pages ripped out of a 4e book). It seems the project would benefit out of having this one person who:

• defines the technology used, ensuring contributors know how to contribute
• maintains an updated list of what needs to be done (exactly like the color-coded one Sigil did above)
• defines the project's voice, style, and formatting, and produces a guide for contributors
• edits all contributed work to maintain quality production value in terms of voice, style, and formatting
• establishes a schedule, mainly in order that pieces which depend on others get produced afterwards
• fascilitates discussion, maintaining board threads for the primary topics
• decides what makes the cut and how to organize the final product, based on community discussions
• is ultimately responsible for the shebang being good enough to be worth our efforts

[codeGlaze]

I believe the implication of 'Core' was working material that directly replaces or alters stuff from the SRD. So base classes, races, skills(?), combat rules. As long as it's complete and up to date. Which would probably mean community content.

Or that's how I read it, at least.

[Lokathor]

The "Core" book should have,
[*]Character Creation and Advancement rules
[*]At most 15 or so classes (all of which go to 20, eg: no Knight allowed)
[*]At most 10 or so races (nearly all of which should be Level 1 playable)
[*]Skills, Feats, and possibly "Backgrounds"
[*]Turnip, Gold, and Wish economy outlines, as well as most of the Turnip/Gold economy fleshed out. Most of the Wish economy can be left to another book.
[*]Exploration, Encounters, and Combat
[*]Magic Rules and Spell Entries

Possibly more things I'm forgetting at the moment.

It seems the project would benefit out of having this one person who:

That's a lot to put on one person, but probably also the necessary amount to put on one person.

I can do the LaTeX work of it all if someone else manages what is and isn't going into the product(s). In terms of contributions, they should either be fully formatted forum posts (BBcode is rather easy to convert to LaTeX), or just a block of raw LaTeX (if the submitter knows that). Things like word documents are not appropriate submissions.

[RadiantPhoenix]

One thing I'd suggest is that things that are not approved still get put somewhere findable so that people who want to can compile their own version that includes them.

e.g., if Magic of Blue stuff doesn't make it in, but I think it would be cool for a campaign I'm running/organizing, I can just add [a few lines?] and include all that stuff.

[Kaelik]

(all of which go to 20, eg: no Knight allowed)

This shit needs to stop. The concept of not 20 level classes fucking needs to be introduced in the Core book, or a bunch of fucking idiots still aren't going to get it. You need to fucking have the knight, and say "And then the Knight PrCs to something else" and you fucking need to do it in the core book, or people are going to throw a shit fit every time someone shows them a Firemage, Snowscaper, Elemental Siphon, ect.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Adventurer goes to 13 because I ran out of things for it to do.

I couldn't come up with any specific ways for it to start a campaign, other than "find cosmic keystone with bardic knowledge and legend lore -> do stuff with it"

EDIT: So, I suppose at level 14 you start on a 7-level Elothar PrC

[Sigil]

However, what constitutes "core Tome"? Only the things Frank & K put out? What about the instances where it's incomplete, like weapons? Does that get broadened to the things F&K have given approval?

My concept of the 'core' pdf is outlined in the post I made that had all that eye-rending green, orange, and red text. Almost all of those things that aren't green require some form of community material to flesh out. We need a complete OGL replacement package.

Personally I'd rather see the "core" defined thus: That which works best with the rest of the rules to produce a whole, complete game. This means community material has to be considered, but I'm of two minds on that:
1. F&K are the original authors and if we're setting out to make a more usable Tome reference object then let's produce the original material into a single body, then expand off that.
2. F&K have said they aren't going to get butthurt by someone using the Tome material for no-profit, credited work like this. That means that if the final product is "Den's Tome" and with the expanded material produces a better, more usable product, then the only reason not to do it is the extra effort of deciding what's "core" and what's not.

Exactly. The concept of producing such a document also necessetates a fair amount of community interaction and discussion so we can, at least, get a general idea of what content people want to be tome. It should just be more than the personal house rules the editors want.

Which brings me to another topic: who's in charge? If it's all open source, get the work done how you want it, when you can, etc, then it would be nice to know that up front. My preference, FWIW, is that someone wears a "producer/creative director" hat (preferably made of folded pages ripped out of a 4e book). It seems the project would benefit out of having this one person who:

• defines the technology used, ensuring contributors know how to contribute
• maintains an updated list of what needs to be done (exactly like the color-coded one Sigil did above)
• defines the project's voice, style, and formatting, and produces a guide for contributors
• edits all contributed work to maintain quality production value in terms of voice, style, and formatting
• establishes a schedule, mainly in order that pieces which depend on others get produced afterwards
• fascilitates discussion, maintaining board threads for the primary topics
• decides what makes the cut and how to organize the final product, based on community discussions
• is ultimately responsible for the shebang being good enough to be worth our efforts

That would be pretty fucking nice, but I'm not willing to take on that responsibility. I'm strictly looking at doing work on a "when I damn well can" basis. If such a person existed, I'd be willing to take responsibility for formatting and editing individual items within the project.

e.g., if Magic of Blue stuff doesn't make it in, but I think it would be cool for a campaign I'm running/organizing, I can just add [a few lines?] and include all that stuff.

With a Latex compiler, a basic understandingof Latex (which you should be able to learn from simply looking at, or even modifying the source code for the document), yes you could do that. If you had your class or chapter or whatever youd simply be able to add in "\input{TEXTfILElOCATION\TEXTFILENAME}" and compile it into a pdf, and the new content would appear in the appropriate section.

This shit needs to stop. The concept of not 20 level classes fucking needs to be introduced in the Core book, or a bunch of fucking idiots still aren't going to get it. You need to fucking have the knight, and say "And then the Knight PrCs to something else" and you fucking need to do it in the core book, or people are going to throw a shit fit every time someone shows them a Firemage, Snowscaper, Elemental Siphon, ect.

Alright, if we want non 20th level classes in, we should have MORE of them than just the knight in the core, so it isnt the odd duck out. We would also probably want classes to stop at 5, 10, 15, OR 20 levels; levels at which you usually start qualifying for new PRCs. Sub 20 classes should provide an obvious path for advancement beyond it, like the knight that comes packaged with PRCs, or the conduit that flat out gives you level appropriate spellcasting you can advance.

[Lokathor]

One thing I'd suggest is that things that are not approved still get put somewhere findable so that people who want to can compile their own version that includes them.

e.g., if Magic of Blue stuff doesn't make it in, but I think it would be cool for a campaign I'm running/organizing, I can just add [a few lines?] and include all that stuff.

100% possible. It'd literally be as simple as commenting or uncommenting a single \input{filename} command in the top level or chapter level document and then recompiling the source. For example, the class entries portion of my 03-classes.tex file in my SRDpdf just says

Code: Select all

\input{classes-base/barbarian}
\input{classes-base/bard}
\input{classes-base/cleric}
\input{classes-base/druid}
\input{classes-base/fighter}
\input{classes-base/monk}
\input{classes-base/paladin}
\input{classes-base/ranger}
\input{classes-base/rogue}
\input{classes-base/sorcerer}
\input{classes-base/wizard}

You could add more classes to that or cut classes from that and recompile easily.

It might not look as good if you don't re-adjust where tables and images are after adding new text (because pagebreaks will be at new points, which messes with the text flow), but it'll work at all if that's what you want.

EDIT: Yeah, if they're more fully supported then sub-20 classes are okay. As it stands, they usually don't come with the actual PrCs you'd need to play the class up to 20, which sucks. And pointing to WotC PrCs obviously doesn't count. Each sub-20 class included should have at least 2 ways to get to 20.

[Cynic]

There is something to be said that a class doesn't have to be any specific number of levels long whether that's 5, 10, 15 or 20. Why is that even a rubric to go by?

[Sigil]

The break points could be any levels, really. You could decide on all prime numbers, or multiples of two, or whatever. The thing is that the NEXT level available should have several PRCs that you can suddenly qualify for. Most PRCs are 5 or 10 levels long, and most PRCs become available to take on your 6th or 11th level. If you want to have a bunch of base classes that end at 8, you should have a bunch of PRCs that become available at level 9.

[Kaelik]

The break points could be any levels, really. You could decide on all prime numbers, or multiples of two, or whatever. The thing is that the NEXT level available should have several PRCs that you can suddenly qualify for. Most PRCs are 5 or 10 levels long, and most PRCs become available to take on your 6th or 11th level. If you want to have a bunch of base classes that end at 8, you should have a bunch of PRCs that become available at level 9.

The problem with your system, besides that you are a retard, is that when you are level 8, you can easily get into PrCs that became available at level 5.

There is no reason to exclude a 12 level class because it qualifies for PrCs that other classes qualified for at level 8 or 10 or 6.

[Judging__Eagle]

I'd also suggest taking a look at Kaelik's Tome Errata thread; they tried to clean up and resolve issues that the original Tomes couldn't or didn't; and I took notes from their work in working on the last Tome game I was contemplating running.

Also, base classes don't need to go to 20.

They can be 1, 3, 5 or 19 levels tall. When the character's concept no longer remains recognizable, has the class ended.

The Warhammer Fantasy RPG's approach to "classes" as being something that you 1) take several of, and 2) are limited in scope, applies in this case as well.

Some of the base classes that I attempted would have been better off if I hadn't tried to make them 20 levels deep.