Any interest in a Tome setting book/thread?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 6:43 pm

So I'm finally in a moderately long-running Tome game, using a setting I've been running short games in for years (since before Tome came out) and adding and revising every time.

Setting: Ouranios

Features

--Not humanocentric
--ransom and honorable war the norm
--divine magic decoupled from gods; monotheism, polytheism, animism, apatheism presetned as viable options.
--cultures based around popular tome classes like Snowscaper, Pokemon Master, and True Fiend
--no "evil" races: goblins and orcs are neutral
--sensible approach to languages
--Every culture has an earth-analogue for convenient names, food, and clothing, but is also definitely different from its source.
--reverses some tired tropes. Dwarves, and Hobgoblins are allies. Dwarves and Drow are allies. Elves and other Dwarves are allies.
--explains some perplexing ones. find out why kobolds hate gnomes!
--airship and sky island based; this is awesome and reduces importance of world map, making it easy to add or remove things from the setting.
--finite planes in a spatial relationship

So I'd like to think that Denners might find something worthwhile in my inventions and raid bits for their own home games. On the flipside, figuring out things like weather, agriculture, and economics are not my strong suit, so I would love to get input there.

My question is: What would be the most useful way to present this stuff to the Den?

Would people find a use for something as detailed as FRCS or Eberron campaign book? The only way I can see that actually happening is as a communal project. (I would be editor, but would welcome writers).

Or would people rather skips the maps, place names, and NPC writeups in favor of a modular series of "Culture Spotlight" and "Class Spotlight/Item Spotlight" essays, which is what I could realistically do on my own? (Well, that and the ONE island I have written up in some detail)

Ghostwheel · Post by **Ghostwheel** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:21 am

One way you could do it is add it to the wiki (see the "Add your own Campaign Setting" link at the top) and have everything arranged nice and neatly for people to peruse according to their interests with well-organized sections to go through.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:33 am

I'm not gonna learn how to work the wiki and work with the wiki crew unless I'm convinced that anyone reads it. And until I can figure out what types of material people would find useful.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:01 am

I posted a "culture spotlight" on IMOI. I will probably add a few more sections to it tomorrow, like air power, clothing, and technology. Oh, and signature weapons! In the meantime, I would love it if people posted any feedback on the style and format of the article HERE, and used that thread for discussion of the actual halfling culture provided.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 3:20 am

Orion wrote:I'm not gonna learn how to work the wiki and work with the wiki crew unless I'm convinced that anyone reads it. And until I can figure out what types of material people would find useful.

Do you realize how ridiculous you sound? Here's what I'm reading from your post: "I'm going to reject a convenient way of formatting and uploading my work so people can read it, out of fear that no one would read it, despite that people are as likely to click a link to the wiki as they are a link to another repository."

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 3:39 am

Well, I have two basic goals for this project:

1: get this setting in front of the eyes of people who played with Book of Gears items and Tome classes.

2: Attention whore some praise and affirmation from Denners specifically, since I have enough of a relationship with them to be gratified thereby.

----

I look at the wiki. I can't figure out whether it has a Tome fandom. I'm not sure how many Denners go there. More importantly, I'm relatively sure that discussion of the material on this site is more likely to happen if people can click "quote" to quote my post, rather than pasting text from another site and perhaps redoing the formatting. I also see that articles are evaluated for balance standards, again by people I don't know who.

I'm not rejecting it out of hand, but I really do need more information and reassurance before I can jump into doing a project on a site I don't frequent.\

EDIT: Wow, there's a lot of cool Tome stuff I never knew about! Also I'm pretty sure I had terrible experiences with some other D&D wiki. There have been several, no?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 3:53 am

There's the Old Wiki. Run (badly) by Green Dragon.

Then there was Wikia, which is where a lot of folks went after GD went nuts. Then Wikia was up to some shit, and the wiki was moved to current hosting. Paid for by Surgo.

(thanks, dude)

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:23 am

Thanks, Surgo. I kept hearing things about wikis moving but I didn't keep track, and I figured as long as GD had anything to do with it I wasn't interested. And a big thinks to Avoracio et al for the Tome of Elements.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 5:33 am

You know, at the moment I have very little time for or interest in reading any fan settings that I'm not already invested in.

But I am 200% in favor of people posting more creative stuff and fewer edition wars and frothing rehashed insult-matches.

So I will take a look at your halflings at some point

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 5:04 pm

Would it be easier to format things for wiki, the repost them here, or vice versa? I just spent an annoying amount of time setting up the halfling post on the wiki, what with bold tags being different.

I have a bunch more culture spotlights ready to go. I'm not sure how to present them. Post them on the wiki, then links here as they go? Spam the IMOI board with a dozen separate threads? Or just post them in the Halfling thread?

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:55 pm

It doesn't take much to get used to the wiki, I can help format stuff if need be. If you're totally frustrated by it though, don't bother.

I personally find it easier to use the wiki because you get most of the colorizing and other kind of formatting by default, but then again I did write most of the formatting code.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:56 pm

Okay, I see what you did. I'm going to reformat it a bit, let me know how you like it when I'm done.

edit: There, take a look at your races page. Basically I changed a bunch of stuff into "headings" -- I think it's more clean and easy to read now. I also added links to the various classes, except for the ones where I wasn't sure of what you were referring to.

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:01 pm

I actually wrote a system a while ago for building classes that could be posted on both the Den and the Wiki, based around a relatively simple python script that parsed files to find and convert simple formatting. You can look at its parsing routines for details about what you have to convert, how to do it, and maybe even how to do it automatically.

Link here: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51096

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:08 pm

Also, if you want help uploading a whole bunch of stuff at once, hop on the wiki chat. You'll probably find a bunch of people willing to help with that.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:29 pm

Where is the wiki that we are all talking about?

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:35 pm

http://www.dnd-wiki.org

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:36 pm

Okay, just wanted to make sure. Thanks!

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 12:57 am

Surgo is awesome. I may continue dumping stuff here for the next few days, as I really shouldn't even be taking the time to write it right now, but then I will definitely move this to the wiki. In the meantime, some previews of things to come.

Humans: Mongolian Zen Gypsies. Monk, Elementalist, Soldier.

Elves: savage, blood-drinking cat riders. Druid, Ranger, Totemist

Orcs: Stoic Kung-fu Celts. Monk, Barbarian, Bard?

Goblins: Semitic wolf-riding shephards. Jester, Paladin, Monster Tamer,

Hobgoblins: Nipponese Sunworshipping Theocrats. Marshall, Cleric, Fire Mage.

Aasimar: Teutonic Demonologists. Conduit, T
Aasimar-enslaved Humans: Incarnate, Tomelock,

Drow: Tragic Spanish Aristocrats. Samurai, Assassin, Fire Mage

Dwarves: Indian? Sun-worshipping Zombie Survivors. Soulborn, Cleric, Paladin.

Other Dwarves: Ascetic Indian? forest necromancers Druid, Dread Necro, Ranger.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 12:17 am

Do you intent for us to criticize your setting as a setting, and say things like "Well, maybe slightly less retarded than FR."

Or do you mean for us to criticize your setting as a prospect for a default Tome setting, and say things like "You deserve to be skull fucked in the eye with a burning poker, you ignorant shithead."?

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:10 am

Do both, in that order, for the entertainment of the viewers at home.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 5:57 am

Criticizing the setting in itself would definitely be helpful, as I know for a fact there are big chunks of it that don't make sense. Especially since I'm threading together material from 3 campaigns with similar but not identical premises. Although, it's more useful if it's "x doesn't make sense" than "X is boring", and I'm already having fun with it.

As a default Tome setting? There are definitely rules pieces that I'm going to recommend as default Tome rules, the extent that Tomes can HAVE a default. I'm thinking Spellbook Locations once it's formalized more, and the Orc stat rewrite coming soon. But for the setting as whole? I know no one but me will ever use the setting in its entirety, because we all write our own settings. What I'm hoping--and feedback would help with--is making individual islands and cultures that someone could drop in to their game. I'll count it a victory if anyone ever runs with roman halfling, or anima-mining dwarves, even if they use nothing else from the setting.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 7:56 am

I figured that I would post this here because the thread about halflings is talking about mounts and shit and I don't need to derail it.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that the halflings are on top. In a setting where you have to use airships to get an army anywhere, having a lot of troops just means you get to have a lot of guys dying in the holds of the transports. I would think that the dominant force in the setting would be a race with a strong merchant marine, which would then demand a strong naval presence to prevent a the merchants from being shaken down. Say dwarves work with metal and make metal ships and they would be a good fit.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:15 pm

Orion wrote:As a default Tome setting? There are definitely rules pieces that I'm going to recommend as default Tome rules, the extent that Tomes can HAVE a default. I'm thinking Spellbook Locations once it's formalized more, and the Orc stat rewrite coming soon. But for the setting as whole? I know no one but me will ever use the setting in its entirety, because we all write our own settings. What I'm hoping--and feedback would help with--is making individual islands and cultures that someone could drop in to their game. I'll count it a victory if anyone ever runs with roman halfling, or anima-mining dwarves, even if they use nothing else from the setting.

Just so long as you are aware that none of your shit can be dropped into a Tome game, because what you did was take the Tome sections on world building and shit all over them, and smear your feces into every crevice.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 10:20 pm

Are you referring to the race writeups in Race of War or the general principles in the Economicon?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:04 pm

Orion wrote:Are you referring to the race writeups in Race of War or the general principles in the Economicon?

Both. Also probably other stuff that I didn't immediately recognize as pissing all over various parts of the Tomes.

But when your starting point is "Dwarves are friendly lovable guys who just love Orcs and Drow, and have nothing against anyone" I want to punch you in the face for suggesting this as any kind of Tome setting.