Dragon Hunt ready for review
over 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 01:11:18 AM

I got a massive art influx today for Dragon Hunt!

These are two of the three pages of counters - the reason the book had to bump from 40 to 44 pages. That's pushing the upper bound of "saddle stitch" but it'll work.

There's tweaking to do. The counters need their 1" box outline in some places, and some of the hexes have internal counter hash-marks...and others don't. That's an InDesign problem (or really, that's a Doug problem with InDesign), but one way or another, I'll fix it.

So the file is in to SJGames for review, and when they have time to look it over, I'll make the fixes and push it out for errata checking.

I've received a few dozen error reports from Dark Lord's Doom so far - that's not bad at all. I have some hyperlinks to fix, plus a few other tweaks to NPCs and whatnot, and then that one's ready for printing.

Dark Lord's Doom: Prelim Errata readout
over 3 years ago – Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 11:36:58 AM

Just so we don't get reports of the same stuff, here's the first bit of error reporting that has come in, and what we'll be doing with them. I did contact SJ about a few details, to ensure I wasn't off the reservation on some of these.

I will update this blog post: Dark Lord's Doom: Errata and Resolution as new reports are made.

Broader Concepts

Here are some things with implications on how formatting works, or rules are parsed.

"Acts as a Lightning Rod"

The titular Dark Lord has an item that "acts as a Lightning Rod." There's an reference in ITL that "scrolls are scrolls, and rods are rods." But the Lightning Rod mechanics, effects, etc. are conveniently all in one place, and "acts as a lightning rod" is an approved construction to define the power of the item. This isn't an error, and has line editor approval to say as-is.

Axe/Mace to Ax/Mace

Both David Pulver and I have been asked by SJ to deprecate the use of Ax/Mace and Ax in favor of Axe/Mace and Axe. So this one stays as-is. Look for more use of axe in the future rather than ax.

Fine Maces and other things

An errata was submitted saying "maces cannot be fine." That didn't strike me right based on personal experience, and I asked SJ what he thought. He replied he's actually fought with a fine mace, balance is important, and a mace can be fine.

Talents and Spells and IQ Requirements (characters and creatures)

Anything that might be considered a character needs to meet the IQ requirements for Talents and Spells. Creatures can be whatever they need to be.

So "The King" needs to have IQ 13 to have Strategist...but an IQ 7 monster might be able to cast Megahex Freeze "just because."

Weapon Expertise (Shield) and Weapon Expertise in general

SJ prefers [Whatever] Expertise in all cases. Shield Expertise, Sword Expertise, Axe/Mace Expertise, etc. So all usage of Weapon Expertise will be renamed and re-sorted based on this guidance.

Niggling Details

Some bits that aren't general TFT rules but are specific to DLD.

Field Plate

The description of the King's armor in the equipment list states his armor is "fine plate," which is true. It is referred to in the text as "field plate," which has no game mechanical meaning. It does have real-world meaning, in that "field armor" is armor designed for practical use on the battlefield, as opposed to jousting armor (basically sporting gear) or decorative armor. Somewhere along the line - probably for other RPGs or video games - "field armor" and "plate armor" got munged together to be "field plate."

In any case, it's confusing and we'll replace "field plate" with "fine plate" or "plate armor" where needed.

Horsemanship Spell

Obviously Horsemanship is not a spell, and will be properly stabled in Talents, where it belongs.

IQ 14 Assassin

He's not smart enough to cast Hammertouch (not Hammerhand; the spirit of Helm Hammerhand moved in someone while writing it). I'll chat with David and either replace the spell with an IQ 14 equivalent or bump up to IQ 15, depending on what he wants the challenge to be. I suspect we'll downgrade the spell to something else. Spell Shield or 4-Hex Illusion seem OK, as do Blast, Fireball, and a few others.

Morningstar

Our titular Dark Lord needs the Axe/Mace Talent to use his weapon; the latest printing of TFT has Morningstar as 2d+1 base damage, so with fine and enchanted on this, it becomes 2d+3, which is as listed.

Paragraph 023

The reference to Map II needs to be hyperlinked.

"The exit is at  ; anyone can exit out it." That is CERTAINLY an accidental deletion of some reference letter or note; in fact, there's a clear door/opening at the top of the map around E, so I'll have to work that in so it's clear.

Paragraph 065

Hyperlink [017] needs to be fixed. Thanks for catching this.

Paragraph 067

Need to enable hyperlink [119]. Thanks for catching this.

Plot Word ZOND

You don't get this "Plot Word" if you beat Zond. You get it if you have to face him in the future. So these particular references are correct.

Staff (1d) vs Staff (as a 2H Club)

The reptile man shaman has Weapons listed as Staff (1d). That is meant to be the result of using the Staff I spell (1d damage for 1 ST), not using the staff as a 2H club or quarterstaff. Will see if I can add both methods of usage. Using it as a quarterstaff would give 1d+2; a club used in two hands at ST 12 is also 1d+2. Not exactly an error, but not clear, either. Will see best way to fix it that doesn't break layout so one doesn't have to look up Staff I to know he has that attack method.

Dark Lord's Doom Distribution and overall update
over 3 years ago – Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 06:07:23 PM

Dark Lord's Doom: Distributed!

I got word from SJGames this morning that, barring one small tweak, the file was good to go. I did a final check of the file, tweaked the curves on a few images to prevent them from being too dark, and spooled out the file.

And then I hit go...so you should be able to check your Downloads link in Backerkit and see the first adventure waiting for you.

It's solid programmed adventure...perfect for lockdowns.

I'll give folks through November 28 to report errata using this link. Please remember "I'd do this differently" is not an errata, and that especially in dialog, folks might not be using perfect grammar. Beyond that, if you find issues, let me know, and David and I will make a judgment call on whether to incorporate them, taking into consideration the magnitude of the problem and whether the fix is (a) better, and (b) doesn't break layout. 

All the hyperlinks should be active and correct. Those are important to fix, obviously...but they also don't appear in print, so last-minute "Oh, this doesn't go where it should!" is much easier for that kind of thing.

The Rest of the Story

So...what about the other files?

Roc of Sages. This one is finished but needs some tweaking of the cover (bar code, sizing of logos, final read-through of the teaser text on the back cover), plus we have to get going on the counter art. The requirements for counters on Rock of Sages are fairly minimal, so this one shouldn't be too rough.

Catacombs of Living Death. I have quite a bit of counter art for this in place, if I recall correctly. I tried something different with how I did art direction on CoLD...and I liked the results. So that's a matter of getting the right number of counters and foes in place on the final page. But most of those art assets are in hand. That one should go relatively quickly.

Dragon Hunt! The counter art for this is in the works, but as I reported earlier, the book actually had to grow by a few pages in order to accommodate all the large counters!

There may yet be some tweaking of sizes and content; obviously the yellow will go away, replaced by a 7-hex dragon drawn for the release. There are at least two more pages of counters for this adventure, most of them large.  My goal is to release this one next, so that the solo/programmed adventures get a thorough workin'-through.

The Sunken Library. I've made very good progress on this during this past week. Some things changed in my home life (mostly the with my kids) that gave me a lot more time to work, rather than be a proctor for distance learning. So that's to the good. I have finished the reframing of the material as "more setting and sandbox" and with that background in place - preserving the authors' good ideas but giving GMs more room to improvise and steer the flow of the game - I can start to drop the challenges and encounters in...and my budget for that is basically 14 pages. So the adventure is still hefty, but includes a lot of room and background for the GM. Motivations and goals of key players. Resources available. Limits (or not) on behavior and action. I'm really hoping to transfer the remaining concepts and challenges into the document over the next few days...and then I can start layout and art for this. It's the laggard - I felt it needed a lot of reframing to reach its full potential - but it puts a nice capstone on the Jok Sevantes series and I wanted to do the authors' ideas justice.

What's Up Next?

So with all that in mind, I should be talking with Juan about the Dragon Hunt! art today. I have most, if not all, of the Catacombs art and the stuff for Roc of Sages is somewhat minimalist. That should allow me to bring those three books into fighting shape relatively quickly. Then they go to SJGames for review, and then to you.

I hope to parallel process the review time for those books to finish Sunken Library. 

As the books go out, and then I get errata and tweak feedback, they'll go for printing. I'll be using Mixam again, and that has a very short turn-around. I also don't have to worry much about printing all the books together like I do when I use Livonia...so as they get finalized, they get printed. They'll ship to backers together, though.

Hopefully that's a pretty comprehensive update as to where we stand.

Dark Lord's Doom nears pre-final
over 3 years ago – Mon, Nov 09, 2020 at 05:52:16 PM

Dark Lord's Doom has all its art, though a few tweaks might be made to some of the counter art. Now comes the process of fixing the last few identified errata and doing a last read-through.

The errors boil down to three categories, in the main:

• There are some map labelling issues with "place fighters on spaces labeled W, X, Y, Z" where one or or more of the letters in the text don't exist on the map. These are not hard fixes.
• A few weapon damages need to be validates using the most up-to-date, errata-fix version of the TFT rules, with clarifications on how damage is calculated sought if needed
• Some of the NPCs have not spent all of their allowable points on skills. David's philosophy has been "state what's absolutely needed or of tactical significance, and don't sweat the rest." 

The third bit may or may not change. The other two are easy fixes. I hope to get these tweaked out, talk to Juan about a few changes to counter art this afternoon, and get the pre-final draft to SJGames for review either today or tomorrow. 

Then you'll get it, let me know if I missed anything. After I fix whatever's needed, I'll finalize the PDF and send it for printing. 

Next up are Dragon Hunt and Roc of Sages. I'll try and parallel process any missing final counter art, ensure all of the back cover text, bar codes, etc are what they should be!

I'm still working on The Sunken Library. I think the changes are much for the better, but it's taking time. 

Yesterday sucked personally, but good work happened
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 10:34:50 AM

Things are making progress.

I took the advice of one of you good folks and stopped focusing quite so laser-like on getting the fifth and final adventure to a state that allowed art to happen, but instead went back and started getting the counters and fixes/errata in place for the ones that ARE done.

So last few days, I pounded away on the solos: Dark Lord's Doom and Dragon Hunt!

Dark Lord's Doom

This one involved going through about 150 error submissions by the playtester pool. Many of those were based on comma use and independent and dependent clauses. Short version: if you have two thoughts separated by "and" and the other key conjunctions, you don't use a comma if the second thought can't stand on its own as a complete sentence. Because English is evil (ask any parent trying to deal with their young kids learning to speak and write), there are of course exceptions. 

Other errors includes a bunch of pointers to Map IV that really should be Map I, a few mistakes on stats and formatting, and David's predilection for only using the Talents he needs to tell that paragraph worth of story, "short-changing" NPCs by anywhere from 1 to 5 Talent points written on the sheet. We'll discuss today whether or not we fill those in (totally defining the character) or not. It might make more sense to do it; in a GM'd adventure, flexibility for an NPC to be more of what the GM needs at the time is good. In a solo...there is no GM, and having the characters be precisely defined is a good thing. We shall see.

I also did quite well in Dark Lord's Doom about asking my artists to give me art that is "extractable," that is, files where the subject can be taken out of the background to put on a counter or DoD-style card.

So right now we're here:

The remaining blanks have been assigned; I have Juan Ochoa working on a nifty little project that will allow me to produce some more-varied Dark Legionaries to make the counters 1-12 more unique. Rick Troula, who did Snorri and the Assassin (as examples), is working the named PCs and Vorlock. Those all should be done in about a week. Then the prelim PDF will go out to y'all for a full-backer playtest. Errata no doubt shall be discovered, we'll fix those, and then the final PDF can be made available. 

Dragon Hunt

This one mostly has the errata done, but it has far fewer pieces of art complete. More importantly...most of them are multi-hex figures.

As a result, Dragon Hunt got the inside-cover maps pulled from the inside covers and put in the interior, but the book boosted from 40 to 44 pages. So the extra two pages are being used for large counters on a 1.5" per hex scale. Three full pages of counters.

Here's two of them, with a few inserts, mostly placeholders.

Parting Shot

That's where we are. Dark Lord's Doom will almost certainly come out first, followed by Dragon Hunt. The rest in their turn, and I'll alternate doing more editing/restructuring of Sunken Library with moving each of the existing PDFs into workable form.

Hopefully you'll see the first PDF next week.