Looking for project leaders

Looking for Project Leaders

When I started the 3.S project I was the only person involved. Now the project is growing (we get on average one new project member every day) and I've found that I can safely pass on leadership of certain Builds to other people.

With that in mind I'm looking for people that can take over the overseeing of certain Builds...well, most of them actually.

Now that I can rely on people to help, it is in the best interests of the project that I hand aspects over to people better suited to running them; people with more knowledge on the fandoms being used as the Builds and with more experience on playing and GMing.

Currently looknig for new leaders are the following Builds: -

Silent Hill,
Bioshock,
Pokemon (though I'll be waiting until I've finished working out the basic mechanics. I'm determined to finish working this out an I'm almost done.),
Legacy of Kain, &
Naruto.

I've decided that I want to keep overseeing the Kingdom Hearts Build, seeing as I'm the most familair with the mechanics of it (seeing as I've written a majority of them) and it's the fandom I most enjoy doing the rules for.

In addition, I've also started work on a new Build, but I'm keeping the details of that under wraps. I'm doing this for a number of reasons, which I wont go in to right now. People are welcome to get involved but you'll have to PM me because that section of the forum will be hidden. If you want to be involved, you need to be open minded and not easily offended.

Anyway, that's all I'm saying about that for the time being.

Mission Statements and Whatnot

In other news, I was asked why I'm going through with this project.

At first I wasn't even sure myself but I've come to realise that it's not just altruism that's motivating me.

The truth is that I find working on rules fascinating. I don't know why; I just enjoy working things out and doing these rules gives me a tremendous amount of scope to play with. I suppose it's the same as people enjoying doing maths. It doesn't make much sense to the likes of us but they get something out of it. I imagine it's the same thing here. It helps me to take my mind off of things and it focuses me...as well as relieving the odd spout of boredom.

So while I'm busy creating I realised that the stuff that actually worked could benefit the D&D and D20 community. I realised that I wanted to put this to good use and with the introduction of 4e (which everybody hates) I thought I'd do my best to come up with something better.

And you know what? It's working. There's been a naysayer or two (negative folks with no imagination) but every day we get another addition (on average) and people are getting involved and liking what we can do with this.

So I want to thank every indivudual who is contributing, no matter how big or small.

Even those people who only come for the Roleplay or the General chat are building a community, a good community of imaginative and friendly people.

Everyone, in one way or another, are contributing to a wonderful project; a project that started as an errand thought and is flourishing in to something for everyone, by everyone.

Worlds are being built, friends are being made and ideas are being woven.

I had doubts, but the people involved have banished those entirely.

I want to finish with an open letter to WotC that I found on their forums which made me glad we're doing this: -

An open letter to Wizards of the Coast - by "drewnchick"

I've not engaged in the discussion on these boards, silently lurking and listening to everyone's responses, both pro and con. I waited, I hoped, I even read the books. Now...I am responding with what I hope is a thoughful letter to the Wizards.



Dear Wizards,

We feel spurned, WotC. So many companies had licenses revoked--er, not renewed...feels the same, WotC--and that wounded or killed a number of them. A hundred thousand readers of Dragon and Dungeon had their lifetime subscriptions forceably suspended, and THAT hurt a lot of people.

WotC (or Hasbro...makes no difference to us), your obvious drive to gather in everything for yourselves seriously offended nearly everyone. Yes, it was your right to do so, and maybe it even made good business sense from a bean counter's point of view. But business is NOT just about money; it's also about the relationships with customers, and you managed to tick off, worry, or confuse just about all of them.

We all see through the guise. Yes, we were complaining about a few aspects of the game. But no, we did NOT ask for 4E. Some of us will like it, and some will give it a chance. A few will even begrudgingly make the switch. But those are the exceptions. A strong and vocal majority of us--individuals and small companies alike--have followed you through the TSR days all the way to Seattle. We gave you all the support any company could want, and we really feel like you have treated us badly in return. We will NOT be following you anymore.

If it was your purpose to wipe the slate clean of all your "old-school" customers and start all over with a fresh and innocent generation, then I applaud your brilliance. If you intended to lose the "dead weight" of the past while boldly storming into the "future of gaming," then you have succeeded. But we feel the sting of your slap to our faces. We loved you; we supported you; we even held out some hope that 4E would NOT be the disappointment we saw coming. Nope. You slapped us all pretty hard, WotC. The final slap in the face would be you dedicating 4E in memory of E. Gary Gygax, who voiced his displeasure with your direction and decisions. Oh, wait...you actually did that.

So...we feel spurned, WotC. But there remains a ray of hope for us. Paizo Publishing is a-courtin' and we're becoming all too happy to switch loyalties. We know when we're not wanted anymore, but we also see a bright future for this company who WANTS us "old-school" gamers, who LISTENS to our collective voice, and who COOPERATES with other companies for the betterment and enjoyment of all who truly love D&D more than money.

Well, I hope the lesson you learn from this isn't TOO painful. I really hope you learn it. Don't say we didn't warn you.


Signed: A fed-up, old-school, pen-and-paper, tabletop gamer.

A Project Update

Well the different D20 builds are coming along, albeit slowly.

We've got plenty of room for submissions and people to help. Remember, that you'll be credited in the book of the default rules, thereby gaining a small measure of immortality.

We still have the following D20 projects underway: -

Bioshock D20,
Pokemon,
Kingdom Hearts,
Naruto, (All my notes regarding this are on a laptop, currently in the hands of PC World...so if any of the PC World repair staff would like to join up, it'd be appreciated...)
Silent Hill, &
Legacy of Kain.

There are also whispers of someone attempting a Doctor Who range of rules, but those are premature.

We're also in need of people to help us build the two default campaigns...kind of like our versions of Greyhawk and Faerun.

We'll be OGL compliant, meaning that we can actually publish the rules and two default settings, if we want. Although I think this is likely to remain a profit-free project.

We'll be releasing them as Adobe Acrobat Files, with the help of our crack team of artists.

Anyhow, this project is by fans, for fans so please join up and check us out.

We look forward to seeing you there.

HMR

Solved!

Recently I handed out a preliminary draft of the first few sections of a beginner's version of the draft version of the handbook *deep breath*

My good friend Dave correctly pointed out that I needed to include as healer class. I had left out clerics and bards to make it easy on beginners. Bards because, well they didn't feel necessary enough and clerics because I didn't want to overload a beginner with talk of religion and domains.

I've figured out what I'm going to do though. I'm going to remove the wizard and cut him in two and replace the wizard with a Black Mage and a White Mage.

The Black Mage will be restricted to mostly offensive spells, whilst the White Mage will focus mostly on curing and buffing.

These classes will remain exclusive to the beginner's version though and will not be included in the default ruleset.

Also, it wont be called the beginer's version anymore. I've decided to focus on the full rules first, and then produce a "3.S Light" for beginners and anyone else that fancies using it. This edition will miss out most classes, containing only the fighter, rogue, sorcerer, black mage and white mage. Actually, it doesn't seem right that the sorcerer stays while I've cut up the magician...but I need to leave in a class that has magic inherantly, as opposed to studying for it. Unless I split the sorcerer in to the B&W mages and do something else with the wizard...

Hmmm...I shall ponder on this.

Anyhow, a lot of the feats and magic a character wont get until higher levels will be missed out. Religion will be omitted altogether.
There will only be two races, also. Originally, I had humans as the only race in the "beginner" version, but I've decided that it'll need at least two...to prepare players for the choices they'll have when they upgrade to the proper rules. I haven't decided what the other race will be. The obvious choice would be elves (being the lowest common denominator in fantasy) but I'm tempted to find something new that can be exclusive to the Light Version.

Anyhow, I don't have to come up with these just yet. I'll be constructing it using input from the forum.

Speaking of which, the forum is steadily growing, which is nice ^_^

I'm looking forward to collaborating with so many people. I want this to be a project by everyone for everyone.

Oh well, I suppose time will tell on how well it goes. Still, I've got some amazing graphics donated by some of deviant's best artists, which is (frankly) amazing. A few of them are also interested in doing artwork for the books, when they're made.

Methinks it's more of an incentive to see if we can actually get some of them printed...I might give them away if I can or something...some kind of competition perhaps?

Anyway, I'm going off-the-point.

I think I'll leave it at that on the Light Handbook. I've been up to quite a bit lately; taking notes, and pondering mostly. A lot of what I've come up with is now on the forums. We have the makings of the following builds: -

Pokemon,
Naruto,
Bioshock,
Silent Hill,
Kingdom Hearts &
Legacy of Kain.

We're also doing original settings so players don't have to be restricted to playing games devoted to fandom. We'll have two in-the-end methinks.

We'll be doing a general one as a default setting...with just enough details to give a DM something to work with but not enough to stifle his creativity (that'll be a tricky balance to master) and I'll soon initiate another setting (kind of like our version of Faerun), complete with history and the entire project's contributor's worth of input.

Anyhow, that's all for another time. Have fun folks...

PS - A link to the forum...as always...

HMR

Progress thus far

Well I've been working on a draft version of the core rules for D20 Synergy. They're a beginner's guide to the rules of the game and as such don't have all of the feats and magic of ordinary 3.5 rules.

I've also restricted the classes to: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Sorcerer.

This is for simplicity's sake, as this particular version will serve as an introduction to D20 gaming for the beginner. The elements that weren't included will be in an advanced edition, which I'll put together later. Meanwhile, everything else will be left Build-Specific and will be included in the relevant Build Handbooks.

In any case, I've so far covered chapters on: -

The D20 gaming system,
Character abilities,
The class system (with the Fighter Class filled in. I'll do the others later).
Skills (Mostly done)

I've still got to finish the skills section, add the other three class entries, do feats, magic, a step-by-step character creation walkthrough, utilising all of the previous sections, then a chapter on adventuring and combat, then a section on basic equipment, finished with levelling up (and anything else i think up along the way).

I've got several copies out there, being reviewed. I'll probably stick a few up on the forums later on, once they're in more of a complete state.

Until later, have fun kids ^_^

HMR

Acck, an update!

I've been somewhat quiet over the last few months though that's not to say that I've not been doing anything.

Of minor importance is that I've been working on my stat blocks. Up until now I've been doing them in a non-standard form (which was apparently only convenient to me) so I'll be working on a more standardised system (so that you can all use what I produce).

This has ramifications on a greater project, which I'm begin to work on now.

This project is a more standardised version of the 3.5 rules of D&D, which I'm calling D&D Synergy, or 3.S.

Now bear with me and I shall explain.

I was mulling over the various RPG forums out on the vast expanse of the internets and it occured to me that many people are eager to roleplay their favourite series, games, etc. That got me thinking; why use a forum when there's a perfectly good D20 system not being used? This is why I'm issuing a call-to-arms, of sorts to help me with a unified fandom project, creating rulesets (or "builds", as I've found myself calling them in my notes) for each of the universes that folks want to play with.

Not only do I want to try and do builds for each universe, but I want to do them in a way that they can be synergised. This achieves two goals:

1. It assures that each universe is balanced against each other.

2. It gave me the idea of a Smash Bros. style build to accompany the project.

In any case, it's still early days yet but the forum is up, at least. So if you're interested, join up and get posting and I'll keep you all updated.

In the meantime, I'll put up sections and offer support for any fandom you want to contribute to and I'll be working on getting a wiki sorted to more easily compile submissions and contributions.

Personally, I'm intrigued by a Naruto build (seeing as I've already got some notes down on that) and a Kingdom Hearts build.

And finally, I'll also be happy to provide support and room for original projects, also.

Well, I've rambled enough. I'll bring you some updates within the next fortnight.

Have fun folks ^_^