FO! #5 Table of Contents

[calithena]

Table of Contents

Background Professions (Akrasia)………………………3
The Scholar (Zachary Houghton)……………………….4
The Wuuky! (Moritz Mehlem and Frank Ditsche)………5
Distinctive Magic (Houghton, Dörfliger, & Calithena)…..7
The Deck O’ Stuff (Jeff Rients)…………………………9
The Tomb of Ixtandraz (Lee Barber)…………………..11
Delvers Delve: Extended Crawling (David Bowman)…..17
Tables for Fables (Age of Fable)………………………..20
Dungeon Motivations (Paul Vermeren)………………...21
Knights & Knaves (Del L. Beaudry)……………………23
Black Blood (Gabor Lux)………………………………25
Pentastadion (Gabor Lux)…………………………...…36
Creepies & Crawlies (Alex Schröder, Wayne Rossi, Jeff
Rients, Terje Nordin, and Geoffrey McKinney)………39
Tucker & Co. (M. “Chgowiz” Shorten)..………………44
Bad Hair Day (Peter Schmidt Jensen)……...…………...44
Fight On! (Jason Vasché)…...…………………………..45
Education of a Magic User (Douglas Cox)…………….45
A Few for the Road (Michael Curtis)…………………..47
A Giant Dilemma (Frank Farris)………………………50
Clarisseth (Tony Dowler)………………………………53
It Used to be a Hobbit Hole (Baz Blatt)…………….…54
The Barrow of Therex (Erin “Taichara” Bisson)………55
The Devil’s in the Details: Pygmy Folk (Baz Blatt)……..56
Seven Kings Mountains (Judd Karlman)……………….62
The Darkness Beneath, Level 2 (Calithena)…………….67
The Tower of Thalen Garh (John Hitchens)………...…78
Oceanian Legends (Del L. Beaudry)…………………....79
Guest Editorial (Timothy J. Kask)……………………..81
Merlin’s Mystical Mirror (Jeff Rients)………………….83
Artifacts, Adjuncts, & Oddments (Josef Mieszko, Terje Nordin, Jeff Rients, and Calithena)……………87

Front Cover by Kevin Mayle (kevinmayle.netaidz.com/ main.php). Back Cover by Settembrini. Fight On! and Erol Otus logos by Jeff Rients. Tim Kask photo by Rich Franks. Knights & Knaves and Creepies & Crawlies logos by Lee Barber. Interior artwork and cartography by Andrew Reyes (4,19), Richard Scott/Otherworld Miniatures (5), Andy “Atom” Taylor (7), Jeff Rients (9), Lee Barber (ghosttower. crithitcomics.com, 11,13,14,15,16,17,23,73), Age of Fable (20), Gabor Lux (25,27,30,32,33,36,37), Kelvin Green (26,43,45,52,87), Georges Roux (34), Alex Schröder (39,40,62), Peter Seckler (40), Jason Pierce (jasonpierce.animaldillo.com, 42), M. “Chgowiz” Shorten (44), Peter Schmidt Jensen (44,50), Douglas Cox (45), Frank Farris (51), Tony Dowler (53), Baz Blatt (54), Erin “Taichara” Bisson (55), Kesher (59), Carl Brodt/Tita’s House of Games (60), Vincent Baker (63,64,65,66), Robert S. Conley (67), Paul “Bliss Infinite” Fini (www.indieonlycomics.com, 68), David Bowman (70), Anthony Stiller (72), Steve Zieser (74,81), Calithena (75,77), Patrick Farley (76), Kevin Vito (77), Pete Mullen (83), James G. Browning (84), Dan Proctor (85).

[Zulgyan]

[geoffrey]

I'm honored that my pair of little monsters was found worthy of inclusion. They are decidedly un-Carcosan. I tried to indulge in a little bit of light-heartedness.

[ragnorakk]

One minor point - could I use my real name (Greg Backus) instead of my
fake internet one (Josef Mieszko)?

[labsenpai]

I didn't type 6 full pages...its mostly the pictures

[Melan]

Did I just count six articles that could be adventures by their titles?

[calithena]

Jason, yes.

Geoffrey, the blood and guts and robotics were pretty Carcosan, even if they were a bit more light-hearted than your norm.

Melan, Adventures:

The Tomb of Ixtandraz (Lee Barber)…………………..11
Black Blood (Gabor Lux)………………………………25
A Giant Dilemma (Frank Farris)………………………50
The Barrow of Therex (Erin “Taichara” Bisson)………55
The Darkness Beneath, Level 2 (Calithena)…………….67

One-Page Dungeons:
Clarisseth (Tony Dowler)………………………………53
It Used to be a Hobbit Hole (Baz Blatt)…………….…54

Campaign Setups:
Seven Kings Mountains (Judd Karlman)……………….62

Knights and Knaves and A Few for the Road contain mini-encounters that promise serious adventure seeds as well. Depending on how you count then there are conservatively between 5 and 8 adventures in the issue. Pretty cool!

[calithena]

[calithena]

kensanata's picture files are gigantic (great work though!)....I am defragmenting right now to see if that gives me the memory to run things...issue will be up VERY shortly though...

[Finarvyn]

Awesome cover!

Oh, and I edited the original thread title to include the issue number. :-)

[coffee]

Love that cover! As usual, Kevin doesn't disappoint.

[ragnorakk]

looks awesome!

[calithena]

May 27, 2009 5:56:27 GMT -6 calithena said:

Jason, yes.

I fixed your name as requested. How I got Jason instead of Greg or Josef in that post I'm not sure though!

[machfront]

Nice nod to Dragon Magazine #1 there with the cover.

[Alex Schroeder]

May 27, 2009 7:44:36 GMT -6 calithena said:

kensanata's picture files are gigantic

Hm I wonder what to do… I usually export images as 300dpi images because I heard that this is what printers require. But if we know that 200dpi will do just as well, I'm sure that this would save a ton in file size. Does anybody know?

[kevinmayle]

All my artwork is done at 200dpi and it's all looked great when printed.
I haven't been able to tell a difference when I've had them printed at 300dpi.
Hope this helps.

By the way, thanks everyone for the compliments on the cover.

[calithena]

It's not that, kensanata, it's something weird with your files relative to my computer. I had plenty of 600 dpi images that only caused a slight slowdown in this issue, whereas yours are borderline crashing my computer. It's all good though now!

[calithena]

By the way, you had a ton of images in issue 4 and I don't recall having these problems with any of them. It was specifically the three monster pics and the map of the seven dwarven kings.

300 dpi is lulu's standard but obviously 200 works OK too.

[labsenpai]

Is it a matter of encoding choice? Uncompressed art can hang your system easily...

[Alex Schroeder]

May 27, 2009 21:54:40 GMT -6 labsenpai said:

Is it a matter of encoding choice? Uncompressed art can hang your system easily...

I think I send them as PNG files, mostly. There's not much to tinker with, there… The mystery remains unsolved.

[kelvingreen]

May 27, 2009 18:21:14 GMT -6 calithena said:

It's not that, kensanata, it's something weird with your files relative to my computer.

It may be something to do with layers, transparencies, or other stuff hiding in the image which is not immediately obvious to the naked eye. Or it might just be one of those mysterious computery things which crops up once in a while without explanation. They say science, I say sorcery!

Regarding resolution, I sent my first few pieces (for the Carcosa stuff in #4) at 400dpi, simply because I'm a cautious, better-safe-than-sorry type of person, but for #5's submissions, I dropped that down to 300dpi, I think. But then I tend to work at A5, which is fairly close to the printed size, so I like to keep as much detail as possible; if I was working at a larger size, I'd probably scan at a lower resolution.

[kevinmayle]

Yeah I should add, that cover was painted at 22 inches high. That's probably why it looks fine at 200dpi.

[kelvingreen]

Hm... well something on the first page of "Creepies and Crawlies" just killed my computer. I don't know if it's an image, but it crashes Acrobat, and the magazine won't open at all in FoxIt. Weird.

Edit: Something on the first page of "Seven Kings Mountains" is doing the same. Now my computer isn't exactly state-of-the-art, but it should be able to handle a pdf!

[calithena]

Yep, that's one of kensanata's images. There are three in the first two pages of C&C and then the map on pg. 62. We should get to the bottom of this. Does anyone with a high-end computer and skillz with a contributor PDF want to figure out what's going on here?

[calithena]

Update: kensanta's images themselves are less than 1 meg each, so that's not the problem. I suspect it's something to do with the png somehow. They are in there, I've gotten the whole document to read on my computer, but it is SLOW!

[labsenpai]

I can't open the contributor PDF; I tried FoxIt and Photoshop.

[calithena]

It was something about encoding. There is a new download link with those pages converted from png to jpg in the source document and the PDF dropped 30 megs! Now that's some quick weight loss!

Anyway, both should work if your computer is fast enough, but the new file is much easier, doesn't jam my machine for even a sec.

Sorry for the mix-up!

[coffee]

The new one is awesome, I just looked through it (skimmed it, really, but every page showed up without problems).

[ant]

I also had a quick skim through the pdf this morning ... it's an amazing issue. Can't wait to place my order on lulu.

[kelvingreen]

Lulu is down for "site maintenance", so I can't download the fixed copy at the moment! Still, the rest of the magazine looks great, and I'll see what pp42 & 62 look like a bit later on.