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Post by geordie on Apr 11, 2010 10:27:27 GMT -6
One thing I didn't do is the Bible-esq two colums per page deal that has become virtually standard with RPGs. This is simply because the 3LBB's, Supplement II, FFC, and AIF are all single column. (and Carcosa, come to think of it.) Two columns are better for larger formats, while single column is best for booklets. Speaking of which, I tried to print Dragons at Dawn as a booklet but I was unsuccessful in using Adobe Acrobat's automatic booklet setting. It apparently doesn't agree with my printer, so I'll have to arrange the pages manually to get them to print correctly. Try Booklet Creator, it's free. I've used it successfully in the past after Greyharp suggested it. |
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Post by tombowings on Apr 11, 2010 11:38:39 GMT -6
The more I look at Dragons at Dawn, the more I like it. There a few too many subsystems for it to work in my home game, but may for a PBP it would work wonders. After the failure of Castle Lyra, I've been working on a new setting. I wonder if Dragons at Dawn might be able to work for it.
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Post by geordie on Apr 11, 2010 13:36:32 GMT -6
I like the Protection Point rules. For a session I'm planning I populated Glendower Dungeon using them - Level 4 had one room that required filling (35pp = 14HD!) mwa ha hah !
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Post by Random on Apr 11, 2010 15:34:59 GMT -6
Try Booklet Creator, it's free. I've used it successfully in the past after Greyharp suggested it. I've heard of it, but I think I'm just going to go back to doing things manually because I know how to do it right the first time that way. |
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Post by aldarron on Apr 11, 2010 16:12:32 GMT -6
I like the Protection Point rules. For a session I'm planning I populated Glendower Dungeon using them - Level 4 had one room that required filling (35pp = 14HD!) mwa ha hah ! Protection Points were an interesting problem to work out because Arneson didn't say, and didn't seem to really remember how he determined the PP rating of creatures not on the Chainmail lists and he didn't always apply them consistently anyway. But the figures worked out in the majority of cases for the FFC Blackmoor and Glendower dungeons. Same thing with treasure amounts although there were some even wonkier cases with that. |
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Post by Lord Kilgore on Apr 11, 2010 18:35:02 GMT -6
It looks to me like only Elfin Mages use the spell point system in the Expanded version and that Wizards continue to use spells as described in the Basic Game. Is that correct? Or am I missing something?
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Post by tombowings on Apr 11, 2010 19:59:55 GMT -6
It looks to me like only Elfin Mages use the spell point system in the Expanded version and that Wizards continue to use spells as described in the Basic Game. Is that correct? Or am I missing something? That is my understanding, too. |
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Post by spacemonkeydm on Apr 11, 2010 22:41:51 GMT -6
I really like what I read so far. My main question thou is how compatible is this with ODnD. since the XP is different I was not for sure how fast players tend to level. Also while I am here, what does a warrior spend money on for XP. Training?
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Post by aldarron on Apr 12, 2010 10:07:10 GMT -6
It looks to me like only Elfin Mages use the spell point system in the Expanded version and that Wizards continue to use spells as described in the Basic Game. Is that correct? Or am I missing something? Yes, the point rules as written only apply to Elfin Mages. It's intended that wizards continue to use material magic. I didn't specifically state that as a restriction for those who may prefer to houserule otherwise. If you did wish to extend points to Wizards you should take away thier at will spells. |
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Post by aldarron on Apr 12, 2010 10:20:36 GMT -6
I really like what I read so far. My main question thou is how compatible is this with ODnD. since the XP is different I was not for sure how fast players tend to level. Also while I am here, what does a warrior spend money on for XP. Training? Really too many variables to give an accurate general answer, but if all else was equal, and because exp are always reset to 0, progress should be the same to level 2, a lttle slower to about 4/5 and a little faster for higher levels. DAD characters will often be more powerful (fighting stregths) than D&D characters but a little less able to take damage. Arneson seemed to favor approaches encouraging avoiding damage rather than absorbing it like a sponge. |
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Post by geordie on Apr 12, 2010 16:02:16 GMT -6
I really like what I read so far. My main question thou is how compatible is this with ODnD. since the XP is different I was not for sure how fast players tend to level. Also while I am here, what does a warrior spend money on for XP. Training? Celebrating ! |
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Post by aldarron on Apr 12, 2010 17:34:19 GMT -6
I really like what I read so far. My main question thou is how compatible is this with ODnD. since the XP is different I was not for sure how fast players tend to level. Also while I am here, what does a warrior spend money on for XP. Training? Celebrating ! Yep! whatever the referee and the player decide is appropriate for the particular character to spend the loot on. John Sniders fighter back in '71 was named Boozero and you can easily guess where his money went. |
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 12, 2010 18:53:09 GMT -6
I seem to remember that some of the Blackmoor players had odd and expensive hobbies. Imagine gaining x.p. for spending vast sums of money on your magic butterfly collection.
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Post by Falconer on Apr 12, 2010 21:44:20 GMT -6
There is a section in FFC where you roll up each character’s hobby, IIRC some of the possibilities were Wine, Women, Song, and Magical Constructs. You wouldn’t gain XP for treasure until you spent it all on your passion.
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Post by Lord Kilgore on Apr 13, 2010 7:34:27 GMT -6
I seem to remember that some of the Blackmoor players had odd and expensive hobbies. Imagine gaining x.p. for spending vast sums of money on your magic butterfly collection. Well, Wizards are going to be spending their gold and half of everyone else's collecting the necessary materials for their spells. Which may include magic butterflies. Warrior: What? You're out of female dragon tongue AGAIN?!? |
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Post by kesher on Apr 13, 2010 10:16:58 GMT -6
Actually, it'd probably be pretty easy to drive an entire campaign based on characters' oddball passions. If every adventure had some sort of hook to each passion, player motivation and engagement would be almost guaranteed (especially if some of the passions involved conflicted or interfered with each other...)
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Post by kesher on Apr 14, 2010 13:33:05 GMT -6
There are a lot of things I really like about this game, and I'm going to post those in a different thread. Here, in the feedback thread, I want to mention a few other, mostly formatting issues.
First, there are quite a few typos. If I'd only paid $3-5, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but once I start getting close to $10 (or more, for the print edition), that sort of thing starts to bother me.
There's a lot of great info packed into those pages, and it needs to be better organized, visually. A judicious use of indenting would help, and the quotes from Dave could use to be indented as well, with perhaps a slightly smaller font size to make them stand apart.
This is probably just inevitably a personal preference, but I really can't stand the font used. Bold-faced, sans serif fonts are hard to read.
Here's a question: Why do Warriors in the Basic Game stay at only 7HPV? It seems weird to have a character with more HD than HPV.
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Post by aldarron on Apr 14, 2010 19:17:15 GMT -6
Thanks Kesher for some productive feedback  There were a handful of typos I became aware of following the initial release (4/7/10) that were corrected. For the 4/9/10 release those were all fixed. If there are still some I really apologize. Please let me know what they are so that won't be any issue. I've seen a few comments on the font - Berlin Sans FB - and that surprises me because I chose that one specifically because that's one of my favorite fonts and I find it easier to read than the standards like arial and times new roman etc. The classical shape of the letters also seemed (to me anyway) suited to a fantasy genre without going too fancifal. Having said that I'm in no way wedded to it and would willingly change it on future releases if the general consensus is in favor of something else. (suggestions?) Indenting more might have looked nicer. I played with that some but didn't do more of that partially because I didn't want too much negative space on the page, but mostly because I was using a larger font size than is typical (11 point) for many RPG products because I hate staring at tiny font and I didn't want to unnecessarily further inflate the page count. That was my thought process anyway. The formatting is generally meant to feel like the FFC or AiF or classic JG product, but a little cleaner in terms of paragraph headings and the logical progression of text flow. I could have followed the wargames rules format of EPT but DA never did that. I'm definetly interested in opinions and ideas on these things though since the Dragons at Twilight supplement is already sitting at nearly three times the page count of Dragons at Dawn and need not follow the same format at all since its mostly my hubris and toolkit additions to the game. That by the way, will sell in the 3-4 dollar range. I wish I knew the answer to your question Kesher, but I don't. The HPV's are what Dave made them, as jotted down in pencil in 1972 in the back of Greg Svenson copy of Chainmail. The only thing was I had to guess the lower values for the Wizard class because Greg only recorded the final value (21) for Wizards, but he had them all for the Warrior. |
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Post by kesher on Apr 14, 2010 20:04:47 GMT -6
My pleasure, Dan! That's cool---the devil's in the details. I'll go through it again and let you know what I found. I'm pretty sure I have the 4/9 version. I always find Calibri or Frutiger Linotype to be eminently readable. I can understand that, but I would think you could go down to a 10 pt. font without losing readability, and I'm not talking about huge chunks of negative space, maybe just three levels of nested paragraphs: Heading--->Body text--->Quote/example. That's about the coolest answer I could've hoped for! Nonetheless, if I run it, I'd be compelled to go 7/14/28. Which made me think of one more thing: The combat section REALLY needs an example. |
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Post by aldarron on Apr 15, 2010 6:17:08 GMT -6
My pleasure, Dan! That's cool---the devil's in the details. I'll go through it again and let you know what I found. I'm pretty sure I have the 4/9 version. I always find Calibri or Frutiger Linotype to be eminently readable. I can understand that, but I would think you could go down to a 10 pt. font without losing readability, and I'm not talking about huge chunks of negative space, maybe just three levels of nested paragraphs: Heading--->Body text--->Quote/example. That's about the coolest answer I could've hoped for! Nonetheless, if I run it, I'd be compelled to go 7/14/28. Which made me think of one more thing: The combat section REALLY needs an example. Fonts - I'll experiment with that a bit. Indent - Looking through my printouts, I can (and will later today) center and perhaps underline major section titles in most cases. I think that would improve the clarity of the layout. I might be able to center more of Arneson quotes too. My wife is my major proofreader and while she is excellent with text, she doesn't know anything about RPGs so titles and terminology get no comments from her. |
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Post by Lord Kilgore on Apr 15, 2010 7:56:13 GMT -6
Re: Fonts and Formatting
I think I wrote here (or somewhere) that I'm not a big fan of the font either. But I will say that holds up pretty well to shrinking down for digest-sized booklet printing of the PDF, which is what I did.
Some more indenting in areas (quotes, especially) would improve readability and the "look," IMHO.
Just keep in mind that a lot of PDF buyers will probably be interested in booklet printing so if you make changes don't make the font too much smaller or one that's too light.
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Post by geordie on Apr 15, 2010 11:42:15 GMT -6
My print copy (1st ed !) just arrived and I really like the one-column pages and I'm fine with the font. And all the art looks good.
A couple of things I'd change: On the cover the tops of the capital letters in 'The First Fantasy Game System' are cropped. Also there is a 1cm black border on the sides of the cover picture. I think it would either benefit from no border at at or an equal black border round the edges. Oh and the odd spelling mistake ('poney').
I'm a happy chappy ;D
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Post by doc on Apr 20, 2010 20:08:11 GMT -6
Almost finished reading it. Lots and lots that I like. I'll get into more detail later, but two things I'd like to mention:
1. I like how the combat system takes various factors into account. The guy who's larger, faster, and more skilled is going to get the huge advantage, even against a small group. The Conan Effect in action. Weapons don't matter; a skilled fighter can kill with a dagger or his bare hands just as easily as with a broadsword. Very genre appropriate.
2. The magic system looks like it is going to drive a whole lot o gamers who love wizards crazy. There is no ironclad guarantee that a spell will work, ever. And there is no "insta-magic." The wizard must plan his spells carefully before he goes a-travellin', and this might take weeks. I picture a D@D mage being like Batman, with tons of nifty tricks in his utility belt.
Two questions for Daniel, though.
1. How much of the material actually comes from Dave Arneson's games as opposed to you trying to "fill in the blanks?"
2. When do you plan to have Dragons at Twilight out?
Great job!
Doc
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Post by aldarron on Apr 21, 2010 8:50:40 GMT -6
How much of the material from Dave is kind of a though one to answer, but if I were thinking of buying such a game, it would be my first question too. I would be concerned that the game be really as true to Arnesons game as it could be and less a product of somebody elses ideas with a thin veil of Arneson on top. So, first, the general tone, topic subject matter, and approach to gaming is all Arneson. Dragons at Dawn sets up the game to let you play the way he played, which is a lot more free form and customizeable than the Gygaxian approach. Second, virtually all the mechanics in the game either mimic directly mechanics given in the FFC and interviews or conform to descriptive statements from the FFC and later interviews or at the very least the general principles behind some mechanics where details were only given in AiF or in a couple cases, Suppp II. Mechanics, (sometimes for copyright reasons, sometimes for the sake of simplicity) may not be exactly the same (egotistic swords vs characters frex) but are functionally equivalent. Often a mechanic given for a particular thing by Dave is generalized by me to cover similar things in other areas. This is particularly true of character classes. The FFC gives us the classes that were unique or originated with Dave, but we usually don't have details regarding any special rules or abilities they may have (particularly for the Merchant) so, keeping in mind that levels 4 and 8 are the significant plataues of hero-hood, I generalized the Thief Assasin deceit mechanic (itself broadened in application from that given in Supp II) to cover the likely abilities of the Merchant. Thus everything I could base on Dave's gaming I did so that while a particular part of the game may not be the way he did it, it is a way he did similar things back in the day and as close as I could get. if I didn't have something from Arneson to base it on I left it out, except where I thought it was absolutely necessary to have some rule or information, in which case I usually pointed out that there was no known source for it. Maybe the best way to think of Dragons at Dawn is as a concise biography, not autobiography of Dave' pre D&D game.
When will Dragons at Twilight come out? I dunno. I'll prolly feel motivatied to polish that and put it up this summer. Most of it is already written from an earlier attempt by me at making an RPG. There's some Arnesonian based material there too (from later work) but mostly there's a lot of expansion material from me (loads of spells, couple other clases and subclases). Might be good to start a thread and see what people might like.
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