The Age of the Warriors - a ToB expansion book idea

[DracoDei]

Personally, I think we should decide on a group of five people or so to vote on these things. At least that way we can have something to work with. Debating freely in this thread, with no structure, isn't getting us anywhere. We've got to make some definite choices before we can really get to work on writing the bulk of this project.

4 or 5 people to hack out how to write things up for voting (after the main thread has discussed things) would be fine... I think the voting itself should be open (but with a 1 or 2 week duration for each).

EDIT:

Well, there's no reason the author can't suggest ideas to be voted upon too- it's just that they also have the final say as to what is done with their work. And frankly, this project has been around for a long time now, and hasn't gotten much of anywhere at least as far as decision-making is concerned. At this rate, we'll never finish, and brainstorming is all we've done.

I just meant brainstorming on NEW things as they come up... the older stuff (anything over say... a month without someone commenting on it, if that high a standard...) has probably been brainstormed on enough.

[pyrefiend]

4 or 5 people to hack out how to write things up for voting (after the main thread has discussed things) would be fine... I think the voting itself should be open (but with a 1 or 2 week duration for each)

Well that sounds perfect. We choose a topic for discussion, debate it in here for about a week (or less, if we don't need it), then a few people condense the various viewpoints into a couple choices to be voted upon, and finally we have open voting in a separate thread for a week or two.

Who else is on board with this plan?

[DracoDei]

One topic at a time sounds too slow (I don't think it is multithreading that slows us down), and a week sounds too fast (it takes time to come up with good solutions to complex problems especially when hybridization of initial ideas is part of the picture).

[pyrefiend]

One topic at a time sounds too slow (I don't think it is multithreading that slows us down), and a week sounds too fast (it takes time to come up with good solutions to complex problems especially when hybridization of initial ideas is part of the picture).

Hmmmm, OK. I suppose it depends upon the topics, but we can certainly have multiple debates and voting threads going on at once. As for the week-long deadline, that doesnt need to be a strict rule. We can keep going until there's nothing left to be said and what opinions we do have can be converted into options for voting.

[Morph Bark]

One of the big questions I, in my not-having-read-through-this-whole-thread-ness, haven't seen yet is this: of the people currently able and willing to work on this project, does anyone know how to make it all into a coherent and well-organized PDF file?

I would presume any artwork to be out, besides perhaps for the cover if there would be any.

[DracoDei]

of the people currently able and willing to work on this project, does anyone know how to make it all into a coherent and well-organized PDF file?

I believe there WAS at least, I am not good with names, so I couldn't tell you who they(singular or plural) were, and thus I also don't know if they are still around.

[dspeyer]

I believe there WAS at least, I am not good with names, so I couldn't tell you who they(singular or plural) were, and thus I also don't know if they are still around.

I think elliott20 was going to work on this, but we haven't seen him since april.

I've been toying with uniformly formatting it into a machine-readable form and then exporting it as html, pdf and whatever else is of interest. This has the advantage that we can have very different presentations and not need to keep them in sync. Unfortunately, the import phase is taking a lot of hand-tweaking.

[Morph Bark]

It would be a shame to see all of this go to waste, yeah... Personally, I've got two more disciplines that I am slowly working on since I've had ideas for them lying around for months and not having done anything with them yet frustrates me. I'd be honoured if at least one of my disciplines could find their way into this. That is, if whomever would be grading what is qualified enough to be put in thinks any of them would be worthy enough.

[playswithfire]

I've been toying with uniformly formatting it into a machine-readable form and then exporting it as html, pdf and whatever else is of interest. This has the advantage that we can have very different presentations and not need to keep them in sync. Unfortunately, the import phase is taking a lot of hand-tweaking.

I was going to suggest either that or point out that editing can be done in Word/Publisher/their OpenOffice equivalents or any HTML editor and then exported or printed to PDF. A machine readable format is probably the right way to go, though. I've spent a little time working on something like that for my ToB II project. It needs to be generalized a bit more, but depending on how similar our machine readable formats are, we may be able to help each other. What programming language were you using for the parsing? My parser's in Java.

[For Valor]

As far as pdf conversion goes, you could use www.Scribd.com

It's pretty easy: Someone puts all that nonsense into a Word document and uploads it to Scribd. It'll be available online to anyone who goes to Scribd and types in "Age of Warriors" in the search bar.

Anyone who goes onto scribd and looks at the document then has the option to download it. It's always available in pdf format, no matter what you upload and what format you put it in.

So just throw it on Scribd. That way people w/o Adobe or flash player can access it, and it'll be downloadable. And nothing would stop anybody from taking the pdf off of Scribd, and posting a link here for downloads.

[Nero24200]

I've studied design and layout and actually have the appropriate software for making a PDF. If I got a hand with organising all the info I could easily sort it into a PDF.

Edit: Though one thing I think I'd be more likely to do is make each individual discipline it's own PDF file adn simply include all of them in a single folder. It would make sorting discplines as they come in alot more easy.

[dspeyer]

I've finally had some success parsing many of the discplines. I'll try to write a mini-srd tomorrow and we'll see how bad it gets. In the mean time, there are a bunch of maneuvers in title lists that I can't find. I may be missing stuff, or it may be missing from the disciplines:

Blood_Sage: "perfect incision" "thou who curith, can makith ill" "amazing restoration"
Kaleidoscopic_Dream: "chaotic spectrum onslaught"
Untamed_Essence: "draining spellstrike" "long slash"
Solaris_Arcanum: "stance of the wyrmling's scale"
Nightingale Feather: "phasing arrow"
Lost Lyrics: "rapiers rhythm"
Broken_Blade: "way of the laughing man"
The_Narrow_Bridge: "chill of death" "embrace the wraith" "final rest you deal"

Also, a few I've found but am missing canonical names for:

Falling Anvil: the zany counters, stormcloud vs. storm-cloud

holy word: word of "healing" or "health"

dancing leaf: Dance of Falling/Flying Leaves

Witch razor: "alienation" or "curse of alienation"?

[DracoDei]

Also, a few I've found but am missing canonical names for:

Falling Anvil: the zany counters, stormcloud vs. storm-cloud

The Zany counters intentionally each have an alias if that is what you mean... (Moment of Imperfect Mind etc)... as for stormcloud vs. storm-cloud, spelling and grammar fail me... whichever is correct is correct. I can check it out when I am on acomputer with the right checkers tommorrow.

[JoshuaZ]

[QUOTE=dspeyer;8858045]

I've finally had some success parsing many of the discplines. I'll try to write a mini-srd tomorrow and we'll see how bad it gets. In the mean time, there are a bunch of maneuvers in title lists that I can't find. I may be missing stuff, or it may be missing from the disciplines:

Broken_Blade: "way of the laughing man"

Yeah, that got changed to Walk the True Path after I used some of the material from another discipline I never finished. Thought that was changed everywhere. Fixed now.

The_Narrow_Bridge: "chill of death" "embrace the wraith" "final rest you deal"

Er, embrace the wraith had a typo in it. The other one is titled "Final Rest." Looks like Chill of Death was missed because it was titled "The Chill of Death" in the maneuver list. Anyways, Narrow Bridge is in the process of undergoing some tweaking to reduce the total number of maneuvers (see the discussion in that thread and a bit in this one on the previous page). So this will probably need another once over after happens.

[Prime32]

Took a look at this thread today, haven't read through much of it, but have you considered creating a website for this stuff rather than a pdf? With an indexed list of manouvers, possibly with the original ones mixed in (hey, they're on the manouver cards...)

I could throw something together pretty quickly, which should be simple to add to.

[DracoDei]

Took a look at this thread today, haven't read through much of it, but have you considered creating a website for this stuff rather than a pdf? With an indexed list of manouvers, possibly with the original ones mixed in (hey, they're on the manouver cards...)

I could throw something together pretty quickly.

We have indeed considered it. More than that I can not say, since it isn't my department.

[dspeyer]

Took a look at this thread today, haven't read through much of it, but have you considered creating a website for this stuff rather than a pdf? With an indexed list of manouvers, possibly with the original ones mixed in (hey, they're on the manouver cards...)

I could throw something together pretty quickly, which should be simple to add to.

There seems to be interest in a website, a pdf, a set of cards, and probably other forms as well. That's why I wanted it in semantic form. Then we can have a single master and multiple views.

[dspeyer]

The Zany counters intentionally each have an alias if that is what you mean... (Moment of Imperfect Mind etc)...

Right, but when we actually present them, is it:

'Zany Mind (AKA Moment of Imperfect Mind)'
'Zany Mind (also known as "Moment of Imperfect Mind")'
'Zany Mind' and 'Moment of Imperfect Mind' both linking to the same maneuver
'Zany Mind' with a description that begins 'This maneuver is also known as "Moment of Imperfect Mind".'

I'd tend to favor the last one, since the first two are kind of long for maneuver names.

[DracoDei]

Right, but when we actually present them, is it:

'Zany Mind (AKA Moment of Imperfect Mind)'
'Zany Mind (also known as "Moment of Imperfect Mind")'
'Zany Mind' and 'Moment of Imperfect Mind' both linking to the same maneuver
'Zany Mind' with a description that begins 'This maneuver is also known as "Moment of Imperfect Mind".'

I'd tend to favor the last one, since the first two are kind of long for maneuver names.

The first one is the most interesting. I see no benefit to the second one, the third one is the best from a design principle point of view, and the last one is perfectly acceptable if that is the way you feel it should be.

EDIT^2: Although really I don't see why you can't just use exactly what I already have perhaps with the parenthetical notes in a different font or italicized or something so it isn't a case of the destination not matching the index.

EDIT: Also, it appears it is "storm-cloud" not "stormcloud" and I have edited it appropriately (and fixed another minor typo while I noticed... and case of changing a "you" to "your").

[pyrefiend]

<Maneuver Name Issues>

Whoops, looks like I changed the names of these halfway through the thread, but only changed them in the individual descriptions. So....

"perfect incision" is eighth level and called "deathly incision" in the individual description. Perfect Incision is the correct name.
"thou who curith, can makith ill" is called "surgeon's spite" in the individual description. Surgeon's Spite is the correct name.
"amazing restoration" is called "sudden surgery" in the individual description. Sudden Surgery is the correct name.

Annnnnd.... I like Alienation better than Curse of Alienation.

[dspeyer]

I'll bring this stuff in.

I'm realizing that a set of half-handwritten JSONs on my own hard drive are a terrible canonical form. I'm thinking of putting it into appengine, using the database there and creating edit forms. This may be more work than we want. Does anyone know a good hosting service for collaboration on structured data?

[Prime32]

I'll bring this stuff in.

I'm realizing that a set of half-handwritten JSONs on my own hard drive are a terrible canonical form. I'm thinking of putting it into appengine, using the database there and creating edit forms. This may be more work than we want. Does anyone know a good hosting service for collaboration on structured data?

Does this count?

I've set up edit forms, but you need to join to see them (tell me if you apply so I can add you). I can also add the facility to enter a list of schools into the page for a class/PrC so that it generates a list of all available maneuvers automatically.

[dspeyer]

Does this count?

I've set up edit forms, but you need to join to see them (tell me if you apply so I can add you). I can also add the facility to enter a list of schools into the page for a class/PrC so that it generates a list of all available maneuvers automatically.

I've applied. I assume once I'm in I'll be able to see more about how it works.

Normal wikis are basically hosting text, which isn't exactly ideal. Is this more structured?

[Prime32]

I've applied. I assume once I'm in I'll be able to see more about how it works.

You've been added.

Normal wikis are basically hosting text, which isn't exactly ideal. Is this more structured?

Yeah, pages can only be added through lists on the relevant pages, are cross-linked automatically, and you get a custom editor with a number of fields. I'm working on templates for feats and classes, but they need a little more tweaking.

Try adding a school, then a maneuver or two to it, maybe comment on it.

Oh, and I can change the interface elements so there's just "Edit", if that helps.


EDIT:
The wiki is also equipped with a forum, which can be set up to associate a discussion thread with every page, or just ones in certain categories.

[dspeyer]

Looks pretty good.

I'll see if I can rig up a mass-upload. Annoyingly, the API seems to be down for redesign, but I can always abuse http :-)

Is there a way to edit things after they're added? I'd hate to think every typo is enshrined.

How powerful is the templating system? I was thinking of things like providing maneuver lists for each class. If the templating system isn't good enough, how easy is it to get the data out neatly?

[Prime32]

Looks pretty good.

I'll see if I can rig up a mass-upload. Annoyingly, the API seems to be down for redesign, but I can always abuse http :-)

Well, the way the entry boxes are set up, they assign parent pages and tags to pages as they are created to allow navigation (an lv1 Iron Heart maneuver would have tags "1 iron-heart" and parent "Iron Heart").

Is there a way to edit things after they're added? I'd hate to think every typo is enshrined.

Yes.

How powerful is the templating system? I was thinking of things like providing maneuver lists for each class. If the templating system isn't good enough, how easy is it to get the data out neatly?

The template for classes includes a field for schools. If you entered "iron-heart desert-wind" you would get all maneuvers from those disciplines in the list.

EDIT: Watch your capitalisation, ds Click edit and take a look at the adjustments I made to the page. The larger entry boxes allow you to use wiki code, though Wikidot's is a little different from most places.

EDIT2: I've been meaning to fix the way maneuvers are organised, so hold off adding new ones for a while. Should be okay now.

[pyrefiend]

Bumpification?

[dspeyer]

Having been bumped, I'll give a status update. I tried to put together a mass-wikidot-uploader using urllib and it isn't working. I copied the login cookie out of firefox, and matched the wikidot_7 token. Wireshark confirms they're being sent properly. I still get a permission-denied error.

I haven't had a huge amount of time to work on it, nor am I likely to over the next few weeks.

[I_Got_This_Name]

When I first saw this thread, I looked back over my disciplines to see what I was and wasn't happy with, and make some tweaks. I really wasn't happy with Glacial Chill (link in my sig), so I ended up rewriting most of the maneuver list. The new discipline of Eternal Glacier (I gave it a new name to go with the new maneuver list) is up at theD&D Wiki, for anyone who wants to take a look. This version is much closer to what I was trying to do with Glacial Chill, and should play better, too. The two versions of the discipline fit into the world almost identically, so there shouldn't be a problem switching in the one for the other.

I may decide that I'm not happy with some of the others and rewrite them, too, some weekend. Also, I might finish off the supplementary material (weapons, prestige classes, and so on) now that I'm not space-restricted.

Also, I looked over Refactoring Archery, and Falcon's Eye is a much more coherent discipline than True Arrow, and the True Arrow maneuvers that didn't end up there make more sense in the other disciplines.

E: Do we have an Aquatic Refactoring? If we don't, I might throw one together sometime, maybe in the next week or two. Also, a threads list somewhere reasonably stable (on a wiki, most likely, so that people can keep it updated, instead of a forum that one person has to maintain and that gets posts accumulated after it) would be great.

[dspeyer]

E: Do we have an Aquatic Refactoring? If we don't, I might throw one together sometime, maybe in the next week or two.

Not yet. Go for it!