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| jamesewelch |
Posted - 28 Apr 2019 : 16:04:13
Hey all,
I feel like my first publication is nearing its final stages. I have a few art commissions that I'm waiting on and some playtest feedback for number crunching.
If anyone has any free time and would like to review ~40 pages of lore that spans from 1981 to present, covering content from every edition about a specific group of 'bad guys' and their deity (and/or review another ~50 pages of game mechanics, items, spells, etc.), let me know.
What I'm looking for:
1) Did I break anything canonically?
2) Does it make sense? Planescape content confuses me, so I kept that as minimal as possible, but there's a few discrepancies between editions in terms, locations, etc. I just want to make sure that everything makes sense and I didn't confuse or autocorrect Moonshae with Moonsea or something like that and I didn't catch it.
3) I feel pretty good about the copy editing and proofreading, but a third set of eyes looking for glaring spelling or grammatical errors would be appreciated, but I feel it shouldn't be necessary.
4) Lastly, what would you add, if anything to make the compendium better rounded and more useful to players, DMs, and lorekeepers/readers.
5) If you have bardic talents and have a poem, story, song, or anything (specific to the book) you'd like to contribute and have your character given credit, let me know. I've written one poem, but I feel like it would be fun to add a few more.
I can also offer attribution and thanks in credits, credit for any lore additions, etc. and a copy of the final product and associated maps.
For Candlekeep admins, I can put in a quote/summary/mention with an internal link to the forums/site (can't hyperlink to site from the product description page, but can posted unhyperlinked in prod desc page).
I don't expect to go live until June, so there's some time and no hurry.
PM me for details. The document is currently in it's 3rd (or 4th) round of proofreading/copyediting and should be ready soon. I can provide current version, if you'd like to check it out now.
thanks,
Jim
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| 1 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 28 Apr 2019 : 22:10:15
"Lore that spans from 1981 to present" basically does cover every edition.
The "canon" depends a lot on the specific sources. Things like the 1E FR0 Grey Box have basically had every scrap of text placed into a context, every question mark expanded, every minor character developed onward. The popular things migrated into fixed paths in future editions but the not-as-popular things are basically free game. WotC's official statement is always "new canon overwrites old canon" when there's conflict and "old canon remains valid" when there's no conflict ... so if you've picked "a specific group of bad guys and their deity" who've all been ignored across four or five game editions - and their activities are not-inconsistent with other canon - then your canon is valid enough. (At least until WotC contradicts it with new canon of their own, but no way to predict or prevent such happenings anyhow.)
Planescape is not entirely self-consistent. Too many writers and too many different things going in too many different directions during those tumultuous 2E times. And some of the most profound 2E Planescape canon (like some of the most profound 2E-era Realms canon) was not entirely consistent with (or ever mentioned again in) other canon ... so even though it's official source it still has dubious validity. Most Planeslore and some Realmslore offers the advantage of being offered to us from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, we cannot expect it to be entirely truthful or accurate.
I pass along some great advice another scribe offered recently: don't let Planeslore determine Realmslore.
If you're publishing in pdf or some other ebook format that I personally think it's awesome to have some sort of category/bookmark/index system for readers to jump from section to section. I know there's already search/find functions but I've always felt that it's a slick and handy feature in any RPG document and it's lazy/unprofessional to not even bother offering it. My philosophy is that you'd want to maximize readibility in any pdf reader or browser which players will actually use during play (on smartphones, laptops, whatever) - you never know what weird little scraps of text might need to be referenced during gameplay but you want to do whatever you can (within reason) to let the players find what they need and get back to their game as quick as possible. When players and DMs like reading (and navigating through) certain products they tend to prefer those products and collect whatever else the publisher might offer. |
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