Want to produce official FG products, adventures, rulesets?

[Trenloe]

Since the stats are OGC but the tokens are not, you would need to clear the tokens before distributing them. We have a license with Raymond to distribute those within FG, so we may be able to work out something here in the future.

Hey Doug - if you build a module using tokens from a token module (e.g. Raymond's tokens or the letter tokens included with FG) the graphics themselves aren't included in that module, purely links to the FG token modules they came from.

See the following as an example. These two NPCs and the test encounter are in a module I've just created:



There is no artwork in the module - just the definition.xml and db.xml file. In the db.xml file any references to the tokens are directly to the FG module they came from:

<battle>
	<category name="" mergeid="" baseicon="0" decalicon="0">
		<id-00001>
			<npclist>
				<id-00001>
					<count type="number">1</count>
					<link type="windowreference">
						<class>npc</class>
						<recordname>npc.id-00002</recordname>
					</link>
					<maplink>
						<id-00001>
							<imageref type="windowreference">
								<class></class>
								<recordname></recordname>
							</imageref>
							<imagex type="number">0</imagex>
							<imagey type="number">0</imagey>						</id-00001>
					</maplink>
					<name type="string">Dwarf</name>
					<token type="token">tokens/dwarf_male_adventurer_A_01.png@Character Pogs</token>
				</id-00001>
				<id-00002>
					<count type="number">1</count>
					<link type="windowreference">
						<class>npc</class>
						<recordname>npc.id-00001</recordname>
					</link>
					<maplink>
						<id-00001>
							<imageref type="windowreference">
								<class></class>
								<recordname></recordname>
							</imageref>
							<imagex type="number">0</imagex>
							<imagey type="number">0</imagey>
						</id-00001>
					</maplink>
					<name type="string">Mookie</name>
					<token type="token">tokens/Medium/r.png@Letter Tokens</token>
				</id-00002>
			</npclist>
		</id-00001>
	</category>
</battle>

The same is true for the token linked directly to the NPC record:

<npc>
	<category name="" mergeid="" baseicon="0" decalicon="0">
		<id-00001>
...
			<token type="token">tokens/Medium/r.png@Letter Tokens</token>
...
		</id-00001>

In use, FG accesses these token modules for the graphic even if the module is not open within the campaign.

This makes it very easy to use existing FG standard tokens in a custom module, without including the actual token graphic/artwork.

Is this OK for commercial modules?

[danielfruth]

We had a good conversation with someone at Palladium several years back. I think the biggest challenge resulted in the state of the PDFs they had available. Most of their library was not in a clean digital format that would make conversion easy.

I recently received a Palladium newsletter stating that their base books and many of their Dimension/World books are on Drivethrough RPG as pdfs and they are adding about 3 a week. While I am presently using FG for D&D 5e, I would love to see the basic rule set and eventually the other books in FG. I am a bit skeptical in ever seeing this since Palladium has a less than stellar record when it comes to letting other people play in their sandbox... but would be thrilled if it happened.

Perhaps after seeing the larger companies like Paizo and Wizards of the Coast jump on board they will allow it. To be honest I never thought I would pay twice for the books (once for the physical Players Handbook and once for the digital content for FG) but I finally did. It would seem to be a good source of new income for people that bought the books 20 years ago and now want to use the content online.

[kavaliro]

I recently received a Palladium newsletter stating that their base books and many of their Dimension/World books are on Drivethrough RPG as pdfs and they are adding about 3 a week. While I am presently using FG for D&D 5e, I would love to see the basic rule set and eventually the other books in FG. I am a bit skeptical in ever seeing this since Palladium has a less than stellar record when it comes to letting other people play in their sandbox... but would be thrilled if it happened.

Perhaps after seeing the larger companies like Paizo and Wizards of the Coast jump on board they will allow it. To be honest I never thought I would pay twice for the books (once for the physical Players Handbook and once for the digital content for FG) but I finally did. It would seem to be a good source of new income for people that bought the books 20 years ago and now want to use the content online.

The problem is not that pdfs are not available. The problem is that they are (most likely) poor quality. I'm guessing, since I don't have the pdfs in question, but I don't think I'm wrong in assuming that edits were made to the previous version pdf instead of using the sourcefiles to generate a new pdf. By editing the previous pdf directly, the publisher hopes to skip the expensive layout phase of the work of creating a pdf. And it's true; you can (but shouldn't!) band-aid some errors this way, and this is sometimes (rarely) the right answer when going to (brick and mortar) print. The problem is that the instant you do, for digital purposes, you end up with a pdf that is unusable except for viewing using a pdf viewer. It's garbage from that point on. Copy-paste selects lines in a random order. The author used an image of text to cover up a flaw, rather than selectable text. Etc. It's a nightmare, because now Smiteworks (or other party) has to manually reconstruct the entire book, introducing more human errors along the way. Proofreading is a tedious job that most brains cannot do well, and programmers doubly so, since our training takes us in the opposite direction. It's an expense the publisher should shoulder; they are the ones who took the shortcut in the first place, removing a significant portion of value in the process. (It's like trying to sell a cracked vase that's been glued back together.)

The upshot is, if the pdf is junkware, then one would be burdened with publisher-level proofreading/editing, which is a huge cost, and very much outside the expertise of programmers.

If you are reading this and wondering, "How am I supposed to create pdfs?" then I will tell you to throw out every notion of using a word processor to do it. Use a plain old text editor and a semantic markup format like Asciidoc to create your sourcefiles, and use a tool like Asciidoctor to output your pdfs. Asciidoc is really easy to learn and produces amazing output. Docbook is also acceptable, as is LaTex. Never edit an existing pdf; that way lies madness. If you must perform layout, it happens after your content files are correct; it's the very last step. Using Scribus or InDesign is not like editing a document in Word. People have careers based around InDesign. It's complex work. If you need that granularity of control over your pdf's layout (you probably don't) then you should hire an expert.

[ddavison]

I think it was some time in 2010 or so when one of the head guys from Palladium came over to the FG booth and looked very impressed. I unfortunately lost his contact info or maybe I never received his business card, but I also remember him telling me that the PDFs were in a bad state and were just very rough scans of printed products. Scans are always challenging to work from and OCR of the text, especially for game systems if generally pretty poor. If they ever launched a Kickstarter to completely redo them in a new digital format, that would be a great opportunity to tackle an FG version simultaneously.

[danielfruth]

I think it was some time in 2010 or so when one of the head guys from Palladium came over to the FG booth and looked very impressed. I unfortunately lost his contact info or maybe I never received his business card, but I also remember him telling me that the PDFs were in a bad state and were just very rough scans of printed products. Scans are always challenging to work from and OCR of the text, especially for game systems if generally pretty poor. If they ever launched a Kickstarter to completely redo them in a new digital format, that would be a great opportunity to tackle an FG version simultaneously.

The owner is Kevin Siembieda. From what I hear everthing goes through him. I am not sure if its because of the unfortunate incident in 2006 (not sure about the exact date) but he is known to be very careful about intellectual property and not very supportive of Rifts character generators. I am sure theres a story behind it that I am not aware of.

I don't have his contact information Its certainly not on the website either. They do have a help page but its more in the form of a help desk ticket. I ordered something from them a few months ago and they were very quick and responsive. However, I have no idea how they would respond to a request directly to Kevin. While I would love to see something happen I know kavaliro has a good point on the quality of pdfs and of course I can't expect FG to chase after Palladium if they aren't interested or even make it difficult to contact them. Heres hoping the stars align!

Here is the site for the help ticket:
https://www.palladiumbooks.com/index...nel&Itemid=192

Here is the general non-help ticket contact information:
Palladium Books, Inc.
39074 Webb Court
Westland, MI 48185
Phone: 734-721-2900
Order Line: 734-721-2903
Fax: 734-721-1238

Quote from their newsletter below
https://www.palladiumbooks.com/index...e=1&Itemid=472

"Rifts® World Book PDFs on DriveThruRPG.com

Rifts® World Book 13: Lone Star (one of my personal favorite titles) and Chaos Earth®: Rise of Magic are available as PDFs this week, more next week and in the weeks to follow!

We are putting things in place to have 2-3 new PDFs of Rifts® World Books and other titles every week. Yes, you read that correctly, 2-3 new PDF titles EVERY WEEK. You wanted PDFs, you’ve got ‘em.

In addition to the titles listed above, The Minion War™ series of books, the Rifts® Coalition Wars®/Tolkeen series, Chaos Earth® Resurrection, all of the Dead Reign® (Zombie Apocalypse) titles, Splicers® RPG and most issues of The Rifter® are available NOW! So are first edition rules of the Heroes Unlimited™ RPG and sourcebooks, Palladium Fantasy RPG® and sourcebooks, The Mechanoids®, and much more, available on DriveThruRPG.com.

Available right now:

Rifts® World Book 9: South America 2, Rifts® World Book 10: Juicer Uprising™, Rifts® World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign™ added last week. Rifts® World Book 13: Lone Star added this week.
Rifts® Chaos Earth® RPG, Chaos Earth®: Rise of Magic™, and Chaos Earth® Resurrection™ are available now, and Creatures of Chaos™ should be coming next week.
Two free Chaos Earth® Resurrection previews and many other previews.
Rifts® World Books 1-11 & 13 with more added every week.
Rifts® Coalition Wars®: Siege on Tolkeen series – all six titles.
Rifts® The Minion War™ series – six current books – consisting of Dimension Book 10: Hades, Dimension Book 11: Dyval, Dimension Book 12: Dimensional Outbreak, HU2 adventure sourcebook: Armageddon Unlimited™, Heroes of the Megaverse®, and Rifts® Megaverse® in Flames available now! Suitable for ALL settings, including Rifts®, Heroes Unlimited™ and The Palladium Fantasy RPG®.
Dead Reign® RPG titles. The Zombie Apocalypse is yours to role-play with the Dead Reign® RPG. The core rule book and all sourcebooks are available now.
The Rifter® issues #1-64.
FREE Robotech® RPG Tactics™ paper game pieces, force organization tables, stat cards, rules and special items – coming soon!
FREE 12 highly-detailed, comprehensive Robotech® RPG Tactics™ assembly instructions for all the Wave One mecha – available now.
FREE Robotech® RPG Tactics™ color guides are available now.
Palladium Fantasy RPG® Paper Miniatures – Volumes #1-6 are available now. More are coming in the weeks ahead.
120+ Palladium titles, plus G.M. kits, and more.
Much more to come in the weeks ahead."

[MadBeardMan]

Greetings,

Has anyone started on Rippers 2nd Edition?

I could have swore I've seen posts somewhere.... can I find them today? Nope, but I think this is one of the better places to ask.

https://www.peginc.com/product-category/rippers/

If so, can you let me know. We have a group who would like to Beta it, and I have all the PDF's from the latest Kickstarter.

Cheers

[drahkar]

In regards to Rifts, there is actually a very basic community Ruleset for it. It have very little customization beyond the character sheet, but it is usable.

https://fgrepository.com/2016/02/02/rifts-0-5-0/

[Sjelsyk]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'm working on converting "The Lost Temple of Yig", a Call of Cthulhu scenario which I think originally was published in the d20's Call of Cthulhu Gamemaster's Pack to FG.
However, even if the scenario is in the D20 rules, it does have all the information needed to run it in the original ruleset also. So what I'm doing is to remove the references to the d20 ruleset and just keep in the 'normal' rules making it inline with other CoC adventures.

Is there any specific 'layout' or style which is preferred.. I've seen some of the scenarios have lots of links back and forth in the story and such. I'm also working on doing something similar when it's done.

However, I can't see it in the list in the second post - so I'm not sure if it's of any interest to people here? I just thought that it would be nice to share it when it's done.

[MadBeardMan]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'm working on converting "The Lost Temple of Yig", a Call of Cthulhu scenario which I think originally was published in the d20's Call of Cthulhu Gamemaster's Pack to FG.
However, even if the scenario is in the D20 rules, it does have all the information needed to run it in the original ruleset also. So what I'm doing is to remove the references to the d20 ruleset and just keep in the 'normal' rules making it inline with other CoC adventures.

Is there any specific 'layout' or style which is preferred.. I've seen some of the scenarios have lots of links back and forth in the story and such. I'm also working on doing something similar when it's done.

However, I can't see it in the list in the second post - so I'm not sure if it's of any interest to people here? I just thought that it would be nice to share it when it's done.

Send a message to Doug and make sure no-one else is doing/done it, I wouldn't think so if it's not mentioned already.

In your scenario make sure that you have an index page, and in each story entry have a 'next/previous' and 'link' back to the section. I've done this with all my conversions based on feedback from others on the CoC forums.

Also post in there what you're doing so people can offer advice.

Nice one though.

Cheers

[Sjelsyk]

Thanks for the advice. I'll do that.

Cheers.