Rappan Athuk for 5e

[Jesse0317]

There are a lot names in the module ending with the Capital letter 'B'

Is this in reference to NPCs, credits etc? I'm doing a quick glance on my copy and I'm not seeing it.

[Jesse0317]

There are a lot names in the module ending with the Capital letter 'B'

Is this in reference to NPCs, credits etc? I'm doing a quick glance on my copy and I'm not seeing it.

As for the stone table its showing up on my copy. I think for this table I used a FG map asset, I may just have to go thru and either remove the table or add it in Dungeondraft. Thank you!!!

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[Jesse0317]

some images are missing from level maps like this stone table

Feel free to PM with a list of what you find and I'll check it with my courtesy copy and my Dev copy.

Thank you Sir.

[Myrdin Potter]

Really happy that my name is in the credits here and not because I submitted the Fantasy Grounds conversion :-) .

I just submitted a smaller module to the store and Frog God has gotten better with maps but they still need some improvements to work better on VTT.

[Jesse0317]

Really happy that my name is in the credits here and not because I submitted the Fantasy Grounds conversion :-) .

I just submitted a smaller module to the store and Frog God has gotten better with maps but they still need some improvements to work better on VTT.

At some point I may just revisit the maps that came out for RA during D&D 3.0. I'm glad it's finished, now doing any corrective work will be a piece of cake compared to doing the conversion. What made the work go even slower besides doing LOS was I stopped playing D&D 5E and went to using AD&D 1E and OSE.

I also felt your pain when I was doing the NPCs....still can't get how many traps I did....

[hawkwind]

Is this in reference to NPCs, credits etc? I'm doing a quick glance on my copy and I'm not seeing it.

I will send you some screen shots . They are mainly in the reference manual and there are quite a few of them

[JohnD]

I'll get this to save me a lot of time, load it with the Universal Module extension and run it in AD&D or C&C.

[Macgreine]

I was wondering , did you remake the maps or are they the ones from the FGG map folio?
Thanks

[hawkwind]

I will send you some screen shots . They are mainly in the reference manual and there are quite a few of them

ok these are from level 12a . I had already converted this level myself some months ago ( plug in level to the Dungeon of the Mad Mage) and encountered the same issue cut and pasting from the pdf

[Jesse0317]

ok these are from level 12a . I had already converted this level myself some months ago ( plug in level to the Dungeon of the Mad Mage) and encountered the same issue cut and pasting from the pdf

Thank you. Those B's are technically supposed to be there as they are in the PDF, I believe they denoted an entry in the Bestiary. The capture below is from the PDF...

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[Jesse0317]

I was wondering , did you remake the maps or are they the ones from the FGG map folio?
Thanks

I remade some of them in order to add a Players Map and some I added a bigger version of an area that may see action.

[tcelind]

Congratulations on fininishing this monstrocity. I have been patiently waiting since I first found this thread and bought it as soon as I saw this. Again, congratulation!

[TheMetal1]

Jesse0317,

Congratulations! Well done!

[rigerco]

I had pretty much given up on this ever seeing the light of day and had begun converting portions of it myself for my Savage Worlds game. Currently working on the Cloister...
Congratulations on getting this labor of love out the door.

[danman71]

I backed the Kickstarters several years ago and have the physical materials and bonus materials. What all is "included" in this module?

To clarify, I mean stuff like Level 5D and Adventures In Zelkor's Ferry?

[hawkwind]

Thank you. Those B's are technically supposed to be there as they are in the PDF, I believe they denoted an entry in the Bestiary. The capture below is from the PDF...

57048

Well they add nothing to FG module. Notepad ++ plus few regular expressions should be able to remove all of them or change back to the format in pdf?

[Pavetheworld]

Just saw this pop up in my FG VTT Newsletter - Thanks for all the hard work Jesse - purchasing now! Thanks again!

[bwatford]

Why are the module story entries locked? Can't edit entries or anything. Not usually how modules are done. I understand locking the creatures, but I often add notes in entries during play if an area has been visited and something missed, etc.

But, huge thanks for this, you just made my life much easier.

[Moon Wizard]

Our official guidance for DLC creators is that Adventure modules should have all content be editable.

Regards,
JPG

[Trenloe]

Why are the module story entries locked? Can't edit entries or anything. Not usually how modules are done. I understand locking the creatures, but I often add notes in entries during play if an area has been visited and something missed, etc.
Yeah, that's not the best practices recommendation from Smiteworks for Adventure modules. More info here: https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996644347/Building+Modules+-+Overview#Best-Practices

@Jesse0317 - assuming the module was created using the built-in FG export functionality, it should be pretty easy to remove the "Read Only?" check and re-export the module. https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996640899/Using+the+Library+and+Activating+Modules#Module-Export

If the module was compiled some other way, the XML will have some static="true" entries, which set the data read only. A simple find/replace on the module XML to remove static="true" will also address the issue.

[Jesse0317]

Yeah, that's not the best practices recommendation from Smiteworks for Adventure modules. More info here: https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996644347/Building+Modules+-+Overview#Best-Practices

@Jesse0317 - assuming the module was created using the built-in FG export functionality, it should be pretty easy to remove the "Read Only?" check and re-export the module. https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996640899/Using+the+Library+and+Activating+Modules#Module-Export

If the module was compiled some other way, the XML will have some static="true" entries, which set the data read only. A simple find/replace on the module XML to remove static="true" will also address the issue.

Rappan Athuk is actually classified as a setting/source book not and adventure. Even though it has more adventure than setting actually......

I have some edits to submit and can take off the Read Only.

As a fellow GM, I'll do whatever I can to make life easier for my fellow GMs.

[Trenloe]

Rappan Athuk is actually classified as a setting/source book not and adventure.
That's a bit... weird; but explains why ot being read only wasn't raised by Smiteworks QA. Thanks for the info!

[Jesse0317]

That's a bit... weird; but explains why ot being read only wasn't raised by Smiteworks QA. Thanks for the info!

This thing is a monster of a module...

To give context I started this in March of 2020...just working on LOS on some of the level maps would take me anywhere from 2 to 4 hours...that also depended on if my two tornado-like nieces were over at the house as well.

I submitted this back in Oct/November of 2022.

There were many times I wanted to hit the delete key on it.

Like I stated before, its more adventure than setting and it really has no new rules per say and it was created using the Export function.

Man...my eye still twitches when I hear Rappan Athuk or see the name....

[Jesse0317]

I backed the Kickstarters several years ago and have the physical materials and bonus materials. What all is "included" in this module?

To clarify, I mean stuff like Level 5D and Adventures In Zelkor's Ferry?

If it was in the PDF it's in there, if not I didn't go searching it out.

[Jesse0317]

Well they add nothing to FG module. Notepad ++ plus few regular expressions should be able to remove all of them or change back to the format in pdf?

I changed the ones you sent over and should be in the first update I submit.

[Trenloe]

This thing is a monster of a module...

To give context I started this in March of 2020...just working on LOS on some of the level maps would take me anywhere from 2 to 4 hours...that also depended on if my two tornado-like nieces were over at the house as well.

I submitted this back in Oct/November of 2022.

There were many times I wanted to hit the delete key on it.

Like I stated before, its more adventure than setting and it really has no new rules per say and it was created using the Export function.

Man...my eye still twitches when I hear Rappan Athuk or see the name....
Having done many FG conversions I can sympathize - I wouldn't have taken this on, no way! Glad you pushed through and got it released. Don't take any of the suggestions in this thread to heart - I know how demoralizing it can be to finally get a big conversion released and then you get comments about issues people have discovered! It's an amazing accomplishment and you should be very proud!

[Jesse0317]

I had pretty much given up on this ever seeing the light of day and had begun converting portions of it myself for my Savage Worlds game. Currently working on the Cloister...
Congratulations on getting this labor of love out the door.

Thank you sir!!

The Cloister....I keep looking at and thinking how I can better organize that.

[Jesse0317]

Having done many FG conversions I can sympathize - I wouldn't have taken this on, no way! Glad you pushed through and got it released. Don't take any of the suggestions in this thread to heart - I know how demoralizing it can be to finally get a big conversion released and then you get comments about issues people have discovered! It's an amazing accomplishment and you should be very proud!

Thank you for you kind words @Trenloe!!

[rigerco]

Thank you sir!!

The Cloister....I keep looking at and thinking how I can better organize that.

When you did the maps, how did you handle the grid? Did you wipe out the pre-printed grid and replace with FGU? One thing I've found in trying to use the "official" Frog God maps is that the grid does not translate properly. I can nail it for some portions of a map and others will be way off.

[Jesse0317]

When you did the maps, how did you handle the grid? Did you wipe out the pre-printed grid and replace with FGU? One thing I've found in trying to use the "official" Frog God maps is that the grid does not translate properly. I can nail it for some portions of a map and others will be way off.

I used the no grid versions where I could and tried to line up the others.

[Myrdin Potter]

At least the Rappan Athuk maps were after I started yelling at them about how hard they made any VTT conversion and they started doing gridless and other things to make it a little easier.

[Jesse0317]

At least the Rappan Athuk maps were after I started yelling at them about how hard they made any VTT conversion and they started doing gridless and other things to make it a little easier.

Thank you @Myrdin Potter, that was much appreciated.

I hate creating maps and having to recreate each one is just making my eye twitch....

[rigerco]

Bought today and started poking around the Cloister, as that was what I had been working on myself.
I'm seeing a handful of issues on the player map Lvl 0B 1 & 4, with broken images and effects in weird places. On 0BDL1 map 1 the "stone table.png" element seems to be the missing one.

Do you want stuff like that posted here, sent directly to you, or in another forum?

That said, you are much better at putting in LOS elements than I am and you have saved me a lot of work!

[Laerun]

Bought today and started poking around the Cloister, as that was what I had been working on myself.
I'm seeing a handful of issues on the player map Lvl 0B 1 & 4, with broken images and effects in weird places. On 0BDL1 map 1 the "stone table.png" element seems to be the missing one.

Do you want stuff like that posted here, sent directly to you, or in another forum?

That said, you are much better at putting in LOS elements than I am and you have saved me a lot of work!

Maps provided in half of the third party and official PDFs were not originally VTT friendly and if the grid is painted on or baked into a map already, it's very easy to get distortion with the grid squares. Quite often one has to recreate the map as best as possible once it's extracted or copied from a PDF source. The third party content creators are getting much more aware of this issue, but for the older IP, not so much.
Tools like the Map Align posted in these forums might fix some of these issues, depending on how distorted they are. HOWEVER, once a map has been stretched, or scaled to fit into a product, the linear 'squareness' goes out the window, especially if the percentage or scale was not adjusted mathematically within the original aspect ratio.

[danman71]

If it was in the PDF it's in there, if not I didn't go searching it out.

I am not sure if the retail PDF is the same as the Kickstarter version? I backed physical books and PDF for 5e and got PDF updates for PF1 edition also (which had different supplements which were included in the 5e book).

I have a softcover physical book for 5e called "Adventures in Zelkor's Ferry". This contains additional content from my hardcover level of Level 0C.
I have a softcover physical book for 5e called "Level 5D" which doesn't appear in the hardcover.

EDIT: I should add that Frog God says the Kickstarter and the retail version are the same. So only thing missing would be some of the Zelkor's Ferry stuff (some made it into the retail version) and Level 5D.

[Jesse0317]

Maps:

If your maps show missing images, you do not have the Map assets I used to add the scatter terrain. I'll be going thru and removing all those images so that it's a clean map image.

I tried to use the non grid version of the Maps when they were available due to how the grid was painted or drawn on.

Even using Map Align to align the grids, I still had to resize the maps in order to get them to size and thus caused more distortion. If I used the maps as I had originally intended the module would be over a 1Gb in size....

That said I'm going to attempt to recreate every a Map every Thursday. I've learned a few things since I started this project.

Keep in mind this project was started on March 2020 and would not have ever seen the light of day unless the maps took the hit.

Thank you all!!

[bwatford]

fwiw....

When I initially pitched this idea to FGG to do the conversion for them, I explained that the adventure needed to be broken up into separate modules due to its size. Having a module this size as one file is just overwhelming and makes things difficult to find.

I had initially pitched it as:

Zelkor's Ferry area (including the castle and Mouth of Doom area) as 1 module.

Tunnels of Terror and the monastery of the Frog God as another, etc.

And do RA in 5 level increments maximum.

Have each module around $10

Redoing maps was a must for VTT, and I was willing to do them..... but

Ultimately, I was not selected for the project. Would have been through GrimPress at the time. But I never could get Zach or Matt to pull the trigger.

[dimonic]

Hmm. I have been running this for the last couple years, I have already re-created Zelkor's Ferry and the Mouth of Doom levels, as well as 1-5 of the main levels. I kind of have a system (some clever gimp-fu for autocreating the LOS), and I entered pretty much all the critters already. I know it's not really a lot of money to buy this - but will I find myself more irritated by the bugs than grateful for the reduced workload? Damn. Why didn't I see a kickstarter for this?

[LordEntrails]

Hmm. I have been running this for the last couple years, I have already re-created Zelkor's Ferry and the Mouth of Doom levels, as well as 1-5 of the main levels. I kind of have a system (some clever gimp-fu for autocreating the LOS), and I entered pretty much all the critters already. I know it's not really a lot of money to buy this - but will I find myself more irritated by the bugs than grateful for the reduced workload? Damn. Why didn't I see a kickstarter for this?
If you buy via the FG Store, you can take it for a spin for 30 days and then ask for a refund if it's not up to your standards :)

[dimonic]

If you buy via the FG Store, you can take it for a spin for 30 days and then ask for a refund if it's not up to your standards :)

Well, dammit - take my money then!

[prometheus13]

I have delved into it a bit since purchasing and it definitely seems like value to me but I don't know GIMP-fu.

[doseyclwn]

How hard do you think it would be to use this for the S&W ruleset?

[dimonic]

How hard do you think it would be to use this for the S&W ruleset?

I don't know if you could load the module in another ruleset - at least not without some degree of hackery. I'm sure you could use the maps though.

[prometheus13]

I don't know if you could load the module in another ruleset - at least not without some degree of hackery. I'm sure you could use the maps though.

The Universal Module extension allows cross loading of modules into other rulesets.
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/266/view


The main things that won't translate are the NPCs and the Parcels.

[dimonic]

I am happy to report that the quality of the occluders (walls) is excellent. I was able to significantly improve on the fitting of the grid, using only the GUI tools in FG - but that is simple enough and not too time consuming.

[Jesse0317]

How hard do you think it would be to use this for the S&W ruleset?

With my last update, I set it so that it can be opened with any Ruleset just for the S&W crowd...

[Jesse0317]

I am happy to report that the quality of the occluders (walls) is excellent. I was able to significantly improve on the fitting of the grid, using only the GUI tools in FG - but that is simple enough and not too time consuming.

The next update I upload will have a lot of Map and Occluder updates.

[doseyclwn]

The Universal Module extension allows cross loading of modules into other rulesets.
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/266/view


The main things that won't translate are the NPCs and the Parcels.

I am assuming that I would be able to edit that stuff myself. It'd be a little bit of work, but I'd love to have this ready to go for S&W

[doseyclwn]

BTW Jesse, thanks for doing all this work. I, for one, sincerely appreciate it and am looking forward to using this to terrorize my players.

[Trenloe]

With my last update, I set it so that it can be opened with any Ruleset just for the S&W crowd...
Hate to be a party pooper here, but did you clear that with Smiteworks? They're usually very conservative with allowing products in the store which are designed specifically for one ruleset to be accessible with other rulesets as standard (i.e. without running the universal modules extension) - especially when functionality is impacted, or there's going to be errors, when running with another ruleset.

[LordEntrails]

I would second Trenloe's concern. As a user I would expect that a module that opens in a ruleset (without an extension being required) fully work in that ruleset.

The UME has big bold caveats and warnings about that and is a step the GM has to explicitly do to get it to work and so GMs who use it shouldn't be surprised.

I fear you are going to run into users who are surprised or complain that it doesn't work (i.e. they get errors, NPC are not complete, etc) in a ruleset that it opens in. And you will spend unnecessary time supporting/answering those questions.

[Jesse0317]

I would second Trenloe's concern. As a user I would expect that a module that opens in a ruleset (without an extension being required) fully work in that ruleset.

The UME has big bold caveats and warnings about that and is a step the GM has to explicitly do to get it to work and so GMs who use it shouldn't be surprised.

I fear you are going to run into users who are surprised or complain that it doesn't work (i.e. they get errors, NPC are not complete, etc) in a ruleset that it opens in. And you will spend unnecessary time supporting/answering those questions.

Duly noted:

I'll revert it back to 5th edition only, pending what Smiteworks says.

[Trenloe]

Duly noted:

I'll revert it back to 5th edition only, pending what Smiteworks says.
Thanks!

[ddavison]

Yes, the module should work without errors in any ruleset it lists as being supported. GMs who decide to run it with something like the Universal Module extension are choosing to accept that some things may not work.

[Zacchaeus]

I totally missed this thread so I reported some issues here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?77811-Rappan-Athuk-Issues

[Navigat0r]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but are there any plans to bring the PFRPG version of Rappan Athuk to fantasy grounds?

[Jesse0317]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but are there any plans to bring the PFRPG version of Rappan Athuk to fantasy grounds?

Not at the moment at least not from me.

[LordEntrails]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but are there any plans to bring the PFRPG version of Rappan Athuk to fantasy grounds?
Note the discussion that start upthread a little bit with a similar question https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?47791-Rappan-Athuk-for-5e&p=686313&viewfull=1#post686313

You can use, with caveats, any module in any ruleset. But it's not a conversion. It might be enough if you are willing do do the monster and treasure conversions yourself.

[rigerco]

Just the work that was done on the maps for this is a life saver for those of us running it in other systems. I would think that a 5e to PF1e conversion would be fairly simple the rest of the way, just drag and drop new monsters in - not like you're having to create them from scratch like I am in my SWADE campaign! Plus, you get the extra content that was added for 5e (like Tunnels of Terror).