DICE PACKS BUNDLE
View RSS Feed

The Mortar Pit

Almost a whole month since my last update

Rate this Entry
It has been a "little" bit of time since I posted any news here on the progress I have (or haven't) made with the both the Winter Eternal and Weird Wars Rome conversions. So here is the latest "breaking news".

First, on the Weird Wars Rome front, the modules are now in the hands the Production Coordinator at SmiteWorks and I have fixed the errors that he reported to me and sent back the fixed version. The rate that James has been kicking new products out the door, you should be seeing something soon. His work is going unseen by us, but he is got to be a pretty busy fellow.

I am still working on a theme extension for this, but it won't be included at release. With FG v3.2 there are some slight changes to some of the XML components (at least for the Savage Worlds Rules set), so it has been altered to work with those changes. At the suggestion of the esteemed damned, I am also going to be including some themed buttons for those you out there that use Dulux-Oz' extensions. Since I have never even downloaded any of his extensions, it will actually take me a bit of time to see what should be themed and what shouldn't.

That is in a way a good thing. As Mask_of_Winter can attest from the messages and images going back and forth between us - I am in no way, shape or form artistically gifted. For whatever reason my brain, at least for the time being, does not seem to like working on image editing. So it gives me a bit more time to stumble through the creation of the graphics for the theme.

Now onto Winter Eternal. I am down to the encounters and parcels, pinning those to the maps and the actual inclusion of maps and images. +Morne Schaap has actually sent me the imagery I need twice because I am a tool and lost the first ones.

Just Insert Imagination created some very interesting stuff for Winter Eternal, and it has been very interesting to try and get everything to work the way I think is "best". In this case the "best" meaning the easiest and fastest for users.

Some of the critters in Ehlerrac can be nasty, they have all sort neat little abilities like Icy Aura, mutations, the ability to turn people into minions and even a crazy old bat of a shepherd who decided to cut off his own leg to use as a club. More on those in a bit.

Included in the module are 10 pre-generated adventurers. You get five heroes at Novice level, and the same five after they have gained some notoriety and become Seasoned. With the little tidbits of XML code that Moon Wizard revealed on the FG forums the GM can import either set of characters by simply hitting the pretty little green plus sign. The image below is a bit older and shows the first incarnation in game, the names now have a (N) or (S) beside their names so the GM and players can quickly tell at a glance what level they are in the import and character selection screens. There were no portraits or tokens in the module when I took this screen cap.

Attachment 14353


This next image shows both Player view on the left and GM view on the right with characters imported to the campaign. I apologize for the size of the image - both views are full screen images on both my monitors.

Attachment 14354

As I was saying earlier, some of the critters your heroes will meet have some really interesting abilities. The Blue Gorgon (think frozen medusa) is a good example of a couple of them. First, she, like many of the other critters has the Icy Aura ability. You stand too close to her and you take damage from the sheer feeling of cold she emanates. Since Ehlerrac is frozen, she is one cold-hearted woman. So I set this up as an attack (although the screen shot below doesn't show it). You simply hit the dice and it rolls damage.

Secondly, she has this ability to turn people into her little minions, who in turn get their own powers. As it is listed as a "template" in the setting book, I decided not to create the minion as a standard creature sheet. Clicking the "Minions" power on the Blue Gorgon opens up a text window with the powers of the minion set up as drag and drop links for the GM to add to whatever hero falls to the frozen medusa. If she has a bunch of minions the heroes are in for a "treat".

Attachment 14355


The Shard Orcs and their mutations, as well as the Mad Shepherd fellow and his hazardous Whispering Trees. Note, the Icy Aura attack on the Blue Gorgon now.

Attachment 14356

The Cyclops Centipede was interesting when I first created the entry. It has this heat ray that it can shoot. When I see "ray" I think ranged weapon, so I set it up as a ranged attack. However, this poor critter doesn't have the Shooting or Throwing skill, I had also not entered the <traittype> correctly. So when looking at the monster sheet, there was no "attack" icon beside the "Heat Ray" entry - but I could still click and FG would still roll its attack.

Except it was rolling the centipede's Notice skill to attack - and reporting it in the chat window. I probably rolled it a couple of times, looking at the XML trying to figure out why it was rolling Notice to attack. I actually had to open the SW GM's guide to look at a monster sheet there to see what was going on. First, it actually took me a couple of minutes of comparing the two sheets side by side to realize that I had not put an "Unskilled" entry on the creature's skill list, so it must default to the last skill in the list. Comparing the XML for the two I then realized that instead of the "ranged" that FG was looking for in the <traittype> attribute I had typed "range"- hence no icon for the attack. Fixed those two things and everything works the way it should. In the end I had a pretty good laugh at myself over it.

That warps it up for this entry, thanks again for stopping by to read my ramblings. As always, you're welcome to leave comments and harassment below.

Submit "Almost a whole month since my last update" to Digg Submit "Almost a whole month since my last update" to del.icio.us Submit "Almost a whole month since my last update" to Google Submit "Almost a whole month since my last update" to Facebook Submit "Almost a whole month since my last update" to Twitter

Comments

  1. Nylanfs's Avatar
    Nice
STAR TREK 2d20

Log in

Log in