War & World of the Dead

[Spectral Force]

I apologize if this is already posted and I did not see it.

Are there any plans to finish off the rest of the chapters of War of the Dead and any plans on adding World of the Dead as well? Thanks!

[Topdecker]

It is posted, but I think it has been well over a year since the question was asked. I believe that the answer then was that it was in the pipeline - but I could be mistaken.

Just Insert Imagination also did the maps for the second part which can be had over on Drivethru, but nothing yet for parts 3 and 4. It is one of those deals where you wonder if the sales warranted additional effort or not.

It is actually my first SW setting purchase on FG - and I have the full PDF set including the alternative start. So I am still interested, but reluctant to really consider a start until I have the full adventure inside FG.

Top

[Spectral Force]

I've played the pen and paper War of the Dead and ran World of the Dead (backed it on kickstarter). I just started playing in multiple D&D AL campaigns and one of the guys asked me about zombie survival and these came to mind, but only seeing chapter 1 and chapter 1 maps, then chapter 2 maps with no chapter two book was curious. Imho, if you're going to start something, might as well finish it, even if its not high priority. It's like you stop cooking dinner when its halfway done. Hopefully they'll at least finish War of the Dead. The only SW I bought for FG thus far is ETU, but I'm considering Deadlands Noir.

[Trenloe]

Imho, if you're going to start something, might as well finish it, even if its not high priority. It's like you stop cooking dinner when its halfway done.

I understand the sentiment, but also understand that developing an adventure module in FG is nothing like cooking dinner. Depending on the product in question, it can usually takes close to 100 hours (sometimes more) of work to enter, test, revise, etc. to produce a commercial product for sale. The majority of FG developers are freelance, not salaried employees. They work for purely sales commission - and can get only a handful of dollars if a product doesn’t sell well - it rarely results in anything close to a "normal" low level hourly equivalent rate. If the first part didn’t sell well and the developer has other things to do, then it’s understandable that they don’t want to spend all of that time for little return. It’s frustrating I know, but understandable.

It may not be a purely money reason either - maybe the developer was also running that campaign and was producing the FG product as they organized their campaign. And perhaps they moved on to a different camapaign and so lost interest. They stopped cooking dinner half way through because they decided they no longer wanted to eat the original meal and wanted to cook something else.

[Spectral Force]

I can understand that if they're working of a commission base and making no money. I was told that FG had their own employees that did the content, I was misinformed.

[Talyn]

I could probably count on my fingers the number of DLC that actual SmiteWorks employees have produced. They pretty much rely on their base of freelance DLC Devs to do most everything, while they handle the business, programming the new Unity client and maintaining and updating the existing client.

In this particular case, I think the primary DLC Developer has left the Fantasy Grounds community? The other two who worked on it are still around but I don't recall hearing if they were actually "put in charge" of War of the Dead, if it had been handed off to another DLC Dev (that's been happening recently just not sure if this product was one of them) or if it's just languishing in limbo. I can think of two DLC Devs off the top of my head who might be interested but I don't think either of them are actually able to take on another project at this time. I certainly don't have time to add it to my project queue, plus I'm not into zombies so my heart wouldn't be in it.

[mac40k]

I ran War of the Dead on FG before someone took the time to make Chapter 1 available for sale. Creating a module in FG is not hard and can be done entirely in the interface without coding any XML as long as you have the pdfs. Furthermore, it is not even necessary to put all the text in FG. You really only need to load the NPC/zombies/opponents using the NPC Maker extension to be able to play. Then just reference the pdf or a print out of it while running the session. For example, all the Chapter 2 Friends and Foes are in the week 1 pdf and some of these you already have from Chapter 1, so adding in the new ones wouldn't take that long at all.

[JohnD]

Chapter 1 struck me as needing a bit of work to make it ready for play. Pregens and other with firearms had attacks denoted as thrown instead of firearms comes to mind for some reason. NPCs missing Unskilled action, etc....

At any rate, Chapter 1 aside from a few small things like that was a solid reconstruction of what the printed/PDF release gave you. I have all the way up to chapter 4 myself and they all follow the "one pager" quick hit encounter, for better or worse depending on your point of view.

I would love to play a game in this genre myself. I ran a short lived game a while ago and came to understand that my grasp of the foibles of SW is not good.

IIRC the person(s) involved in creating Chapter 1 were working on Chapter 2 but something happened and they move on to other things (IIRC, YMMV, TMA and all that).