A Suggestion for Organization

DPGTony · 12th February 2002, 05:52 PM

Hey All-
Just wanted to let you all know that we do monitor the threads here and we are paying attention.

We wanted to kick off the Cosmonomicon as a project for the d20 community and basically lend our support. We have been purposely keeping our hands more or less off the project so that it's as much community based content as possible.

So far we've built a web site for the project and down the road we would be happy to help organize all the material, lay it out, and create a PDF document.

I think it has plenty of potential and will be a great tool for game masters once it's done.

The way I see it right now the project needs some new team leaders and some direction. So, I suggest we do the following...

[1] Choose some team leaders and assign them their responsibilities.
[2] Create an outline of what sections need to be worked on and prioritize
them.

What do you all think?

BlackJaw · 13th February 2002, 08:11 AM

Ok, I nominate myself a leader.

Wyvern would be a good one if time allows. You have time?

Otherwise, who else wants some?

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Anyway, leading is useless if there is nothing to lead on.

First we need a system for defining ships (a mostly finalized Stat Block), describing how they move, and describing how combat takes place.

1) movement needs to be done.
2) combat (making attack, defending from attacks, damage effect)
3) put togeather a stat block
4) ship construction
5) sections on how to run flight/space settings, etc.
6) polish it all up, and bring it togeather

Things more or less have to be done in this order.
Also, at some point we need to update the website.

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Movement and combat are very very very important. They not only need to be flexable, but also simple and clean. KEEP IT SIMPLE. I think we need two people at least to run this.

Stat block formats are just a helpful system. We could play games without them but it's slow.

Ship construction can be a bit complex, but I wouldn't make it any harder then say, magic item creation rules. I'm willing to head this section, but I would want help coming up with components and advice on the system for building it. I'm not sure how to price it all either.

Advice on using this kind of material is not my forte, and something I know a few of you are intrested in doing.

SO who wants to sign up!?

ax0n · 13th February 2002, 03:14 PM

I'd really love to contribute some help to this project. At the moment I'm busy with another project so I probably wouldn't be able to be a team leader, but I could certainly help out in other ways.

Wyvern · 13th February 2002, 08:15 PM

I'd personally like to do the setting design and character design chapters, unless someone beats me to them. I can't guarantee when I'll get to them, since I'm swamped with grading at the moment, but it shouldn't be too far in the future. The more useful feedback I get on what I've already done, the more incentive I'll have to move on to the next section.

I have plenty of ideas for ship components, but I'm quite willing to leave the foundation of the ship construction system up to BlackJaw, since anything I wrote along those lines would be based on the ideas he posted back in December. I mentioned elsewhere that I'm not especially eager to do the nitty-gritty details of the combat system, although I have ideas about what works and what doesn't and will probably have comments to make on whatever anybody else comes up with.

There are a couple of things that I think Morrus needs to do at this point. First of all, the forum link on the Cosmonomicon front page needs to be fixed so that it points here. Secondly, it would be nice if the rules I drafted could be posted as an alpha version on the rules page, so that more people will see it and hopefully comment on it.

Wyvern

DPGTony · 13th February 2002, 08:19 PM

Great, it looks like we have 3 so far that give a damn.

Perhaps we could talk Morrus into posting a notive that we're looking for leaders for the Cosmic Council?

ax0n · 14th February 2002, 02:17 AM

I know EN World is the Cosmonomicon 'home' but perhaps it would be an idea to create a mailing list for this project. From a personal point of view its easier to read and keep track of whats going on if you have a record of emails and a clear mail client than have to click through a (often) slow web site?

BlackJaw · 14th February 2002, 03:21 AM

I do have some background in webpage construction and could fix up the website a bit if I had the FTP information.

I worked as a part time web-designer at a few companies, run my own sight (http://www.pseudolife.com) and know HTML, SHTML (XSSI), JavaScript, and enough Perl to update scripts and keep them running.

I don't know about doing massive updates or record keeping (not if I'm going to work on other projects, school, etc) but I could easily update the links, make a post now and then, etc.