Vampire Bestiary

Upper_Krust · Jan 16, 2012

Hey all!

Today's update. Wights section completed. Traps; Hazards and Terrain Features completed. Wendigo section all but finished*.

*Ridiculously I am stuck on two different attack powers for two different wendigo. Both have been annoying me all day. I'll sleep on it and hopefully the solution will present itself...damned dirty (undead) apes! :rant:

So today's success rate is 99% of what I had planned.

Upper_Krust · Jan 17, 2012

Hello all!

Monday nights Vampire Bestiary update. The Obayifo and Soul Eater are both completed (and I'm happy with both). The Uktena monster entry artifact is only about half completed, I spent a bit of time going over the Uktena stat-block itself and changing stuff. Very happy with the changes, but the artifact section still needs about 1-2 hours work.

So about an 83% success rate on what I had planned for today.

Upper_Krust · Jan 18, 2012

Howdy!

Tuesday nights Vampire Bestiary update. Got a lot of work done on the Adventure Section but I may have been a bit conservative in estimating how much needed to be done there. It may take a day or two more than I thought (since I actually forgot I had to finish the maps).

I probably got about 50% of what I wanted to do finished, but then realised this section needed twice as much work as I thought so probably 25% overall. :blush:

Rhuarc · Jan 18, 2012

Well, the continuous updates about your progress are nice to have. Let's hope you'll get the book finished this month. Maybe you'll even be able to finish a second book before D&D Next comes out

Upper_Krust · Jan 19, 2012

Hey Rhuarc mate!

Rhuarc said:
Well, the continuous updates about your progress are nice to have.

Thanks. Today I got...

- The back cover blurb sorted.
- I fixed the previews page at the back of the book.
- The adventure text is about 80% complete.
- Designed a new eternity publishing logo (but I still need to scan it in and tweak it on photoshop)

Let's hope you'll get the book finished this month.

Lets see whats left to do...

1. Tiny bit of work to the Boss Monster rules (basically just needs a thorough read through and tightening up).
2. Those two wendigo powers I still haven't solved.
3. The uktena artifact is about 50% completed.
4. Logo needs scanned and tweaked on photoshop.
5. The adventure needs about 20% more work done (writing) and the maps finished.

I think I'll have all the above (except the maps) finished for Friday.

At that point, it'll just need a bit of a read through, spellchecking and so forth (shouldn't need much spellchecking because I have been over every paragraph about 50 times).

Now, one thing I have contemplated is asking artist Peter Szmer to effectively "colour in" the Wendigo illustration so that we can go ahead with a colour cover.

I mean I always wanted to use the colour Kali cover, but Kali has nothing to do with the first or third books, so I can't rightly use it for them. Plus if I use the Kali cover for book 2, the three will look out of place plus it will be confusing when I put all 3 together for the 160 page version and use the Kali piece as the cover.

Maybe you'll even be able to finish a second book before D&D Next comes out

Lets not get too ambitious!

I had a look over Vampire Bestiary: Temple of Death and here is what is completed for the second book:

- All the Thuggee pages (barring a few tactics paragraphs) = Finished (14 pages)
- All the Kali Cult pages (barring a few tactics paragraphs) with the exception of the Aspect of Kali herself = Finished (10 pages...14 with Kali)
- Wights section (except for tactics on one wight) = Finished (2 pages)

So what needs done:

- Kali stat-block is only = 50% complete (4 pages)
- Thuggee Hideout/Temple of Kali Traps = 50% complete (2 pages)
- Vampire Monster stat-blocks = about 20% complete (10 pages)
- Adventure = 10% complete (10 pages)
- Contents page and Table of monsters listed by Level (2 pages).

So thats about 26 pages more or less finished and 28 pages that still need a healthy dose of work done.

...I think I also need to ask Peter to do 2-3 more illustrations for book 2.

On paper, book 2 looks like about a months work...which probably means it'll take me longer than that.

Book 3 I'll take a closer look at some other time, but I think its about 15 Pages finished with another 25 pages partially done and the 10 page Adventure needs completely done.

I'll keep doing these updates (on any non-working night, and I am back to work this Friday through Monday) because its helping me get a clearer picture of what needs done and its also spurring me on a bit, which can only be a good thing.

Upper_Krust · Jan 19, 2012

Hey all!

Todays update hasn't much to report, I always go to the gym Thursday (once per week) and that was most of my day gone (all in all about 5-6 hours including getting ready, the journey itself, the workout, the journey back, putting stuff away, dinner etc.).

The rest of the evening I spent creating another website update.

Revised 4E Wizard Class Eternity Publishing

So not much done today but I sort of new that would be the case.

I am contemplating a slight switch to my Vampire Bestiary stat-blocks:

- Minion Stat-blocks = Blue Colour
- Standard Monster Stat-blocks = Familiar Green colour (ie. they stay the same)
- Elite Monster Stat-blocks = Orange colour
- Solo Monster Stat-blocks = Red Colour

The idea is (of course) to give the more dangerous monsters a colour to match their threat level.

I haven't implemented the changes yet, but I have been toying around with the colours just to see what it would look like.

Any thoughts on the idea? Or is it one of those 'I'd need to see it first' things?

Khisanth the Ancient · Feb 4, 2012

A couple of questions:

Is this volume going to be Heroic Tier only, or up to level 15, or what?

Are there Super-solos in this one?

Are you going to continue the 'update' posts or was that just for that one week?

Upper_Krust · Feb 4, 2012

Hey there Khisanth mate!

Actually been trying to reply for a few hours. ENWorld very slow for me this evening.

Khisanth the Ancient said:
A couple of questions:

Is this volume going to be Heroic Tier only, or up to level 15, or what?

...because I had to divide this book into 3 parts, the first part (Mountain of the Cannibal God) goes up to Level 11. Later parts go up to at least Level 15 (maybe slightly higher).

Are there Super-solos in this one?

There are no 'super-solo's' in this first book but there are a handful of boss monster solo's that use elements of those rules. Some of the bosses have multiple stat-blocks and so forth. But there are no super-solo monsters since I personally think those rules should be kept for the epic tier and above.

Are you going to continue the 'update' posts or was that just for that one week?

I'll continue the updates from tomorrow.

I had a bit of a packed schedule over the past two weeks and barely had any significant computer time whatsoever (next weekend will be the same - going on holiday for 4 days, but taking some time off work for that so it won't fully eat away my free time).

I should be able to (at least) get everything other than the maps done within the next day or two and the maps themselves shouldn't take more than a day or two to finish. So it will just be a matter of finding 4-5 free days from now to finish things off. I only had one free day over the past 2 weeks (although the past two weeks have been unusually busy for me, normally I would get at least 5-6 days of free time over each two-week period).

Upper_Krust · Feb 6, 2012

Hey all!

Okay, my sleeping patterns are still a bit out of whack from work, so I only managed to get about 4-5 hours done today. Most of that was spent fixing a formatting issue and finding out whether I could get the Blue - Green - Orange - Red stat-blocks to work for the Minions - Standards - Elites - Solos. Turns out I can't get that to work. The Blue Minion stat-blocks look cool but the Orange and Red stat-blocks just look crummy (regardless of what tones and transparencies I used) so there is no point using that idea.

I did get a solution to the Wendigo problem which I am about 75% happy with so unless I can think of something better the Wendigo section is complete.

Remaining Tasks

1. A few paragraphs of the Solo Monster Design section need some work.
2. Uktena artifact (almost finished but still needs an hour or two).
3. Adventure write-up (again almost finished but needs a few hours).
4. The adventure maps.

Upper_Krust · Feb 7, 2012

Hi all!

Again only 3-4 hours work done today because I had some business in town. But I did get the Solo Monster Design and Boss Battles section(s) completely finished.

Remaining Tasks

1. Uktena artifact (almost finished but still needs an hour or two).
2. Adventure write-up (again almost finished but needs a few hours).
3. The adventure maps.

I am working tomorrow night, but I should get the Uktena artifact completed tomorrow and possibly the adventure write-up by Wednesday night. I'm on holiday Thursday to Sunday, so after Wednesday, no updates until Monday. After that a few days should have this (finally) in the bag...even for me.