Eric "Shade" Jansing (1971-2012)

[Cleon]

Eric helped push the Creature Catalog so close to finishing all the monsters, that I think I'd love to see the process get finished and turned into one or more netbooks* that are dedicated to his memory, a bit like the way that CGR1 The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook is dedicated to TSR designer Curtis Scott.

* = There is so much here, that I'm not sure it would fit into one netbook. And it is possible that niche netbooks (like Creature Catalog presents: Monsters of Imagine Magazine" or "Creature Catalog presents: Monsters of Kara-Tur") could be dovetailed with appendices that include some of the information we have here in non-conversion threads. The collectors lists would be useful. We have had some rambling conversations about the individual monsters, but perhaps a couple of small quotes could be included as notes in a sidebar or in a "how the monsters got converted" appendix. It would need to be summarised, but perhaps you could show how the conclusions were reached.

That's a tempting idea. Doing it properly would require a lot of work, although it'd be worth it.

It would certainly be better to cut the list up into smaller netbooks. There are approximately 1685 monster entries in the current Creature Catalog, excluding the Creature Crypt, and only counting monsters with both 3.0 and 3.5 stats once. We've also got a bunch of monsters in Homebrew that haven't been added to the CC yet. I'm not sure how many, but I believe it's not an insignificant number.

A 1700+ monster pdf seems a bit unwieldy. The WotC Monster Manual hardbacks have, what, 150 or so monsters each?

 

[Cleon]

My favourite monster conversions have to be the ones that were only partially designed in the original products. My all time favourite would be the Silver Silactic.

I don't think I could pick a favourite monster, there are so many I like (and I wouldn't want to hurt the feeling of the other monsters ). I do have a fondness for the Tasked Genies conversions we did, those ended up as a nice set of critters.

Oddly enough, the first monster I contributed towards converting was the Arucha, which was the next Ooze converted after the Silatics. I only signed up to Enworld to ask Demiurge for a copy of his World of Kong document, but then the Enworld monster conversions sucked me in...

Shade's mostly to blame for that, and I'll always be thankful to him for it.

 

[Big Mac]

That's a tempting idea. Doing it properly would require a lot of work, although it'd be worth it.

Going with something small (like Imagine Magazine monsters) would probably be a way to test the concept.

Art would be something that would need to be looked into to "do it properly". We might need a bit of fan art for each monster.

Cover art might also be useful, although we might find someone on DeviantArt that would donate something.

Does anyone know what that dragon picture is that Shade has as his avatar? It would be nice to have that on the back cover of any hypothetical book.

It would certainly be better to cut the list up into smaller netbooks. There are approximately 1685 monster entries in the current Creature Catalog, excluding the Creature Crypt, and only counting monsters with both 3.0 and 3.5 stats once. We've also got a bunch of monsters in Homebrew that haven't been added to the CC yet. I'm not sure how many, but I believe it's not an insignificant number.

Creature Catalog was really about conversions, but there is no reason why the non-converted monsters could not be put into a "Creature Catalog presents Homebrew monsters" netbook, so that nothing Shade or others worked on gets wasted.

A 1700+ monster pdf seems a bit unwieldy. The WotC Monster Manual hardbacks have, what, 150 or so monsters each?

That guess sounds about right. I'd say the Creature Catalog would need about 12 netbooks on that basis. But if you look at the way that many of the monsters come from specific campaign settings, it might make sense to do (some if not all) netbooks on a per-setting basis.

 

[BOZ]

If the Creature Catalog was converted to one or more netbooks, do you think it would be appropriate (and legal) to mention the college fund in an appendix at the back? I already said that a netbook (that held useful stuff that lots of gamers would want) would be a great way to get the message across. If there are gamers out there that are willing to donate cash to Kickstarter projects, maybe a percentage would throw a bit of "thank you" cash towards Eric.

I think we should clear that with his wife out of courtesy, but I can't see her saying no. She is extremely nice from the few interactions I've had with her.

The harder part would be getting WotC to agree to it. Doing the CC for free didn't seem to be a problem, but we would absolutely need some kind of licensing agreement to do it for cash.

 

[freyar]

Shade's avatar is the deep dragon illustration from the 3e Monsters of Faerun book, so I don't think that's something we can use.

Well, if we didn't charge and just mentioned the memorial fund, would we need the licensing? But there are maybe other issues --- I don't think we've followed the OGL properly really, and I don't know what kind of agreement the CC has with WotC that allows us to convert all their old monsters.

EDIT: I've split out a separate planning thread for this sort of discussion, so we can save this more for memories of Shade.

 

[freyar]

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I just want to say to all of you that I appreciate the community we have here. Thank you. I wish I'd thought to say this to Shade, too.

 

[Knight Otu]

Oh dear. My condolences to his family and friends.

 

[Darkness]

Goodbye, Shade. Condolences to his family and friends.

 

[RavinRay]

Shade's avatar is the deep dragon illustration from the 3e Monsters of Faerun book, so I don't think that's something we can use.

freyar, it's the shadow dragon, (reused in Draconomicon) not deep, which is appropriate for his username.

EDIT: I've split out a separate planning thread for this sort of discussion, so we can save this more for memories of Shade.

Good. Gotta check that out.

 

[Cleon]

I'm glad to see this thread's been moved to the "stickies" at the top of the forum. This seems the right place for it.

Incidentally, I got an email yesterday that a contribution I'd posted to Eric's memorial fund had arrived. It seemed the least I could do.