Netbook projects

[XCorvis]

I'm a team member of the Netbook of Classes, part of the FANCC. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I want to take a second to say some things about the FANCC, since there might actually be people interested in hearing it.

Note: all of this is IMO, and not (necessarily) the opinion of the rest of the FANCC.

I think the Fantasy Netbook Community Council is a great idea that suffers from poor implementation. The basic idea is to allow anyone to submit content, but to filter the content through the individual netbook teams. The teams help make the products better by providing advice and guidance. They also rate the content. In theory, nothing is turned away (except things that aren't legal). The worst that can happen is it's rated poorly and included anyway.

The process of becoming elligable to submit content involves signing a document that makes your submissions legal. If the FANCC ever came under legal fire because of someone's submission, the Submission Document would be a leagal fallback. Great idea, but hard to implement. A lot of people get hung up here and give up before they start.

Once you have that taken care of, you can submit content. On some teams, where there are few submissions, turn around time is not bad. On the Netbook of Classes, we recieved far more submissions than we could handle. We needed team members who could make real time commitments to review and advise, but it's difficult to do that. The dedication of some team members is very commendable - they spend a lot of time on it. Others aren't so good. They do the occasional review but weren't expecting that kind of workload. The Netbook of Classes burned through a lot of people who decided that they couldn't handle the time commitment. At this point, I can't either.

FANCC is in desperate need of new blood to revamp the submission and content review system. I think we need a message board style setup, electronic Submission Documents, large numbers of reviewers who need to do less work (as opposed to a small number that does a large amount), more open (visable) review processes, etc... Anyway, new blood is good, and someone willing to get involved could go far.

Here's some links, for those who had trouble:
http://www.fancc.net
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/fancc/

 

[XCorvis]

First of all, I had never heard of FanCC before this topic, and had to look it up myself since there were no links. Second, the Netbook of Planes site seems to be down. But for me, here's the thing. With a professional product, the various classes tend to be tested for balance and compared against each other. With a netbook, I don't have that same feeling of assurance. It might be true, just like it might not be true for a print product, but it just has a different feeling for me.Since I don't feel the production quality is perfect, with art that I'm not that fond of in spots, and only decent layout, I have a hard time telling the difference between this and any other homebrew material. It might not be fair, but that's how I feel.

I understand your position, but I want to address some of your comments.

I believe The Netbook of Planes actually separated from the FANCC a while back. They're not listed on the main site anymore. I don't know what's happened to them.

The layout/art/production quality is not uniform across all Netbooks, since all Netbooks are done by different people. None of them are pros. So in that sense, it isn't that different from homebrew. You're not going to find professional artists, because the FANCC can't pay for art. We have to get it for free. Anyway, it's all about content, not presentation.

The real difference between homebrew and the FANCC is the rating system. Go check out the Netbook of Classes. Read a class with a high rating (4.7x or so), then find one with a lower one (3.x). You should notice a pretty large difference in general balance. The rating is there to reflect that. You can even look at the sub-ratings to see where the weak spots of the class are. Some are well-written but too powerful. Others are just fine power-wise but hard to understand. You won't find that in most homebrew.

 

[der_kluge]

I was in the FanCC oh so long ago, back when it first formed up under Bradley.

In those days, a lot of people left because they didn't understand the d20 license, and they didn't want to contribute to something where a publisher could use their work, and not even give them any credit for it, which is exactly what happened with Mongoose's Ultimate Book of Classes.

I would contend that the advent of electronic publishing, and the proliferation of d20 publishers has pretty much annihilated the entire netbook community. I left the FanCC because Thunderhead Games (now part of Mystic Eye Games) wanted me to write for them, and they were going to pay me money! So, it was obvious for me - continue to write for free for the FanCC, or write for money for a publisher. Hmmm..

Most people that have a bug to write can easily find a publisher willing to print their product. Good writers are hard to find, and I would contend that if you are a good writer, and you haven't found a publisher to write for yet, you just aren't looking hard enough.

That said, I think the FanCC is a noble thing, and they've put out some great stuff, but it does appear to have fallen by the wayside. I don't know if there is a central repository, or if books are still being worked on (yes, they do tend to take too long). I think it's a perfect example of what you get when you try to create a book by committee. My own book, the Netbook of Tinkering had more pages in it than anyone except for the netbook of feats. I told contributors when they joined my team that I had sole interest in the product, and that there was no guarantee that anyone they contributed to the product would make it into the product. In other words, I made it very clear that the product was my brainchild, and I alone would see it to fruition. This meant that I didn't have to bounce ideas off a committee, or review anything. It was just an imagination dump, and I added to it frequently.

Before 3e, netbooks were just collections of stuff off a website. Today, I can find just as many interesting monsters, spells, and PrCs off the House Rules forum than I find in any netbook.

Find a way to pull all that stuff out, format it, and present it to me, and then I'll be impressed.

 

[pdkoning]

I'm interested in everybody's opinion on 3e Netbooks and the FanCC project.

Some are good, some not.

And by the way: My DM does not allow feats that are not in a real 'book'. to be more precise, he only accepts the ones in the PHB, and official FR books. I once created a character, and when he looked on my character sheet he saw some strange feets I took from the netbook of feats, I had to remove them and replace them.

 

[jerichothebard]

I'm not sure how many people out of the 60 who have voted so far have actually looked through all the FanCC Netbooks to see what is available, and to properly adjudge the quality. But hey, it's a non-scientific poll anyway.

I have looked through most of them - in point of fact, I've got material in two of them - and stand by my earlier opinion. Pretty spotty, overall.

jtb

 

[Sledge]

Hmmm mayhaps I'll look into join the classes book. I'm always checking out classes online and can never find enough.
As far as the books go I would say that it is still largely in favour of useless, but not completely. I have the entire Netbook of Feats printed out. It's not quite current, but it is there.
(On a side note I think that most DM's would be much more likely to accept a feat from the netbook if they didn't first see it on a character sheet. If there is something you like in it try asking your DM before adding it to the character.)

 

[der_kluge]

Some are good, some not.

And by the way: My DM does not allow feats that are not in a real 'book'. to be more precise, he only accepts the ones in the PHB, and official FR books. I once created a character, and when he looked on my character sheet he saw some strange feets I took from the netbook of feats, I had to remove them and replace them.

This sounds like more of an issue with your DM than with the FanCC.

My response to your DM would be, "well, these are the feats I want, and if you won't let me take them from this source, then you create them for me from scratch, because they don't exist in the PHB..."

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The fact that so many of the books seem to be 'dead' is also very bothersome, I very much enjoyed Netbook of Feats, but it has been over a year since the last update of the book. Its as though the enthusiasim flared up, then died. I don't even know if people are still submitting feats for the book, there has been no information aside from 'team members are not motivated' on the site. I don't know if that is only the reviewing staff of if it includes the folks who submit feats, but when a year goes by it is hard for people to even build up the energy to submit articles, volunteers want to see their work being used.

The Auld Grump, I have other Net Books, but NBoF was the most used.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I'll add my voice to the "some of it's good, some of it sucks" camp. The Feats book is good, although I find myself editing some Feats for balance (either toning down the effect or adding prereqs). Classes is alright, although few of the class themes really grabbed me. Monsters seems mostly uninspired. The others I haven't really looked at, although early attempts to look at them often produced broken links.

I'll also add that the Copyright Notice for NBoF makes it very hard to re-use the material on an OGL-compliant website. It used to be handled very much (but not exactly) like Tome of Horrors (i.e., Copyright for the Book, Copyright for the individual Feat), but later versions included a complete summary of authorship in the Section 15, making it excessively lengthy. If future releases returned to the simplified, shorter Section 15 method, I'd be very happy to use later versions.

 

[eris404]

I'm not sure how many people out of the 60 who have voted so far have actually looked through all the FanCC Netbooks to see what is available, and to properly adjudge the quality. But hey, it's a non-scientific poll anyway.

I have looked through the ones that interested me the most (classes, feats, monsters), and though I found some intriguing ideas, none of the ideas really wowed me. But then again, I've bought books that later I found didn't really wow me either.

In theory, I would like to be involved and I did try to be involved with one netbook group, but I had two problems with it. First, I'm not really a rules/balance kind of person. When I DM, I'd rather just use the SRD rules and spend my time on the flavor and story. So as far as netbooks are concerned, I was willing to proofread and do some formatting and maybe some rewriting for clarity, but that's about it. Also, these people had known each other a long time (and some knew each other offline) and had already designed and planned everything that they wanted to include in the netbook. I'm not the most outgoing of people and it was even harder to get involved when the group already has that kind of history. So, I just didn't feel invested in the project and I dropped out.

But hey, that's just me and I'm sure that the people who work on these books put a lot of effort and time into them. Managing a group of volunteers ain't easy, and I have to give them a whole lot of credit for that.