[URBIS] PDF draft or not?

[Matrix Sorcica]

Okay.

I've only skimmed Urbis again. I once read a lot of the material, and might remember some things wrong. I do recall that not having the option of a hard copy to read on the couch etc. turned me away from Urbis many months ago.

Here's what I'm changing right away. The cosmology will be D&D like. One of the things about Urbis IMO, is to take a D&D world and apply the logical consequences of magic and progress to it. But this should apply to the cosmology as well.

I'm uncertain 'bout the gods. Either there will be no gods, or I will change things around. I'm very tempted to let the players design their own 'faiths', as it seems very much an urban thing to me, creating your own beliefs and such.

I will put a lot of focus on equipment. 3E is the fantasy game where equipment matters the most. It seems logical to me, that the inhabitants of a magic world would be very creative in applying magic and equipment. So instead of complaining that D&D is an arms race and equipment is everything, I want to see what happens when this magitech enters the scene.

There will be a lot of urban sprawl, but I'm not giving up on wilderness exploration or delves into dark dungeons.

I'm a bit curious. How do you see Urbis separate itself from Eberron? Place your party in Sharn, up the population, and you have a lot of the elements of Urbis, with the added advantage that exploration, wilderness, and all the other trappings are right outside the door as well, all packaged in a killer design?
I'm not looking to degrade Urbis, I'm curious as to what in your opinion sets it apart?

 

[Capellan]

I've never read Urbis, despite some curiosity about it, because of the website format. If you did a PDF, I'd be far more likely to actually read it and give feedback than I am now

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I've never read Urbis, despite some curiosity about it, because of the website format. If you did a PDF, I'd be far more likely to actually read it and give feedback than I am now

Agreed. Like I mentioned above, I only skimmed it this time around. Same reason as Capellan.
A pdf would make it immensely more easier to read and give feedback on, whether or not my group and I use it or not.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've been wanting to play Urbis anyway, so the moment I get a regular gaming group again (perhaps as early as January), I'll sign on to playtest. It might be sooner, it's hard to say.

I must admit, part of the reason is because you and I are doing similar things, with the release of pdfs and seeking of playtesters (I'm doing it for FFZ!)

So here's the deal: give me a central locale and a plot thread, complete with all the rules I need to generate characters and pick their challenges and get a sense of the world in any kind of simple-to-read format. It doesn't need to be today, but, you know, eventually. Set up Urbis for me, give me a skeleton to run with, and I'll run with it, put it through the grind, and tell you what turns up.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

Various people (including here on ENWorld) have been asking me if I plan to create a PDF file for Urbis so that they could download the entire text and print it out instead of navigating through the website all the time. But while creating a PDF is the ultimate goal (I want to sell it once it is finished after all - whenever that might be), so far I have resisted doing that. After all, Urbis is far from finished at this stage - there are plenty of "blank spots" that need to be filled out.

And it is much easier to simply update the website when I add new material than to maintain all the texts in two formats - creating a PDF and making sure that it has the right format is a lot of work, after all.

But since so many people have been asking for it, I am considering creating a PDF with all currently existing material anyway. But only under one condition: Some gaming group, somewhere, would have to use this material to actually playtest Urbis and tell me of their experiences with it. I could really use some more feedback for the setting, but creating a PDF is a lot of effort, and I'd rather not spend all this time if the PDF is only going to end up on some hard disc anyway - for this, the current website would be enough.


So, would anyone be interested? Or should I remain focused on the website instead?

It might be possible to do both. It is possible to convert HTML to PDF. There are several free tools that do it, and several on-line publishing applications (such as Daisy Wiki) are capable of rendering content as both HTML and PDF. So, you could update your HTML and then convert it to PDF. Just a thought, anyway.

NCSUCodeMonkey

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

So here's the deal: give me a central locale and a plot thread, complete with all the rules I need to generate characters and pick their challenges and get a sense of the world in any kind of simple-to-read format. It doesn't need to be today, but, you know, eventually. Set up Urbis for me, give me a skeleton to run with, and I'll run with it, put it through the grind, and tell you what turns up.

I've been meaning to write up a sample city in detail - Dartmouth in the Flannish Cities region Would that help?

As for character creation, it is exactly as in the D&D Core Rules.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I'm a bit curious. How do you see Urbis separate itself from Eberron? Place your party in Sharn, up the population, and you have a lot of the elements of Urbis, with the added advantage that exploration, wilderness, and all the other trappings are right outside the door as well, all packaged in a killer design?
I'm not looking to degrade Urbis, I'm curious as to what in your opinion sets it apart?

A valid question, and I must admit that there are indeed quite a few similarities between the settings (and ironically, both were initially developed for the great WotC Setting Search of 2002...).

I'd say the main thing is the much greater focus of Urbis on urban environments. There's not just one huge city like with Eberron (and even Sharn has "only" 200,000 inhabitants), but scores of them, and each one has its own, unique character and quirks. There is Grüngarten of the Flannish Cities, where eating meat is illegal and a thriving black market for meat products has developed. Or Chanes in the League of Armach, where the musical arts have been developed into a highly advanced science and songs are used to cure all sorts of illnesses of both the body and mind. Or Neubodenwald in the Star Mountains where mages use quirks in the local magical field to teleport themselves to distant planets. And those only begin to scratch the surface of the sheer variety of the cities of Urbis

In Eberron, the adventurers are supposed to explore distant ocales and countries and move rapidly from place to place. In Urbis, each city is a world in its own right which will take many adventures to explore - if not an entire campaign.

That doesn't mean that exploring the wilderness and distant countries is impossible in Urbis - I realize that those are old D&D standbys and I've made room for those, too. But you will have to travel farther afield for them, and they are not the main focus of the setting.


Does this help?

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Does this help?

Quite.

I definately interested in the pdf now

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

It might be possible to do both. It is possible to convert HTML to PDF. There are several free tools that do it, and several on-line publishing applications (such as Daisy Wiki) are capable of rendering content as both HTML and PDF. So, you could update your HTML and then convert it to PDF. Just a thought, anyway.

I dunno - how adjustable would the font sizes be? I don't want the PDF to be larger than necessary...

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've been meaning to write up a sample city in detail - Dartmouth in the Flannish Cities region Would that help?

As for character creation, it is exactly as in the D&D Core Rules.

Yeah, that'd be pretty great, I think. Villains, organizations, a distinct kind of flavor...all good stuff to hang a campaign on.

And there's no new interesting details or options for Urbis that aren't in the D&D core? Or will those be more discovered as the campaign advances?