where to from here? planning thread

[freyar]

That's fine. I just didn't want to give you all the hard ones, and I'll need to get up to speed anyway.

I'll do mine Saturday and perhaps Sunday; I'm going to try to catch up on the conversion threads today.

 

[Cleon]

That's fine. I just didn't want to give you all the hard ones, and I'll need to get up to speed anyway.

I'll do mine Saturday and perhaps Sunday; I'm going to try to catch up on the conversion threads today.

I'm back from my films and I've added my five monsters to the Creature Catalog - over to you!

 

[Cleon]

Oops! I've just noticed an error in the original Shadowrath, Greater (Abysskin) stats I've just added to the CC.

We forgot to change the sample creature's Type - it's still Humanoid, not Undead!

Easy enough to change...

...And changed.
​

 

[Cleon]

Here's a question: should I do the werecreatures multiple forms as a table or not?

If you look at the current Werejaguar on the CC, I've posted it as a three-column table with Human/Jaguar/Hybrid forms like they appear in the 3E SRD and Monster Manual as well as in a "one above the other" format.

Which do you prefer? I'm favoring the table, since it makes it easier to compare them.

It doesn't take that long to convert one to t'other, since I've written a Word macro that does most of the work for me.

 

[freyar]

As you say, the table makes it easier to compare things, but it feels a bit squished. It's about the same as the MM, though, I guess. In the SRD, it looks a bit better, since the page can stretch to fit the screen, so more will fit on one line. Too bad the CC does do that...

Might as well go with the table, I guess. There are only a few lycanthropes already in the CC to convert to table form if you want. Probably more with different types or "age categories."

I'll see about doing mine now, but they might not all get done today.

Here is a draft of the news text. Any comments?

"In Memoriam

In June, Eric Jansing, known here as Shade, departed for the Outer Planes, leaving us without our leader and friend. Shade became a CC moderator and admin in 2005, and this is the first CC update in over 5 years that Shade didn't make himeself. In honor of his tireless efforts in monster conversion, the CC crew will continue our project of updating every D&D monster to 3.5e; Cleon and I will take over the updating duties. We hope these critters bring you the same joy that Shade's work brought to us and so many others.

Shade was an equal opportunity "monster junkie," as he proudly called himself, so it was difficult to choose monsters for this first update. These include some of the monsters Shade helped convert in his last year (the gohei p'oh, jagwere, snapper tortle, and werejaguar), two epic monsters (the draeden and the Tree of Wailing Souls), some shadowy undead (the shadowrath and greater shadowrath and the soul beckoner), and the greater lammasu (to represent Shade's role in our community).

Rest in peace, Eric. We will miss you."

 

[Cleon]

As you say, the table makes it easier to compare things, but it feels a bit squished. It's about the same as the MM, though, I guess. In the SRD, it looks a bit better, since the page can stretch to fit the screen, so more will fit on one line. Too bad the CC does do that...

Looking at the page's source code, the whole "white bit" the monster entry appears in is one big Table cell with a WIDTH=500 variable to fix it to 500 pixels wide. I wouldn't think it'd be that hard to change it so the table stretches to fit or has a broader 700-800 pixel width, but it's reasonably readable now and I don't want to hassle Darjr any more than I am already!

Might as well go with the table, I guess. There are only a few lycanthropes already in the CC to convert to table form if you want. Probably more with different types or "age categories."

Methinks we'd better get our monster queue out of the way before worrying about fixing up the existing monsters.

Here is a draft of the news text. Any comments?

"In Memoriam

In June, Eric Jansing, known here as Shade, departed for the Outer Planes, leaving us without our leader and friend. Shade became a CC moderator and admin in 2005, and this is the first CC update in over 5 years that Shade didn't make himeself. In honor of his tireless efforts in monster conversion, the CC crew will continue our project of updating every D&D monster to 3.5e; Cleon and I will take over the updating duties. We hope these critters bring you the same joy that Shade's work brought to us and so many others.

Shade was an equal opportunity "monster junkie," as he proudly called himself, so it was difficult to choose monsters for this first update. These include some of the monsters Shade helped convert in his last year (the gohei p'oh, jagwere, snapper tortle, and werejaguar), two epic monsters (the draeden and the Tree of Wailing Souls), some shadowy undead (the shadowrath and greater shadowrath and the soul beckoner), and the greater lammasu (to represent Shade's role in our community).

Rest in peace, Eric. We will miss you."

Gosh, that's a lot better than I could come up with.

The only change I can think of it altering the shadowy undead to either a slightly more elegant "(the shadowrath, greater shadowrath and soul beckoner)" or more elaborate "(the shadowrath blackbones, greater shadowrath abysskin and soul beckoner wraith)" form.

 

[Cleon]

Once we've finalized the "In Memorium Monsters" shall we start doing batches of 10 each?

We should tell each other what monsters we're intending to be updating in our next few batches, and what monsters we'd like to leave til later, just to stop them getting double-posted.

Speaking of double-posting, the Converted monsters list has two identical 3.5 entries for "Carp, Giant" (One and Two) and "Golem Firedog" (One and Two).

Should I delete one of them, or will that muck up the DataBase in some fashion?

Better ask Darjr before I do anything.

 

[Cleon]

Well Freyar and I added our first batch of 10 monsters to the Creature Catalog.

It seems appropriate to let our "In Memorium" postings remain in situ and not add any more monsters until at least the weekend, in honour of Shade.

* * *
​

While posting our first batch we've discovered a few problems with the CC editor which mean we can't correct 3.5 edition creatures or dragons once we've posted them, except by deleting the whole thing and re-entering the stats as a new creature.

Which is a bit of a pain, needless to say.

We can still edit templates without any difficulty, so I'm planning to post a batch of Lycanthropes next, since I can edit their template entries to update their stats and/or fix any mistakes we find.

How's this for a list:

Lycanthrope, Dire (includes Dire Werewolf)
Lycanthrope, Werebadger (Standard & Dire)
Lycanthrope, Werebison
Lycanthrope, Werecamel
Lycanthrope, Wereleopard
Lycanthrope, Werelion (Standard & Dire)
Lycanthrope, Weresheep
Lycanthrope, Weresmilodon (includes Sabrelord)
Lycanthrope, Weresloth (Tree, Ground & Giant)
Lycanthrope, Wereweasel (Standard & Dire)

That's a nice round 10 templates if we count the variants as one entry, or 15 templates if I post the Weresloths and Dire versions of the Werebadger, Werelion and Wereweasel as separate templates.

Do you favour keeping the Sloths and Dires together, or separating them out?

The current "Dire Lycanthrope" template has both a Weresmilodon and Dire Werewolf in it, but I'd like to make the Weresmilodon a separate entry, for three reasons:

Firstly, the Dragon 40 article a lot of these weres came from called its Dire Werewolf a "Weredire", so making the Dire Lycanthrope template's sample creature a Dire Wolf seems appropriate.

Secondly, the SRD already has a lycanthrope which uses a Dire Wolf as the base animal - the Wolf Lord - so it seems less desirable to separate out the Dire Werewolf conversion.

Thirdly, I've recently come across a "Were-Sabretooth" in one of the BECMI Hollow Earth setting and I'd like to mention that as a variant of the Weresmilodon, which would read more cleanly if said kitty-kat was separate from the Dire Lycanthrope template.

So, what do you lot think?

 

[Echohawk]

How's this for a list:

Lycanthrope, Dire (includes Dire Werewolf)
Lycanthrope, Werebadger (Standard & Dire)
Lycanthrope, Werebison
Lycanthrope, Werecamel
Lycanthrope, Wereleopard
Lycanthrope, Werelion (Standard & Dire)
Lycanthrope, Weresheep
Lycanthrope, Weresmilodon (includes Sabrelord)
Lycanthrope, Weresloth (Tree, Ground & Giant)
Lycanthrope, Wereweasel (Standard & Dire)

I'll support uploading this lot as the above batch of ten (i.e. give the weresmilodon its own entry, but keep the dire versions with the main weres). Since that approach works out to the exact ten we want, it seems a shame not to run with that!

 

[Cleon]

I'll support uploading this lot as the above batch of ten (i.e. give the weresmilodon its own entry, but keep the dire versions with the main weres). Since that approach works out to the exact ten we want, it seems a shame not to run with that!

I must admit that was the way I was leaning, too.

Ten's such a nice round number and all.

The Leopardwere (and the Loup de Noir and Werehyena we're likely to do next) aren't quite lycanthropes, or at least they don't match up to the SRD template very well.