New Frank & K Tome pdf

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 12:07 am

I think it's on the page or two before this, hiding in one of Aktariel's posts. I have .6b27 saved, so I'm sure it's here somewhere, just don't want to go hunting for it.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 2:49 am

Yep. Actually, I think 0.6b28 is the latest one. I put stuff in, people bitched about it not being finished, I laid it aside because college and now > full time job took priority.

I need to spend some time with multicols so I can format Koumei's Magic Items, at which point I'm willing to punt on 0.6 and call it "done," and then people need to think about what the hell they want from this doc.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 6:48 pm

On a somewhat related note...What is a good *free* pdf editor? I have stuff that can *make* pdfs, but I don't know how to modify existing ones.

Namely, this one 3rd party one that for some fucking reason had charts landscape rather than vertical, even though it was possible.

/hijack

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:05 am

There are no good free PDF editors, and the reason is that PDF is a format sort of intended to be the electronic equivalent of paper - IE, an end format. It's damn hard to edit at all, and even then only minimally.

Acrobat is the only PDF editor that I'm aware of, and it's expensive.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:50 am

A NEW TOME RELEASE!!
(the "I can't believe it's finally done" release.)

Ok. That's it, I've had it. My life is fvcking nuts right now, and I've forgotten half the LaTeX I [n]ever learned, so I'm kicking this out the door and calling it good. I'm not laying it aside, not permanently, but I make no guarantees about future releases.

Additionally, even if someone else picks this up, I'm tempted to declare the Tome PDF "done" with the exception of "minor bug fix" releases (AKA point releases), and here's why.

One. The Tome material is “complete.” Neither Frank nor the long-lost K have created anything new for this since they posted the unfinished Book of Gears stuff almost two years ago. No new material is going to be created by them unless pigs fly and time runs in reverse and other sundry impossibilities. (Just don't ask me how sad I am about this).

Two. That means that any material that is added is going to be community material. Now, I'm not against this persay, but the problem with this is that it may or may not be balanced, and critiques are needed. As such, we’ve sort of hit a stable plateau whereon material is added at a slow rate as it is vetted (which isn’t happening at all, I might point out). Again, back to point releases.

Three. The other problem with adding community material is that no one is even playing the same Tome game anymore, and while people seem to be balancing new creations against some hypothetical Tome balance point, it may not even be consistent with other community material. Hell, even The Tomes aren’t internally consistent (Tome of Necromancy special mats -> Races of War armor, Book of Gears, etc...)Seriously. This is a base and a starting point, but I’m sorely tempted to split off the community material into it’s own “supplement,” even though splatbooks are bad.

Come to think of it, the more I ponder splitting the community material off, the more I like it. Makes things simpler, and the core Tome material can sit there just getting proofread, with a stable (read:slow)release cycle, while the community material can be updated more frequently.

Please let me know your thoughts on this matter.

With all that said, I present for your enjoyment,

Tome v0.6 Final: Via MediaFire

And, Tome 0.6 Source ViaMediaFire

What’s been done since 0.5.1:
- Seven prestige classes have been added to the PDF.
- More has been added to the source, but it was marked as “do not include” for various reasons, mostly having to do with concerns about balance and polish, and not wanting to throw it all in there without approval.
- Spelling and grammar errors have been fixed.
- “Preview” has been removed from the Feytouched. No more from Tome of Trees or whatever the heck it was will be added in, so this seems pointless.
- Link color changed to cyan. Yes, cyan. Because while red and black is a nice color combo, I personally do not favor red. I understand that the link needs to be identifiable as such for being easily noticeable within text, but red wasn’t cutting it for me. If you want a different color and the outcry is strong enough, I will change it back, or to another color.

Yet to do:
- No, Koumei’s magic items did not make it in, and they did not make it in because I am not a LaTeX master enough to be able to create a new template that is flexible enough to work for all the vagaries and differences in the items, and it would take a long time to do it by hand.
- Iaimeki’s prestige classes are on the list to be added, but again were not included due to concerns over “just throwing it all in there,” and have not been formatted yet.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:54 am

Damn. I wanna punch this 3PP in the cock for doing this. There was space to do it normally, but for some retarded reason they did landscape.

Why the fuck should I have to rotate a file to read two pages? Grah.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:11 am

DAMMIT.

Sorry, I managed to fubar the source code. The 483KB file is trash - it's missing the community stuff and the makefile. One person managed to grab it before I swapped out what I thought was the bad code with the good code, but in fact did the opposite.

The new/original source code is back in place, so if you grabbed one before now, you might want to get it again. (The link in the original post is now good.)

Also, what the hell is 3PP?

EDIT: Hey man. You want to punch me in the cock, you tell me why you have an issue with it first, other than just "it looks broken from here."

Flumph · Post by **Flumph** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:30 am

Aktariel wrote:Also, what the hell is 3PP?

Third person publisher.

The file looks OK to me. Interesting!

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Mon Jul 06, 2009 9:09 am

Huh. Must've posted just before me. Yeah, sorry for being unclear there. Imma download this now.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:30 am

I've been away for a while, drifting in and out of this place as I am wont to do, and was idly contemplating releasing v0.6.1 of the Tomes, since it has some new material and formatting and grammar fixes as always, when a thread I stumbled upon in IMOI made me pause and have a

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

sort of moment.

Uh... I like the idea of compiling as much stuff as possible, but I am only one person and only marginally capable of keeping up with this project. Especially with the new "Finish the Tomes" offensive that was launched a while back on the gaps in the "official" material, a lot more stuff is being produced.

It's great to see. It really is. But there's no way I can do all this by myself, so I would like to hear people's thoughts and desires on this matter.

Where do people envision the TomePDF going? What would they like it to contain?

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:33 am

Double post.

But still.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:37 am

I'm sticking that of my stuff that I like onto Surgo's Wiki, and I mostly use this page instead of the Tome PDF these days.

Of course, that page doesn't have everything, like the Elementalist. It is a pretty good compendium of original Tomes and Community material from the Tomes. Still not nearly everything.

As for what goes in the PDF, I'm not entirely sure. Having an offline-accessible version of the good stuff is really nice.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:35 am

My thoughts: we could have a separate PDF for each of the Tomes (meaning the first four would be completely static, and the other four if/when we get the content finished) and an expansion work acting as the Community Material.

If you need a hand with anything like formatting up new content etc., I have a pretty good grasp of the formatting stuff from the aWoD stuff, and could help out with whatever.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:23 pm

I've been running some Tome games lately, and as an experiment of sorts I've tried to stick exclusively to Tome material with as little 3.5 material as possible. I think it would be nice to have a PDF that had everything you need to play the game as a self contained system. All the skills are OGL for example, and classes that were never made into tome classes because they didn't need it (Wizard and Druid spring to mind) could be included.

I realize that this doesn't seem to be what the majority of people seem to want from it, but it would be nice to have something you could print out into a book, and not need to reference any other books at the table.

Well, aside of course from the non-OGL spells. But there's the spell compendium for that.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 11:48 pm

Yeah, the wiki has really replaced the PDF for me.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:14 am

Well, I tried my hand at LaTeX today to see if I could use the source to cut out all the fluff material and rearranging the community classes and feats to appear with the others in order make a shorter document fit for printing just the rules.

It... I sort of got it to work, but there's lots of errors. I definitely have a new respect for how much work you guys put into this now.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:51 am

Utterfail wrote:I've been running some Tome games lately, and as an experiment of sorts I've tried to stick exclusively to Tome material with as little 3.5 material as possible. I think it would be nice to have a PDF that had everything you need to play the game as a self contained system. All the skills are OGL for example, and classes that were never made into tome classes because they didn't need it (Wizard and Druid spring to mind) could be included.

I realize that this doesn't seem to be what the majority of people seem to want from it, but it would be nice to have something you could print out into a book, and not need to reference any other books at the table.

I would love to see that happen. The issue there would be two-and-a-half fold. One is, it's a fvck of a lot of work, as your later post shows. Two is, I would be making very large and arbitrary judgements about layout, which I'm loathe to do, because I'm a critic and a programmer, not an artist.

2.5 is, how the hell would I even organize it? Tome here? Non-Tome there? Community integrated? Vetted and non vetted community sections? Who says what goes in? Try to make it an actual "rulebook" style thing with an intro on how to play D&D and with the combat mechanics and magic explanations? (The "meat" of the PHB) When you say not other books, do you mean you want MM stuff in there too? DMG? DMG II? Frostburn? Sandstorm? Where does it end?

Utterfail wrote:Well, I tried my hand at LaTeX today to see if I could use the source to cut out all the fluff material and rearranging the community classes and feats to appear with the others in order make a shorter document fit for printing just the rules.

It... I sort of got it to work, but there's lots of errors. I definitely have a new respect for how much work you guys put into this now.

And now you know why it takes so long to make a release.

Let me know what you're trying to do, and I can help you out; I'm still learning this stuff myself. Sometimes having a collaborator can help get both parties moving.

What OS are you using? Also, it helps if you know some other code - even HTML is a big step up.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:42 am

Ok, so, here's what I've done. And keep in mind, in this case I'm doing this for me, so if someone doesn't like my ideas on formatting... meh.

I've cut out pretty much all of the 'fluff' that frank and K wrote, and tried to cut it down to just the rules and things that they said directly relating to said rules.
I merged the community material and F&K material into the same sections.
I added Mister Sinisters completed tome armors.
I added mister Sinisters metamagic feats
Put mister sinister in the Credits

This is how I think it should be organized. Just like if you put the PHB and DMG together. Races, then classes, then skills, then feats, then PrCs, then spells. All the material should be organized together, and then credits could be given at the end.

My Sample/Example: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?goyxk2jzrmc

Edit: Oh, and I'm using windows. I've obviously worked out the problems I was having.

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:11 am

Utterfail wrote:Ok, so, here's what I've done. And keep in mind, in this case I'm doing this for me, so if someone doesn't like my ideas on formatting... meh.

OK, fine. Fair enough, it's your own branch. What we really need to do is start a Mercurial or SVN repository for this, and have trunk and branch code.

Utterfail wrote:I've cut out pretty much all of the 'fluff' that frank and K wrote, and tried to cut it down to just the rules and things that they said directly relating to said rules.

This is where you start to live up to your name.

I can understand wanting to cut down on some of the text, but it gives it a real richness, and quite frankly, the so-called "fluff" is either fucking funny or intensely informative, and very often both. Trunk will keep this, I suspect.

Utterfail wrote:I merged the community material and F&K material into the same sections.

Ok. Sure. We were keeping them separate as a sort of "this is gospel this is not" kind of thing, but if you want it all together, you just have to make sure the shit you're putting in is good.

Out of curiousity, did you deprecate the comm:class and comm:prestige labels for hyperlinks, or switch them over to the clean links (class and prestige)?

Utterfail wrote:I added Mister Sinisters completed tome armors.

I think that was scheduled for the 0.6.1 release, so good on you.

Utterfail wrote:I added mister Sinisters metamagic feats

Alright... I was holding off on feats until I got around to writing a more complete and flexible feat command, so I could do everything all at once. Plus, I was leery of just throwing shit in, especially feats.

Utterfail wrote:Put mister sinister in the Credits

Ok, sure. You put his stuff in, you give him credit.

Utterfail wrote:This is how I think it should be organized. Just like if you put the PHB and DMG together. Races, then classes, then skills, then feats, then PrCs, then spells. All the material should be organized together, and then credits could be given at the end.

Sounds fine. My major issue with your rewrite is killing the fluff. But again. Branch.

Utterfail wrote:Edit: Oh, and I'm using windows. I've obviously worked out the problems I was having.

Ok. What are you using to compile?

EDIT: Thoughts on the PDF

Nitpicks:
1) Prestige Classes are not fully in alphabetical order, and the credits aren't either.
2) If you want this to be a combination PHB & DMG, why did you take out the entire "Adventuring" section?
3) Where is the warlock?

4) Not so much a nitpick as, let me give you the 0.6.1 source. I fixed a lot of table (and other) formatting issues everywhere, so things look much nicer.
5) Before I do that, though, mind giving me your source? Or more specifically, the armor section? It was on the list of things to do for 0.6.1, but it hasn't gotten done yet.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:46 am

Ha, I did chose the name for a reason, so it's not a merit-less title; but I'm not cutting out the flavor because I don't like it. On the contrary, I've read it several times and love it. For a printed table reference book though its just not necessary.

And as to why the Warlock isn't in there... actually, now that you've mentioned it, I can't figure out why. I have the \input commands in what appear to be the proper places, but they don't show up. In fact, some of the classes I didn't aren't being input. Perhaps its something with my compiler? I'm using MiKTeX 2.7. TeXnicCenter is the editor im using.

Here's the armor.tex: http://drop.io/armortex#

If you want the rest of it I could give it to you, but honestly it's rather... amateurish. There's big empty spaces in the metamagic feats, for example.

Edit: Fixed those missing classes on my end.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:18 pm

Okay, I did some more work on it today. In fact, I think the source looks clean enough compared to what I used make the previous document that I wouldn't die from embarrassment from posting it up.

Every time I update it I'll put the relevant files in this drop.

The biggest changes are thus:

I added the SRD races to the document.
I added "The Basics" from the WotC SRD
I added a very basic "Creating a Character" chapter. In my own words obviously since there is no officially released OGL material for character creation.
I fixed those missing classes

I eventually want to include a skills chapter using the combined skills (Sneak, sense, etc), and to put in all the SRD spells.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 4:18 am

Utterfail, first of all, you the man.

Secondly, please take my Illusion Metamagic feat out of the PDF. 50% of 'destroy the world' being real is a BAD idea.

Lastly, thanks.

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 4:51 pm

Hah, will do.

Edit: Now that I look though, that would make Illusion the only school that wouldn't have a Metamagic Feat tied to it. Do you, perhaps, have something else to put at the 9th level slot?

Aktariel · Post by **Aktariel** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 8:20 pm

Mister_Sinister wrote:Utterfail, first of all, you the man.

Secondly, please take my Illusion Metamagic feat out of the PDF. 50% of 'destroy the world' being real is a BAD idea.

I rest my case.

In the nicest way possible, of course.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 9:53 pm

Utterfail wrote:Hah, will do.

Edit: Now that I look though, that would make Illusion the only school that wouldn't have a Metamagic Feat tied to it. Do you, perhaps, have something else to put at the 9th level slot?

I believe there's a few other missing schools. But I'll see to it as soon as I can spare the time. I'm glad someone's taking up this stuff.

I would also ask (very humbly) to have my psion, nightmare seeker and speaker added to the PDF. Frank's Spirit Shaman could do with inclusion too, while you're at it. Oh, and Hicks' scaling items! Don't use mine, he did it better than I ever could.

Edit: Also, please reintroduce the Book of Gears stuff, as well as the character backgrounds. They were both conspicuous with their absense...