Out Of Character

[waysoftheearth]

tombowings wrote:
Looks good, the spell levels seemed to have changed a lot, but that's not surprising.

[waysoftheearth]

waysoftheearth wrote:

Impressive. Depending on how you want this bound, you might want to increase the margins a bit. Saddle stitch should be fine with the current setup, but if you were thinking about soft or hardbound availability, you're going to have some problems.

Thanks for you comments Verhaden. I haven't given it too much though yet, but when I get to the "pre-press" stage I will start looking at the options more carefully (including the cover stock).

For now I have been printing it from PDF in "booklet" mode (from the printer software), which prints two pages front, and two pages back, per sheet of paper, and then folding and stapling through the center. This seems to work out fine, although admittedly we don't have letter sized paper here in Australia, so it is all scaled down to fit onto A4 sized paper (slightly taller and narrower).

[waysoftheearth]

waysoftheearth wrote:

Looks good, the spell levels seemed to have changed a lot, but that's not surprising.

Thanks Tombowings [img]images/smiley/smiley.png[/img]

Changed from what -- OD&D or my Hinterlands game?

The real difference is that when I started running Hinterlands, I decided to stick with the OD&D concept of "spell level", meaning 1st level spells for 1st and 2nd level casters. In my house rules have gone for one spell level for each character level.

A few spells have changed spell level beyond that change, namely sleep and charm-person, which (according to my house rules) a wizard can't memorise until 3rd level. But he could still attempt to cast them from a scroll, even at 1st level.

This change was partly to balance the spells according to their relative power, but mainly to get wizard players to be a bit more creative than the age old "sleep" and "charm person" tactics which we have all seen a thousand times.

A 1st level wizard isn't completely nerfed by this change, since he can probably memorise two 1st level spells per day (three if he has 18 intelligence!), and may be able to cast each memorised spell more than once per day.

[waysoftheearth]

tombowings wrote:
Yeah, I like the changes you made to spell level. I can't wait to see the finished product.

[waysoftheearth]

waysoftheearth wrote:
Hey Tombowings, I just saw your blog here:

http://swashbucklershideout.blogspot.co ... sting.htmlswashbucklershideout.blogspot.com/2010/06/another-take-on-spell-casting.html

Your core idea is nigh on identical to what I set out for spells-per-day in my house-rules preview... great minds must think alike, hey ;D

[waysoftheearth]

tombowings wrote:
I wrote that before I saw your game rules and in response to an other blog post ( http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/2010/06/ ... ution.htmlhttp://rolesrules.blogspot.com/2010/06/ ... ution.htmlrolesrules.blogspot.com/2010/06/spells-reform-or-revolution.html ). Now that I think about it though, it is very close to you have been doing here. Your house rules and this game have had a large effect on my gaming mentality. Over the years I've done many, many magic rewrites. I've just never been perfectly happy with anything and have been constantly looking for alternatives.

[waysoftheearth]

waysoftheearth wrote:
Tombowings, I didn't mean to imply that you had "copied" me -- I knew you hadn't, since your post was a few days before I sent you my house rules. Not that it would matter in any case... it's all one big melting pot of ideas enabling each referee to run the game in his own "ideal" way.

I suspect, if anything, we both read a lot of the same ideas and discussions on line, and came around to more or less the same conclusions. All good!

[waysoftheearth]

tombowings wrote:
I new you weren't accusing me. I just wanted to acknowledge Roger. I seem to have forgotten to in my post.

[waysoftheearth]

tombowings wrote:
I just wanted to say Happy Birthday, waysoftheearth. Have a good one.

[waysoftheearth]

waysoftheearth wrote:
Older and wiser. Well, older anyway [img]images/smiley/wink.png[/img]