Update to Tyrian Conspiracy
An update to Tyrian Conspiracy is available. The changes are minor; some corrections on NPC power points, other minor things.
later than expected ...
Getting things sorted out with Verisign took quite a bit longer than expected. However, two weeks later than I’d initially hoped for, the DNS entries are updating, and http://athas.org/ now points to the server it’s supposed to.
In other news, there are some "small" updates to the Races chapter of DS3 -- namely, the Thri-kreen have been replaced with the version that appeared in MM2.
Athas.org has a new home
What now lies before you is the end result of a lot of writing and re-writing on my part. I had to learn a new language before this move could follow through, and with me, that sort of thing tends to involve a lot of prototyping (aka, work that I throw away). Athas.org now lives on a new server, graciously provided by 3ip.net. There are a few changes that were brought about because of this move:
- Because I had to rewrite the site, and it's no longer in cold fusion, all of the links to .cfm pages are now broken.
- You may notice that most of the database driven sections of the site are absent. There's actually a good reason for this, and it's not lazyness on my part. More on that below.
- I'm trying to get more of the art that's been contributed to us in use over the site. Actually, what had made that hard in the past was the purely database generated pages ... without those, it's pretty easy to incorporate.
Of major note: To go along with the site revision, we’ve got two releases for you:
- Tyrian Conspiracy a 3e Dark Sun adventure by Jon Sederqvist
- Wisdom of the Drylanders a setting elaboration by Brax.
As mentioned above, my mutterings on why removing the database driven parts of the site. Specifically, the feats, spells, races, classes (was never really a db, but I tried fakeing it), monsters, powers … Once we began editing the items that were going to appear as a part of DS3, it turned out that we were totally neglecting the copies of those items that resided in the database, in favor of the ones in our working documents. Perfectly understandable, that. It’s a natural result of having repeated information in more than one authoritative source. (I’m a software developer by trade, so that’s acutally something I think about more often than I should…) But, the version skew was damaging and misleading. We’re better off without it.
The second aspect is that, while weeding through some of the databases, we encountered a lot of material that was ... shall we say, below par. Quite a few of the spells and powers broke rules left and right, and more than a few of the feats were terribly broken. I belive that to be a result of inadequate maintenance; something the active staff either didn't have the time, inclination, or realization to do. The mantained database, for monsters, was of a noticably higher quality than any of the other databases.
So, there you have it. The database sections were dropped for quality reasons. Until I think I can reasonably expcet that to get better, I don't think that I'm going to be re-implementing them anytime soon.
The UnCon
Wizards.COMmunity asked me to pass this on:
Name of Event: UnCon (UNconventional CONvention)Dates: October 11-13
Time: Visit http://www.wizards.com/uncon/ for more information and a schedule of events and times.
Room on chat site: Varies by event.
Description of event: It is time once again for UnCon, the UNconventional CONvention held online at the Wizards of the Coast chatsite. This year we have a number of events planned for your gaming pleasure: industry chats, in-character dances, seminars, trivia, online gaming, and much, much more! Please visit the UnCon site at http://www.wizards.com/uncon/ for more information, or contact the UnCon coordinator, WizO_Hydragon, at hydragon@wizardsmoderator.com . Want to run a game or conduct a seminar? Please register on the UnCon site.
Powers and Skills
The Powers and Skills chapters are ready for preview.
(edited, 2002.10.02) Apparently, some people have been having some problems with the PDFs for these two... The files have been replaced, so hopefully that fixes things. If not, let me know.
Equipment chapter update
An updated version of the Equipment chapter has been released. The skills chapter should be ready shortly, and with the release of MM2, the thri-kreen is going to be updated (yet again, though this really is the last time. Until Wizards errata’s the MM2.)
Equipment chapter preview
Okay, it’s finally ready: The equipment preview … a lot of the stuff included here hasn’t been pulled together in one place before, so this may elicit more comment than some of the previous docs. Use the usual feedback forums …
Spells
A Spells chapter preview is now available. Included in this are Domains, and spell lists for clerics, druids and wizards. Psionic powers are to be a separate (and still in progress) chapter.
Feats
A preview of the feats chapter is available.
I’m working out some fixes and editing on the Equipment chapter; that will probably be the next thing. The spells chapter is under heavy editing at the moment, and I’m not quite sure when that’s going to be done…
Races, Classes Solidified
The Races and Classes chapters have been frozen. Barring anything totally catastrophic that needs to be fixed, these are going to be the versions of the chapters that go into playtesting.
Next up: Equipment and feats; we’re filling in some holes on those, and will hopefully be releasing a preliminary version by the end of the weekend.