Pavis & Big Rubble Companion: The Directors' Cut Relaunch

[Ian A. Thomson]

As is always the case, on my reviews of 4A there were quite a number of ideas I had for improvements and little bits of extra information, which took a few hrs, but that's all done now as well

So yes where we are at now is that we have 3 Champions (among the many champions who helped make this happen) still working on things:

One big overall proof of the main new scenario, one new set of creature stats, and one map

[EDIT: One of these is done, other two underway] :)

And I am very happy to wait for as long as they need because volunteers for this material are the only reason it can continue!! Heroes of Pavis all of you!! :)

Once they are done it will be released on the world

Edited May 30 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

Vol. 04A: The 'Strangers in Prax Companion' is done and ready to upload :)

Will do another post as soon as I see it up and available

[Ian A. Thomson]

A big thankyou shout out to Nick & Fabian for working behind the scenes on a technicality involved in getting issue 4A up on Drivethru

Looks like they have wrestled it through :)

I will check again later to see when the book is showing, and post as soon as I see it

[Ian A. Thomson]

It's up on the Jonstown Compendium! :)

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/483301/vol-4a-the-strangers-in-prax-companion-runequest

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/23651-strangers-in-prax-companion-vol-04a-of-the-pbrcdc-out-now-in-pdf/

 

 

Edited June 14 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

On 4/21/2024 at 7:24 AM, Tyrian Telbenj said:

Have we got news about vol 4a?

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/23651-strangers-in-prax-companion-vol-04a-of-the-pbrcdc-out-now-in-pdf

:)

[Ian A. Thomson]

VOL. 04a NOW UPDATED

Version 1.2 is up on Drivethru already (just now) and here are the change notes as to why :)

Added a quarter page on Faltikus' status/history as an Illuminant & Lunar agent.

Corrected a few formatting errors, and an embarrassingly large number of spelling/grammar mistakes!!

(Yes, we forgot to run the checker that one last time!!)

Also, we have changed the cover and the DTRPG blurb page to emphasize more fully the proportions of the book.

Only 16 pages are adaptation notes and extra pieces for the original, and only about half of these are completely useless without the original Strangers in Prax. (So yes, only 8 pages of this book are of zero use without the original book.)

Whereas the majority are extra independent details (scenarios, moonboat article, full RQ:G statted characters) that can be used either with or independently from the Strangers in Prax original scenarios.

So yes, nearly 160 pages of the 166 actual (packed) content pages stand-alone whether you own the original or not.

Edited June 16 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

A few hours work this morning and a bunch of hours yesterday, and I have the order of the rest of the series sorted.

Things of course may change as new material needs to be written to fill some small and large gaps, and old pieces revised and extended, but it pretty much looks like:

Vol. 05: Land of the Giants (Zola Fel, Prax, & Old Pavis)

Vol. 06: Fear & Loathing in Old Pavis (Chaos threats, a new hardline Governor, plus scenarios of course as the Adventurers unearth more secrets of the Old City in the face of these challenges. Oh yes, and the Lunars are sick of the delaying tactics and pushing aggressively ahead with their plans for the Wedding of Pavis to the Red Goddess!)

Vol. 06A: The Rough Guide to Pavis City (revised & expanded from the original)

Vol. 07: The Liberation of Pavis (various quests & scenarios as Marshalls of the Old City as the political climate falls apart in Dragon Pass, and armies head towards New Pavis. There really will need to be some kind of miracle to save Old Pavis one more time!)

Edited June 26 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

EDIT: Leaving this post here in case any more people see it and are able to assist in any way. Also though wanting to say Thanks heaps to those who responded. There is now a small team again helping out, which is critical to this project continuing. Thanks very much, you wonderful people! :)

Hi Folks

I just did another email shout out for people who might be available to assist with any of the things below, and thought I would also mention here too that I am looking

Although this light is (in the far distance) visible at the end of the tunnel now that the remaining books are laid out, there is an infeasibly insane amount of work still to do. So even anyone who can only put the time aside to do one small burst of work is appreciated and gets their name in the front of the book.

Anyone who has time for several pieces obviously can have a copy of that pdf, and the gratitude can lean towards cost-price PoDs for those who have the time do a larger bunch of bits and pieces. (No guarantee of a PoD release of course, but so far so good, and Vol. 05 is going to be another corker!!) :)

Help is needed with:

* Proofing documents (reading them as if you were viewing them in the published book, and noting any errors, inconsistences, omissions, repetitions, confusions, clumsy writing etc). Requires some basic knowledge of RQ and ideally the campaign

* Formatting articles from our house-style guide template. (Ideally needing Word, but one person did decent basic formatting on a Word alternative). There are a bunch scanned from pdfs still to be smartened up in the house style

* RQ:G stats (either small and simple or larger full individuals/foes)

* There are even a few pieces of writing needed to fill some of the gaps that don't require Grand Plan knowledge, so if anyone has experience as an RQ writer and would like to get an author credit...

By the way, just to clarify in case any of these fine people read this... Already several people have responded to the email request and will be receiving pieces from me as soon as I have sorted them enough to be ready for someone else to look at. There is just sooo much to do, that it would still be great to get another few people on board

Edited July 1 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

What the... ?????

Edited July 6 by Ian A. Thomson

[g33k]

35 minutes ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

What the... ?????

Looks like some heretical collaboration between the Mostali and the Zebra Riders.

[Baron]

I live in Los Angeles. I was driving home one day and saw a guy leading a zebra along the sidewalk. I saw The Mystery Machine on the highway. I saw a couple dressed like rich sixties hippies standing on a corner, I mean Wardrobe dept had outdone themselves, rich, bright fabrics that no dirty hippie ever dreamed of. We won't even talk celebs. It's a crazy world. 😉

[Ian A. Thomson]

2 hours ago, Baron said:

I live in Los Angeles. I was driving home one day and saw a guy leading a zebra along the sidewalk.

I have a photo from maybe 15 years ago in Melbourne when I was cycling down the street and saw a hippy friend of mine in a business suit standing next to two zebras. (He was off to an interview and had just seen someone advertising the circus and stopped to look at the zebras when i happened to be passing) I got a photo of it :)

2 hours ago, Baron said:

I saw The Mystery Machine on the highway. 

Also saw that here on the coast recently. Them pesky kids getting around a bit!

As an on-topic statement, I've recommenced writing up the full Grand Plan article that will feature in the last book of the series. I need to complete it now so I can track the what and when of the clues and fragments to keep dropping in the series as we go. (Vol. 05 is steaming along.)

Edited July 6 by Ian A. Thomson

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

What the... ?????

An eccentric Rothschild? Surely not. Didn’t this come up before? Mark Steel visits Tring here.

[Ian A. Thomson]

HANDOUTS / EXTRA PAGES AVAILABLE AS SUPPORT FOR THE P&BRC:DC SERIES

Those who have got the PDFs have seen that there are a few extra bits and pieces (as PDF pages) available. Nothing critical, but useful stuff like index pages of which books (and page numbers) for Cults and Spells and characters with RQ:G stats. (I've just finished making some more.)

I'm seeing about how to make this available for people who have the PoDs but not the PDFs, and waiting to hear back, so I won't speculate too much. Maybe we can attach them after all somehow, but I think I heard that we can't, so maybe it will be a separate release as part of the series.

EDIT: Spinning off of Nick's idea, maybe we can just link a folder (on some other storage system) in the description of each book)

However, it just struck me that while we are working that out, anyone on here who has PoDs but no PDFs of the series can message me privately here, and I'll send that bundle to you

Cheers

EDIT: It's up (two errors there on page at 17 July will be corrected as soon as possible)

Edited July 17 by Ian A. Thomson

[Baron]

Every town has a boss...

[Nick Brooke]

Stick the files in some shared directory you control (e.g. a DropBox or OneDrive folder), and find a way to share its URL (or an attractively abbreviated version) with your print customers. That’s what I did with the handouts for Crimson King, anyway.

Want to see how? Buy the book. 😛

[Ian A. Thomson]

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Stick the files in some shared directory you control (e.g. a DropBox or OneDrive folder), and find a way to share its URL Want to see how? Buy the book. 😛

Can't update the PoDs with that information, but could put the url in the description of the books on their Drivethru pages of course, so that's an interesting idea

Will check and see if Fabian has such a folder available

Edited July 15 by Ian A. Thomson

[svensson]

6 hours ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

HANDOUTS / EXTRA PAGES AVAILABLE AS SUPPORT FOR THE P&BRC:DC SERIES

Those who have got the PDFs have seen that there are a few extra bits and pieces (as PDF pages) available. Nothing critical, but useful stuff like index pages of which books (and page numbers) for Cults and Spells and characters with RQ:G stats. (I've just finished making some more.)

I'm seeing about how to make this available for people who have the PoDs but not the PDFs, and waiting to hear back, so I won't speculate. Maybe we can attach them after all somehow, but I think I heard that we can't, so maybe it will be a separate release as part of the series.

However, it just struck me that while we are working that out, anyone on here who has PoDs but no PDFs of the series can message me privately here, and I'll send that bundle to you

Cheers

Pale Mostali the Unforgiven 😁

[Brian Duguid]

14 hours ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

I'm seeing about how to make this available for people who have the PoDs but not the PDFs, and waiting to hear back, so I won't speculate too much. Maybe we can attach them after all somehow, but I think I heard that we can't, so maybe it will be a separate release as part of the series.

If you don't mind making the extras publicly available, just do what Beer With Teeth did for Sacred Earth Sacred Water:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/461173/sacred-earth-sacred-water-pdfs?affiliate_id=1107865

[Ian A. Thomson]

9 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

If you don't mind making the extras publicly available, just do what Beer With Teeth did for Sacred Earth Sacred Water:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/461173/sacred-earth-sacred-water-pdfs?affiliate_id=1107865

Yes, agreed. This is exactly our back-up/default option. Just looking into other ideas first. There will be nothing useful to people who aren't getting the books, except for a different scale version blank map of the Rubble, but we would note that on the page

EDIT: No easily-accessible or ongoingly reliable external holding space is available, so we are indeed going to put up a new bonus page especially for these PDFs. Fabian is on it, so I will let you know when it's up.

Edited July 15 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

** Extra PDF hand-outs document for the P&BRC:DC is up on Drivethru **

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/488217/Pavis-and-Big-Rubble-Companion-Directors-Cut--Index-pages-lists-and-other-helpful-PDFs

There are two errors on the page (a repeated word and the phrase LINK THIS) which we will correct as soon as we can, but otherwise is all good :)

EDIT: Errors fixed

Edited July 18 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

New (and likely final) Version of the 'Strangers in Prax Companion' Just Uploaded to DriveThru

While working on Vol. 05 I worked out a much clearer way of formatting one element of the scenarios that had always bugged me as looking really boring for the eye

So I am using a slightly different style now for passages that the GM can read out (GMCs speaking and descriptions of places/events), which are quite common throughout

Went back and revised that for Vol. 4A (Strangers Companion) and I think it is a huge positive difference! :)

Also took the opportunity to correct a handful of small errors and replace one of the images, with the one I had originally wanted, but wasn't available

That's probably the Strangers Companion fully completed now I think

Edited July 20 by Ian A. Thomson

[svensson]

7 hours ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

New (and likely final) Version of the 'Strangers in Prax Companion' Just Uploaded to DriveThru

While working on Vol. 05 I worked out a much clearer way of formatting one element of the scenarios that had always bugged me as looking really boring for the eye

So I am using a slightly different style now for passages that the GM can read out (GMCs speaking and descriptions of places/events), which are quite common throughout

Went back and revised that for Vol. 4A (Strangers Companion) and I think it is a huge positive difference! 🙂

Also took the opportunity to correct a handful of small errors and replace one of the images, with the one I had originally wanted, but wasn't available

That's probably the Strangers Companion fully completed now I think

Yer doin' the Rune Lord's work, Ian.

[Ian A. Thomson]

Good news, the 'Strangers in Prax Companion' is approved for Print On Demand

Big thanks again to Nick for formatting the pdf for this!!

Process take a fair while, what with needing to wait for an approval copy etc, but it's underway! :)

Also, in doing the triple-checking prior to sending the copy for PoD prep, I found a few other tiny errors (mostly formatting) and a few more places to improve formatting in the style I did recently...

EDIT: The truly final version of the PDF for 4A just went up now thanks to Fabian

EDIT: And the handouts pages on Drivethru have just been updated too with some extra pieces, so now is good to grab a copy:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/488217/pavis-and-big-rubble-companion-director-s-cut-index-pages-lists-and-other-helpful-pdfs

Edited July 29 by Ian A. Thomson

[Ian A. Thomson]

Volume 5 is going to be the biggest yet. About [Edit: 320] pages

I'm trimming and cutting as much as I can (moving material forward into Vol. 06) but it just has so much that needs to be in it

Some parts are proving particularly fun to write, as this book is the segue between the Adventurers being independent mercenaries sympathetic to the Old City and the very start of their understanding that they seem to have been chosen to be prominent figures in some major historical events 

I'm just writing the scenario section in which they gain their first direct understanding about some foundational elements of the Grand Plan and its epic scale :)

Edited August 10 by Ian A. Thomson