Tooleys Underwhelming Projects

[tooley1chris]

Ok. I think I've completed it. Here is Tinsdown. The Tin Mines of TIndale

 

[tooley1chris]

So...on to Dwaven hold? Maybe 😎

If I do this community I think I'd like to give them some unique customs, quirks, etc.

Make them MAGIC WORLD dwarves instead of typical Scottish accent LOTR dwarves. Maybe some things outsiders don't get to see often, or even know about.

Also looking for ideas on cruach dragon 🐉 

Something besides an actual worm

What weird things have dwarves made in their holds?

How does a home look when you can walk through stone walls?

What the heck is Erdebroc?

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by tooley1chris

[Coronoides]

Customs and Quirks: What do they eat? Do they farm above ground like everyone else or do they live on roots, fungus, weta, and blind cave fish 

Yay! as a 1/4 Scot and (ex?)working class I'm tired of the stereotypes.

Cruach: so the dwarves are not Scots but the dragons are? Does Sean Connery do their voices?

Walk through walls?: Do they have a low cultural value on privacy?

Not a Wrym? well there is the old celt tradition of the red dragon of the celts fighting the white dragon of the invaders (Angels, Jutes and Saxons). Traditionally British dragons breath poisonous gas not fire. Have you read any Katherine Briggs?

 Weird things made?: I'd think about life underground so hydroponic gardens caved into the rock, waterwheels powering huge bellows to draw in fresh air, geothermal heating for homes.

What the heck is Erdebroc? Beats me

[tooley1chris]

* SIGH *

Looks like big brother has finally caught up with me. 

I've been told my Damn Big Book of Monsters is being removed because of copyright pics included within the pages. 

All of my projects contain other people's great art, so will likely be removed as well.

Hope some of ya found a use for the stuff 😎

[rsanford]

1 hour ago, tooley1chris said:

* SIGH *

Looks like big brother has finally caught up with me. 

I've been told my Damn Big Book of Monsters is being removed because of copyright pics included within the pages. 

All of my projects contain other people's great art, so will likely be removed as well.

Hope some of ya found a use for the stuff 😎

Aww man! Our loss!

[Simlasa]

2 hours ago, tooley1chris said:

All of my projects contain other people's great art, so will likely be removed as well.

Whatever drawings I gave you for the alchemist book are yours to use. If you need me to sign something I will.

Apparently Magic World has also disappeared from the online store... so maybe they're just disappearing it altogether, as some nagging bit of the past.

[rsanford]

30 minutes ago, Simlasa said:

Whatever drawings I gave you for the alchemist book are yours to use. If you need me to sign something I will.

Apparently Magic World has also disappeared from the online store... so maybe they're just disappearing it altogether, as some nagging bit of the past.

Magic World in PDF is still available on DriveThruRPG at least for the moment.

[tooley1chris]

On 2/24/2021 at 5:13 PM, Simlasa said:

Whatever drawings I gave you for the alchemist book are yours to use.
 

That art you made for that book is outstanding! Thanks again for your great work.

 If you ever want to draw up 500 separate monsters (for free😀) lemme know and I'll re-releae it 😀

[Simlasa]

On 2/26/2021 at 4:24 AM, tooley1chris said:

If you ever want to draw up 500 separate monsters (for free😀) lemme know and I'll re-releae it 😀

I was actually thinking about that this morning... wondering how long it would take me.
IF I do it, I'll let you know when I'm finished.

[tooley1chris]

On 2/27/2021 at 2:34 PM, Simlasa said:

I was actually thinking about that this morning... wondering how long it would take me.
IF I do it, I'll let you know when I'm finished.

That would be SOOOOO MUCH WORK 😀

[g33k]

11 hours ago, tooley1chris said:

That would be SOOOOO MUCH WORK 😀

It would be!

OTOH, if one could rally a half-dozen (or a dozen, or a score, etc) of fan-artists who could do it for love, for "I owe you a beer," or "for the exposure/cred" -- it'd be a lot less work for each one...

 

[peterb]

On 2/24/2021 at 10:09 PM, tooley1chris said:

* SIGH *

Looks like big brother has finally caught up with me. 

I've been told my Damn Big Book of Monsters is being removed because of copyright pics included within the pages. 

All of my projects contain other people's great art, so will likely be removed as well.

Hope some of ya found a use for the stuff 😎

Can't you just remove the art from the file? I just did a quick test and opened the pdf file in LibreOffice Draw and removed some of the images and then did a export to PDF. Worked like a charm. I did notice that the navigational bookmarks disappeared when I saved it to PDF but that might be a configuration issue.

/Peter 

[tooley1chris]

6 hours ago, peterb said:

Can't you just remove the art from the file?

Yeah I COULD...but not sure I want to go through all of that. It was downloaded quite a few times. People either already have copies or can share. *shrug*

I dunno. I might

[peterb]

Yes, I can understand that it might seem like waste of time. I also realize that if you want to make it look nice, you'll have to redo the layout and that might take quite some time. Just removing the art leaves the index intact but also create a lot of "empty holes" in the text.

[Nick J.]

On 3/16/2021 at 1:03 AM, peterb said:

Yes, I can understand that it might seem like waste of time. I also realize that if you want to make it look nice, you'll have to redo the layout and that might take quite some time. Just removing the art leaves the index intact but also create a lot of "empty holes" in the text.

If you really need a big ass bestiary that is in the ballpark of compatible with Magic World, the Gigas Monstrum I & II books have been useful to me on occasion. It's basically an authorized reworking of Frog God Games Tome of Horrors for Legend, so it's pretty trivial to calculate total hit points and armor and abilities from the included descriptions and stat blocks. Also, a pretty cheap deal to get them as a bundle.

Eternity Realms Saving Bundle! [BUNDLE] - Solace Games | DriveThruRPG.com

[Chaot]

On 3/1/2021 at 8:37 PM, g33k said:

It would be!

OTOH, if one could rally a half-dozen (or a dozen, or a score, etc) of fan-artists who could do it for love, for "I owe you a beer," or "for the exposure/cred" -- it'd be a lot less work for each one...

 

That would be fun. I'm not an 'artist' artist but I can sketch.

[tooley1chris]

So it's almost been a year since I finished this massive project. 100+ of you awesome people downloaded it. Am curious if anyone actually read thru or hosted a game inside Tindales borders.

What did you think of the layout? The descriptions? The quests? The NPCs? 

Constructive Criticism welcome as always.

[Nick J.]

I'll offer as honest an assessment as I can. Because this much work deserves a response.

First off, I downloaded it some time ago and I remember skimming part of it, but frankly it was sooooo big that there's just no way I was ever going to read all of it. So I started reading it again and I'm left with the same impression I had back then: I can tell that this was clearly a labor of love for you, and I can't even fathom how long this must have taken you to write and compile (and way back when I did a bit of tinkering with the NWN2 toolkit and I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was, so that's a whole other level of grinding).

The Good:

• No stone is left unturned. It looks like you've given every inhabitant and every building in the place a write-up. It's a staggering amount of detail.
• If this was a NWN2 module it would probably take me months to talk to everyone and I'd be awed by the level of detail.

Here's the part where I give my critique:

• it's far too dense to be easily usable during a game session. Full stat blocks and long histories for every NPC is impressive, but it doesn't really help me if I actually want to run this at the table; it's almost counter-intuitive that something so comprehensive could be less useful than something tersely worded, but that's the biggest problem I would have using this; there's too much to wrap your brain around and quickly find the thing you might be looking for.
• Organization is a bit of a problem. It's hard to get a sense of how places and people are connected from the way they are laid out.
• Full dialogue written out for NPCs isn't useful (to me). Give me a terse physical description, a word or two about their mannerisms, what they know, who they know, and what they want and I'll take care of the rest.

Overall impression: 1,450 pages is just too much for any game supplement for me to ever seriously consider using it. Hell, I start to get twitchy when a core book gets bigger than about 300 pages. If you really are interested in it getting used, it needs to be edited down considerably, and I'd probably like to see some kind of spatial or factional organization.

For references, if you have access, look at things like the Chaosium's Pavis (& Big Rubble), Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord, TSR's Lankhmar (or Goodman Games' recently released version), Flying Buffalo's City Book series, or even Frog God Game's Bard's Gate city supplement if you need examples of the the level of detail that maximizes the game-ability of a thing, while providing enough depth and detail to make the job of the GM's job easier getting a place to feel like a living, breathing place with a life of it's own.

But honestly, It's a truly Herculean level of work that you put into this thing. I'm gobsmacked and humbled to think of it.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Nick J.

[tooley1chris]

On 5/19/2021 at 2:55 AM, Nick J. said:

I'll offer as honest an assessment as I can. Because this much work deserves a response.

Yeah this supplement definitely didn't have the standard "GMs should read through the whole module before playing" preface.

  I appreciate your critique! Kinda disappointed about your view on the layout. I really thought I made it as sectional as I could but...it is A LOT of details and things overlap quite a bit between NPCs, quests, ect.

  I really thought a game master could throw down a map of the town for players during a visit to the town and have anything readily available that they were looking for with a simple search through the PDF by the chronicler. That's how I've been doing it anyway. Players want to find a cobbler? Maybe they ask a guard or a random citizen and the chronicler searches the PDF. BOOM. The NPC tells the characters its up that street to the left. Maybe the players stumble into one of the quests along the way. 

  It is a monster tho. I'll  admit. My own players still haven't scratched the surface.

Again, thanks for the review tho. Gives me stuff to think about if I try something else.

[g33k]

On 6/9/2021 at 11:09 AM, tooley1chris said:

... Kinda disappointed about your view on the layout. I really thought I made it as sectional as I could but...it is A LOT of details and things overlap quite a bit ...

I, in contrast, have *NOT* read it; but reading here makes me think strongly that a treatment with R-Maps -- lots and LOTS of R-Maps! -- for neighborhoods, for guilds, for families, etc, would be a huge advantage in a work like this.

All mutually hyperlinked, of course, between individuals' text listing in each Section, and the R-Map(s) where they appear...

[tooley1chris]

16 hours ago, g33k said:

I, in contrast, have *NOT* read it; but reading here makes me think strongly that a treatment with R-Maps -- lots and LOTS of R-Maps! -- for neighborhoods, for guilds, for families, etc, would be a huge advantage in a work like this.

All mutually hyperlinked, of course, between individuals' text listing in each Section, and the R-Map(s) where they appear...

There are quite a few hyperlinks throughout but...its a free project afterall 😀

[tooley1chris]

Updated my Magic World Character Generator to version 2.0!

New sheets, lots of fixes and additions. Cleaned it up.

Added abbreviated spell descriptions to spell lists

Added a few coins from other systems. Platinum, copper, tin and auto fill for exchange rates

Autifil weapon and armor stats

Added Feats from my Feats Supplement (but you can delete this sheet if not using it)

Also added a printer friendly version of the character sheet. Not as pretty but less ink

 

Edited January 14, 2022 by tooley1chris

[g33k]

On 1/13/2022 at 5:04 AM, tooley1chris said:

...

Added Feats from my Feats Supplement ...

???
"Feats Supplement" ?

I checked the downloads under "Magic World" tag, didn't see a likely file/title.

Say on, good sir!

[tooley1chris]

On 1/14/2022 at 9:46 PM, g33k said:

???
"Feats Supplement" ?

 

[tooley1chris]

The material/supplements I've created (that are allowed here) are located on page one of this thread 👍