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HARP / Re: HARP second edition
« Last post by pawsplay on Today at 12:51:03 AM »
Is this the book called "HARP Fantasy?"
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Rolemaster / Re: Rolemaster Unified art: what happened?
« Last post by Cory Magel on Today at 12:06:19 AM »
I'm not a fan of the covers. But, I don't like obviously digital art, so I've got an instant biased right there. I think it looks cheap (from a quality standpoint) a vast majority of the time. And, I'm sure, to a degree it literally is (actual cost) as there are no material costs involved and you can try as many times as you want to make something that looks cool. Sure, you have to pay for the program and your computer, but after that it's all simply your time - which is worth something, but not in the same way that $1000 is.

I've got a good amount of framed art around my house and only one of them is digital... and it doesn't look like it. It looks like the original piece was an actual painting.
Actually, I do have a set of six digital pieces: Nerdy Star Wars, Firefly and Dr Who mixed silhouette/word art. But most my stuff is Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, Parkinson, some of my own photography, etc.

Thing is, I couldn't really care less about the art for Rolemaster. I end up deconstructing the books and making my own anyhow. Probably not the normal response though.
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Rolemaster / Re: Rolemaster Unified art: what happened?
« Last post by pawsplay on Today at 12:00:38 AM »
Well, if the budget was truly sparse, I find myself wondering, was there a Kickstarter at some point to get some funds up front for the art?
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RMC/RM2 / Re: Should Profession "Magic" bonuses give extra PP if PP Dev is used?
« Last post by brole on April 23, 2024, 09:13:20 PM »
Ignoring Classic, RM2 II RAW all professions are usually stuck at 1 rank per level for PPD. So it is just costing spell users DP to have much the same PPs as per level rule.

RM2 II level bonuses make the skill more viable given the DP costs.

However, Semi’s who don’t get the Magical level bonus are paying DPs but falling behind on PPs.

I think it would be best to not use PPD (if that is possible in FG) and use per level rule instead due to the negative impact on DP expenditure, especially on those Semi’s who don’t get the level bonus.
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Rolemaster / Re: Rolemaster Unified art: what happened?
« Last post by jdale on April 23, 2024, 09:06:59 PM »
I like that there are characters who carry over from book to book, I like the gratar, and everybody having a familiar is a callback. It's got some dynamism, a variety of characters, and they are dressed like adventurers and not, well, undressed like some fantasy art.

That said, sure, ICE has a small press art budget not a Hasbro art budget. I don't know the actual numbers but, look, Core is platinum on Drivethrurpg. That's something around 1000-2000 copies. The proceeds of sales have to be split between ICE, writers, editors, art, and layout, plus DTR takes a cut themselves. So what do you think that actually means for the art budget? Now what does that mean on a per-piece basis?
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Cyradon / Re: Cryadon setting book
« Last post by Jakob on April 23, 2024, 08:47:05 PM »
It's April, and I just thought again: How great would it be to not only have a Cyradon setting book, but also the mentioned new Cyradon material ... might it be soonish?

With RMU and Against the Darkmaster, there seems to be some renewed interest in "the Rolemaster family", and it would be great if Cyradon could profit of it.

Also, I still think that Cyradon, as a setting, was a little ahead of its time and might find a lot of fans these days. It's not as stuck in D&D tropes as a lot of other settings out there these days, and feels a lot more inspired by relatively modern fantasy literature. Nearly twenty years ago, it already took a step away from "evil races" and stuff like that and presented a more complex situation.

Maybe I'm misreading HARP, but especially when looking at the "Folkways" and "Beyond the Veil" supplements, it always seems like an RPG more interested in drawing from the breadth of fantasy literature than in the self-referentiality of a lot of other RPGs. I think there must be an audience for that, and Cyradon would certainly be a great figurehead for that idea. I love Against the Darkmaster, but it falls back quite consciously to 80s Tolkien pastiche fantasy; Cyradon could showcase that HARP can offer a broader scope.
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HARP / Re: HARP Community Content Program?
« Last post by Jakob on April 23, 2024, 08:09:44 PM »
@craig:
While you're not wrong in everything you outline, it also bears notice that copyright is quite generally a field riddled with "We'll find out how exactly it works when someone goes to court about it."

I think a community content program for HARP could be really great, simply because it might be a platform to get HARP more visibility. Create a HARP CC logo, advertise the program, get people publishing in it, most of all, make the conditions fair - none of this "if you publish in our CCP program, we reserve the right to use all of your IP published through it" crap publishers like Schwalb Entertainment are coming up with. Basically just say: "You can write stuff that works with our rules, referencing them as needed, we want a small cut, you retain all the rights in everything you've written and published, and you'll have peace of mind that we're okay with what you're doing."
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Shadow World / Re: Where exactly is the Ceril VII Star System.
« Last post by cdcooley on April 23, 2024, 07:53:14 PM »
I've uploaded both the original 2008 files I had and my revisions to the TinyPortal Download Vault. We'll see how long it takes an administrator to notice.

In the mean time I've also put them on Dropbox along with some screenshots for those who are curious.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/6ong1vxx5r2f2orcm6wtc/AAy4dvJltC8TJ96XaXgGlK8?rlkey=exu9uolrjutv4zctf1r676kuf&st=hhr1hl9u&dl=0

I can also make the source textures I created in Gimp available, but just the main Kulthean texture is almost 1GB using the compressed settings so I'm not putting those up unless someone promises to take them and improve them. (The source texture is 16384x8192 and has multiple layers involved, with an even more detailed version over Jaiman.) The actual plugin files are using the Virtual Texture system which breaks that into smaller, more manageable chunks.

That Dropbox folder also has a file called "KultheanCalendar.html" which includes a Javascript-based calculator and clock that shows paired Kulthean and Terran times. Since Dropbox is just a file storage and sharing site, you will need to download that html file if you want to use it, so I've also included a screenshot of what that clock looks like. This is technically unrelated to the Celestia stuff, but the same date and time conversions are included in the Celestia scripts. Just without the cute clock display.
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Rolemaster / Rolemaster Unified art: what happened?
« Last post by pawsplay on April 23, 2024, 06:57:05 PM »
I was pretty excited about the new Rolemaster. However, after sitting with it, I finally decided to get rid of my hardcover. I was just too unhappy with how it looked. The question I have is: what happened?

I can see several possible scenarios.

First, maybe the dev team love how the new books look. We just agree to disagree, and I just part ways with this version of the game.

Second, maybe there was a budget constraint. Maybe all the art across three books had to cost $1000 or less or something. Maybe this is the painful result.

Third idea, maybe some of the artists just didn't deliver. Their portfolios looked okay, but what they turned in was really uneven, and even after revisions, this is where we are. This could be the result of a slightly less constrained, but still tight, budget.

Fourth idea, no one was really in charge. A bunch of art was ordered piecemeal, no one was responsible for QC, and this is the result.

Does anyone want to comment on this? Sorry if this comes across as harsh. I was just really hoping for a Rolemaster I would be happy to have on my shelf, and this does not hit the mark.
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HARP / HARP second edition
« Last post by pawsplay on April 23, 2024, 06:51:12 PM »
This is probably hopelessly broad, but what's new in second edition? I'll be honest, first edition did not capture my imagination. Is there anything about the second edition that would change my mind?
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