Josh Simon's page

By the by, I have just submitted the Revised Edition of World of Avlis to Paizo for publishing to the website as a PDF. It should run for $6.95 instead of 20 bucks.

As always I am grateful for feedback, and I hope you will find that this version agrees a lot more closely with the Pathfinder RPG rules.

I also hope you will get to enjoy my world as much as I do, and as so many others have done along the way.

Special thanks goes to Mark Smiley for that artwork, and to Matthew Lindley for helping to redesign the cover a bit. I'd also like to thank the crew that helped revise the text and rules.

Hello, hello.... No, the PDF that is up there is NOT updated.

I am actually most of the way through a decent-sized revision, but am having a hard time with my co-author who is spending most of his time trying not to lose his legal immigration status in the US. Yikes. That means he's not too into writing lately, which means I'm going to have to finish the revisions myself.

Having said that, I could still use some play testers who are willing to take a chapter at a time and use the crunch in there for their real games to tell me how it goes. Email me at joshua.simon@gmail.com or friend me on FB via the same email address if interested.

Many thanks in advance,

--Josh

Yeah, I'd be interested to know if there's an update too. I'm interested in looking at this, but it'll certainly move up my list of things to buy once the revised edition arrives. :)

Hello all,

Thank you for asking about the revisions. They are proceeding. It is taking a little longer than expected because I am re-wiring the holy warrior classes into base classes instead of prestige classes. Plus, there's been a death in the family that's slowed things down, and I am simultaneously working to launch an Avlis version of a Facebook Game that should be up and running within a couple of weeks in beta mode.

Lots of stuff on my plate. What would really help out is if I could get some feedback on some of the revisions, like the entire Races chapter whose revision is complete. If interested, email me on that, please.

I am also interested in anyone who would be willing to play test a class here and there as I do the revisions.

--Josh

Hey everyone,

I wanted to give an update to those who were interested.

I intend to fix this Avlis work in two phases. Phase I is to simply fix the rules mistakes in the book, but not actually add any content. That will be the Avlis Sourcebook "Revised Edition".

Phase II is to extend some of the information and add plot hooks, according to some of the criticisms given in this thread. That will be the "Expanded Edition" and will come out a bit later.

So where am I now? Well, I've been busy with life stuff, but still managing to slowly get this moving. I started a pnp group to actually play some Avlis PFRPG weekly, so that's taken some of my time. Nevertheless, I am almost through with editing the Races section of the book to bring it into line, since that was the section that received the most bad press. Next I will tackle classes, then monsters, along with some prose editing and we should be done.

Along the way, I plan to have the work checked, and soon will be asking for help from some of the earlier critics to look over the revised Races chapter for rules editing.

Once this Revised Edition is done, I will give a PDF of it to anyone who has purchased the original PDF already.

Best,

--Josh, aka Orleron

Thanks Redcelt, that's what I was looking for. :)

Also a great idea by Utgardloki. :)

Sure, I get totally what you guys are saying, but what I'm really wondering about is what sort of headings would you put in a tribe writeup?

Does anyone know of a PFRPG or D20 product that gives templates for creating barbarian tribes for your campaign world? I'm looking for something with a nice generic guidance and set of rules.

Any help is hot, thanks!

josh@avlis.org

Point taken, DarkWhite. I am glad that the community here is supportive. Yeah, yeah, they did "savage" my product as you put it, but I think it's probably because they care. That's encouraging. To me that means I might have a chance to bring Avlis to this community after fixing the book.

I'm no stranger to this kind of thing. Back when Neverwinter Nights came out in 2001, we were one of the very first persistent worlds to come online and go public. We thought we had the best thing since sliced bread. Well, the same thing happened. Our reviews were awful. The NWN community thumbed its nose and laughed. What that did was galvanize us. We swore we would address the valid problems people brought up and make a comeback....and we did. Avlis PW was and still is the most successful PW in NWN. Not only that, but our PW wound up contributing to the whole NWN community by giving them new content and tools that are used by almost every PW out there now.

I am not saying that doing the same thing here is a slam dunk, but I am saying that there seems to be a demand for something like Avlis here, and all this criticism I have received has sorta made me angry and determined enough to provide for that demand. The same goes for Nob. Moreover, Avlis has potentially more writers than just Nob and I. I'm fairly lenient with allowing people to invent in my world, as you can see from all the extra content on the Avlis wiki, so this is nice.

Nob and I are going through the PFRPG rules with a fine-tooth comb, and buying the competing campaign worlds' PDF's to see what we're up against. The plan is to "quickly" fix this book and put out a "Revised" edition, after a Pathfinder Editor goes through it. Next, we will release an "Avlis Expanded" edition, where we actually add in a lot of material to the book, like plot hooks, personalities, organizations, etc.

Stay tuned. Game on.

Thanks for the review, Urizen. Yes, we are going to be revising the text and putting it out again, giving all those who bought a copy a new version for free. At this time, I think it is only the Avlis fans buying, so we should not have a big problem there.

What I do not know is how long it will take to update/revise this content, as that will probably require some additional layout work as well, which might take time and money that we have yet to set aside.

Thanks also to all who piped up in this thread. See you for the next release.

It just sounds like he's in desperate need of a professional editor. Amateurish prose and glaring inconsistencies is what editors live to correct. A good editor will fix your book without making fundamental changes to the spirit of the text.

It HAD a professional editor, btw. Perhaps the stress should be on *good*. I did not catch the homonym misspellings and neither did he.

I disagree with the amateurish prose bit, but c'est la vie.

Folks are going to ask in the meantime about certain contents. Is it alright to respond in brief to help satisfy curiosities? I just wanted to be certain since you were kind enough to share your product to me (and Chris).

Thanks again, Josh!

Sure that's fine.

Thanks for the review, Chris.

Any chance of a print or print on demand edition ?

Hi Stereofm,

Yes! This book is out in print. I just did not want to risk advertising a different site other than paizo.

If you search for "Avlis" on lulu.com, you will see the book. :)

Enjoy.

Josh Simon wrote:

Don't forget that none of the races I gave out were complete, AFAIK.

So that was a first draft? Because I only mentioned traits from complete stat listings, not partial ones.

Obviously it is not a draft. Was that sarcasm? Isn't it more productive to bring up small errors over email so I can correct them and give people a better product? I found the "movement rate" and 2 "nature sense" errors and confirmed that they are the only appearances in the book. They were holdovers from when I converted this from D&D 3.0.

Fairy wand mechanics are glossed over on purpose and will be covered in later supplements. What's told is that they will die if the wand is lost in any way, and that's enough to play the game for now.

If you find more errors, please definitely tell me, but over email so it does not clog up the thread. I can gather up a wad of them and fix them. Nonetheless, this book was professionally edited, and I have been over it countless times so it should be pretty good.

@Mikaze: You are correct. I will take your advice and modify the book description to say what's unique about the setting.

Reading the races chapter and confused on a few things:

Odd-number racial ability adjustments are used.
At least one race as an ability score bonus of +5 without anything that look like severe penalties for balance.
Fairies use "wands" but no rules are presented for loosing, breaking, and/or replacing.
A trait called "Nature Sense" is listed, but not given mechanics.
At one point you refer to a "movement rate of 12".

I'm just pointing these out because some people may read the preview and be turned off by these elements for various reasons.

Don't forget that none of the races I gave out were complete, AFAIK. That Races chapter only had every other page in it. I have to check out the Nature Sense and movement comment. Feel free to email me more info.

34 races? How many are sub-races? (Like wild elf, sun elf, night elf, etc.?)

A lot. Avlis has 9 major races, each with a bunch of subs, and it has what we call "minor" races also, which are more numerous and do not usually have subraces.

That's actually a good segway. There was a request to see part of the book as a sample. I can do that. One part I will partially reveal is the chapter on Races. The other part is the cover/Table of Contents.

For the next 7 days or 100 downloads, whichever comes first, you can get the TOC here:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/MVNkM25PYStwM2wzZUE9PQ

and the partial Races chapter (every odd page) here:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/MVNkM25PYSt3NUozZUE9PQ

For some reason, these files are disproportionately large compared to the book itself. I don't know why. The book, unzipped in hi-res, is about 100 MB, so don't worry about the sizes of these snippets.

Coupled with the reviews, I've done my best to convince this place. I hope you decide to join our little band of several thousand!

I'll be on www.avlis.org if you need me. (Boards name is Orleron.)

Cheers and Game On!

Hi Watcher :)

You bring up a good point. Unfortunately, no, there is no website solely dedicated to the campaign setting in a non-NWN oriented way. Until now, there has never really been a need.

eh, perhaps I should get something up?

Brigand Publishing is one guy (me) and one book (this one). My co-author and I are working on a second book, but we feel it is years away. This IS a sight-unseen purchase except for two things, I hope:

1) I gave away 2 copies to your community so they can have at it and let you all know.

2) You know there's definitely SOMETHING in the PDF that might be at least a little interesting based on the number of fans Avlis already has.

I could work on a "sourcebook-oriented" site, but in the meantime, I do not know what else I could do except what I am doing. I'm biased, but I think this is a good product. Also, Brigand Publishing (me) will never be cranking out tons of books, because this is my hobby and I am just doing it for the love. {> My doctorate is in Biomedical Engineering, and along with my MBA and two other degrees, there are a bunch of other things I am doing to pay the bills, quite easily, but none of which I really take to at heart like building Avlis.

I understand the risk to you, but stand by my work, for good or ill, and that is all I can offer for now.

PDF's are on their way to Urizen and Chris Mortika. Thanks very much. Enjoy, and I welcome any honest review. Avlis has been around for years and has been both criticized and praised, so I'm used to it, whatever the case. Gods know there are more things than you can read about folks' opinions on the world between avlis.org, avlis2.org, The Avlis Wiki, Wikipedia, and the NWN and NWN2 message boards. So fire away!

Out of interest, would you be able to give me an idea of the split between fluff and crunch in the pdf? While new rules are interesting in their own right I'd be much more interested in reading the information about the rules itself. So I'd be keen to know approximately how much of the book is new rules and how much is world background.

Cheers!

Hi Berik,

The book contains 34 races, 11 Prestige classes, 16 new spells, 33 mage feats, and 23 monsters originating from the Avlis campaign setting, but usable in pretty much any world.

There are no new mechanics, per se. Out of the 254 pages (9 chapters), there are 4 that contain only world information, and 5 that contain some form of crunch.

Well it would seem strange to suddenly pop up and review something then vanish into the ether.

I'm campaign settinged out so I won't be getting this to review. That being said, the second review reads as 'more honest' than the first.

I see what you are saying now, and given the nature of this community what I would really like is to have someone from here do a review.

I will give out a free copy of the PDF to two selected people for that purpose.

Anyone interested should email me at joshua.simon@gmail.com. Include your boards username so I can check out your posts and see that you exist here and are considered part of the community, and if I pick you, I will get you the PDF so you can write a review.

Fair?

Not sure why credibiliy is only given to those who have posted extensively on Paizo before. Berik is correct, however. Avlis existed as a homebrew campaign since the late 1970's and as a Neverwinternights persistent world (www.avlis.org) since 2001. Arguably, it has been the most successful PW in the history of NWN at that.

Depending on how you measure success of a sourcebook in this business, I've been told that selling 1,000 copies is considered "good". Essentially that means that at least a couple thousand people have heard of your work and used it. Well, as a NWN server, Avlis was played *actively* by a little over 50,000 people from 2001 thru 2009. It is more well known than the average homebrew campaign, I'd say. However, just not in these Paizo circles, at all. Does that make it less worthy of attention? Your call.

As the author, I did ask for fans of Avlis to write a review for me, as any author trying to market his book would. I will continue to ask for them, although I had no idea how the Paizo community would see that.

Cheers,

--Josh Simon

Thanks, Lisa. I remember checking the faq earlier and not seeing my answer, but upon reinspection (and some reading between lines) I believe I found my answer, i.e. that I could indeed do so.

The thing that threw me off was an offer from Paizo, only to gaming companies, to enter into a confidentiality agreement to see the full rules before they are published in August. It would be nice if individuals who filled out licensing applications could also sign this agreement, but alas, I am still not certain of that one.

Thanks again.

--Josh
josh@avlis.org

As it says in the title.... Can an individual doing POD through LuLu or another place be allowed to license the Pathfinder rules?

I've got a finished manuscript going through layout right now, but I am not a publishing company and I'd like to know if I do this through Lulu if I'll be allowed to license the rules?

Of course the next best thing would be for a gaming company to snap up my work, but that is neither here nor there.

--Josh
josh@avlis.org