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I love the new hardcover but I have encountered an impracticality in running games with it. The stat blocks are in Appendix IV page 346 to page 387 (397 including recurring NPCs). To say that flicking back and forth is getting annoying, as well as shortening the life span of the book's spine binding, is an understatement.
Now I can just photocopy these pages, although doing 40 to 50 pages from a hardback can be a bind, or I could scan them. However permission to copy for personal use seems to be notable in it's absence from the book. Is Paizo considering releasing these pages as a .pdf at this site at all? Do it in greyscale by all means but please consider it as it would be really, really helpful.
....I've been begging for stat blocks as a .pdf for Dungeon magazine for a while now. I would even be willing to pay extra for them, as I find page flipping annoying to the extreme.
I've posted about this several times, but each time it has been met with resounding silence by the Dungeon staff. This is okay, as I don't expect personalized attention for each question or comment, but....Gary's tongue-in-cheek comment aside:
How about a SC HC Appendix with the stat blocks, available for a $4.95 price as a .pdf download? It would be well worth it and not excessive....
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I'd pay that. The amount of money it would cost to photocopy (or risk getting into poo abusing works photocopiers), against how much I would earn doing overtime at work against how long it would actually take to scan them myself would be more than worth it. It's only about three quid, which would only buy me like 4 litres of Cola.
However, that's just two of us and somehow I don't think there will be as many who are as spendthrift as us :)
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How about this?
Paizo seems pretty busy right now, and another PDF online (approved by WOTC) is a lot more work for no money.
How about Paizo opens a Statblock forum, where we the users can post statblocks from the magazine, our home games, etc and other users can go retreive and use? Then we can cut and paste them into our own home game docs (I print mine on 4x6 index cards).
As another benefit, Paizo may generate readers or magazine purchases from these statblocks -- "an aspect of Asmodeus and his disciple, a former town guard gone bad become a sorcerer? Sounds like a great adventure, I'll got buy that issue!"
What do you say Paizo? How about giving us a Monster Stat Block forum? I'd be glad to start things off by posting the monsters from summon monster (in the new statblock format).
I know I'd love a stat block resource, even though I find the new blocks easier to do than the old ones.
I know I'd love a stat block resource, even though I find the new blocks easier to do than the old ones.
Starting with Soul Pillars I'm converting each non-MM creature to the new stat blocks. I'm already done with everything through the temple of Wee Jas and I'm starting on Karran-Kural tonight. It actually doesn't take too much time for each creature. I've created a doc template with the basics of the new stat block that each creature uses. I then add any special stuff like attacks and combat gear. I would share them but I doubt Paizo would want copyrighted material floating around.
Any of the above solutions would be welcome. I would personally love to have the opportunity to look at the methods each of us uses to keep track of stats. I'm sure I can both learn from others and share a bit of my own as well. Still, I would be willing to pay a nominal fee for an available download.
Perhaps I am naive regarding copyrights and infringement, but it does seem like protecting the main chapters is of more importance than the stats section. You can't play the path without the adventure chapters, but you could feasibly run the path without the stats. It would mean a lot of work to recreate them yourself, but still possible.
Hopefully, those in the know will share with us their concerns and let us know what they would like to see happen in the future. I've got my fingers crossed.
Why is this an issue? Paizo release web enhancements for various Dungeon issues all the time. These web enhancements contained "stat blocks" so I don't think a license issue with Wizards is applicable here.
Great! So let's get started! Anybody have something easily convertible to PDF yet? I like the 4x6 card idea, but any size page with one stat block per page will do.
I'll get started on something if nobody has one yet.
Like I said earlier, I've already started converting Soul Pillar's creatures/NPCs over to the new DMG2 stat block. Even Ike Iverson fit onto one page with a 9pt font. It was close but he still fit. It's still easy to read as well.
I really like the new stat block format. It's so much easier to use during the game. The four sections are:
Senses / Defense / Offense / Misc.
If were going on the assumption that Paizo is OK with us sharing stuff like this then I don't mind sending what I have out. Maybe start a Yahoo group for this? That way we can store the files there?
Well, let's give it a go and see what happens.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SCAPresources/
I've started the above group for any and all to join. I don't yet have anything to submit for sharing, but I'll get to work on some. Brian, it would be great to take a look at what you've been creating.
We could start a wish list here and in the Yahoo group to give everyone an idea of the resources we all would like to share.
Good idea? Bad idea?
Great idea. I joined and immediately uploaded the cauldron Herald I wanted to share with you guys.
OK, I've joined and alreay uploaded what I've done so far. Just a reminder, I'm only uploading NPC stat blocks. For anything from the MM I just use the one page sheets from Creative Mountain Games SRD. I also suggest we don't upload stat blocks of any creatures from MM2, FF, or MM3 that Paizo inlcuded in the appendix. Those are WOTC's and we need to be aware that they are not OGL.
Paizo, we know you're probably watching this so if you would like us to take them down we will in an instant.
Agreed! Good post, Brian, and thanks for sharing.
18 users and 7 files. Not bad for a first day. Carry on posting!
Creative Director
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This is a great idea! It's good to see everyone getting into the campaign like this. I'd agree that you should probably limit what you post to what's from the SRD, but new fan-created content like the Herald is awesome.
I'll look into seeing about getting the entire statblock appendix posted as a PDF in the meantime, but don't expect any development on this soon since Gen Con's next week.
I understand copyright concerns, but it sure would be nice to get or be able to compile and distribute the SC specific stat blocks. Would we have any right to distibute such data privately via email? Such as a post saying "I have all the stat blocks from the SC AP in MS Word format. Email me for a copy."?
***Note that I am not implying that I have this information in part or in whole, because I don't. Please don't email me for it or sue me for thinking I do ...cause I don't. Seriously.
But, would that be cool under and legal stretches or loopholes? I'm really hating haveing to copy all this stuff straight out of the book myself and I'd just as soon save someone else the displeasure of it all if I could. I know that you all understand where I'm coming from.
On the long end, Paizo could just make a statement allowing the public reproduction and trade of SCAP stat blocks in electronic format... but that seems damn near astronomically unlikely. And from an intellectual property owner stand point, I definitely understand their reticence. It's a thought though.
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This is a great idea! It's good to see everyone getting into the campaign like this. I'd agree that you should probably limit what you post to what's from the SRD, but new fan-created content like the Herald is awesome.
I'll look into seeing about getting the entire statblock appendix posted as a PDF in the meantime, but don't expect any development on this soon since Gen Con's next week.
The joint resource site is excellent, particularly love the Law code. However, it would still be nice to have a .pdf of the Appendix IV stat blocks like the Player Handouts. Any movement on this James? I imagine a .pdf of the SCAPHC exists already.
I imagine a .pdf of the SCAPHC exists already.
I would imagine that any PDF that they have is a press quality version meaning it would be a HUGE file. Actually depending on what program they do their layout in and the needs of their press service, they may not have a PDF at all (instead exporting directly to postscript or the like). Of course, that could be distilled, but it is still work to create a readable, home-useable version from a press ready version of a document.
Sean Mahoney
Along this line, does Paizo have any plans of allowing Code Monkey to produce a dataset for the Shackled City Hardcover for etools or PCGen?
-Neomorte
*Knock, Knock*
Hello?
Anybody have an answer for me?
What I do is photocopy the specific appendix pages I need for each adventure, cut out the relevent information, paste it to a new sheet and then photocopy again for a clean page. This makes it easy to reference and also easy to add any specific information (for example I list all the attributes of each spell, pot, special ability etc).
Works for me. A downloadedable PDF would even be better as I could mix and match as I please without killing so many trees.
Paizo think of the trees!
It would be nice if adventures started coming with PC maps in addition to the DM maps.
This is something Paizo has actually been doing for a while in their downloadable PDF supplements posted on the site accompanying the release of each issue of Dungeon. They've been a little behind the release of each issue for the last few months, but they provide player-friendly versions of the maps from each issue, along with a lot of printable art and other goodies. Plus, they're free, so I can be quite patient waiting for the supplement to be posted every month. I know it doesn't help with all the situations you may face, but if you run a lot of adventures from Dungeon (like me), then they're a great help!
That way we could all benefit from your hard work. A leecher is me!
I'll second that request! And, btw HK, to find those supplements, just look under the Resources section here on the Dungeon magazine page, in case you were wondering where to find the goodies. If you ever plan on running the AoW AP, the AoW Overload is a GREAT resource!
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I imagine a .pdf of the SCAPHC exists already.I would imagine that any PDF that they have is a press quality version meaning it would be a HUGE file. Actually depending on what program they do their layout in and the needs of their press service, they may not have a PDF at all (instead exporting directly to postscript or the like). Of course, that could be distilled, but it is still work to create a readable, home-useable version from a press ready version of a document.
Sean Mahoney
Shows how little I know about publishing :) Thanks Sean, obviously it is more involved than I thought. However it was managed for the player handouts which had images as opposed to text, and that was done PDQ, so it would be nice for it to be done for appendix IV as well. However there are non-SRD monsters in there so that will probably be a problem for WOTC. I'd be quicker OCR scanning them myself and converting them to DMGII statblock format :) Hmmm.
Just for everyone's information. Paizo answered my question about stat block .pdf's in last month's Dungeon magazine. They said they can't do it because the amount of editorial work it requires is too much for them to handle. I imagine it would be the same thing for the SCHC stat blocks in a PDF file.
They call him flipper, flipper....