Hi all,
I'd like to provide customers of our upcoming products with downloadable extras that are useful in their games. The first thing that comes to mind is art (maps and illustrations) for use with VTTs. Unfortunately, apart from a few sessions with Fantasy Grounds, I'm not terribly familiar with these great tools. So I'm asking you guys, the experts: What do you need or want from downloadable assets?
* What VTT software are you using?
* Are there any requirements (format, size, etc.) for maps or images used with your VTT?
* What else would be useful? Plain-text statblocks? Box text? Something else?
* Besides VTTs, what other uses do you have for downloadable assets? Handouts formatted for easy printing? Condition tracker sheets for NPCs? What else?
I'm open to suggestions here...and I'm sure other 3PPs would benefit from your advice on the subject as well. Fire away!
M
Silver Crescent Publishing
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As a suggestion, I am working on putting everything from my Realms of Twilight Campaign Setting into the Hero Lab software, and I intend to set up the encounter maps for the adventures I am currently working on for D20Pro.
Both of these software pieces did VERY well at GenCon this year. Hero Lab was nominated for an Ennie award in best game aid, and D20Pro won a gold for that same honor a few years ago if memory serves.
Thanks for that.
I just bought Hero Lab and have only used it a little. Have to look into the development kit for that. I'm not adding a lot of character-development crunch at this point but I agree that it'd be nice to have what I do add available for that software (I noticed some core book equipment items that don't seem to be there for some reason). Is it difficult to build a custom dataset? Anything I should watch out for?
I'm not familiar at all with D20Pro, so I'll go do some research on that. Thanks for pointing it out for me.
M
BTW, been working on your encounter map. Hopefully have something more to show you later today. Those elevations are a bit of a pain! :)
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Silver Crescent Publishing
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Hero Lab takes a bit of getting used to, but once you figure it out it isn't all that difficult. So far I've put in the monsters, the races, the classes, deities and the spells (including new domains). I still have feats to do. The hardest part is figuring out how to make the feats and ability bonuses apply automatically in the program when they are selected.
I haven't played with D20Pro too much either, but it seems relatively intuitive assuming you already have a map available for import. But I haven't had a chance to dig in to it too much.
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As a suggestion, I am working on putting everything from my Realms of Twilight Campaign Setting into the Hero Lab software, and I intend to set up the encounter maps for the adventures I am currently working on for D20Pro.
Both of these software pieces did VERY well at GenCon this year. Hero Lab was nominated for an Ennie award in best game aid, and D20Pro won a gold for that same honor a few years ago if memory serves.
Awesome I think that seals the deal for me on whether or not to buy the hardcopy of the book from your website. I am a huge fan/supporter of both Herolab and D20pro and that is awesome news.
* What VTT software are you using?
* Are there any requirements (format, size, etc.) for maps or images used with your VTT?
* What else would be useful? Plain-text statblocks? Box text? Something else?
* Besides VTTs, what other uses do you have for downloadable assets? Handouts formatted for easy printing? Condition tracker sheets for NPCs? What else?I'm open to suggestions here...and I'm sure other 3PPs would benefit from your advice on the subject as well. Fire away!
MAcacia Games
* What VTT software are you using? I use D20pro pretty much exclusively.
* Are there any requirements (format, size, etc.) for maps or images used with your VTT? Not that I know of, I have put some extremely large maps into the system with no issues.
* What else would be useful? Plain-text statblocks? Box text? Something else? Box text is great as you can copy and paste them into D20pro and use the announce feature to announce them to the players. Token's and icons of creatures would be very helpful.
* Besides VTTs, what other uses do you have for downloadable assets? Handouts formatted for easy printing? Condition tracker sheets for NPCs? What else? Handouts are always awesome and work great in most VTT's
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Silver Crescent Publishing
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In my limited experience with D20Pro, I would say that you want to make sure you have a minimum DPI for your map images. I tried using one from an old Wizards of the Coast book (from their website) and it was like 60 DPI. I couldn't get it to size right and still be readable. We either couldn't identify the characters because it had to zoom out so much, or we couldn't identify the terrain because it was so blurry.
Most of my artwork has been done in 400 dpi. I'm hoping to stick with that. But I would think that 200 dpi would likely work as well... though someone with more experience in the software might be able to give better information.
To the Big guy:
I am thrilled that you are interested in my world and my book. I will be making the Hero Lab stuff available as soon as it is finished. Though I have to admit there may be a few bugs in it since I am still learning the editing stuff. That being said, when I post it I will also be asking for any feedback, suggestions or fixes that those more fluent in the system might have or find.
I've been debating posting it in stages, or simply emailing the working file to those who have purchased the book and request it... but I'm still figuring out all of that. In any case, it is intended to be a free addition for those who purchase the book... so I'll go from there.
I'm thinking of having downloadable assets from my products available on my site for "registered users"...you wouldn't necessarily have to have purchased the product but you'd at least have given a working e-mail address. I can't think of any good way to verify someone has actually purchased the product if I'm distributing it through Paizo and others so I'd want to be very permissive in letting folks download it. Hopefully non-purchasers that downloaded would be interested in purchasing the product the material was drawn from?
That sound reasonable? Should I look into something more complicated that only lets actual purchasers download? Does the holdback of something like this help deter piracy or something? I'm new to the whole 3PP game so I'm trying to learn the ropes as best I can.
M
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I'm thinking of having downloadable assets from my products available on my site for "registered users"...you wouldn't necessarily have to have purchased the product but you'd at least have given a working e-mail address. I can't think of any good way to verify someone has actually purchased the product if I'm distributing it through Paizo and others so I'd want to be very permissive in letting folks download it. Hopefully non-purchasers that downloaded would be interested in purchasing the product the material was drawn from?
That sound reasonable? Should I look into something more complicated that only lets actual purchasers download? Does the holdback of something like this help deter piracy or something? I'm new to the whole 3PP game so I'm trying to learn the ropes as best I can.
M
You could do like Necromancer games did with a lot of their stuff, they put a password in all of their books and when you downloaded the PDF's there were password protected with the password from the purchased item. It doesn't stop piracy but it is a little step.
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Silver Crescent Publishing
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put a password in all of their books and when you downloaded the PDF's there were password protected with the password from the purchased item. It doesn't stop piracy but it is a little step.
That is a very good idea. It seems I have some research to figure out just how exactly to do that. It does seem like a very effective way to do what we are trying to do.