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Community Generated Campaign


Matt John S

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I do not believe that this is an ‘official’ product. Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Monolith wanted nothing more to do with printing or promoting fan made scenarios. After the last effort, they received a LOT of backlash from a select few fans who paid a small shipping fee to receive the last printed version of fan made scenarios, but never received them due to shipping issues. 

I thought it was an awesome gesture on the part of Monolith, and I got mine in the mail with no issues. But blurring the lines of ‘official product’ has definitely led to at least a few disgruntled people accusing Monolith of cheating them out of shipping fees.  

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14 hours ago, drmauric said:

@Epaka

 

This is a fan made campaign. Nothing more, nothing less.  We intend to bundle it into a super cool looking PDF and make it available for download right here on The Overlord. Stay tuned 🙂

 

Monolith could take certain actions that show they endorse the campaign, such as play-testing and promotion. I wouldn't object to that.

 

I also wouldn't object to them printing and shipping it, although I agree with Epaka that the vocal minority have probably ruined that hope.  

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I think the lesson on printing and shipping is that if one wants to run an "at cost" offering there is a need to charge a "handling" fee of about 10% of overall cost to cover problems, and time involved. I.e., "at cost" is not just printing and initial shipping, there are more costs to being successful. Heck at this point, I'd be okay with a little more on the next one to cover those who previously didn't get their copy.

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I would love to see Monolith package this and release a nice print run of it, we need to promote the game more and get new content out there. Of course part of that is personal interest - I am proud to be part of this creation and hope there will be more opportunities for creators to get "endorsed" or some kind of backing from Monolith to help keep things going!

 

EDIT: The idea of a periodic fan-made pdf magazine came to me, it could have some scenarios, maybe painting advice, new skills/equipment, a gallery of fan painted miniatures... @Matt John S, do  you think Monolith might be ok with something like this? The content creators./contributors would get some exposure of course, but it would also help keep the game relevant and perhaps reach new users.

Edited by Primeval
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2 hours ago, Primeval said:

The idea of a periodic fan-made pdf magazine came to me, it could have some scenarios, maybe painting advice, new skills/equipment, a gallery of fan painted miniatures... @Matt John S, do  you think Monolith might be ok with something like this?

 

Games Workshop basically used White Dwarf for years to promote their products. It's general format was along those lines. A monthly is hard to crank out, maybe a quarterly is more in the realm of possibility. It should cover the full line of Monolith games. I would totally subscribe and submit miniature pictures. I think the licensing for Batman and Conan might be a little thorny.

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As a fan-made thing, if I was involved I would prefer just doing a Conan pdf mag. I have no interest in the other games. If Monolith did something official then it would of course make sense to do all the games. I don't think a fan-made creation would have any issues with license, as it would be free, as are all the creations we do here on The Overlord. I am sure each game's community could probably come up with their own "magazines".

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On 9/3/2018 at 6:18 PM, Neil Amswych said:

 

So, is this actually an official Monolith campaign? Or is it a fan-made campaign that Monolith allow to happen? It would be nice if Monolith could say, "Hey everyone, here's our new campaign, and the awesome thing is that it was fan-made, so here it is." Is that possible?

 

Neil, I wouldn't say it's an official Monolith product. I mean, it's not being sold, but it is endorsed and was launched by one of its employees (me). But I'm not sure it matters. If we promote it via Monolith channels people will see it and see that Monolith wants to promote it. The key message, for me at least, is that this is what the fans have created and really spotlights the original desire that this game be embraced by the community. This whole site is about that very thing. I'm not sure if I've answered your question, but that's sort of how I see it. 

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On 9/5/2018 at 1:36 PM, Epaka said:

I do not believe that this is an ‘official’ product. Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Monolith wanted nothing more to do with printing or promoting fan made scenarios. After the last effort, they received a LOT of backlash from a select few fans who paid a small shipping fee to receive the last printed version of fan made scenarios, but never received them due to shipping issues. 

I thought it was an awesome gesture on the part of Monolith, and I got mine in the mail with no issues. But blurring the lines of ‘official product’ has definitely led to at least a few disgruntled people accusing Monolith of cheating them out of shipping fees.  

We have indeed been reflective of how the Compendium distribution was handled and are absolute re-thinking how we handle it in the future. We don't want to abandon it, but we recognize our last method did not work for everyone. We have some ideas that may make it reliable. We kind of do want it to be like White Dwarf, but we are a small team and need to manage or slate carefully. Once we have this figured out we will plan what's next for fan compendiums. I think it's a very real and interesting idea that this community campaign could be compiled into a future Compendium like the others. but we have things to figure out first. 

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On 9/6/2018 at 2:18 PM, Primeval said:

I would love to see Monolith package this and release a nice print run of it, we need to promote the game more and get new content out there. Of course part of that is personal interest - I am proud to be part of this creation and hope there will be more opportunities for creators to get "endorsed" or some kind of backing from Monolith to help keep things going!

 

EDIT: The idea of a periodic fan-made pdf magazine came to me, it could have some scenarios, maybe painting advice, new skills/equipment, a gallery of fan painted miniatures... @Matt John S, do  you think Monolith might be ok with something like this? The content creators./contributors would get some exposure of course, but it would also help keep the game relevant and perhaps reach new users.

It would be totally cool if fans created pdf magazine. If it's not being sold, there are no issues and you can post it here. I love the idea. 

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The good news: I updated the PDF with all the updated rules and scenarios. 

Update: I reformatted two scenarios (The Time for Flight is Nigh and Dreams of Atali) to remove large chunks of white space to save paper. Dan & Matt, can you check to make sure these changes are acceptable (i.e. you approve the new format and I didn't accidentally delete any thing (I'm good at that)).

 

 

 

Whispers-from-Stygia-Cover.thumb.jpg.a723893c571eef9a38ff1a9797718be1.jpg

 

The bad news: I accidentally overwrote my PSD file with a flattened version of page 3, so basically I lost hours worth of work that will need to be recreated if there are any changes. 😞 

Update: I found a backup file from June, so I only need to recreate these most recent changes.

Edited by Ken
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7 hours ago, Ken said:

Update: I reformatted two scenarios (The Time for Flight is Nigh and Dreams of Atali) to remove large chunks of white space to save paper. Dan & Matt, can you check to make sure these changes are acceptable (i.e. you approve the new format and I didn't accidentally delete any thing

 

Glad you found the old back up.

 

I'll be looking at it through out the day. I'll let you know if I find anything.

 

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Wow! Great work you guys. Seriously impressive. I wish I could have helped out in some way... I was on the road too much the last few months to try and lend a hand, but I will try to playtest this with my gang ASAP. 

 

Minor Nitpick Suggestion:

For the cover art, perhaps try moving the Outer Dark Demon behind the Dark Demon, shrinking him by 10%-20%, moving him up and to the right, and rotating him to the right (like he’s in the background swooping in). Then the Dark Demon can be the focal point and can be shifted over closer to the center of the image. Without being able to tell if that will actually look better, I just feel that it might be more compositionally appeaing.  Also, the ‘Whispers’ title could be a bit larger and lower than it is now, to give it some emphasis. Apologies in advance if this kind of suggestion isn’t actually wanted or needed. It really looks great already. 😁

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5 hours ago, Epaka said:

Wow! Great work you guys. Seriously impressive. I wish I could have helped out in some way... I was on the road too much the last few months to try and lend a hand, but I will try to playtest this with my gang ASAP. 

 

Minor Nitpick Suggestion:

For the cover art, perhaps try moving the Outer Dark Demon behind the Dark Demon, shrinking him by 10%-20%, moving him up and to the right, and rotating him to the right (like he’s in the background swooping in). Then the Dark Demon can be the focal point and can be shifted over closer to the center of the image. Without being able to tell if that will actually look better, I just feel that it might be more compositionally appeaing.  Also, the ‘Whispers’ title could be a bit larger and lower than it is now, to give it some emphasis. Apologies in advance if this kind of suggestion isn’t actually wanted or needed. It really looks great already. 😁

 

No apologies necessary. All constructive feedback is welcome. As a matter of fact, Neil had also mentioned bringing the Dark Demon to the front. Unfortunately, the image of the Dark Demon was already flattened, so it required time and effort to separate the demon from the background. That being said, I think it looks better this way.

 

Scenario-Book.thumb.jpg.a1854af155e903c65dc40241380d0bf1.jpg

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I finished recreating the data I had overwritten and I made some tweaks. The previous version had converted some text into an image, which was causing blurring. I discovered the culprit (it was Photoshop's built-in BOLD functionality that was causing the issue) and have uploaded a much cleaner version.

 

I am also in a better position to make any additional updates, with appropriate cloud backups.

 

Oh, and I updated the cover.

 

New updated verison:

 

Scenario-Book.jpg

 

Note: I plan on making printable cards to help players remember their bonuses going into the final scenario, but that is for another night.

Edited by Ken
Updated PDF to fix a type and reformat the bonus gem section.
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So I was working on a first draft of the Victory Point Bonus and I have a question:

 

Should the +1 Reroll and +1 Yellow Die bonus be limited to attacks (like I have on the card)?

 

I think I just assumed this, but I don't recall if we ever discussed it. Otherwise, it seems like there is a lot of defense on the board.

 

Here they are:

VP-Hero_Defense.thumb.jpg.c70512ca1c7461482fb0c22d61ed7b55.jpgVP-Hero_Offense.thumb.jpg.d4717ca37f042dd6ad361544a5f020f6.jpgVP-Hero_Defense.thumb.jpg.c70512ca1c7461482fb0c22d61ed7b55.jpgVP-OL_Offense.thumb.jpg.e0cf8d27014c46d625bf42ab7138c136.jpg2VP-OL_Defense.thumb.jpg.d39101cc7a3c8113ac282282cea3482e.jpg


 

Thoughts?

 

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@Matt John S @Primeval @Neil Amswych  @drmauric 

 

I was brainstorming our launch plan once this is finished. What do you all think of the following?

 

1. Create a new thread here on the-overlord.net with a title announcing the completed book.

2. A thread on Board Game Geek pointing to the-overlord.net thread.

3. A thread on the on the-overlord.com pointing to the-overlord.net thread.

4. A post on the Facebook Conan group. I think we should lead with the cover image to grab attention and point to the-overlord.net thread.

5. A duplicate post on the Monolith Conan Facebook group. There is probably a lot of crossover in terms of membership, but it still is worthwhile. 

6. A duplicate post on the Facebook Miniatures A-Z group. Again, probably some crossover but well worth it.

7. Remove links in our development and testing threads to the campaign book and individual scenarios.  

8. Perhaps we could make a note at the top of these other threads indicating the project is done and provide a link to the new, finalized thread.

Note: This is to prevent version control issues. Nothing can be done about already downloaded files, but we want newcomers to only have access to the final, approved version.

 

That's it. I'm out of ideas, but open to additional thoughts.

 

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