Shared Origins: Should It Continue?

[DShomshak]

After taking a year off HERO to immerse myself in D&D 5th Edition, I'm ready to resume work on Shared Origins. In a month or two, I should have #3 ready: Metamorphosis of the Green Butterfly, about a book of magic that tells how to become a demigod... if the process doesn't kill you or make you a monster. The origin story type is "Dangerous Choices." The text is almost done, and I've started on the illustrations.

 

(The Green Butterfly was the focus of a story arc in my Supermage playtest campaign, so this one is a favorite of mine.)

 

But here's the question: How much should I continue this series? Sales have been, well, pretty small, but I didn't expect to get rich off this. More importantly, I haven't had any feedback. I don't know whether customers find these little supplements interesting or boring, useful or useless. What works? What doesn't? Is this what people even want, or should I be doing something different?

 

Please let me know. If people find them useful, I'll keep writing them. If you have suggestions to improve them, I shall be grateful.

 

Dean Shomshak

[rjd59]

I've purchased SMASH, and Dynatron. Really like both, and will be working them into my campaign more. I for one, would be interested in the shared orgins continuing.

[steriaca]

While I personally haven't bought eather book, I would like to see it continue. It is hard to pick up background rpg stuff when you don't have a campaign.

[BoloOfEarth]

I was blissfully unaware of either product until seeing this thread, and have now purchased the Dynatron PDF.  I've only read maybe a half-dozen pages into it, but I'm initially impressed. 

 

The background story is well written (important to me as I hate tripping over misspellings and extraneous or missing words), well crafted (at least, I didn't run across anything major that I wish had been covered) and entertaining. 

 

I'll try to post more meaningful feedback as I read more, especially when I get to the character writeups. 

 

One disappointment:  no bookmarks / links in the PDF.  One thing I liked that Dave Mattingly did in Digital Hero, and I carried over into Haymaker! when I was coordinator, was incorporating bookmarks, with Table of Contents entries also serving as links to jump to those points in the manuscript.  If the PDF was generated with something that doesn't allow bookmark / link creation, there's nothing you could do about that.  But if that's not the case, in this digital age there's no reason not to be able to point, click, and jump to where you want to go.

 

(And as I say this, I realize that I forgot to add bookmarks and links to the Corporate Raiders PDF I posted last night.  Shame on me.  I'll try and fix that this weekend.)

[BoloOfEarth]

Oh, as to continuing the series, I'd say "yes."  The overall concept of the books is cool, and useful both for the villains as well as the heroes or their allies (government agencies, other hero groups, etc.)  I've created many NPC teams around common themes, but only a very few with common origins.

 

Years ago, I created a handful of low-powered villains intentionally for the heroes to handily beat, then had a master supervillain give all of those losers additional power, which rather surprised the heroes.  Great recurring foes.  I could easily see doing something similar with the Dynatron, and presumably other Shared Origin plot devices.

 

The main downside of this series is that most of each book is going to be for GM eyes only, thus restricting your potential purchasing pool.  But I think you're going to run up against that with most RPG supplements.

[DShomshak]

I'll look into bookmarks bookmarks. I create these mss. using Word (Office 2000 edition, yet) and take them to the library, where a more up-to-date version of Word converts them to pdf. I'll see if further processing is possible to add bookmarks. It might be tricky. You see those headers in different fonts? Since I don't know how to embed fonts in documents (though I know this is possible at some stage), I create those headers as little graphics files and paste them into the ms. just like any other illustration. Then I hide the original text headers (so they are still accessible if you save the pdf back to text -- say, if you want to print out character sheets in a more convenient format to use at the gaming table.) It seems clumsy, but me big tech dummy.

 

If all else fails, I can ask someone who knows more and has better software to add bookmarks to the pdf after I finish it, if I can find someone willing to do it in exchange for a free copy. I know this is possible because a friend sent me a copy of the Exalted 3rd Ed. beta-test pdf that a third party had bookmarked.

 

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

Dean Shomshak

[BoloOfEarth]

Sent a PM regarding bookmarks / links.

 

As to embedding odd fonts, it may be simple as checking or unchecking a box in the Printer Properties of whichever PDF converter the library is using.  I know that's how it's done in Adobe Reader.  Although if they use a freeware PDF converter, embedding fonts may not be an option.  Before you hit Print in Word, check the printer properties for the PDF converter.

[Steve]

I've been buying them and enjoying them, so I hope you will do more.

[Scott Baker]

I bought these months ago and just have not gotten around to reading them (or a bunch of other stuff). I was intrigued by the descriptions for sure. I'd certainly be interested in seeing more of the series.

 

 

 

Word (at least the latest version since I don't have any older versions installed currently) can save a file directly as PDF now. There are options for creating bookmarks and also an option to "bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded". I haven't played with that last option, so not sure exactly how it's implemented. And someone else may have offered better alternatives.

[DShomshak]

Thanks, all. Next time I'm at the library, I'll see if I can find the bookmarking and font-embedding functions. I convert to PDF using their version of Word, so the bookmark and font functions should be there, too.

 

After The Green Butterfly, the products furthest along the Shared Origins pipeline are (accident involving alien tech and a particle accelerator sends a wave of bogon energy over the city, causing origins -- hey, it's traditional; story type is Shared Accident); and The Doomsday Cross (diabolical magic item gives people powers through demonic possession).

 

DS

[assault]

a particle accelerator sends a wave of bogon energy over the city, causing origins

 

An ideal origin type for an Australian game.

 

Although I might be thinking of bogan energy.

[Fedifensor]

I just bought Dynatron and Sky-Q, since I'm handling character creation for a new Champions campaign.  I doubt I will use either as written, but they are good sources for ideas.  It's definitely worth the price - roughly $0.10/page makes it an easy purchase.

 

Side note - I also bought SMASH.  Very reminiscent of Turtle Armor, something I use a version of in my game (Armadillo Armor, created by the now-defunct Defensive Design Industries of Amarillo, Texas).  When I update Armadillo Armor for 6E, I'll probably steal a few ideas from SMASH.

[Kharis2000]

I have them both, Dean, and they're both slotted for use in the next campaign I run where supers are present, so yes, I found them useful. =)

[BoloOfEarth]

Still going through it, slowly due to work/home stuff taking precedence, but here's a little more feedback, starting with positives.

 

I like the inclusion of related side information (e.g. Astral Information with Dukhobor's writeup, or Alternate Histories for Chisel's country).  The "Names, Names, Names" piece gave me about as much of a feel for the Cartel's member personalities as their writeups did, along with a feel for how they night interact.  I think things like that really flesh out a work and make it fun to read, as well as potentially more useful.

 

I also appreciated the "Optional Complications", with text explanations for each. 

 

As a GM, I'm fond of Plot Seeds to help me find ways to incorporate characters, and am pleased that Shared Origins: Dynatron looks to have plenty of seeds to sow.

 

I also like the character Facts, with info based on skill roll made. 

 

The sample characters have a range of power levels, which is good.  Since the Rainbow Cartel members are (barring Red Giant) all low-powered (300 points) by design, I'd have made all the other characters at least 400 points, but since Orb is the only non-Cartel 300-pointer, that's a fairly minor quibble.

 

Haven't delved into the actual character writeups yet, so I won't comment further on those yet.

 

And while the work is titled "Shared Origins," it does periodically mention ways that a GM could use the Dynatron beyond basic origin stories.  I'd have suggested a separate section dedicated to this, but at least thought was given to continued / extra campaign use, which I appreciated.

 

Another thought I had was, since the Dynatron can provide various power levels, perhaps providing one character with three writeups -- Low, Medium, and High Powered, highlighting appropriate differences based on the time spent in the Dynatronic process for each.  Just a thought.

 

Overall, I'm still enjoying reading it.  Just wish I could dedicate more time to it.

[DShomshak]

An ideal origin type for an Australian game.

 

Although I might be thinking of bogan energy.

>Snerk< I'll keep that bit of Aussie slang in mind. Thanks, Assault.

 

The "bogon" is the hypothetical particle that carries the property of bogosity, or bogus physics, converting real science to comic-book science. A spike in the bogon flux indicates a ridiculous plot device is about to occur, including (but not limited to) character origins.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Amorkca]

I have the Sky-Q and plan to buy the Dynotron (thought I had it already)  Plan to use some of those ideas in my game!!  please keep it going!