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Posted by: Fatum May 7 2011, 11:25 PM

So, our alt.war project, for which I'd been writing about Russo-Yakutian war, seems to have ground to a halt.
Since I seem to be the one with the draft with the most content, and also seem to be the most stubborn of the contributors, I could try finishing my part regardless, be it now or some time in the future when the university takes less of my efforts. The question is - is there community interest in the results?

My plans so far include a chapter-long write-up of Russo-Yakutian war some time around '73; and since both countries got only cursory coverage in 6WA and elsewhere in 4E material, I also wanted to include a chapter for each country involved, describing the regime, the culture, and running there; a chapter for each country's armed forces; and finally a chapter for gaming stats, covering each country's magic, firearms, vehicles, NPC stats, maps and whatnot (not actually sure if that should be one common chapter of two separate country-specific ones). I'm looking at old books like Atzlan as an example.

Obviously enough, I'm not too keen on just writing the thing for myself and my players, so I'd like to know whether you're interested, or whether you'd want specific topics covered, or maybe whether you think some topics are excessive.

Now, if the results are to be presented to the wider world, obviously they are to be wrapped in pdf form and supplied with art. That is, naturally, a tad bit problematic, raising a lot of questions. For example, we could try emulating the look of the official books of any edition, using things like borders, general layout, or chapter structure; or we could try something of our own design. What do you think would be the best option? Would you per chance be willing to help with putting it all together? (I have an old contact of mine who's agreed to help me, but I'm not sure he's up to editing a hundred pages, and I myself have no pdf editing skills whatsoever).

Similarly, while art would be a nice addition, and I'm willing to invest some of my pocket money into getting it, it doesn't appear to be all that simple to find an artist to begin with. I could use the blueprints of RL analogues for game stats illustrations, but that still leaves the question of how to illustrate the other chapters. How important is the art for your interest, anyway? Do you know anyone who might help, or would you be willing to participate yourself per chance (again, I'm devoid of any kind of artistic talent)?

tldr: your opinion decides whether I should finish the supplement, and if yes, what should the end result look like.

Posted by: Halflife May 8 2011, 04:17 AM

This sadly comes too late for our Russian Shadowrun campaign this year but I could be tempted to return to it with some Grade A fan material.

Posted by: Dez384 May 8 2011, 04:25 AM

You want to go against shapechanging spetsnaz?

Posted by: CanRay May 8 2011, 05:40 AM

They'd be bears, of course.

Posted by: Loch May 8 2011, 05:43 AM

Funnily enough, according to Shadows of Asia they're mostly cat shifters. I hear the weretigers do especially well in commando roles.

Posted by: Fatum May 8 2011, 09:43 AM

Well, far as I remember, shapeshifters prefer working for Awakened Yakut, and I'm not sure Yakut would call their spec-ops Spetznaz...

Posted by: HeckfyEx May 8 2011, 10:19 AM

Or anyone else for that matter. Calling spec-ops "Spec-Ops" seems kinda silly.

Posted by: Jhaiisiin May 8 2011, 02:44 PM

With all the uproar about how bad War was by the fans, you'd think we could have gotten it together and delivered on the re-write. Guess it shows that we didn't have the motivation we thought we did.

Hopefully what was completed will be released.

Posted by: Fatum May 8 2011, 04:14 PM

Pah, the usual fate of fan projects.
But, as you can see, I'm considering finishing the thing out of sheer stubbornness, and the voting so far seems to support that decision.
Now, the whole pdf editing and art thing... D:

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi May 8 2011, 09:57 PM

Yeah, Fatum, by far was the guy who most wrote stuff while I was second (but to be fair almost no one wrote anything, so...)

Posted by: nezumi May 8 2011, 11:18 PM

I am quite interested in Russia, from a cultural and stylistic standpoint. I don't play SR4, but ... I can ignore that shortcoming ;P My primary concern is whether the author has a real 'feel' for what Russia should be like, and writes a compelling, believable story consistent with Russia as I understand it to be. It would have to be properly edited and professionally written. I don't need art, although it helps.

Posted by: warrior_allanon May 8 2011, 11:41 PM

send it to me, the DDH issue that i'm still working on needs more to flesh it out and while something i'm working on right now will help to flesh things out, I hate to seem like i'm using something that everyone should be taking part in to semi-publish my own work.

Posted by: Fatum May 9 2011, 12:14 AM

Well, I'm not sure if my work will be useful for you if you don't play 4E. Maybe the bits on culture, hmph.

Naturally, everyone has their own understanding of the fluff, but I'm trying to keep my work as consistent with existing in-game knowledge as possible. You can always check out my work https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UQkzg2u_b9Wq-9IOpEyAwS1TBk16GQHSY2uQZPn9xyM/edit?authkey=CJ3ZoNEB&hl=en&pli=1#, I'm open for suggestions and corrections.

Well, editing I have more or less covered, I hope. In what comes to being written professionally - ehhhh. I'm not a pro writer, so I just hope strict editing helps.


You see, we're talking more than a hundred pages of stuff here, with internal structure and whatnot. I believe it'd be better as standalone - however, alt.war has several drafts of different stages of preparedness, maybe you might want to use those?

Posted by: Sengir May 9 2011, 10:36 AM

Sounds like a nice background, better than yet-another-jungle-war-knockoff. Are you also planning to integrate the Sagan Zaba (or whatever they were called) conflict with the Yakut shifters?

PS: I used to do a lot of work with LaTeX, so if that becomes the layout tool of choice I'd gladly volunteer some help (pending RL, of course) to keep me from forgetting everything

Posted by: Grinder May 9 2011, 11:28 AM

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51934 - Frank Trollman so beats you two.

Posted by: Fatum May 9 2011, 12:40 PM

Well, the fighting there never really stopped since the secession war, it just degraded to border skirmishes and provocations, as far as canon info goes. Seemed like a nice and reasonable place to have a big war, minding that the two countries have both a history of hostility and reasons to want each others' stuff (Russia more so, of course).
And yeah, of course I'm planning to integrate the Sagan Zaba rebels, with all the conspiracy theories behind them. There's a problem here, though - very little is known about them from canon sources, so while with Yakut I can at least base my writing on pre-existing info, with Sagan Zaba I'm left to my own devices (and that's especially troubling if I am to explain the nature of their power, or just to show their capabilities in war). And as an additional concern - Sagan Zaba seems to be an ongoing plot line in official books, so elaborating on the rebellion too much could easily mean producing a supplement incompatible with further CGL books.

I'm not really familiar with tex/latex, what is it capable of when it comes to pdf building?


Yep, but he seems to be writing Shadowrun 4.5E.
And I feel that including radically new mechanics in a fan supplement is the worst decision possible, since it limits the number of people willing to adopt the materials inside (which is already low for any fan supplement) to almost nothing.

Posted by: Sengir May 9 2011, 05:50 PM

YMMV, but to me it seems like CGL has no immediate interest in furthering this storyline, because...well, have there been any new developments in the region? AFAIK it's still "rebels with weird artifacts around the lake, shifters everywhere else".


If you have read some scientific papers, chances are they have been done with Latex. Of course since it's mostly used for "prosaic" stuff things like background images might be more complicated than with other DTP tools...don't really have experience with other such tools, so I can't give a comparison


More like Shadowrun "proof that I can do better" Edition

Posted by: Mardrax May 9 2011, 07:11 PM

InDesign is your friend for doing pdf making in my experience. Free demo available off Adobe's website, as goes for all of their CS software. Takes a bit of getting used to, but after that, it's all smooth sailing.

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi May 9 2011, 10:18 PM

Pretty much anything, I used it to write my grad thesis and I thought it was really good, specially to write any kind of mathematical expressions (and grapics too).



I did forget about Trollman, true. But I agree with Fatum he is writing way too much, not only about fluff but also about mechanics, A LOT OF MECHANICS.

Posted by: Grinder May 10 2011, 06:13 AM

Brazilian_Shinobi made no distinction between fluff and crunch.

Have to agree with you - Frank should have concentrated on the fluff, but with his attitude towards SR4, CGL, and the world in general, he just couldn't.

Posted by: Sengir May 10 2011, 09:13 AM

Provided you can find the right package.

@Fatum: Is there a draft or something online?

Posted by: Fatum May 10 2011, 10:01 AM

Well, it's there, the hints are all over the place, plus 6WA featured some plot seeds for Russia as well, so I figure something might be coming.

Yeah, sure enough, I know what latex is used for, it's just that I'm not aware what it's capable of when it comes to pdf. Can it make neat AE-styled pages?

Let's be fair here - SR4 is a system with a lot of holes; the only reason it's used is other systems are even worse. So I have nothing against trying to fix 4E, or trying to write a new, upgraded, edition. I just don't feel this attempt should be made as a part of alt.war project. Well, whatever, with this project dead, it's not like it matters any more.


I've tried it, it's really weird. I believe I could cope with learning to use it, but that'd take a book and a lot of free time on my part.


Btw, in what comes to mechanics - I'll need a lot of playtesting or just general opinions with all the stuff I'm hoping to bring into the system.


I don't think many alt.war contributors like CGL in its current shape and form. It's just a question of productive counteraction. I just doubt writing your own rulesystem is really productive.


Sure, I've linked it in this thread already - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UQkzg2u_b9Wq-9IOpEyAwS1TBk16GQHSY2uQZPn9xyM/edit?authkey=CJ3ZoNEB&hl=en&pli=1#.

Posted by: Sengir May 11 2011, 12:33 PM

Wow, I must say I'm impressed by the sheer volume already


Guess there's only one way to find out...I need to brush up my skills anyway...

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi May 11 2011, 02:14 PM

Sorry, didn't understand what you meant here.

Posted by: Sengir May 11 2011, 05:03 PM

Tinkered around a bit while waiting for a DL.... http://uploaded.to/file/yvxgi7ul

I must say what adds the most is quite simply the background image I copied from the 4A pdf

Posted by: Fatum May 11 2011, 07:29 PM

I seem to be unable to download the thing - it just keeps telling me it's starting download, and starting the whole wait-enter captcha-click process all over again.
Could you please up it to rapidshare, or mediafire, or megaupload, or ifolder, whatever?

UPD: Oh, and I've dropped some pics into the gear section - unless I'm able to find something better, it's all going to be like that.

Posted by: Sengir May 12 2011, 07:30 AM

http://www.scribd.com/doc/55243905/Blatt4

(don't ask me were the white line in the sidebar comes from, something with paragraphs)

Posted by: Fatum May 12 2011, 09:56 PM

Oh, this one works nicely; and yeah, seems like Latex works just fine.
The things we'll need in what comes to editing, as far as I can tell, will obviously be chapter header blocks (and subchapter names), Shadowland login pages, images, sidebars, stat tables, and shadowtalker signatures.

Posted by: warrior_allanon May 14 2011, 02:11 AM

Fatum, i've pm'd people on the Alt.war workings and not had one word back from any of them, though i know they havent dropped off the face of the earth.

As for the size, i dont have to put out the whole thing in one shot, i could work it in as a sectional like i'm wanting to do for regional write ups

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi May 16 2011, 11:46 AM

Well, for sure, you never pm'd me.