Re: Official Spelljammer Website (www.spelljammer.org)

Greets all,

In our last episode, Chris Dickinson said:
[snip]
>Of course, all of this anti-3E stuff I see kinda irks me.
>That is NOT a good reason for things to not get posted. Lack of quality and
>absence of someone is. 2E is gone. Welcome to the 3rd Edition. If you don't
>like it, there are plenty of older source materials available on e-bay, as
>well as BtM for other things. The purpose of Compendium is to provide
>players with THIRD EDITION SPELLJAMMER material, not 2nd.

        Ugh.  Why do I feel like G'Kar in that episode where the other
Narn was preaching to him from the Book of G'Kar...

        The official sites are there to support the setting, including
going so far as making conversions.

        Now, history lesson time.  (Man, I'm becoming awefully preachy.)
In very early 2k, I was thinking of shutting down BtM to create a smaller
site (Compendium), which would be contain mostly my stuff, which I'd have
time to write since I wouldn't be spending so much of it maintaining BtM.
It would also fit better with my quickly-becoming-more-complicated life.

        A few months later, Jim Butler (of Wizards) asked the list if we'd
like an official website, like some of the other campaigns had/were getting.
Before I even read this post, several people said (approximately) "We want
BtM!"  I thought "Hey!  I could make Compendium be the official site!  I'll
even have time to write for it since it wil be a smaller site!"  Before I
had time to put these changes into effect, somebody suggested a "council"
to keep the site "pure".  After much voting and the like, a council was
assembled (from all the people that accepted their nominations, go figure).
We -- The High Council -- decided to wait for 3e at the time before we
did too much to see what was what.

        Jump to August of 2k.  3e comes out at the same time I decide to
move to the west coast.  Then, I disappear of the face of the net for
five months (pre-move, move, post-move with no net access, new job).

        Jump again to January 01.  I start picking up XML/XSL at work
while the server BtM and Compendium has some trouble.  (Site was available,
but most of my tools for working on it were not.  Sigh.)  January to early
February I spent re-writting the Compendium data and worked out a process
for adding data.  (This is the current state of the site, BTW.  The process
is worked out, and I'm working on clean DTDs for the data.)
</history>

        About this time, everybody starts asking for SJ3e.  That's expected.
It *has* been quite a while since 3e came out.  Some people even came along
and started working out the rules, but I havn't seen a single submission
to the council for a rules set.  I *never* assumed I'd have to write the
rules.  If I go and make up something, it's going to start a flame war.
People will start saying, "Who does he think he is?  Some king with
actual power that can be usurped?"  And then will come the endless bickering
about whether giff are Large Giants with +12 strength or Large Humanoids
with +4.  Ugh.  My favorite passtime that is not.

        I don't *want* to write a conversion.  I don't think I'm qualified.
I'm just a guy who started the second SJ site as a mirror of the first
SJ site (without anybody's permission (: ).  (After I grew a bit, Richard
-- the first SJ site's webmaster -- mirrored all the info back because
he liked what I'd done with it.  Ah, those were the days.)  I *will* --
with the help of the council -- organize the various ideas into a "whole"
system.  I just havn't seen many of those ideas yet, while things
I post for comment never get commented on. :(

        Oh well, give me a bit to figure out how to deal with this
nightmare, and we'll go from there...  Expect a new survey on Compendium
soon...  We'll let the people decide.

-Static

--
   Don't mistake indifference for an open mind.

   --==<< http://www.darkwoodforest.com/ >>==--