Thank you for telling publishers to put their stuff in epub - and thank you for publishing in epub yourself! It makes things so much easier to read on my phone (which is one of the reasons I use D&D Beyond), and my wife has low vision so she needs to read epub (She doesn't play dnd, but she is an accessibility specialist, so it warms my heart when people take the time to make things accessible)
Thank you for highlighting the power of markdown! I converted the Forge of Foes epub to Markdown for use in Obsidian a few months ago. Thank you for publishing that as epub. The resources you’ve added today are extremely valuable. Hopefully this helps more people migrate into better tools than PDF.
30:25 Our dedicated 5E D&D group had our long running campaign take a break due to our forever DM getting deployed. Me and one other player reminisced about 4E and decided we should teach the other players 4E with a short adventure. They only have known 5E. Some amazingly intrepid people have turned the 4E character creator into a fully offline application with ALL the released options from ALL supplements (including options from Dragon magazines) for the world to use. I won't speculate on legalities or anything nor point to where you can get it, but it isn't not too hard to find. It is a pain to set up, though. With it, we've successfully taught our other 3 players 4E and they are having a blast.
Shadowrun was the RPG I owned the most books for and played the most back in the 3rd edition days. That being said, there's so much crunch that I just can't anymore with it, even though it's near and dear to me. Thanks for the neat dice roller and the "review" of the DM guide.
Very much worth noting that the paid version of Cities Without Number has rules for spellcasters for your cyberpunk system, once that's installed recreating Shadowrun with an OSR style ruleset seems pretty doable to me.
Looking at different types of GM Guides is a Great idea for a series. I found this video beyond helpful. It will help me make the most of the 2024 DMG. I can’t wait for you to do the same with the 2014 DMG as I think it’s very underrated and has lots of useful features that go unnoticed.
Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding are probably my primary way of getting RPG content these days. I buy an actual book maybe once every few months, but my wife has no issues with low priced purchases that bring no physical objects into our space! Separately, you've talked about Uncharted Journeys and the A5E travel systems (and recently the One Ring 5e book). It would be interesting to see how to use those in an at-the-table improv use vs. a game prep use, and how to cherry pick their content to use together, either from a what's the best part of each standpoint, and a where they cover each other's weakness standpoint.
I love hearing you digging on Kevin Crawford’s work. The Tags are designed to have two picked/rolled and mashed up. He has Stars Without Number, and Worlds Without Number as well. Love his work
Re: digital tabletop. I had an old TV that sits relatively flat on the table (or some blocks might work for you). I taped a thin plastic protector over it, and we had many happy sessions with minis and terrain, while saving me hours of map drawing. When done, just unplug and remove from table (no modification necessary). You can always go more complicated if you and your players really dig it.
I LOVE when I can get an epub book for my RPG books. I like using my iPad when I don't feel like reading the physical book or if I'm not at home so I don't have to lug around my books.
The one thing I was wondering about with releasing things in PDF as opposed to epub and especially markdown is do you think some of the publishers do this to try to prevent easier sharing/piracy?
The best use I've had for tvs is background environment stuff. Have some landscape or the monster they are fighting and themed music. Honestly, queued music is the most helpful "extra" I add.
Happy Holidays, Mike. This is probably better asked via patreon, but curious about others input as well. I have been toying around making "Random Tables" for Up and Downbeat scenarios/encounters and wondered if you ever tried this type of thing. I know most of the time the meat of the happenings during these isvery story centric, but I also am sometimes tired or just not firing on all cylinders - and I like to roll dice. So even having them be vague is fine. Just stuff to get the juices flowing
One thing I think could be super useful with a one-note-per-monster approach, would be if things like CR and creature type were moved into the frontmatter as properties, so that one could use things like dataview and get some basic database-like functions inside Obsidian (like with dndbeyond or with the artisanal 5e monster DB).
I forked his github repo and added that kind of stuff as YAML headers. To find it, replace "mshea" with "js-mickey" in the URL for the repository. I can't make the fork show up in github search (this is my first time using github for development instead of simply cloning existing repositories for desktop use).
Epub is ok, but liquid mode on acrobat reader works pretty well for me with pdfs. I really like to use Obsidian for Markdown though. I wish DnD Beyond would allow us to download our books in Markdown
That’s a good option for content that hasn’t been published into epub. Using a format that’s designed with devices first, like epub, is going to be more predictable and far less resource intense than refactoring print-first designs using AI like Liquid.
@johnmickey5017 hmm I don't think epub is designed for any devices at all, it's made to be device agnostic, which is what liquid mode PDF does. It doesn't work for all PDFs though, the PDF must have been exported a certain way
@ PDF is based on maintaining the design of a printed page, epub is designed with digital devices’ advantages in mind, including being able to adapt the content and layout to any screen size. That’s what I mean by “designed with devices in mind.” Original PDF specs couldn’t even handle hyperlinks. The feature set and advantages of each format are totally different. It’s good that there’s a band-aid for PDF, but it’s better to use the right format for the right medium in the first place. It isn’t true that liquid mode is device agnostic. It is so resource intensive that it has significant minimum requirements.
@@johnmickey5017 Sure, you can have your own preferences. Not sure what your goal is. Look, the reason I'm saying epub is ok but PDF is ok too is that for me they provide different experiences. I like epub or mobi for long walls of text, like reading a romance for example. I like liquid mode for sectioned text where styling and information design can improve the reading experience. You may say liquid mode is a band aid for you, but it provides a much closer experience to a responsive web page, for informational text and images. There is a reason why editors and graphic designers exist (and I used to be one of them before switching to tech), and that's not to design for print or to "make things pretty". Epub eliminates almost entirely the intentionality of the page layout, except for long text as I said. Yes I know it's more accessible but there's things you lose on the way. For RPG content, it is usually desired to have some good formatting, hierarchy and information design, they're not usually made of walls of text. And that's the reason why, for me, what Obsidian does with Markdown wins over both formats. You can have the full accessible data, responsive for every screen, and still apply styling to improve information design. The only downside I see is that it dirties the raw data a bit, but it's easy to parse.
I actual really dislike the treasure tables in 2024 compared to 2014. It involves to much rolling and flipping. First you have to roll on the random treasure horde table in chapter 4, than flip to chapter 7 to roll on the item rarity table, than flip again to the random magic item section, than roll a d4 for theme (it mentions treasure being sorted by theme in the monster manual which isn't out yet), than roll a d100. That's too many steps for me to randomly determine treasure. I think the assumption is dm will hand pick treasure. However if you are like ma and like to roll they could have made it a bit easier. The 2014 guider was easy chose the appropriate hoard table roll a d100 then roll dx times and magic item sub table. much less flipping and rolling. I suppose it will be easier when the monster manual comes out as it seems the monster entries will tell you what treasure to hand out for a given monster.
I'll definitely say a monitor whether lying flat on the table, or sitting someplace every one can see is a great visual aid. Being able to just insert your maps on it is very helpful. I can see where just drawing the map would be good enough as well. But I prefer the 50" monitor at end of table standing upright.
Thank you for telling publishers to put their stuff in epub - and thank you for publishing in epub yourself! It makes things so much easier to read on my phone (which is one of the reasons I use D&D Beyond), and my wife has low vision so she needs to read epub (She doesn't play dnd, but she is an accessibility specialist, so it warms my heart when people take the time to make things accessible)
I’m so on board with more EPUB
Agreed!
Great video!
Torn between leaving a first comment and watching first to have something meaningful to say. Guess I'm just that shallow. Happy Holidays y'all.
Mike, this was a great episode! Incredibly dense with highly useful and practical information.
Thank you for highlighting the power of markdown! I converted the Forge of Foes epub to Markdown for use in Obsidian a few months ago. Thank you for publishing that as epub.
The resources you’ve added today are extremely valuable. Hopefully this helps more people migrate into better tools than PDF.
30:25 Our dedicated 5E D&D group had our long running campaign take a break due to our forever DM getting deployed. Me and one other player reminisced about 4E and decided we should teach the other players 4E with a short adventure. They only have known 5E.
Some amazingly intrepid people have turned the 4E character creator into a fully offline application with ALL the released options from ALL supplements (including options from Dragon magazines) for the world to use. I won't speculate on legalities or anything nor point to where you can get it, but it isn't not too hard to find. It is a pain to set up, though.
With it, we've successfully taught our other 3 players 4E and they are having a blast.
Shadowrun was the RPG I owned the most books for and played the most back in the 3rd edition days. That being said, there's so much crunch that I just can't anymore with it, even though it's near and dear to me. Thanks for the neat dice roller and the "review" of the DM guide.
Very much worth noting that the paid version of Cities Without Number has rules for spellcasters for your cyberpunk system, once that's installed recreating Shadowrun with an OSR style ruleset seems pretty doable to me.
Looking at different types of GM Guides is a Great idea for a series. I found this video beyond helpful. It will help me make the most of the 2024 DMG. I can’t wait for you to do the same with the 2014 DMG as I think it’s very underrated and has lots of useful features that go unnoticed.
Merry Christmas to the Flourishes! 🎅🎄🎲🎲🎲🦄
I love how Mike keeps calling "Cities without Number" "City of Arches" and "Shadowrun" "Shadowdark". We know what you mean.
Thanks! The suggested bookmarks for the new DMG is very useful!
Awesome stuff, Mike, thank you for releasing these .md files!
Eyy! Good to see Obsidian getting some love!
Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding are probably my primary way of getting RPG content these days. I buy an actual book maybe once every few months, but my wife has no issues with low priced purchases that bring no physical objects into our space!
Separately, you've talked about Uncharted Journeys and the A5E travel systems (and recently the One Ring 5e book). It would be interesting to see how to use those in an at-the-table improv use vs. a game prep use, and how to cherry pick their content to use together, either from a what's the best part of each standpoint, and a where they cover each other's weakness standpoint.
I love hearing you digging on Kevin Crawford’s work. The Tags are designed to have two picked/rolled and mashed up. He has Stars Without Number, and Worlds Without Number as well. Love his work
I'm interested in doing the app for the dice roller 33:18
I like the minimal approach.
Re: digital tabletop. I had an old TV that sits relatively flat on the table (or some blocks might work for you). I taped a thin plastic protector over it, and we had many happy sessions with minis and terrain, while saving me hours of map drawing. When done, just unplug and remove from table (no modification necessary). You can always go more complicated if you and your players really dig it.
I LOVE when I can get an epub book for my RPG books. I like using my iPad when I don't feel like reading the physical book or if I'm not at home so I don't have to lug around my books.
The one thing I was wondering about with releasing things in PDF as opposed to epub and especially markdown is do you think some of the publishers do this to try to prevent easier sharing/piracy?
This is the beginning of it all: sly flourish is becoming the new donjon
Thanks
The best use I've had for tvs is background environment stuff. Have some landscape or the monster they are fighting and themed music. Honestly, queued music is the most helpful "extra" I add.
Hi Mike, have you done any videos guiding new indie publishers through basic elements of marketing and releasing products for 5e (or other rpgs)?
Happy Holidays, Mike. This is probably better asked via patreon, but curious about others input as well.
I have been toying around making "Random Tables" for Up and Downbeat scenarios/encounters and wondered if you ever tried this type of thing. I know most of the time the meat of the happenings during these isvery story centric, but I also am sometimes tired or just not firing on all cylinders - and I like to roll dice. So even having them be vague is fine. Just stuff to get the juices flowing
you've got the map fu article on sly flourish
One thing I think could be super useful with a one-note-per-monster approach, would be if things like CR and creature type were moved into the frontmatter as properties, so that one could use things like dataview and get some basic database-like functions inside Obsidian (like with dndbeyond or with the artisanal 5e monster DB).
I forked his github repo and added that kind of stuff as YAML headers. To find it, replace "mshea" with "js-mickey" in the URL for the repository. I can't make the fork show up in github search (this is my first time using github for development instead of simply cloning existing repositories for desktop use).
heads up for tagging/search purposes: wrong "hoard" in desc.
Epub is ok, but liquid mode on acrobat reader works pretty well for me with pdfs. I really like to use Obsidian for Markdown though. I wish DnD Beyond would allow us to download our books in Markdown
That’s a good option for content that hasn’t been published into epub. Using a format that’s designed with devices first, like epub, is going to be more predictable and far less resource intense than refactoring print-first designs using AI like Liquid.
@johnmickey5017 hmm I don't think epub is designed for any devices at all, it's made to be device agnostic, which is what liquid mode PDF does. It doesn't work for all PDFs though, the PDF must have been exported a certain way
@ PDF is based on maintaining the design of a printed page, epub is designed with digital devices’ advantages in mind, including being able to adapt the content and layout to any screen size.
That’s what I mean by “designed with devices in mind.” Original PDF specs couldn’t even handle hyperlinks.
The feature set and advantages of each format are totally different. It’s good that there’s a band-aid for PDF, but it’s better to use the right format for the right medium in the first place.
It isn’t true that liquid mode is device agnostic. It is so resource intensive that it has significant minimum requirements.
@@johnmickey5017 Sure, you can have your own preferences. Not sure what your goal is.
Look, the reason I'm saying epub is ok but PDF is ok too is that for me they provide different experiences. I like epub or mobi for long walls of text, like reading a romance for example. I like liquid mode for sectioned text where styling and information design can improve the reading experience. You may say liquid mode is a band aid for you, but it provides a much closer experience to a responsive web page, for informational text and images. There is a reason why editors and graphic designers exist (and I used to be one of them before switching to tech), and that's not to design for print or to "make things pretty". Epub eliminates almost entirely the intentionality of the page layout, except for long text as I said. Yes I know it's more accessible but there's things you lose on the way.
For RPG content, it is usually desired to have some good formatting, hierarchy and information design, they're not usually made of walls of text.
And that's the reason why, for me, what Obsidian does with Markdown wins over both formats. You can have the full accessible data, responsive for every screen, and still apply styling to improve information design. The only downside I see is that it dirties the raw data a bit, but it's easy to parse.
I actual really dislike the treasure tables in 2024 compared to 2014. It involves to much rolling and flipping. First you have to roll on the random treasure horde table in chapter 4, than flip to chapter 7 to roll on the item rarity table, than flip again to the random magic item section, than roll a d4 for theme (it mentions treasure being sorted by theme in the monster manual which isn't out yet), than roll a d100. That's too many steps for me to randomly determine treasure. I think the assumption is dm will hand pick treasure. However if you are like ma and like to roll they could have made it a bit easier.
The 2014 guider was easy chose the appropriate hoard table roll a d100 then roll dx times and magic item sub table. much less flipping and rolling. I suppose it will be easier when the monster manual comes out as it seems the monster entries will tell you what treasure to hand out for a given monster.
I'll definitely say a monitor whether lying flat on the table, or sitting someplace every one can see is a great visual aid. Being able to just insert your maps on it is very helpful. I can see where just drawing the map would be good enough as well. But I prefer the 50" monitor at end of table standing upright.
Thanks