Big Mac wrote:Very impressive, Jeff.
Thanks!
Big Mac wrote:Looking at this project, it actually goes beyond Spelljammer and is something that would interest fans of all 2nd edition D&D campaign settings. And if you do decide to expand this, it could accually appeal to all D&D fans (regardless of edition).
We do want lots of good quality threads in the SJ forum (to pull in more visitors and build up the number of people talking about Spelljammer) but your thread looks so useful to non-SJ fans that I might need to put my moderator hat on and move it to another part of The Piazza forum, where other interested people have a better chance to find the great quantity of information you have collected.
MODERATOR NOTE: I'll leave this thread here for now, because (depending on where you want to go with your project) there are a couple of places that this could be moved to. And once I shunt this thread out of this forum, I can't pull it back and put it in the other forum.
I also think that your work might go "beyond" the scope of Beyond the Moons and be of interest to multiple D&D fans. You might want to find a more "generic" home for this file and then add a link to it in your forum signature.
Yes, I've thought of that; however, since this is more of a "limited testing" type scenario, I figured it would be best to solicit reactions and feedback from the people I was targeting with the information. Once I feel it is ready for a full release (so to speak), I figured I'd start a new thread in one of the general forums.
Big Mac wrote:I rate this as (almost*) being as useful as
Echohawks Complete D&D Monster Index. And considering that your sheet is a beta version and he has been doing this for ages, that is very good. When you have put a bit more work into this, the two things will be resources that will be very helpful to D&D fans.
* = Echohawk narrowly beats you, from my point of view, because he has done classic D&D, 1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition and 4th edition monsters. So that makes his file work for all D&D fans, rather than only work for fans of his preferred D&D edition.While you might be a 2nd edition fan, I think that there will be some 2nd edition fans who want to retroconvert things like Eberron to 2nd edition and for that reason alone, I think there would be a reason to do that "eventual expansion" into 3rd and 4th edition at some point. But please expand
backwards too. Things like Mystara Immortals are documented in classic D&D and 2nd edition rules.
Perfectly understandable. In fact, I would be quite pleased if this lead to discussion on retroconverting later deities. However, my goal is not to have a comprehensive chart detailing tons of minutia about all the deities. Ideally this should be used as quick reference when you just need very basic information, or where to find more information on a specific god or pantheon.
Now, converting backward (at least to 1st edition; I really know very little about D&D Immortals, although I plan to rectify that by getting some of the relevant PDFs) is a little sticky in that the amount of information published is incredibly basic. Prior to the publication of Deities and Demigods/1st Ed Legends and Lore, gods were listed with a name, maybe an epithet (Lord of Air, etc.), and combat statistics. This honestly doesn't help in migrating them to later editions, because you can usually get far more useful information off of a quick wikipedia search (provided they're Earth pantheons, which most of them are; non-human gods were converted long ago). This is the primary reason my list does not include anything from Dragon Magazine before around issue 50 (yet; the disinclusion is obviously not set in stone). Post D&D/L&L, you at least get added information along the lines of power level (although there was no "Intermediate," just Demi, Lesser, and Greater), Home Plane, Epithets (which can form the basis of an updated portfolio), and some minor descriptions. All of that information is essentially included in 2nd ed stats.
Big Mac wrote:Many gods get mentioned in products without getting specific rules in those products. The Spelljammer products are quite good at mentioning gods without giving game details (for which a GM needs to look elsewhere). But I think that a GM or player researching a deity like Celestian, may benifit a lot from getting all the Greyhawk, Spelljammer and Planescape references, so that they can read every paragraph. So you might need to add listings of gods that leave a lot of blank cells in your table.
Well, if they want to know EVERYTHING written about a deity, the god list you linked would be a better resource. My goal is to allow for quick cross referencing when a DM needs to choose a similar god to use, wants to compare basic info when developing a new god, or needs to quickly check what god is in what pantheon. The one other minor goal I have is to make it easy to find out what gods lack specific basic information so they can be completed by fans. That's more of my own personal completionist compulsion than a stated goal, though.
Big Mac wrote:I think I would personally find it easier if the "Pantheon" was to the left of the Sphere columns, so that I could look at the Home Plane and Pantheon at the same time, but that is a minor niggle - I can make those columns "invisible" and get the same effect. However, if "Pantheon" was next to the deity name, you might be able to pull the stuff in brackets off of the deity names. Doing that, might save a bit of space.
That was originally a sorting only column, but you're right, I can probably move that more tot he left.
Big Mac wrote:You might want to add a column for "worshipers alignments" or "cleric alignments" as a lot of people playing a cleric might want to know this sort of thing.
I kinda figure MOST of that can be figured out with some critical thinking, to be honest.
Most clerics and specialty priests need to be the same alignment as the deity, and the worshippers' alignment usually contains one or two close alignments (i.e. only varies one step) as well, unless they are patrons for a specific field of study. I could add it if there was demand, though.
Big Mac wrote:You might need to reorder your listings. You have currently ordered most of the deities into pantheon order (and then alphabetical order within that) but Tyr doesn't appear with the FR gods and appears twice in the Norse section. I think you might have a conflict of interests here, because some people are going to want to dig into your data for specific pantheons and other people are going to want to dig into your data for a specific god.
That was on purpose, actually. Tyr, Loviatar, etc. are essentially interloper gods. They're gods from a specific pantheon worshipped outside of that pantheon (Ptah in SJ would fall into the same category); however, they are still Norse or Finnish or <insert pantheon> gods. The FR is what indicates where that aspect of the god is worshipped. I can put my reasoning for this into the notes section when I add it.
Big Mac wrote:The people wanting a god would probabably want the entire list to be in alphabetical order.
Sorting in Excel is easy enough to do.
I find a pure alphabetical sort style defeats my goals for this list, which is why it is not done that way.
Big Mac wrote:The people wanting pantheons would probably want to be able to see all the gods in one pantheon in one go.
Mind you the people interested in a specific Home Plane might also want to see all those gods in one go.
Echohawk has put some filters into the top cells of his spreadsheet. Maybe you could do the same sort of thing.
The best way to do that would be to create dynamic webpages with a backend database, IMO, which is well outside my area of expertise. (I'd be happy to do the data entry if someone coded pages to do that though.) For me, trying to create a fancy presentation distracts too much from the content I want to research and deliver.
Big Mac wrote:AuldDragon wrote:The sources I drew upon were all major campaign settings, major (and many minor ones, but not all by any means) accessories, Dragon Magazines between ~80 and 280, and a handful of Polyhedron magazines. I do not have access to very many issues of Polyhedron, so anyone with access, I'd appreciate assistance in adding in appropriate info. I may have missed some truly obscure gods, especially if they're in older Monstrous Compendium releases (I briefly skimmed the Annuals and the SJ appendices already) or adventures, as well as any detailed information from settings like Mystara, Greyhawk, Birthright, etc., so any assistance there is appreciated.
I think you are going to need to list the stuff you have checked, so that people who want to help you, know what they should check for you.
Good point. I'll put that in a notes page as well.
Big Mac wrote:You have missed out the Clusterspace pantheon (from the Astromundi Cluster boxed set). (The author of that boxed set says to use other deities and change the names. I infer this to mean that these deities have come to Clusterspace with hidden identities**, but someone could instead infer that they are new deities with the same stats.)
** = Just FYI, the reason why I prefer to infer these gods as being the same gods as the gods they are "copied from" is that it makes it more likely that a SJ cleric from another crystal sphere will be able to regain spells. From a playability point of view, it is a good idea to use "recycled gods" rather than "new gods" in the Spelljammer universe.
Well, I didn't "miss" them; I interpreted it the same way (although I swear I remember it saying they ARE those other gods rather than saying to just use the stats for them, I'll have to check on that). I was going to list the names in another column with known aliases, but I forgot I was going to do that.
I agree with you about "recycling" gods; I think that unless the deity is from an Earth pantheon that hasn't been developed yet or is a pan-spherical racial deity (another Gnome god that fits into the whole pantheon across most spheres for example) that fills an existing gap, we should try to use an existing god under a new alias.
Big Mac wrote:AuldDragon wrote:If there's anything unclear about the list, please ask! I started writing it just for me, so I'm sure some things may be obscure.
My first suggestion would be that you look at Echohawk's Complete Index of D&D Monsters and then use that to work out how you can use the other "sheets" in your spreadsheet to provide additional helpful data.
As you can see, Echohawk calls his first tab "Index" and it contains useful data that is very similar to your sort of data.
His second sheet is called "Sources" and is a list of all the D&D products that he has checked so far. If you had your own "Sources" tab, people could see how far along your "beta" project was going. More importantly, Echohawk lists something in his sources even if it doesn't have monsters in it. So as you search through D&D products and find they have no gods in them, you could add them to a "Sources" tab, so people don't ask if you have checked things you have already gone through.
His third sheet is called "Notes" and as you are using some bits of shorthand, I think you could benifit from having a similar sheet. You are using a lot more shorthand that Echohawk. You could probably cut down a bit on the shorthand, but I think that you have so much information, that you will probably need two or three times as many notes columns as him.
Things you probably need notes columns for include:
- PL (Power Level),
- AL (Alignment) - while this might be obvious to some people, a few people might get confused by things like "Va" and you might as well shove this in,
- Home Plane - note that all of the Dragonlance gods came from three variant outer planes in Dragonlance Adventures and this conflicts with the 2nd edition information***,
- Spheres - You have multiple letter codes as well as colour coding going on here. It is bound to confuse some people.
*** = Where two sources differ, I think you should give both types of information and not take sides in any "arguments" over X being better than Y. So for Dragonlance, I think you should list both the 1e/3e Home Planes and the 2e Home Planes.
Good suggesstions, and I'll take them under advisement. For now, I'm focusing on 2nd edition, however, so where 1e and 2e information differs, I usually go with 2e. I'm not trying to take any sides, I'm just working within what I know.
Jeff
