Question for Doug and all LOTR Narrators

Would an index for the FOTR SB, Fell Beasts, and the TTT SB be useful? I was thinking of doing one for each book, so that you could tuck the index into the back of each book and find exactly what you needed quickly.

Doug, if I went forward with this and posted the results here, would that be a problem? I suspect Decipher frowns on posting extensive parts of the sourcebooks to internet boards, and an index would basically delineate everything that's in the book (though it won't give stats). At any rate, I wanted to ask before I put in the time and effort.

Thanks!

I'd sure be interested. Decipher willing, you might want to do so "after" the second printing comes out and take advantage of any pagation adjustments? Just a thought...

Tharkun
:)

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Originally posted by Tharkun
I'd sure be interested. Decipher willing, you might want to do so "after" the second printing comes out and take advantage of any pagation adjustments? Just a thought...

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As far as I know, Decipher has no plans to do a second printing of the FOTR SB, the TTT SB, or Fell Beasts.

And I'm willing to bet the changes they make to the core book for its second printing won't affect the pagination, since they're not doing significant revisions. :)

I remember that in AD&D (yes, that is second edition) TSR put out a "master index" with a screen. The index indexed all the major rule books (and I think a lot of minor ones) so that with one booklet a DM could find the pages of every book that talked about a subject. It was incredibly useful. Something along that line would be one of the most valuable Narator tools there it. It speads up game play SO much.

Gavynn

Now that's a thought...a master index for everything.

I had originally planned to do book-specific indexes, but I could just as easily do one master index for everything...

Hmm...

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Originally posted by Ineti
Would an index for the FOTR SB, Fell Beasts, and the TTT SB be useful? I was thinking of doing one for each book, so that you could tuck the index into the back of each book and find exactly what you needed quickly.

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I would heartily endorse such an undertaking, especially a "master" index covering all of the books - so I don't have to try and remember which book had the stats for Orc Medicine, for example.

Ideally, the format for such a thing would be bookmark-shaped...

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Originally posted by Jason Durall
Ideally, the format for such a thing would be bookmark-shaped...

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Not sure what the idea format would be, but I'm thinking a Word doc or pdf, with bookmarks to get you to specific sections (People, places, Edges, spells, etc.).

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Originally posted by Ineti
Not sure what the idea format would be, but I'm thinking a Word doc or pdf, with bookmarks to get you to specific sections (People, places, Edges, spells, etc.).

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Actually, I was thinking of something actually in the shape of a bookmark. Chaosium has done this with a few things - quick reference contents/indexes on bookmarks, which were ideal for GM usage.

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Originally posted by Jason Durall
Actually, I was thinking of something actually in the shape of a bookmark. Chaosium has done this with a few things - quick reference contents/indexes on bookmarks, which were ideal for GM usage.

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But...the master index would be HUGE. How could you condense that down onto a bookmark and keep it legible without a magnifying glass?

1) I can't think of any reason Decipher would object to the creation of such an index (as long as it didn't include any actual material from the books, but you knew that already).

2) If you use a database-type back end, you could easily output both a master index for all supplements as well as book specific indices. You could also output to multiple formats (like bookmars) with a minimum of fuss.

If you used the right program to enter all the data into, you would be able to just "sort" the data into whatever specific indexes you want, such as a master index, then an item index, and a place index, whatever you wanted. Computer programs make it so easy to do any variation on a list of data you should take the most advantage of it you can. That would even let you sort by specific books if you wanted to make a more narrow index from the master list.

Personally I don't see how looking up "orc" in the master index would be considerably slower than flipping to the "creature" or "race" section of the index and then finding "orc", but that is just me.

Great idea Ineti - after the amazing spell cards, I am sure that this will be of the highest quality.

Gavynn

Wow. I may not be able to implement an ideal index then. I have no idea what software is out there.

I was planning to just go through the books and compile an index the old fashioned way.


Hmm...now I feel lost. I think it is a great idea, I just don't know how to implement it.

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Originally posted by Ineti
Wow. I may not be able to implement an ideal index then. I have no idea what software is out there.

I was planning to just go through the books and compile an index the old fashioned way.

Hmm...now I feel lost. I think it is a great idea, I just don't know how to implement it.

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Use of Microsoft Access, or even Excel, should be enough to accomplish this task.

My idea of the bookmark wasn't really aimed at a full index being available, but more a quick reference index, such as for charts, tables, and specific rules which would be refered to often.

This sounds like a very neat idea! Not too helpful for me in particular, but I'm probably one of the few that have only bought the Core Book. :)

Good luck and God bless on your project, Ineti!

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Originally posted by Jason Durall
Use of Microsoft Access, or even Excel, should be enough to accomplish this task.

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I personal would suggest the use of a WIKI (like fi. www.zwiki.org) so all interested could help.

WIKI's are a great thing for collaborative work.

But this would unfortunatly need a webserver to be used.

But there are also lots of free WIKI's out there.

My Two Cents,
Eol

I forget what prgram I used when I made indexes back at school, but it would not help here as that program searched the text and basically made it for us. Since we can't search the text electronically, we do have to do it the old fashioned way. For just sorting them it would be easy enough to use excell, I would think.

Gavynn

I'm leaning toward Excel too. Access is just a huge pile of confusion for me.

Use excell -

NOT ACCESS!! Noooooooo!!!!

Gavynn

Hey Ineti,

If you want I would be willing to help pull references for you. May be you could pass out some key words to a few of us and we could make a list of pages we can find with that reference. If you gave each key word to a few people that wanted to help we could probable search and get most of them. Just an idea. I am more than willing to help and I am sure others here would be willing to help. Let us know if we can do anything. The index would be very usefull and since it looks like Decipher is not against the idea I would love to see it sooner rather than later.

mcb

How goes the index?

mcb

Did you get my PM, Matthew? :)

Haven't touched it recently. I had another project to finish this weekend, and am working on my chronicle. The index is happening when it can happen.

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Originally posted by eolruin
I personal would suggest the use of a WIKI (like fi. www.zwiki.org) so all interested could help.

WIKI's are a great thing for collaborative work.

But this would unfortunatly need a webserver to be used.

But there are also lots of free WIKI's out there.

My Two Cents,
Eol

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Wikis are great for online colaboration, but not for pretty output.

If you want help getting it all together, a fan authored wiki would be great for gathering the data.

If you want to print in multiple formats, I would suggest XML/XSLT to hold/view the data. For example:

Code:

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<INDEX>
  <TOPIC Name="Combat">
    <PAGEREF Book="Core Rules" Pages="xxx-zzz" />
    <TOPIC Name="Initiative">
      <PAGEREF Book="Core Rules" Pages="yyy" />
    </TOPIC >
  </TOPIC >
</INDEX>

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Originally posted by MightyCthulhu
If you want help getting it all together, a fan authored wiki would be great for gathering the data.

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm going to stick with Excel. If someone wants to take the data I assemble in Excel and turn it into a web product, they'll have my blessing. :)