hashuts lil helper:
Good on you then. I think that no one ever was trying to do this in isolation, and no ones input would have been ignored out of hand. If people want to help, they should help. Personally I think it can only be good for the community. But like all change it won’t be equally good for all members of the community. If you want to make your voice heard, it can be heard, just don’t say you weren’t properly invited so you won’t do it.
Method:
i think guys, that maybe someone should look at the playtest rules and OFFER input, rather than be so cautious.
to my knowledge, they want anyone and everyone to help out. maybe Kevin is really OPEN to suggestions and opinions from the cdo community. also just beacuse someone has an idea, and mentioned it on a decade-old army race community board, doesnt mean someone hasnt been thinking along the same line for years. how do you know this guy hasnt been making up similar units/ideas on non-exclusive forums? if say GW adapts his list for play, where would it leave all the hard work of CDO members? Chaos dwarves are not the exclusive domain of any fans,
worse case scenerio
think of some inexperianced/unknowledgable writer in hollywood, gets a gig writing star trek. now some trekkies have been fans for 40 years, as opposed to this guy who might or might not be a fan… should he go to the community for everything? do you even realize how that would turn out for the star trek franchise if he did? instead the writer makes a FRESH origin story (soon to be in theaters…)
he is not working in isolation. he is asking for feedback. and to my knowledge from playing on the GT scene, the man has been playing warhammer for at least 15 years, so he has about as much info of the race as the rest of us. no one owes CDO anything, and the dark elf forum was extremely a rare case of a community affecting anything. he has been given a job, by people who play against more opponents, armies more often than most of us combined.
why dont we help and offer input? this could be big, (even for a fan-list) and might be what projects the chaos dwarves into the line of sight of GW. there isnt any reason why this should bother anyone IMHO.
that being said, what if i do want to play my ravening hordes list in a indy gt in those states?
different disscusion for different time i guess.
btw, Willmark, my bad, i mentioned you to those guys because i figured they might need your expert advice, and that you wouldn’t mind helping out the chaos dwarf way…not so they can steal stuff from the CDO community, so sorry if thats how it was viewed.
my 2 cents
dedwrekka:
Good on you then. I think that no one ever was trying to do this in isolation, and no ones input would have been ignored out of hand. If people want to help, they should help. Personally I think it can only be good for the community. But like all change it won't be equally good for all members of the community. If you want to make your voice heard, it can be heard, just don't say you weren't properly invited so you won't do it.I just think there was a little miscommunication, a little assumption, and a little lack of communication (Not on any single side either). If the Indy game groups are writing a list for their tourneys, they'll use their site. This doesn't mean they wont listen to our ideas. It doesn't mean they haven't looked at our stuff and our ideas.
hashuts lil helper
Grimstonefire:
That’s great news!. I wonder if he would let us put it in WoH?
mattbird:
Hi guys, this is Matt.
Just wanted to stop in and say hi, and give a little background and hopefully allay any concerns. I’m a longtime Chaos Dwarf player; they were the army that got me into the game in the 90s, the first army I played, and pretty much ALL I played up until 2004. I’m a fan, and I’m personally invested in the army and the book. I’m going to be involved primarily in playtesting and design direction. ( I’m a graphic designer by trade.)
I’m not the writer of the book or the rules. That’s Kevin, who you already have some background on. IMO he has an excellent grasp of the rules, is very creative when it comes to background writing, and is all around the kind of guy you’d want in charge. He has the experience and the enthusiasm.
We had a drink-fueled idea at the Colonial GT a few weeks back to get the local Indy TOs to agree to let Kevin dig up his old CD rulebook, playtest it, have the TOs all agree that it was balanced, and make it official for the 4 local Indy GTs. They all agreed that it was a good idea, and to go for it. So we’ve spent the last week or so tweaking them up and getting them into an army book format.
As some have said, this is not a group army writing project. I think at the end of the day those never work. Kevin wrote a Chaos Dwarf list a few years ago, as he wrote a lot of rules. The Chaos Dwarf rules have basically sat on the shelf since he wrote them. They were written before the new Mortals of Chaos or Daemons of Chaos books were out, and potentially before this site got going. (I’m not sure how long you’ve been up). So while the current play test list is not based on any work this site has done, it’s not because CDO has been disregarded. It’s because the rule book had already been worked on years ago.
What we are planning is several months of world-wide play testing, at which point we need to get the 4 key tourney organizers to agree that the book is good to go. As that goes on, I’ll be working up a full-sized 100+ page army book in the mold of GWs other books. It will be available as a free download when complete. We aim to have it finished by the end of the summer.
What we DO need is help in a few areas, which CDO members are in a great position to help with:
�?� General feedback. What is balanced, what costs too many points, etc. What parts of the background fluff were missed?
�?� Playtesting. Testing will be open to anybody, anywhere. CDO members have Chaos Dwarf armies- we need battle reports!
�?� Artwork. I’ll need a group of illustrators for spot illustrations of each unit type, layout ornaments, and a color cover.
�?� Photography of models, conversion guides, etc.
Some people have started a thread with new unit suggestions. Please try to resist the temptation to add to that thread, at least until we release the first draft. 
(Many of the ideas in there are present in the first draft.)
Anyway, I hope that I did address your main concerns, and hopefully got you excited about the project as well. The first draft of the book should be ready to release shortly, and I’ll stop back in then with info on how to download it. In the interim, the best way to reach me is through the Warmonger forums.
http://warmongers.ziggyqubert.com/wmbb/viewforum.php?f=19&sid=9481d15c8559ec5e96fa0b933a0bb025
Thanks!
-Matt Birdoff
mattbird:
that being said, what if i do want to play my ravening hordes list in a indy gt in those states?This is one of my concerns as well. It will need to be addressed.
different disscusion for different time i guess.
Method
mattbird:
That's great news!. I wonder if he would let us put it in WoH?Happy to let you guys use as much of it as you want, certainly! WoH is great.
Grimstonefire
mattbird:
why is he mining for ideas as if this has never been done before?Hi, he's definitely not mining for ideas. He's taking the role of lead army book writer. The collaborative part of the project rests in the playtesting and feedback, not rules design. I agree with you that collaborative group rules writing rarely works.
Right now, it's just another collaborative project. It might turn out fine, but I don't see how it's any more valid or interesting than the dozens of others I've seen.
Thommy H
mattbird:
Apparently I'm being offered up for help/art/designs what have you, on their site when no contact to me let alone any other staff.I hope my initial post above has answered your question about why CDO was not referenced or reached out to in writing the first draft of the rules. It was an old Kevin project that was sitting on a shelf, until we got the local tourney organizers drunk enough to let us pull them out as "legal".
Am only the only one the sees this as.... We are good enough to help with the grunt work but apparently can't design rules?
Hrmmm.
Willmark
Willmark:
Suffice of to say right now my real response is saved to my drafts until I’ve had more time to consider…
Method:
great to hear matt!! i hope this is as successful as you guys are planning. once it comes out, i’ll get your buddy wiatt (hehe) and the others to playtest with me on sunday game nights!!
frankly, i believe this is the way to release it, get tournys to back it, those tourny players being it back to their regions, in a nice handy 100 page booklet, more TO’s adopt it, the knowlege spreads…
and WOH could make a big feature article about it by the author, (or someone close to him) then the aussies and brits see it via WOH, and finally GW notices it.
CDO could be big, hand in hand with this.
and honestly, as opposed to making fan-list even on a site such as ours, how would we get even the greatest list into the public eye? we cant, to the dismay of the many listmakers on this board. there is just not enough of us, and most of us have play groups of less than 12 people.
this is the only way to expand for the chaos dwarves, isnt it? without asking for Gav to save our race or some other GW miracle some of us pray for…
i think we should all be in support… what harm could it be?
why is he mining for ideas as if this has never been done before?Hi, he’s definitely not mining for ideas. He’s taking the role of lead army book writer. The collaborative part of the project rests in the playtesting and feedback, not rules design. I agree with you that collaborative group rules writing rarely works.
Right now, it’s just another collaborative project. It might turn out fine, but I don’t see how it’s any more valid or interesting than the dozens of others I’ve seen.
Thommy H
mattbird
Tarrakk Blackhand:
Hi Matt! Gald to hear that someone is working on bringing CD’s into the “Times”, as it were.
Just wondering if you’re going to keep the same figures as the RH list, like Bull Centaurs, Sneaky Gits, etc.
I don’t know how you’re going to change the rules, but I’d still like to keep the same models.
thanX
Trevor Ursulescu
Monster Hobbies
Thommy H:
Okay, this sounds a lot more like what I thought it was now, which is good. I look forward to seeing what the list is like.
mattbird:
Hi Matt! Gald to hear that someone is working on bringing CD's into the "Times", as it were.Yup! All the current units are in there.
Just wondering if you're going to keep the same figures as the RH list, like Bull Centaurs, Sneaky Gits, etc.
I don't know how you're going to change the rules, but I'd still like to keep the same models.
thanX
Trevor Ursulescu
Monster Hobbies
Tarrakk Blackhand
Tarrakk Blackhand:
ThanX Matt…so in other words, the CD’s are still the original CD’s with probably some rules “Updates” to make them more playable in the current edition, as well as some newer units that as of recently, haven’t been tested.
What about bringing back some of the old heroes from 4th edition that were removed from the Ravening Hordes list? Astrogoth comes to mind.
mattbird:
pretty much all the suspected and desired characters and units will be in there. 
Tarrakk Blackhand:
What about including the Hell Cannon so that we can also use it in the CD army. It’s a redily avalible model…pretty much the only CD model in GW at this time, and saves us all from converting.
Also, check out this link - https://discourse.chaos-dwarfs.com/t/10712
Grimstonefire:
As someone who has written a lot of lists over the years (enough material for more like 2 books), I will be interested to see what you guys come up with.
I assume based on your replies so far that it will not be that original in terms of the composition (and so the background as well). Understandable considering you want people to use their current armies.
Like Willmark I will wait to comment more until I read what you’ve done.
100 pages is quite a bit… I’m up to about 80 pages of decent stuff so far, though I’ve only got about 4 pages of model pics. I would be very interested to see how you fill all those
You can do multiple quotes per reply btw, just copy and paste
apocalypstia:
Excitement, despair, hope… lol, this thread has it all. I like whats being attempted and can appreciate the magnitude of this endeavor.
With GW dropping the online and open support of the Ravening Hordes more and more coordinators are showing up without real knowledge of Chaos Dwarfs, Ravening Hordes and the like. Those of us who have misplaced our RH books are at a loss with no rules to find or have yet to unearth (didnt think Hashut was that fickle to his followers, prominent or not).
The fact that certain segments of the Indy’s are making strides towards unofficially officially accepting chaos dwarfs i beleive is good progress. Without the RH resources i cannot get my local area to really support/allow them - no matter how great a fan list is. But with a list/book by Kevin and crew, potentially tempered by the forges of CDO and other greats in the chaos dwarf community i can at least have a stone to grind my way into local tournies and such with the CD’s.
I do reserve my opinion for final comment once things have been released, reviewd and ratified… and according to their site and matt the draft should be breaking from the molds shortly, then we can help polish it into its refined form.
krusty:
Was wondering if anyone tried to get in contact with gw about this to try and get this
1, available for uk tournaments
2,try and get this into white dwarf
This could be done iff he has collaborated with white dwarf before and published material in there before
Since this will be heavily playtested it could be justified to them to allow it to be published
Also if they try not to ,even though this might sound pretty lame get everyone to send an email asking if this can be used as the official list until a new one is published.
It will show them that the market and interest is most definitly (as we all know) there and in their eyes may slightly boost tourament numbers for the official tournaments.
This may sound stupid but hey it cant go badly for us.Worst case scenario we are in the same position now,mid case scenario we have some new official rules,best case we get told they cant be official as they are working on new rules for them