[Archive] Ravening Hordes V. 1.1

Thommy H:

Sort of an odd idea that I have a feeling might have come up before, but I thought I might as well suggest it.

Since the Word of Hashut proved that we, as a community, can produce a piece of work that is of professional quality, and since the Ravening Hordes pdf is becoming increasingly elusive (I believe, since the GW website changed that it’s now not available in any country), would it be possible (or legal…) to create a new pdf that features the same rules, but with the addition of background and some rules clarifications?

I just think it would be nice to have a pdf that we can point to and say “these are the official rules, but also it has everything an Army Book has, like background and well-worded (heh) rules”. I’m thinking we give fluff reasons for why Heroes have Ld 10, separate out the CD warrior and Hobgoblin units, come up with names for Champions, etc. etc.

Anyway, just a thought. I can do much of the actual writing (yay for cribbing from the wiki!) but I don’t have the Adobe expertise to make it look sexy (which is the whole idea).

Hashut’s Blessing:

So, basically, you’re suggesting an errata for the Ravening Hordes list and some fluff to go with the reasonings? Sounds good and as far as I know, as long as we say it’s based on GWs original intellectual property and that it’s not sold or anything, it;s just some fanwork, I think it’s fine.

EDIT: I’m assuming no new rules, just making the old ones clearer and specifying what Lap Around is for the Sneaky Gits etc…

Thommy H:

Yeah. I’d imagine we’d use the US GT clarifications as the basis of the “tidying up” of the rules (I’m thinking about Bull Centaurs, for example) but there would be no new content (except background) per se. The initial idea is to have a bestiary and an army list - the army list would just be Ravening Hordes, but rewritten. For example, the Lords wouldn’t be all shoved together in one entry.

EDIT: Also, more to the point, the pdfs of the Ravening Hordes list and the FAQs don’t even seem to be working any more. At the very least we have to host them somewhere so they’re still accessible to new players. And if we’re gonna do that, we might as well make a nicer version of the content.

Hashut’s Blessing:

Okay,t hen count me in. When we going to start the project? Shall we assign people as fluffeteers and others as rule clarifications and so on…?

Thommy H:

It’s all moving so fast! I think we need to figure a few things out first, and maybe get some more input, since if this is going to happen I’d prefer it to be something that CDO can endorse.

I imagined we’d preserve much of the old background information, since this is just an update of the Ravening Hordes rules, so the wiki would be the basis of the basic background information perhaps. Then we’d need to agree on what artwork to use, how the army list will be presented etc. etc.

Servius:

this is what my group was intending to do for starters. I tried to contact you on msn but you havent been online.

Thommy H:

Who? Me?

This message was automatically appended because it was too short.

Servius:

yep… yesterday. i was trying to ask if you were interested… I have always seen you as a balanced sort of person when it comes to this stuff… I tried.bethor at another.com and you never came online…

Willmark:

It’s funny you should mention this, you never know what is going on in chambers of the Dark Lord of the Sith…

Grimstonefire:

That’s the great thing about a strict Ravening Hordes update, you don’t need to write any new fluff! You probably don’t need any fluff at all actually if you don’t want to.

I was loathe to have complete project groups on CDO because of the volume of threads it would generate, but if you worked methodically out of a few threads there wouldn’t be a problem.

Another good thing about a strict RH update is that it should be really quick, as you don’t have to imagine any new entries.  Start to finish 2 weeks top I reckon.

If you confirm this is to go ahead as a project, I’ll move this thread to the Warhammer Armies: Chaos Dwarfs section.

Thommy H:

yep.. yesterday. i was trying to ask if you were interested.. I have always seen you as a balanced sort of person when it comes to this stuff... I tried.bethor at another.com and you never came online..

Servius
Well I'm online right now... I haven't had a thing come up saying someone's added me, but I assure you I'm very much on msn.

If this is something that's being planned already, Willmark, could you kind of...uh...let me do it? :P

The whole reason I started this thread was because it was something I wanted to do anyway (I've written my own Chaos Dwarf Army Book based on Ravening Hordes before, but never just taken the rules as-is and made sense of them in a different way) and I just needed the resources of the site to make it into a sexy pdf we could post.

Servius:

It's funny you should mention this, you never know what is going on in chambers of the Dark Lord of the Sith...

Willmark
you mean besides killing the Jedi and taking over the Galaxy...
Anywho getting back on topic.. Thommy, I was pretty much wanting to do the construction of the books and playtesting for the later project.. as far as writing fluff, not me. and rules I can do it but wasn't really looking to head up.. if your keen i'm more than willing to join up with you and I doubt that HB or Arak would have any issues.

Willmark, I believe Thommy would agree if you want to help out its welcome. But I know you wear alot of Hats as you put it (whats so bad about that. :) ) but if you have some time again jump on in. I think most of it can be done with PM on CDO, Instant Messaging, and maybe skype. with a weekly update by email to everyone involved to keep everyone informed.. I think that making an entire board somewhere else is a waste.

Thommy H:

Well, let me put it this way: if someone can make pdfs that look as nice as the Word of Hashut gets on board and Xander agrees to put it somewhere on this site as the definitive “official CDO Chaos Dwarf army list” (that is, our version of Ravening Hordes - all the same rules, just reformatted) then I can do the actual work really, really soon. I mean, a couple of days. As I suggested, I wanted to do this as a personal project myself, but I would prefer it to come to something.

So I don’t mind doing virtually all of the content (and anyone making future army lists is free to use whatever fluff I write) as long as there are people on board to make the project (i.e. making it a CDO pdf) a reality.

Servius:

well the last time… I pretty much finished a template for a new list and i basically got fed up with the project because of more opinionative infight than actual playtesting… so me and some local friends ended up making a list and play the crap out of it… but i lost the memory stick i had it on it seems… but im starting again… if your willing to get the list written ill work on getting the PDF.

Thommy H:

Yeah, I’m perfectly happy to write everything that has to be written. I just need guys who know how to spruce it up to make it look as nice as I think it can. The ideal situation, as I see it, is to have a version of the RH list that matches, in terms of presentation, the Word of Hashut (same background, borders, artwork, etc.) that we can put on the main site and say to newbies “this is the official CD army list and we’ve made a fancy version of it with all the fluff you need to know”.

Servius:

while I love the WOH look… i think we should do something along the same lines… but not identical. this is in fact what makes WOH unique.

Thommy H:

Well sure, but I want it to look like something produced by CDO at least. Ideally, it would have some of the artwork from WOH maybe, but that would require some help from Willmark to secure permissions, etc.

Thommy H:

Excuse the double post, but let me tell everyone my plans before I turn in for the night (as I intend to get this started tomorrow):

- I’ll write a Bestiary and Army List that takes the existing background and rules and presents them in a new, coherent format.

- Utilise the US Grand Tournament FAQ to clarify rules questions. Nothing else will be altered from the list to be “more logical” - Hobgoblins on wolves will remain 10+ (and fast cavalry, even with shields and light armour), Heroes will still have Ld 10, Blunderbusses will still only require four models per rank.

- There will be clarifications like Great Tauruses having “Scaly Skin (4+)” and Lammasu having “MR (2)” instead of the current vaguely written rules. I’ll also rewrite how stuff like Hobgoblins not counting for Panic tests works (with the introduction of a “Slaves” rule).

- What will not be included (for copyright reasons) are the rules for Orcs and Goblins - the entries will instead tell players to refer to the O&G army book. I will however include the full rules for Animosity (which are only slightly modified from how they appear in RH).

Once this is all done, I’ll post it as a Word document and other people can work their Adobe wizardry to snazz it up a bit. That all sound okay?

Grimstonefire:

It has to fit in with all the 7th edition rules. Hasn’t the definition of a ‘rank’ been changed to 5 now?

Servius:

actually in the US GT Errata it states that to gain a rank bonus you require 5 models but only 4 models are required to gain the strength bonus with a blunderbuss