by Kain Darkwind » Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:45 am
That could be it. But then the Gates of Hell team had to convert everything over from 3.0 to 3.5, doing it all again. And as time went by, new better fitting PrCs came out, which also made many entities have to be redone all again. And at least three times the templates themselves were redone in some manner or another. So the argument that such is a lot of work holds merit; the argument that such work is the only thing holding back any progress holds none.
As for the lot of statting done on Horrors, most of it wouldn't be redone regardless, either due to the new cosmic rules nor the gestalt rules, because there haven't been a large number of cosmic entities statted yet. Much of the statwork revolves around base creatures, which are unchanged, or non-cosmics, which aren't required to use gestalt rules for their class builds. Nothing is, for that matter.
Certainly nothing has been done on the order of the number of entities that had to be updated in GoH numerous times over.
And even then, statting accounts for the smallest portion of work to be done on any project, unless it is a stat-only project like Alternate World is. Suggesting that hundreds of pages of flavor which are yet unwritten are being delayed because one has to stat things three times over due to various shifts in design policy....well, it's a distraction pure and simple. The flavor doesn't care what edition you are using. Nor does it care what feats you have, or whether it utilizes virtual rank, true rank or no rank whatsoever.
I'll not disparage anyone who has put work into a project. It is unpaid and thankless effort. But the simple fact is, you could take all of the work poured into all of the non-released projects here combined, and it wouldn't equal the amount of work that was needed to get Gates of Hell released.
If people ever expect to see those projects released, the amount of effort dedicated to getting it finished has to increase tenfold. I empathize with your frustration at a policy change, but I do not sympathize with it. The cold hard reality remains that Gates dealt with the same if not greater frustrations and managed to get done. But it got done at the cost of people sacrificing a great deal of their personal lives in the collective and committed effort that it would get done. Not people who found it an entertaining hobby to spend a few minutes a day, a few hours a week on. And not through a single person trying to take the entire burden upon themselves, but through a team effort dedicated to the task.
It may be that people are unwilling to commit that much of themselves to a team effort. I wouldn't blame them at all after having gone through it. But neither will I have you kid yourselves that "I could have done it but [the new power rules], [the switch to Pathfinder], [the new statblock] kept me back." I've seen the level of commitment needed in very few people and the collective effort not at all.
I'm not saying this to discourage anyone, nor am I saying it to kick you collectively in the ass and get you moving again. My days of project taskmaster are done. The bottom line is that the frustrations aren't new, even if the particular shape of them is. They will be there forever, until you finish the project. Or until you give up on it. Whether you will pull together as a team or fall apart will be up to each person to decide.
Does there have to be "official support?" Common sense says that Kain's right.
-James Jacobs-
