I'm a D&D newbie, and followed >this< guide when playing BGII. Is there a similar short guide for 3.5 Edition rules intended for newbies? Thanks! [edit] Also, is there an online, hyperlinked version of the game manual, such as on a wiki?
I'm not sure about any guides for ToEE, but the 3.5e hypertext SRD can be found here: http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm
Awesome! I spent several hours last night trying to figure out how to modify the original game manual PDF without any luck. I tried several programs but none of them worked correctly. [edit] I have trouble connecting to the site. Pages frequently time out, or don't load completely. Too bad it costs $$$ to download the ZIPped version.
It shouldn't cost any money to download anything for 3.5, Wizards of the Coast have released 4th edition, and as far as I know everything for 3.5 is available free of charge. If the hypertext srd doesnt work for you, try the official site. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35 Not quite as nifty, as all the articles are in .rtf format, but you can download all of them at once at the bottom of the page. Hope that helps.
I spent some time yesterday converting the game manual to hypertext. I'm almost done; I just need to add all the hyperlinks. Is anyone interested in hosting it? It's about 1MB of files and images. -Mike [edit] Here's a screenshot: As you can see I tried to maintain the look of the original manual.
Hey SharkD, that's pretty neat. Please hang on while the admins discuss the viability of hosting it here. Mainly don't want to violate any copyright laws.
Roger that. I tried to keep it as faithful as possible so that maybe the copyright holders wouldn't mind. Also, it should be fairly trivial to convert the HTML to wiki markup if there's a ToEE wiki somewhere. That way, people can update it as the Co8 mod continues to make changes. Of course, then it wouldn't look like the original anymore.
Unfortunately, copyright laws are very murky at best. The one piece of information I do remember is that the further away a derivative work is from the original the less likely it is to violate the copyright. If you think something may violate the copyright law it is best to get permission from the copyright holder. In this case the copyright holder is Hasbro through it's Wizard of the Coast division. Atari licensed the use of the D & D material. I do not know if the advancement tables are released through d20. I believe that they only appear in the PHB and other licensed material. So Gaear's concern is warranted.
Well, I went ahead and uploaded it to MediaFire. Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?2ixjedmun2w Do whatever you want with it. [edit] I re-uploaded it with some fixes.
Looks good, SharkD. We may yet host it here, still trying to figure that out. We have to answer to the site and server owners and whatnot. There's very little point in seeking permission from that evil trifecta of Hasbro/WotC/Atari, btw. The best you can ever hope from them (and this is based on actual past experience) is that they'll ignore you. Which is what they normally do anyway.
Ahh! I remember when WotC was a small company pumping out Magic the Gathering cards and was a nice fun company. Now they are a member of the trifecta of evil!
I'll see about creating a Windows Help file too. That way you can use the Help system's search feature for finding specific items.