OK, I'm kind of proud of this newest project I just finished and uploaded to DriveThruRPG, and not for the obvious reason.
I have had this idea kicking around in the back of my head for, no kidding, a good 10-15 years and it feels so good to.... just....get....it...out! If it completely bombs I am 110% AOK with that. There were three big RPG(ish) projects I've had eating away "back there" and this was one of them. One of the other ones was to make a big "KoDT" letter sign covered in Knights of the Dinner Table comics. Basically those big paper mache letters with decoupage comics all over. I wanted to gift them to Jolly Blackburn and finally did so a few years ago.
My last project is kind of huge and likely to never get done, so I won't share...why disappoint anyone else?
Any, the project I just finished is basically a fill-in-the-blank character backstory generator. A lifetime or two ago when I was playing HackMaster 4th Edition and coincidentally using an earlier version of Adobe Acrobat to make forms I screwed things up by cut & pasting the same form fields a bunch of times. No, not a big deal in the scheme of things, but if you forget to edit the names of those fields (
or possibly screw it up) you end up with multiple linked form fields. Frustrating when it's not intended....but what if you used this as a feature?
This PDF is basically a collection of 30 Character Backstories preceded with three pages of input fields (names, adjectives, nouns, locations, etc.). You blindly enter data into the form fields and then either roll a d30 or just choose a now-filled in character backstory. Thing is if you don't like a particular generation you can click on the form field that doesn't work for you and BAM!....all of the other backstories with that form field get updated as well. I also made sure there were plenty of bookmarks to make navigation easy. I thought about trying to add a "clear all" button, but I haven't had good luck getting those things to work like I want.*
I think the biggest reason it has taken me so long to scratch this itch is because the task was too daunting undertake. I can come up with the general backstories, and even most of the specific fill-in-the-blanks to insert, but any decent testing and validation? Too much work.
Enter AI. Using Chat GPT I could easily edit the backstories, tweak literary crutches, make sure some fields weren't overused, etc. Just the testing alone....wow. Even with all the help this PDF took a couple work-days to get finished. There were some problems that I couldn't even see without computer-aided assistance. A perfect example was I found that I was really overusing a lead-in to a form field and I though "No need to re-print my word document, I'll just quickly edit the PDF" Easy-peasy and looks fine, BUT the edited text is somehow rendered gibberish in the PDF. Sure, what I see looks great, but depending on how the end-user opens the PDF.....well there might be some gibberish on the screen. Had that come back to me I'd be at a complete & utter loss as to why.
Since I was already using AI I figured "in for a penny....." and went ahead and added a few related graphics, to include a full-color cover. I figure nobody realistically is going to print anything other than maybe a specific backstory, so why not?
FGM048: Before the Adventure is a Pay-What-You-Want PDF. If you do not pay anything for this product, know that I'm 110% ok with that! I hope you get some enjoyment out of it.
*Just a tip....when you download this PDF I highly recommend going into the file's properties in your computer's file browser (right-click or Alt+Enter in Windows 10/11) and clicking "Read Only" in the Attributes section. Trust me, it'll save you a lot of headache if/when you ever want to re-use the PDF without having to manually clear all the form fields.
