Call of Cthulhu Screen Shots

[Aracon]

I added another screen shot up top.

[Peabody]

Hey, that looks mighty fine!

[Aracon]

Thanks.

I'm working on quite a few more maps including sites in Arkham, NYC and the really neat supplements of historical/haunted houses from Miskatonic U press.

[hal_mayne]

nice looking maps, I'm jealous now

[moonbeast]

I agree that setup time is a bit time consuming. It would be nice to have a customizable character generation tool for each ruleset that can import (or built in).

For Call of Cthulhu, I purchased several PDFs through Drivethrurpg to create a few modules for FG2, but the scans were absolutely horrible. When cut and pasting it picks up both columns, the text is tough to read so even re-typing it is difficult and in Secrets of New York, built in images interfere with text.

Aracon,

I know it's not your fault for not knowing, BUT... please know that the CoC PDFs sold at the DriveThroughRPG website are of an inferior (crappy scan) quality compared to the better-rendered (hi-resolution) PDFs sold directly at the Chaosium Website itself. How do I know? I made the same mistake myself a couple years ago. First I started buying a few of the (crappy) CoC PDFs from DriveThroughRPG, and I thought I wasted my money. The quality was horrible, and barely printable. Then months later, I bought a couple directly from Chaosium's own PDF shop, and realized that the quality was 5 levels superior.

Of course, it's always a lesson of "you get what you pay for". The DriveThrough PDFs are cheaper (and thus lower quality). The ones sold at Chaosium direct are a bit more expensive (but the quality of the PDFs make them a good value).

My take on this? Chaosium SHOULD HAVE revoked DriveThroughRPG's license to distribute and sell (poorly-scanned) PDFs of the Call of Cthulhu line.

I have, by the way, months ago, purchased PDF and/or JPEG maps from Chaosium of things like the Arkham city map, and I can tell you that the Chaosium digital files are like what? Like 20 MEGABYTES huge? Right. Those are called "hi-quality" JPEG map files. Nothing crappy about that. Those are perfect for printing out, or even resizing for online digital map ("battlemap") usage for FantasyGrounds.

Again, your accusation should be towards DriveThroughRPG, because they sold you crappy quality PDFs, blurry, poorly scanned, not very hi-res. My advice: stop buying from them.

moonbeast,
a YSDC veteran

https://catalog.chaosium.com/product...oducts_id=2428
Click above link to see what I'm talking about. The Arkham Town Map PDF alone (digital download bundled when you purchase the Arkham PDF book) is a 34 megabyte file. Very very very very very very FREAKING HI-quality resolution. Seriously, you could print this out on a poster-sized paper. Your gripe about low-quality PDFs.... is due to DriveThroughPDF's crappy digital files they sell.

[Aracon]

Moonbeast,

FYI Chaosium had crappy scans as well. I purchased one from them. Apparenty they are well aware of the issue because at one point (after I posted here but no longer on the site for me to reference) I saw a "crappy scan" disclaimer, probably due to so many complaints.

In any event, if a dealer sells a defective item under agreement from the manufacturer, both are responsible.

If Choasium remotely cared about their customers they would not only get the better scans to locations they are making money from but also ensure anyone who had purchased the crap ones get a good scan.

Our email records are on file and it should be a simple mass email to clean up their mess.

[Aracon]

Moonbeast,

For example, Secrets of New York was updated on 6/10/2010 prior to that date the scan was garbage.

Source:

Requires Purchase Secrets of New York PDF 06/10/2010 11

Link:
https://catalog.chaosium.com/fdm_fol...hp?fPath=19_29

[StuartW]

Interestingly, and quite helpfully, Choasium now site the source of their PDFs as either 'Scanned from printed boooks' or 'Created from electronic files', which helps the buyer understand the likely reproduction quality.

I bought Superworld a good while back, and it is scanned from out-of-print hardcopy books: Chaosium no longer had any original electronic media (if there ever were any, as it was printed in 1984).

Stuart

[Arnuphis]

Late to the party I know, but I loved those maps!

[moonbeast]

Moonbeast,

FYI Chaosium had crappy scans as well. I purchased one from them. Apparenty they are well aware of the issue because at one point (after I posted here but no longer on the site for me to reference) I saw a "crappy scan" disclaimer, probably due to so many complaints.

Aracon, I don't doubt that you also were disappointed with Chaosium's earlier scanned PDFs. However, as Stuart noted (his post is below yours that I am quoting), Stuart noted that Chaosium (only in the past year I think) have distinguished on their website what type of PDF you are buying from them.

1) The "scanned" books are most likely the ones we think are "crappy" quality.

2) The ones copied from electronic files are going to be the ones with somewhat better quality. In fact, I have several of them, and they are what a decent Adobe PDF file should be. They are higher resolution, and the text (inside the PDF) are searchable! Most likely they used some professional-grade OCR program to accomplish this translation from paper books to digital book.

Anyways, I'm not here to debate you, simply trying to make a distinction (and inform other CoC Keepers) that not all Call of Cthulhu commercial PDFs are created equal. I apologize if my earlier post was not clear.

Regarding Chaosium's unresponsiveness: Yeah, I totally agree with you. Chaosium is generally an unresponsive company, it feels like they take forever to respond, and even longer to listen to the thousands of requests/wish-lists of their customers. Sadly, most of us have known this for years, as Chaosium had been on the brink of bankruptcy/insolvency at least once or twice, and they always hint that cash flow at Chaosium does not come easy (hence projects are delayed for months or years). You know... this is one of those things that we simply cannot do anything about. It's probably a blessing (or pure luck) that Chaosium still exists as a company. You know why I don't gripe about this? Because I have lowered my expectations of Chaosium long ago. Venting at Chaosium won't do anything to make them a more successful company. Sending them 'suggestions' will not help much, because you are likely the 100th person to suggest to them the same thing, which they have ignored the same suggestions for years.

I truly believe that the staffers at Chaosium would *LOVE* to listen and follow our suggestions, but somehow they are in no shape or situation to go that route. According to some of Dustin's blogs, Chaosium often struggles just to keep its head above water.