On Sun, Jun 01, 2008 at 02:47:50AM +0000, Carl D Cravens (Mod) wrote:

I'm thinking about starting a PBM (Play-by-Message) roleplaying game based on my "Department 13" setting, as published in Fudge Factor...

http://www.fudgefactor.org/2004/04/department-13.html

I expect that all characters will be part of the agent team, which will be restricted to five or six agents. There will probably be room for non-agent characters if there is demand, but I don't think I want to field more than about six players. (I haven't done this in years... an ensemble cast would be biting off more than I can chew.)

If you would like to join the Department, fill out these TPS forms in triplicate, do not leave any fields blank, and be sure to give full contact information for next-of-kin.

Sounds interesting. Sign me up. Probably as a kid/teen. With no gun.

I'm thinking about starting a PBM (Play-by-Message) roleplaying game based on my "Department 13" setting, as published in Fudge Factor...

http://www.fudgefactor.org/2004/04/department-13.html

You might call it "/Torchwood/, except supernatural instead of aliens, and they don't have much money". (If you want a little old-school, it's a little /Buffy/ mixed with a little of SciFi's /Invisible Man/.) If you would like to join the Department, fill out these TPS forms in triplicate, do not leave any fields blank, and be sure to give full contact information for next-of-kin.

Sounds interesting, I'm in.

BTW, have you seen this: http://www.shadowunit.org/

On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 09:09:15PM +0000, Mike Feldhusen wrote:

Sounds interesting, I'm in.

BTW, have you seen this: http://www.shadowunit.org/

I was totally going to say that too.

Mike Feldhusen wrote:

BTW, have you seen this: http://www.shadowunit.org/

Wow, those are some interesting names down the credits column.

Mike Feldhusen wrote:

Sounds interesting, I'm in.

Sweet... that makes three interested parties, which is critical mass as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure we can pick up a couple more if we want 'em.

Gimme a couple days to get some introductory documentation written up and the mailing list activated. As is typical, I pick the beginning of a flurry of "other activity" to toss something like this into the ring. It's a busy, busy week, with family surgery, Cub Scouts, ducklings arriving by mail, and a Cub Scout campout on the weekend.

( 4E here refers to D&D 4th edition)

I've gotten 4e and given it a look through. I'm starting a campaign this weekend to give it a real spin.

I had a love/hate relation with 3rd edition D&D: It attempted to add "real" RPG features to D&D (skills, some variation from simple class). But it kind of stunk. Overly complicated, cumbersome, less than fun.

Heck, I hate levels, classes, and hit points. But D&D has always been the definitive sword and sorcery game: anything else was just trying to do D&D better. (Perhaps why White Wolf has been the only challenger to D&D's wide base as the starter game - it didn't try to do sword and sorcery) So I keep coming back to D&D in all it's variations.

The OGL was, I thought, a terrible idea. Sign away critical rights to be able to do some compatibility work, most of which you'd be able to do without the agreement, and all managed by a biased party that has no interest in clarifying matters. Plus it promoted a system I found suboptimal.

The world didn't listen to me (Again! This keeps happening!) and OGL material was wildly popular. I cannot look back now and not see a lot of gamers encouraged and interested in the hobby as a result. huh.

4E doesn't have OGL anymore. They are abandoning that idea.

So a few personal reactions (I'd love to hear others on this):

1) The game

4E is a better game than 3.0/3.5. It's more distinct, and the authors have much more focus on story and pacing. The game isn't about building your character anymore, it's about playing it. It's still mechanical and combat focused, but in a way the emphasis makes it easier to pull out RP content and enjoy it. The authors have done enough toward RP (such as Skill challenges and XP bonuses for story "quest" completion) that even if the implementations are flawed, the concepts will remain with the players. For an introductory game that's a very big deal.

4E has been panned a bit for being "MMO the RPG" (I panned it for that as well), but the use of MMO techniques in combat are pretty effective for a combat-focused game. No longer does a Wizard choose between a combat spell or an RP spell...they are separate categories.

4E is in no way a better system than most of the ones I've been enjoying in recent years (Fudge, PDQ, etc), but it's a good sight better than its previous incarnations.

2) The License

WOTC has just released their terms for compatible products...and they stink. No reproducing any text, no character creation rules, no interactive products. The only "rights" you get that you don't have otherwise is a compatibility logo and some degree of assurance that you won't have to defend your rights in court.

4E will NOT lead to the explosion of games that 3rd did. Even though most d20 producers "failed" a number stuck around. From what I've heard and what I can see, those producers won't be going into 4E much and we won't be seeing a large number of new publishers appear.

But I'm okay with that: The RPG market needs players at this point and the successful publishing houses aren't throwing up their hands and walking away from the hobby, so we aren't losing publishers. The OGL may have been a terrible idea, but it did good things for us.

3) The Subscription

Wizards intends to offer certain online features (not yet available) for D&D as a subscription feature. (I've heard between $10-15/month, and I've heard that beyond a trial account there will be only a per-person option [Not a DM option], making a lot of money per group for WOTC if it works...but I've not heard the final version, so those numbers and details may be wrong). Character creator, online games with maps and references charts made-to-order.

I suspect it will be a failure. I certainly have no interest in a monthly fee if it's not highly cheap. ($20/year for Pyramid is a great deal, even if I let my subscription lapse*. $120/year for D&D only tools of likely insufficient quality/versatility...not such a great deal). If it succeeds, it'll change the landscape of gaming.

Thoughts?

*Yes, I let my pyramid subscription lapse a couple of years ago. Anyone want credit if I renew? Can I give credit if I renew?

Brett Ritter wrote:

I've gotten 4e and given it a look through. I'm starting a campaign this weekend to give it a real spin.

I'm just starting to find players for the same thing. I played 3E when it came out for a few weeks, but it didn't really fix the problems I had with D&D. Namely, staring "heroes" weren't very heroic, and every character's story was essentially (and necessarily) about a meteoric rise to power.

4E has been panned a bit for being "MMO the RPG" (I panned it for that as well), but the use of MMO techniques in combat are pretty effective for a combat-focused game. No longer does a Wizard choose between a combat spell or an RP spell...they are separate categories.

I'm finding this very interesting. They've freed the cleric up from being nothing but a combat medic by giving everyone "magic" healing (Second wind, and other uses of healing surge)... very cinematic, very video game, I think. They've let the wizard use magic as his primary weapon consistently... no more first-level "bang, bang, I'm out for the rest of the day guys, don't let the goblin hit me again or I'll die!!" Characters start out more competent.

I had no intention of even buying the PHB, let alone playing a game, but it just took a few days of people talking about it and then my skimming a copy to decide I needed to try playing it.

4E will NOT lead to the explosion of games that 3rd did.

(New license and SRD here...)

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome

They may have shot themselves in the foot with this one... I dunno. Even _before_ the release of the license, publishers were already committing themselves to sticking with 3E/d20. Paizo may be banking their business on it.

But 4E is such a different game... in some ways, I think it may be the game D&D has always _claimed_ to be, but actually fell short of. (I have never gotten over the dichotomy of "Want to play fantastic heroes!? Here kid, have a 1st level wizard.")

Wizards may have it right here, though... the license is focused on getting others to create _supplements_ for Wizards' games, and not creating new, stand-alone games that do nothing to to support Wizards' market position. That's what they meant to do with the OGL... get people to write supplements for them. But the success of D&D was actually too big... people could say "OGL" or "most popular fantasy game" and people knew it was d20 without ever using the d20 logo.

So yeah, there certainly won't be an explosion of _games_ because the new license is aimed (as I read it) at _preventing_ that from happening. They want new material that makes their own properties more valuable, not material that diverts sales.

The OGL may have been a terrible idea, but it did good things for us.

I don't think the OGL was a bad idea, it was just focused on the wrong game. Some of the more successful properties were only marginally based on d20.

3) The Subscription

I suspect it will be a failure. I certainly have no interest in a monthly fee if it's not highly cheap.

If it succeeds, it'll change the landscape of gaming.

I don't think Wizards has the depth, technical or conceptual, required to make this work. At least, based on their current web offerings, that's the impression I get. They don't even have their character creation tool online yet... that should have been fully use-tested, debugged and ready to deploy when the core books hit the shelves. And that's the _minimum_ content they should have had ready to go. Vaporware online support doesn't do the fans any good, and the _fans_ are already creating more online content than Wizards is.

Wizards has had a lot of online content over the years, but their website has always been, in my eyes, massively disorganized and frustrating to use. I don't think they really know how to use the web, or the people they have don't have the time to do things right, and they're not going to invest money in a team that really does, and that's going to hurt them.

I think they _could_ change the landscape of gaming... if anybody is poised to be in the right place at the right time with the right property, it's Wizards. But I don't think they're lined up to do it right. I suspect that all they'll manage to do is create an online magazine and a few (half-baked) tools.

And I'm with you... they'd have to do it _incredibly_ right to get ten bucks a month out of my wallet. I think most online services over-charge for what they provide. And anybody with a _monthly_ fee better be delivering a _lot_ of content and useful apps.

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 07:39:54PM +0000, Brett Ritter wrote:

Heck, I hate levels, classes, and hit points. But D&D has always been the definitive sword and sorcery game: anything else was just trying to do D&D better.

I'm starting from a slightly different position - AD&D was the system I started with, and it was all very well for 1982, but I've moved on since then. I'm now basically a GURPS-head who isn't that interested in basic hack-and-slash most of the time. I played a little bit of AD&D 2e, a tiny bit of 3e, but haven't run either.

On the other hand I have taken a quick skim of the 4e books to see what they're up to.

1) The game

4E has been panned a bit for being "MMO the RPG" (I panned it for that as well), but the use of MMO techniques in combat are pretty effective for a combat-focused game. No longer does a Wizard choose between a combat spell or an RP spell...they are separate categories.

It seems to me that they lose quite a bit of the generic nature of the game by having special per-(timespan) powers for every class.

What I notice very much with 4E - vastly more than with 3E, though I thought it was pretty blatant there - is that the rules have clearly been designed by people who know computer systems design, with the aim of making it possible to run the game (at least in terms of dungeon exploration and combat) with no human GM.

2) The License

Bear in mind that we've come a long way from "mention our game in your product and get sued"...

3) The Subscription

I suspect it will be a failure. I certainly have no interest in a monthly fee if it's not highly cheap.

Yeah, but you're probably not the core audience (read the history of RPGs in the new PHB, which manages to imply that the only RPG ever to have existed is D&D). People who play MMOs are, because there are _lots_ of them - and they're already used to paying that sort of subscription fee.

*Yes, I let my pyramid subscription lapse a couple of years ago. Anyone want credit if I renew?

Sure. My username there is RogerBW.

On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Roger Burton West wrote:

Bear in mind that we've come a long way from "mention our game in your product and get sued"...

At least one step backward, though, with the loss of the 30-day cure period, and the magic-auto-updating license. Makes me happy I don't have a dog in *that* fight (the Phoenyx operates under fair use, not licenses... especially this one, given its explicit "no web site" statements. Which suddenly makes me think of getting a dog, and sending it to fight, but that's a matter for some thought and perhaps a Stakeholders post).

But hey, it'll keep the armchair lawyers busy for quite awhile. (Non-armchair lawyer opinions are here: http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=6799&page=1, hat tip to John Kim: http://jhkimrpg.livejournal.com/69847.html )

Roger Burton West wrote:

People who play MMOs are, because there are _lots_ of them - and they're already used to paying that sort of subscription fee.

They're used to paying it to get access to the core activity they are involved in... if you don't pay the monthly fee, you just don't get to play _at all_. Roleplaying material is quite different... you don't _need_ any of it (at least as designed so far).

So take the MMO player, who is _already_ paying a monthly fee for his favorite MMO(s), and ask him to pay _another_ monthly fee for something that doesn't give him nearly as much value as his MMO... I see that as a formula for failure. If you're going to charge $20 a month, you're going to have to give MMO-level value, and I really don't see that happening.

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 11:02:02PM +0000, Karen Cravens (Mod) wrote:

At least one step backward, though, with the loss of the 30-day cure period, and the magic-auto-updating license.

True. Seems to me that it's rather more closely focused on the core purpose of the licence: sell more WotC books. (And don't compete with the super terrific web site, of which more anon.)

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 12:38:52AM +0000, Carl D Cravens (Mod) wrote:

Roger Burton West wrote:

People who play MMOs are, because there are _lots_ of them - and they're already used to paying that sort of subscription fee.

They're used to paying it to get access to the core activity they are involved in... if you don't pay the monthly fee, you just don't get to play _at all_. Roleplaying material is quite different... you don't _need_ any of it (at least as designed so far).

I should say that I'm not an MMO player, and I already think they're suckers for paying all that money for an experience inferior to what they could get by roleplaying. But there are _lots of them_ - you don't need all that many to subscribe to the WotC web site in order for WotC to be lifted out of "big RPG company" and into "small computer game company".

R

Roger Burton West wrote:

I should say that I'm not an MMO player, and I already think they're suckers for paying all that money for an experience inferior to what they could get by roleplaying. But there are _lots of them_ - you don't need all that many to subscribe to the WotC web site in order for WotC to be lifted out of "big RPG company" and into "small computer game company".

I think if Wizards wants to compete with the MMOs, they should just design a kick-butt MMO. I don't think they're going to lure a computer game crowd into a new computer game via a table-top roleplaying game. I don't think that's their strategy, though. I really can't guess what their strategy is... I don't see what they're going to provide that'll be worth what they expect to charge.

I agree with you on the MMO experience... I've sampled a couple of them and find them awfully boring. There are fun bits, but there's a lot of down-time between the fun bits in the couple I've tried (free trials).

Of course, there are roleplayers who think all the gamemaster prep is "boring down-time" too... but I find it almost as interesting as playing the game.

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 12:48:26PM +0000, Carl D Cravens (Mod) wrote:

I think if Wizards wants to compete with the MMOs, they should just design a kick-butt MMO.

Yeah, but then they'd be going up against people who actually know how to make this stuff work right. What they're trying to do instead is be sufficiently different that they can enforce a monopoly by contract, and sufficiently similar to bleed off MMO players.

After almost a quarter century in the hobby, I finally own a set of polyhedrals.

I have *buckets* of six-siders (Traveller, Gurps, and especially Champions and its "12d6 Energy Blast"), and more than my share of Fudge dice, but aside from owning (and never playing) Trav:2300 and its pair of 10-siders, I've never needed the weirdo dice until now.

(Yeah, I'm in a 4e game.)

Chessex Signature Gemini Blue-Purple with Gold, if you must know. I already had the six-sider version.

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 07:35:41PM +0000, Karen Cravens (Mod) wrote:

After almost a quarter century in the hobby, I finally own a set of polyhedrals.

I have *buckets* of six-siders (Traveller, Gurps, and especially Champions and its "12d6 Energy Blast"), and more than my share of Fudge dice, but aside from owning (and never playing) Trav:2300 and its pair of 10-siders, I've never needed the weirdo dice until now.

(Yeah, I'm in a 4e game.)

Wow, that is weird.

I don't have any new dice, but my son and his friend convinced me to run D&D 3.5. It is pretty easy and kind of fun in a "kill the monsters and take their stuff" kind of way.

Karen Cravens (Mod) wrote:

After almost a quarter century in the hobby, I finally own a set of polyhedrals.

I have a lot of polyhedrals, but they're all from the 80's and really aren't that pretty (or accurate) compared to today's dice.

I remember when my crystal dice were so darn cool, with their sharp edges and lack of pre-inking.

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Carl D Cravens (Mod) wrote:

I remember when my crystal dice were so darn cool, with their sharp edges and lack of pre-inking.

You can still get those...

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 07:35:41PM +0000, Karen Cravens (Mod) wrote:

(Yeah, I'm in a 4e game.)

So what d'you make of it?

I think my reactions are fairly predictable if you know that I gave up AD&D when 1e was still the big thing. I'm not really interested in a square-based skirmish wargame...

On Wed, 16 Jul 2008, Roger Burton West wrote:

So what d'you make of it?

It's like Champions, only fantasy-themed and square-based.

I think my reactions are fairly predictable if you know that I gave up AD&D when 1e was still the big thing. I'm not really interested in a square-based skirmish wargame...

ITYM "square-based fantasy-themed Champions."

Oh, wait. Same thing.

It's kind of a *fun* square-based skirmish wargame, so far. We literally haven't done anything outside of some skirmishes yet, so I dunno how much fun roleplaying in it will be.

And the leveled thing. In addition to never having played with polyhedrals before, I've never played anything with levels. Champs and its EP is the closest I've been (admittedly, almost all the other games I've played have *had* some experience point rules, it's just that Champions is the only one I've played long-term enough for it to resemble leveling up). I don't even know why that sounds like fun... I think I blame Order of the Stick for that. ("Ding!")

Karen Cravens (Mod) wrote:

leveling up). I don't even know why that sounds like fun... I think I blame Order of the Stick for that. ("Ding!")

Well, leveling _is_ fun... reaching a milestone and getting new abilities and improving old ones is a lot of what D&D is about. It means you're locked into telling a particular kind of story... a meteoric rise to power, but if you don't mind telling that story, it's cool. (Though 4E isn't nearly as meteoric as previous editions... the gap between 1st and 30th isn't nearly so big, with each level bringing smaller changes.)

It's really a different kind of game than we're used to, but it can be a lot of fun. I don't know that I could take a steady diet of it long-term.

And hopefully by the time I'm ready for a change, the new players we've recruited will be willing to try something different.

Call for players for Gavilan:

http://www.gameropolis.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?pid=3

Yes, on a webforum. So it goes.

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 03:48:07AM +0000, Karen Cravens (Mod) wrote:

Call for players for Gavilan:

http://www.gameropolis.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?pid=3

Yes, on a webforum. So it goes.

Why does it go?

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008, Chuk Goodin wrote:

Why does it go?

Because that's the way things are going. It's getting harder and harder to reliably deliver email, particularly to the less technically-savvy. And the web side of the current Wirebird release is just not up to the reliability standards I want, and the almost-out release is stuck at "almost out" (I haven't had coding time for a couple of *months* now) and I got tired of waiting.

Call for players for Gavilan:

http://www.gameropolis.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?pid=3

Yes, on a webforum. So it goes.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

I'm in. I'll set up an account later today or tomorrow, as soon as I have time.