Category Archives: talk

The Economics of Open Gaming – An Open Letter To WotC

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 6 comments

Why Open Gaming Is Good For Business

The OGL was largely single-handedly responsible for reviving the RPG industry overall and it and 3e took D&D from a bankrupt and largely irrelevant position back to its current state of RPG primacy and pop-culture relevancy.

Let me note something about real world economics. A healthy market sector means more for everyone. My IRL company has been posting record revenues for many consecutive quarters. Our stock took a big hit lately. Why? Because our major competitors posted big losses. This cast the entire sector in a bad light. Doing well in a bad sector isn’t any better than doing poorly in a good sector, and is arguably worse, to investors.

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WotC Rethinking Open Gaming

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 3 comments

In a post on the ENWorld boards, a WotC rep says that they’re still reviewing the basic premises behind the GSL.  Has Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG play scared them into thinking that any degree of openness isn’t the way to go?

To me, this is one of the largest decisions that Wizards could make regarding D&D 4e.  The prior OGL was a huge moment in gaming and helped catapult D&D back to the top from being a bankrupt and irrelevant little thing.  In my opinion, any decision to go back on it would be both stupid and ultimately harmful to D&D/WotC.  I’ve played D&D a long time and would love to keep playing it.  Even if 4e has retarded stuff in it, I can houserule it, heck, publish my own “nonretarded” variant, and keep going.  If they choose to make it not open however – then I won’t bother, I’ll go with Pathfinder or something else exclusively.

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D&D 4e – A Board Game?

Posted on March 27, 2008 | 5 comments

In a post on his blog, John Wick makes some very good points about the differing goals of a board game (victory) and a roleplaying game (character development) and argues that D&D, especially 4e as it’s cast, is more of a board game than anything else.

Now, a lot of the people in my gaming group hate John Wick with the fury of a thousand suns, because he is an asshole.  I concede this point; however, he’s an asshole who frequently makes good points.  I see their point too, however – his anecdote about his thief named Rav seems to be an example of people who “roleplay” as a thinly veiled excuse to make the other gamers’ lives more difficult.  Although perhaps he would have stuck by his ideals and, if the rest of the party had caught him stealing and decided to lynch him for it, applauded the resulting story.

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Malconvokers Rock

Posted on March 25, 2008 | Leave a comment

So how many of you have actually had a character that does some honest old school demon summoning?  Well, wait no longer.  Complete Scoundrel has a prestige class called the Malconvoker, which is a good person who tricks demons into fighting the other evil critters they face.  Here’s Treantmonk20’s thread on the Wizards Character Optimization board on “Mastering the Malconvoker.”   I chip in on good Planar Binding options.  I have a related thread on all the legit 3.5e Summon Monster targets.  My current character, Valgrim the Summoner, in the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path from Paizo, is a malconvoker and loving it.

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More Gygax Retrospective

Posted on March 25, 2008 | Leave a comment

A couple fun things in the wake of Gygax’ passing.  One, this huge D20 on the MIT campus (courtesy FARK). 

 Also, an unexpected place for retrospectives on Gygax – various Presbyterian pastors!  (Thanks to the Mad Doctor for these.)

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The Good Old Days (?)

Posted on March 25, 2008 | Leave a comment
Thanks to Grogtard for this – someone on the ENWorld forums found this little gem about the WOTC purchase of TSR.  It’s Ryan Dancey talking about what he found and the new tack of Wizards of the Coast – “listening to the customer.”  It’s ironic in that the new Hasbro WotC seems to be falling back into the error tht caused TSR to fail.  Everyone keeps saying “Oh, it’s D&D, the 900 pound gorilla – they’ll always dominate the market.”  These people must be less than 14 years old, because D&D nearly hit the shitter once before, and could do it again.
Dancey commented on 4e last year – his comments about a open variant of 4e seem to predict the Pathfinder RPG – note he even assumes it would “crush” the official pretender. 

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4e Compilation PDF

Posted on March 22, 2008 | 2 comments

“Verys Arkon” has compiled all the info about 4e revealed so far into a preview “Lite Edition” PDF.  Check it out here.  It appears to only include the stuff from DDXP, not the various things designers have revealed on blogs or whatnot (marking, etc.).

 As I read it I get back to my familiar ambivalence with 4e.  The initial changes in terms of simplification and encounter powers – basically all the stuff they showcased in Star Wars Saga Edition and Book of Nine Swords – I love.  All the other crap they piled on top of it – I hate.  Alas. 

The Stinky Cheese:

  • Teleporting elves
  • All point buy stats
  • Dumping half-orc and gnome for tiefling and dragonborn
  • Shoehorning “roles” for PCs and monsters
  • Movement in “squares”

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Paizo Forks D&D!

Posted on March 18, 2008 | 1 comment

It’s official!  Paizo Publishing is the gaming company that was publishing Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine for  years until WotC pulled their license.  Since then they’ve been publishing the best D&D adventures on the market (and Dragon and Dungeon are languishing in low-content electronic-only hell on wizards.com). 

Well, Wizards screwed around and screwed around; even after announcing that they’d get the license and rules to third party publishers (for $5k a head) they never executed on it.  So now Paizo has decided to fork D&D by creating a RPG called the Pathfinder RPG based on 3.5e via the OGL.  The “alpha” version of it is freely available – in fact, they say once they start selling the beta sometime around Gen Con it’ll still be available freely as a PDF.  The beta will be an open beta for a year and the “final” version will launch in August of 2009.  They are also launching the Pathfinder Society, which sounds like a competitor to the RPGA.

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Relative Class Power in D&D 3.5e

Posted on March 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

There’s a thread on the Wizards forums I refer to from time to time – The Base Classes as Rated by You. The community voted on relative class power and the results are interesting.

Rated 1-10, with “10” being “most powerful” and “1” being “least powerful”.
*= not enough responses to mean much
D= highly debated – the ranks were widespread
C= consensus – the ranks were often the same

9.4 Druid C
8.6 Wizard C
8.6 Cleric
8.6 Artificer *C
8.1 Psion C
7.7 Wu Jen * C
7.5 Psychic Warrior
7.5 Favoured Soul
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The Old Grey Lady on the Elder God of Gaming

Posted on March 16, 2008 | Leave a comment

The New York Times, in last Sunday’s edition, published a nice article from Adam Rogers of Wired about D&D, E. Gary Gygax, and how D&D informs so much of modern geek culture (which is steadily taking over mainstream culture).  They have a big fun flowchart to follow your own journey of geekiness, too!

Geek Flowchart

(click to enlarge)

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What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Am I?

Posted on March 15, 2008 | 1 comment

I ran across this online survey while surfing.  It’s a comprehensive questionnaire that determines your D&D class, race, and alignment!  Here’s me.  Appaently I’m a goon because who would go bard/wizard?!?  I assume the bard part is for my strength in leadership, but bah!  Other than that, it’s about right.  And since clerics are “leaders” in 4e, and I scored pretty high on cleric, maybe I’m really a Wizard/Cleric.  Mystic Theurge, here I come!!!

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Bard/Wizard (3rd/2nd Level)

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Monster Manual VI: The Politicians

Posted on March 14, 2008 | 1 comment

There’s a hilarious writeup of the three major US presidential candidates as they’d appear in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (first edition!) courtesy of British scifi author Charles Stross.  McCain is “Demon Prince of Republicans”, Clinton is “Demon Queen of Pork Belly Futures,” and Obama is “Demon Prince of Upsetting Applecarts.”  The pictures, from FreakingNews.com and GuysFromArea51.com, are mind-numbingly beautiful.  My fave:

Hillary the Devil

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