D&DNext Steals from Castles & Crusades? It's more likely than you think

On saving throws:

Greg: Another thing we've been talking about recently is saving throws and what you guys think about them and the future of D&D? 

Monte: Making a saving throw against something has become something that's really a part of D&D. So again, what we've done is tie those into the ability scores. For example you'll make a strength saving throw or wisdom saving throw against a certain effect and so far it's become a big part of some effects and abilities. The attacker makes a check and that sets the DC for your saving throw.

Rob: Right now, Cha is linked to saves for fear and charm effects. However, if you describe it well, you could use different stat. For example the big monster is grappling you, you might use dexterity to save and get out. But you can also have some other ways of getting out that grapple. Maybe there's a gem on that creature's head and you can make an intelligence saving throw to realize that if you mess with it, the creature would die and let you go.

On skills:

Greg: Talking about ability scores leads easily into skills. What are you guys tossing around for skills and their uses? 

Bruce: Looking at the playtest characters here, you might have noticed that a class or a theme might have given you a bonus to skill, but you didn't have a skill list. Normally if you were to call for a check, you would just call for the ability score - like a dexterity check for sneaking up. But if you have a class or character feature that gives you a bonus to sneak, you would add that in. There are a lot of different expressions for skills. Trained, sneaking at full speed (stealth twice). Lots of options. 

In other surprising "WTF" news:

Bruce: One of the things we're doing is moving things more to a silver standard instead of a gold standard. We also have mundane implements for some caster classes that are their equivalent of a fighters sword or their slightly better armor. This opens up space for some interesting magic items that help you in rituals. but if you have a magic item, maybe it's a totem that has a little creature in it that is summoned to help you and do other cool things. A mundane wand might be 100sp, like the fighter's scale mail. 

We might give XP for gold, but that's silly talk:

 How is XP going to be rewarded? XP for gold, or alternative advancement mechanisms?

Rob: We want to provide a bunch of different options for how DMs can reward the players for doing different things. So yeah, we'll have an experience table for the monsters, but we'll also have information for doing things like giving XP for quests, or giving XP for exploring a whole area, or give experience for finding the hidden treasure. There are things we're doing so that you can reward your players for what you or they are trying to accomplish in the game. 

And now, a picture of Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie is not a metaphor for D&DNext.

Rocket Scientists are designing D&D Next

From the "Charting the Course: An Edition for All Editions" seminar:

"So instead of the fighter’s attack bonus going up, up, up every level, maybe it goes up every few levels and he gets other things at the other levels. So you can go back to that orc and know that this is the same exact orc that nearly slaughtered you at level 1. It gives you a bar to see your character advance."

That sounds familiar ...

Retraining (respeccing) is dumb

The original Dungeons & Dragons is a game about two, maybe three things: exploration, combat, and accumulation. In no other game do you have such a strong tangible way of measuring the expertise and power of adventurer then by the wealth they have accumulated. It makes sense in a way that future editions fail to: the longer you survive, the more wealth you accumulate, the better you get at accumulating wealth, which brings even more wealth.

Rather than develop a story about your adventurer before the game begins, you develop stories as you adventure and gain wealth; real stories that are not subject to editorial revision, unlike pre-game background.

In a game where you have few special abilities except the most crucial ones (spellcasting, turn undead, thief abilities), respeccing is impossible. Even if you could (say by changing your high level fighter to a cleric), you would just invalidate every story developed over the course of play.

Retraining also comes with the assumption that you will be playing this character for the entirety of a campaign, even if it dies or suffers from a fatal malignancy. This is a far cry from the old days where if you died, unless you could raise dead, you start over. If you made a mistake with a character, the game self corrected this by killing characters at low and even high levels.

In short, too many abilities and the option to trade then out: hallmarks of what's wrong with D&D, and will continue to be wrong with D&D, until designers get a clue.

Well, fuck me

From the WotC website:

"In 1974, the world changed forever when Gary Gygax introduced the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The legacy of his innovative ideas and the extensive reach of his powerful influence can be seen in virtually every facet of gaming today.

To help honor his work and his memory, we created limited-edition reprints of the original 1st Edition core rulebooks: the Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, andDungeon Master's Guide. These premium versions of the original AD&D rulebooks have been lovingly reprinted with the original art and content, but feature an attractive new cover design commemorating this re-release. Available in limited quantities as a hobby channel exclusive in North America.

Your purchase of this monumental book helps support the Gygax Memorial Fund—established to immortalize the “Father of Roleplaying Games” with a memorial statue in Lake Geneva, WI."

Well, I'm kind of at a loss, fellow gamers. Do I boycott these books and not give money to the Gygax memorial? Or do I buy them so that they go to the Gygax Memorial? It's not like I need another set of 1st edition books: I somehow have two sets.

I guess I could just give money to the Gygax Memorial. Give an amount equal to the cost of all three books and put some message about screwing WotC out of unearned cash - but that seems kind of petty.

Never stopped me before.

The Real 5th Edition

Remember fans, there already is a 5th edition made by a team of loving and hardcore gamers who understand what good games, gamers, and referees are made of.

It's called Hackmaster. And it rocks.

You knew it would come to pass

Brothers and sisters, my message to you today is a simple one: do not trust the white man bearing gifts.

Fifth edition has been announced (to no one's surprise, which has got to be some sort of record for a holder of the D&D license), although they are calling it a new "iteration". Wizards of the Coast wants to do open playtests, and have the fans give feedback and shape the development of the game. Their goals seems to be inclusivity, catching the largest amount of fans possible. And they are going to use the Forgotten Realms to catch the gamers, though it remains to be seen

Now if I was a wanker I would link back to a post I made some time ago about how WotC could start acting like a responsible producer of D&D products and win back the fans. But I'm not. You know why? 'Cause all that shit I wrote was obvious. All the shit I wrote would be in the introduction of a report by a marketer, with the real meat being everything else. If I could see it, Wizards of the Coast could see it.

But back to my sermon, let me tell you a history lesson. When the white man first set his foot on this new world, he brought with him the disease. The indigenous people had no resistance to the disease, and so they died by the thousands as the disease ran rampant. At first the white man came bearing gifts and friendship, and his disease. But once the numbers of the indigenous man were small, they came not with gifts but with guns and cannons.

So remember, WotC may be nice to you now, they may promise you the keys to the mansion in Bel-Air, but once they win back a majority of the fans, they are going to come after you. And you must resist, because what was made and what is being made is beautiful, and we cannot let the good works be forgotten.

Another year passes

And as we keep hurtling through the cold dead of space in an elliptical rotation around a singular star in the sol system, these great mysteries and wonders of the the cosmos may hit us like bolts of thunder for the mind, causing us to reflect on events that have transpired before the completion of another calendar year. And because you read my crap, and I still keep making this crap ('cause poop out of the butt is free), I am posting my (newly minted) state of the gaming world as I see it, 2011. So without further ado, let's go.

WotC: Still publishing shitty games, Mark Mearls (is that his name again? I can't remember) starts a column in the vein of Grognardia, but already obvious to everyone in the OSR, Monte Cook comes to work on 5th edition, pretty much duller than Mark Mearls

Paizo: makes WotC look like a chump; Pathfinder still makes me want to slam my dick in a sliding glass door and then stick my nuts in a hornet nest.

Green Ronin: Continues to make quality products with a small staff, really awesome people. They acquired a book for me, at a loss during their warehouse sale: that is dedicated customer service.

Troll Lord Games: Great guys, make good product, finally released the Castle Keeper's Guide, I ordered a bunch of stuff and because it took longer to mail it then a few days, they sent me a free module. These guys are a class act.

Tales of the Frog God: I am loving the shit that Bill is making. Tome of Horrors, Tome of Adventure Design, Hex Crawl Classics, Black Monestary - this is top quality stuff made with love.

Lamentation of Jim Fire Princess: Took him forever to make Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown, but woah, awesome job on the visual aspects. He's come a long way since he released Weird Fantasy Role Playing. Sure, his blog is hella boring now, but his stuff is good in my opinion.

Cubicle 7: Hey, the new The One Ring RPG is pretty sweet. They also do Advanced Fighting Fantasy.

Mongoose: Lost the license for Dragon Warriors, and Rune Quest. Now they do Legend, which is the first Rune Quest-y book I've owned. I like what I read.

FATE: I've picked up a few games using this sytem: Diaspora, Legends of Anglerre, Spirit of the Century. I have to say, I'm warming up to it.

Brave Halfling: Still no Delving Deeper box.

Goodman Games: Still no DCC RPG.

Kenzer and Co: Hackmaster is shaping up to be pretty awesome. The Hacklopedia is beautiful, and I have no doubt that the Player's Handbook will be just as awesome, if not more so.

Conclusion: Fuck you WotC, everyone else keep up the good work.

P.S. HAHAHAHAHA MARK MEARLS!!!!!

P.P.S. Happy Holidays!

You guys are looking at this completely wrong

A lot of people are saying "Fuck WotC for letting go Steve Winters and Rich Baker!" And brothers and sisters, I would normally be with you in the church singing those praises high into heaven. But you got to look at this from another angle.

WotC = shit.

Leaving WotC = wiping the shit off your boots.

Look at the trends. Paizo's business is booming. They have been hiring these cast aside WotC/TSR employees. These guys have lots of cred, I'm sure there is no end to the amount of freelance work they can do. Sure, freelance isn't health insurance, 401k, benefits, and all the good stuff stable work brings you, but money is money friend, and you can pay the rent freelancing as much as you can working at the shit mines.

Also, some people are surprised, to which I ask this rhetorical question: where have you been the last 11 years? WotC always celebrates christmas with a round of layoffs and then bringing in a homeless guy to have perform a cleveland steamer on with while drinking cognac and smoking cigars.

Every time someone says that someone got laid off at Christmas from WotC, I want you to link them to this picture: that will be your work and mission in this life. And then strike them - strike them as hard as you can. Drag them down the stairs and take their lifeless body into the backyard and bury the body in the ground. Bury it deep and bury it well. Bury the shame and the pain.

Woah, we just went to a weird place.

I am taking my toys and going home - fuck you guys!

So James at the Underdark Gazette is closing shop and moving the OSR news to a new blog. Why? 'Cause the dude is afraid for the ways IP is being protected in this country. Do I blame him? No. Is this blog entry about him? No.

Fuck you WoTC. You already wrecked the best fantasy game of all time, but you didn't want to stop at that. You're sending out C&Ds like holiday cards. You take away PDFs of the old non-supported editions - by the way, the OSR community says fuck you for having to pick up the slack. You talk shit about the games we like. You save the a few select parts of the game for yourself. And then you turn around and sing this "why can't we all just get along" tune and say to us, "Hey guys, we're doing some articles and polls. What do you think?"

I think fuck you. Fuck you and every bean counter that works there. Fuck everybody there from the lowest intern to the highest CEO. I don't even want your concessions anymore, I just want you to get the hell out of my part of the net and go fuck up your shit somewhere else. You want to C&D someone? C&D being assholes for the sake of the people who still like you.

Leave the OSR alone and go fuck yourselves.

A Challenge to Game Designers

How many times have you, John Q. Public, seen an awesome game and thought "Man I'd love to get my group to play this, but the people I know don't all want to spend the money to each get their own book for a game they might not like." I know that sometimes the hardest part in group game adoption is the buy in, especially in these economically strapped times where some people don't have the discretionary income to purchase new games.

Some game designers don't want to give their game away for free, and rightly they should feel this way, because if they put the effort and work into it, they are certainly within their right to demand reward for it. In this day when we are still transitioning from a paper based world to an electronic document world (though never fully in either direction), it becomes easier and easier to justify pirating a PDF for your group so that they can have their own copy and be able to buy in to the game.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to obliterate piracy, because I think that is impossible, especially when you are talking about the electronic document medium. However, one problem is getting your electronic document into the hands of as many gamers as possible. Sure, you can price your game low enough or give it away for free, but the sad fact is, people don't look at free games the way they look at a game sold on the market.

Therefore, I propose the following option that is untested and therefore very theoretical. Taking the idea from software licensing, I propose that PDF retailers or people using paypal or google checkout, give the option to the buyer to buy a group PDF license. This license, which would add to the cost of the PDF item enough to cover retailer costs and a small margin for the game designer, allows the buyer and up to four other people to have the PDF. If the buyer needs another license for more than 4 people, the cost can be scaled up.

This idea came to me because recently I had been thinking of running a skype game for some gamers, and I know the game I want to run has a high PDF cost, and I feel guilty at the prospect of putting it on some file sharing site so they can download it. If such an option were available to me, I'd buy it immediately. The benefits are obvious: you cover the relatively small costs of distributing the PDF to more people (creating more awareness), put a little bit more money in the pocket of the designer, for a product that is intangible. Some people may not like the idea that up to 5 people are getting the game for the costs of little more than one PDF, but you don't have to apply this benefit to all PDFs (mainly PDFs which represent the core rulebook), and you still cover the costs enough to make it more desirable to purchase rather than pirate.

Am I nuts, am I on to something, or am I beaten to the punch? Tell me internet, in the comments below.