This would normally go in RPG ghetto, but it's too fucking AMAZING.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9294-The-State-of-Dungeons-Dragons-Future

THE EGO THAT SANK ROLEPLAYING.

Mearls admits 4th edition might have gone too far in creating a perfectly balanced game. "We've lost faith of what makes an RPG an RPG," he said, admitting that in trying to please gamers with a limited imagination, 4th edition might have punished those with an active one. "There's this fear of the bad gaming group, where the game is so good that even playing with a bad gaming group, you'll still have fun."

This is the guy behind 4th Ed, a lot of Pathfinder (which is now recycling product and foundering just as I, your prophet, predicted.  His ego goes on to even further heights, as he bashes his customers for not appreciating his genius, in a manner that would have embarrassed John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

You can, of course, leave comments.   

This brings up another issue.  "THE BEST GM IN TUCSON" - yes, there's a guy that actually bills himself as that - has thrown all the other DMs out of his podcasts, because they also don't appreciate his titan-like intellect...He could have cured cancer, but dammit, he's a GAMER, and if you don't do it the way he does, then you should quit and play Candyland.  His site also accepts comments...But I'm hogging that one up until we can all blitz him at once.

[Don Coyote]

Say whaaaaaaaaattt

More to come after I read the article.

[Don Coyote]

And, I..uh...what?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And, I..uh...what?

You failed to appreciate all he's done for you, you ungrateful BASTARD.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

"We broke it. How do we fix it without ret-conning everything out of existence?"

I don't really know what their options are, at this point. Betcha 5th edition is going to have two options in the same manual; DM-driven storyteller mode and player-driven choose-your-own-adventure mode. That way they can appease everyone and get them in the same book, at least. :P

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"We broke it. How do we fix it without ret-conning everything out of existence?"

I don't really know what their options are, at this point. Betcha 5th edition is going to have two options in the same manual; DM-driven storyteller mode and player-driven choose-your-own-adventure mode. That way they can appease everyone and get them in the same book, at least. :P

I'm gonna stick with pathfinder, even though they've started recycling material lately.  I'm particularly dismayed by Bestiary 3 and Mythic Monsters Revisited.

[Don Coyote]

"We broke it. How do we fix it without ret-conning everything out of existence?"

I don't really know what their options are, at this point. Betcha 5th edition is going to have two options in the same manual; DM-driven storyteller mode and player-driven choose-your-own-adventure mode. That way they can appease everyone and get them in the same book, at least. :P

I betcah 5th edition will have 5 books, at least, required to play the game at its most basic.

Why?

Well, the PHB, the DMG, the MM and the "How to play this game without a DM" book and the "I am a tortured and misunderstood WRITER" guide to railroading and NPC theater.

BUUUUUUT

All the books will reference each other, so even if you don't want to play the game a certain way, you will need to buy them all for all the rules.

And the new version of OGL will be even more restrictive, and there will be no SRD available.

[Telarus]

That was nearly painful for me to read.




"A divided D&D is a symptom [that some of the role-players out there aren't handing me money]," said Mike Mearls, the current head of Dungeons & Dragons development at WOTC. "I think the designers market seems to have lost faith in the core essence of the RPG the brand name most associated with roleplaying."

[Don Coyote]

Now correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't DnD originally about fucking shit up in dungeons that frequently had no purpose other than to house things for your party to fucking up royally and take their shit?

And wasn't there a proliferation of other RPGs during the 1st and 2nd editions.

oh wait, that's right. RPGers will buy different RPGs. But why would anyone buy different concurrent versions of the same one, one of which may or may not be anything like the game you used to play?

That was nearly painful for me to read.




"A divided D&D is a symptom [that some of the role-players out there aren't handing me money]," said Mike Mearls, the current head of Dungeons & Dragons development at WOTC. "I think the designers market seems to have lost faith in the core essence of the RPG the brand name most associated with roleplaying."

And I bet having so many extra books with minimal content but high costs, had nothing to do with it at all.

[Cramulus]

This article had a number of points that made me go "ehhhhh that's not really it".

Quick note - Mike Mearls was hired a few months ago -- he's not "behind" 4th edition. He was involved with 2nd (a bit) an 3rd, and they hired him (recently) to try and reunite the warring factions of D&D players. WOTC hopes that by bringing some of the oldschool designers back onto the team, they'd sooth a bit of the community's peevishness.

The article makes it sound like all RPG players played on the same team until D&D 4e came out, and that caused this giant rift. But yo - the RPG industry's been like that for as long as its been around. Gamers divide into camps and trash talk every other style of game. That was what the Open Gaming License was supposed to combat, and I'm still bummed that WOTC stopped supporting it - it was a great idea!

I thought Mearls made an interesting point about how 4e overly indulges in player power in the same way that 2e overly indulged in story. I'm finally getting into the higher levels of 4e play, and daaaamn players have some crazy abilities. But that means you get to throw even crazier monster powers at them and see how they deal with it. Just like in 3e, the DM needs a pretty solid grasp of the system and the party in order to build encounters which are challenging but not total party wipes.

I'm really not getting where Mearls is coming from about the system cramping creativity - They've shifted how they publish stuff like setting information - story details are left much more open to the DM in this edition than in previous editions. One part of it is that the players have a bit more control over the story in this edition. Right now I'm writing the next tier of the plot, and a lot of gets determined by the class / paragon / destiny choices the players have made. Like the wizard in our party picked a paragon path (think prestige class) that involves her being mentored by a specific dragon who communicates to her through dreams. And I've had to build that into the story (which isn't difficult), but it's interesting because it's not my story, it's her explicitly choosing what her story is about.

I'm psyched to hear Atari surrendered the D&D video game license. They've done little with it except make arcade style games. Temple of Elemental Evil was awesome*, but that was 10 years ago. The Heroes of Neverwinter facebook app was pretty good, for what it was, but it's still missing something. Atari is into making really accessible "pick up and play" games, but D&D needs something you can sink your teeth into a bit more. (like the Baldur's Gate series)




I have some more thoughts, and I'll find the time to type them up a bit later...




*TOEE was THE most loyal adaptation of 3e rules in any computer game -- seriously, if you lose the game manual, you can use the tabletop player's handbook and get the same info. Definitely worth pirating if you're into 3e.

[Telarus]

I agree with a lot of that Cram. I just found the article really poor journalism. Here's how you write about RPGs (forgive the crappy pdf formatting)

Johnny Brainwash: Holding Games for Ransom

From O.V.O. #18, "Money" (O.V.O. curated by Onan Cenobite)

Tabletop gaming is a niche hobby at best. A
selection of relatively simple board games is
marketed for children and families by big toy
companies. The granddaddy of all role-playing
games, *Dungeons andDragons*, is a major
product line for its publisher, Wizards of the Coast,
but the company still relies on card games and
miniatures to keep itself afloat. And Wizards is just
a small division of the toy giant Hasbro.

Only a handful of other games can compete with
D&D for profitability. Many are lucky if they can
even make it onto the shelves. Major book retailers
like Borders prefer to deal only with established
and well-supported games. Local gaming stores,
meanwhile, are usually shoestring operations with
limited shelf space and a bewildering array of
options. Again, an established line is usually a
safer bet.

Selling directly to fans seemed to become easier
with the internet - anyone who could find your
game online could order it, regardless of whether
their local gaming store stocked it or not. But the
costs of printing a large enough run were still
prohibitive. Some publishers tried selling digital
copies, starting with various e-book formats but
quickly settling for the basic .pdf.

Unfortunately, anything sold as a .pdf is quickly
shared, and stops selling as free copies become
available. Sharing music isn't catastrophic for
independent artists, because they can make their
money on live performances. Game publishers
have no such option, however - the book or
manual itself is their primary source of income.
They don't sell concert tickets or t-shirts. And
independent game writers, without the resources
of a bigger company to back them up, can't
subsidize their game books with collectible cards
or miniatures.

If they can't get paid to create games, they can't
keep doing it. At least they can't give it the time
and attention that it deserves. One game writer,
however, is trying a new model, one that's off to
a promising start.

In 2004, Greg Stolze and Daniel Solis created a
fun little game called Meatbot Massacre. It's a
tactical dice game where players design
bioengineered war robots and fight them in an
arena. It's well-written and tightly designed, and
introduces an innovative dice-rolling
system. It's a game that feeds the enthusiasms
of a select group of gamers, a niche within a
niche, but it's not a game that will generate
enough profit to be worth printing. Not on a
traditional retail model, at least.

But Stolze reimagined his audience. Instead of
a group of individual customers, he saw them
as a collective. He wanted to harness the
support of the gaming community to sell the
game to the community. They didn't all have to
buy as individuals - they just had to offer
enough collectively. So he decided to hold the
game for ransom.

In December of 2004, he announced that the
game had been written, and would be released
into the public domain when he received $600
for it. It was a small start - the game itself was
only ten pages, and Stolze set the price by
determining all the expenses and then paying
himself four cents a word, the low end for game
writing. Solis set up a ransom website with a
PayPal button, and they set a deadline of
September 2005. If the ransom wasn't collected
by then, the game wouldn't be released, and
whatever money had been raised would be
turned over to a homeless shelter.

Ransoming a game was a novel idea, and no one
knew how it would work. After a strong start,
donations slowed to a trickle, but they kept
coming in. The $600 goal was achieved in five
months, half the time allotted, and the game was
released as a free download in April 2005.

With this success under their belts, Stolze and
Solis went on to produce ...In Spaaace!, a comic
role-playing game of space shenanigans. Like
Meatbot Massacre, it was an innovative system,
based this time on bidding with tokens instead of
rolling any dice. And like Meatbot Massacre, while
it would find a hearty welcome in a certain narrow
audience, it would never be profitable for retail.

They set the ransom in July 2005, this time at
$750 for a fifteen page game, still paying Stolze
less than five cents a word. Instead of ten months,
however, they set the deadline at six weeks, and it
only took four to collect.

There was another big difference in this ransom,
apart from the shorter time period. Instead of
running their own site and collecting PayPal
donations, Stolze and Solis moved their operation
to a new site, www.fundable.org. Describing itself,
Fundable says it "lets groups of people pool funds
to make purchases or raise money." It collects
pledges, not actual payments, towards whatever
goal the group leader sets. When the goal is met,
the money is collected, Fundable collects 7%, and
the remainder is sent to the group leader by
PayPal (or by check, for a $10 fee.). If the goal
isn't met, the pledges are released and no money
changes hands.

Greg Stolze went on to release two more games
on Fundable. Soon after the success of *...In
Spaaace!*, he teamed up with four other writers
and designers to produce Executive Decision, in
which characters are Oval Office advisors who
compete for the president's ear while pursuing
their own agendas. It was offered in September
2005 as a fundraiser for the Red Cross after
Hurricane Katrina. In one month, it met its goal of
$1000, which was devoted to relief efforts.

Then in February 2006, Stolze and fellow game
developer Dennis Detwiller offered Nemesis for
a $1000 ransom. In this case, there was a 25-
day deadline that was met in just 11 days.
Nemesis was the largest yet, at 56 pages, and it
was also an important release for other
reasons.

Stolze and Detwiller had worked together
before, notably on 2002's Godlike, a superhero
role-playing game set in World War II. For this
game, Stolze developed the dice mechanic that
would become the One-Roll Engine (ORE), a
generic game system that could accommodate
any setting. Stolze and Detwiller would release
Wild Talents, the sequel to Godlike, at the end
of 2006, but in the meantime Godlike was all
there was.

Nemesis was the ORE, stripped of
superpowers, spliced to a system for madness
from Stolze's earlier work on the Unknown
Armies game, and placed in a horror setting
reminiscent of the Cthulhu mythos. It was the
first ORE release since Godlike, and by working
with characters who were ordinary mortals, it
made the system accessible to a much broader
range of settings than a superhero game could
be. It served as a default system document for
the ORE, and continues to fill an important
function within the system.

But Nemesis only set the stage for Stolze's
next project. Reign was to be his long-awaited
fantasy adaptation of the ORE, with a new set
of rules for characters to build organizations
and play on a much larger scale. It was to be a
full-size core rulebook, over 350 pages, far
larger than anything that had been published by
ransom. Stolze didn't want to stretch the
ransom model to the breaking point, but he
couldn't afford to print the books himself either.
He chose instead to use Lulu.com for print-on-demand
(POD).

Reign came out on Lulu in May 2007. It came in
four editions: hard or soft cover, and with a choice
of cover art by Daniel Solis or Dennis Detwiller.
The softcover editions ran into trouble with some
misprints, which took several months to clear up.
Also, POD can't offer the price breaks of mass
production, so the books were spendy: $36.89 for
the softcovers and $49.30 for the hard, with more
tacked on for postage. This compares to $29.95
for hardcovers of the core D&D books, and $39.95
for the hardcover of Godlike from the small press
Arc Dream Publishing.

Despite the problems and the cost, Reign has
sold well for POD. In October of 2007, Stolze
reported on his website that he'd sold 675
copies. Not a lot compared to D&D, but a decent
showing for an independent game. He reported
that he'd currently made over $12,000 from Lulu,
selling the four editions of Reign and one small
book of short stories. None of that money included
what he made from the supplements.

Traditionally, roleplaying games offer one or more
hefty rulebooks, followed by a number of
supplements. Managed well, new supplements
can continue to bring in money once the core
books have leveled off. But from the player's
perspective, the constant flow of supplements
sometimes feels like being milked for every
available penny.

At the end of the Reign rulebook, Stolze makes a
promise: "You're holding in your hands the last
Reign product to be released solely as a print book
with a fixed price. Everything else is going to come
out via the Ransom Model."

From June to October 2007, Stolze offered four
supplements for a ransom of $1000 each. Each
one had a deadline of 25 days. The first three
made their goals; the last one came up $20 short
but was released anyway. More are said to be in
the works.

Stolze seems to have dedicated himself to
building a new model of making and selling
games, one with the potential to reach players
directly, saving the game's creator the overhead
of printing and distribution and bypassing the
fight for retail shelf-space. He's made a good
start, but important questions remain.

Stolze and his collaborators were already wellknown
in the gaming community. Stolze had
worked for White Wolf Publishing, the main
competitor to Wizards of the Coast, as well as
the smaller Atlas Games, where he had worked
on the seminal Unknown Armies. The ransom
model depends largely on his well-established
reputation, which also helps to overcome the
high price of print-on-demand. But will his
model work for a writer without his reputation?
What happens to a designer without a built-in
audience? How will a system based on
reputation allow for new blood to enter the field?

It also remains to be seen if this model will work
for Stolze in the long run. Will ransom continue
to work when the novelty wears off, and will it
allow him to establish a regular source of
income? Other than coming up $20 short on
one Reign supplement, he hasn't failed to
achieve a ransom yet. What will happen when
he does? The system looks good when it
succeeds, but is it robust enough to handle
failure?

Finally, what else can the ransom model
support? Fundable's primary market seems to
be non-profit fundraising and group purchases.
It also boasts of supporting books, music and
film. How far can this approach be taken, and
can it be optimized for particular types of
products? Game design has such a narrow
audience that it may have to ride the
coattails of more popular fields, such as
independent musicians.

Stolze's efforts may succeed and grow, or they may become another internet casualty. But in the
meantime, they've already put good innovative games in the hands of players, and broadened the range
of what can be done with gaming. Long-range success is by no means assured, but Greg Stolze is doing
his best to find a new way for his industry to work.
RESOURCES:
www.gregstolze.com
www.gregstolze.com/downloads.html
www.fundable.org
www.lulu.com
stores.lulu.com/gregstolze

[Kai]

That was nearly painful for me to read.




"A divided D&D is a symptom [that some of the role-players out there aren't handing me money]," said Mike Mearls, the current head of Dungeons & Dragons development at WOTC. "I think the designers market seems to have lost faith in the core essence of the RPG the brand name most associated with roleplaying."

Seriously. Because independent designers are coming up with some amazing and creative ideas building rather simply on the SRD20 ruleset.

Example: Pitfalls and Penguins

PnP is being developed by a group of gamers and web comics writers called Team Snow Day, and while some of the material is meant as a satire on D&D, most of it is created just to enhance the fun of the gaming session. This includes races (you can play as a robot, for example, but they don't have souls, so no magic for you), classes (the Salaryman is basically a bureaucrat that can go into a barbarian-esque rage once a day), and feats (Redneck Ingenuity means "there is no problem that can't be solved with duct tape). One of my favorite small changes to the SRD rules is that stats are rolled with 4d6, but only 3 of those are added up for the attribute. The fourth becomes an additive imaginary stat that represents how confident the character is at that ability. You might, for example, be playing a character that has an average charisma (10) but because of the imaginary stat (6), he thinks he's a social god (16). Which can make for hilarious gameplay. Also, some classes use imaginary stats for abilities, since magic in the PnP world happens a certain way because people believe it happens a certain way.

I was watching TSD playing a couple games (complete with character rolling) last night on a live stream. The videos are archived here: http://www.twitch.tv/joehills/videos

[Telarus]

That sounds damn creative.

Oh, for anyone who's ever even seen the book, you should all know:


Tales From the Floating Vagabond is going into a reprint/new edition!

http://thefloatingvagabond.com/

New GM Screen Art:

http://www.bitzbox.com/sites/thefloatingvagabond/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Chapter-Head-1-4-150-small.jpg

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This article had a number of points that made me go "ehhhhh that's not really it".

Quick note - Mike Mearls was hired a few months ago -- he's not "behind" 4th edition. He was involved with 2nd (a bit) an 3rd, and they hired him (recently) to try and reunite the warring factions of D&D players.

Incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mearls

He worked as a freelance writer and designer for various gaming publishers for several years before being hired in June 2005 as a designer by Wizards of the Coast. He was a Lead Developer for Dungeons & Dragons R&D[1] working on the new 4th Edition.

4th Ed was released in 2008.

[Cramulus]

ah hah.. I stand corrected !