1. The GSL rebellion seems to be going full swing, but like the corporations in Star Wars I think I'll let this go on for a little while before I pin my flag to either side. AFAIK the copyright laws regarding systems are the same over here as they are in the US as I've seen similar 'compatible' products sold over here.

2. Someone should SO 'Osric' Cyberpunk 2020 given that CP3.0 was so bloody awful.

Card game idea that came to me in a dream last night (don't ask).

OK, you have a deck of cards, there are three kinds of cards in it:

1. Pigs - each pig has different qualities, like being bulletproof, fireproof etc. Affecting what objects can be used on it.
2. Verbs.
3. Objects.

a) Shuffle the deck.
b) Each player draws three cards to start, any pigs are returned to the deck.
c) Determine who goes first by playing rock, paper scissors or rolling a dice.
d) Each turn you draw a card, up to a maximum hand size of five (discard a card if you go over). If you draw a pig you shout 'F*CKPIG!' and proceed to step e). Otherwise play moves clockwise around the table until a pig is drawn.

e) Starting with the player who drew the pig you play card combos that describe something horrible you are doing to the pig. Each action and object is worth points and the person who scores the most points with their combo wins that hand, their points and the points for ALL the combos placed on the pig (introducing a tactical element). Combos have to make sense. In the event of points ties the table votes on who wins the hand with a coin toss separating ties.
f) If you can't go for some reason, you shout 'PIGFUCK!' and everyone laughs at you.
g) Play ends when all the pigs have been played.

Optional:
To increase the tactical element some interference/addition cards (4th type) could be added to the mix. Such as '...and douse it in hot sauce.'

Example:
Bill draws a card for his turn, bringing his hand size to five, it's a pig! It's Wee Pig, who is a born victim with no immunities. Bill gets to go first and the four remaining cards he has in his hand at the moment are...

1. I fuck it...
2. I burn it...
3. ...with my chainsaw.
4. ...with a badger.

Fucking a pig with a chainsaw is possible, and horrible, fucking it with a badger.... feasible but the other players aren't likely to go for it. Burning with either a badger or a chainsaw isn't really possible so Bill has no choice but to play 'I fuck it with my chainsaw' for a fairly strong combo of fifteen points. The remaining players now play their combos, if they can't beat Bill they should choose to play low card combos to limit the number of points he can get, otherwise they should strive to beat him.

HERE over on apresvie

X-Posted to apresvie

Wizards of the Coast is pleased to announce that third-party publishers will be allowed to publish products compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game system under the new Dungeons & Dragons 4E Game System License (D&D 4E GSL). This royalty-free license will replace the former d20 System Trademark License (STL), and will have a System Reference Document (SRD) available for referencing permissible content.

The D&D 4E GSL will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in fantasy settings with the D&D 4th Edition rules, and publishers who register with WotC will be granted the right to use a version of the D&D logo that denotes the product as compatible with the D&D 4th Edition Roleplaying Game, in accordance with WotC’s terms and conditions. The effective start date for sales of D&D 4E GSL publications will be October 1, 2008.

The license associated SRD will be available on June 6, 2008, at no cost. A small group of publishers received advanced notice and will receive these documents prior to June 6, at no cost, in order to prepare for publication of compatible materials by the effective start date. If you haven’t already been contacted by WotC, you will be able to access the documents on the Wizards website beginning on June 6, 2008.

Wizards is also working on the details of a second royalty-free license, the d20 Game System License (d20 GSL). This license will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in non-fantasy settings with the 4E rules. The exact details for the d20 GSL will be released as they become available.

************

This seems slightly woolly to me since 'Fantasy Setting' is a rather subjective term, would Iron Kingdoms be a fantasy setting? What about Bas Lag? Some people consider Star Wars to be fantasy. Plus this doesn't tell us that much about the constrictions of the new licence but I'd hazard a guess and say it's going to be about as restrictive as the old D20 license, so you may not be able to do complete settings with character creation etc in them. This may be a bit of a mistake as the leeway with the old OGL lead to efforts like True20 and Mutants & Masterminds that pushed things forward a bit. Still, we'll see, I'm sure I can knock something up whatever the restrictions.

New reviews for Scion Companion: Tuatha Dé Danann and the new version of Suzerain over on apresvie. They should also appear later on on Flames Rising, which is the other place you can read my reviews besides my journal and which is great for horror, RPG and other reviews, news and discussion.

Running a Dr Who game for our very own timelord, xambrius is both a nerve-wracking and a fulfiling experience.  While he is a true Whovian I merely grew up with it and it forms part of my overall pantheon os science fiction knowledge.  Still, throwing in some Dr Who obscuriana, fitting him into and around the events of the end of the most recent series (The Doctor couldn't have saved the world without The Seeker!) and delving deeper into the Whoniverse than I have previously have all made this a cracking experience.

Can't wait to do more.

Though I think I made </a></a>atrophy_angel a little too wussy as a companion, even though the 'Meeps' were authentic.

(Bex, miss ya, escape the cam and come visit, poophead :P)

Anyway, now The Seeker is off into his spin off, we can start to have fun.

The best parts are...

• I can avoid silly romance plots.
• I can use UNIT properly.
• My budget is unlimited :)

Best bit of gaming I've done in a long time.

We seem to have a slot opened up in our Wednesday night IRC gaming.
Looking for an Arcane Magiciant/Technologist type for Iron Kingdoms.
We're up to about level 6/7 now and just about to finish the Witchfire Trilogy, then a short break and carrying on with that campaign I reckon.

Anyone?

Have I fallen back through time by 25-30 years somehow?

Everywhere I look at the moment I'm seeing gamers talking about battlemats and miniatures for their play.

I don't think I've ever, except way back in my gaming neophyte years, ever used a battlemat or miniatures for an RPG. Skirmish games yes, wargames, definately, but not in an RPG.

Then there's this palpable 'backlash' and defensiveness by hack and slash gamers against more story-led gaming. Which I don't get. Their style-of-play (by the book, kill stuff, play tactically) is the one area in RPGs where computer games can do it better than we can, whereas the story-led and more adaptive/rules light/social style of play is where TTRPGs can still outshine their computer cousins.

What the hell is going on?

These assessments are made upon having got to level 3 and the third area of the city. They are subject to change.

Graphics
----------
On previews, movies and stills the graphics look very nice, very smooth and capture the newer 'Dungeonpunk' look of 3rd edition D&D quite nicely.

In character creation they also look nice.

Once you get into the game though - and this may just be due to the stress on the servers - everything runs like a pig.

I do not have a shitty rig by any means, 2.5 gig processor, 1.5 gig ram, 256 meg graphics card, plenty of cache space, nothing running in the background, but even on lowered resolution and with most of the bells and whistles turned off it runs - at best - spastically. Slide show movement in towns, controls are slow to respond and any customisation you have put into your character becomes barely noticable.

The problem slackens off - a little - in dungeon instances, but not by that much, and definately not in outside instances. You'd think the instancing would help take the load off, but apparently not.

These graphics issues wouldn't be a problem necessarily, if there weren't sheer drops and ramps you can fall off everywhere, and take falling damage. The graphical strain and lag in control makes plummeting to your doom somewhat likely.

As a PnP RPer character customisation is important to me. There are basic options but IMO they're not really enough. Equipment does look different from item to item however and that does make characters recognisable. The problem comes when your kick-ass bit of equipment looks lame and you have to substitute style for effectiveness.

Overall I think the graphics are good, but they seem to create problems in other aspects of play. Note that NWN similarly runs like a bit of a pig on my rig, as have the KOTOR games, all games that use a similar interface and playing mode. So it _may_ be my system, but I can't see how.

Oh, and your cloaks and things don't show.

Gameplay
-----------
Character creation is pretty much spot on from tabletop, with full customisation options.
However, there are omissions.
No shapeshifter race, no half orc or half elf.
Class-wise they're missing the Druid and Monk and also Eberron specifics like the Artificer.

Once into the game you're deposited on a newbie island and the quests are pretty straight forward from there. You get a mission, you descend into a dungeon and things may or may not get complex from there. Rinse, repeat. Most of them being sewers or cellars.

If you create a continuum of gameplay with turn-based strategy on one end and platformers on the other, DDO falls somewhere betteen 60-75% on the platformer side. This has knock-on effects in other areas of gameplay.

Unlike with many D&D type games, XP and loot are kept under control and the level balancing seems approximately right. Combat is often challenging but you rarely feel gypped.

Controls in town are sluggish, slightly less so in dungeons but the poor controls do make you fall off things more often than you should.

That pretty much covers the raw physical side of things.

The real test for me is in roleplaying. That's my raison d'etre.

There isn't any.

All the quests are preset and there are no deviation paths, while you might choose (if solo) to sneak, or bash or take some other route the adventure and its outcome are all predetermined. This is a massive step back from KOTOR or Deus Ex where you did have some actual choice in how things turned out. Here, you're very much on rails and on rails more than many current generation single player CRPGs.

You can't roleplay very much, if it all, because it IS an action game. You cannot pause to type something because you need to be constantly moving your character, positioning and fighting for best effect.

Voice chat severely restricts your ability to play something not of your own race, area or sex, further screwing with the ability to RP.

While there are items such as food and drink, they have no graphic and the inns are just respawning, healing and teaming places. There are NO roleplaying spaces within the game and no props or opportunities to get into your role.

The emote list is inadequete for RPing also.

For a game drawing on the grandaddy of all RPGs, this seems... odd.

Teaming however is essential and I cannot stress enough how much difference having a decent team makes to this game. It makes it 10-100x better. Of course, with so many random pick-up groups going on you do get the asshats too, and they can reeeeally mess things up for a team. If you're lucky, you get a gem of a team though.

MMO?
-------
Massive? Not really, the areas are fairly pokey, dungeons feel quite big but that's because you scour every corner.
Multiplayer? Yes. Definately. Essentially.
Online? Of course :)
RPG? No, there is almost no chance to portray your character in any way, no scope for it built into the game. This is much more about action oriented play and the tactics of creating the 'optimum build' for your character class.

D&Dness
----------
It has the stats and the look but it is 'empty'. The fanatical concentration on dungeons overrides the possibility of any other real RPG effort getting into it. The narrator voice is a nice touch, drawing attention to things and acting as your DM but it brings to mind the module play of the 80's rather than the more freewheeling modern modes of play. It's like a timewarp to someone who still plays red-box D&D and only uses modules. Again, very strange.

It has D&D's body, but not its soul. Though the way some people play tabletop, perhaps it'll suit them (the Munchkins).

Instancing?
-------------
Instancing kills immersion stone dead for me. Repeated quests that everyone else has done? What's the point of unravelling the same story as everyone else for the umpteenth time.

Worth Paying For?
---------------------
I like it, I could play it as a break from other games, but for casual play it isn't worth the charge being asked. It just doesn't offer what I want at that cost. $5 a month, maybe I'd pay to play, the current charge? No.

NWN is likely to look as shiny as this and will let me create and interact with my own content, and the online parts will be free. That sounds like a better deal to me.

Summary
-----------
It's not D&D, or if it is, it's more like Xtreme Dungeonbashing (Sponsored by Pepsi Max). It makes me think of a game called Xcrawl.

http://www.pandahead.com/Xcrawl/background.php

Whatever it IS is done well, but it isn't an RPG in any sense that I understand it or apply the term. But it's much better than the slagging recieved here would have you think.

Linked to it before, but it's still good.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/basementelf_1024.jpg

OK, bear with me...

You basically have three modes of LARP, ones that correspond pretty well to the MMORPG world.

1. Players Vs Monsters - Organised play like Labyrinthe and the smaller LARP groups in which people 'monster'. Much more like traditional tabletop play.
2. Big armies and factions - Like the big battle oriented LARPS with some politicking between factions but usually all building to skirmishes and a big fight. Much more like a wargame in many regards.
3. Intrigue based - Like oWoD, politicking, scheming, erupting to violence when the positives outweigh the negatives and so on.

MMORPGs are a lot like LARPs and I see a lot of comparisons.
You have your PvE play (which corresponds to no.1).
You have your faction PvP (which corresponds to no.2).
You have your Free For All PvP (which roughly approximates to no.3, only with no consequences, generally, for killer or killee and no balances.

You get similar splits in expectations as well, though most in LARPS, since they're more split up, seem to enter into it with a clear idea of what they're getting into. I think part of the problem with MMORPGs is that they try to be all things to all people but end up pleasing none of them entirely.

PvE players tend to be more the genuine roleplayers, interested in developing their character, exploring the story and 'living' in the world. The community builders.
PvP players seem to, most of the time, come to MMORPGs more from the FPS route and their roleplay is pretty much limited (where it does exist) to 'Lol! I am teh 3vi1!'. There are exceptions but still.

Trying to mix these communities (in a situation with little to no consquences for the murderous PvPers) appears to be a recipe for constant bitching and recrimination but gives the PvPers all the power in the situation since they want to kill, don't mind dying and tend to get extra rewards for PvPing.

PvE content is often unrewarding for those players since development time is taken away from it to cater to PvPers and 'balance' that wouldn't be so much of a concern in a pure PvE environment. No developer can produce enough PvE content to satisfy the masses and very little quest or event content has a genuine effect on the gameworld, leaving those players unsatisfied.

MMORPGs seem to have lost sight of, and even to poor scorn on, their roots despite the fact they could learn a great deal from going back to tabletop RPGs.

I think WoW has taken the place of D&D in the MMORPG equivalency - an unusual thing from our point of view, a Fantasy Heartbreaker that usurped the original. The best route to take for many developers would be to find and exploit the various niche markets rather than try to be all thigns to all people and to take on WoW. We might be starting to see that with DDO and it'll be interesting to watch how things develop.

I have some solutions to the root problems in MMORPGs but the solution has to start at the development stage and there just aren't many people willing to risk innovation given the cost.

Maybe I can find a way to get involved in improving current MMORPGs, training the plot/quest developers or something.

Having now played both Warmachine (using card proxy figures) and having been running an Iron Kingdoms game for some time now, I have no reservations in telling you that the whole setting, and games themselves...

ARE MADE OF WIN AND GOD!

I've killed two characters, something that I hardly ever do in RPGs, and its an interesting twist on the heroic narrative I normally play. It fits the grittiness of the setting and my rules modifications though.

Just played (or tried to play) the opponent of HL2 in the 'great FPS face off'.
Doom3 is... I'm sorry... shit.
I don't have a slacker machine by any stretch, but even in 'medium' graphic settings it ran like a slideshow, the plot was wank and you just couldn't see what you were doing, making for frustrating and annoying, rather than scary or challenging, gameplay.

Screw that.

*uninstall*

@ctiv8 is an experiment and another dare – the last being Hentacle. The experiment here, the dare – though this time it wasn’t an explicit dare – was to make an overtly political game. Not political in the sense of intrigues and Machiavellian schemes which has come to be the definition in most games that define themselves as political but rather a game that takes an explicit political stance and expresses it.

Conventional wisdom is that taking a political, or religious, stance is commercial suicide as you will alienate far more people than you attract. While there are plenty of games that play with religious or magickal themes and concepts none of them take a stance on what they regard as being real or their own religion for fear of inciting fundamentalists into an 80’s style RPG witch hunt or alienating their customer base. It’s not hard to see with many games however that their authors or contributors do have a particular stance or belief. Strangely though, politics seems completely beyond the pale for people to comment on or play with even at the arms-length with which we play with religion.

The politics and ideas upon which @ctiv8 are based are expressed more than adequately elsewhere in the book. You can play @ctiv8 without acknowledging these and play it as a more straightforward conspiracy or hero type game. The main thrust of the game is that anyone can be a hero, anyone in the right place at the right time with the right skills, connections or just a willingness to do something can make a positive and measurable change to the world.

I hope that @ctiv8 encourages people to become more aware of things going on around them, of how things work, of how they can help each other, help their communities and make the world a better place. After all, the best stories are those that inspire as well as entertain.
Notes
------
a) The political stance that @ctiv8 takes is an anarchistic one, that government structures fail, corrupt themselves and that this seems to be almost inevitable. That low turn outs and the disconnect between political parties and the ‘common man’, combined with the rise of single-issue activism has rendered the larger western democracies unrepresentative and largerly irrelevent.
b) I have a fairly staunch belief that writing something you have some buy-in to, some belief in, some enthusiasm for makes for better work.
c) The world is a complicated place politically and socially and I really want to write things where nothing is straightforward or easy, where Orcs aren’t ‘the 3vi1!’ simply because they were born Orcs. @ctiv8 is set in our real world and there’s few settings more complicated and grey than that!
d) Politics never hurt George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Heinlein or China Mieville.

Reading Achilli's comments about White Wolf's new LARP protection racket.

Strangely, that makes me incredibly angry while I can deal with and get into the head of the terrorists behind todays bombings with a much greater degree of understanding.

I think the difference is that one set of distress causing actions have some justification and are in many ways a redress of grievances.
The other is out and out corporate wankery with only a thin tissue of lies to cover it.

Still, it is a strange feeling to have.

Finally finished Planescape Torment, only 7 years after purchasing it...

Very good game.

I never completed Baldur's Gate either, but don't seem to have it around any more. Ah well.

www.livejournal.com/~mekanismo