That’s my cliffhanger, now to step back.

Last week, I was interviewed by the honchos over at Gamer’s Haven. What started probably as a short podcast ballooned to ninety minutes, I think prompted by my announcement of Amethyst Renaissance (our Pathfinder edition), not really an announcement but it was new to them. Gamer’s Haven’s review of Foundations became infamous in my circle and in the circles that tune into Gamer’s Haven. The quote that found itself in circulation involved Amethyst Foundations possessing a “3rd Edition mentality”—a thought still hard to properly define. In fact, the boys at Gamer’s Haven, when pressed about it, couldn’t properly characterize that statement either. It was then I made the passing remark that I was expecting them to claim in their eventual review of Renaissance that it had a “4th Edition mentality”. We all laughed.

How odd that three days later, I had one of my playtester imply that very thing.

The issue comes from what I believe to be the two greatest lessons to be gleaned from 4th Edition D&D.
1) There is nothing wrong with giving players freedom to choose without penalizing creativity.
2) Making abilities easy to read by offering them in bullet-form is superior than lumping them into a giant intimidating half page of amorphous paragraphs.

Forgetting my open letter, one of my more successful posts on Living Dice involved the strange and specific vernacular involving 4th Edition D&D. As I’ve been reading through Paizo’s Pathfinder and remembering how D&D 3.0/3.5 was written, I’ve discovered how much the language has changed nearly as much as the rules have. The obvious ones are supplementing movement based in feet than in squares and having someone staggered instead of dazed. I discovered that Paizo had written Pathfinder to slot in nicely between 3.5 and 4.0, as it should be. Sense Motive and Spot were merged into Perception. Jump and Balance became Acrobatics. It’s been easier to take Amethyst backwards from Foundations than forwards from our 2008 D20 book. But one issue I have with Pathfinder is the baffling nature of compressing all the facts of an ability into a hard-to-read paragraph forcing you to sift through the dense collection or sentences to find the one pertinent nugget you need.

So, with Renaissance, I’ve been listing abilities in bullet form in order to make them easier to understand, something like this:

Ability Type: Supernatural
Action: Swift
Attack of Opportunity: No
Requirement: You must be within 5 feet to a tree.
Uses Per Day: As many as your Wisdom modifier.
Effect: You teleport up to 50 feet to another tree within range. You emerge within 5 feet of the targeted tree. The trees must be rooted in the Earth.

So I’m left curious as to why would someone want something more confusing. And there are other issues as well. In Pathfinder, effects can last one 1 round, but I always considered that more confusing than effects that last until the start of your next turn. Pathfinder abilities will cure a target of damage while 4th Edition will have abilities that regain hit points. Both games make skill checks. Pathfinder characters can target opponents while 4th Edition goes mostly after enemies. Both will target creatures. Semantics aside, the issue with layout is a big one.

This was an inherent flaw with 3rd edition which Pathfinder hasn’t done enough to fix, the intimidating and confusing nature of how it present its rules. I mean a half-page of text for barbarian rage powers forcing you to look through all of that for relevant information is archaic. I mean, it IS a power; let’s be honest. You activate it. It lasts for a fixed time. Why not present it in an easy-to-read fashion?

As for giving player’s freedom, I’m still committed in following the “yes” mentality, so that if you pick an Amethyst race, you’re not automatically forced into one or two obvious classes. If you get a boost to Strength, it’s a foregone conclusion that in order to maximize your character, you would elect to be a fighter or similarly fighter-related class. So I intend to keep variable attribute bonuses introduced with the latest 4th Edition errata. The practice of Amethyst to allow its races to swap out their primary attack attribute (introduced in our 3.5 game, I might add) remains, offering more freedom than the basic races in Pathfinder do. From a design view point, I don’t see the issue.

And for those still wondering if there are more strange diction rules for 4th Edition, I just made a huge sweeping find-and-replace for Ultramodern4, removing the word “activate.” It’s only used in reference to auras. So you never activate a power, you can only use it unless the power you’re using activates an aura, in which case, that’s ok. In fact only auras and magic items are activated. But what about stances? Don’t you activate a stance? Oh hell no. You don’t use a stance either…get ready folks. You assume a stance.

You could make a trivia game about this.

I never objected to people using artwork from Amethyst, especially if it’s used in the advertising of Amethyst. I have seen artwork used in other areas, like character profile images. I look the other way. As long as it’s not used to advertise another product someone is trying to sell, I consider it fair use. The proper course of action, if there was some lofty ideology to sharing content in hope of advertising the quality of said products, would be to ask permission first before posting copyrighted information online. For Foundations, you can download the first chapter for free. Evolution offers nineteen pages on RPGNow. I created the Biohazard module, which cost me $100 in layout and art, and offered it on gratis. I’m doing it again in the fall with another free module for Ultramodern4 called Invasion Proxy.

People may not fully understand copyright law and what is and is not permissible. Many times, the law has to take precedence over the wants of fans because of the risk of corrupted ideals. Neil Gaiman’s ideology (spoken of previously) may seem pleasant and easily quotable, but his views are not reflective of the actual world. Despite the possible gains for free access to copyrighted files, you automatically run the risk of that work being manipulated and distributed by those only wanting something expensive for free.

If you were a game designer trying to make money from RPGs in one of the most volatile times to be publisher (with WOTC fragmenting their rules systems, Paizo continuously gaining ground and some fans believing that you can’t love both), you would understand how running a free database without permission could be an assassins dagger into the backs of third party companies. I know the arguments about the suffering American economy but the problem faces both developer and consumer. With large industries like fantasy fiction and console games, a company can underwrite lost revenue. Websites post whole sections of books and demos of games. Pen & paper role playing is a relatively small group of people in comparison.

Movies are making more money than they ever did. The music industry redefined itself with iTunes. Books are having a tough time. Brick and mortar stores are closing left and right. It’s becoming more difficult to even define copyright no less enforce it. You’re talking to the same guy that posted a rather “famous” public letter to WOTC regarding 3rd Party Publishers on this very website. We’re feeling the squeeze from Paizo fans (not Paizo), and WOTC is doing nothing to expand their own product penetration by supporting the very companies that signed to support them.

But that’s my problem to deal with, not yours. All you need to worry about is gleaning maximum enjoyment over what I present. I hire the best artists and don’t allow crap, at least not intentionally. I had to ask for the removal of Amethyst from the forum that started this dialogue because I had to from a business perspective. I stayed posting on it because I respect gamers…at least until they hurt my feelings…

So far, so good.

Actual Post

There seems to be little point in arguing with self-deluded people. I wish that you folks could actually hear what you’re saying from my side of the screen and realize how childishly insane your arguments are.

You are claiming that you have the right to steal because:

1) An author like Neil Gaiman who sells a million copies of his work as soon as it hits the stands, says that piracy is ok because the few 100 folks who pirate it only spread exposure. What about us small press publishers who think getting few 100 sales would be amazing?

2) That “sharing” a file so that many people do not have to buy it does not affect sales or revenue. Do you realize how insane that statement is? It’s the same as taking a book and photocopying it instead of buying it from the store and giving money to the author. That’s what affecting revenue means.

3) The law differs from country to country. Well for all those folks stealing the PDFs in the USA, you’re breaking the law. Sorry, that’s the facts.

4) You have been made aware of third party products by , which makes it ok to steal them. No sorry… if your only source of information is , then you aren’t much of a gamer. There are a dozen D&D blogsites, plus EN World, RPGNET and other sites all with product reviews on them. Apparently, you have not bothered to actually read any other game site, except the one that offers you a chance to
steal other people’s work.
Nemesis
______________________________

If you’ve already downloaded Amethyst via the site in question or any other, know that I will never seek your testicles or (by some strange alignment of planets) ovaries in open court. I have to ask for the removal of public files out of policy, but I won’t hunt down or badger those that have downloaded it. If you have it and like it, throw me a few dollars and tell others.

I mean if you have a group of gamers sitting around a table, although I would love it if they all paid for a book they’re using, this rarely/never happens. The GM has always been the book man. “I want the vanguard class.” Print it for that player. “I need feats.” Print it for that player. Pass the iPad around. Send the PDF wirelessly around the group. In the end, leaving it within the circle is the most we should ever ask; that’s how it’s always been. One purchase per party, pass and copy it around. That’s how I did my playtesting; only one member of the group signed the NDA, and he or she was responsible for the security of those files. So if you buy Amethyst, you can send it to your friends in your game group. I mean my group is composed of five people. There are only two PHBs and couple individual splat books between us. We ran a Midnight game once, one copy, Aberrant, Warhammer Fantasy, Iron Kingdoms…one copy.

Sharing is a way of life and certain tolerances must be accepted. When you rent a movie, you don’t watch it alone (well…unless you’re me), you invite your friends. They don’t pay for the rental. Half the novels on my shelf are those my friends gave me after they’d read them. Only digital games have had the luxury of forcing individual purchase…which is why their games are so widely pirated and are still make a killing. Pen & paper games have always been cursed by the “one-book-per-five” mentality. So distribution without compensation is a way of life; it’s when you remove the 1-per-5 requisite where I (and perhaps we) get worried.

This is why many of the arguments for Free Culture irk me…it’s not a black and white issue, and pen & paper games give quite a bit back to the community by allowing (not that they have a choice) inner-circle-distribution. Making a comparison to Google+, it would be like distributing Amethyst to your close circle of five friends, but not to any of the other circles, while some people see it as Facebook: everyone, all the time. (I’m not suggesting by the way that someone distribute games via Google+; I’m only making a metaphor.)

WOTC hit a windfall with DDI, allowing players to create and maintain their characters online, and doing all the math and indexing for you. But there was an interesting side effect: you each had to pay for the service. My group is old school. We prefer the paper character sheets, despite most of them owning laptops or iPads. WOTC had effectively and successfully circumvented the inner-circle-distribution “curse” that all game books had tolerated until that moment. It was economic genius, a shift in industry that WOTC prevents its own GSL companies from taking advantage of. We’re still stuck with 1-per-5. The GSL prevents us from going digital, so we can’t make our own.

So in the end, even our most enthusiastic supporters can still call pirates…funny thing is, they’re still customers.

When I was younger, I started a webpage where I would post my own homebrew role playing games, of which Amethyst was a sophomore member. I had a donation button in the hope that I would receive enough compensation to pay for the site. In 15 years of operation, despite hundreds of daily hits, my donations totaled just under $200 against an operation budget of about $3000, not counting time invested.

When I was writing the first homebrew version of Amethyst in 2000, I decided that instead of leaching art from public pages, galleries, and online exhibition sites, I would do something rather unorthodox. I asked the artists’ permission. I sent out requests from dozens of artists from all over the world, from every walk of life, struggling part timers and independent celebrities. Of them only two—two—said no. Most said yes with many of them thanking for me asking in the first place. A few others went to the extent of offering their services for free for additional content. This faith was rewarded. When Amethyst went professional in 2007, I contacted these same artists to commission them for original artwork. Those that declined only did so out of schedule conflicts.

Amethyst D20 sold well in 2008 until the juggernaut that was 4E rolled me like wholesale carpeting. I admit going overboard in production costs. It was a risk to jump D20 and sign under the GSL, but I figured it was a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor like Paizo did with 3.0 years earlier. That enthusiasm got the attention of Goodman, and the rest was history. The deal with Goodman was…complicated.

I’m not even supposed to be telling you this.

With D20 Amethyst, I got high profit from self publication; actual sales weren’t as high as they could be because of a lack of mass distribution and advertisement. With Goodman, I gained mass distribution but lost my high revenue. I was making considerably less per volume. The goal was to put as many books in people’s hands as possible. With a name permeating the market, I could release supplements like Evolution away from the Goodman name and hopefully make more money (this tactic wasn’t entirely my decision of course). Despite Amethyst selling well, the schism created by both Paizo and Essentials had soured Goodman and other companies, and they later jumped the 4E ship.

If I at least recoup my expenses with Evolution, it will fund  Ultramodern 4, Renaissance, Factions, and perhaps even an updated Amethyst Compendium. With projects like these, 20 or 30 people downloading a game they would normally pay for can turn a project inked in black to red. It was for this reason you might expect a knee jerk reaction from some designers when their titles are found being freely distributed.

Actual Post
Your level of self-delusion is both appalling and sad. RPGNow and DriveThru provide you the ability to browse books just like you want. Publishers select anywhere from 3-10 pages of their product which can be read using the nifty booklet image at the bottom of each product page. So yeah, we 3PP folks do offer you a “brick and mortar” experience of leafing through a product before you buy. With that feature, plus numerous product reviews, it should be easy to make an informed decision on whether to buy.

And btw, winning the war is done one battle at a time, which is done by shooting down one soldier at a time. And right now, I’ve got you in my metaphorical sights, and I’m more happy to squeeze the trigger and put an end to your piracy.
Nemesis
__________________

Let’s not dance around it, some of these third party companies are populated by my friends. They had the right to know these files were made available. Some looked at it and couldn’t be bothered. Others…as you can plainly see…were rather…put off. I can’t validate or defend their position. I can’t fault them either. They had the right to react as they did because it hits a very exposed nerve, like spotting someone egg your house or key your car.

You might think that me preaching this as a gospel of the evils of downloading, but let’s not jump the gun (or the shark) just yet. I can’t point fingers and accuse people of harboring the devil. Holy crap, who hasn’t downloaded music, movies or games? Despite not being religious, I keep reminding myself of the old adage, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” This brings up two noteworthy trains of thought, immortalized by two very famous writers, both friends with each other but on opposite sides of this debate, Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison.

Harlan is emphatic on his opinion regarding intellectual property. In his view, and a direct quote, “you can’t take someone else’s work and do ANYTHING with it.” He has sued Hollywood filmmakers including Gene Roddenberry and James Cameron (getting his name attached to The Terminator because it SLIGHTLY resembled an episode of the Twilight Zone, a fact Cameron unfortunately admitted). Ellison even once sued a college student for attempting to make a class film based on his work without prior authorization. So, lesson to the creative minds out there, if something Ellison wrote inspired you to write something totally different, never admit to it. Ellison believes any writer that creates product for free, even for the internet, is sullying the profession as whole. “Pay the writer,” he often says, and he has a pronounced intolerance (among many other intolerances) to writers that work free when they could and should be paid.

Then we have Neil Gaiman, who in an unfortunate case of verbal diarrhea came out in support of free distribution of his work, believing that the more people read it, the better. As a result, the video clip of him saying this has been distributed to every corner of the debate, where Gaiman is paraded as a voice for the rebellion, as one that sees the value in free distribution of a product. “People were discovering me through being pirated, and then they would go out to buy the real book,” he notes. “I started to realize, that actually, you’re not losing sales by having stuff out there,” he says.

However, Neil Gaiman is a writer that makes his money regardless if his products are downloaded or bought. When you’re dealing with that level of popularity and market saturation, he can afford to say it. I guarantee that his publisher was breaking a chair in frustration when he heard that. Having dealt with agents and publicists, I know the one thing they fear the most is their client actually talking. If Amethyst was a novel and I a successful writer, I might take a more lenient stance. But this is my money on my writing.

Every person everywhere has downloaded something they shouldn’t. Some people draw the line at music, others movies. Some download everything they can to avoid spending money, regardless of what it is. But most people find some…balance. They buy certain things, download others. So it doesn’t do any good attacking people who download. The person that downloads Homefront may purchase Mass Effect 2. Someone that downloads Sucker Punch may buy Rango. Someone that downloads Monster Manual may purchase Amethyst. The issue is that with Amethyst, the line between black and red is marked by only a couple books, so we can get a little sensitive. Where some people want to “stick it to the man”, in this case, I felt they were really sticking it to a man. I wasn’t even that annoyed when I found Amethyst D20 online. My co-writer on the original book made the joke when I told him that the original Amethyst was available as a torrent was, “Hooray, we’re popular.” He was joking, of course. I think the knee-jerk reaction came from Amethyst Evolution being posted two weeks after being for sale.

Actual Post
Apparently, you must not be aware that the law is pretty clear on intellectual property and file sharing. Are you not aware that if you share a music album or a movie, you end up sued and paying damages for all the copies that “multiplied”? Sharing the works of small publishers is the exact same thing, so there is a real world equivalent.

Pretending that piracy is a victimless crime is self-delusion. You are stealing from real human beings just as if you broke into their home and stole their wallets. You guys can keep telling yourselves you’re not thieves, but the law says otherwise.
Nemesis
_________________________

I was thinking about the possible gains. How much can I afford to lose to appease current and potential fans? I really gave it some thought. I considered posting a modified version of the book with missing pages, posting a larger preview, a heavily watermarked copy…or creating a scenario that if you pay for my book, but hate it THAT much, I’d refund your money from my own pocket. With the latter, if someone despised the product that much, I’d consider it. I’m open to compromise that allows someone to read my book but require payment to take full advantage of it. Even considering that people had to register for the forum in question (the one these articles are based out of), you could still find the files free on 4Shared, meaning anyone anywhere can get them.

No matter how many times I tried to see the positive spin, I always looked back at my bank account, the commissions I needed to mail to Nick Greenwood for Ultramodern4, and the fact that I don’t have that revenue yet. I’m close. I’m real close.

With this book, you can make your PCs the boss of their own mafia. It contains rules for creating and maintaining mobs, operating the mobs, and of course, GANG WARS! But, this is no regular old 4E “every book looks alike” job. These are new rules to make an almost entirely new game out of 4E. And really, it is just skinned with 4E for a workable setting (and it can easily be used in any flavor of 4E). If you are willing to find/make your own stat blocks and tweak the rules of what skills are tied to what, you can run this game in any system, because the mob rules are unique and not 4E dependent. In fact, the author has stated that he will be doing a free conversion for the new upcoming DCC RPG.

The book itself is 96 pages. The first chapter deals with creating mobs. The second deals with activities/crimes your mob can commit as well as punishments if things don’t go as planned. This chapter also deals with bounty hunters and assassins, the upmost punishment for the noisy crime lord. Chapter three is the operations of the mob. It gives the actual rules for a mob taking a turn. Chapter four deals with the rules for gangs fighting. Chapter Five is campaign ideas for the DM. Chapter six has 6 scenarios a DM can use to get a location established. Chapter seven contains 3 pre-built, ready-to-use mobs. There are also several appendices containing stat blocks, a thieves dictionary, maps, and tools to build up neighborhoods.

This is a really flexible products. You can use it to introduce a DM-run mob that acts as an antagonist in your story. You can use this to make one or more of your PCs an actual mob boss, running their mobs concurrent to their adventuring careers. Or, you could make a game of just having a bunch of mob bosses fighting it out for control of a city.  This is the perfect product to build that feeling of Cersei, Littlefinger, Maester Pycelle, Varys sitting around a table cordially chatting as their spies and thugs duke it out to win them control of the Seven Kingdoms in the background.

This is a must-have product for anyone who wants to run a unique 4E game or anyone who is interesting in implementing a fantasy mafia (for any setting).

The Goodman Games website has a 7-page PDF preview of the Introduction chapter and an 8-page PDF preview of the Mob Turn Chapter.

This book is available now in PDF or Print from Goodman Games Online Store, your FLGS, and various other retailers. It carries an MSRP of $21.99. But, it is worth its weight in gaming gold!

Stuart

* * *

Several years ago, one of my closest friends informed me he was no longer going to be attending our weekly D&D game. Apparently his then girlfriend (now wife) thought the game was stupid and didn’t approve of him playing it. However, she did and does encourage World of Warcraft, which she also plays. Although it’s entirely possible that this was just a power play on her part, I’m still going to acknowledge the hypocrisy.

With the deluge of players signing up for online RPGs every day, it would be a safe assumption that traditional pen & paper games would soon go the way of the snow leopard. This could be cyclical, as I remember when role playing games were circling the drain in the 90s. But the 80s and the 90s didn’t have World of Warcraft to contend with. When WOW took the world by cloudkill, I’d begun to doubt the future of pen & paper role playing.

I admit I don’t play WOW but not because of some moral reason. My battles with weight (won, by the way) do indicate certain self-control issues. I refuse to smoke and I never drink, well aware that addictions can take root quickly if left unchecked. When I play a game, I require it to have an ending, lest I may play it to literal exhaustion. Mass Effect was wrapped in a week after forty hours, two weeks with Dragon Age at seventy hours. I need my games to have an ending, a finale no matter how bittersweet that closes the book and allows a moment of reflection. Even if I want the game to continue as my addiction stipulates, my sanity demands that it end. Most MMOs never have an end, only a point of indifference. And I don’t consider having a plethora of pearlescent guns a climax.

You do get value for your money. A combat driven first person shooter usually lasts between six and ten hours, with some unfortunate charlatans trying to snake-oil their way with games that last only four or five (I’m looking at you, Homefront). WOW is pervasive with content ever present. This brings up another issue, repetition. MMOs can be very repetitive. I stopped Borderlands when I hit the top level. The desire to find better weapons just for the sake of acquiring them never interested me. I also like experiencing in depth stories where one character or a small group of heroes are the focus of said story, something seldom seen with online gaming. In these communities, even the greatest warriors are but one cog in a massive Fritz Lang ziggurat where accomplishments are steamrolled by players more committed. I enjoy being special, even if it’s contained in my own private universe. It’s called being an introvert.

I refused to follow my friends into WOW and quickly became an outcast among them. I’m not sure how my weekly gaming sessions survived, but they did. I lost friends permanently to the online multiverse. In time, many came back to D&D. Digital and paper gaming have been moving side by side for decades, and I still believe they will do so for decades to come. Nobody believed that Wii Sports would kill tennis or Gran Turismo would kill car racing. Yet, some critics still profess that paper gaming is a novelty, offered by fewer companies each year as customers move onto more modern digital distractions. This equates paper gaming to a ball and cup. Yet I see Warhammer still towering in the miniature market despite digital alternatives like Dawn of War.

The last trophy locked in a plier -like kung-fu grip by paper gaming is the adaptive story–a game players can affect and alter, even to the extent of changing the entire world by the end of it (yes, there are exception, which I’ll go into next time). This is not a common practice in paper gaming and is reserved for more proficient campaign masters. All my reasons for disliking online role playing games have been personal up until now, mostly rooted in my dislike for games without a defined ending and the encouragement of player versus player conflict—the latter I have never enjoyed. However, this does leave the one issue sure to garner a response…Online game worlds have no actual story.

A lot of people I find mistake a good setting for a good story. You can have the basic skeleton of a story mated onto an amazing setting or an amazing story paired with a routine setting (like any number of crime dramas). Fantasy and science fiction stories often feel they can tack on the most tedious and uninspired of plots as long as there’s a worthy setting to build upon. But settings alone don’t make a story and many MMOs have settings and conflict but no real story. Even Matrix Online—claiming to have an evolving arc—was only a pale miniscule reflection of its filmed predecessor. And Warcraft after so many years contains far too many fan service machinations and role playing clichés to be considered a genuine or even a serious setting. This doesn’t even take into account that most online worlds, Warcraft included, are incredibly unrealistic, even by fantasy standards. Fantasy world like the ones seen in the minds of great writers must measure up to internal logic. The worlds, however fantastic, still must be able to operate on realistic levels. There must be a worker class; there must be an environment relatively safe enough to produce food. Even many of the Final Fantasies fail to measure up with this simple constraint, but at least they have stories (a few are even good).

As my friends try to make an argument that WOW has a good setting, I always follow up and ask them what they did with their character this week. Eight out of ten times, they were grinding Gnomeregan, Auchindoun, or any number of dungeons on the slim chance that one monster might drop a piece of equipment that may be slightly better than the one you have, still assuming you are up on the queue to receive it. The other two out of ten times, they were killing random mobs in order to save up the money to grind the aforementioned instances.

Joy.

Next time, I’ll talk about why Mass Effect may the best game that could never exist…

Holy Crap…

What else can I say? The letter posted two weeks ago took a life of its own. I was hoping it would have an impact, but I had no idea it would do this.

Let me explain, or as Montoya would say, let me sum up. On February 28th, I decided to reach out publicly to Wizards of the Coast to offer suggestions to improve their relationship with their GSL 3rd party companies. Without going into too many details, I’ll enforce certain ideological points the letter hit upon. The first dealt with WOTC’s relationship with 3rd party companies and the fact that the community is divided on what that relationship is. Accusations abound that WOTC created the GSL as a handout to prevent an uprising, while others considered it a restrained, but conscious business decision to protect WOTC’s franchise while still offering its rules to outside publishers. Still others consider it an aggressive maneuver to destroy said competition. Assumptions followed claiming WOTC considered 3rd party companies annoying tolerances best pushed under the bed. This despite WOTC listing 3rd party companies on their website under the title “Partnerships”, indicating something more valued.

Fast-forward a week later, the letter on Living Dice had received no comments and little attention…until a news posting on EnWorld on Monday. Three comments followed, a link on thread on EnWorld, but the letter seemed fated for obscurity. That was March 5th. Upon my return from work on March 6, the responses on Living Dice had increased to twelve and the thread on EnWorld had exploded to 135 posts over nine pages with over 2,000 views. By the end of the week, those numbers would triple. Unfortunately the dialogue appeared more concerned over the conflict between which was the better system, Pathfinder or D&D. I have to take personal responsibility for that, as I had stated that some 3rd party companies were enjoying increased sales under the Paizo banner over the Wizards’ one. That statement was easily misunderstood as a declaration that Paizo was selling better, a statement I neither made nor could back up with any accurate data.

Overall, the responses were extremely supportive, though many provisionally. Some comments held hope that WOTC could actually adopt these proposals, though convinced the letter would fall on deaf ears for reasons as varied as grains of sand. The negative comments appeared divided into two camps, those that considered the letter the ramblings of a whiner complaining that WOTC doesn’t do his work for him and those using the letter to extol the virtues of Paizo’s community policy. The latter I will deal with later. As for the accusations of whining, beyond the ill-mannered tone of such accusations, I realize now I could not have hoped to have posted that letter without such comments being made, despite their ignorance. If the policies and business practices I suggest are so pitiable, then why does Paizo follow that same model (more on that later)? These comments also appeared isolated to certain regions. On EnWorld, although initially present, they quickly vanished in the swell of Paizo vs. WOTC rhetoric. On WOTC’s official forum, three threads discussed the matter without a single negative remark towards the spirit of the letter. I have seen at least one extensive negative thread continue on two other sites, revealing how certain people congregate to certain sites.

The conflict between which was the better system eventually dragged Morrus (owner/operator of EnWorld) to defend his company practices along with praising the advantages of writing for 4th Edition. Humorously, he repeated a comment I had made in jest to a podcast interview some months back concerning the lack of products in the 3rd party 4e landscape being in our favor (given the absence of competition).

There were comments made about my opinions towards Pathfinder, based mostly on assumption. I stated I have my preference, which is true, but it is in no way based on the quality of the product. I have never played or read Pathfinder. My group made a decision; gamers can be stubborn that way. They won’t even touch Essentials despite me wanting to. Pathfinder was released a year after DEM had signed the dotted line on the GSL. Because of the limitations with the license at that time, there was no point in attempting a dialogue with Paizo, as there was no way we could adapt Amethyst to 3.75 without breaking our license agreement with WOTC. However, my initial opinion was that an Amethyst-Pathfinder adaptation would not succeed given the deluge of 3rd Edition products available.

Little did I know the irony of this situation. In actuality, as I alluded to earlier, the proposals I was hoping WOTC would adopt were the same Paizo follows as gospel. Pure coincidence. What does that say about the practicality or effectiveness of that business model? If the concepts I suggest are so totally alien to a successful business, why is it that Wizards’ biggest competition in the RPG market follows those very same practices? Regardless, the letter was made not as a vent but also not as a heartfelt attempt to garner a response for Wizards, as I agree with many people in that WOTC is unlikely to respond. But sometimes you have to make a statement despite the futility of it. The fact that it generated this considerable reaction does indicate a lot of pent up frustration felt by players and publishers alike. With a definite presence of knee-jerk reactionaries and armchair quarterbackers, it’s unlikely that WOTC would be willing to sift through the conflict to see the legitimate concerns their fans and 3rd party companies have. If by some grace of sorcery Wizards does respond, and does implement some of the suggestions offered, I imagine the fanatical naysayers would not be the first to apologize.

The conclusion of this tale takes an interesting twist. I was in fact contacted by a major publisher involved in this entire episode. It wasn’t Wizards of the Coast that contacted me; it was Paizo, specifically Vic Wertz, its technical director. With little stake in the situation, watching silently from the sidelines, Vic decided to wave a flipper of friendship from welcoming shores, inviting me to dip a toe in water of Pathfinder. After Morrus discussed the difficulty with converting his 4E products to Pathfinder, he suddenly announced a Pathfinder adaptation to ZEITGEIST. The revised GSL issued in 2009 does open 3rd party companies to develop properties outside of the GSL, even single products released under two rules (a fact I confirmed with Goodman Games). This permits simultaneous releases of both Amethyst 4E and Amethyst 3.75. Alas, as I have mentioned, I have no experience with Pathfinder (though extensive with 3.5), so there is considerable research to be done.

IF such a project were to move forward (which it actually is—I bought Pathfinder last week), it would be an expansion of the line, not a shift (as two books are still due for Amethyst 4E this year). It would also be an adaptation from the 4E Foundations book, not the 2008 Amethyst D20 release. Too much has changed in the setting in the intervening years and I’ve gotten to be a much better writer (I didn’t even have an editor for the old book). This is not an official announcement; I’ll make that up for later.

It’s an interesting footnote to the story. By this posting, I still have not received a word from WOTC. I am grateful at all the positive feedback received.

Apparently I have a 500 page rulebook to read…

Dear Wizards:

I’ll attempt to word this letter in a fashion that promotes compromise and expresses my understanding of the situation. It  starts with the declaration that Wizards of the Coast are not obliged to follow anything mentioned here. They don’t owe anyone, and I am neither demanding action nor contending that what I request must be followed. I am suggesting a course of action that will benefit all parties involved.

On Friday, February 25th, I received a phone call from a writer experienced in 4th Edition wishing to produce his product. He had previously been tied to another major publisher that had recently dropped its 4th Edition lineup in favor of Paizo’s Pathfinder which they claim had been growing in sales to the extent of surpassing their 4th Edition products. This is not an isolated incident but only the latest symptom, following in the wake of similar announcements from Mongoose and Goodman Games. For all intents and purposes, despite declarations from fanboys on both sides about whether Pathfinder or D&D is the better seller, it is now glaringly obvious that from the 3rd party publisher outlook, the winner has been decided.

This wasn’t always the case. It’s important to mention that I am not threatening to cut my ties with the mother company. If DEM fails to make an impression with its 4th Edition lineup, we won’t be abandoning it in favor of Pathfinder. Most likely, if our 4th Edition products prove to disappoint, it may be the end of products from the DEM universe. This is not a threat; it’s simple fact of life and investment. Dias Ex Machina made its name with 4th Edition D&D. We already created an Amethyst 3.5 in 2008. We switched it to follow 4th Edition; stepping back to 3.75 feels…exactly that.

I am offering suggestions to make the 4th Edition D&D multiverse a welcoming place for 3rd party publishers, most involving D&D’s online presence. This is not like the days of the OGL, where companies could access and copy the entire rules system, a la Linux. Third party companies need to reference original WOTC products. This encourages sales. Additionally, more 3rd party products increase D&D penetration in the marketplace. It may not be a significant increase, but the investment is negligible, making a return virtually guaranteed. You wouldn’t even have to offer these to every publisher, only to those you believe have reached a certain level of quality—perhaps companies that are producing truly original products over those only offering variations on elements already created.

It’s important to know that 3rd party companies can keep up with the pace if you dare them to. Changing the rules through an errata is not as damaging as you might think. As a metaphor, I would offer that a 3rd party product (at least Amethyst) was a car using WOTC roads. WOTC can change the laws and the limits, where and how fast you can go, but we don’t have to rebuild our car. The problem is WOTC uses an express lane and refuses to open to those following them.

So here are my proposals:

TALK ABOUT US
Simply put, with the many blogs and official press releases WOTC issues, reserve a section to mention the products being released by third-party companies. This could include the many newsletters and online articles dealing official WOTC products. This would not be a one-time occurrence but a recurring practice so that players will know these products and companies are ever-present in the community. Currently, WOTC has a single page mentioning 3rd party companies and one forum group called GSL. We would like something prevalent and dedicated one blogger a week, one page in a newsletter, maybe even space in an issue of Dragon. You would be surprised the amount of free content 3rd party publishers would offer in exchange for a bit of free advertising.

SUPPORT US
In the many products released by WOTC, they put aside space for advertisements. Although you would imagine costs would be astronomical, offering a discount or a single gratis communal page dedicated to everyone (like those small market advertisers at the back of a Road & Track) could work wonders. Banner ads on the website would never come to pass, but allowing some advertisement, side by side with D&D, could muster up considerable leverage in convincing third-party companies that they are under your umbrella, not standing beside you in the rain.

REWARD US
Although there are perhaps dozens of products that may not reach your level of quality, if one does come about, acknowledge them. Perhaps even special awards dedicated to only 3rd party products. You could offer accolades for artwork, layout, writing and originality. You won’t even need to make plaques; a simple GIF would suffice.

SELL US
File this under improbable, but opening an online store is something Wizards still insists on not creating. They offer DDI as the compromise. But selling 3rd party PDFs via the official Wizard site would not only promote our products but also offer revenue for WOTC. If you think this is unprecedented, it is important to know that Amethyst Foundations (a 4th Edition 3rd party book) is available for sale (and does sell) on Paizo’s online store. If Paizo can sell a 3rd party D&D product, why won’t the creators of D&D. There is revenue there to be had.

DISTRIBUTE US
The DDI is the single biggest feature that sets 4th Edition apart from the rest of the RPG community, allowing up-to-date content a finger-tap away. Trying to get 3rd party content into Character Builder has been a poster-protest since the debut of the controversial application, something that WOTC has never been receptive to. They have come close, with the frank answer being that even though they are not against the idea, WOTC is not sure how to implement it. Meaning they could if they spent a large amount of money on programmers to enable the system and still keep it secure…ergo, they won’t do it. I am not talking about Character Builder; however, I am talking about all the other aspects of DDI, the exclusive content. Allow 3rd party products to post artwork, classes, and monsters. It would be part of DDI content and showcase the products offered by 3rd party companies.

TALK TO US
The last proposal is to keep us 3rd party companies in the loop. With the exception of the first GSL license update, there has not been a single email sent mass to the companies signed under the GSL. There has been no attempt to keep them—us—informed of future products and changes in the rule structure. We are not told about rule updates until after they have gone up. We had no warning about the potential rule changes coming with Essentials. We are not made aware of the coming products; if we were, we could make an effort to support those very same product lines.

As long as you require, by word of GSL, to reference your products without copying information within them, then consumers must own those books to use ours. It’s a symbiotic relationship, not unlike the clownfish swimming around an anemone. All we’re asking is to open that umbrella just a teeny bit more to allow us the same protection, show us that we’re connected, not holding on for dear life.

Hoping and Optimistic (as they are different)
Chris Dias
Dias Ex Machina Games

I’ve spoken at length about the differing atmosphere that has gravitated around 4th Edition D&D compared to its predecessor. There is an increased intolerance with deviating from accepted D&D principles. Knee-jerk reactions from certain designers created a false atmosphere of paranoia about the GSL. Then WOTC’s inconsistent communications and shifting philosophies didn’t help matters either. To make a situation more convoluted, there’s a growing segment of gamers that insist that the success of a product is based on its capacity to include an online element, either an interactive character builder or a pervasive online environment. The GSL prevents companies from using the SRD in any online form, including a character builder. Lone Wolf got around this temporarily, a work around DEM had been secretly working with, but the recent development by WOTC to shift the entire Character Builder to on online-only system closed the book on that. WOTC has not made any attempt to allow 3rd party products on D&D online, despite many requests. It’s a strange and difficult environment to be a 3rd party 4E D&D game company. At least the game didn’t go through a radical change in rules like 3.0/3.5 did…

…no, wait…

In fact, what Wizard of the Coast did was nearly as frustrating. They released several errata over several years, and then released Essentials, promoted as an alternate approach to D&D without replacing the old 4th Edition rules. All this would be have been nice and good…except that most the rules that they changed with Essentials found itself into the errata. So is this late 2010 set of rules an unofficial 4.5 D&D? When I ask that, I refer to the rules, and not the Essential lineup itself. For that, we would have to look at the differences between the new 4E rules and the old 4E from 2008, and then compares those to the differences between 3.0 and 3.5 D&D from nearly a decade ago.

As for 4th Edition, missing rules and clumsy wording notwithstanding, what actually changed? The races were altered with the new concept that each race has a variable attribute modifier. Instead of an elf gaining a +2 to Dexterity and Wisdom, now he gains Dexterity with an option to select a +2 to either Intelligence or Wisdom. Humans also gain a racial power as well. If we look at combat, we’ll notice a few more changes. Looking at the DMG, we see altered mount rules, improved skill challenges, and entirely new tables for creating monsters. Notice the radical change in the look of monsters in Monster Manual 3 compared to the previous two. They are tougher, with higher ACs and more devastating attacks.

So does this make a 4.5, even if disregarding Essentials? It would be only the opinion of one person if I said yes or no. However I can make one confession and that is that it’s still frustrating for game designers. For Amethyst, we’ve already found the Wizard errata conflicting with rules or concepts that we had accepted as gospel. Those mount rules for example resulted in outdating our Kannos Kavalier. All of our monsters were made under the previous system. We don’t necessarily have to update our races…but we are.

So here goes another Amethyst errata, out now as this article goes online. Beyond the technical glitches we fixed with the first errata, we are now addressing the shifting mechanics of the system we mated ourselves to. The classes are all receiving a tweak; all the race traits are being revised. Because of the popularity of our vehicles, the rules regarding them are also being updated. It’s the cost of playing in this sandbox, especially when the wizard running the box changes the sand.

At least we were able to incorporate these changes during the writing of our second book, Evolution. The races are being reprinted there as well, reflecting the new philosophy. And in order the match the WOTC model point-by-point, Evolution is also rereleasing the original techan classes of Amethyst Foundations for use with D&D Essentials. Like Wizard’s rhetoric continually reminds us, this is not replacing the techan classes of the Foundations book, only offering an alternate build for those wanting a simpler character experience. We imagine that as long as WOTC continues to support both product lines, we’ll continue to do so as well.

You can find Amethyst’s 2.0 Errata here.

http://www.diasexmachina.com/AmethystErrata2.0.pdf

Chris

On numerous occasions I’ve been asked about what is the most difficult aspect of writing 4th Edition. I offered a few general answers from ensuring that all the powers balance with each other to adapting Amethyst to the evolving nature of the 4th Edition rules (a common gripe I’ve cited). However, I believe the answer must be the specific wording required for the new edition of D&D. With 3.5, you were given considerable leeway on how you worded abilities. This was because in comparison, 4th Edition is much more precise and defined—a needed requisite for a number-crunching dungeon crawl.

Moving from one edition to another (Amethyst D20 to Amethyst Foundations), I have to admit now being somewhat unprepared for these new demands. It was two months before Amethyst reached print when I realized that no one associated with the product (from layout, to editor, to writer) had noticed that whenever we wrote “next turn” we had written “next round”. A quick find and replace fixed that (though a few managed to still slip through).

Most powers list their effects to lasting until the end of player’s next turn, though some list the beginning. You can’t say “beginning” though; you have to say “start”. This seems like a minor quibble. What about punctuation? Races and classes are not capitalized, but feats and skills are. But this is rooted in the somewhat confusing nature of the English language. You capitalize specifics, but not general terms. As an example, you would not capitalize dog unless it was part of Swiss Mountain Dog. So even though athletics is not capitalized, the skill is. When listing a power’s range or effect, the first word is in bold, but the rest are not. Do you use an action or do you spend an action? These are important distinctions to remember. It matters. By keeping your wording consistent, you can ease the transition from a first party product to a third party product. This can be difficult, especially if you’re moving into unpaved ground like Amethyst did last year.

You don’t push back a target, a target is pushed. You don’t add 15 ongoing damage, it’s ongoing 15 damage. Do you say “make a saving throw” or just “make a save?” That last one can throw off us old players. When you have a power that targets multiple creatures, you don’t say “all targets in burst”; you must say “each target in burst.” And what about those creatures? You can list allies or enemies if the power enables you to distinguish, but you can’t replace creatures with say, opponents, monsters or people. And when you list it as a burst or a blast, you have to list that, even though it would appear obvious that was the case.

As a holdover from the old days, you have to be careful about those stacking bonuses. Remember a bonus without a type can stack with any other bonus without a type unless the two bonuses originate from the same source. Identical specified bonuses do not stack (like feat bonuses or armor bonuses). Using that logic, you could make someone’s brain explode by saying that a +2 cumulative bonus would stack with anything but itself, even though the word cumulative means it would stack with itself. Can a stackable bonus be stackable with another stackable bonus? The game introduces terms like “power bonus” and “feat bonus”, but can you invent your own? None of the rules say no, but you should have a good reason.

Never forget that characters gain or grant benefits from powers, features, and feats. They are never given, offered, gotten, obtained, received, or collected. You don’t save from an effect; you save from a condition. An effect does not last for the rest of the encounter, only until the end of one. A power may not be reset, but sometimes it is not expended. Powers do not last for another turn, they persist. You don’t make a skill roll; you make a skill check, though when I ask my players, I always say, “Roll Athletics.” I could go on forever…

Targets are not in adjacent squares; they are adjacent targets. You don’t reroll attacks so much as you repeat them. I should stop.

It may seem I am ranting about the annoyances of these specific expressions, but truthfully this is important stuff and it took me some time to catch all the little tricks. Even now, my editor and I are discussing issues regarding moving and marking. If you lost ability if you move, do you lose it if you are pushed? How would you word that? Would you say, “If you are moved/are moved…” or would you word it as, “if you leave your current square…?” You can’t say “move from your current square.” It has to be “leave”, as move implies you must be the one to move your character. Remember that you provoke an opportunity for leaving a square, never when entering it, and certainly not when you pass through it.

Marking has been a big one of late. Sure, you can say “you mark a target,” and that’s easy. The marshal, on the other hand, can shift the focus of the mark to another ally—a similar ability seen with the 4E bard. Now the bard uses an ability called Misdirected Mark which is worded, “the target is marked by an ally within 5 squares of you until the end of your next turn.” By saying “marked by an ally” you avoid the issue of the fighter’s combat challenge ability, which specifies that he be the one that mark the target. Even though the bard is using the power, the effect is worded so that from a rules perspective the fighter is still counted having done it. Amethyst Foundations was written before PHB2, so when the marshal’s similar power came out, it said the same thing…but it didn’t. We used words like “the source of the mark”, which says the same thing…but not exactly as the bard says it. As we moved into Evolution, we included many abilities involving marked opponents. I wanted to ensure our abilities that utilize marked targets didn’t insist that the marking be done by the character. You can’t just say “marked targets” because that could mean all targets marked by all players. We tried “marked target (where you are the attention of the mark)” to “marked target (where you are the target’s focus)” and later settled on “your marked targets,” but even this does not match the exact wording of similar powers in D&D. Do you keep them, knowing full well they say the same thing and can be clearly understood…or do you change it?

In the end, you change it fit D&D staple lingo and hope players understand what you are implying.

And don’t forget…you make a ranged basic attack, not a basic ranged attack.

I still make that mistake.

Chris

I like fantasy comic books over the traditional super-hero stuff. Give me Conan, and Sinbad, and Red Sonja (hubba hubba). Nothing made me happier, and then sadder, then the recent Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons comic line by Devil’s Due Publishing. It had iconic characters, great art, and great stories by some of today’s top fantasy authors.  And POOF the comic suddenly stopped (if anyone knows what happened, please leave a comment). So, I was very happy to see IDW , not only take up the reins of this prestigious comic line, but inside were teasers for new Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Ebberon, and Salvatore/Drizzt comic goodness.

But there is more to this story.  There is a reason why am I writing about a free comic preview from August in December.  Well in November, issue #1 came out, followed by #2 this month. And, I wanted to point out how really cool this series is!

Two words… Marketing GENIUS.  This is a great example of two companies working together, using their individual talents, to create one really cool product. For in the last several pages of each of these comics, is a D&D 4E adventure. And not just any adventure. It is the story just told in the comic, brought to life for the game table.

So here is my take on the new Dungeons & Dragons Comic:

The comic itself is fun, campy, and adventurous. Funny and cool situations mixed together in an interesting adventure. It really brings the feel of playing a role-playing game into a comic. Other high-fantasy comics have gone the serious route (and that is really good too), but expect a lot of situational humor and jokes that only those who regularly sit at a game table will get. I guess a better way of explaining this is that this comic series more captures what it is like to play D&D rather then one that captures a story in a fantasy novel.

The adventures are also very good. Created by Wizard of the Coast’s Bill Slavicsek, these short sets of encounters (aka a delve) can be plucked and added to any adventure. But of course, they can also be played together to recreate the events in the comic series.

The only negative thing I can say about this product, is that if you want to run these adventure for your group, and you want it to all be a surprise, then you will have to keep your group from reading the comics.  And good luck with that!

Dungeons and Dragons comics are available through IDWs online store, other online merchants, and your friendly local comic shop.

Let us know what you think!

Stuart