Wikipedia solidifies it as “an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of (possibly equally valid) alternatives.”

To be unbiased is to practice absolute impartiality, practice being emphasized. When people review movies or spout their political beliefs, even if they claim impartiality, how could they prove that objectivism? One way is to quote precedent, either repeating similar examples from the past or declaring an opinion as unbiased because it sets itself apart from the consensus—but that to can be interpreted as bias. How can an opinion be impartial if it mentions another source even in passing?

And then there’s conformity. If someone loves something, he or she is expected to praise that love regardless of its shortcomings. That’s bias. When someone admits an issue despite that adoration, it’s bravery. So do we salute those people who claim a bias and speak against the conformity, or would we rather simply accuse those of conformity of bias. Being objective is a rather odd belief to encourage, a development in human society that found success and circulation in only the last few centuries, and then is seldom seen outside of scientific circles. Find me an objective politician.

The judgement of subjectivity or objectivity is made by the readers/listeners and not by the one expressing the opinion. The one claiming to be unbiased has to declare it in order to repudiate expected criticisms, such as is the case in reading a number of reviews involving the new massive online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic (referred to many circles as simply TOR).

Never before had I read so many reviews stressing objectivity, as if the reviewers suddenly had an obligation, like they had never been unbiased until that moment. I still discovered gross violations of objectivity, all based on past experiences with MMOs. Wouldn’t a true unbiased review be by someone with no MMO experience? Or rather would someone’s past experience take precedent? Very often these reviews which claim impartiality do so because of the inevitable comparisons being made to World of Warcraft (WOW). I have read reviews of TOR which attacked the game for various shortcomings which World of Warcraft only addressed in the last few years. I know of people who refuse to even look at TOR because of their blind loyalty to Blizzard.

Approaching the release of TOR, I was skeptical. Why? Because I don’t like MMOs. I admit I’m biased. I don’t care for them, never have. I lost two friends to Everquest and a dozen more to World of Warcraft. People avoided me because of my avoidance of WOW. I never understood the jargon or the in-jokes or the need to obsessively push a character to be the best it could be…until the next patch…or the next add-on. I know I’m subjective, and have my reasons to back that up. I need games to have an end, and the constant grinding required to get a miniscule improvement to your character is too much of a hassle. I also have issues with the cruelties of PvP. And then there are the raids where you repeat the same battles every day, gaining nothing save for the slim chance that an enemy may drop something useful for you, only to see that item fall to someone higher in the queue, forcing you to play further until you rise up the rank. At the end, all you have is a leveled character with no satisfaction that you were special or made a difference in the overall setting.

And World of Warcraft’s setting is pitiful. I admit I’m biased. I’ve always been a science fiction guy, and when I inject fantasy into a setting I create, I need it to take itself seriously and not be some half-comical tongue-and-cheek world which changes gears from melodrama to slapstick without warning. Blizzard may make great games but their writers all need to be fired.

I’m not saying that the setting of TOR is without fault. I prefer the dirtier, cannibalized setting of the second trilogy. I admit I’m biased. I thought Empire was the best movie, and the advancement of special effects simply didn’t overcome George Lucas’ hemorrhaging talent. And the look and feel of TOR does greatly mimic that of the new trilogy.

So then why would someone like me play a game like TOR? For one, I was promised considerable single player content and my friends endorsed a RP server over the maligned PvP—which is itself a tame child compared the nightmare conveyed by those playing Ultima Online. Plus I had faith that Bioware would make the experience fulfilling. I admit I’m biased. I like Bioware; Mass Effect 2 was one the best games I ever played, probably the best ever with a couple others tied a horse-lip behind.

I had no experience with MMOs before, save for a brief moment playing EVE Online—where I exited the opening space station after having made my character and immediately turned around to see a half-dozen identical ships leaving behind me at the same time (not a unique snowflake). I had never played WOW. I had watched it played often. I had missed Guild Wars and blinked when my friends played and passed Warhammer Online. I was going into TOR with no assumptions of what to expect. I had no base to compare. I couldn’t criticize the game on its action-to-compliance response time or its graphical hitches. I could only review what I saw and grade the game on its own strengths and weaknesses.

I created my trooper after ten minutes of Mass Effect-styled fine-tuning and walked into my first unique zone where I met the members of my unit. These were my comrades, mine, superiors and underlings with names that no one else would know. They gave me missions where I would talk to people with no one else around…at least that was the illusion. There were dozens of fellow troopers talking to the same people with the same friends, but we never mixed our identical storylines. For all I knew, these were other troopers with different names, different origins, and different missions.

When I see a piece of gear, I can preview it on my character. I can see how that piece of gear interacts in comparison to the gear it replaces. When I sell something, I could instantly buy it back, and I can sell gear at any vendor. I can hop speeders between distant locations. Once a day, I can warp to an area with every vendor in the entire universe clumped in one spot. I gain companions which I can talk to, that talk back to me, that offer opinions, interject criticisms, and even accept romance if I (and they) are so inclined. I can send them off to run errands while I concentrate on combat and role playing. They can scavenge and build items. They can earn money and help me run a virtual business, and I can have them do all of this even while I’m not even playing the game. I log back in after a good night’s sleep and they have things for me. If I find orange gear that looks good, I never have to sell it; I just replace all the components within it, giving my character a constant look through level progression. I never have to wander a landscape killing random creatures. My character always has a place to go, someone to talk to, a mission to complete or people to save. Each of the seventeen worlds I visit has their own unique segment of a personal story for me to encounter as well as a grand story everyone can partake in. By the time I depart each world, I’ve left a permanent impression (or scar) on the people or landscape. And when I’m done for the day, I can enter rest areas and gain bonuses to XP when I return, meaning even when I don’t play, I’m still playing.

Having no experience with MMOs, I had no idea that so much of TOR was the result of fifteen years of trial and error from inferior games. My best friend in TOR and in life keeps reminding me that I take a lot for granted—elements that a few other games didn’t implement until years after their release. You had to sit there in a spot and build stuff by hand, which could take hours away from combat. You had to hunt around for vendors and run for minutes on foot because of lack of transport. And when another player killed you, he could take all your stuff, forcing your character into hours if not days of tedious grinding to earn that money back. My friends praise the fact that in TOR you never have to grind. I never did, and I’m landing on the last planet in the game already at the level cap. You don’t even need to socialize. You can do most of the game by yourself, though rewards are plenty for teaming up.

I love the fact that you can journey with friends and see what they look like as they interact with you in a conversation. My friend is not a two-inch tall green-skinned Jedi toon; he really is an uncomfortably attractive space nun with her own voice and personality.

My character got laid. She was an NPC—a fellow trooper I accompanied on several missions. She called me from another planet asking that I return to Coruscant. I never considered that this galactic whore probably slept with a hundred troopers that week (those that flirted; you have the option not to). We had a great evening and didn’t talk again for twenty levels, months I assumed by game time. We never established the details of our relationship or even if there was one. Afterward, I met this great ex-Imperial defector and asked her to join my time. She was a healer and proved a vital counterpart to my DPS talents. Spending so much time together, affection started to show and a relationship began to blossom. Well, wouldn’t you know it, my old flame from Coruscant got herself kidnapped and sent to a penal asteroid. I fully expected my current girlfriend to inquire about the details, where I would have to respond like, “Look, honey. It was before Taris; we hadn’t met yet. I should have said something. Here’s the thing: her and I never broke up—I-I mean we never established what we had and I hadn’t seen her for months. I know-I know, I owe her an explanation as well.”

Well, it turned out that the asteroid was a trap set up by a certain big time villain. I ended up being forced to decide between my ex-girlfriend and 300 prisoners locked up at that same facility. I made a decision and now have to deal with the repercussions.

That was Wednesday.

On Tuesday, I slapped a sith warrior so hard with the back of my gun, I sent her falling down a massive elevator shaft. I cheered a moment before realizing I’d sent all her high-end gear falling as well. The day before that I was picked up by a friend for a mission dealing with a rogue fallen Jedi he’d been tracking for days. I commented on how much nicer his ship was over mine. The jedi always get nice things. My friend had played WOW since the first day, leveling a character for half a decade, and was an authority on the missteps that online games make. He confirmed that I wouldn’t have liked WOW in the early days, since it had none of the elements I love and take for granted in TOR. I’ll never need to play WOW. I have TOR. I admit I’m biased; TOR does most everything right. I didn’t know that most the gameplay mechanics were carried over from previous games. I didn’t know that some games have larger worlds or more robust economies. Any MMOs I play in the future will have to deal with my TOR bias. I became subjective to TOR because of TOR. Everything people complain as old hat is refreshing to me.

After a decade of avoidance, I am playing a MMO, and I love it.

Last July of this year, Dias Ex Machina engaged in a dialogue with several individuals the entertainment industry brands as miscreants. You know the type of which I speak, the downloaders of illegal songs, movies, pictures, and files…you know, everybody. Given such a broad net the industry attempts to toss, it’s no wonder such a huge portion of bycatch is left flopping on the deck to suffer for the benefit of a few sharks that often slip through the holes anyway. How much damage can corporations inflict on their own consumer base until they realize they’ve inflicted irreparable damage to the entertainment environment?

The situation began with a private message I received from a loyal fan on the Wizards of the Coast forum. The post illuminated me to the 4Shared online storage website. Though often employed as a cloud system, it can also be (and often is) used for illegal file distribution. Although music companies are allowed by 4Shared to search the files on the server, small companies like DEM don’t have that luxury unless someone posts the file for public access. In this case, this was exactly what happened. Not only were both Amethyst publications available, but so were hundreds of other 1st and 3rd party products as well. I had already encountered a similar issue on ScribD, where I had to send out cease & desist letters to a user that had done the same thing. On 4Shared, all the files were hosted by one individual. In a relatively obvious moment of inspiration, I ran the user name on Google and found a namesake website.

That was easy.

After signing up with one of my aliases (the same one from WOTC, so not a huge stretch), I began searching around. The forum boasted nearly 3000 users. DEM has about 500 and most of them are bots, but there was no way to deny the site’s popularity. The sticky post atop of each page was a link to the library. By this point, I had already sent the C&D to the 4Shared site to have the links to Amethyst removed, but I felt it was important to put a face to the writer.

Actual Post (paraphrased)
The point of concern is the fact that the vast majority of people that steal products never pay for them. Movie companies and game producers each have their own reasons and have altered the industry to compensate. They’ve raised or lowered prices. They’ve introduced copy protection. They’ve even created new technologies like Real3D to encourage people to pay. They even have systems in place to undercut and write off lost revenue.

I’ll respect your space if you’ll respect mine.

__________________

It was a hand on heart moment. It was at this time I relayed to the site link to certain comrades in the industry. Their reactions were mixed, ranging from “don’t care” to “I’ll get the pitchforks.” One such comrade, one that I had personally worked with several times in the past, decided to make his presence known. He signed up under the name Nemesis and made his thoughts very clear. He began to stir the pot and then pour to over everyone. I knew who Nemesis was, but I was neither going to support nor criticize his reaction. He had every right to react as he did; I simply took a different direction. It quickly turned into a good cop / bad cop routine, though it wasn’t planned by either of us. No one knew who Nemesis was, while I identified myself openly.

Actual Post
I hope you are aware that the “library links” are illegal, and further, it is stealing copyrighted materials from the people that wrote them.

Think about the fact that every time you give away a copy of a 3PP product, you are literally STEALING money from another gamer, just to save yourself a couple dollars.
Nemesis
__________________

I can appreciate the concept of gratis product. From artwork to modules, I’ve done it all with the one line drawn that products that costs me in excess of $2000 to develop don’t get distributed without some measure of control. This multi-part article will detail my opinion on fair use, distribution, and copyright. Although you might assume my stance from this opening page, you may be surprised where it ends up. I would not be spoiling the tale by saying that I made no enemies through this dialogue. For the industry to truly find an epiphany, to create a paradigm shift on how we act as creators, it will involve forming such a dialogue with people, because the line between pirate and consumer is not only vague, it’s non-existent. It is not like it’s a handful of terrorists moving through a mob of civilians. Everyone is a shade of grey.

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Sandstorm Productions began in April, 2010 and immediately partnered with four  game publishers. Glowfly Games, Closet Nerd Games, Wildfire and Posthuman Studios.  It is important to understand that Sandstorm, while a traditional game publisher in many respects,  also markets itself as a business service provider for small game publishers.

Business services that include:

• Business administration
• Sales & Marketing
• Convention support
• Production Management services
• Bookkeeping services

This is not a comprehensive list, but it gives you an idea the kinds of services available.  All of these services are provided on an a la carte basis, so you pick which ones your company needs.

Sandstorm’s goal is to partner with between 7-10 game creators/publishers at any given time. As a game publisher becomes more successful, they “mature” out of the Sandstorm relationship and move on as independent entities. This model means Sandstorm is always looking for new game ideas and new publishers to work with.

At this point, we moved on to the game studios  currently working with Sandstorm

Closet Nerd Games:  Closet NerdVersion produces euro-style strategy and board games, and had its resource management/market board game “Globalization” for sale at Gen Con.  Here is the game description:

Globalization brings the exciting world of big business into your living room. You are the head of a multinational corporation with one goal in mind: to make money. Outbid your competitors to acquire businesses within six different industries and grow your conglomerate.

Glowfly Games: “Hecho” is a new card game from Glowfly. Glowfly focuses on the educational game market and “Hecho” is a light, family game that introduces some  Spanish vocabulary, basic math and lots of personal interaction.

Wildfire Studios: Publishers of the “Cthulhutech”  RPG, branch out in to family games with their new “WildThing” imprint. “WildThing” launched with the award-winning game “Poo” and plans future releases in the casual games arena.

Posthuman Studios: “Eclipse Phase,” the oddly fascinating posthuman game with cybernetic octopi and orbital habitats made of bacon. Yes, bacon.  I just finished reading “Eclipse Phase” and will have a review up in the near future.

Jessica also mentioned some secret, upcoming releases from the Sandstorm family. Including a new family game from Glowfly and a storytelling game that serves as a gateway for younger children in to role-playing games.

I would like to thank Jessica for taking the time to speak with me about Sandstorm and I will keep you apprised of  their new releases.

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Eoris, the long gestating and beautiful RPG book released at Gen Con 2010! I am blogging from my iPhone, so more details later.

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For immediate release.

Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Sophisticated Games announce that they are developing The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game.

Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Sophisticated Games are proud to announce that they are jointly developing The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game.

“We’re tremendously excited about The One Ring,” said Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Cubicle 7 Director. “Our aim is to give our audience an authentic Middle-earth gaming experience, one that really captures the feel of Tolkien’s world.”

The designer and lead writer of this project, Francesco Nepitello, is a games industry veteran, best known for the hugely successful and critically acclaimed War of the Ring strategy board game, which he designed with The One Ring co-designer Marco Maggi and Roberto di Meglio. A recipient of the International Gamers Award, War of the Ring is recognised by many ‘Lord of the Rings’ enthusiasts and hobby gamers alike as one of the most engaging recreations of the world-renowned fantasy saga by J.R.R. Tolkien. Francesco and Marco are the designers of other immersive board game titles like Marvel Super Heroes and Age of Conan, but started their game-designing careers creating Lex Arcana, the most successful and popular fantasy role-playing game published in Italy.

Francesco has designed the new LOTR RPG game system to make sure that players are completely immersed in Middle-earth from the moment they begin creating their characters. As an experienced designer of games based on JRR Tolkien, as well as being a lifelong devotee of the Tolkien works, Francesco brings a dimension -and a depth- to this RPG which has probably never been seen before in a LOTR game.

Robert Hyde, head of Cambridge (UK) based Sophisticated Games said, “When we first acquired the rights from Tolkien Enterprises to publish this RPG – as part of our wider LOTR book based board game license- we had no hesitation in approaching Francesco to conceive a completely fresh LOTR and The Hobbit RPG, and for him to be the writer. We knew that he possessed both these skills and that the game would be in very safe hands. His presentation of Middle-earth, along with stunning artwork from John Howe and others, brings this incredibly evocative and exciting world to life.”

“We also approached Cubicle 7 to be our publishing partners on the new The One Ring RPG because we loved the quality of their previous publications and felt that Dominic and Angus (Abranson) had both the experience, and with the creation of Cubicle 7, the role playing game resources, to bring LOTR and The Hobbit to a very wide audience.”

For more information on The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game please contact Cubicle 7 on info@cubicle7.co.uk

The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game will be published in the second half of 2010.

About Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited

Cubicle 7 Entertainment is a British-based publisher and events company, specialising in the games industry. Founded in 2006, by Angus Abranson and Dominic McDowall-Thomas, the company has published role-playing games from a list of licensed and home-grown properties including Victoriana, Starblazer Adventure (based on DC Thomson’s 80′s Starblazer comic series), SLA Industries, Qin: The Warring States and the recent Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space (licensed from the BBC). In June 2009 Cubicle 7 announced it had joined the Rebellion Group.

Cubicle 7 Entertainment: http://www.cubicle7.co.uk

About Sophisticated Games

Sophisticated Games is an international board game publisher, specialising in book based Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit games. It is also the publisher of Reiner Knizia’s Ingenious and Callisto, and has recently done Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, Shakespeare and a Horrible Histories game.  Sophisticated Games is based in Cambridge UK.

Sophisticated Games: http://www.sophisticated-games.com

The modules use the 3.5 OGL system, plus some world-specific information from Paradigm Concept’s Arcanis books.  I wrote two modules, but read “Iwa” first. It was the last one I wrote, so I think it is my best effort and most reflective of my current writing ability. I am embedding Iwa in this post, so you can read it online at the bottom of this post or you can use the links below for the zip version.

Iwa Download

Tree of Shadows Download

If you are curious about the other modules I contributed to or were from my region, check out the Midake region home page.

Any feedback is welcome, so drop me a line or a comment please!

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A clarification is required of the term “review” before I continue with this post. Osprey Publishing publishes many titles every year and has done so for decades. There is a small army of professional illustrators, editors and history professors working behind the scenes to create all of this content.   Osprey has a niche and totally focuses on producing quality product for that niche. They are quite good at it. In a normal review (especially for game companies) on Livingdice.com, I take a close look at production quality, editing, and art in addition to the actual content. Doing so with an Osprey book is a waste of time. As a company, they are simply too practiced at what they do to make frequent editing mistakes or put bad art into a book. That is not to say I will ignore these aspects, but I will not mention them unless they are significantly deficient.

Rather I would like to focus on the book’s content and how that content can inform or enhance your game’s reality and depth.  I am not a historian, so I am not qualified to comment on the quality of the book’s research, but as a long-time gamer I am qualified to discuss if a book is a good resource for game campaign design.

Enough boilerplate, time to actually talk about the book.

I know this is a “serious” reference book, but there was a line in the first chapter that made me chuckle.

“Chinese city walls saw a lively operational history…”

“Lively operational history” is the best euphemism for “centuries of unrelenting and bloody war” I have heard to date. I sense some great game material to come…

Even though the book has chapters, I broke it down into two distinct sections. The first section comprises about 38 of the 84 pages and is truly dedicated to Chinese city walls. It discusses in great detail the designs and construction techniques in making city walls. You pick up some useful information like many city walls were basically rammed earth with a brick facing.  There is also some historical context mixed in, as well as some discussion about the principles of defense in ancient China. A surprise for me was the total lack of interior defenses in the cities, relying on the city walls as the sole means of defense. I have the European “walled city with citadel” model burned into my brain as the standard city defense design. Apparently the Chinese felt differently and simply did not build the citadel.

This section also contains a survey of the great walled cities of China and their ruins or in a few cases, surprisingly intact walls.

I think as some background material, the first section might provide some “flavor” for your campaign, but the real gaming goodness is in the latter part of the book after page 39. This section actually discusses specific sieges, combat tactics and personalities involved.  Here are a few highlights:

• A defending general ordered his men to eat his favorite concubine to demonstrate that everyone must sacrifice during an extended siege
• Organizational structure of city fire-fighting brigades
• Methods of gunpowder storage
• Counter-mining techniques and sappers
• An attacking general that tried to hold the defending general’s son hostage, only to have the boy’s father shoot arrows at his own son in an attempt to kill him and “end” the hostage situation
• Wheeled, spiked “sweepers” that ran up and down a wall to clear it of attackers
• Stopping a battering ram with curtains
• Generals were often concerned that their own people would revolt during the siege
• Details on how the walls were manned by soldiers, including how they ate, slept and generally lived during the siege
• Using the latrine as a weapon

My personal favorite is an anecdote that an attacking general sent a message by arrow into a city offering a bounty for anyone that betrayed the defending city and killed their general. The defending general promptly took the message, wrote a similar offer on the back of the note for the attacking general’s head and sent it back. Almost as good as saying “Nuts” when you are surrounded by the Nazis!

Chinese Walled Cities 221 BC-AD 1644 starts out slow, but it has some great material for the patient campaign designer and is most certainly worth a look.

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Full Disclosure: Osprey provided a review copy of this book

I would rather watch the entire run of “Star Trek: Enterprise” and “Seaquest,” back to back than have anything to do with “Caprica” ever again.

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Hat Tip: Osprey Publishing Blog

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