Rurik

Point taken, but let me clarify that their web portal is not a replacement for their physical books, but a replacement for the digital distribution of their books. They are betting that most purchasers of PDF files have ready access to a computer (duh!), probably a laptop they can take with them (as we both do) and access to the internet pretty much wherever they game (likely, especially if people have 3G cards - of which I don't have one of but since you have 3 can you send me one? ). On a plane is about the only place I can think of that I ever use a computer where I don't have access to the internet. But then with D&D Insider I don't need my computer to access the content I am subscribing to - any computer with web access will do (or phone, or i-pod, etc). Well I hope this does boost other systems, because I play and support other systems. I suspect Mongoose will get some support because both MRQ and Traveller are OGL, and maybe some other popular systems. Maybe, hopefully some talent will come BRP's way. Some people will say "no way in hell' to their D&D insider. But I don't think it is suicide, or even directly targeted at their competitors. They are not challenging the big online companies, they have just decided to play a different game. The question is will their customers play with them? Ahh Microprose, how I miss thee. And Thank thee DosBox, for allowing me to revisit those days when six-pixel 4 color trains actaully used signal towers and the treasure fleet was worth hunting... I used to have a c:\games AND a c:\MPS directory. WOTC is not the same as Hasbro though. MTGO was never going to work either - "who in their right mind would pay the same for digital objects as for real cards?" They make a lot of money off of MTGO. WOTC has succeeded with risky web endeavors before. Two books a year at $30 each comes to $60 a year or $300 over five years. I spend way more than that. Plus for a subscription you get access to ALL the rules from ALL the books, not just ones you purchased. No fluff or pictures, but all the crunch, plus the subscription includes Dragon and Dungeon magazines, character generates, GM tools, and other stuff. Plus the beauty of subscriptions are that though you spend $300 over five years, who actually misses $5 a month (actually, the $5 rate is if you pay for a whole year, it is $8 monthly). Many people will continue paying even while not playing.

But they have already replaced this functionality on their website. Take a look at their Rules Compendium on the D&D Insider web site. A good search interface that searches all 4E books, supplements, and magazine articles and gives you all the rules text, printable, copyable, latest errata and everything automatically included - and you don't need to own the books - all you have to do is pay your $5 a month. To me this makes buying a book like PHB2 optional at best, as you have access to all the Races, Classes, Feats, Skills, Spells, etc without having to fork out for the Hardcopy if you don't want to. Easier than searching through a bunch of separate PDF's. Not a bad carrot at all. I personally like books. I much prefer them for use at the table and even for just reading. I like pdf files for searching and while creating content. The Compendium does that. I'd pay $5 month for something like that if I played D&D as my main game system. If Chaosium offered such a service for BRP I'd do it in a heartbeat. This model however does not play well with Third Party publishers, or support old rules sets. I suspect their recent moves in licensing and now pdf sales have more to do with supporting their new online model than anything to do with piracy. My first reaction was some that the pdf thing was some dumb knee-jerk reaction but I doubt that now. I suspect that claiming to protect their IP was deemed less a hit PR wise than outright saying they were trying to limit legal digital access to their site. Legal being a key phrase. They have to know that they cannot and will not stop or even significantly dent piracy. Digital distibution works because while piracy is simple, a majority of people choose to buy their music/movies/books/games legitimately. Despite the whining and complaining and lawsuits from the RIAA I don't see Eminem or Kelly Clarkson or Metallica going hungry anytime soon. Piracy isn't new to the digital age - remember the cassette tape? (or, has been mentioned, photocopying game books)?. WOTC knows that they don't get money from pirates anyway, so they are concerned with how people who choose to pay for thier IP access it, and that model is a D&D Insider subscription. Will that choice drive some former law abiding customers to piracy? No doubt. But their long term plan is obviously their subscription portal. Is that a better long term plan than the status quo? Time will tell. But the subscription model works - ask Blizzard how WoW has worked out for them. While I don't play any MMORPG's I do have a Netflix and Rhapsody subscription - I choose to even though I know how easy it to get music and movies for free and how to take precautions against getting caught. How will this all play out? It will be interesting to see. I really don't suspect it will have a whole lot of effect in the long term on my part of the RPG world. I don't play D&D and so don't really support the third party D&D small publisher either (who is the one really hurt by WOTC). To me the market has always been D&D and non D&D. The D&D market is affected by WOTC's moves, but I think the other part of the market will be largely unaffected. Some third party D&D publishers will fold, some will move to other games, and those who think it is worth it will pay the $5000. I also don't think they are evil and out to crush the little guy for sake of crushing the little guy (which is not say that they aren't evil for other reasons). They are the company behind the OGL after all. They thought that model was the best business model for their product at the time. Now that they have a new business model, they are doing what they think they need to to best support that model. Crushing the little guy is a result of adopting the digital portal, but not the reason they chose that model. Wizards is also not exactly new to this web based business model thing - MTGO Online is a very early and successful model for on online product and digital ownership.

WotC is big enough to take whatever hit this does to them. I suspect Harshax is right, it is probably designed to 'coerce' people to use their D&D Insider website. The subscription model works - just ask WoW. I hadn't really paid much attention up until now as frankly I could give a rat's ass about D&D but their online Rules Compendium is pretty slick - a search-able database that includes all rulebooks, supplements, and magazines (by WotC of course) - you don't need to own the books, just pay the monthly site membership. Way more convenient than searching through 20+ pdf files. The next generation of gamers is going to be a lot less resistant to such a model. So will this change hurt them some in the short term? Probably. Is it all that poorly thought out and the very seeds of their doom and destruction? I highly doubt it. And honestly folks, we shouldn't be wanting them to fail. They bring more gamers into the hobby than all the other game publishers combined could hope to, and when some of those gamers realise there are other games out there they cross over to other systems. Is Chaosium going to get Borders and Barnes & Noble to prominently display BRP? Are they going to take out ads in popular comic books? They can't even afford to seduce potential customers with nice full color plates of mail bikini clad elfin maidens hacking hordes of koborkflingoids to bloody pieces. I know that we all have brought someone into the hobby directly with a game that is not D&D, but we are are a minority for sure. Like it or not - they are the gateway drug into our hobby. Kind of like D&D is pot to BRP's crack (bad analogy acknowledged). I imagine abandoning the OGL with 4e was a worse move than this one. At least most of that small publisher/largely pdf market was in support of their system before they made the cost of entry so prohibitive to many small publishers.

A surprising move yes. I doubt it will have a great effect on their RPG Dominance though. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if there down the road some electronic format of WotC books became available, though only direct from them, possibly with some unique to them DRM or client needed. They must know this will do little to combat piracy. They also must have weighed the cost (lost pdf revenue) vs. benefit (reduced piracy and/or increased print sales?) and decided it was the right thing to do. The cost/benefit thing doesn't seem to make sense to me which is why I suspect there may be more to it. Maybe not though - perhaps it is a knee jerk reaction to poor numbers among suits at Hasbro. A possible scenario follows: Grey Suit: "Why are sales down in the RPG division?" Voice of Reason (Offstage, not present, and apparently unheard): "The economy you friggin idiots." Gray Suit: "It is no fault of ours sir - it is Pirates" Grey Suit: "Do you mean to say that Somali's are hijacking shipments of our books?" Gray Suit: "Err, no sir. People take electronic versions of our books and give them to other people for free on file sharing sites on the internet." Grey Suit: "Can we sue this 'internet'?" Gray Suit: "Err, no sir." Grey Suit: "Where do they get these electronic copies?" Gray Suit: "We sell them sir" Grey Suit: "Well stop selling them then, damnit!"

Some of those Adventures mention rules not in the Quickstart. Looking over the WWII adventure it uses both Burst and Implale, neither of which are in the rules section. I haven't looked over all of them but that one jumped out at me. Still it is a great idea to include some adventures.

:shocked: What is this thing of which you speak? Is it a printed Pendragon Pass type supplement of some sort? Maybe I should continue with my plans tp drain the Atlantic after all. We from this side of the Pond could run over there, raid them and take their copies, run back and then let all the water back into the Ocean.

Swimming! You are a genius! That would probably be much simpler than draining the damn thing, which is what I was planning on. Both plans will probably take me well over a month, so I guess I'll just wait.

Preview looks great! Alas, I suspect this whole Atlantic Ocean thing is just a nefarious plot to make me wait for a copy.

Rurik proceeds to dance on the mugs and eat the tables.

This from the MRQ Board. He asked to spread the word so I am. This will be of interest to some members here. Tradetalk is a Gloranthan magazine that has been around for many years.

Much of the notes are Glorantha specific - can (and should) those be included? Some kind of Issaries approval for a document that contains anything Gloranthan will be needed.

Well Arneson sued Gygax for some reason... But let's not turn this thread into a contest over who knows what about who did what to who, only Gygax and Arneson know everything about their relationship. If there happens to be an afterlife, and they happen to be in the same one, then hopefully they've got it all worked out. This thread should be about paying respects to one of the fathers of RPG's who has passed on. Like D&D or not, it is the first RPG and still the biggest. It probably brings more people into this hobby than any other game. It is hard to imagine where Roleplaying would be today without Arneson's contribution. Hey, Blackmoor even had hit locations. So R.I.P. Dave, thanks for helping get this whole thing started.

Interesting approach. At first look it seems pretty usable - particularly because it doesn't seem to break when reducing the stats to fit the table. If I were to run a supers or mecha BRP game I would certainly consider using that.

Chaosium Inc.

AND ROSEN MCSTERN! (He is after all Alephtar Games). Great news. It is good to see third party material coming out. Is there an ETA?

I can volunteer to do the poking with a pointy stick bit...

IMHO BRP has never scaled well far past 'normal human' ranges. It is OK for Human versus Troll, but not Godzilla versus Rodan. It works ok for Human versus Godzilla because the human gets squashed, which is fine. BRP has always suffered from the fact that STR 400 vs STR 390 is handled the same as STR 20 versus STR 10. And the fact of the matter is there is no simple solution. Any method that reduces by factors or multipliers does not provide a smooth probability curve - there are always abnormailties at each reduction that result in an odds penalty to the higher skill/stat (like the long since scrapped MRQ halving rule). Any formula that gives a smooth probability curve that scales with the skills/stats involved requires a calculator. The last RPG I played that pretty much required a calculator was Aftermath! (not that I don't have some fond memories of playing amidst the ruins of society and the formulas and flowcharts of the rules...). That is why I personally have never felt BRP is a good system for Supers (at least high powered supers - it fine for more street level supers like Batman and Daredevil). What BRP was originally used for, ancient armed melee combat, it does exceedingly well and is my favorite system for that. It is a tribute to BRP's design that it works so well in just about any setting, but it has always been a bit lacking when used outside of its original scope. Modern ballistics modeling (no proper penetration rules and suspect autofire rules) and scaling for supers being examples of some weak spots when out of it's 'natural' environment (ancient and medieval or fantasy combat). All of this is of course just my opinion.

So it is settled then, we divide the skills by five, roll a d20 and add, highest roll wins.

But D&D has opposed rolls - so how would a having an such a mechanism in BRP alienate D&D players? NOT having one would alienate them. "Why can't BRP handle a simple Spot vs. Sneak check?" is a valid question, and frankly the d20 mechanic handles it far better than any of the BRP methods (It is the rest of the stupid crap in D&D that makes the system shit).

It might have. I'm seeing if I can make a DI roll to save it... I've been away from gaming and this site cause that nasty real life intruded, but now that I'm getting back into it I was looking at my bulging unfinished projects folder and there was a bunch of stuff for shared world that I liked so I figured I'd see if there was still interest. I liked the background and myths of Sky World alot. There are some good ideas, and the world already has a unique feel to me. Most of the information is very general and abstract though, I think some more specific and concrete material would help generate interest. I plan on an area map and city map of Portal and a few cults, maybe even a scenario.

I concur with Soltakss - I don't see why it wouldn't fit. Just about any setting can fit as long as it can deal with a stationary sun. And there is plenty of open real estate. Chinese or Egyptian inspired cultures would be cool.

I put two new images on the Wiki. The first has a spot for The Green that conforms to the map of the Green and puts in in the right climate zone. I'm not really crazy about shape of the rest of the world but hey, there is nothing there yet anyway. The second is actually a very old one with a central land mass as an island, so I figured I'd throw it up for discussion. I'll probably use the map style of this one once the map really starts to take shape. The simple B&W maps are quick to throw together for roughing out the map.

Well, for contributors trying to fit existing work into the Sky Mountain world, yes. Content created for the Shared World would be deisgned with the Sky Mountain in mind. I think I can fit your Green map in fine in the right proximity for the climate. We had discussed it's proximity to Portal before. Portal was west of the Green, and wastes created by that bad gate they opened were between the city and the mountains on the west edge of the Green. There is an island off the mouth of the river that Portal is on that has a relatively small population of excellent seafarers (and a few pirates) that have sea contact with the shores of the Green. That all can be preserverd and the shape of the Green as well. The Green and Portal will move to the Northern Hemisphere but that's ok. Mind you 'Northern' and 'Hemisphere' are both terms that don't make much sense with the shape of the world... That early map was the Mediterranean - the idea was to use the familiar shape for the world. General concensus though was to go with a completely original map. I think Triff had a map with an island as well. I am open to that. Part of the reason I went with the current shape of the world was to have both land and sea around the Sky Mountain, just as there is both land and sea at the edge of the world, for maximum variety. But of course! Volcanic Islands are always cool. The present map is very fluid based on the needs of contributors and may be scrapped altogether. I just feel that if there is something concrete to look at/consider it is easier to get discussions going.

I like that lots. I'm all in favor of it.

We could. I considered that but ended up with two threads. The distinction was this thread was for more theoretical questions like "should mountains be hotter as you rise in elevation rather than colder" and "if so what is the origin of mountain rivers?". The map thread is for more specific things like "I need mountains here and a forest here and a big river here for my part of the world" that directly affect the map. That was the original intent. If it seems unweildly I can close this one.