Wizards, 4e, and the OGL
If you haven’t heard elsewhere yet, Wizards has announced that they are selling the rights to publish anything under the 4e OGL for $5,000. Purchase now, and you can sell your products for several months following the release of 4e. If publishers don’t purchase the license, they’ll still be able to publish material for 4e - just not until 2009.
Why? Wizards say they’re doing this “to ensure quality.” Somehow, I doubt it. To be sure, following the release of 3rd Edition a lot of unbalanced and poorly constructed products were released by third parties. But then, Wizards released an unbalanced and poorly constructed product when they released 3rd Edition. The product was so unbalanced and poorly constructed, in fact, that they had re-release the game a few years later - no new features were included, only fixes to what was broken before. Oh, and Wizards doubled the money they made off 3rd Edition.
But what does this really mean in the long-run, other than more profits for Wizards?
We’ll see less support for 4e. Not just initially, but for the lifetime of the product, there will be substantially less third party products. Many companies won’t bother to switch to using the new d20 license, but instead focus on continuing to use the old d20 system that all their products have been released for in the past. These companies will also be catering to the crowd of players who won’t bother to switch from 3.5 either, which brings me to the next consequence.
Less people will play. Less support, no conversion guide from the old editions, and no ability to preview and even test-play the system in-depth thanks to the OGL? People will stick with what they already know, have, and love - and don’t have to spend another $100 on to start over.
New systems will come out and compete with d20 and the new 4e system. Publishers who aren’t using the d20 OGL may find that it’s better for them to create a new system or fall back to an old one that fits the game better than shoe-horn the game into d20. This competition will further take away both support and players from 4e and Wizards community.
New players will be attracted to the game table again due to the new array of choices and products. Players who left because it felt like they were repeatedly playing the same game in different settings when they played d20 will be attracted by the new choices and systems, and may return to the game table.
Wizards will begin to lose its ridiculous monopoly on RPGs. I’m not saying that Wizards will go out of business or even stop being the biggest company in the industry, but as they continue to do things which create more growth in the industry outside of their company than inside, or things which push potential customers away from hearing about products or increasing their costs to play and use their products - as all of these things happen, Wizards’ grip on the RPG industry will begin to slip, and other companies will slowly begin to gain ground and fill in the cracks left by Wizards.
What’s next, Wizards?
Evaluating Your Game: Part Four
This is part four in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate and improve your game from the ground up. Previously, I discussed Genre, Setting, and Scope, followed by an analysis of Character Generation Methods and The Role of Randomness.
In most RPGs, you will eventually encounter something in character advancement that has a pre-requisite - something you must already have to be able to qualify for the advancement. These will typically apply to traits, classes, and occasionally skills.
Pre-requisites are good because they serve the function of providing a barrier between who may use something and who may not. This may be because of a concern with specialization, such as with d20’s prestige classes, or because the system does not implement a point-buy advancement and there is a desire to make somethings more costly, as with d20’s feat system.
The first concern with using pre-requisites is that it may make things too costly for a player to pursue - the Whirlwind Attack feat being an ideal example, it is highly desirable but almost never pursued because of the litany of pre-requisites.
The second concern with using pre-requisites is that they can go against a character concept. The Whirlwind Attack feat is another perfect example of this - among it’s pre-requisites are three defensive feats, one of them (Combat Expertise) will never see use if it was taken only because of the pre-requisites. Players will most likely try to avoid this wasted space on their character sheets.
There are one of two solutions to this problem:
First, you may offer alternate pre-requisites, a different path that can accommodate different concepts so that they may access the same thing.
Second, you may create an alternative to what the pre-requisites originally guarded - the alternative would represent the same skills if they were lacking whatever pre-requisites were not included and augmented by whatever they were replaced by. In the case of Whirlwind Attack, a version which did not include the defensive feats might provoke Attacks of Opportunity.
The use of pre-requisites is a balancing act - you must be sure that the requirements do not outweigh the perceived benefits, and that the requirements of a feature will appeal to everyone that would be interested in that feature.
Campaign Website
A few months ago, I posted an article about building a campaign website to keep track of your game’s story, characters, and other various elements.
One of the most difficult parts of building a website like this is finding hosting and getting the necessary software set up on the server - wikis are obviously the best but they are also difficult to deal with.
Micah from ObsidianPortal.com got in touch with me recently to let me know about the website - which provided a free automated hosting space for people to use as a campaign website.
Some of the basic features include an NPC, Item and DM wiki, making it easy to make changes on the website and keep track of events, characters and items. In addition to the campaign management features, the website makes it easy to publish your campaign or keep it private - you can even use the website to hunt out new players, based on geographic location or other search parameters.
If you’re looking for a simple solution to handle your campaign website, check out Obsidian Portal - if you don’t need anything other than the basics described above, it’ll certainly meet your needs.
Is there any other software or websites that make this process easier that you take advantage of?
When The Sky Falls
Until the 15th, you can download the new release by Bruce R. Cordell, When the Sky Falls, at RPGnow for FREE! I’ve just downloaded the book myself and so far I’ve only had time to scan it, but it seems like a wonderful resource, at a price that can’t be beat.
So hop on over to RPGnow and take advantage of the free gaming goodness.
Ending a Campaign
Just before the holidays, I was finally able to draw a three year campaign to a close. This was a challenge to both me and my players, as this was the first campaign of mine to reach a close. Here are two things I learned from running the session.
Prepare a quick ending. When we started the session, the general understanding was that we had two or three more sessions in which to conclude the game, and the pacing of the game was set up to mirror this. Unfortunately, this was only the result of poor communication, as one player could not return after this session due to an imminent relocation to another state. This coupled with a player’s significant other having severe car trouble, and we were left with two hours in which to conclude a three year campaign which I had planned on spending another two nights on.
As a result of all this, the game was most certainly rushed, scenes were skipped and some mysteries went unsolved during the game. Worst yet, there were two prophecies hanging over the game, one much more recent and naming a lot more events and entities, albeit very vaguely. This second prophecy gave me another five or six events which I had to pull to a close quickly. For each of these events, if I had prepared an alternate event which could have taken its place, my job would have been much easier.
It’s important to have a quick ending prepared not only in case the schedule suddenly shifts, but in case the game itself does. For many experienced game masters, it isn’t a terrible problem when a campaign takes a strange turn, as there is always time left in the future to get things back on track or adjust for the sudden shift. With the end of the game approaching, however, this is not always the case.
The key question to determining if something needs a quick way to end it is “Will the game be worse off if this isn’t resolved before it ends?” If the answer is yes, then be sure to prepare something. If the answer is no, then there is no harm in sweeping it under the rug (or behind the screen for that matter.)
Prepare an alternate ending.
There was a point prior to the end of the campaign where the party (thanks to a Deck of Many Things) was nearly wiped out. If not for a remarkable stroke of luck, the party would have been dead and the campaign over with no even remotely reasonable way out of it. If a situation like this crops up and you are unprepared, it can be devastating. With proper preparation, it can be made into a great plot hook and even a new campaign.
For instance, let us say the goal of a campaign is to stop a demon overlord from coming through a portal and beginning the apocalypse, and the players, for some reason or another, fail at this. The demon overlord comes through the portal and triggers the apocalypse, as well as several options for a follow-up campaign. Perhaps the next campaign will take place in this post-apocalyptic world, or perhaps it will continue the fight on the other side of the portal, rebelling against the demon overlord. Perhaps fighting the apocalypse is useless, and the next campaign is focused around trying to survive during the apocalypse itself.
Being prepared for the campaign to end differently allows you to not only set the stage properly for these events, but make the failure something more: a tragedy.
Get positive feedback. Ending a campaign is very draining and tiring, as well as the culmination of a lot of work. While it might not normally be your practice to make your players offer feedback, now is an appropriate time to do so. After the session is over, grab some limelight for yourself and enjoy it as your players tell you about how they enjoyed the game.
How do you end a campaign?
Five Ways to Improve Your Game
A few days ago, Yax wrote on article on several ways to improve a DnD game.
Remove every distraction possible. It’s universally agreed upon that distractions and disruptions in any game not only makes the game less enjoyable by itself, but also removes people from the game and causing the quality of the game to suffer for a time after the distraction/disruption ends. Turn off cell phones, shut down instant messaging clients, and hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door if needed.
Whenever any situation comes up in the game where you feel something has provoked a character, or you would like it to, ask the player to share the reaction with the group. This encourages character immersion and does a lot to set the mood by having players describe how their characters feel.
If the party splits up, if at all possible, keep everyone at the table, or at least in the same room. Making players stop playing for a time in the middle of a session breaks the flow of everything, and results in boredom. If possible, have the players stay in the room so that they can listen. You may also want to consider having a small project for them, such as having them write up notes about the game, or write a character journal entry relating to something. A small reward for the player encourages them to do this, and doesn’t remove them from the game.
Exaggerate NPC characteristics. I don’t mean you should do this to a ridiculous degree, but times where I have exaggerated NPC characteristics to make them particularly noticeable, annoying or endearing, my players have never thought I was exaggerating the characteristics. It may seem over the top when presented, but rarely when it is received - especially if you don’t happen to be an actor.
Recognize that the story being told may well be bigger than the characters which the game focuses on. By making this apparent to your players while keeping the main focus on them, you add a lot to the feeling that they are making a difference, and that what their characters do actually matters.
Game Weather
Weather in RPGs is one of the most overlooked and simplest way to add flavor and attitude to a game. Because weather rarely comes into play as far as logistics goes, it often goes ignored. In the last four years, the only time I have heard players ask about the status of weather, it was because they were wondering if they could use a storm or wind based spell that required certain weather conditions.
How do you create weather in RPGs that is realistic, interesting and doesn’t come across as repetitive? Go outside on a regular basis during different times of day and write down whatever weather patterns are presenting themselves. Learn the conditions when dew turns into a misty fog in the early morning, or whatever else you can gleam. Use these descriptions to create a scene for your players to imagine in their heads.
For instance, here is a description of adventurers waking up in the woods without weather being part of the description:
The last watch shift ends at dawn, and you begin breaking down the campsite and hiding any record of your presence lest you be tracked. Calls of wild-life emanate from within the forest.
Compare this to a description of the same scene with weather included as a factor:
The last watch shift ends at dawn, and you begin breaking down the campsite and hiding any record of your presence lest you be tracked. A low fog rolls over the ground, forcing you to go up a tree in order to scout the surrounding area and get your bearings. Looking out over the forest, many patches are filled with an obscuring mist. Calls of wild-life emanate from beyond the mists, reminding you of how little you see of what’s around you.
These scenes are essentially the same as far as any mechanics go, and there may or may not be an ambush or other peril waiting for them within the fog. The image of it, however, is quite evocative and sets a mood for the players. Encouraging them to imagine the scene allows them to create an image of it in their minds, forcing them to interact with the game and become more immersed in it.
How do you create weather scenes and descriptions?
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Update: The error has been fixed, and the RSS Feed should be working normally now.
Changing Your Game’s Alignment
Alignment is one of those tricky substances that can make or break a game, and I have yet to meet someone who feels about and defines the alignments the same way as the next person. Here are some house rules you can implement your game to help make alignment run a bit more smoothly and feel more meaningful when it comes into.
Detecting alignment does not detect the alignment of anything that does not have the Evil/Good/Lawful/Chaotic/Whatever descriptor on it. It is, however, able to detect current intentions and thoughts, so that a person contemplating an evil act would show up to Detect Evil. This solves the problem of a lawful good society declaring it illegal to be evil and simply executing everyone who glowed red when Detect Evil was cast. Additional story lines may-be weaved in involving sleeper agents, a la the Manchurian Alignment.
Alignment detection only detects the alignment relative to the person detecting it, so that the detection will only detect evil/good/law/chaos as defined by the character. This creates more roleplaying opportunities and allows characters to be blinded by their prejudices, while simultaneously reducing the concreteness and definitiveness of alignments.
Allow players to declare no-alignment, meaning that they do not gain any alignment based DR and they are unable to overcome alignment based DR, or be the subject of any alignment based spells. Doing this causes alignment to become special again, and someone with a Good alignment or Lawful Good alignment is someone special and someone who is especially dedicated to those beliefs. An added benefit is that when doing this, sorting out the proper alignment for a character is far easier - if it is clear, then the alignment choice is easy, but if not then Null Alignment seems the best choice.
An additional benefit from implementing the two rules above is that it stops players from engaging in combat simply because of alignment, which stops a lot of mindless slaughtering and encourages actual roleplaying.
What house rules have you introduced to deal with alignment in your game?
Wednesday Links
The ChattyDM recently started a set of forums for RPG players to hang out in and discuss different games, swap advice or game stories. A nice set of forums with knowledgeable people I enjoy talking to. Highly recommended.
John Kim posted his initial thoughts on DnD Fourth Edition, discussing changes in the game and the target audience of 4e. Well-organized and highly recommended.
Deeper in the Game wrote a short article discussing the purpose of setting in an RPG.
Martin from Treasure Tables has announced he probably won’t continue with the site. Thanks for all the good content over the years!
