I grew up in New England, which gets all four seasons in full measure. It can get brutally hot in the summer and frigidly cold in the winter. I know how to deal with snow and lived through the blizzard of ’78. Seattle though, has a much milder climate. It only gets really hot for maybe a week of the year and when it does snow, it usually melts in a day or two. That makes this week all the more unusual. It’s been quite cold for starters and then snow began threatening on Tuesday.

I woke up Wednesday expecting to see the ground covered with snow. All the weather reports had said it would definitely snow overnight. So I went to work and heard about snow all around Seattle but not in the city itself. At lunch I went down to the Pike Place Market to get lunch and pick up a few things for home. I got some fresh bread at Three Girls Bakery and then stopped at Bavarian Meats for some charcuterie. The nice German lady was efficiently filling my order for things like liver sausage and blood and tongue sausage when I asked if I could also get three potato sausages. At this she lit up. “Good choice! Are you Norwegian?” For those of you who’ve never met me, I am like an anti-Viking. So I laugh and tell her I’m Greek. “Oh,” she says, ” you have good taste. Do you want more than three? We have more in the back.” I assure her that three is more than enough and head back to work. That night the news says the storm will bypass Seattle completely.

Sure enough the weather reports are wrong for two days running. The next morning everything is white and it’s still coming down. I decide to stay home from work and catch up on Green Ronin business. In the afternoon I shoveled out the backyard path and the front steps and sidewalk. Lacking a snow shovel, I had to use our sad garden shovel, a rake, and an old broom to do the clearing. Naturally an hour after finishing, it started to snow again. It felt like being back east.

Last night I made the potato sausages for dinner, along with baked sweet potatoes and lingonberries. While I had previously baked potato sausages, I thought I’d check the internet to see if that was the correct way to prepare it. I discovered that potato sausage is apparently a traditional Swedish Christmas food, so this was the right season to pick some up. However, the Swedish community seems split on the proper way to prepare it. Some boil it, some bake it, and others poach it. I decided to go with slow boiling and it came out great. The lingonberries were an excellent match. Meat + fruit = win.

Today I foolishly decided to head into Flying Lab. Even more foolishly, I brought two bags full of packages to mail at the post office. These were GR mail orders that had gone awry and I really wanted to get them out before the weekend. I thought the bus might be empty today with many people staying home. In fact, I’ve never seen it more crowded. The bus driver stopped taking on new passengers before we even got off Beacon Hill because we couldn’t fit even one more person onboard. I had to balance my bookbag and the two other bags on my lap while hemmed in by other commuters. What a magical season.

This weekend I’m going to stay in, write, and eat more charcuterie.

For years I have joked that it was old British movies that made me love imperialism. When I watched films like the Four Feathers and Gunga Din on our black and white TV, I knew there was a historical background but I was in it for the action and adventure. Two of my favorite films growing up were Zulu and The Man Who Would Be King, both starring Michael Caine. My brother and I would “play Zulu” with our neighbors on a regular basis. Two of us would play the British, crouching at the bottom of a small hill with wooden rifles. The other two would play the Zulus, hurling a stream of sticks at the (very) thin red line. To represent their enormous army and British firepower, the Zulus would get gunned down over and over again until was time for hand to hand combat. Then we’d switch sides and do it all over again. Considering the number of sticks we threw at each other, I’m surprised none of us lost an eye.

It is thus no surprise that when I was in NYC a couple of months back and browsing the temple of knowledge that is The Strand, I was drawn to a book called Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King. A quick skim convinced me to pick it up and I’m glad I did. Ben Macintyre has written a cracking good biography of a little known American named Josiah Harlan, who was likely the inspiration for Kipling’s tale. Harlan was a Pennsylvania Quaker who swore he would never return to America when his lover jilted him. He traveled to India in 1820 and on the strength of having read his brother’s textbooks got a job as a surgeon in the army of the British East India Company.

This proved just the start of an amazing series of adventures inspired by his idol, Alexander the Great. He met the ousted ruler of Afghanistan and offered to put the man back on the throne in exchange the viziership. He then recruited a small mercenary army under American colors and marched into Afghanistan. Harlan should have died 20 times over but somehow he did not. He ended up working for Dost Mohammed Khan, the very man he had sought to depose. He became a governor for many years and eventually led the Khan’s army. He led an expedition into the Hindu Kush, and while there won a princedom of his own. He never had a chance to rule, however, as the British were marching on Kabul by the time he returned. He was forced to leave Afghanistan and eventually returned to America. He attempted several schemes to get himself back to Central Asia, including one to import camels for use by the US army, but never returned to claim his princedom. Still, this unlikely character managed to raise an American flag in the Hindu Kush in 1839 and become Prince of Ghor, even if briefly.

Ben Macintyre has done some excellent historical detective work and manages to skillfully evoke both the period and Harlan’s eccentric personality. If you like true tales of adventure, I heartily recommend Josiah the Great.

With the status of the d20 logo unclear, I decided to go ahead and create a new brand under which to sell our d20 back catalog. Sparky is working his way through the PDF files, deleting out the d20 logo and its legal language, and subbing in the new 3rd Era logo (nicely designed by Hal). We should be able to put up a couple a week, so in time our whole catalog ought to be available (save for a few titles due to the deals under which they were published). This doesn’t mean we’re going to be doing new D&D; 3.5 material; it’s just a way to ID our existing products.

Some of you may recall that I pondered whether or not to brand our stuff as Pathfinder compatible rather than creating our own brand. I decided that this was the more honest approach. While you’ll certainly be able to use any of the 3rd Era books with Pathfinder, we won’t be spending the time to update them to reflect Pathfinder’s changes to 3.5. I wouldn’t want someone expecting that to be disappointed when they purchased one of our books. 3rd Era seemed a better way to go.

One bonus of this move is that we’re going to start offering these books on Lulu, so folks who want print copies can get them. For titles that have been long out of print (like Book of Fiends), this gives us an easy way to make print copies available again.

There’s a press release about this on GR’s website. You can read it here.

When you have just laid off 20+ people right before Xmas and it’s time to try to put the best face possible on that, do NOT pull out the bullshit corporate doublespeak. Here is the money quote from WotC President Greg Leeds in an article on ICV2 on the recent layoffs (oh sorry, “digital consolidation”):

“Consolidating internal resources coupled with improved outsourcing allows us to gain efficiencies in executing against our major digital initiatives Magic Online and D&D; Insider. Wizards of the Coast is well positioned to maximize future opportunities, including further brand development on digital platforms. The result of this consolidation is a more streamlined approach to driving core brands.”

Ah yes, gaining efficiencies and maximizing opportunities! The only phrase this masterpiece is missing is “leveraging our core competencies.” Maybe he’s saving that one for the next round of layoffs. Seriously, this sort of soulless gibberish may play with Hasbro shareholders but it the 100% wrong way to communicate with the gamers who make up WotC’s audience. Next time, I suggest Mr. Leeds try showing a human face and some compassion for the people he just put out of work. Quotes that read like passages from 1984 only reinforce the idea of WotC as an “evil empire.” And you don’t need an expensive market research campaign to figure that out.

Since the announcement of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, there have been continuing flamewars about the game all over the internet. This is to be expected, but what I find interesting is the amount of time that’s also spent discussing whether 4E is selling well or not. Every gaming message board I visit has some variation of this topic right now. For most gamers, you wouldn’t think it would matter. Either they are playing and enjoying 4E or they not. How many others are playing it would seem largely irrelevant, but some people who hate 4E want to crow about its failure and some people who love 4E want to exalt in its success. The trouble with the game industry is that companies rarely share their sales data, and at large companies like WotC accurate data is not necessarily passed down the chain of command. It is thus the executives and the sales people who know what’s really going on at a high level and they of course are the least likely to talk about it. You may see vague and qualified statements, but almost no one provides real numbers.

Due to the GSL situation, Green Ronin isn’t doing much with 4E. Our one planned product, an update of our d20 System Character Record Folio to 4E, just went to print. I am looking forward to its debut because it will give me some direct and measurable data. The original folio was Green Ronin’s best selling product of all time, going through six odd print runs. It will be informative to see how the 4E version stacks up.

Now the anecdotes I hear are sometimes interesting, but I try not to read a lot into them. I had a retailer at the Alliance Open House in Las Vegas, for example, tell me he stopped carrying 4E because his customers tried it, didn’t like it, and went back to playing 3E. I can believe that happened in his store, but I don’t think such an extreme reaction is common. The only commentary I have taken seriously has come from the two halves of the distribution system: the game trade and the book trade. In separate conversations, an executive in the game trade and the former RPG buyer for a major chain of bookstores both told me the same thing: 4E sold in well but follow-up sales were slow. One of them told me that 4E supplements were selling at the same level as 3E supplements at the beginning of this year (i.e. 8 years into 3E’s lifecycle).

That is interesting info if true. Even so the picture might change as more supplements and support material comes out and new organized play programs have an effect. I’ve said previously I don’t think we’ll know what kind of legs 4E has until next summer. A year after release gamers will have had a chance to put it through its paces and judge the development of the line. While brand power is important (and D&D; has plenty of it), it’s ultimately the play experience of the fans that will tell the story.

Yesterday’s layoffs at WotC add an interesting wrinkle, but it’s unclear what they signify (other than a shitty Xmas for the folks who were let go). It seems most of the layoffs were centered on WotC’s digital efforts and certainly their part in the 4E launch did not go as planned. It was surprising to see Jonathan Tweet and Andrew Finch, both long time employees I’d have thought immune to the seasonal layoff cycle, on the list. Their departure could be a cost saving measure, but it’s also possible they volunteered for the layoff. I’ve seen people who are ready to move on take bullets to spare others before.

What is unambiguous to my mind is that the third party market for 4E material is a shadow of its former self. By early 2001 you had publishers selling huge amounts of d20 product and more companies jumping into the fray every week. This time there is a trickle of product and no one is seeing the gangbuster sales of 3E’s heyday as far as I can tell. The GSL revision has yet to appear and the d20 diaspora continues to splinter. If WotC was serious about wanting the support of third party publishers, the GSL has been a strategic failure to date. If the goal was to cull the third party market though, mission accomplished.

Moving into 2009 the state of the biggest RPG in the industry is unclear, the RPG category in general continues to struggle in retail stores, and we are in a recession that may get much worse before it gets better. In this environment you can give up or look for opportunity. I have chosen the latter course and I’ll have more to say about that in the future.

Over the summertime I got to be a judge in the PAX 10 game design contest. I spent a day in a computer lab at DigiPen, trying out and rating about 10 of the 100 odd entries. One of my favorites was A Kingdom for Kelflings. In the game you play a giant helping the diminutive kelflings build their community. It has similar gameplay elements to other building games but the conceit of playing the giant is a nice twist. When you want to set a kelfling to a particular task, you pick up its kicking and screaming little body and then set it down where you want it to work. While I found the game charming and fun, it did not win the PAX 10 contest. That was the last I heard of it until last night.

So I was over at Rick’s playing a game of 40K (aside: snake eyes on a plasma gun shot; really?) when I got a text from Kate. She said that she had found a new game and that Nicole was now bogarting the Xbox playing it. When I got home Nik was still going. When I took a look at what she was playing I said, “Hey, I know that game!” It was A Kingdom for Kelflings, released recently on XBox Live Arcade. The game looks the same as when I judged it with one key difference: the giant in the game is your new Xbox avatar. So if you made an avatar that looks like you, now you can help the kelflings build their kingdom in person. Nicole played the game for like six hours last night and told me she “loved loved loved it.” It’s like we’re married or something.

About a month ago I talked about getting the new Basic Roleplaying core book from Chaosium and mused about doing a BRP Freeport Companion. It is an appealing idea, as Freeport is certainly influenced by Call of Cthulhu and doing a BRP companion would bring the setting closer to its roots in some sense. The question remains whether it makes business sense to do the book for Green Ronin?

Apparently, the BRP fan community discovered my blog post because all week I’ve had gamers posting comments on that entry telling me they’d love to see a BRP Freeport Companion. It’s not exactly market research but it’s nice to see some interest in the idea. Thanks for being pro-active, BRP fans! I can’t commit to anything but I am considering ways to make this happen.

Weeks have been flying by of late. That’s good for the work week, but it also means weekends go by in a flash.

Friday I was feeling cruddy so I stayed in. Saturday and Sunday were similar: work during the day and then dinner out. Last night we got together with two friends of mine from high school, Elizabeth and Geoff, who I only recently discovered lived in Seattle. I’ve gotten together with them for lunch but we hadn’t done the full family meet up. They had us over to their beautiful house in Magnolia and I introduced them to Nicole and Kate and met their five kids. It’s been really nice to rekindle that friendship and get to know each other again as adults. Tonight we went out to the Saffron Grill with Nicole’s brother and his girlfriend, which was also nice. I could drink that chai endlessly.

Working on the weekend, which I do pretty much every weekend, can be a drag when it’s just administration, scheduling, contracting, and other such bullshit. This weekend I got to spend most of my time doing — gasp — game design. Yeah, the reason I got into this in the first place. I am designing a new RPG and I had a productive couple of days building out the framework and core mechanics. I’m quite pleased with what I’ve done so far. The concepts are coming together quickly, probably because I’ve the last couple of years thinking about what I want from this type of game. I’m afraid I can’t talk about what the game is just yet, but you may seen announcement before Xmas.

And now the weekend is over already. Ah well.

Last night I took Nicole to local foodie favorite the Herbfarm for a birthday dinner. The meal was tremendous (bleu cheese ice cream…so good), but I’ll let Nik blog about that. What captured my imagination is a unique item only the Herbfarm offers. They call it “The Oldest Wine You’ll Ever Drink.” The Herbfarm has a very small amount of Madeira that was bottled in 1795 and forgotten in a Scottish castle for over a century. No other wine would be potable after 200+ years but because of the unique nature of Madeira it has continued to improve. When this wine was bottled, George Washington was still president of the United States. Napoleon dispersed Royalists with “a whiff of grapeshot” during the French Revolution, thus beginning his rise to power. George Peabody, the man my home town in MA was named after, was born. That Madeira is a taste of history I would like to have.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t come cheap. The 1795 Madeira is $365 per ounce. Yes, that’s per ounce. The taste of 1795 will have to remain in my imagination for the foreseeable future.

Now this is a huge step in the right direction. I’ll have more to say about what Obama must do to actually make some positive changes in America and the world later. Analysis can wait though; tonight is for celebrating. Take it away, Black Flag.

Jealous cowards try to control
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
They distort what we say
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Try and stop what we do
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
When they can’t do it themselves
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

Society’s arms of control
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Think they’re smart, can’t think for themselves
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Laugh at us behind our backs
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
I find satisfaction in what they lack
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, but it’s no use

We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

We’re born with a chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
I am gonna have my chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are born with a chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
And I am gonna have my chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

Rise above
Rise above
Rise above
We’re gonna rise above
We’re gonna rise above
We’re gonna rise above