Nik and I spent the weekend in Vancouver and had a nice, relaxing time. I’ll divide my report into two entries: gaming and eating. First, gaming.

I spent Saturday at Trumpeter Salute, a wargaming convention put on by Vancouver’s venerable Trumpeter Tabletop Games Society (established in 1964). I’ve been meaning to go up for this con for many years and finally had the chance. It took place at a community center near the Metrotown mall and I’d guess there were 300 attendees or so. My goal was simple: play some damn games. I got there at 9 am and was able to get into a WAB game which pitted ancient Egyptians vs. Assyrians, with two players per side. I was on the Egyptian side, which was fine by me. The game started off badly when my co-general sent his chariot unit racing unsupported towards the enemy battle line. It was charged and broken by Assyrian cavalry, routed back to our lines and rallied, and then was charged and broken again. The ensuing panic caused half our infantry to panic and start to run. I used our chariot-mounted general to destroy the cavalry and then reform the battle line. Things went much better after that and the enemy generals capitulated at the end of the session. The game was fun, the other players and the GM were friendly, and the game was in the quietest room of the con. Good start.

In the second session I had to decide between playing Blitzkrieg Commander or a Legends of the Old West game set in the Firefly/Serenity setting. Since I’ve played BK many times but never got to try Legends of the Old West, I chose the latter. I also knew the GM, Lisa Smedman, who worked with Nicole on Adventures Unlimited Magazine back in the 90s. The rules worked well for Firefly, requiring only a few changes for some of the higher tech items. The basic scenario had six groups in a small town with individual goals, but on turn two a Reaver ship showed up and chaos ensued. I was playing the local sheriff and his posse of townsfolk. Other players controlled the various Firefly characters, a gang of outlaws led by Patience, an Alliance squad, and a loading crew of Rasta-looking dudes. Lisa had built out Serenity using downloadable scifi terrain packs and it looked pretty good. My crew’s job was to maintain law and order but with multiple rivals and Reavers in the mix, that was not happening. The Reavers were insanely tough. On several turns I’d have 7 or 8 of my posse unload on one Reaver and if I did even a single wound it was a rousing success. The game was fun but the system strained a bit to handle six players and a GM faction. I have some Western figs I got ages ago from the Foundry; I should bust them out for a Legends game with Rick some time.

Those two sessions kept me busy from 9 am to 6 pm, so that’s all the gaming I got to do. I did have a chance to look around at some of the other games being run and there was some beautiful stuff on display. The Pulp Figures people were there and they had a stunning table set up with gunboats, big Buddha statues, and even a waterfall if memory serves. The Blitzkrieg Commander game I did not play in had really well-painted 20mm Germans and French forces in a 1940 battle (it also won “best of session”, so I guess it was pretty good). I was amused to note that every single Battletech game there was played on Heroscape terrain. Oh, and one guy was running a Warhammer 40K Apocalypse game of ludicrous proportions. There were a dozen Baneblade tanks on the board, along with 30 or more Leman Russ tanks, and a horde of Tyranids. It looked like tactics were non-existant, basically line up 18 inches away from each other and charge. Still, quite a spectatcle.

So that was the gaming. Food later.

I have finally finished reading Rick Atkinson’s The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-1944. I got this right when I came out and started reading it in October I think. It’s the sequel to An Army at Dawn and the middle part of Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy. The reason it took me so long to finish has nothing to do the merits of the book itself. It is an engaging read and a worthy follow-up to the first part of the trilogy. Atkinson has a great way of taking moments from 60 years ago and making you feel like an observer. He has a real eye for detail and knows how to paint a scene. This helps make the narrative quite gripping, even though you know how the story ends.

So yeah, no problems with the content of the book. If you are at all interested in WWII, do not miss out on the Liberation Trilogy (though I curse the several years it will take before part three comes out). My problem with The Day of Battle was its physical size. It’s an 812 page hardback and that made it unwieldy. I get most of my reading done on the bus but I found the book simply too big to read comfortably when wedged into a bus seat. After a week of trying that I put it by my bed and began reading a few pages at night before going to sleep. I rarely was able to dedicate more than 15 minutes at a time, except on a couple of weekends. This is why it took me longer to read this book than it took the allied armies to fight all four battles of Monte Cassino.

Yesterday I got An Army in Exile in the mail. Took me awhile to get a copy, but I think it’ll be worth it. This is the memoir of General Wladyslaw Anders, who led the II Polish Corps in the Italian campaign. It’s a really epic story that is little known in America. Polish soldiers who were captured by the Soviets in 1939 were released by Stalin after several years of imprisonment and mistreatment. They made their way to the Middle East, joined with other Polish soldiers who had escaped their country after the German/Soviet takeover, and organized themselves under the auspices of the British army. The II Corps then fought in Italy in 1944-1945, most famously taking the abbey of Monte Cassino after many other allied forces had failed to do so. Then the survivors, after years of struggle, were betrayed at Yalta and could only watch as Stalin took over their homeland. Anders wrote this book in 1949, when memories were fairly fresh. I’m looking forward to reading a first hand account of these historic events.

Joy: Wow, this is exciting. I’m having adventures in a magical world of gods, demons, and dragons. I love magic missile because it hits automatically! Weapon specialization? Cool. Double weapon specialization? Hell yeah! Hey, who’s behind these giant attacks? Drow? Awesome!

Discontent: How come in basic D&D;, elf and dwarf are classes? That’s really stupid. “What do you do, good sir?” “Why, stout yeoman, I am an elf, professionally!” Duh. And speaking of classes, why are they so restrictive? And why are so many fighters exactly alike? If psionics are so rare, why is there at least one character in every party who has it? And someone with an 18/00 strength for that matter.

Anger: I need a frickin’ dictionary just to read the DMG. This Gygaxian prose is killing me. And a harlot table? What the hell? That barbarian from Dragon Magazine should be called the super-fighter. And don’t even get me started on the cavalier. And what’s up with Greyhawk? It’s geography makes no sense at all. And why does magic missile hit automatically and get better as you up in levels? That’s totally broken. In fact, this entire game is broken!

Abandonment: Gygax was nothing but a hack with a thesaurus. Did you ever try to read one of his so-called novels? To hell with him and AD&D.; He screwed over Dave Arneson anyway. I’m off to greener pastures. I hear Runequest is skill based and Glorantha is so authentically mythic. And Champions has point build character creation with advantages and disadvantages. And in Traveler, you can die right in character creation!

Exploration: All popular games are crap! I need to go to the furthest reaches of the imagination to find the game best suited to the unique snowflake that is me. What, you can find it in a store? That’s not obscure enough! Keep on roll-playing, you drones. I am an artist and roleplaying is my form.

Nostalgia: Man, being artistic can be fufilling and all, but it’s also hard work. I’m coming out of sessions emotionally wrung out and tired. Isn’t this supposed to be my hobby? Remember when we used to play AD&D; and we took on those slavers? Yeah, that was fun back then.

Return: It’s true that Gygax could be a pompous ass at times, but whatever. He also took a tiny niche hobby helped spread it to millions around the world. And hell if playing some AD&D; isn’t still fun, even with its restrictive classes, arcane rules, and tortured grammar. Thanks for everything, Gary. We wouldn’t have gone on this journey without you.

Have you been looking for an excuse to get into Flames of War, the 15mm WWII miniatures game? I have some figures and accessories that I don’t need, so I’m offering four starter forces for a reasonable price. You’ll need to pick a few things to complement what I’ve got here, but these should get you going. All figures are by Battlefront, the makers of FOW. I do have one extra core rulebook. If you want to add that in, it’ll be $40 (MSRP is normally $50.00).

I’m offering troops for a Late War American Airborne Company for $110, an Late War American Rifle Company for $120, a Mid-War American Rifle Company $120, and a Mid-War Italian Fucilieri Company for $100. For starters I’m offering them to American buyers only to make it easy on me. Add $10 shipping and handling for each company purchased. I’ll send these via Priority Mail. Payment is via Paypal. If you are interested, drop me a line at chrispramas [at] aol.com.

American Airborne Company, Late War (Total MSRP $139; Sale Price $110)
1 Parachute Rifle Company boxed set ($65.00)
2 57mm anti-tank guns ($17.00)
1 Parachute Rifle Platoon ($18.00)
1 Parachute Mortar Platoon ($14.00)
D Minus 1 Intelligence Handbook ($25.00)

American Rifle Company, Late War (Total MSRP $150; Sale Price $120)
Rifle Company boxed set ($42.00)
Landing Craft boxed set ($45.00)
1 Machinegun Platoon ($9.00)
2 M10 3 in GMCs ($18.00)
D-Day Campaign Book ($25.00)
1 set of Gale Force 9 American FOW Tokens ($11)

American Rifle Company, Mid-War (Total MSRP $156; Sale Price $120)
2 Rifle Platoons ($36.00)
3 M3A1 Stuart Tanks ($27.00)
2 T19 105mm HMC ($18.00)
2 M5 3 in anti-tank guns ($17.00
2 M3 Half-tracks ($18.00)
Afrika Intelligence Handbook ($40.00)

Italian Fucilieri Company, Mid-War (Total MSRP $130; Sale Price $100)
1 Company HQ ($9.00)
2 Fucilieri Platoons ($36.00)
1 Machinegun Platoon ($9.00)
1 Mortar Platoon ($9.00)
1 M14/41 Tank Platoon boxed set ($45.00)
1 set of Gale Force 9 Italian FOW Tokens ($11.00)
1 set of Gale Force 9 8 Million Bayonets Tokens ($11.00)

When deciding how many copies of a book to print, it’s so easy to talk yourself into overprinting. You think, “Ah, but for only a little more money we could get 1000 more books and if we sold them we’d make a much greater profit.” It’s a common trap and one I’ve fallen into more than once. It does not help that the pre-order system is completely worthless. In theory pre-orders are supposed to help you set your print numbers, but so few retailers actually pre-order RPG books these days that every print run is basically an educated guess.

Recently, I had to set the print run for the d20 Freeport Companion. This is our last D&D; 3.5 book. At first I thought if I advertised that fact it’d be a selling point. We began our crazy d20 journey with Death in Freeport and now eight years later it would end with another Freeport book. There was interest from the Freeport fan community but I didn’t see anything from the “3.5 forever” fans that made me think the book would buck the trend in d20 sales we’d seen for the past couple of years.

So I did a short print run and figured that’d cover demand. Then the orders started coming in from distributors. One order alone asked for 90% of the print run. Another distributor who had barely ordered d20 stuff in the past couple of years suddenly ordered this one. It quickly became clear that we had nowhere near enough books. I probably could have doubled the print run and still sold out. Now I face the ludicrous prospect of reprinting a 3.5 book three months before 4E comes out. The danger being that in a month when the next print run comes in the demand might not be there.

Sometimes you just can’t win.

Sunday’s post sure opened a can o’ worms. A few things have come up in comments, e-mails, and message board posts that I’d like to address about my 4E Test Drive.

1. I have had a taste of the new rules, but I have by no means come to a final verdict about them. I really do want to read the new core books and see the whole thing in the proper context. Green Ronin may indeed support 4E, but I need to see the GSL first and then review the game. The new rules do look like they support a specific style of play, but within that style I can envision some good products GR could do.

2. D&D; feel is indeed hard to nail down. All I can say is that play reminded me more of FFG’s Descent than D&D.;

3. When I bring up other types of games, I’m not making comparisons in a pejorative sense. I like Descent, I like minis games, and I like some CCGs. When I said the new rules were interesting, I meant it. The question is will they feel like D&D; to the players out there? I can’t speak for anyone but me on that issue.

4. I do think that a third party company could stick with 3.5 or do a “3.75” upgrade and make a good business for itself catering to fans who feel disenfranchised. Green Ronin, however, is not that company. Our last 3.5 books, the d20 Freeport Companion, just got back from the printer and is releasing this month. That’s going to be it for us. I just don’t think that we’re well-positioned to be that company and frankly I’d rather be more forward-looking. We have A Song of Ice and Fire coming out this summer and we have True20 as an already existing alternative.

5. Saying that I see TCG roots in the 4E rules does not mean that I think the game is a CCG. Of course 4E is a RPG. The question is how important is the “R” in the new edition and I don’t have enough info to say yet.

6. However this shakes out, I’m not worried about what I’ll play myself. I have more games already than I could play in a lifetime. If I want a D&D; experience and 4E doesn’t do it for me, I have many previous iterations to choose from. Hell, the most recent game I’ve been playing has been using the D&D; Rules Cyclopedia and that’s been a blast. At the moment my primary concerns about 4E are business oriented.

7. Gary Gygax died today. There’s no better way to honor him than playing some D&D–of; any edition–this week. I know I will.

I had a chance to actually play D&D; 4th edition today. A friend of mine who still works at WotC got permission to run the demo adventure from the D&D; Experience at her monthly game day. Since I’m still waiting for WotC to finalize the Game System License, this was the first opportunity I’ve had to see something of the rules and try them out.

Short Review
It’s an interesting system that didn’t so much feel like D&D; in play; nonetheless, the brand power of D&D; all but ensures this will be a success and it may even redefine what D&D; means for the next generation.

Long Review
Since the announcement of 4E last Gen Con, a common critique of the emerging rules was that they looked more to MMOs than RPGs. My play experience suggests something else. The roots of the new rules are not in MMOs at all, but collectible card games. Building your character seems much like building a deck in Magic: the Gathering. You have a selection of powers and special abilities that are exceptions-based. Some powers you can only use once per encounter, like tapping a card in a CCG. Character turns have a very specific order, with beginning and end of turn actions used to handle bookkeeping issues. Part of character and party building revolves around power combos. In short, 4E seems to be what people feared was going to happen with 3E after WotC bought TSR, though thankfully without a collectible component.

Now one of my concerns had been that 4E would simply be a revised 3.5. I’m glad 4E is not that. I really felt that 3.5 was just more complicated than it needed to be and I hoped that 4E would simplify things. While it does fix many of the ongoing issues with 3.5, my feeling after today’s session is that it’s just complicated in a different way. It’s not something I think experienced gamers will have a huge amount of trouble with, but it does seem that 4E may be even more unfriendly to new players than 3.5 was. It looks like 4E requires newbs to make too many choices and track too many things to make it truly accessible. Since D&D; has always been the entry point for most RPG players, this is my most serious concern.

Of the current D&D; players, I suspect most of them will switch over to the new edition, despite the unimpressive marketing campaign that we’ve seen to date. There are many options for character customization and players who like tactical combat will find a lot to work with. I understand there are some kind of social interaction rules, but I haven’t seen them. The focus seems squarely on combat from what I could tell. There were interesting choices to make during fights and it wasn’t just a matter of trotting out your best attack again and again. The CCG style of the rules and the changes to the IP did make the game feel a lot less like D&D; though, at least to me. And since the rules seem to have been tailored to provide a very particular experience, I don’t think they will make as good of a base for the variety of campaign settings D&D; used to see. It’s pretty clear that WotC realizes this, which explains why they felt the need to advance the timeline and have an apocalyptic event in the Forgotten Realms. I don’t think many of the old campaign settings will transition over without a lot of cutting, spindling, and mutilating.

What I think WotC is going for here is what Marvel managed to pull off with their Ultimate line of comics: take the core of the IP and redefine it for a new generation. There will certainly be some longtime fans disenfranchised by this move, but I don’t think there will be enough of those folks to hurt 4E. (I do think, however, that there will be enough of those for a third party company to carve out a good business for itself catering to them, but that’s a topic for another day.)

All of this is, of course, based on what I’ve managed to glean so far from released info and today’s play experience. I would naturally like to see the new rules in their entirety and doing so may change my opinion about some things. If the GSL gets sorted out this month, maybe I’ll get the chance for a more in-depth read soon. If I feel like spending 5K to do so anyway.

Here’s a brief overview of the seminars I attended at GDC. Good stuff overall.

Casual Games Summit: The first two days of the show were taken up with summits. It was a toss up for me between the Independent Games Summit and the Casual Games Summit, but I ended up choosing the latter. The first part of the summit was a general overview of the casual game space and then there was a series of more focused lectures about content, business models, future developments, and so forth. I heard some attendees complaining that they weren’t learning anything new, but as someone who didn’t know a lot about the business end of casual games I found it quite useful.

Rules of Engagement: Blizzard’s Approach to Multiplayer Game Design: In this lecture Rob Pardo talked about multiplayer design in WoW and Starcraft II. It was interesting enough, but not particularly illuminating.

Game Writer’s Roundtable: Tricks, Techniques, and Concerns: This was basically a bull session for writers, moderated by ex-White Wolf developer and current Red Storm Manager of Design Rich Dansky. I really enjoyed this, as it was a chance to talk shop with a bunch of other writers. That’s a lot rarer than you’d think. It was interesting to note how practically every company handled writing differently. Some of the people there had more or less been thrust into the role when there was a need for writing and no one on staff to do it. There was a woman from Harmonix, for example, who ended up writing descriptive text for clothing and other accessories for Guitar Hero, though she was hired to do something else entirely.

Collaborative Writing and Vast Narratives: Principles, Processes, and Genteel Truculence: The shtick here was a mock argument between Ken Rolston and his partner Mark Nelson. The two worked on Morrowind and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Ken, who came out of the tabletop game industry, argued that best way to handle vast narratives was to concentrate on setting and theme. He talked about the big vision stuff he did when creating the worlds for his previous games. Mark countered that all that was useless without character and story. He stopped short of calling Ken an ignorant slut, which was too bad. Anyway, this lecture was pretty entertaining and of course the conclusion was that the two approaches worked best in concert.

Proper Use of Episodic Content in a MMO: Despite its title, this was really more of a City of Heroes/Villains post mortem by Jack Emmert. With CoH bought out by NCSoft, Jack was quite willing to be forthright about the history and challenges of the game. He then talked some about Cryptic’s just-announced Champions Online, and how it would benefit from the lessons of CoH. He was talking about that when I got up to ask a question. Jack, misinterpreting my move, said to the audience, “Chris Pramas is walking out because I didn’t license Mutants & Masterminds!” I laughed and then asked my question. Then I gave Jack some good natured shit after the seminar was over.

The Future of MMOs: Probably the most packed session I attended, this was a roundtable with Jack Emmert (Cryptic), Ray Muzyka (Bioware), Mark Jacobs (EA Mythic), Rob Pardo (Blizzard), and Min Kim (Nexon) discussed what was coming down the pike for MMOs. Moderator Jon Wood of MMORPG asked the panel some questions and then opened it up to the audience. The funniest moment was when Jon asked if microtransactions were the wave of the future for MMOs. Jack went off, ranting about how microtransactions were seen as a silver bullet and how he just didn’t see it. Jack, he loves the subscriptions. Then the Nexon guys pipes up, quoting player numbers for games like Maplestory and noting how much money the company has made using microtransactions. Later many people tried to get Ray Muzyka to spill on what Bioware’s upcoming MMO is, but he did not take the bait.

You can read some quotes from this panel here:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task;=view&id;=9278&Itemid;=2

Let Me Win: Kate Stone-Perez, a Microsoft producer responsible for dozens of Arcade titles, gave an interesting presentation about customer retention through more forgiving gameplay. Her basic argument was that video game design often uses techniques that date back to the arcade game era. Those games were designed to get you to spend more quarters. Today, she says, games don’t need to do that because people pay up front. You’ve got their money, so make sure they have fun. She had some interesting stats, showing how few people bought sequels to games they never finished. It’s thus really in the publisher’s interest to ensure that people can finish the game without undue frustration.

Teaching Players: Tutorial and Opening Mission Design in Company of Heroes: Despite some technical problems with the Powerpoint presentation, this was a really interesting seminar. Two guys from Relic, Neil Jones-Rodway and Aldric Sun, talked about their design choices in the teaching content of Company of Heroes. This included both the tutorial proper and the opening suite of missions. What I liked about this presentation was that they showed clips of the missions from different stages of development and talked about how playtest feedback contributed to making this opening content better. One thing I found curious is that the opening mission is D-Day, but the second mission goes back in time to cover the paradrop the night before. I asked if any of the playtesters had conceptual problems with moving back in time and they said no. One of the Relic folks told me afterwards that the issue I brought up vexed him for months. In the end they really wanted the first mission to have the drama of D-Day. I certainly saw the point, but I argued that 20,000 paratroopers dropping into Normandy was also pretty damn dramatic.

Well, my favorite character on the Wire took a bullet to the dome this week. Knowing that the writers were hearkening back to Greek tragedies with the show, I expected he was going to go out in the final season but hoped to be proven wrong. I imagine David Simon didn’t want to make a hero out of the guy either, preferring to show the harsh realities of the street. It’s been three days since the episode and I still find myself thinking about it and being bummed out. That’s what you call effective drama.

If you haven’t seen the Wire, start with Season 1 and watch the episodes in order. You will not be disappointed.

I am back from GDC and trying to catch up on all the stuff that piled up while I was away. I had hoped for some movement on the Game System License, but still no joy there. When I see things like classes getting fixed hit points at each level, it makes me fear the new edition will be so totally overdesigned that I won’t even need to show up at the table; my character will play itself. Not going to worry about it until I can see the whole ruleset though.

GDC was great. I attended many interesting lectures, made new contacts, reconnected with some old friends from the game industry like Rich Dansky and Josh Mosqueira, ate some excellent food, and saw some of SF to boot. I would definitely go back and I’m already plotting on how that’s going to happen next year. I may have more to say about the lectures later.

Later this week I have another sleep study, this time to fit me out with the CPAP machine that’ll help me breathe better during the night. If things go as they should, I soon will enjoy the first good sleep of my adult life. Wohoo.