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.

So when GW announced the closure of Black Industries a few weeks ago, I contacted them about the possibility of licensing WFRP and Dark Heresy. Since Green Ronin had created just about every product in the WFRP 2nd edition line, this was of course a natural move. The licensing lead at GW told me that many other companies had expressed interest, which was no real suprise. He also said that things were a bit chaotic over there and that it would take them several months to sort it out. However, if I wanted to put together a proposal, they’d be happy to consider it.

The following week we had some big internal debates at GR about what to do and how this could impact the company. A German publisher then contacted me to talk about the possibility of a joint venture. Since they were interested in the board games and we were more interested in the RPGs, this seemed like a good fit. However, one does not set up an international business deal in a matter of days. Nicole and I met with a friend who’s an executive at Microsoft to get some advice on the situation and then last Sunday I flew to SF to attend the Game Developers Conference. Since I had been told that this process was going to take months, I thought it would be OK to submit the proposal after I was back from GDC. I e-mailed my licensing contact at GW from SF mid-week and got a message saying that its delivery had failed. That was curious, but I was not unduly concerned.

Today GW announced that they had signed a deal with Fantasy Flight for all the board, card, and RPG rights. No one at GW warned me that a deal was going to happen this fast. I wasn’t give a deadline for the proposal, or a heads up that they were close to signing with FFG. After having had a close business relationship with GW for over three years, I was surprised that the negotiations were handled in this way.

I’m sorry that GR wasn’t able to make this work, and particularly disappointed that we won’t be able to continue what we began with WFRP. That said, if it had to go to another company, I’m glad it was Fantasy Flight. They are good folk and with Jeff Tidball on staff they have the know how to do the RPGs justice. I wish FFG the best of luck but they should be warned: it’s a grim world of perilous adventure!

I wrote a lengthy post last night about my first two days in SF, only to have LJ eat it. The computer I’m on apparently can’t use the autosave function either. Boo.

In brief then, the trip is going really well. I spent Sunday at Endgame, one of the best game stores in the country. I hung out with Chris Hanrahan and crew and after dinner we recorded a podcast that GR will share with 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction. Yesterday I discovered that you can’t judge walking distances in SF by using a map because it doesn’t indicate where the giant hills are. I took part in the Casual Games Summit and that was very interesting indeed.

After a full day of lectures at GDC I took the bus to Haight St. and visited the Giant Robot store and Amoeba Records. The latter is one of the most awesome record stores I have ever seen. Acres and acres of records, CDs, and yes, even 7′ singles. I had not planned to buy any CDs; I left with 11. My reason for the trip was that local punk legends Flipper were doing an in-store performance to promote a new DVD. Since I happened to be here the right week, well, I just had to go. Their noise-damaged aural assault was still powerful and the new songs sounded good as well. The funny thing about Flipper is that they’ve lost two bass players to heroin overdoses over the years and yet they somehow managed to recruit Krist Novoselic of Nirvana to take on those duties. You’d think that dude of all people would not tempt fate.

Today more casual games seminars and perhaps a trip to the Ferry Building.