Links, Links, Links

I was running my Links page through the W3C's Link Checker (something anyone who has external links on their site should do regularly), when I got to thinking - does anyone really care? Used to be that a "Links" page was kind of a big deal, but that was before massive portal sites and search engines like Google (and I'm not going to take the time to put a link into that - if you don't know how to get to Google by now...). Linking to personal web sites is sketchy because they often disappear before long (not always, though the links I have to personal sites continue to decrease due to sites going away), and is there a point to linking to major or well-known companies like Reaper Miniatures? You don't need to "find" them through me - and do you really care that I think they're a cool enough company to link to?

Perhaps those pages are useful, and I'm simply approaching the matter from someone who's been using the Web for years and is rather computer-savvy - a common failing among people like me.

Hard to say! A Links page is probably better used to alert people to things they might not normally run across, particularly in forums or e-mail lists, which I assume is how most people find out about neat new stuff. I'm debating whether to even continue to have a separate page for that. When other people link to me, I feel it's only appropriate that I return the favor. But if not for that, I'm not sure what the utility of the page is...though maybe I just need to approach it differently.

Along the same lines, I removed the "awards" part of the Links page, since there are no valid links there anymore. The originated pages have long since disappeared. And while I appreciate the folks that gave me those awards originally, I don't know that anyone actually cares about whether a site received an award or not. If you have content that interests them, they'll bookmark your site. If you don't, it wouldn't matter who gave you your awards. And honestly, I don't know if anyone's giving out awards anymore anyway. That seemed to be a big thing early on in the Web, but nowadays it's about as meaningful as the Grammys :) Or the Origins Awards (does anyone care about those other than a handful of game writers? I've never bought anything on the basis of whether it won an award or not - see my comment about "content" above).

Giants of Amazing Luck

Picked up four boxes of the latest WotC miniature series: Giants of Legend. First box I opened: Huge Gold Dragon. Second box I opened: Huge Red Dragon. Time to hit Vegas before this streak cools... ;)

I also got a Treant and something I'm not going to name since the players in my campaign read this blog (don't want to ruin the sense of surprise...though the mention of the Huge Red above undoubtedly has them groaning). I do have to say that each of these series is better than the last. As always, a well-painted Reaper fig beats the pants off these mass-produced plastics. But the sculpts in GoL are not too shabby, and the paint jobs are impressive for what they are (case in point: the Grick, which is Common, is very nice).

Now I just have to get off my backside and get back to painting the metal figures I have queuing up...

Magical Commerce

For those of you keeping score, I updated the World Guide article titled "The Economy of Magic". Basically, I changed some things in regards to how the Alchemists Guild will buy and sell magical items.

The first change was primarily for simplicity. For buying, instead of rolling a d20 and referencing a lookup table, I simply streamlined the process and made the percentage of the purchase price equal to 3d4 x 100%. Roughly the same result, slightly lower average, but what you would expect. These guys have overhead to deal with, you see...

The other change was more complicated. While I understand how ubiquitous magic tends to be in a standard campaign, I've always tried to keep it as something more mysterious and exotic than, say, high-tech gadgetry in a sci-fi setting. At the same time I wanted to accomodate the players in my game who would, at least, want to be able to sell the magic items they came across that were of no use to them. But then I realized that in the process of how I set that system up (via the Alchemists Guild), it simply commoditized magic, and made it as mundane as trading cattle or grain. Plenty of computer games are set up that way (Diablo comes to mind), but that's not what I wanted for Mythosa.

The compromise I came up with was to allow the Alchemists Guild to still pretty much buy anything (they want to monopolize magic as much as they can), but be picky about what they would let out. Thus, the change to the "buying factor" table that I came up with. On the one hand, it does recognize that some things are pretty common - rings of protection +1 or cloaks of resistance +1 come to mind. For that reason, they're more inclined to sell those, either out of "stock" or by creating them. But they really aren't comfortable about letting out the more powerful items that can be created. They can make them - but they aren't going to without good reason, and money isn't a good enough one (odd as that may sound to some people).

The other reason for this is that, in my opinion, items of great power shouldn't be available at the drop of a few (tens of thousands of) gold pieces. To take this to an extreme, if a PC wanted, they could go to a "magic shop" and buy the equivalent of Excalibur, Stormbringer, or Mjolnir. Not really the stuff of legend, doing that...

Part of this, of course, is an artifact of the original design of D&D from 30 years back. There are a number of things that work perfectly well with a small group of people plundering a dungeon, but they sort of break down when extrapolated to a world at large. They require additional rationales or mechanical limits to explain why, say, caravans and fleets are still used in light of teleportation magic, or assassinations aren't as big of a deal for the rich with resurrection magic handy. That's not to say those examples (and others) cannot be explained away with proper thought - they can and are regularly. I'm just bothered when they aren't.

Note that despite the 30K gp limit, this still means that it's possible to get armor or shields up to +4, a weapon with a bonus of up to +3, the majority of rods and rings, every potion, almost all the wands, and all minor and medium wondrous items. That's quite a bit. But if you want something of true power, you're going to have to figure out a different way to get it.

The next question is "OK, so how do I find the powerful magic I want?" My response: "Use your imagination." We're talking about a fantasy game set in a world filled with magic, monsters, lost cities, ruined wizard towers, oracles, bards, sages, etc. If you can't figure out how to track something down you want without it available at your local "Magi-Mart", you might want to crack open some of the old classics of fantasy and mythology and see how it was done in the past.

DRM, PDF, DTRPG, and other acronyms...

The current debate sparked by the emergence of DriveThruRPG.com concerning the security on the PDFs they sell is interesting to follow. On the one end of the spectrum are gamers who are screaming about their "rights" being "violated". At the other end of the spectrum are publishers who, quite frankly, are being complete asses in their responses (I understand how frustrating dealing with people at the other end can be, but please - aren't you guys supposed to be the "professionals" in this industry? Try to act like it). In between - fortunately - are rational arguments by both "sides" about the pro's and con's of what's being done.

My take on this (for anyone that cares) is that I don't like it. The "copy/paste 10 times every 10 days" thing isn't that restrictive, it's a combination of two things - lack of portability and cost. From what I understand, it sounds like it's a major inconvenience to use one of these PDFs on more than one machine. So if I plunk down $30 for one, I need to re-register it on my laptop it I want to use it there as well as if I want to copy it to my USB drive and read it at work during lunch. Note that I'm talking about legitimate uses of something I legally bought - I'm not advocating piracy. I wouldn't be posting an opinion about this if I did - I'd just shrug and grab the files off of Kazaa or one of the other file-sharing networks. I need to look into this more, though, as I'm not entirely sure this is an issue as some are describing it.

Now, if I'm buying a PDF, I expect it to cost less than the print version of the book. If part of the cost of a print book is due to costs for paper, ink, warehousing, etc., and those costs are eliminated with a PDF, I expect that savings to be passed on to me. Particularly since if I decide to print out the PDF, it's going to cost me additional money to do so. And if the PDF is in color, I need to print it somewhere other than my desktop (my laser printer is B&W)...which leads back to the inconvenience I mention above. Now, if the PDF is being released at the same time as the print version, I can understand charging the same price - you don't want to cannibalize your sales of the print book by charging less for the PDF. But I would expect the PDF price to decrease, then, after the initial front-log time of 90 days (or whatever they call it) is done.

There's also format issues. Again, many publishers are dismissing that as a concern, but my 1st Edition DMG still works - and it's over 20 years old. So do the Original D&D and Travellers books I have - with the former being almost older than me. Adobe stands to be around for a good while - but for how long? What if their format for DRM'ed PDFs change in the next 3-5 years? How easy is it to "convert" a DRM'ed PDF to a new version? Format obsolence is a bigger deal than most people think, in my opinion. And the world and computer industry do change rapidly; how many people are still using VisiCalc or dBase, or TurboPascal? Extreme examples, to be sure, but this is still an issue. Track down a copy of "Dark Ages II: When the Digital Data Die" and read it (informative, though a little dry) if you don't think so.

Anyway, that's my opinion. I think this is still a great way to get old, OOP stuff and it's certainly nice for the people who can't get the print version of books easily or cheaply. But for me, the way the DRM is being done adds no value, and actually reduces the value of products where the option is an eBook or a printed version in almost all cases. If I want cut-and-paste ease, the value may increase over-and-above how much it's decreased by DRM, but in general, all the DRM does is make it less likely I would buy the eBook over the printed product.

Again, I'm not claiming my "rights" are being "violated", and I'm not trying to tell any of the publishers how they "need" to run their businesses. I'm simply expressing my opinion as a consumer. I may be one of the 4-5 insignificant geeks that the publishers don't care about, and if that's the case, then so be it...though I find it odd how they keep reminding us how small the industry is, but then dismiss out-of-hand those people who disagree with them - which right now isn't really that small a number (I'm extrapolating a bit, but remember that it's people on-line who buy PDFs, so using the people who are debating the issue right now as a sample isn't too outlandish); but hey, who are we to question them? Our purpose is to buy their books regardless of quality so the Stackpole's of the world don't have to get real jobs!

The Past is the Present Again

Lots of people complain about d20 books packed with new feats, new spells, new prestige classes, etc. (I'm not too fond of overly-crunchy books myself). In light of that, I found the following from an article in Dragon #6 (April '77) ironic:

"The great appeal of Dungeons and Dragons role-playing lies in the
uncertainty of any action taken. It is the anticipation of standing before
a sturdy oaken door in a corridor dimly lit by flickering torches, preparing
to force it open. It is the uneasiness of finding an artifact of unknown
purpose and attempting to discover its powers. It is leaping into
combat with a foeman of unknown skill and ability. And yet the allure
of the game can tarnish in time through the dullness that can come
from too much familiarity. Thus, in nearly every publication devoted
to D&D, one can find new monsters, new classes of characters, or new
magical items, all intended to add to the uncertainty of play.

Guess the "problem" has been with us for quite awhile...