More Lack of Perspective

Ran across this, on another amateur d20 company's site:

Due to some recent policy changes with the d20 STL over at Wizards of the Coast, many industry figures are moving away from the use of the "d20 System" logo as a sign of rules compatibility. Many have pretty much settled on a single logo and license, termed "Prometheus", as an indicator of ONLY rules compatibility.

Define "many". Last I checked, any d20 company that had any significant presence in print or in PDF was still using the d20 logo. Only people on the fringe are using the "Prometheus" logo and most of them are theoretical publishers*. There's nothing wrong with that logo and the philosophies of its creator (the Free Gaming Assocation) are certainly commendable. But the simple fact of the matter is that companies that truly have a stake in the d20 market - companies like Mongoose, Necromancer, S&SS - are still using it. While some are moving away from d20 or diversifying their product lines, that has nothing to do with the last time WotC changed the license - it's driven by the market. And none of them are moving towards Prometheus.

Side note: Looks like a lot of the links at the FGA site above are broken (they weren't working for me, at least). I don't know if there's been much activity there in awhile, either (the front page still has a 2003 copyright, and we're rapidly approaching 2005...). It's unfortunate, but that's the way of things when dealing with volunteer projects on the 'Net... in PDF was still using the d20 logo.


*: What's a "theoretical publisher"? A term I made up, of course. I'm referring to people that discuss the ramifications of publishing with the d20 license or alternate licenses, but have yet to actually publish anything in any medium. They talk about what WotC could do with the license in the future or how game publishers operate without actual experience in the industry (for two examples). There's a big difference between someone who actually has put forth the effort - and more importantly, the cash - to publish their own gaming products and someone who talks about it but likely will never end up doing it. That's not to say that actual publishers aren't concerned about the same issues, but they tend to approach it from a far more pragmatic point-of-view rather than debate hypotheticals back-and-forth.

Sometimes People Have the Same Idea

I was just reading a forum for a vanity press company that's claiming another game company stole the name of one of its products. The thread is filled with fanboys calling for blood, amazed at how "evil" the "thief" company is.

I'm amazed at how clueless these people are. Taking two common words and putting them together does not make you original or a genius. You may get a cool phrase out of it, but you aren't particularly original. To borrow some thoughts from the OGL mailing list, if I produce a monster called a "Frost Ape" and then a year later see a product with a different creature called a "Frost Ape", that doesn't mean they "stole" my idea.

Reminds me somewhat of someone I used to work with (though he was only guilty of ignorance rather than the ridiculousness I saw above). He enjoyed RPGs, but didn't really have any experience with tabletop games. He regularly would mention an idea he had and would be amazed when I mentioned that someone had already done that in such-and-such a game, usually 10 or 15 years earlier. Granted, Google wasn't as big a deal back when we talked about that sort of thing, but he never considered that someone else could possibly have come up with the same sort of thing he had. Personally, whenever I come up with something "original", I assume that someone else may have thought of it and try to verify if that was the case. Whether that makes a difference or not in what I do with it is another story...

(I'm not going to mention the companies in question simply because I don't want to give any publicity to the "victimized" company, who I've had a negative opinion of since they first appeared - and it's only gotten worse).

Changed the Template

The other one was...unattractive. Let's see what this looks like.

Edit: Hmm...I like it! Though I might want a different background...

Take THAT, Image Thieves!

Where'd my text go? Friggin' Blogger...

This is the second time this has happened.... I'm not going to re-type all of that. Just know that if you've been remotely linking to the images on my site, you should probably stop if you don't want your links to break periodically.

If you want to use an image file from this site:

1. Ask me for permission first
2. Copy the image to your site, so your bandwidth gets used
3. Make sure you credit me as the creator/author/whatever

That's all I ask. Not too demanding to be calling for fairness.

Maybe if You Use ALL of It...

From a discussion board:

D20 ... thanks to the OGL one of the most over-developed systems out there. It has even far surpassed Rolemaster 2nd Edition, which had a reputation for having rules for almost everything. D20 not only has rules for everything, but often has several variations of each rule, which in turn makes it much much more complex than Rolemaster ever was...

Why do some people think that just because everybody and their dog has their own d20 publishing venture, d20 is "over-developed"? Everything outside of the core rules is optional (and much of that is optional as well).

Maybe it's just a semantics issue, but to me the term "over-developed system" implies one in which the official or "standard" ruleset has an overabundance of rules. For d20, the standard ruleset is the d20 SRD - that's it. Everything else is gravy.

I suppose if you buy every d20 supplement you can get your hands on, and your DM allows you to use all that, you may think the system is "over-developed". Personally, I look at it as a host of options you can add to your game if you wish. If you don't want to use it - don't. There's a big difference between that and having far too many rules to play a game (as written, at least).

Speaking of which, now that Complete Arcane is out I need to figure out what to allow from it. Wild Mages, definitely :) The remainder will have to see.

BTW, Halo 2 is very cool. If you have an X-Box, get it. If you don't, wait for X-Box 2 so you can play Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. The previews I've seen for that game are amazing.

Monday Musings

A web posting (more of a press release) on a gameboard I frequent contained this statement in regards to the company posting:

"...a company dedicated to producing high quality RPG products"

Are there any companies that are dedicated to producing low quality products? That admit to it? I've seen this in a number of places - "We make high quality products!" Sure, Chester. I think I'll be the judge of that. You don't need to say that; the very fact that you are producing something implies that you think it's high quality. This sort of thing just seems like a typical, amateur marketing phrase that really means nothing.

Another one along those lines: "By gamers, for gamers." I may have said this before, but I'll say it again: This is a tired cliché that needs to be put to rest. Most RPG companies have products made "by gamers" - even the designers at the megalith WotC are gamers, though their business people might not be (but that's not their purpose). Even if the products aren't made by "gamers", if they're good - who cares? Though generally those companies don't last long, so it tends to be a moot point.

Turning to the site, I actually got Chronicle #6 published on time. I didn't think I would, given how little time I've had to spend on it in the past couple of weeks. But the weather this weekend was rather crummy around here (north of Chicago), so I was able to finish it up. And get a bunch of raking done. Raking is a pain; I'd rather vaccuum the leaves off the trees before they fall and save some time... Anyway, the revised Gazetteer is almost done; the history chapter is the only thing left, and that's mainly because how it ends depends on the current campaign.