Tag Archives: RPG

Bah. Humbug.

One of my guildies recently posed a question that boiled down to “Is it weird for a 42 year old guy to play DnD with 20 year olds?”  He wanted to get back in to gaming, didn’t have a group, signed up for the friendly local Comic Book Store’s open gaming.  Group was young, his coworkers are hassling him, he’s confused. 

This annoys me.  It’s reflective of the nature of this site, sure, but come on.  If he’d gone to a gym and gotten in to a pick up game of basketball with a group of 20 year olds, it’s not a thing, as long as he can keep up.  If he’d gone to a bar to watch a sporting event of note, and there were 20 year olds there celebrating, and they started high fiving, it’s not a thing.  If he’d joined a community theater group and been Claudius to a 20 year’s Hamlet, and they hung out, it’s not odd.  But if he games, it’s weird?

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Paying for games

So it’s not a new thought – I’ve had it before, and posted it before (hell, maybe here – I’m too lazy (no, no, too inspired) to check), but I’m thinking about the costs of games again.  So here comes a rambling discourse on stuff.

There are a lot of different ways to pay for your games nowadays.  Apparently there are people out there that pay a sum of money, and receive some sort of physical device they keep for ever.  It’s odd – I’m going to test this idea out in a month or two when I do that sort of transaction for Borderlands, Dragon Age (CE) and Alpha Protocol.  So, say you pay $60 for an RPG type game or a shooter, and get 120 hours of enjoyment out of it.  Then you play it again later for 30 hours or so.  You’re looking at $.40 per hour of entertainment.  If the game is something shorter, you start to get less, but even if it’s a 12 hour game, that’s $5/hr, which is movie price.

Then there’s the ever popular renting of console games.  I’m pretty fond of that one.  Pretty much I buy RPGs and Rhythm games, and that’s about it.  Everything else is a rental.  From a cost/hour perspective, that’s probably your best bet (assuming you actually play it once you get it – I’m horrible about renting them and turning them in a week later unplayed).  If you get a good game, you’re looking at anywhere from 8 hours to 40 hours for a rental price, which is $5 to $10.  So you’re anywhere from $1.25 to $.15 per hour in cost.  Pretty good return.

Then you get an MMO.  Initial investment is the same as a game, or less.  First month, you’re probably playing 2-3 hours a night on average, assuming you enjoy it.  Now you’re at $1/hr, which isn’t bad, but isn’t great compared to the other types.  But then next month, you’re still enjoying it.  Now you’re getting 60 hours for $15 – $.25 per hour.  The difference is that if you play less, you can’t make it up – you bought a game, if you play 5 hours now and then 50 hours later, it’s 55 hours.  In an mmo, it’s by month.  So you lose value if you don’t play it.  Shamus (shamusyoung.com and escapistmagazine.com (no relation)) has a bit on this that says it well, and is what prompted me to do this.

And then there’s free to play.  More and more, I’m coming to be a fan of free to play (which is really microtransactions).  You can play as much as you want, and if you want to spend some money, you can.  But you can get by just fine without doing it (in a good f2p at least).  DDO is doing it perfectly, imho – f2p with purchases, or just subs – best of both worlds.

But people complain that you can’t really play unless you pay.  I call bs on that.  If you’re lazy, or you need the shiniest and best, then you can’t (ironic, coming from me).  Take my current f2p obsession, Wolf Team.  It’s a shooter.  You earn gold for doing things, and can buy gold or AP.  Gold is used for weapons, and a couple other things, AP are used for stuff that makes you better – stronger wolf, can’t blow yourself up with grenades, etc.  If you’re lazy, or not very good, you might need better weapons – having the basic stuff may mean you can’t play.  And items have a duration.  But really, they give you a sniper rifle.  They give you a machine gun.  They give you an uzi.  The sniper rifle you get takes three shots, or a headshot.  The sniper rifle you can buy is basically one hit.  So if you pay, it’s easier.  If you’re skilled, you’re fine.  I’m playing with the basics only on purpose, to get better.

DDO is the same – people whine like crazy, but you don’t have to buy a damn thing.  You get a lot of stuff for free, or you can spend $5 or $7 every month or two.  And you’re doing a hell of a lot better than an MMO still.
Course, there’s a multiplier effect of some sort – $.50/hour for a game that’s okay is probably worse than $1/hr for a game that kicks ass, but I think there’s a limit – there’s mediocre, and there’s good, and there’s awesome.  But paying $1/hr for good and paying $2/hr for awesome come out the same in a lot of people’s minds, I think.  It’s hard to argue that an MMO is superior to a single player game in most cases.  But a single player game isn’t significantly better.  Unless it’s KoTOR, you’re getting enough fun for a good price.  And that seems to be the key.

Trek the Third: The Search for More Trek

Gaming Together: My Uncle Ken, Cousin Wes, Me, and Dad
Gaming Together: My Uncle Ken, Cousin Wes, Me, and Dad

Okay, I may well be the closest to an actual Trekkie/Trekker on this blog. Like all aspects of my life that involve geekery, this one comes pretty much directly from my father. Let’s be honest, much of what we call preference likely exists as little more than random acts of osmosis from the fragmented habits of our parents.

RPGs? My parents started playing them when I was four. I be knighted my first character with the name of Bert and my sister Ernie. My mother promptly tried to kill us with a purple worm at 1st level. Those who have played in any game of mine might consider this insightful.

Classics and pulp? While my house frequently went dark from unpaid electricity bills during childhood, when light could be found the works of Ovid, Caesar, and Plato set nestled beside works of Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Heinlein.  My parents’ collection would never bear the weight of unread vanity texts.

Board games? I cut my teeth on Axis and Allies and Blitzkrieg. My first steps into game design involved my father and I tweaking Fortress America in an attempt to make that historic mess of a simulation vaguely fair. We, as so many before us, failed.

I should get back on Trek. My father adored Kirk and company. Between the original series and Dr. Who, I likely spent more time watching television with him than just about any other activity beyond Boy Scouts. One reason for that may well have been that he worked nights and slept days, so catching late night sci-fi provided us a rare chance to do something together on a daily basis.

My first convention was a Star Trek convention in downtown Fort Worth. Dad took Sam (not the Sam of this blog), Jason, and myself. I recall buying a Red Dwarf t-shirt and not a ton more. I’m sure Dad could recite the events of that day in detail.  That’s how it goes; feel free to take a Harry Chapin break.

 

Now, I can recall numerous Channel 39 marathons of Star Trek, complete with dial-in trivia questions. I devoured the original series during these marathons. I knew everything about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Maybe in part because I’m from the rural Southwest, I always adored the angry, emotional stalwartness of McCoy’s sense of determined from the gut justice. I point this out in contrast to Henry’s comment about the secondhand nature of McCoy in the original series. In no way unrelated, I also found Urban’s portrayal the most annoying in the new flick. It felt more façade then inspired re-invention—and now that the thought has arisen within this reflection, let there be no doubt, I found J.J. Abrams new film the definition of inspired re-invention.

Really, it’s more than discovering the crew on the Enterprise anew—and Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty will always be the crew of the Enterprise to me. Some of the true art in this film comes in how the actors who are known quantities disappear. Nero might not be a great villain—there’s really no such thing as a great Trek villain—but he definitely doesn’t scream Eric Bana. And I’m still not sure I believe Ryder was Spok’s mum. Most importantly, Chris Pine and Abrams have rescued the character Kirk from the gloriously absurd satire of Shatner’s legacy. Because of this film, I have hope again that new audiences might understand why some fans take Kirk seriously. Mostly because we knew him before T.J Hooker, Airplane!, SNL, and “I’m Denny Crane.” There actually existed a time when you could view Kirk as legit, when the original crew was legit. Abrams has given that back to a lot of us—and not just those old enough to have written letters in the 60s, but a few of us who had fathers that might have written a letter or two.

I doubt a pulp franchise could ask for anything more. Abrams might not have done for Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek what Shakespeare did for Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but I bet George Lucas prays at night someone half as talented as J.J. Abrams will rescue his franchise someday. In a theatre far, far away (Yep, cheapest joke of the post). Since my son and I have a similar connection over Star Wars as Dad and I over Star Trek, I must hold out hope.

Oh, and as far as Trek canon and the new film. I defer to the wisdom of my father who stated, “the original series didn’t follow any canon from one episode to the next. Why should this film?”

No reason at all. It’s too true to the original spirit of the series to care a whit about canon over character.

Now I have to sleep so that I can get enough work done in the morning to slip out of the office by 10:15.  My son is dressing up as Neil Armstrong for school tomorrow and will give a speech about the journey from Mercury to Apollo. There’s a family legacy at stake, one with an eye toward the stars.

Continuing the Zombie Theme…

I just got home from running a table top role playing game where a group of people have to survive a zombie outbreak.

Currently, they’ve foolishly chosen to help others who were trapped in their homes when the zombies attacked, and now they have a group of 70 survivors they can’t feed or protect.

Bad things are gonna happen. And it’s gonna be great.

(But yeah. despite this post, if this turns into a role playing only discussion site, I’m going to have to set you all on fire.)

Wizards of the Coast and the Digital Dilemma

Wizards of the Coast, and its preceding incarnation, TSR, is infamously bad at delivering digital tools. There had been some recent signs of improvement- although released late, the subscription Character Builder is quite good, and they had made a great deal of their catalog available for sale through pdf vendors such as RPGNow and Paizo. Now, though, in my opinion they’ve taken large strides backwards.

Wizards of the Coast works are infringed. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone- just about every creative work is infringed to varying degrees. What has been a surprise is the company’s response. WotC has decided to pull all of their pdfs from the market in a seemingly knee-jerk reaction, giving their distributors and their customers very little notice and their customers no legal way to get the pdf. These products include all 4th Edition and earlier Dungeons and Dragons pdfs as well as some older systems for which they own the copyright (for example, Alternity). This action, taken in consideration with other recent actions seems to indicate that some at WotC are seriously out of touch with the effective use of digital technologies. In addition to the pdf situation, WotC has released a new Internet Sales Policy and has begun lawsuits against copyright infringers.

There have been earlier indications of questionable behavior and/or attitudes. The switching over from the OGL to the GSL showed a remarkable lack of belief that the improvement of the overall RPG market can act to improve their own sales. (This is a polarizing discussion and will immediately discredit me in some quarters, so I’ll address it separately some day.)  The lack of  a promised fan site policy has made a number of online fan endeavors problematic. The recent cease and desist notices towards certain sites started pointing towards the possibility of the lawsuits that we’ve now seen.

Take a look at my background if you want to get a sense of my gaming preferences and my biases. To make a long story short, I’ve played D&D for awhile, and I’ve been playing 4th edition almost every week since it was released.

Infringement is wrong. I do not in any way condone the use of peer-to-peer technologies to unlawfully distribute copyrighted materials to the public. WotC is within their rights to take the actions that they have, but they could have taken different actions. Let’s look at their recent actions: the Internet Sales Policy, the lawsuits, and the removal of the pdfs.

The Internet Sales Policy. The Internet Sales Policy doesn’t quite allow sales on the Internet. To be more specific, it only allows authorized retailers to make such sales if the Internet site is directly affiliated with a bricks and mortars gaming store, sometimes referred to as a FLGS (friendly local gaming store). Also note that the Internet Sales Policy at this point in time primarily affects sales of Magic: the Gathering. Now, I’m *all* for supporting your local gaming store, but this seems to be an odd method of doing so. There are online-only gaming stores that have good customer service and good relationships with their customers. FLGSes have other advantages, such as the ability to hold gaming events, and WotC can also support them by providing them with support for those events. Moving on, the license allows prohibits these FLGSes from participating in the secondary market, not allowing them the revenue associated with their and their customers’ lawful uses under the first sale doctrine. Ever see your local gaming store sell individual Magic cards? Not anymore, if they want to be an authorized retailer. Is cutting of a source of revenue and a reason for some customers to go to the store really helping your FLGS? Finally, at least one vendor I know has expressed the idea that the term in the license prohibiting “lowering the value” of WotC goods could be interpreted as disallowing negative consumer reviews.

The lawsuits. The initial reported reason for the pull of the pdfs was “piracy.” (Terminology note- I try to use the word infringement for this type of action, just to be specific.) WotC has sued 8 individuals- 5 named, 3 John Does- for copyright infringement. WotC put out a press release about their action (probably to show how serious they are about the problem). Like the *AA’s, WotC is suing its fanbase. One of the individuals has self-identified himself as a 16-year-old D&D player in the Philippines. Another, if his story is true, is a D&D player from Poland and is actually innocent of infringement (his friend uploaded the pdf to scribd without his knowledge). Being innocent of infringement is not particularly far-fetched, either, even if this person is lying- there are number of ways that this can occur. Lose your computer? Have your computer or a storage machine hacked? Edited the watermark? We’ve seen these types of things occur with other content industries already.

WotC is suing these individuals for actual damages (the amount they’ve lost, which they also claim is unmeasurable in those same documents), and statutory damages (up to $150,000 per infringement). Without getting into a specific legal discussion about copyright, trade law, international conventions, and jurisdiction, WotC absolutely has the right to take these actions. The legal process, however, is not kind. Although it’s hard for some to feel sorry for these individuals when they’re guilty, if you’ve never seen a scared kid who’s made a stupid mistake have the full force of the law come down on her, it is a gut and heart-wrenching experience. If they’re not guilty, the experience is even worse. Also, the idea that lawsuits discourage infringement hasn’t quite borne out… A lot of people won’t have sympathy for these infringers, and I can see why. It’s still a terrible situation.

The removal of PDFs. The removal of PDFs was not solely a response to infringement. (As a response to infringement, removing your product from the market is a pretty silly move.) It was also a business decision, as stated by the president of the company. They are planning to make works available again in some format, but not PDF, and they won’t disclose the methods they would like to use. This has led to rampant speculation, but in my opinion the signs are not positive. I use the PDFs I had on multiple computers that I own- my desktop and laptops. I take the laptops to places that don’t have Internet access. I’m not fond of DRM-encumbered technologies. I have issues with not being able to do what I like with the products that I’ve bought. Furthermore,  they become increasingly hard to preserve and use as technology changes.

The way the pdfs were removed was also problematic. I think that the third party pdf stores do have some responsibility for the unhappiness- they let themselves be in an arrangement where WotC did have the ability to pull items the way they did. Even with the “24 hour reprisal” that WotC has allowed, WotC still had to allow it. But from what they’ve stated publicly, it seems like a lot of their everyday business was based on mutual respect and communication, and this decision totally surprised those vendors. It’s kind of hard to be too hard on them; they obviously don’t have much power in that particular relationship, and furthermore, they’ve been good at communicating what has been happening from their perspective.

As it so happens, I don’t necessarily need to buy a pdf to have legal access to a copy. I have easy access to a nondestructive book scanner and OCR technology. I’d just rather buy the official pdf copy. It’s less of my time, and I can support the company that way.

Realistically, I’m not dropping 4E altogether. I like the system, and my friends and I are playing it. I like the designers. I’ve met a few of them at various cons, and they seem like genuinely nice people that love their game. The actions of the company, though? I probably won’t be such an advocate for the game, and when the current games are done or dissolved, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I have put a lot of money in it already with the books, pdfs, tiles, miniatures and so on… but for the first time in a long time I have started seriously looking at different systems closely. I’ve subscribed to dungeonaday.com. I downloaded the free copies of Exalted and the Pathfinder beta to check them out. I’ve started looking at Mutants and Masterminds (I enjoyed the Wild Cards novels) and I’ll probably take a look at Savage Worlds.

So, what could WotC do, in my opinion?

-Be better at communication. The interviews and PR responses thus far are uninformative.
-Seriously consider the ramification of the lawsuits and act accordingly. They won’t win many fans by offering cheap settlements- it hasn’t helped the RIAA much- but it’s better than what seems to be occurring. Frankly, I’d be happier if they stuck to publicizing their cease and desists rather than issuing press release about how they’re wielding the hammer of statutory damages. I haven’t seen that be much of a deterrent. At any rate, I don’t think crushing the infringing D&D players is going to help a whole lot.
-Ideally? Resume sales of pdfs. It’s not likely to happen. They’ve decided to move on. I’ll make my own absent a similar alternative.
-If they are coming up with a DDi subscription-related model, I hope they let me pick and choose what I want. If I want the Character Builder and Dungeon/Dragon, let me go with those. They shouldn’t increase the price dramatically because they’re providing features I’m not interested in- that will pretty much just guarantee that I don’t buy the product at all.
-If I have to download yet another application to view the materials, and that application affects how I can copy or view the item, I’m not likely to buy those materials.

There actually have been some good discussions about how companies can support FLGSes out of this over on enworld and some store owners blogs, with several representatives from publishers participating. Several publishers have come also provided discounts on their pdfs in light of these events. Those are all pretty positive outcomes… just not necessarily for WotC.

I hope WotC is seriously considering all of these viewpoints.