Ex-Teenage Rebel

Horror Business

2008-05-15T13:03:00.001-07:00

Man, this year is just flying by. How can June be approaching already? How can Ropecon and GenCon be right around the corner? How is it was like 50 degrees a couple of days ago and it's supposed to be 90 tomorrow? The hell.

Without really being conscious of it, I've been on a bit of a horror kick lately. It started musically, as I've been frequently listening to Danish psychobilly stalwarts the Nekromantix and the Horror Pops. I finally realized what it is about the Nekromantix I find endearing. It's that their over the top, B-movie lyrics really remind of classic Misfits. I've kicked off almost every day at work for the past week with "Gargoyles Over Copenhagen." The Horror Pops, who share a member with the Nekromantix, also should not be underestimated. "Walk Like a Zombie" is awesome. Their non-conformist anthem "MissFit" is also great. It's got a ska flavor, which is only fitting when they break into the tune from "Our House" by Madness but sing instead, "My fist--in the middle of your face!"

I also just finished reading the first volume of Fall of Cthulhu, a comic by Boom Studios. It takes your basic Lovecraft storyline and updates it to the modern era. Not groundbreaking by any means (which I guess is par for the course with Lovecraftiana), but enjoyable and has a couple of good twists. I've got Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah on deck. This is a new title from Mike "Hellboy" Mignola that takes place in Victorian London and is said to be "reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, H.P. Lovecraft, and Captain Ahab." Sounds good to me.

The Wacky Bus Driver

2008-05-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

I have this wacky driver on my first bus of the morning. He's got this practiced patter that he uses every day. It starts when we get to the International District. He says, "This is the first stop in the Ride Free Area; welcome, ladies and gentleman, to the Twilight Zone." I'm not sure if that's a commentary on the International District or the Ride Free Area. As we proceed downtown, he calls the Federal Building "the protestor's Mecca" and the main branch of the library "the ziggurat of knowledge." I appreciate the sense of humor, but I think he needs to mix it up a bit. It's always the same thing.

Nerdy Saturday

2008-05-11T10:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was pretty nerd-tastic. I took the bus downtown in the afternoon to go to Emerald City Comic Con. I generally far prefer gaming cons to comic and scifi cons because there's a lot more to do. Emerald City had some seminars but nothing like the programming you'd see at a game convention. I was there to do a bit of business and then catch up with a bunch of people I don't see that often. I also ran into some old friends from WotC, as well as some of the newer blood like Rodney Thompson (who contributed to Buccaneers of Freeport, at print now). I picked up volume 2 of the Walking Dead, which I've had trouble finding locally. Then I stopped by the Boom booth to chat with Ross. He's an old gamer and I had sent him a box of GR stuff a while back. He loaded me up with 14 of their graphic novels and that put an end to my shopping, as my bag was stuffed.

Nik and Kate arrived mid-afternoon. Kate was a zombie because she had stayed up half the night doing a sleepover with her friends. I tried to find some things of interest to her but she was too tired and couldn't muster any enthusiasm. After we left the con, Nicole suggested we make a second attempt to see Iron Man. That seemed only too appropriate so we walked over to Pacific Place and had no trouble getting tickets this time. I enjoyed the movie, particularly the performance of Robert Downey Jr., though I wasn't as blown away as some of my friends have been. I understand the impulse for film makers to do origin stories in superhero movies but I wish they'd stop. This one was better than most attempts, but I'd rather they just got on with the superheroics. I also want to see the protagonists as part of a larger superheroic world. In the Superman movies, for example, you never get the sense there are other supers in the world and that's too bad. This is why the scene after the Iron Man credits excited me a lot more than the movie itself. Until the promise of that movie is fulfilled though, my favorite supers film remains X-men 2.

Not as Small or Agile

2008-05-08T00:53:00.001-07:00

Those of you who have worked for or dealt with large companies know that they usually move with agonizing slowness and this can be frustrating for all concerned. Getting an organization behind an idea can take time, and then getting it to act can take even longer. One advantage of smaller companies is that they can be more agile. With less bureaucracy to deal with, they can make decisions quickly and move on things right away. That kind of freedom is nice, but if you are always ready to turn on a dime your planning can never truly get long term.

I'm thinking about this because normally by this point I'd have a pretty firm idea of what Green Ronin will be doing next year. For a variety of reason I don't and it's bugging me. We have several deals in negotiation that are dragging on and on. They may come through or they may not. Another game line is getting a start but needs a firm hand to move it forward and I'm down one hand. And of course the saga of 4E and third party publishers goes on. So while I should be recruiting authors and such for a bunch of products, I'm in a holding pattern instead. Convention season is rapidly approaching and things will get crazier. It would be nice if some of these things could get sorted out before we start traveling hither and yon.

I guess the truth is that while GR is still a relatively small company, we do too much to be as agile as we used to be. When it was me, Nicole, and Hal concentrating on one project at a time, it was easier to jump on an idea and make it happen. Now there are always a dozen or more balls in the air at once and sometimes it takes only one more ball to cause total chaos.

Before I go to Finland and hopefully before Origins, I need to find clarity, solidify plans, and get new projects in motion. Otherwise 2009 is going to start chaotic and go who knows where.

More GSL News

2008-05-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

So last week WotC released a FAQ about their new Game System License, which will allow third party publishers to put out 4th edition D&D support books. It took them a few weeks but they finally did clarify that the choice of Game System License or Open Game License did not have to be made per company. This greatly increases the odds of Green Ronin doing some 4E material, as we could continue our own OGL lines like M&M and True20. One wrinkle is that rather than going with the simple solution of making the choice per product they're making it per product line. This is going to create a lot of corner cases, like Freeport, so I'm not sure why they are bothering. It will be interesting to see how they phrase this in the final license, which is due June 6.

Another thing that was made clear was that the GSL can be revoked, unlike the OGL. I don't expect that it will be any time soon, but this does have some interesting implications. If most third party companies now make the switch that means at any later point the genie can effectively be put back in the bottle. I think it's understandable that WotC wants more control this time, but publishers need to go into this with their eyes open. They need to understand that at any point the plug can be pulled, so supporting only the GSL has an inherent risk. For many companies the potential reward is worth the risk, but this is something each publisher will have to consider.

WotC also confirmed that the d20 System Trademark License will be going away in June and there will a six month sell off period for books with the d20 logo. I don't know why they feel this is necessary. It's going to flood the market with a ton of cheap 3E material at just the point when they should want it going away. In 1999 WotC actually bought up some 2nd edition D&D books to make way for 3E if I recall correctly. GR is not the only company that has a fair bit of inventory with the d20 logo. PDFs at least can have the logo stripped and then continue to sell but actual books need to be sold or destroyed by the end of this year. I bet a company formed with the specific purpose of liquidating old d20 inventory could do pretty well.

Anyway, fairly positive news overall. I do still need to review the final GSL when that's released, and of course I want to see the actual rules.

'Tis the Season?

2008-05-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

Nicole and I had a simple plan last night: get dinner, see Iron Man. After some debate we decided to try Malay Satay Hut. My morning bus route goes about a block away from the place and I've been meaning to try it forever because it has a great rep. We pulled up around 8 and saw that it was closed. Closer investigation showed that it was out of action due to a kitchen remodel. We sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, trying to figure out where to go instead. While we were waiting three more groups of people came to dine at the Satay Hut and left disappointed. We'll have to go back when it reopens.

We ended up at Shilla, a Korean place on Denny that we hadn't been to in a long time. We got beef and scallop BBQ and cooked it at our table. It was very tasty, but we didn't get over to the over to the movie theater until 10. The 10:15 show of Iron Man sold out as I was walking up to the counter. So no satay and no Iron Man but not a total wash.

Today Nik went out to get a new garbage disposal. The plan was that she'd stop off at Matt's Famous Chili Dogs in Georgetown and bring back lunch while I did the dishes in preparation for the installation. Nicole stopped by and found Matt's was closed. They are also doing a remodel! What the hell? Is it the season to remodel restaurants or what?

I Guess the Artist Didn't Get the Memo

2008-04-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

I was reading Warren Ellis' Crecy, which tells the story of the famed triumph of the English longbow over the chivalry of France in 1346. Early in the comic, Ellis tells us via his narrator, "We shoot or loose an arrow. We do not fire it. Firing is for cannon. Not cannons. Cannon is the plural of cannon."

Later on there is a map of the battlefield that shows how the troops were deployed. The artillery is shown in two spots with the following label: cannons. Whoops. The map of Great Britain is pretty funny though. To the north there is "Fucking Scotland," while to the west Wales is labeled simply "Sheep Shaggers." Did I mention this comic is very English?

The Country Where I Quite Want to Be

2008-04-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Back in the dark days of the original Ronin Publishing (also known as the mid-90s), my business partner got invited to be a guest of honor at a convention in Switzerland. They offered to pay his way over and pick up his hotel. I told him he should go for it and he arranged to attend. I think many convention organizers outside the US don't realize what a cheap date American designers are. Offer us a ticket to someplace more exotic than Columbus or Milwaukee and odds are we'll come. Anyway, months go by and this Swiss show approaches. The night before the flight my partner has this dream in which his dead grandfather told him not to go. This freaks him out and he cancels at the last minute. I told him a free trip to Europe was probably the coolest thing he was ever going to get out of being in the game industry, but it was too late. He skipped the trip and a couple of years later he was out of the industry.

All of this is a long preamble to the fact that I've been invited to be a guest of honor at Ropecon in Finland and you can bet your ass I'm going. I was actually invited last year for the first time but it was on the same weekend as Recombination in Cambridge, England. This year I had no previous obligations so I was happy to accept. Nicole, being a proud Finnish-American, will be coming with me. We hope to arrive a few days early so we can see some of Helsinki and perhaps beyond. I, of course, am keenly interested in the Winter War and the Continuation War but I'll try not to drag her to all war-related sites. Anyway, very much looking forward to it. The only downside is that it's the weekend before GenCon. It seems likely that Nik and I will have a 15 hour flight home and then have to get on another plane the next day for GenCon. We may be quite zombiefied by the time we get there, but whatever: we're going to Finland, baby.

I Wish I Could Remember Why I Wrote This

2008-04-27T22:49:00.001-07:00

Jack Bain was born in Boston to a Scottish-American family. Jack's grandfather had parlayed Civil War heroics into a successful business career, making the "Boston Bains" a respected family. Jack made his family proud with his acceptance to West Point in 1912 and bitterly disappointed them when he washed out in 1913. Jack, it seemed, was too much of an individualist to fit into the military lifestyle. He and his friend Liam Carmichael, another West Point washout, decided to head to Paris for a change of scenery. The two used their cadet uniforms to bluster their way into society parties and became well known in the pre-war social scene in Paris.

When the Great War started, the two friends at first kept out of it. They assumed the war would be over by Christmas and then the parties would start again. By early 1915 it was clear that the war was not ending. They returned to the United States, so they'd be on hand when American joined the fight. American isolationism was strong, however, and this did not come to pass. By the end of 1915 the two friends decided to return to France and fight under its colors.

They arrived early in 1916. Through their contacts, they heard about the imminent formation of an air squadron made up of American volunteers. The two applied for acceptance into what was then known as the Escadrille Américaine. Liam was accepted but Jack ran into an unexpected problem. The officer in charge of his interview was the father of a girl Jack had jilted in 1913 and he remembered Bain all too well. His application was denied. Jack convinced Liam to stay with the squadron, as flying was much more prestigious. Liam reluctantly agreed, joining the squadron that was soon known as the Lafayette Escadrille.

Jack meanwhile sought out the French Foreign Legion. If they wouldn't let him fight in the air, he'd fight on the ground. The legion, starved for replacements, gladly accepted him. He received his baptism of fire at the Battle of the Somme and fought with the legion until the end of the war, when it assaulted the Hindenburg Line. After the war, he was sent to Africa to serve out the rest of his five year enlistment. He fought in the legion's Moroccan campaigns and ended his time in the legion as a captain. The very traits that had made him unsuitable for the peacetime military had made Jack an outstanding combat officer.

Once he mustered out, he traveled to Cairo. He assembled a small group of ex-legionnaires and hired the group out to provide security for archeological digs. It was on one of these digs that he fell into a buried chamber and discovered the artifact known as the ankh of light. He should have turned it over to the archeological team. He should have, but for reasons he's never been able to articulate, he didn't. This has caused him no end of trouble.

Service Interruption!

2008-04-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I was poking around the internet looking for ideas on places to eat in Sin City. I ran across Larry's Las Vegas Restaurant Guide, which has reviews of many of the foodie favorites there. The reviews are generally useful but one of Larry's quirks is that he's a stickler for service. In many reviews he has notes like, "Service Interruption--15 minutes!" I was amused enough that I related this to Nicole on our plane ride down to Vegas. This must explain the poor service we got from several restaurants that I expected better from.

It started the morning we arrived. We had a 6 am flight on Saturday so we were at our hotel by 9:30 and our room was not ready. We decided to head over to the Venetian and have brunch at Bouchon. I had been to the Napa Valley original last year and looked forward to checking this one out. Everything went great through the beignets and then the wait began. About 20 minutes later they brought out my food but not Nicole's. I started eating so it wouldn't get cold and hers came maybe 10 minutes later. Pretty odd for a place of Bouchon's caliber, though I will add that the chicken and waffles Nicole got was truly awesome. My eggs with boudin blanc was good, but not in the same league.

Sunday night Hal joined us for a trip to Seablue, one of Michael Mina's places. The restaurant wasn't all that busy but seemed understaffed. Our waitress was very nice when she was around, but she routinely went MIA for 15 minutes at a time. We had told her we were in no hurry ("This is our show," we said), but that didn't mean we intended to spend the whole night there either. When the food arrived though, it was excellent. The lobster corndogs were not as great as they sounded (the batter overwhelms the lobster a bit), but the paella was hands down the best that I've had anywhere. It was just stuffed with high quality seafood of all sorts, as well as quail and rabbit. So no problem with the kitchen; only the service needed help.

I must therefore give meal of the trip to Wing Lei at the Wynn. The service was excellent all around. Our waiter was attentive but not obsequious and he had ample assistance. Nicole and I had the Imperial Peking Duck tasting menu, which was five courses of heaven. It started with a whole Peking Duck brought tableside. Choice bits were carved out and rolled into delicious crepes. They then took the rest of the duck back to the kitchen and used it to create the rest of our dishes. Fantastic and no service interruptions!

You can see why I don't gamble when I'm in Vegas. I save up my money to eat above my means, not to lose it shooting craps.

Work and Props

2008-04-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

Somehow, a whole pile of work seems to have snuck up on me. I've got a new assignment at FLS, I have lots to do for GR leading into convention season, and for the first time in a while I have freeelance work as well. I'm writing and reading proposals while assigning and being assigned work. It's good that I was able to relax for a couple of days in Vegas.

Green Ronin is participating in the Origins Awards for the first time in years and we got four nods in the semi-finals. This is a relatively new stage of the process that provides a field of 10 in each category. The retailers at GAMA Trade Show are voting on those, which will winnow it down to 5 and those are the actual nominess. I was pleased to see the Pirate's Guide to Freeport, Hobby Games: The 100 Best, Walk the Plank, and Faery's Tale Deluxe make the short list. I still don't like the super condensed categories. I also really think the non-fiction category needs to be re-thought or re-named. This includes magazines, art books, and other oddball stuff. Somehow, the Grand History of the Realms (for the Forgotten Realms) is also in this category. Wacky.

I probably should skip gaming tonight but I won't. More Combat Commander awaits.

Back from Vegas

2008-04-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

Although GAMA Trade Show goes on for three more days, I am back from Las Vegas. Kate is mature for her age, but not so much so that we'd leave her to fend for herself all week. I had three days in Vegas. Two were spent relaxing with Nicole, who I've barely seen this month. Yesterday, as GTS got going, I had a couple of business meetings, helped set up the Green Ronin booth, and caught up with some friends and colleagues. I also got in on Mike Webb's yearly GTS game of Kremlin and that was good fun, even if my best politburo stooges ended up dead or in Siberia.

I'll post more later on what Nik and I got up to (short version: eating well). I wish I had been able to stay longer at GTS, as the industry seems to be a strange place at the moment and I'd like to have had more of a chance to catch up with folks and talk things over. We are still awaiting clarity on the whole GSL issue and I'll be surprised if we hear anything concrete by week's end. I can tell you that was topic #1 for most RPG publishers I talked to. Interesting times.

You're With Us or Against Us?

2008-04-19T00:02:00.001-07:00

More information has emerged about the new Game System License and for Green Ronin it is looking more ominous. It seems--and I've asked WotC to clarify--that if you want to use the GSL you must cease using the Open Game License as a company. Scott Rouse of WotC posted this on EN World (http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4173113&postcount=99):

"It won't surprise me if the GSL is not for everyone. If M&M, C&C, Conan, or other OGL stand-alones are successful enough for those publishers to sustain their business more power to them. You'll get to buy their books in the future. If not, then they can jump on our license and take advantage of some pretty good perks including getting to use the most valuable trademark in PnP RPGs on their products and gain access to our IP/PI."

This makes it sound like we'll be forced to choose. We could continue to support Mutants & Masterminds and True20 Adventure Roleplaying or support 4th Edition D&D, but not both.

It has also come out that the original d20 logo will be going away come June. Not only can you not put the logo on new products, which was expected, but it'll apparently have to be stripped off old ones if you want to keep selling them. That's possible with PDF products but it'll mean you can't sell printed products after a certain date. In the short tem this means that a lot of 3E product is likely to be dumped on the market for pennies on the dollar. That will make it harder on companies that have decided to keep supporting 3E, most notably Paizo. It also means huge swathes of backstock for many companies will be wiped out.

In short, it looks like it's more stick than carrot. Now I will point out yet again that we haven't seen the GSL yet, and we really must before making it a final assessment. If WotC is seriously asking me to give up the #1 superhero game on the market for a chance to support a new edition that has yet to prove itself, that's really not much of a choice.

Last night when I couldn't sleep I spent some time pondering what Green Ronin could bring to the table for 4E that would be fresh and cool. Tonight I'll be thinking about something else entirely.

Ah well, I'm off to Vegas in six hours. Better finish packing and try to get some shuteye.

A Bit of News

2008-04-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally got some news out of WotC yesterday about third party publishing for 4th edition D&D. The things I most want to comment on I can't at the moment because of a NDA. Guess I'll have to wait until WotC itself makes more details public. What I can say is this:

Good news: There will be no $5,000 fee.

Bad News: There also won't be any "phase 1" publishers, so in October absolutely everyone can pile into the pool at once. That's going to be a rough month, and it's also when we have the Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide scheduled. Ugh.

Good news: GR is one of a small group of companies that are getting early access to the rules.

Bad news: We still haven't seen the new license. However, they claim we'll see it very soon now.

So basically WotC are keeping the 4E marketplace to themselves from May to October, which makes sense from their POV. This does mean that there will be no third party material at GenCon. On the one hand this is a missed opportunity because GenCon sales are always great, but on the other hand product rushed out for GenCon likely would have been sub-par so maybe it's for the best.

That's all I have to say about it for the moment. When we get a chance to look at the license and the rules, we'll be able to assess what we might want to do.

Picking the Right Weapon

2008-04-15T19:18:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that some folks are now saying that I'm "anti-OGL" because of my commentary on the Open Game License. This is pretty funny when you consider that I created one of the most successful open gaming programs in the industry, M&M Superlink, and just announced a royalty free trademark license for True20 Adventure Roleplaying as well. I think the key difference between me and some other folks is that I don't see open gaming as a movement per se. To me the OGL is one weapon in my publisher's arsenal. Sometimes it's the right one and I will happily deploy it, but I don't believe that the OGL is always the right answer for every book. Our upcoming Song of Ice and Fire RPG, for example, has a new system and will not be released under the OGL. I think such things need to be assessed on a case by case basis, and that can change over time. True20 is a case in point. In its early days I wanted more control so we could develop our publishing strategy for the game; hence a nominal fee to use our trademark. After a couple of years I decided that True20 was a mature enough game that a royalty free license now had more benefits than drawbacks. So things change.

The challenge, given the paucity of data that I've already discussed, is making an assessment based on more than gut feeling. I do not accept many of the Danceyisms just because they've been repeated endlessly. I try to use GR's experiences as a publisher who has been using the OGL longer than anyone, and what I can gleen from other sources. It is sometimes tough though and you have to be careful lest you bring a knife to a gun fight.

Combat Commander

2008-04-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

I've finally had a chance to get back to playing some Combat Commander, GMT's boardgame of WWII infantry tactics. I played a game with Rob Heinsoo maybe a year and a half ago and liked it. (He was really tight lipped about what he was working on at WotC; in August I found out why.) I've wanted to give it another go ever since and lately I've gotten to play twice. Ray and I played the first scenario a couple of weeks ago and last Tuesday Rick and I tried one from the Paratroopers pack. I enjoyed both and am starting to get a sense for the rhythm of the game and what you can and cannot expect troops to achieve. I really like the card-based system. It allows the game to nest a lot of info on each card, but you only need to use a small section of it for any given action. It's also a nice way to represent the fog of war, since you do not have the godlike control over your troops featured in many wargames.

I decided to drop the money to get my own copy of the first game in the series, Combat Commander: Europe, only to discover it's currently out of print (though a reprint is on the way). The Pacific version is also coming soon, and that looks interesting. Rick and I have decided to make this our game of choice for the next month, so we can get better acquainted with the rules through weekly play. Luckily, he has both CC: Europe and CC: Mediterranean already. After that we should probably go back to minis for our next game. I haven't pushed around enough lead in 2008 and must rectify that.

A Strange Year

2008-04-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

After finally getting a chance to watch the King of Kong (which was great, btw), we went to dinner at Voila with Ray and Christine tonight. Towards the end of the meal we were talking about this has been a strange year so far. And it's true. Not bad, but definitely different than how I thought it would go. I've actually had some interesting opportunities pop up lately (more on that if things if work out), but these are things that have come out of the blue. Things that I expected to happen didn't or did in a different way.

So we're talking about the weirdness of 2008 when Kate pipes up and says, "Nothing has gone right since the fireworks." We all laughed because it was sort of true. On New Year's Eve the big Seattle fireworks display was a total bust. It just went spectacularly wrong and for the first time I actually heard people booing fireworks. That was a bit of an omen about the year to come, but it took the mind of a 12 year old to make the connection.

Tomorrow, things may get even stranger.

Recent Reading

2008-04-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

The Armageddon Rag by George R.R. Martin: While I had read Wild Cards books and the Song of Ice and Fire series (both of which Green Ronin is licensing), I had never read the Armageddon Rag. That was an oversight, as this is a great book. It starts a whodunnit but it's really a thoughtful meditation on the 1960s, rock and roll, and the counter culture. This came out in 1983 originally but has recently been reprinted. Highly recommended.

An Army in Exile by Lt. General W. Anders: In memoir General Anders tells his own WWII story and that of the Polish II Corps. Formed largely of soldiers imprisoned in the Soviet Union after its invasion of Poland in 1939, the II Corps fought with distinction in the Italian campaign, most famously capturing Monte Cassino. I was looking for something more tactically oriented, but Anders' story is strategic and geo-political. His first hand account of important events is fascinating though, so I'm glad I read it.

The Briar King by Gregory Keyes: Hey, a new fantasy series I'm actually interested in. Who'd have thought? I think I had lunch with Keyes 8 or 9 years ago, when he was writing fiction for Dragon Magazine. This is the first book of his I read an I enjoyed it. His setting is fantasy but it uses Roanake and Virginia Dare in a pretty interesting way. This is the first of the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, which is up to four volumes now. I will be moving on to part two, The Charnel Prince.

A Question of Honor by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud: The subject of the book is, in theory, the Kosciuszko Squadron, a unit of Polish airmen key to Allied victory in the Battle of Britain. The first half of the book tells that story and its gripping stuff. Once the Battle of Britain is over though, the focus is less on the pilots and more on the fate of Poland as a whole. The second half of the book, while continuing to touch on the squadron and its members, is really a history of how it was that the Allies went to war to protect Polish freedom but ultimately condemned the country to decades of Soviet domination. Well written and engaging.

Sharpe's Regiment by Bernard Cornwell: This is the 8th of the original 11 Sharpe novels, which chronicle the adventures of a British rifleman who comes up through the ranks and makes a name for himself in the Napoloeonic Wars. These are rousing adventure tales, and while Cornwell defintely has a formula, he does it well. I liked this book because it actually took place away from the front. Sharpe heads back to England to find a missing battalion of his regiment. This embroils him in a world of political corruption quite different than the battlefields of Iberia.

When Presidents Lie by Eric Alterman: The basic thesis of this book seems to be the presidents lie for short term gain but the country pays the price in the long term. I've only read the first part so far, which covers FDR and the Yalta conference. He argues that almost no one knew what agreements FDR had really made at Yalta and he died sho quickly on returning to America that he didn't have a chance to finesse the situation. The result: the Cold War. It's an interesting read so far, though I'm not really convinced that Stalin intended to honor all the terms of the Yalta agreement.

Business and Pleasure

2008-04-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

Nik and Kate are in NYC on a class trip, so I've been left to my own devices here in Seattle. This weekend was pretty much equal parts business and pleasure.

Yesterday I went down to Tim's place in Renton for a final game of Spirit of the Century before Tim, our most recent traitor, moves back to the Bay Area to take a job with Apple. It was a battle royale in Hong Kong, with our intrepid band of pulp heroes facing off against a horde of tong gangsters. We ended on a cliffhanger, with what seemed to be dragons heading to Hong Kong to eject the foreign devils, and we hope to be able to finish up the story when Tim is back visiting at some point. I spent my entire evening in the office, doing Green Ronin work of the most boring sort. Ah, the endless joy of contract writing and administration.

Today I woke up with a full blown cold that came out of nowhere, which was weird. Knowing I had people coming over at 1 pm, I just downed some medicine and went to work cleaning the downstairs. I got things in order and right on time Rick, Jimmer, Ray, Seth, and Wolfgang arrived. We were getting together for an afternoon of boardgaming, which I don't get to do as often as I'd like. Today's game: History of the World. This is the classic game of rising and falling empires. The game is exactly seven turns long, which each one representing an epoch of history. On each turn you play a different empire, while trying to hold together as much of your previous empires as possible. I had the good fortune to get the Romans (thanks, Rick!) and I was able to maintain a lead from that point forward. It came down to the wire, but I pull out a victory despite my various empires getting picked apart. We played a complete game and finished at 6:30. I really ought to try to organize days like this more often, though with convention season approaching I shouldn't kid myself.

Tonight it was back to work. I did not get as much accomplished as I wanted to because this cold is running me down, but I am continuing to check things off my to-do list. I am tempted to take a sick day from FLS tomorrow but I may hold out and take one Tuesday if need be.

AP Article on D&D

2008-04-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed for an Associated Press article about 4th edition D&D. The reporter had found me via my blog and he explained to me that this a common technique for journalists these day. Funny. I was little concerned about being quoted correctly, because he was transcribing as we talked instead of recording the conversation. The article is out now and the quotes he used do seem to be what I actually said though, so hooray.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23903817/

It's also up in some other places like the Huffington Post, as you'd expect from an AP story. As mainstream media coverage of gaming goes, it's not bad. Certainly a big step up from the hysterical stuff we used to see in the early 80s.

One thing I ought to point out is that the estimate of the size of the RPG business (and note I was just talking RPGs, not minis, TCGs, boardgames, etc.) that I gave him was an educated guess on my part and I told him so. I based it on what I knew of the D&D business a few years ago and what I know of sales numbers today, but since most game companies are privately owned and don't report their sales it's difficult to know for sure.

Debating the OGL

2008-03-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend there was a bit of a brouhaha at ENWorld because of a quote from Liz Schuh, the Brand Director of D&D (and one of the better marketing folk at WotC in my experience). People were asking after the Game System License and Liz gave the following quote:

“We’re still vetting our final policy regarding open gaming. As soon as that process is complete, we’ll make an official announcement. Stay tuned for more information.”

This raised some eyebrows because previously statements had been more along of lines of, "We're working hard to finalize the GSL." If you look at this as a carefully worded bit of PR, you might suspect that WotC is rethinking its whole open gaming strategy. Some people began to wonder if this might be the prelude to an announcement that there will be no GSL or OGL of any kind for 4E, effectively closing the game off from third party development. That could be, though it's also possible that Liz was trying to make a neutral statement and didn't realize how it might be interpreted.

It's not the statement I want to talk about but the ensuing debate. What I found fascinating was the almost religious zeal of open gaming advocates. Over and over people would assert highly debatable things not only as facts, but also facts so obvious that a drunk blind man on an acid trip could see them. The upshot of these posts was that if WotC did not embrace open gaming for 4E, they were not only betraying the community but also cutting their own throats.

Now look, the OGL has certainly been good to me, and probably only Monte Cook has benefited from it more, but many of the oft-repeatedly claims of the open gaming advocates are theories, not facts. No one, including WotC, has done the market research to confirm these suppositions. At best people offer anecdotal evidence. I think it might be useful to run through a few of the open gaming theories and see what the facts support.

Third Edition D&D was a success only because of the Open Game License.

This is the easiest one to debunk because I was at the epicenter of both the 3E launch and the beginning of open gaming. When 3E came out, open gaming was a new concept and barely anyone knew about it. The game debuted after an intensive year-long marketing campaign. It was the first new edition of D&D in over 10 years and people were excited about it. By the time the first d20 products, Death in Freeport and Three Days to Kill, were in stores, there were already at least a quarter million Players Handbooks in retail channels. The brand power of D&D at 3E's launch was enormous; that of the OGL was nil. I think it's fair to say that 3E would have been a hit OGL or no.

The OGL created a safety net to catch gamers who otherwise would have left the hobby.

The theory here is that gamers who previously would have left roleplaying altogether when they got bored with D&D were kept around by various OGL offerings. The sheer variety of stuff available and the fact that the rules of many OGL variants were close enough to D&D that they were easy to pick up kept these gamers in family. In many cases this led folks back round to D&D, ultimately offering WotC income they would have lost. I'm sure there are folks who fit this pattern. What we don't know is if the number of them is statistically significant.

Without the OGL WotC would have had no talent pool for recruitment.

It is certainly true that the OGL created a pool of people who garnered a lot of experience working with the D&D rules. That idea that without the OGL WotC would have had difficulty finding talented designers to hire is pretty ludicrous though. The industry has always had more designers than it knew what to do with and TSR and WotC after them never had any difficulty finding talent. Those D&D books that came out for 25+ years before the OGL didn't write themselves.

The OGL made WotC money.

I think this is the most highly debatable belief of the open gaming advocates. The argument from the beginning has been that the OGL would help WotC sell their core books and the PHB in particular. I must admit I always found this idea dubious. It is entrenched gamers--folks have PHBs in other words--who buy third party products. Were there people who bought D&D core books so they could play Dragonstar or Broncosaurus Rex? Maybe a few but there is not proof that this happened to any great degree. When complete OGL variant games like Mutants & Masterminds hit the market, this clouded things even further. If you like M&M, I've got plenty of books to sell you and none of them require you to own or even be familiar with D&D.

You can argue that third party products kept people playing D&D when otherwise they would have moved on to another game and I think that's a fairly reasonable assertion. The question is whether the revenue generated by those people was enough to offset the money spent by D&D fans on third party products? Again, evidence is lacking. What we do know if that at the height of the d20 boom, an enormous number of books were sold to D&D fans and WotC saw not one cent of the revenue generated. Green Ronin alone sold books in the hundreds of thousands. Now add in Malhavoc and FFG and Atlas and Necromancer and Privateer and Goodman and how many books are we talking about (never mind the booming business of PDFs)? People love to say that WotC has no real competition in the RPG field, but I think it's easy to see how the aggregate effect of the OGL might be perceived as detrimental to WotC's bottom line.

For the folks at WotC trying to figure out a strategy for open gaming, that is a serious decision. They have to weigh the sales of well over a million books to their fans under a royalty free license vs. a bunch of theories that claim this was of benefit to them but have never been tested by real market research. Then there are the PR implications and the possibility of market fragmenation to worry about. It's a tough spot to be sure and the longer this drags out the more difficult it becomes.

I've said before that I was surprised that WotC was going to continue with open gaming in the 4E era. If they come through with the GSL and open gaming in some form continues for D&D, great. If they are rethinking their strategy and they do decide to make 4E closed, I wouldn't blame them either. The OGL has indeed been good to me, but WotC doesn't owe me or any other publisher anything more.

A Useful Lesson from Junior High

2008-03-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

When I was in junior high school, I took this craft-type class. We spent one quarter each in wood shop, metal shop, sewing class, and cooking class. In metal shop we learned about workplace slacking when, on the first day of class, the teacher said, "This quarter you can make a metal box or have a free period; what do you want to do?" We, of course, opted for the free period. The best of the four quarters was the cooking class. My friend Scott Piso and I were the only two guys in the class and it was apparently expected that we'd be dumbasses because cooking was not a male thing. Let's see, which is more fun, getting sawdust everywhere or eating fresh baked bread? One of the things we learned to make was classic mac and cheese. It was pretty easy, involving a simple rue and just a little patience, and it tasted so much better than Kraft's krap. I took that recipe home and started making it for myself. As I got older and mac and cheese became a less exciting culinary treat, I stopped making it. It's probably been 20 years since I busted it out.

Last night I revived my old tradition. Kate and I are on our own this week and, despite her food-loving parents, she's still a pretty picky eater. The couple of days previous I'd let her fend for herself in the pantry, but I decided I'd make something from scratch for her. Kate loves very little more than mac and cheese. When we go to Stellar Pizza, one of Seattle's best places for NY-style pie, Kate eschews pizza and gets their mac and cheese (which, she proclaims, is the "best in the world"). Luckily, she was not too curious about what I was doing in the kitchen. I was able to cook the macaroni, make the sauce, layer it into a baking pan, and pop it in the oven without her coming into the kitchen once. Twenty minutes later the timer went off and I called her in. She was delighted and ate a big bowl. Success. I think I should have used a bit less pasta so it would have been a bit creamier but it was pretty good all in all. As a bonus there are enough leftovers that Kate will have something she likes in the fridge for the next several days.

Husker Dungeons

2008-03-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

There's an old Husker Du song in which Grant Hart screams, "What do I want? What'll make me happy?"

Lately I've been pondering this in relation to D&D. The game and I go back a long way. I started playing when I was 10 years old and this began a journey that led me into hobby gaming and ultimately to a life of game design, writing, and publishing. So while I can and do play many other games, I find that I like having at least a little D&D in my life. The game has had its up and downs over the years, but it has a core that continues to appeal.

I've been trying to figure which of the many games called D&D is the one I really want though. D&D has a certain gestalt that it's hard to pin down exactly. When I look over the various iterations of the game, there are things I don't like about each one. Each version seems to fix some problems while creating new ones. I had hoped that 4E would learn some lessons from 3E. It has but the direction it seems to have taken isn't the way I would have gone. While I will certainly give it a shot and GR may indeed publish some stuff for it, I don't consider it likely that it'll become my D&D game of choice (though again, I reserve final judgment until I see the actual rules). Paizo is doing some interesting stuff with Pathfinder but it is going down an evolutionary route that again isn't quite what I'm looking for. And GR's own True20 wasn't meant to be a D&D replacement in the first place.

Grant Hart's answer in that song is, "Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!" I'm trying not to be that cynical.

Now I have, off and on, been tinkering with a rule set that tries to capture what it is about D&D that I like. I'm sure that's a surprise to no one; it's what designers do if you give them half a chance. The thing is that I don't have time to go writing a new game while working two jobs unless I'm going to do something with it. And let's be frank, does the world need my interpretation of D&D? This is ground so well-plowed that it's turned into mud. So I tinker a bit and then I put it away. It doesn't make any sense to pursue it, and yet I find myself thinking about it on the bus and making notes when I get home. I suppose I either need to find a way for it make sense as a published product or just forget about it. At the moment I am, as the Replacements would say, "stuck in the middle."

Question Answered

2008-03-18T16:14:00.001-07:00

Six weeks ago I posted this:

"I think the big question is whether any of the prominent third party publishers will decide to just skip 4E and the GSL and continue to publish 3.5 material. I think Paizo is best positioned to pull this off but it would be a gamble for sure."

Paizo announced today that they are taking that gamble. They will continue to publish under the 3.5 rules and are beginning an open playtest to lead up their own core rulebook based on those rules for August, 2009. This is a ballsy decision and I have to salute Erik Mona and company for rolling the dice. I think they are approaching this in the right way too. They are not trying to put out new rulebooks in the face of 4E. Instead they are doing what WotC did not: conducting a long open playtest. They are also making backward compatibility a big goal, so folks can continue to use their large library of 3.5 material with Paizo's new stuff.

I'm sure that some fans will think this is a foolish move on Paizo's part. How do you fight against the 800 lb. gorilla after all? Here's the thing: they don't have to. If Paizo can peel off even 20,000 current D&D fans and make them Pathfinder fans, that's a great business for a company of Paizo's size. WotC is likely going to lose at least that number of fans anyway, so at the end of the day I doubt it'll really affect 4E. I can easily envision 4E and Pathfinder both being successful for their parent companies.

Less good for WotC are the PR implications of this announcement. Third party companies have been waiting and waiting to see the new Game System License and here is a major player in the field saying, "Sorry, can't wait any more." If WotC is going to support third party publishing, they really want companies like Paizo as allies. Now Paizo is still Necromancer Games' publisher and Necro says they are going 4E regardless, so if the GSL allows it Paizo will be publishing 4E books as well. That really can't mask the shock waves this is likely to send throughout the world of third party publishing. Interesting times.

For the record Green Ronin's position remains the same: we'd like to see the GSL before making any decisions.

Vancouver Report 2: Food

2008-03-18T13:33:00.001-07:00

As of Friday we didn't really have any firm plans on where to eat. It's always tempting to go to old favorites like Tojo's or Rasputin but we also like trying new places and Vancouver has so many to choose from. I did some research in the afternoon and left Seattle with a post-it note in my pocket with some dining options. I specifically looked for a place that'd be open late on Friday, since we were going to leave late and not arrive arrive until 10 or so. My first choice was a Spanish place called La Bodega (a name I'm sure other New Yorkers also find funny). This is a tapas place that's apparently 37 years old, pre-dating Vancouver's "small plates" revolution by several decades. Getting a table late was not a problem, so we hunkered down with some sangria and checked out the menu. We ended up ordering the plato variedo (a selection of cold tapas that included ceviche, mussels, pate, jamon, and a smoky and delicious chorizo I could have eaten a lot more of), hidago de pollo (chicken livers in a cream sauce), alcachofas vinagreta (baby artichokes in a vinagrette), pimientos al cabrales (roasted pimentos in a blue cheese dressing), and a daily squid special. It was all tasty but the squid was the winner. It was extremely tender squid cooked in rice and served with a sauce made of its own ink. I would go back to La Bodega for that dish alone.

Saturday night my plan was to try out Vij's, an Indian restaurant I've heard a lot about. They do not take reservations, so you just have to show up and hope you can get a table. I had wanted to get there as close to opening as possible, but by the time I got back from Trumpeter Salute and got ready for dinner it was nearly 7. On arrival we had to go through the restaurant to the small bar at the back and fight through the crowd to talk to the keeper of the list. We were told it was a two and a half hour wait. Ouch. As we had no other plans for the night, we decided we could amuse ourselves elsewhere while we waited, so we put our names on the list. We walked down the street to a place called the Red Door, which seemed kind of like a Canadian PF Changs. We figured we'd have drinks and a couple of appetizers to tide us over until dinner. They gave us a table on the condition that we be done by 8, as they needed it for a reservation. We said it wouldn't be a problem as we were not having a full dinner there. We did not count on their hectic kitchen and overwhelmed staff. We ordered some salt and pepper prawns in the shell and some lettuce wraps. The prawns came out after a half an hour and then we waited. We could see the kitchen from our table and it was chaos. No surprise then that our lettuce wraps didn't come out until 7:55. The hostess did come to reassure us that we could stay as long as liked, as they found another table for the reservation. We left around 8:30 and checked in at Vij's. They told us to come back in half an hour so, so we walked down the street to a Chapters and browsed books for awhile. I always like checking out the history section of Canadian bookstores because it has many titles you'll just never see. I resisted the urge to buy a book about the Canadian experience in the Italian campaign of WWII and returned to Vij's at the appointed hour. We were seated about 15 minutes later. At last!

Now normally if you tell Nik and I there's a two and a half hour wait, we'll just go somewhere else. I'm glad we didn't. Dinner at Vij's was, quite simply, the best Indian meal I've ever had. The contrast to the Red Door was stark. Both places were equally busy, but the staff at Vij's was much better trained and kept everything running smoothly. Again we could see into the kitchen and I watched the four Indian ladies in charge turn out dish after beautiful dish with a Zen-like calm. No yelling, no rushing, no sweating--just precision and serenity. The food they made was outstanding. We started with a South Indian lentil pate with ginger date pickle and two spoons of Dungeness crab with coconut, cilantro, and candied beets. The pate was more of a spread, but it matched perfectly with fresh naan and was spicy and delicious. The crab was fresh and tasty, and was well-complemented by the beets.

I probably could have left satisfied at this point but then came the main courses. Nicole had the eggplant and papaya curry with black chickpeas and roasted almonds, while I had the grilled pork tenderloin and back ribs in fennel seed, ginger, and coconut curry with cashews. Now I understand that the chefs at Vij are all vegetarians but you'd never guess that from my meal. The pork was perfectly cooked and the curry was amazing. Nik's eggplant was also great, very tender and flavorful. The whole menu looked fantastic and we defininely want to go back and try some other dishes.

But wait, the tale of Vij's isn't quite over; we also had a ridiculous celebrity sighting. There were three guys at the table next to us and they were clearly movie/TV industry people by their conversation ("Juno was lucky it came out in a weak year.") and the way the staff was giving them extra attention. I kept looking at the two guys I could see but I didn't recognize them. Then the guy with his back to me went outside to take a phone call. When he came back, Nik whispered to me, "I think it's the Chairman." And it was indeed Mark Decascos, the guy who is the Chairmain of Kitchen Stadium on Iron Chef America. Too funny. The staff loved him and many of them came around to chat and give extra tastes of this or that. I can't really complain though, as Vikram himself (the owner) came to our table three times during the meal to ask how we were enjoying the food. It was really easy to be honest.

Sunday we picked up Kate and had some veggie dim sum at an old favorite, Bo Kong. Then we continued the veggie theme at Cafe Deux Soleils in the afternoon, where we met up with some of Nik's old Vancouver friends. It's probably no surprise that we weren't all that hungry by the time we got to the cafe, so it was mostly coffee drinking and hanging out. We left Vancouver relaxed and satisfied. We always have a good time up there and talk about how easy it'd be for us to live there if we ever had to move.