Slashdot Mirror

Powergaming in D&D?

No way! I don't believe it!

If NWN2 and BG3 are in the making they're being done by someone else and I can only imagine how much they will be unlike their predecessors.

Because I beleive alienation is 'a bad thing' (tm)... here are some terms explained. If I missed anything, post it and someone (maybe me) will help ya out.


WoW - World of Warcraft (the game, duh)
Push - Phase
EQ - EverQuest
D&D - Dungeons & Dragons (Pen and paper, not MMORPG)
DAoC - Dark Age of Camelot
PVP - Player versus Player
PVE - Player versus Enemy
MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
RTS - Real Time Strategy
NPC - Non Player Character
XP - Experience (a measure of progress between character levels)
RP - Role Playing
Aggro - Aggression (when an enemy is focused on attacking you)
DPS - Damage Per Swing
AoE - Area of Effect
Root - An immobilization spell (not admin :P)
Mangina - Derogitory slang for a male playing a female character (in this context anyways)
Mez - Mesmerize (stuns target for a set time, or until it is attacked)
HP - Hit Points
AC - Armour Class
emote - (electronic-motion ?) A special command that causes your character to perform an animation (like waving, cheering, bowing, etc)

Happy, er.. reading!

Could you be more specific?

Um, opengamgingfoundation.org...

D&D is now distributed under a "free" license inspired by the GNU GPL. The redistributable/downloadable versions don't include all the artwork and flavor text, nor does it have each little special bonus and magic item. But it's all you need to play the game itself. (Better for your own GM to invent customized details for your particular world)

you loose on a technicality - sorcerer is now a base class. check it out character
classes

Wizards Of The Coast, the Hasbro gaming division best known for the Magic: The Gathering

you're right...that probably is their best known game... : p

Starcitygames has an article that has links and discusses some of the options on playing magic online. It actually ignores the official WotC product which, big shock, is called Magic Online.

I believe you can get that if you go to the download section of the WotC site.

Wizards of the Coast celebrated Magic's 10th anniversary at GenCon last year. From their 10th anniversary page:

In 1993, Magic: The Gathering created the trading card game category. Today, it's the best trading card game in the world, enjoyed by over six million players.

You definitely have the correct attitude IMO. No illusions. I basically agree with you.

The reason I still play at all is because I love the game. The amount of strategy is incredible. It's got so much variety (especially Limited), compared to deathly boring games such as Chess.

I play mostly on Magic Online these days, and I wish I could make a living off it. I guess that's what everyone hopes to do, make a living off their favourite hobby.

I'm typically not condescending of other people's posts, but this is particularly ignorant.

Yes, there is an element luck involved, but would you say that all that poker is is a game of luck? Of course not. The same applies to magic. The reason that certain players (kai budde, jon finkel, etc.) consistantly place well at pro tours and grand prix is because they are simply the best there are at the game. period. they dedicate themselves to the game (some people take a year off from work/school to "go pro" - no kidding) and really understand it.

money really isn't an issue, unless you're playing type 1, which there are barely any sanctioned events for anymore (NONE of the pro tours or grand prixs use this format in fact. they are all type2 [only cards currently printed] or extended [the past several sets]). the cost of a competetive deck in today's environment is much less than the equipment a football player owns, the membership to a gym, or countless other activities. not to mention that expensive cards != ( for all you vb6 guys) good at the game. if i sat down across the table from bob maher, and i had a deck worth several hundred dollars more than his, chances are he'd still school me with a 20 dollar deck.

yes, there's luck involved. yes, cards can cost a fair amount. but is it a game of skill? yes. does it reward intellect and originality? most definitely.

You don't believe me? Look at the living room, the kitchen and your bedroom, for example. Are they arranged and decorated as they would be if you lived there alone, or as they would be if she lived there alone? I thought so.

But as you are a long term guest, and because of your various useful functions (getting things off high shelves, opening jars, killing icky things and changing fluids) you should be alloted some small parcels of guy space.

Traditionally, guy space is found in the garage, the basement, the attic or sometimes in a room in the house that the wife can find no other use for. They are filled with things; guy things; things that the wife will not tolerate anywhere else in the house but cannot outright ban. Your power tools, your games , your books , your semi-abandoned projects, your things that are too close to working again to throw away,

This is where your computers should be.

Once you establish that your computers are in your space - where everything is as it should be - let your cables be as they should be. The general condition of the guy space must constantly remind her that here, she is the guest A rat's nest of computer cables on the floor sends that message subtly but strongly.

Wizards of the Coast has attracted a ton of third party roleplaying game content to its d20 system because, according to the license, anyone can make supplements or even whole games based on the d20 game mechanics and other 'Open Gaming Content'. (See here for some plain English info.)

Maybe somebody should try making Lego-like toys with a similar license -- it would be very cool if manufacturers converged on interchangable components, from the complex (Mindstorms-like stuff, and 'Expert Set' gearing componentry) to the low (simple old-style bricks). And if some company wanted to make the idiotic prefab pieces that predominate today, they could do that too.

The D&D Minatures don't look too bad from the pictures at Wizards. Hopefully the SW ones will be a little more detailed, but close to the scale of the old Micro Collection...

Hmmm... do I dare add another line to my already crowded SW collection. Too many decisions, I tell you, too many decisions!

Nope. They'll create dummy robots to run around factory mazes shooting each other and tagging flags...

and they will call this RoboRally!!!!

(Huge dork. Me.)

while this IS /., not all geeks are Magic geeks:

Magic:The Gathering's Ornithopter

a cheap flying artifact critter. yup, thats what an ornithopter is. And its being reprinted [after years on the bench] in Mirrodin, the new set about to be released!

Is there an economically viable idea here? Yes - see Magic the Gathering Online - people are willing to shell out real money for unreal versions of the same items sold on real cardboard.

Will MMRPG maintanance turn into suit-and-tie work with as many lawyers and and accountants protecting as technical staff? Yes - this will be like anything else in the world - where concerns over ownership and liability rise to overshadow the actual work being sold.

But would I ever want to play in such a world? No. RPGs I enjoy are a blank slate where everyone starts equal no matter what their real world background. For me, they are a frontier fantasy more than a hack-and-slash fantasy. Once the frontier is settled and the normal inequalities of the real world take over, the whole enjoyment for me in being there is gone.

I'd rather make my money in the real world doing real work. Well, except that my real work is spent on a network doing virtual grunt work for people I'll never meet. I play the .com MMRPG for a living.

• Direct Sale of Virtual Objects - To start playing Magic Online, you have to buy the digital booster packs from the manufacturer. The price is the same as the paper version.
• Conversion to the Real World - If you collect a full set of cards online, then you can redeem them for the paper version. Paper Magic cards commonly sell for $2 to $20 at stores or on eBay. There is a corresponding market for buying and selling the cards online.
• Profiting from Economic Exchange Inside the Game - There is a system for trading cards between players. Unfortunately, it's rather awkward and inefficient. The manufacturer shows no interest in setting up an automated auction system -- they probably profit by making it easier to just buy more cards than to distribute the existing pool of cards more efficiently.
• Populating the World - Because of differences in card rarities, it's impossible to redeem all of one's online cards into paper cards. Thus the manufacturer is guaranteed that more money goes into the game than can come out. Plus, many players find the online cards to be more fun and useful than the paper ones -- they never get worn, they are easy to sort, and there are always opponents ready for a game.
• Legal Issues - There are tournaments running constantly online that pay out cards as prizes. So a player can acquire new cards just through skill and an entry fee. Eligibility is restricted in certain states, but this form of winning goods by playing cards seems to be viewed differently than poker or blackjack.
• Security - Each player's account is password protected. The biggest source of fraud seems to be social engineering -- tricking someone into giving away their cards or password. There have been no reports of server break-ins, but if there were cases they would probably be handled more like bank robberies than hacking on a Diablo server.

Well, its not reallyl a MMORPG, but look at Magic Online. The online version of the Collectible Card Game Magic (Wizards.com)

You buy virtual "boosters", gain virtual cards, which you, if you collect entire sets, can convert to real paper-cards, with "real" value. And I cant remember seeing any restrictions on selling these for real cash as well.

(I'm always amazed by how much /. ignores this.)

D&D has been, since 3.0 came out, the lead-runner in "Open Gaming."

Go to this page on WotC's website, and you can get quite nearly every rule in the core 3.0 books--soon to be quite nearly every rule from the core 3.5 books.

The only rule that's really missing is awarding XP--and there are easily a half-dozen ways to find that on the web.

(So, everyone who's complaining about a 3 year turnaround for a revision--do you complain about how quickly Linux gets a new kernal, or how swiftly Mozilla moves from 1.0 through 1.4?)

If you are boycotting Blizzard or don't want to wait, you can head on over to Wizards of the Coast and buy some of their Chainmail sets. Really, Chainmail is where it all started. If only Wizards of the Coast had good IP lawyers, they could sue Blizzard for implementing a version of their Chainmail game as a computer game (as the TSR intellectual property holders. TSR: Tactical Studies Rules, TSR was doing wargames before that whole Dungeons and Dragons thing took off.) Unfortunately, then Wizards of the Coast would have to deal with the Tolkein estate...

Chainmail Brand to Be Discontinued after August 2002

-M-

They're just dipping the feet in the pool right now,
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/main.asp?x=minis/welcom e,3

You can bet they'll be flooding the market if chainmail is successful.

Is this the same Larry Nevin as the Magic card?

i was a game tester back before the dot.bomb

much of what testers examine is not top-rated games. for example, i tested a large number of kids' games (far more than the other, more fun/challenging and graphic ones). i may not be typical among testers, though; my company repackaged and distributed games over the internet, so i tested everything from unreal tournament, theif 3, and civilization II to tonka's garage and learn windows 98. most of testing is non-sequential; when i tested evercrack (err, i mean everquest), i didn't keep the same character for too long. essentially a tester's job is to break a program.

What do they do as a hobby? Accounting, maybe?

i was kind of known for "testing" ebay while at work, as it was my only internet connection and i was growing/selling my magic collection.

As to a real hobby, we would play speed bughouse (team chess) during lunch and Dungeons and Dragons after work on days we didn't hit the bar down the street (on the company of course)

Actually, I should have said, with the SRD, you don't need the PHB, really. My point about the extra stuff they make (which is what they are charging for) still stands. The information in the SRD is free in every PCGen release...

These closed source data files were already typed up and hosted on sourceforge before WotC stepped in and put a halt to their distribution. This means fans of the d20 system already did the work to write up the data files using the dead tree books they already paid for. They were then hosting it on a system which WotC had nothing to do with, and didn't have to pay for. Fans were already filling this gap for free.

The key here, I think, is control. Wizards is afraid that by allowing the guys at PcGen to distribute their IP for free, people would lose interesting in buying the dead tree versions. To try and counter this threat, much of the write ups in the fan created content contained notes such as "As defined on page 231 of the Players Handbook". This compromise wasn't good enough, it seems.

As another point of interest, Wizards already created and sells their own version of a Character Creator for the d20 system which basically competes directly with the open source PcGen. You can download the demo version for free from their website. As you say, the commercial effort is a lot more professional than PcGen, but PcGen has a lot more features.

Everyone else may have already read this, but this Q&A about Open Games is probably the most clueful thing I've read in weeks - including the open and honest justification for the creation of OG. Ver well written, credit where due, and exhibits an openness that I appreciate.

Look at it here

I found it interesting that some outfit called 'Swords and Sorcery Studios' has partnered with Blizzard to put out the Dungeons & Dragons WarCraft RPG too.

Well, WotC already did stuff about Diablo II, so it wouldn't surprise me to see this...

Of course, the company that does the coolest computer-game-to-RPG-supplement conversions is Steve Jackson Games - There's a GURPS supplement for Myth / Myth II, and I heard they're also making a Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri supplement. Not to even mention all of the weird and original supplements for GURPS...

Too bad the GURPS game system pretty damn heavy to row compared to d20System / DnD3e or, the game we're playing right now, Classic D&D. =)

Wizards.com - I Forgot My Password

Is already known to dwell somewhere near the star Fomalhaut. No, not the oscilloscope for your mp3 player; an unspeakable great old one who gibbers and meeps unspeakably beyond the dimensions we know.

Now that we have located intelligent life, all we need to do is contact it (which, under the new rules, will cost us a permanent wisdom point.)

So who is naming these viruses? :)

Magic will be a force in the gaming community for a VERY long time. The strength of its support and sheer popularity will make it viable on the tournament scene, and the nature of magic itself will make it popular outside of tournaments for even longer.

The difference to me lies in the number of creative and fun ways there are to play. I like to play a format called backdraft. Instead of drafting the best deck possible, you draft the worst, and then exchange that deck with your parner. Another format that was recently written up by the wizards staff was the Big Draft Box. This simply was a collection of one copy of every magic card ever. While out of reach for most players, the principle remains sound, stuff one copy of a ton of different cards into a big box and draft 'em.

What makes magic different seems to be the ways the cards interact with each other. Drafting in other games just isn't as easy because of the necessity of an initial game state. Magic has no initial game state except for cards in hand and a library.

As for player support alone, if it came to that, I think Magic would still survive. There are enough people who love to play the gmae no for prizes or cash or cards, but just because it's fun. Other CCGs, such as Middle Earth: The Wizards(a once-popular CCG produced by the now defunct Iron Crown Enterprises) survives today on it's fan base alone. As the web editor for the North American council pages, I can say we're still very active.

In the end, games that people love to play will always survive.

• Describe a process for Creating a Character
• Describe a process for Applying the Effects of Experience to a Character

Wizards of the Coast, who became a subsidiary of Hasbrow, and own AD&D after buying out TSR.

Apparently the Epic (levels higher than 20) rules D&D are already designed so they have their next cash cow in the bag already.

Designed? The Epic level rules are published

Do you think it will spell an end to D&D ?

Oh, you mean will D&D software survive. That has nothing to do WotC. They only control things that are called D&D. Example:

A long time ago a undergrad name Michael Toy used the D&D fighting system and monster stats to create a Curses game called Rogue, the predecessor to NetHack. (Ignore Glenn Wichmann -- he's a legend in his own mind.) TSR didn't care for this, of course, and sicced their lawyers on him. The only result was that all the names got changed to non-D&D things. Which was actually an improvement -- there's no place in the D&D universe for my own favorite player character, the Tourist

Bottom line -- you don't need the media monopolies to play games, any more than you need them to make music. Pity about Farscape though.

It's RoboRally, published by WOTC. See here for an explanation of the rules, and compare to the ICFP rules here. Personally, I think RoboRally is more fun.

It's RoboRally, published by WOTC. See here for an explanation of the rules, and compare to the ICFP rules here. Personally, I think RoboRally is more fun.

It's RoboRally, published by WOTC. See here for an explanation of the rules, and compare to the ICFP rules here. Personally, I think RoboRally is more fun.

Anyone else ever played the RoboRally board game produced by Wizards of the Coast?

Wizards is committed to making all of the old books available for those of you that "must have them all". It's also probably cheaper then scrounging in old bookstores to get beat up copies of all of the books. Though Ebay might make it easier these days.

All of this is especially funny because Wizards (whom I hate because of all of the collectible card games) is in fact the best RPG company I've dealt with. They produce the best qualtiy (and proof-read) books that I've bought in forever. Anyways. Wizards has made a good effort at making all of the old D&D materials available at their site either for free or for a nominal fee and you can download them all as PDFs.

See Wizards page for Classic downloads So ultimately you don't have to go to a pirate site to download someone else's copyrighted materials, but can in fact "do the right thing" and download it for free from wizards or pay for it...

Despite a lot of the stories and speculation on here I've met mostly nice people in game. Yes, there are kiddies who in it for the excitement of trading and the quest for the deck that will destroy all opponent (like this deck ).

But there are a lot more people who are civilized and friendly. If you don't want to spend gobs of money just join (or create) a guild where money isn't the guiding force. You can create "buddy lists" (although I really hate that name) of people who are fun to play against, and block any kiddies you come across.

I've been playing for a couple of weeks (I got in on the tail end of the beta), and I have only met one jerk. I said hi, he said, "you already sound like a fag", so I blocked him and resigned the game. If everyone does this these people will find it hard to find an oponnent.

The Solution: http://www.dragonstudios.com/ or http://www.e-league.com/walkthru/walkthrough_for_n ew_players.htm

One thing to remember, though, is that unlike conventional publishers, game houses like WoTC buy all rights forever. That means you loose all control. It's not that big a deal (heck, you're being paid) but it sometimes irks me that I can't post my stuff at my site.

If you're interested it pitching something to Dragon, read the submission guidelines and come up with a half dozen ideas. Then EMAIL Dave with the ideas. You might go through twenty or thirty ideas before coming up with a winner, but once he sees something he likes you can get down to scribbling.

Good luck!

One thing to remember, though, is that unlike conventional publishers, game houses like WoTC buy all rights forever. That means you loose all control. It's not that big a deal (heck, you're being paid) but it sometimes irks me that I can't post my stuff at my site.

If you're interested it pitching something to Dragon, read the submission guidelines and come up with a half dozen ideas. Then EMAIL Dave with the ideas. You might go through twenty or thirty ideas before coming up with a winner, but once he sees something he likes you can get down to scribbling.

Good luck!

One thing to remember, though, is that unlike conventional publishers, game houses like WoTC buy all rights forever. That means you loose all control. It's not that big a deal (heck, you're being paid) but it sometimes irks me that I can't post my stuff at my site.

If you're interested it pitching something to Dragon, read the submission guidelines and come up with a half dozen ideas. Then EMAIL Dave with the ideas. You might go through twenty or thirty ideas before coming up with a winner, but once he sees something he likes you can get down to scribbling.

Good luck!

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx200 20606a

It is quite for real, here's a link: Contest Info

The Wizards link is here. Why didn't the submitter link to the original?

Very cool. I'm in the midst of documenting a campaign for 3rd edition -- I guess I'll submit the intro :-)

Thanks for the link! News for nerds indeed :-)