Calling All Dungeon Masters

Well, this is not really in Slashdot's main focus, but heck, it's a rare nerd who hasn't at least dabbled in D&D. Wizards of the Coast is looking to build a new campaign world, along the lines of Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms, and they're offering cash prizes. Their document (.doc file; Abiword reads it; try here if that link doesn't work) sums up the contest. Comments in this thread suggest they're looking for medieval fantasy settings. Show some writing flair and creative ability and take home enough cash to buy literally dozens of lead figurines AND a few new D30's... Update: 06/07 20:38 GMT by M : WOTC has the contest on their site now.

Comments

Wizards of the Coast

[funkhauser]

WotC seems to have a refreshingly player-centric attitude lately. From a player-designed D&D campaign setting to player-designed cards and player input on the next edition of Magic: the Gathering, it really is good to see a gaming company actually realize that players like to get involved in the games they play. Kudos to them.

Re:Wizards of the Coast

[caseydk]

The only thing I don't like about all this is the fact that it all becomes property of them. I've been working on a world off and on for about 8 years now (Hey, college got in the way) and this sounds pretty cool.

Re:Wizards of the Coast

[Asprin]

WotC seems to have a refreshingly player-centric attitude lately. From a player-designed D&D campaign setting to player-designed cards and player input on the next edition of Magic: the Gathering [magicthegathering.com],

IF WE'RE DOING ALL THE WORK, WHAT THE HELL DO WE NEED THEM FOR?!?!grin

Re:Wizards of the Coast

[AshPattern]

We need them for the same reasons that most open source projects need standards organizations, graphic artists, and maintainers. Think of WotC as a roleplaying CVS repository.

Re:Wizards of the Coast

[dbc001]

The guy from WotC stated on the message board that they only take ownership of the top three, all the rest are owned by their respective creators.

-dbc

Re:Wizards of the Coast

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those top three, they pay rather handsomely - $20,000 is about five times the usual pay rate for a freelancer writing 100 pages in the RPG industry, and $120,000 is just plain off the scale regarding RPGs.

Re:Wizards of the Coast

[mrfoos]

Yea, WoTC are player-centric and responding to the needs of the average gamer. That's why it's turned into a bunch of munchkin-loving, battle-crazy crap! They have re-defined Role-playing into Roll-playing. Bravo!

Say wha?

[ZakkWylde]

They've got D30s now?! The most "sided" official DnD die that I know of is D20. There is a D100 but it's the size of a handball.

Re:Say wha?

[Eg0r]

nah... D30 is way to old, what you really want is a D60 or maybe a 1D... or am I missing something? :-)

Re:Say wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that this matters all that much, but technically a D20 is the largest possible polyhedral with equilateral sides(they're called platonic solids). A D30, or a D60, or a D-whatever all have sides that aren't equal. Technically, a D10 isn't a platonic solid, either, but it makes a bit more sense to make a D10 than creating a golf ball-esque D100, don't you think?

Re:Say wha?

[nordaim]

D30's were used heavily in a game called "Quest of the Ancients", which was owned by a company (Unicorn Press?) that was as player centric as the current Wizards of the Coast. Quite a number of books were published for the game in the mid 80's, but their business model failed and they went under after only a few years.

Re:Say wha?

[Scooter]

hmm indeed - do WoTC own all RPG's now? I picked up the new Star Wars RPG the other week, and not only is it now a WoTC thing (used to be West End Games) but the whole system is totally different (rendering the huge pile of source books I have for old one useless from a stats point of view). I havn't played any RPGs for 13 years now, so I'm not up on who bought who, but it seems there's WoTC and GURPS. Hell even Traveller seems to be a GURPS thing now - the last edition of that I bought was "Marc Millers Traveller" which was a very poor effort next to the old classic and advanced Trvaller that we played to death in the eighties (you know - those little black books "High Guard", "Merchant Prince" and so on). Even "Megatraveller" was better than the latest paltry efforts, and now it's just a GURPS module..

Still - WoTC do seem to produce a quality product - the new Star Wars RPG book is really nicely done. You can spend hours trying to work out whether Yoda could take Mace Windu, Kenobi and Skywalker on in a ruck and win.. Pity it's already out of date - I shoulkd wait til Lucas says "I've finished" before buying any RPGs based on Star Wars :)

At least AD&D doesn't have that problem

Re:Say wha?

[Fazooist]

You forgot Palladium games, makers of Rifts....It's WoTC Steve Jackson games and Palladium.... yeah.... Fazoo my Brother

Re:Say wha?

[Godeke]

Formula De (not a RPG, but whatever) includes a set of unusually numbered d4, d6, d8, d12, d20 and d30 to represent the gears you can shift into. The d30 is not produced like the d10 (which isn't platonic either) but looks like a big d20 with diamond faces.

Re:Say wha?

[Conare]

Hero System is still kicking to some extent. They just published a new Rules book (5th edition), with some balance changes, but not emough in my opinion (plus it wieghs more then the D1e10 from the previous post). It is still the best system for SuperHero RPGs, but is a bit lethal in its fantasy settings.

Re:Say wha?

[TeaDaemon]

What about Hogshead Publishing, currently producing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, still one of the best fantasy RPGs ever IMHO (our group has just started playing the Enemy Within campaign, the best published RPG campaign ever, also IMHO). (I ran it when I was 13 but haven't looked at it since, so I'm playing it this time).

Also, there's Chasosium, publishers of the venerable but still amazingly cool Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon. I believe Runequest is still going but I think Chaosium sold it to somebody else.

As a last note, there's also a cool publisher of Call of Cthulhu material called Pagan Publishing who produce material for Call of Cthulhu, they can be found here:

http://www.tccorp.com/pagan/index.html

I've never been disappointed with anything they've produced, including plush Cthulhu dolls!

Re:Say wha?

[kallisti]

Although the thing is somewhat of a joke, check out all the HackMaster stuff being put out by Kenzer and Co. And there are a lot of RPGs, just not as well-known ones. Check out Dying Earth, Legend of Five Rings or Fading Suns, for example.

Re:Say wha?

[TeaDaemon]

Is Fading Suns still going?

My last job as a convention troll was to demo it at EuroGenCon '97. I seem to remember it had some really nice background, but the system required buckets of D20.

Then again, I actually like and occasionally run Deadlands, an rpg that uses 6 types of dice, numerous packs of playing cards and poker chips to randomise stuff. It seemed pretty complex but it worked, I especially liked the way magic was dependant on the magician getting a good poker hand.

And if we're talking obscure games, what about SLA Industries? A very cool sci-fi/horror rpg with a unique setting, plus it was produced and typeset on an Atari Falcon.

Is M:tG still going?

[ringbarer]

Last I heard, they'd dumbed it down bigstyle at the request of Hasbro so that it would appeal to the Pokemon players.

I hear there's a newer edition out now - have they reinstated Interrupts?

Re:Is M:tG still going?

[funkhauser]

They haven't dumbed the game down, really. What they have done is broken the game down into three "levels." There's Starter, which is more or less dumbed-down Magic. Then There's the Basic Sets (Equivalent to 4th Edition, 5th Edition, Revised, etc.) They've simplified the Basic Sets, too, but not to the extent of Starter. Then they have the Expert Level expansions. This is where the new cards come in, and the card interactions are just as complex (maybe a little more, if you ask some people) than older sets.

Interrupts are obsolete. They restructured the rules so that distinguishing interrupts and instants is unnecessary.

Actually, the rules restructuring of Magic has been excellent for the game. The rules aren't just kludged together, there's a unified system for spell resolution, which puts the focus on the card interactions where its supposed to be.

Re:Is M:tG still going?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuck! You must be ancient! What the hell are you doing posting on Slashdot!?

Hehe, cash prizes....

[Andorion]

Wonder how much they'll be making off the new books? =)

-Berj

Re:this

[anonymous cowfart]

This is not funny

Wizards

[grokBoy]

"All one page submissions that meet the requirements will be reviewed blindly by a panel of Wizards experts."

Will they be casting a sight spell at some point, or relying on braille, I wonder ...

Does that mean....

[unikron]

They are going towards diablo again? Or will it be Warcraft world now? Hmm.... I say! Buy Games Workshop and make a Warhammer (Futuristic) RPG!

Re:Does that mean....

[nordaim]

Ever see "Rogue Trader" in the mid 80's? It was a mix of Games Workshop's table top game and an RPG game. A lot of fun with a lot more options and expandability than their last few rule sets. That and the Warhammer based fiction was absolutly amazing.

SlashWorld

[David E. Smith]

In which many valiant warriors battle an army of trolls.

Obviously it'll need to be expanded a little bit, but I think it can be turned into a setting easily enough.

Re:SlashWorld

[Peter Harris]

Yes, and if you had a *cluster* of heroes who fight trolls that would be .....

Re:SlashWorld

[RealisticWeb.com]

It would need a whole new alignment system. You would hear things like "I'm more 'Insightfull' than 'Flamebait'".

And how bout races?

• Anonymous Coward
• Script Kitty
• Admin
• Uber Hacker
• Cowboy Neil

Re:SlashWorld

[archen]

Only problem is that an admin would require an uber hacker to write a perl script to interpret what a script kitty says on the page they just hacked on the system. - this game sucks =P

Re:SlashWorld

[Cruciform]

ROFL, I think I just wet my codpiece!

Re:SlashWorld

[David E. Smith]

CowboyNeal isn't a new race, really; probably just a powerful NPC (vague, mysterious, versatile... sorta like Elminster, actually).

I'm actually starting to take this seriously. That's a bad sign...

Re:SlashWorld

[Winged Cat]

• Anonymous Coward - Red
  
• Script Kitty (or Kiddie) - Black
  
• Admin - Blue
  
• Uber Hacker - White
  
• Cowboy Neil (or Neal; possibly also Moderator or Editor) - Green
  

What more alignment do you need for M:tG?

Re:SlashWorld

[buckeyeguy]

Nah, not the characters, instead the artifacts and weapons should take on those post-mod qualities... SlashWorld would be a medieval battleground in a Net setting... I call dibs on the +3 poison dagger of flamebait!

So would CowboyNeal, CmdrTaco, JonKatz and others be flavorful NPCs, or whole character classes? Hmm....

Re:SlashWorld

[hkhanna]

Don't forget the GNOMEs. However since GNOMEs already exist in D&D why don't we make another (evil? hehe) race of KDE. Then we can start a flame war between the races.

j/k, I don't use either. BlackBox, baby!

Hargun

Auto Generation for Consistancy

[codemonkey_uk]

Well, shit, isn't the timing magnificent. I've been playing an AD&D game run by some friends of mine, and there have been some problems with consistency, which got me thinking about automatic generation of realistic worlds for use as settings for rollplaying games.

I think there is a lot that can be done. Fractal terrain generation is a well understood area. Developing on that you can use social evolution heuristics to determine the locations of settlements, and teh development of towns, and cities. You can use historical demographic data to determine what might be found at each settlement. From there its only a short step to generating a population for those settlements.

Which is about where I started thinking about writing some code. Last weekend I actually put some of my ideas into action. Its far from complete, but this serverside script demonstrates the beginnings of what can be done. There are problems with execution time - PHP isn't my usual language, and the 30 second limit is preventing it from working with populations larger than 750, but you can see where I'm going with it - generation of random populations, assignment of possitions within the community based on ability, and the code is in place for the generation of familiys with inherited genetic traits. Of course, the source code is available (via a link at the bottom of the page), so you can run with the idea if you can't wait for me to develop it further.

Once all these details are handled computationally, the designer can focus on the most important aspect of the game world - the plot!

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[Proquar]

Hmm.. there's a lot to be said for consistency... and a lot to be said for a generator as you've described it. BUT... I won't let a computer near my game (except for storing data after the fact, and thought)... there is something amazingly skewiff about computer-generated randomness... or maybe there is something skewiff with our perception of randomness, that I don't like what the computer generates. And of course, the essence of a good game lies in the ideas. The generation of data - well, you could go to the Bureau of Statistics for that - but it won't lead to a good game of D&D. "The White Pages - yes... lots of interesting characters, shame about the plot."

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[pubjames]

Personally I think these games are all about people and imagination, and could do without computer involvement of any sort, but that's just my view.

If you are having execution times of over 30 seconds for a PHP script, then it is likely you are doing something wrong. If your a newbie, try asking questions on phpdeveloper.com.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[Rogerborg]

This is a superb start, many congratulations.

Some positive criticism:

• You'll want to make it clear that the default profession is farmer, and that these people make up the vast bulk of the population. Indeed, they are so vital to everything else that "farmer" is too broad a term. I know it seems dull, but it might be useful to know if a region produces a lot of arable crops, pigs, sheep, cattle, fish or fruit.
• I'm a little sceptical of a chart that is apparently based on 12th-14th centuries, but has doctors separate from barbers (barber-surgeons were around right up to the 19th century), and misses out midwives altogether.
• Guardsmen/watchmen and lawyer/advocates are more of a 15th century than a 12th century phenomenon. For that matter, tailors are practically unknown in pre-14th century Europe except in the very largest cities. This seems to represent the very largest mediaeval Europe, cities, and seem (to me) more like 15th or 16th, which is admittedly the favourite period of most fantasy worlds (whether they realise it or not).
• You missed undertakers, bone and antler workers, potters, glassblowers, boatmakers, shipwrights, reed cutters, market traders (as opposed to specialist mercers, wholesale importers and travelling merchants), miners of various sorts, and minters (where do you think all those gold pieces come from?). You also forgot the seedy and distasteful side of mediaeval city life: dung collectors, trash scavengers, whores, pimps, burglars, cutpurses, muggers and bandits.
• The ages need to come down a lot. The age of majority for men crept up from the 9th to 14th centuries, but we really need to stop thinking of it as 18 or 21 and more like 13 or 14. "Men" as young as 11 were called up to serve in the Æthelredian fyrd, and like it or not, that's still common in some third world countries today.
• Mediaeval population centres tended to specialise, so instead of having a representative selection of trades, you'd have a town (or region) that specialises in making (e.g.) pottery, glass, or even a particular colour of cloth (with all the necessary supporting trades), and that exports its wares over a large area. Besides being realistic, this avoids an identikit feel to towns, and gives convenient plot hooks: how would adventurers respond to the blockade of the town that produces most high quality sword blades?
• It would be useful to have degrees of specialisation. Bear in mind that the trades on this list represent those found in the very largest mediaeval towns and cities. In smaller towns, you wouldn't necessarily have a separate glovemaker and a pursemaker, but you might have a general "small leather goods" maker.
• The idea of trades breaks down altogether in smaller communities, where most necessary skills for day-to-day life can be found replicated inside each household. So in any given household, you'd find someone who can make shoes, clothes and hats, but perhaps not particularly well, and you'd also find a competent butcher, weaver and woodworker. It's important to note that the vast bulk of the population live on the land, and so any group doing a lot of travelling are going to spend most of their time interacting with farmers or local thegns or knights rather than city types, so don't just skim over the small communities. Perhaps you could have degrees of competency, so that a large town might have a good tailor, while a small village might have a single individual who is both an adequate tailor and a poor cobbler?

Other enhancements that I can think of would be a "retail price index" based on the supply and demand of goods. For example, a town with a lot of armourers would pay well for iron, and swords would be (relatively) cheap. Wool will be cheap in an area with a lot of sheep farmers, and meat would be expensive in an industrial centre. Prices also vary sharply depending on the season: the value of a cart is more or less constant, but the value of a horse to pull it is much lower just before winter (when you have to feed it) than in spring (when you can make use of it).

Keep at it; this has the potential to become an extremely useful tool. Incidentally, how about trying it in Java?

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[Anonymous Coward]

And few comments on your comments:

I'm a little sceptical of a chart that is apparently based on 12th-14th centuries, but has doctors separate from barbers (barber-surgeons were around right up to the 19th century), and misses out midwives altogether.

Doctors were certainly separate from barber-surgeons. Doctors went to universities (at least from 13th century onwards) to study how the ancient authorities (read: Galen) cured patients. They were gentlemen who wouldn't bother themselves with messy things like surgery. Of course, if they managed to cure someone it was more of an accident.

Barber-surgeons had more of a learn-by-doing methodology.

Guardsmen/watchmen and lawyer/advocates are more of a 15th century than a 12th century phenomenon.

Again, lawyers have been around from at least 13th century onwards, probably earlier. Their main occupation was drawing land deeds; in the age before centralized record-keeping it was really important to have a nice physical document that could be used to prove legal ownership of a stretch of land.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[Mannerism]

If you're interested in the generation of manorial-sized settlements for RPG's, I highly recommend Columbia Games' "HarnManor" rules. Very authentic and well-researched.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[Cave Dweller]

You *are* aware of the set_time_limit() function, right?

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[jimmcq]

If you need some inspiration for your Town Generator script, take a look at this one.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[goliard]

Guardsmen/watchmen and lawyer/advocates are more of a 15th century than a 12th century phenomenon.

??? Ah! You must study English history. Because all those Troubadors and Trouveres writing albas mentioning watchmen ("gaitas") in the 12th/13th centuries would sure surprized to hear they don't exist.

In the 12th/14th century what you have is in towns (any area thickly settled enough) small numbers of people who stay up all night to watch the town for attack or, more importantly, fire. They carry trumpets and sound an "alls well" periodically all night. This is not the standing garrison familiar to D&D players, but they are the NPCs most likely to notice your 3rd level thief plying his trade in the wee hours; they won't try to apprehend them himself, but rather raise the entire town (won't that be a nice surprize. :)

(English dude: "Gaita" eventually became "Wait" across the Channel, and by the 15th century the duty had evolved to being a mostly musical job. But even through the 17th cen, the Waites of English cities carried badges ("cognizances").)

As far a laywers and doctors go, you forgot the idea of the university town. By the end of the 13th century Europe was pocked with not only university towns (Paris, Salerno, Oxford, e.g.) it was swarming with roudy students. Town/gown riots go back that far. Defitely a flavor of specialization you want to allow for.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[Sloppy]

Neat. :-)

The source link isn't working. ("The requested URL /rpg/\php\source.php was not found on this server.") Fix that and we'll take a look at the speed problem. (Don't increase the execution time limit like everyone's saying; let's make it faster instead.)

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[grytpype]

Damn, I wish I those generators were around ages ago when I was DMing AD&D (First Edition) campaigns! I remember writing a suite of DM applications for the Apple //e, "The Dungeon Master's Familiar." It had some random generator stuff that was not very useful, but the jewel was my Combat Manager. It would display a scoreboard of how everyone in the combat was doing, and do rolls and table lookups for you.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[PMuse]

Hmm.. there's a lot to be said for consistency... and a lot to be said for a generator as you've described it. BUT... I won't let a computer near my game ... there is something amazingly skewiff about computer-generated randomness...
And of course, the essence of a good game lies in the ideas. The generation of data - well, you could go to the Bureau of Statistics for that - but it won't lead to a good game of D&D.

Heck, you can get a land form, major population centers, and a military history from the playback function of Civilization I! That's a plenty-good basis before applying personal creativity.

To capture the imagination, the world needs a hook. For instance, the dragon battles of the Dragonlance world of Krynn, DarkSun, the earth power of C.S.Freidman's ColdFire Trilogy, the Rings of Middle Earth, the One Power of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Admittedly, some realms are rather similar to our own, e.g. the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Kalamar. But good conception usually starts from (1) a major point of difference or (2) one exquisitely imagined locale. A perfectly accurate map is a secondary or tertiary consideration in generating an exciting, intriguing world.

Go with the maxim: create only what you must. Spend your time on the interesting parts and leave the boring parts to be filled in later, if at all. Blank areas on the map are a good thing. That way you or others can put something interesting there later -- after you dream it up.

Still, if you want to write a highly detailed world generator, by all means, knock yourself out. Just make sure it can generate its map in one of the readily available terrain editor formats. The output will, of course, have to be edited to better fit the storyline. Better yet, give some thought to how the generator might be seeded with a few predetermined features to build around a preconceived hook, e.g. Olympus Mons, Devil's Tower, a Grand Canyon, an inland sea, five equidistant island city states that hate each other, races that cannon/will not interbreed and thus always attempt to exterminate the other, cannibalism, advanced technology in possession of only one group, a plague, etc.

Precision never hurts, but concept is key.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[kallisti]

which got me thinking about automatic generation of realistic worlds for use as settings for rollplaying games.

You should check out Captain Barcode's War Room the best collection of computer world generating links anywhere.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[codemonkey_uk]

The source URL is http://thad.notagoth.org/php/source.php?file=/rpg/ medieval_settlement.php. Email me. I don't actually read /. a lot these days.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[serutan]

Hey CodeMonkey -- isn't it amazing how much effort people will put into commenting on somebody else's work as opposed to doing some themselves?

Nice job!
Psst -- add wizards.

Re:Auto Generation for Consistancy

[danny]

Incidentally, how about trying it in Java?

A campaign world set in medieval Java? That's a fascinating idea, but perhaps too foreign - I doubt it would have the mass appeal of the default Western European setting.

Yes, yes, I know you were talking about a programming language! I couldn't resist myself.

Danny.

Re:Small prize for winner, bigger prize for WotC

[AntonyL]

Whoops. How about 'not exactly for free, but for a fair amount of money'.

Hurrah, I've managed to invalidate my own idea!

Ant, who should read articles in more depth. Or at all.

D30's

[BannSidhe]

Too bad they'd have to invent them first. :( The most is d 100...its a golf ball basically. D20 is the step under it.

Re:D30's

[aetherspoon]

Should I take a picture of my d30 then? I have it with me... Or is this a "I don't think, therefore it isn't" situation?

Re:D30's

[David E. Smith]

You mean my d30 doesn't exist? Jeepers. I wonder what else I own that doesn't exist?

It's been around for a while - I got mine at a con in Indianaplis in, oh, 1993 or so. (I honestly don't remember the exact year.) There was a kooky huckster who had this cheesy "things to do with a d30" book that made no sense, but the book and the die were like five bucks total.

Re:D30's

[Bigbutt]

I bought my D30 with the cheesy book back in 79 or 80. I guess you're not old enough :-)

Re:D30's

[tjensor]

D30's are used as the 6th gear die in the boardgame Formula De - however this particular die is only numbered 21-30.
The temptation to roll the big blue die has landed me in trouble in this game more than once!

Re:D30's

[Kintanon]

You don't visit a lot of game shops do you? You can buy D30's almost anywhere that sells dice. Several of my friends own them. I never needed them because I don't have any characters wielding plasma rifles...

Kintanon

Re:D30's

[armb]

> I never needed them because I don't have any characters wielding plasma rifles...

I never needed one, but I bought one anyway because it looked cool. (I have had non-D&D characters with plasma weapons, but those systems didn't use d30's either.)

cold hard cashesh...

[Em Emalb]

$100,000.. cold hard US greenbacks for the winner. One time "consulting" fee. Of course, if you are good enough, I am sure you could parlay this into the Book, Movie, and merchandise.

In the immortal words of Dude, Where's My Car":

SWEET!!!!

Re:cold hard cashesh...

[jackal!]

Of course, if you are good enough, I am sure you could parlay this into the Book, Movie, and merchandise.

No, THEY can parlay it into the Book, Movie, etc, etc. All submissions become their property. If they're offering 100k, you can bet they're the ones hoping to grow in into a cash crop.

Re:cold hard cashesh...

[Em Emalb]

my, my, my, aren't we realistic this morning. Shesh, let me take off my rose-colored glasses before you assault me with the truth huh?

Peace,
em Emalb

Re:cold hard cashesh...

[einhverfr]

$100,000... for the winner

Think of how many issues of Knights of the Dinner Table this would buy :)

Armed with a fish sandwich

[SynKKnyS]

Burger King, where all Dungeon Masters eat! (See: EP2 Triumph the Dog Clip)

you forget...

[Joe 'Nova']

its now Hasbro. They also bought out SSI the comp gamers, D&D/TSR, and some others.
They are weak(Has.), for they only use "Wadsofmoneymade" games, and shelve the rest. This seems a huge departure on their part. MTG player contribs? Wow, wouldn't have guessed. Then again, if they are serious about keeping peoples interest, they should stop card yankin'(want this card to work again? need this one, that one's out of date, obsolete because...bullsh*t 'cuz you only wind up buying craploads of cards)
If they want a setting, it seems kinda pricey for the payout, but they can use anybodys idea, pay the one person/group their money, and claim it's a wash, then use ALL the ideas submitted. I read the doc, seems like they could do that.
Even if it didn't seem rip-off, I wonder what has happened to their talent pool? It's not like Phil foglio ain't doing anything else, but what about the D&D side? Isn't Gary Gygax crying in beer he got divorced, and she got all the good stuff? He could be pressed into service, but why not?
It all smells like rip-off

Re:you forget...

[Archon]

I completely agree. I'm an old D&Der from the '70s and it'd be a cold day in hell before WotC got any creative juice from me... or anyone I'd know. It reads to me as if they drained their talent pushing out card cames and when it came time for them to try a shot at some new RPG material, they decided to go out of house and try to get it all done for spec.

Fsck that, them, and what they've done to the gaming world in general.

Ideas, not numbers, matter

[Raedwald]

Yes, you could generate detailed demographics using some computer programs, but why bother? None of the players or their characters will have access to census data, nor will they be particularly interested in them.

Really interesting RPG settings, such as Glorantha and Tékumel shine because of the quality and depth of the ideas, not the complexity of the numbers. Take some advice from John Hughes:

Glorantha has a wonderful mix of three elements: an all-pervasive mythic structure, an elaborate and lovingly (co-) created history and culture, and a wacky sense of fun. Try to keep all three. Though vary the mix.

Re:Ideas, not numbers, matter

[Dr. Evil]

I personally like the idea of a computer-generated backdrop. This stuff is too complex, and it is a pain to make it all consistent. It can stop players from noticing things like "Why is there a blacksmith making armour and weapons in this inland farming community when there is no access to any major waterways and the nearest oar body is a week away."

Of course the blacksmith is only really there because the DM was under pressure to pull a town out of his hat when the players took a wrong turn. So who is this blacksmith? why is he in the town? who is the nearest blacksmith, did he study under him?, is he a competitor? What do they do? How old is the blacksmith? does he have children? who is is wife? What's his wife's name? Is there anyone studying under the blacksmith?

Whoops, it turns out the players went next door, to the cobbler. Quick! flesh out that shop.

What other shops are in town?

It is trivial to write plots onto a backdrop, it is very tedious to do everything ad-hoc.

Admittedly there are some storytellers who can walk through this stuff with nothing but pure charisma, but they also have a tendency to lead player actions and bend rules when players step out of line.

I would rather run games where a blacksmith making armour in a remote inland farming community would stick out so sorely that he could only be part of some plot... rather than being part of some empty game where the blacksmith is only there to answer the question "how many gold pieces for this?"... ugh.

I'm skeptical that a computer generator can do a good job of this stuff. It is tough. The demographics are also shifted by magic, and you want magic to be included in the demographics.

I guess it doesn't really matter, AD&D has been screwed up since they started making all those stupid player supplements in the second edition. Game balance was thrown out the window and my games degenerated into arguments as to why particular spells and 'kits' could not be allowed.

Re:Ideas, not numbers, matter

[bsartist]

None of the players or their characters will have access to census data, nor will they be particularly interested in them.

Exactly! Why should the DM have to worry about a bunch of boring details that none of the players care about? That's what computer are for.

Re:Ideas, not numbers, matter

[bsartist]

If so, then why even bother with the computer generation, then? At this point it's just being done to please the stats-hungary DM.

For the same reason that Tolkien bothered with creating an entire Elvish language, even though most readers don't care about that kind of thing. The background material, even though it's not something that players directly interact with, helps round out the environment and make it more believable. It provides the foundation for the parts that they do interact with.

Re:Ideas, not numbers, matter

[Planesdragon]

I guess it doesn't really matter, AD&D has been screwed up since they started making all those stupid player supplements in the second edition. Game balance was thrown out the window and my games degenerated into arguments as to why particular spells and 'kits' could not be allowed.

Look at 3rd edition. Most of the fluff and bad choices from 2e are gone.

And you can even see the entire ruleset online, using a GPL-inspired copyleft license.

www.wizards.com/d20

design a generic campaign world

[Khopesh]

"similar to your existing settings, particularly Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance" ... kind of bland.

wonderful idea, but I don't see why it needs such restriction (any submission from me will disregard that suggestion).

I'm a fan of fantasy and I can see why Wizards is saying that, but there are already tons of settings like Forgotten Realms (Mystara, Greyhawk, Birthright, and Lanhkmar(sp?) to name a few official 2nd ed ones).

I certainly hope that gerneric medeival fantasy isn't D&D's new niche (they did sell off Ravenloft, but they did wonders with Rogukan (OA) and here's for hoping Dark Sun is out soon).

oh, man you should (will?) all see my current campaign world (~7 years in development); it's Birthright meets Dark Sun meets pseudo-Ancient Egypt (literally)...

Re:design a generic campaign world

[ChristTrekker]

They sold Ravenloft? Like you alluded to, it was the one unique world they had.

Re:design a generic campaign world

[Kintanon]

I'm going to submit my Steam/Clockwork based fantasy medieval setting. "Wizards" are distinguished by the amount of gadgets they carry. Players essentially start (As wizards) with a bag of parts and some basic tools to create their "spells" with. It's very fun. The fighter and rogue classes also rely heavily on objects created by the wizards for them. I doubt I will win, or even be a finalist or whatever, but what the hell...

Kintanon

Re:design a generic campaign world

[echristo]

>I certainly hope that gerneric medeival fantasy >isn't D&D's new niche (they did sell off Ravenloft, >but they did wonders with Rogukan (OA) and here's >for hoping Dark Sun is out soon).

Rokugan was originally the work of AEG (which WoTC) bought for the Legend of the Five Rings CCG. The WoTC Oriental Adventures is nothing more than a copy of the Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game (by John Wick) made into the d20 system.

Now, I actually believe that the MMORPG for D&D will be quite good. After all, they had excellent taste in the designers for the new system. This was more of a factual comment.

Re:design a generic campaign world

[Gamethyme]

And Alderac Entertainment Group still owns the rights to Rokugan.

WotC only did ONE BOOK that related to Rokugan (Oriental Adventure). AEG has done three "pure" d20 books, and is dual-statting future L5RRPG books.

And, for the record, I thought the OA book was butchery of the highest order.

Re:design a generic campaign world

[Kintanon]

Never heard of it. What system is it in? I might have to go hunt it down...

Kintanon

Re:design a generic campaign world

[dberger]

Our God's the FUN God! Our God's the SUN God! RA! RA! RA!

Ok, that was damn funny... If only I had mod points.

I must be a 'rare nerd' then.

[wackybrit]

I can't stand 'fantasy' BS. I've never played or seen a D+D or WarHammer game. I've haven't seen Star Wars, I've haven't seen LOTR, etc etc. So I must be rare :-D I do quite like Star Trek though.

However, I do understand the language of hot babes, so I might see Episode II for Natalie Portman's hot bod.

Re:I must be a 'rare nerd' then.

[redfox42]

There's nothing wrong with that.

There are RPGs for Star Trek. I've never played one but you might be interested. RPGs are not limited to 'fantasy' BS. There are RPGs in every setting you can imagine. That's the appeal. There is no limit to what you can pretend to be.

Star Trek RPG

Re:I must be a 'rare nerd' then.

[wackybrit]

Not only are you rare, but i am sure you have no friends

Of course I don't, if you mean geeky dungeon friends that is.

Not completely off topic

[night_flyer]

seems someone at WoTC is in some deep doodoo...

Hasbro Fires Exec, Claiming Embezzlement

Legalese

[4thAce]

After reading the lawyerese on that form, I just like saying:

"Do not breach a contract with Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to litigation."

That was, kind of, my point

[codemonkey_uk]

Yes, I agree that it's the "quality and depth of the ideas, not the complexity of the numbers" that matters, but you have to admit blatant inconsistencies in the game world distract from the experience by breaking the suspension of disbelief. Using automated tools for the generation of the inconsequential details not only improves consistency, but takes a huge load of the designers hands, allowing him or her to focus on the bigger picture.

Re:That was, kind of, my point

[Raedwald]

Sayeth the poster:

but you have to admit blatant inconsistencies in the game world distract from the experience

I strongly disagree. Indeed, the opposite is true. The Roman Empire was:

• A pinnacle of civilisation, bringing benefits such as coinage, roads, drainage and literacy to Europe.
• A nasty, fascist regime that enslaved most of Europe for centuries, grinding down its peasants with 60% taxation for the benefit of a tiny elite.

Would simultaneous existence of such views in a game world distract from the expereince or enhance it? Such inconsistencies makes things more interesting, right? How about a fantasy world in which even basic facts such as whether the world is round or flat are merely matters of opinion? Better?

You want to produce something that appears 'realsitic'. Seen any films? They usually look realistic, but wait! The camera angles and distances are choosen just so. If you could walk about the set you would see that the walls are just flats, and the actress had to be sewn into her costume. To produce 'realism' by generating the statstics of a village is completely useless and wrong footed: you could do better faking it by just describing the things immediately apparent to the players. Nobody will ever know, because none of them have a 'god's eye view'.

Re:That was, kind of, my point

[codemonkey_uk]

Hmmm, I'm not sure I agree that your example is actually an inconsistency. Isn't it just a conflict of view points? Something that would be handled by the way the DM played the NPCs?

I am in no way advocating total computer generation, and the elimination of designers, and I doubt you seriously think that a DM is actually better off meticulously designing every detail of every village in advance.

Ad-lib is an important skill for a DM, but surly you can't think having lots of internally consistent* material at hand is a bad thing?

*Note that "internal consistency" (that the game world does not contradict itself) is what important, not "realism" - something that perhaps I failed to make clear.

Re:That was, kind of, my point

[TheRevenant]

OTOH, detailed random generation is a good way to inspire ideas you may not have thought of ("Hmm, the land of the lords of light is right next to the orc-filled blightland - how can that be? Maybe if...").

BTW, your example is not inconsistent. It's ironic (in hindsight), but it's not inconsistent.

You speak of films (and I'll raise you novels). In films and novels (at least good ones), someone has usually developed a huge amount of detail that you never see on screen. Because the fictional setting has its own foundations and, for the setting to feel authentic, the creators have to acknowledge and build on that, even if the audience never see it.

Two issues

[codemonkey_uk]

There are really two issues at hand in what you say. The first, the quality of results, is one that can be tackled computationally.

You say that "is something amazingly skewiff about computer-generated randomness", but I would argue that it is because of the low quality and inherent simplicity of most character generators. There is more to it than just random number generation. You have to make things a bit more sophisticated than that, which is what I am trying to do with the scripts.

The other issue you mention, is the plot, if you read my other comments you will see that that is not something I would want to handle with tools. The tool is supposed to take the pressure to do all the inconsequential details out of the hands of the designer in order to free him up to do the real work.

You are right that a NPC generator tool is not a good idea for you main plot line characters, but for the inconsequential shop keeper, baker, or blacksmith, and for the "random" villages you find along your way, it keeps things varied, interesting, consistent and believable.

Wizards management shift

[Khopesh]

seems someone at WoTC is in some deep doodoo...

Hasbro Fires Exec, Claiming Embezzlement

thank you soooo much for bringing that up

this could be the end of Wizards' full content control
and bring an era of Hasbro-delegated misery to d20/mtg ...

moderators please mod the parent up; I didn't find the link, he did.

What?

[Spunk]

this is not really in Slashdot's main focus

If this isn't News for Nerds, then nothing is!

Re: execution times

[codemonkey_uk]

That would be phpdeveloper.org , but no matter.

While I am new to PHP, I am a very experianced programmer, and the script has been peer reviewed by a PHP pro. Somethings are just computationally expensive, I'm afraid...

Re: execution times

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

You might consider upping the max execution time in /etc/php.ini

Ahem...

[Big Sean O]

Hate to be nit-picky, but they stopped making Lead Figurines a while ago. The figurines that are made now are a Pewter-alloy that does not contain lead. Apparently this is a safety thing:

• Number 1 son buys a lead orc.
  
• Number 2 son chews funny looking man.
  
• Number 2 son gets drain bamaged.
  

Re:Ahem...

[Orblivion]

Not to sound completely smart ass, but shouldn't there be a #4 where son says:

"But I have grey eyes!"

Re:Ahem...

[Quixadhal]

Number 1 son of Number 1 son buys safe pewter figurine. Drinks glass of cold water. Water filters through landfill where all "evil" lead figurines lay. Number 1 grandson has far more brain damage and has to pet three legged cat to calm himself.

interesting

[YakumoFuji]

it will be interestnig to see what comes of this, since the main draw for me of the Forgotten Realms as a player setting was that it has a huuuuge backstory, each town and character has a history, everything is present and it all felt cohesive.

dragonlance didnt have that 'cohesiveness' that the Realms had with history, geography, and politics, etc.

So I'm eager to see what people come up with, and truth be told, I'm expecting very very little!

we need a Feng Shui crpg, something with depth, using the fallout2 engine, multithreaded quests and hong kong action....

Re:interesting

[Pii]

Back in the day, circa 1983-89, I used the Conan universe, Hyborea, as the basis for a long lasting campaign.

Geographically, Hyborea was Earth, prior to continental drift. The maps were basically the "Pancea" continent we all saw back in the days of "Earth Science."

Having been completely addicted to Robert E. Howard's Conan novels, they provided a rich, deep backstory, and a broad range of diversity. Howard never relied too heavily on Monsters, either, which I liked. I always thought the wandering monster aspect of D&D was somewhat ridiculous. Instead, the missions tended to be against the Snake Cult, set in Stygia (Directly mimicking Egypt and it's mythology), led by a powerful Wizard, or Pictish Warlords (Mimicking various tribes throughout Afica), or any number of other human historical groups throughout the ages.

This kind of backdrop provides near limitless possibility.

I'm sure that licensing issues would render it useless to WotC's goals here, but for any of you that are still into the RPG scene, and rolling your own campaigns, Hyborea makes for excellent source material.

D30?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Cool, at what level do I get to roll a D30 for my attack rolls?

Re:D30?

[FreeUser]

Cool, at what level do I get to roll a D30 for my attack rolls?

I haven't kept up on all the latest AD&D rule changes (its been several years since I last campaigned), but IIRC D30s weren't used by AD&D at all. They are used by other RPG games, however, so I picked several up a while back. They came in handy for rolling things like "how many minutes (between 2 and 60) you'll be stuck in this sticky mass, rolling 1D6 damage for each minute." :-) Besides, for dice geeks like myself they just look cool ... though I still want to get that D100 I saw a long time ago.

Re:D30?

[mooman]

Actually there is a house rule (not Wizards-endorsed, of course) where a DM can award "luck points", perhaps for some supreme sacrifice that was made, or particularly good role-playing in a tough situation, or what have you. Then, at the players choice, they can opt to "spend" that luck point by getting to use a d30 on any one roll instead of a d20. This doesn't exactly give you an overwhelming advantage as you can still roll something like a 1 and fumble, but it may prove the difference on some key roll that you need to make.

Personally, in our 3rd ed. games, we've relegated d20 to skill and saving throw rolls only. After lots of calculations on probability and odds, we've opted to use a d10/d12 combo for initiative and combat. The dice are modified (physically, or in your head) so that the 10 on the d10 and the 12 on the d12 are both considered zeros. So rather than a flat distribution where a 1 is as likely as a 10, we have more of a curve (well, technically, not a curve, just an inverted "V"). We changed the critical and fumble rules a little since rolling a 20 or a 1 is now much rarer, but our new system has gone a long way to eliminating the frequency of having a monk with an amazing dexterity get topped on initiative entirely too often by stupid things like undead. By pulling things back around the mean, your plusses (or minuses) suddenly matter a little more...

If any other gamers are interested, I'd be happy to provide more details.. I experimented with many systems before settling on this one (4d6, 3d8, 2d10, d10+d12, etc). We chose this one because it seemed the best balance between the d20 rules (we didn't wanna have to rewrite everything) and the an overdone system (like the 4d6 where rolling anything more than 3 or 4 away from average was exceedingly rare). Also it had the advantage that every player, even with minimal dice, already had a d10 and d12 and no one had to buy or borrow others...

I keep threatening our DM that I'm going to make an entire system that revolves around the d30 (I'm the only one in our group that has any) to the point that it's now an inside joke of ours. I just like 'em cause they're big and it feels great to roll something like a natural 28. :^)

Re:D30?

[Quixadhal]

The same level I get to use it for my hit dice rolls?

Re:d100 handball-sized? Or, if you are more sane..

[Scooter]

Well you could, and this is probably a bit anal, but 2d10 doesn't give the same spread as D100 (the histogram would look like a hill for 2d10, whereis D100 will be linear (assuming it were possible to make a D100 with all the sides the same :-))

offtopic but still WOTC related

[sckeener]

www.gamingreport.com and www.enworld.org posted the following rumor. It's not offical, at present, but there has not confirmation or denial from WotC as to the truth of it all.

Well, Wizards of the Coast seems to of take some interesting turns as of late. We have received several tips from readers and have now received several confirmations about some stunning changes at Wizards of the Coast. Here is the break down of all the tips from reliable, anonymous sources.

Recently there was in an internal investigation at Wizards of the Coast which allegedly unearthed a massive fraud operation within the employees. This resulted in the firing of several high level executives. It is alleged that Sr. VP of Production Tom Federline had setup a funneling operation to pipe money out of Wizards' production department and into his own personal accounts. In addition, to the revelation concerning Mr. Federline, the Renton, Washington police department is reportedly filing, or filed, a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Mr. Federline. The investigation apparently did not uncover any misdealing concerning Vince Caluori, however, in an internal company memo Vince announced his departure. Apparently, Vince' is being replaced by a Hasbro representative from the main office and Loren Greenwood, former VP of Sales, is now taking on the duties of COO. The new CEO is based in Rhode Island so what that means for WotC's Washington State future is uncertain. We were passed Vince's internal farewell letter by a tipster. This email is posted below in its entirety.

From: Vince Caluori
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 12:39 PM
Subject:

Dear friends and co-workers,

A little over five years ago I agreed to come to work for one year to help get WOTC over the challenge of acquiring and assimilating TSR. With mixed emotions I am announcing that the "year" is up! It has been a wonderful time for me and I hope for all of you. We have accomplished more then any of us could have ever expected and I leave at the end of this month a healthy and vibrant company. We are the best at what we do and no one can ask for more then that! I cannot express how proud I am of our company and each of you.

I could never leave you if we did not have excellent management ready to take over and lead our company forward to even better times. Chuck Huebner will become our CEO focusing on our relationships with other parts of the corporation and strategic leadership. I have worked closely with Chuck over the past several months, and I know he has the drive and dedication to help build this business.

Loren Greenwood will become EVP and Chief Operating Officer concentrating on the day to day operations of the company. I'm confident that his experience and knowledge of our business will keep us focused on our objectives and on an upward path as you go forward.

This a great pair of managers with complementary skills and the ability and desire required to move us to another level of performance. They deserve your congratulations and need your help. Don't let them down!

During this month we will be transitioning to these new roles and I will move away from day to day decision making but I will give both of them my support and will remain available on an on-going basis for advice and consultation to ensure an effective transition. I hope to have a chance to see each of you during this time but if I don't you know you can always find me enjoying the benefits of being a retired employee in the gym, at the go-kart track or at our great golf tournament.

Best to all of you and thanks for being my co-workers.........It has been great!

Vince

We are currently attempting to get an official word from WotC's press department but have only received no comment or no answer. We will continue to attempt to get an official word.

We have also heard of a few other changes that may very well bode the end of WotC in its current state. There are allegedly deals in the works to move the WotC retail stores to new owners as part of a separate deal. The details are a sketchy as the details of the deal are still being worked out. Apparently this change is going to happen within the next few months if not sooner.

We have received information on other changes in process. However, until we receive confirmation from other sources we will not post these. We will keep you informed as we are able.

Re:offtopic but still WOTC related

[night_flyer]

And here is the update:

We did terminate Tom Fenderling WotC senior vice president and severed our relationship with a quality assurance consultant Gene Maddox. We have filed law suits against both of these individuals alleging improper purchasing practices and the falsifying of expense reports. since this case is currently in litigation we cannot comment any further.
The retirement of current CEO Vince Caluori is in no way connected to said lawsuits.

Re:offtopic but still WOTC related

[Tackhead]

> We did terminate Tom Fenderling WotC senior vice president and severed our relationship with a quality assurance consultant Gene Maddox. We have filed law suits against both of these individuals alleging improper purchasing practices and the falsifying of expense reports.

New AD&D thief subclass for purposes of WOTC game submission:

Fraudster! Gain one experience point per dollar successfully l33ch3d from shareholders in the form of embezzled funds, falsified expense reports, improper derivatives trades, or just plain lousy accounting."

experience : Rank
0-100 : Office Supply Cabinet Raider
100 - 999 : Expense Account Padder
1000 - 9999 : Spammer
[ ... ]
? - ? : WOTC executive (1)
[ ... ] 100,000,000 - 999,999,999 : Rogue trader
zzzzzzzzzzzzz - zzzzzzzzzzzz : Rogue trader of the Order of Leeson (2)
over zzzzzzzzzzzzz : Arthur Andersen!

(1) - To Be Determined

(2) - a Rogue Trader of the Order of Leeson must both inflict a loss of over $1B and the collapse of a major financial institution. The Order is named after Nick Leeson, who broke his employer, Barings Bank, with $1.3B derivatives loss.

(3) - Title chosen by the reigning champion. Former winners have included Bre-X ($4B scam re: nonexistent gold mine supported by faked ore samples) and current leader Enron at over $60B (740M shares outstanding at $83 at the peak) in vaporized market cap.

The title is currently in contention, with executives from Tyco (TYC) making yet another strong showing this morning by racking up almost 9 billion experience points as TYC trades down to $10.12 (-$4.48) on further allegations that alleged personal improper accounting may have also affected the company. While TYC had appeared to be coming back from its lows in recent weeks, these revelations have taken Koslowski's score from ~60B experience points to 80B experience points, and he currently stands at 90B.

(And before you go off in a huff and claim that capitalism has somehow failed - despite these egregious examples, the market's full of thousands of good companies out there run by good people out to make an honest buck by providing a service or good for money.

And more importantly, all of these scandals combined still barely make a dent against the multi-trillion dollar pyramid scam called "social security". The people who purchased ENE or TYC did so of their own free will. The same cannot be said for the unlucky "participants" in the Social Security game.)

Fractal terrain generation

[Xouba]

>Fractal terrain generation is a well understood area.

Yes. Karma-whoring, here I come :-)

The best land generator I've found is Torben Mongensen's "planet.c". You can find it here. It's not GPL, but you can see the source and learn of it, at least :-) The results are quite good, though there's a few limitations: it doesn't do erosion and rivers, for example, which is something that could be very, very important if you want to use a map for a RPG setting. Rivers are the places where many cities are built, and crossing of rivers are always fertile lands. Well, anyway it's the only gripe I have about this program. For the rest, I like it very much :-) It can do a lot of different projections, and magnification, so you can really see the world from every point of view.

There's other nice terrain generator here. This does erosion and rivers, and the source is also available. It's for Windows, though the creator says that should compile well in Linux or related. I haven't tried yet O:-) The problem is that, besides not being "readily available" for Linux, I don't like the maps generated by it too much. And it doesn't plenty of projections, as Mogensen's program does (or, to be precise, I think it doesn't; I'm not a expert with this program). It runs fine under Wine, btw ;-)

Another fine tool: TerraGen. Shareware, but free for personal use. Great. The results of this program are awesome. I'm sure that it's easy to use the output of Mogensen's program to renderize it (some small part, I mean) with TerraGen, but I haven't tried a lot and consequently I don't know how :-/ This runs somewhat well under Wine, too.

The program that looks great for all this, anyway, is MojoWorld. And not forgetting, of course, all of ProFantasy Products. But these cost quite a few bucks, so I don't have and can't speak about them O:-)

Fractal terrain generation is something I'm quite interested, though only from the user point of view. I don't know how to even program something to output a simple Mandelbrot fractal O:-) If you know something more about all this, don't make me check for every /. post: mail me at ask4it (at) gpul.org :-)

Re:d100 handball-sized? Or, if you are more sane..

[iainl]

"the histogram would look like a hill for 2d10"

Can you explain this one? If it were a 2d50 added together then yes, but surely for a tens and units pairing the histogram has to be flat; otherwise it wouldn't be for 1d10 either.

Free source.....

[jsimon12]

What a good way to get free source material. "Submit your "contest entry", which becomes our property and we MIGHT give you the chance to win some money". Damn I need to think of such things.

Re:Free source.....

[Skraig]

Oh come on. The first submission is only one page. Hardly tons of "free source material". If they were asking for an entry fee I would scream "SCAM", but they aren't.

Just like /. the signal to noise ratio will be awful in the first round of submissions.

Sounds to me like they are just hoping to find something fresh, and discover a new writer.

Re:Free source.....

[monksp]

Ya know, at first, this was my thought, too, but it started to occur to me, thinking back to all the people I've gamed with over time, that there are a whole lot of fools in the hobby, like there is in any, and they tend to have overinflated egos about the quality and originality of their material.

I'd say that clause in the submission process is more a CYA against people throwing around the ``You used this idea, which you clearly got from the two sentences I used to touch on something related'' lawsuits than any real desire for free development work.

Not, of course, that I think the free development aspect was lost on people. I just don't think it's the primary drive.

Re:d100 handball-sized? Or, if you are more sane..

[Scooter]

You are right - I'm talking bollox - the incident I was thinking of was someone subtituting 2d10 for a d20.

Sorry :-/

I have a D1e10

[edremy]

Weighs 16 pounds. I take it out sometimes and throw it at some wooden pins at the end of alley to see what number I get.

Oh how wonderfully original...

[iainl]

"Comments in this thread suggest they're looking for medieval fantasy settings"

Great, just what the world needs, another medieval fantasy setting for an RPG. Would it KILL them to do something more different? I know that the rulesystem is really set up for this sort of world, and obviously there is a fair bit of difference between, say, the worlds of Robin Hobb and Terry Pratchett, but something that really stretched it would be far more interesting.

Interesting take

[Prof.Nimnul]

Once all these details are handled computationally, the designer can focus on the most important aspect of the game world - the plot!

While generating the setting and population from a script has its merits, and I know that there are programs out there currently that allow this type of thing, I think in the end it really just creates really, really bland worlds, because no imagination goes into the design process.

The best thing about designing a Fantasy world is that the genre of Fantasy pretty much means that the laws of Physics are merely optional, not required. Terrain can be as bizarre and unrealistic as you want, and generally it leads to whole new ideas about civilizations that might have cropped up in the area, not to mention that the players will enjoy romping through the area far more than just trekking across a forest or field.

Think of Mt. Rainer -- just swap out Wizard's Island with the Devil's Tower for a scene that really conjures up a world of magic and monsters. Or drop part of the Grand Caynon in the Pine Barrens. Mix and match ecosystems and habits at will, or heck, just look at any number of covers for Yes albums.

The same goes for designing the flora and fauna of the world, and every other aspect, too. Not everything has to be weird or "new," but at the same time, not everything should be predictable or "standard."

Naturally, this may not be the way for everyone. A program to generate everything out to realistic detail is preferable to some, no doubt. My own personal feelings reside in that the more a Fantasy world incorperates the actual Fantastic, the more enjoyable it'll be for the players.

Matt

Good to go!

[Titusdot Groan]

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 :-)

Wha?

[EvilNight]

Am I going mad, or did I read "Well, this is not really in Slashdot's main focus" in the topic blurb?

First of all, if Slashdot HAS a focus (main or otherwise) I'd just love to see someone take a stab at describing what it is.

Second, geeks are gamers. Period. There's just no way in hell that those involved in computers and IT technology, especially those born sooner than 1970, haven't been exposed to gaming in some way. Maybe they didn't game, but some of their friends did. Heck, lots of folks cut their programming teeth on quick little apps to make RPGs easier to play.

As for the contest... well shit, doesn't sound too bad. They're basically allowing some very smart and creative individual a shot at making it into the gaming industry. Sure, they're saving a ton of development costs. Sure, they'll use a lot more of the stuff they get than just the finalists. Just remember that nobody's holding a gun to your head forcing you to give them your ideas.

Wizards has always cared more for their playerbase than the majority of the gaming companies out there. TSR treated folks like dirt, chasing all over the internet shutting down anything even remotely related to their products. Wizards releases a 3rd generation dice system free uner a license that isn't too dissimilar in spirit from the GPL, and allows the fan work to flourish. Small wonder they resurrected dungeons and dragons after TSR ran it into the ground.

TSR never should have dumped Gygax...

Re:Wha?

[Creepy]

actually, Dragon was sold years ago (circa 1984), so Gygax may still be writing for them.

As for TSR dumping Gygax, read the real story for yourself:
http://www.gygax.com/gygaxfaq.html

Re:Wha?

[Skraig]

No it is the same Gary Gygax. After TSR was bought by WotC the new management aproached GG and rebuilt a relationship with him.

There were several years where GG and TSR where on very bad terms. These days GG seems to be quite friendly to WotC.

Re:Wha?

[grytpype]

>First of all, if Slashdot HAS a focus (main or otherwise) I'd just love to see someone take a stab at describing what it is.

It might be easier to define what Slashdot is NOT focused on:

1. Sports.
2. Clothes (wearable computers excepted).
3. Grooming and dating tips.

Basically, Slashdot is the complement of GQ.

Re:Wha?

[Ondo]

Sure, they'll use a lot more of the stuff they get than just the finalists.

No they won't. Not legally anyway. They only ask for the rights to the work of the three finalists. I really don't think they have enough incentive to do it illegally.

Sure, they're saving a ton of development costs.

Actually, they're not. They are spending considerably more than would be normal. Just the twenty thousand is estimated at somewhere between five and ten times industry rates for something that size, and that's not even counting the additional hundred thousand for the winner.

Re:Wha?

[EvilNight]

Nah. Gygax was run out of TSR via the usual gamut of nasty politics.

Once TSR ended up under new management, they got him back.

My point is, TSR most likely would have done a lot better with Gygax helming it the whole time.

Reminds me of Apple kicking out Steve Jobs, only to damage the company and later get him back again.

Re:Wha?

[Heironymus Coward]

Am I going mad, or did I read "Well, this is not really in Slashdot's main focus" in the topic blurb?

First of all, if Slashdot HAS a focus (main or otherwise) I'd just love to see someone take a stab at describing what it is.

Second, geeks are gamers. Period. There's just no way in hell that those involved in computers and IT technology, especially those born sooner than 1970, haven't been exposed to gaming in some way. Maybe they didn't game, but some of their friends did. Heck, lots of folks cut their programming teeth on quick little apps to make RPGs easier to play.

he was probably thinking that "mailer daemons" and "deep wizardry" got their names from the satanic geek masters...

as for the contest: hell, it's worth it for the recognition. I have a couple world ideas I was planning to sell. I'm not submitting them to WotC, because I want to maintain control, but I'm willing to come up with a "spare" world background for this contest. even getting in the top three would be good: if they picked someone else's world, you still have a good chance at pitching a novel or adventure module in the winning background.

Re:Wha?

[mvdwege]

Wizards releases a 3rd generation dice system free uner a license that isn't too dissimilar in spirit from the GPL, and allows the fan work to flourish. Small wonder they resurrected dungeons and dragons after TSR ran it into the ground.

That so?

Try asking Wizards' legal departement what their stance is on you making a Free (as in GPL) suite of uitilities for Dungeon Masters.

Basically, try mentioning anything trademarked by WotC in your source or documentation, and they'll sic the lawyers on you faster than you can say 'cease and desist'.

Of course you could say that your suite of utilities was for the d20 system. Tough luck. Everything that sets Dungeons&Dragons apart from generic d20 is trademarked.

Oh, and WotC retains the exclusive publishing right to any D&D related software. Your suite of utilities will be pulled faster than you can say 'DMCA' if they send a nice letter to your ISP, and they will. Of course, whatever software they publish will be Windows-only, but what do they care about Linux users? We're all pirates anyway, aren't we?

The only viable project I know of has a sourceforge homepage full of disclaimers to the above effect.

Yeah, really nice company. Please don't compare the d20 license with the GPL. It's not about Freedom, it's about free marketing and free R&D for WotC.

Mart (who gave up in the design stage because of this)

Re:Wha?

[Cryptnotic]

GQ is obsolete now that there are FHM, Maxim, and Stuff.

I thought it was about Burger King...

[Bodrius]

... promoting fish fillets for all Dragon Masters.

I guess that's what happens after two days with no sleep and watching that Triumph video a couple times too many.

set_time_limit

[Jezral]

set_time_limit(36000);

Should cover your execution limit problem, unless your server has Safe Mode on.

-- Tino Didriksen

Thanks!

[codemonkey_uk]

Thanks for such a detailed constructive critism. Rather than continue discussion here, if your interested in discussing the details, or would just like to know when I do an update, feel free to email me.

Makes you wonder

[Prof.Nimnul]

As others have pointed out, the cynical side of me wonders if this is just WOTC looking for a cheap way to develop a new game, rather than having to hire someone on full time. After all, ever since Hasbro slashed WOTC budget, they have to start finding new (and cheaper) ways of doing things.

But I honestly doubt this is the case, for several reasons:

--WOTC, as I mentioned, has had their budget cut tremendously. The odds that they could hire on more people on a full-time basis isn't too likely. The consultant-based contest approach might be the best way to still get decent products developed.

--I hate to break this to any aspiring game designers, but these positions are not six-figure incomes. One of my friends works for what remains of West End Games, and even when the company was doing well (i.e. before the went bankrupt), she was only making around 30K a year or so. The prize money really seems comparable to what an actual salary would be. Where WOTC saves is that they don't have to provide benefits, insurance, etc., that they would with a salaried employee.

--WOTC has recieved some pretty hefty bashing over the years, particularly for their handling of GenCon. Their customer base of Magic players has lost a lot of its power, and the remaining gaming communtiy, in general, just doesn't trust WTOC enough to buy their products. If they don't want to crash and burn like TSR did, they have to win those customers back -- this is probably a good way to go about it. Putting the power in the hands of the players will at least give them some better P.R.

Overall, I think it's an interesting idea. What I find most amusing is that this is similar to an actual project, in that the deadline is only a couple weeks away. I'd better get started on my submission.

Matt

Already busy

[mr.nicholas]

As much as I would love to contribute to this, I'm afraid that I've already sold my soul for next nine months (or so) for Neverwinter Nights (well ok, rented I guess). My playing sessions will be described in units of DAYS instead of hours.

<jonStewartLike>Thank you ProVigil!</jonStewartLike>.

Maybe next year? Oh wait, but doesn't ..... come out then?

TSR

[Hamshrew]

TSR isn't wholly to blame for their treatment of D&D. A lot of the developers wanted things changed, but from my understanding, one of the big guys(actually, it was a female), like the CEO or something, hated gamers. What she was doing with the company is anyone's guess, but it's no surprise that things started going badly for them.

Re:TSR

[blowhole]

one of the big guys(actually, it was a female), like the CEO or something, hated gamers

I'm intrigued. Do you have any linkage?

Re:TSR

[Hamshrew]

Not at the moment... I'm at work. It was in the Dragon Magazine annual a few years back, I think... had a lady riding a dragon on the cover, with a gold border(not that it helps unless you have the issue)

Re:TSR

[kallisti]

An excellent writeup of the origin of RPGs and the whole TSR saga was in an issue of Computer Games a few months back. It doesn't appear to be online, unfortunately. Basically, TSR was taken over by a woman who was going to "show how a REAL business is run", she also believed that gamers were "socially inferior" and was responsible for things like the Rocky & Bullwinkle Party Game. If you can, find that article. As a RPG gamer since about 1978 I learned a lot I didn't know.

plot twist

[jlusk4]

...and in which it turns out several of the warriors' leaders are half-trolls themselves.

Every good story needs a plot twist or two.

Re: execution times

[Skidge]

Or use this function at the top of your script:

void set_time_limit ( int seconds)

as described on php.net

WoTC is the good guy?

[imadork]

I'll admit that I haven't been paying attention to the gaming industry in quite a few years, but the last time I checked, the RPG/Gaming industry was going downhill because the giant lizard with the head of a Pokemon named WoTC (and then Hasbro) was eating up all the gaming companies in sight.

It wasn't too long ago that WoTC was considered that other Monopoly from Washington State. And after Hasbro bought Avalon-Hill, it seemed like if you wanted to play any interesting new board games, you had to learn German.

What happened to make WoTC one of the good guys? Seriously, I'm lacking on the history of the last few years and would like an update... It must be more than just a silly contest that's causing /.ers to like this company...

Re:WoTC is the good guy?

[kubrick]

I always thought it was TSR bad, WoTC worse, Hasbro unspeakable.

As to the contest -- a usual tactic for companies wishing to scam decent ideas instead of paying going market rates for them.

Re:WoTC is the good guy?

[MrResistor]

They bought D&D and made it a functional system. That makes them pretty cool in my book. I never had a problem with WoTC, though, aside from thinking some of their rules revisions for Magic were kind of stupid.

Re:WoTC is the good guy?

[Adlon]

I'm just happy that finally, one can openly publish materials for the game, with the owner's blessings, as long as they stay within the boundaries. TSR didnt allow any such thing. Adlon
www.mortality.net

Random Dungeon World

[selectspec]

You can't beat Gary Gygax's random dungeon algorithms from the back of the original Dungeon Masters' Guide.

Re:Random Dungeon World

[GooseKirk]

Right on! My group sometimes busts out the old-school DMG for a few rounds of what we call Dogma. You roll 3d6 6 times, those are your stats. Decide on class. Roll for hit points. Roll for money. Buy some gear. Bang, you're in the game. No backstory, no bullshit, just pop, there you are.

The GM uses the random encounters and dungeons in the back of the DMG. If you make it to third level, you get an alignment and a name (you even get to pick your own name!). If you die, you just immediately roll 3d6 6 times, etc, until you pop back into the game again.

The DM's role is to abide by the decisions of the almighty Gygaxian algorithms, and to discourage players from actual role-playing until they've 'earned it' at third level. In practice, Dogma is fast-paced and not entirely unlike a game of fantasy Quake. In the right hands, it can be very, very funny... well, funny if you're a dork, anyway!

Is this for real?

[alden]

There's no address to send the form to, and I've had a quick gander at the WotC site - there doesn't seem to be anything about it up there? Anyone got a link to an official page on this?

Re:Is this for real?

[Bob Finklestein]

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

Lead Free History

[Lysander Luddite]

Actually, it was New York that passed a state law banning lead in figurines. This was back around '95. There was never any proof that the lead in the figures ever harmed anybody, but the law required the entire miniature industry to comply if they sold minis in NY.

So we got an inferior alloy that makes converting harder. It took a year or two before quality castings returned, but believe me, the changeover was an excuse to raise prices that never went back down after the initial investment went was recouped.

Quick, Jon Katz!

[Gannoc]

You can write a D&D universe where adventurers cope with slaying dragons in a post-9/11, post columbine, post-getting-your-ass-kicked-daily-in-high-school world.

I've got an idea!

[InnereNacht]

*re-hands in the whitepapers for Spelljammer*

Seriously, any game that you can destroy a ship by lighting a match in space is a-ok in my book.

Do we REALLY need another campaign setting? Dark Sun, Birthright, Spelljammer, Al-Qadim and I'm sure some others have flopped. Dragonlance 5th age sucked too. Hell, do they even RELEASE Ravenloft stuff anymore? Thought not.

They went and took away all the good stuff, but at least left us with Forgotten Realms (whew).

Re:I've got an idea!

[InnereNacht]

Doh!

On second look, WoTC just release a new D20 Ravenloft core book.

Silly me.

Re:I've got an idea!

[Gamethyme]

Rumor is AEG has the rights to Dark Sun. Sovereign Press has the rights to Dragonlance 3E. Al-Qadim is part of the Forgettable Realms -- as is Maztica and several other campaign sets they've released over the years.

Re:I've got an idea!

[InnereNacht]

Yeah, I realize Al-Qadim is part of FR. I used to DM it ;p That doesn't mean it didn't flop after a short few years of development though.

Pity too, it's quite the interesting world.. But with Dark Sun still around at the time it wasn't much of a surprise that it tanked.

Lesse here...

[Drakin]

First Wizards passes up the money cow that is Dragonlance for the 3E/d20 system (althugh, Margreat Wies, one of the creators of the world is going to be publishing the setting for 3E, through her own company), retired Planescape (as in, all the flavour is drained, and the concepts are laid out in Manual of the Planes), shunted Ravenloft off to White Wolf (You know, makes of Vampire the Masqurade, and such... they did a good edition, but should have made the core book compleat, without the need for their DM book)

Pretty much all they kept is Grayhawk (original D&D setting) and Forgotten Realms... both proven products, but, in the case of Dragonlance (nothing new published for games in ages) and Ravenloft, they were established as well.

And they're looking to take a risk on a new venture? paying a total of $160,000 for two potential ideas and one rough product? true, for the independant who gets the money, it's a dream, unless they want to retain ownerwhip of the materials.

myself, i'll keep hacking away on my own settings, useing them and developing them more... if I publish, I'll make them compatible with the Open Game License and release them digitally. Sure, migh not make money, but I have control over them.

Re:D30's, statistics, and dice :)

[einhverfr]

D30s are kinda cool. They are the largest statistically valid die I have ever seen (take a close look at those D100s and you will notice that the sides are not evenly spaced.

Actually, I still prefer the ol' pythagorean polyhedrons (4, 6, 8, 12, and 20 siders). On a completely unrelated note, but one that should interest you if you like RPGs or polyhedrons is that at the artisan markets in Quito, is is possible to buy quartz dodecahedrons (OK, so they are not quite regular because they are hand-made). (A D12 is a dodecahedron.)

Also, the other die are cool because the Pythagoreans associated them with the four elements and spirit (tetrahedron/d4=fire, cube/d6=earth, octahedron/d8=air, dodecahedron/12=spirit, and icosahedron/d20=water).

Guess I am kinda a wealth of useless information...

It's "open source" plotware

[brinticus]

We've seen open source software, but now we have an open source semantic-base, where people fill in the meaning of the plot. No doubt, one could modularize this and keep adding new "winners" of these open source plot competitions. Hey, it beats paying writers to be creative; let the do-gooders work for free!

brinticus

---------
"Technology is most likely to let you down when you need it most" -- Montgomery's axiom #2

Ohhh... Nice "dept." line!

[UncleAlias]

A "Munchkin" quote? How much did Steve jackson pay you for that one?.. 8-)

OT: D100, then back on topic

[mekkab]

Oh, the D100 is basically a golf ball! The idea "looks" good on paper, but in execution the d100 sucks. too big, too many faces, takes far to long to come to rest. I MUCH prefer 2d10.

(okay, here's where I bring it back ontopic)
Besides, a good DM can make do with a d6, and either a d10 or a d20. everything else can be improvised from the above. Don't lose the spirit of the game and push the story; the DM already knows what he wants his players to do and most "tests" have only two options: you did it, or you didn't. They can come up with some number for you to beat and you either do or don't. Oh sure, you can make the combat last a bunch of rounds, but you either roll well a lot, or you don't.

As long as there's a set up ("Call the guards! The princess is missing! A reward for anyone who finds her!"), a decently long discovery phase ("where was the butler on the night of the attack? What is the theives guild up to? And who broke into the palace's treasure room but stole only a daggar?"), an enemy revealed ("THE BISHOP!"), and/or a betrayal, a fight and then some form of denoument (look it up), that sounds like a fun night to me!

Or you could just play illuminati and end the night fighting with your friends in a paranoid rage.

Cuthulu, anyone?

Actually D30s are regular and statistically "fair"

[Sharper]

Actually a D30, while not a platonic solid, does have sides with equilateral edge-lengths. What it doesn't have is sides with regular polygons, as they are (usually) 4-sided diamonds.. so they have two acute and two obtuse angles per side. Platonic solids have sides who's edges are the same length and angles are the same.

NTL, they _are_ balanced for all sides.. at least to within reasonable tolerances. :)

Sharper

Ps: The fact that there _is_ a largest-possible-platonic-solid is a kinda cool mathmatical proof ;)

Re:OT: D100, then back on {tackled]

[KrancHammer]

Actually what the kids are doing these days are, instead of rolling a d100 "golf ball," rolling two d10s, designating one the 10s digit and the other the 1s digit beforehand. I don't know the statistical validity of this, but it does keep the ol' Royal Corona bag from getting too lumpy.
They even make d10s that are marked 10,20,30,...,00.

Official Confirmation

[Tikiman]

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

Re:Small prize for winner, bigger prize for WotC

[technomancerX]

Actually, you're right. Even with the one time fee (oops I mean 'cash prize') it allows them to treat it as a work for hire. The prize money is nothing compared to what a royalty-based deal would earn over time on a successful world. (Which I would imagine is why they're doing this, to get rid of the Forgotten Realms which, if I recall correctly, Ed Greenwood still owns the rights to). Think about it for a minute... you're talking not only game modules, rules, etc. but also books (I think there are at least 50 for the Forgotten Realms).

Explanation face-the-gazebo-alone dept. bit

[rtos]

I can't believe that the from the you-must-face-the-gazebo-alone dept. bit hasn't drawn more comments and explanations. It's really pretty funny in that special D&D geek way. For your pleasure and information, here's the scoop from the rec.games.frp.dnd FAQ. Blockquoth the FAQ:

E15: What is the Gazebo story? And what's the Head of Vecna?

Both of these are gaming stories that have been told and retold so many times that they have taken on the air of urban legends--where the original DM is a "friend of my sister-in-law's uncle's second cousin" and if you track that path down, it turns out to be just that, a story. However, in both of these cases, the original tellers are known, the original versions are archived on the web, and both stories really happened!

The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo, by Richard Aronson, is about a player who didn't know that a gazebo is a hutlike building typically found in parks, and had his character attack one. The story was originally written in 1986, and various versions of it can be found all over the web. One such place is the rec.humor.funny webpage; another, with some background into how the story spread, can be found at DreadGazebo.com.

Whereas the tale of Eric and the Gazebo is about how lack of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, The Head of Vecna, by Mark Steuer, is more of a morality tale about how greed can make you stupid. Most *D&D players have heard about the Hand and Eye of Vecna, powerful artifacts which require the owner to cut off his own hand or eye in order to gain the powers. In this case, the characters found what they thought was the Head of Vecna, and ended up with several headless--and thus very dead--characters. The full story can be found at on the web at Stan Berry's webpage.

There you go. Classic D&D humor no self respecting geek should be without. :)

Re:Explanation face-the-gazebo-alone dept. bit

[michael]

It's actually even worse than that. There's a card game called Munchkin that plays on typical D&D antics (one of the cards is "Whine at the GM - go up one level"), and one of the monsters you can fight is the dreaded Gazebo, which includes the notation: "No one can help you. You must face the Gazebo alone."

Bill Gates used to dabble in D&D...

[grommet_tdi]

You can find all the gory details here.

No it is D&D they dumbed down

[Archfeld]

to the level of a video game. The 3rd ED sucks badly. It seems obvious that the designers were playing DIablo during much of the so-called rewrite. Hasbro has allowed WotC to continue with their plans, which seem to be to kill any real playability of D&D.

Re:No it is D&D they dumbed down

[Conare]

I completely disagree. I left D&D for the Hero system long ago due to D&D's absurdity. I have since come back to the third edition, because of its careful balance, lack of needless complexity, and playability. Combat is efficient while still allowing room for improvization and special moves(Disarm, Trip, Charge, fight defensive, etc.) Feats add depth both for role playing and roll playing. Prestige classes allow infinite character customization. If it sounds like I am sold it's because I am. To WotC I say, "Bully" (Inside joke involving Minotaur NPC, sorry)

Re:No it is D&D they dumbed down

[Conare]

It's not the pieces so much as the whole package. The balance between character types is impressive - Fighters are actually a decent character type again thanks to feats, and rogues actually do well in combat now thanks to flanking/backstab. I found GURPS and to a lesser extent Hero to be to mired in complexity. Combats take too long. Haven't tried BRP.

Re:No it is D&D they dumbed down

[Archfeld]

and the cool new Barbarian Race too huh ?
I am glad you enjoy it. My gaming group, not just me was very disappointed in the new system and we are all veteran gamers. The 10 of us looked around and decided of GURPS as a replacement. We've been happily playing away since.

On Topic

[m_evanchik]

The idea that D&D is off topic for slashdot is ridiculous.

When you look at the popularity of rpg's in the computerati versus the general population, it's clear that there is more than coincidence at work.

It's interesting too when you consider that E Gary Gygax was an insurance adjuster. It's all about the numbers. Gamers and open-source computer geeks are both romantic math amateurs.

You forgot

[Jonny Ringo]

The main title "Calling All Dungeon Masters"

I mean can you imagine actually calling all Dungeon Masters? Shit, you'd never be able to get off the phone. They would be talking your ear off on all sorts of pointless annoying crap.

And on June 21st I rested...

[vicarina22]

So if God created the universe in 7 days... that means we have twice as long to complete ours! No problem.

Re:OT: D100, then back on {tackled]

[mekkab]

yeah like I said in my post, I prefer the 2d10.

However I thought the d10 marked 10,20,30,....
was lame. Use your imagination!

As for statistical validity it works- you get values from 00-99, and your chance of rolling any given two digit number (09, 10,87)
is 1/10 * 1/10, giving you 1/100.

THe only problem is, when you roll them 1 at a time and your ten's digit is a 0, MAN OH MAN are you praying to roll another 0! (100 being (usually) far better than 06!)

Re:OT: D100, then back on {tackled]

[KrancHammer]

Quotha:

However I thought the d10 marked 10,20,30,.... was lame. Use your imagination!

Don't blame me! I didn't do it!

THe only problem is, when you roll them 1 at a time and your ten's digit is a 0, MAN OH MAN are you praying to roll another 0! (100 being (usually) far better than 06!)

I must admit I prayed to the dice gods more than once, making sacrificies, promising never to give up my sacred virginity, stuff like that...

Re:Small prize for winner, bigger prize for WotC

[DeeGor]

Yeah, but with the flood of new campaign ideas they'll get from this contenst. We should see some really interesting stuff being released that we may have not seen otherwise.

World of Darkness

[ELCarlsson]

White Wolf still owns the World of Darkness series(Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changling, Hunter). I was a big fan of D&D until WoTC got ahold of it. 3rd Edition is okay but it's just not the same. I've switched over to WoD for all my RPGing. Plus, White Wolf has V:tES, a much better CCG than M:tG. I started playing V:tES and Magic about the same time and quit playing magic about 6 years ago but still play Vampire. Check it all out at http://www.white-wolf.com.

You won't get rich, but the checks don't bounce...

[Embedded Geek]

I've written a couple of things for Dragon in the past. While developing a gaming product is quite different, I like that the staff was very professional (with the exception of a single member of the editorial staff who shall remain nameless), they paid on acceptance, and the checks never bounced -- all of which are questionable when dealing with other F/SF magazines. They paid out about $400 for a 8K word article (which took about 40K of rewrites to do - about $1/hour). I also like that Dave Gross is very quick turning around EMAILed article queries - perhaps a week or two is the longest I ever waited. That's greased lighting in the publishing biz, my friends.

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!

Re:OT: D100, then back on {tackled]

[adamjaskie]

What I have seen more often (instead of the 00-90 die) is people using just two different colour d10s. I.e. the green die is 1s, the red die is 10s.

GreyHawk

[geekoid]

They should support GreyHawk. It is the Most detailed campaign setting they (TSR) ever had.
It had the Highest quality maps, best Dungeons, great 'non-dungeon' plots. Granted they were seldom followed, but they where there.

Re:GreyHawk

[Allen Varney]

They should support GreyHawk. It is the Most detailed campaign setting they (TSR) ever had.

No, the Forgotten Realms is the most detailed TSR world by quite a long shot. When Ed Greenwood sold TSR the rights, he shipped them 60 large boxes of his campaign notes going back ten years or more. That was apparently under half of his total amount.

Greyhawk was detailed as worlds go, but Gary Gygax couldn't match Greenwood's output -- if nothing else, because Gygax had a gaming company to run!

Not many published worlds match the Forgotten Realms for depth and volume of creativity by a single designer: M. A. R. Barker's Tekumel (seen in Empire of the Petal Throne, Swords and Glory, and elsewhere), Greg Stafford's Glorantha (the original setting for RuneQuest), N. Robin Crossby's Harn, possibly Skyrealms of Jorune (but that had two creators), Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia (a pre-gaming forerunner), and someplace by a guy named Tolkien, I know I've seen it somewhere....

It's a rare and very interesting psychological syndrome: the tendency to obsessively create an imaginary world, not out of psychosis but as an aesthetic compulsion. "The Jet-Propelled Couch," an interesting account of a less balanced version of the syndrome, where the creator broke with reality and came to believe his invented world was real, appears in Dr. Robert Lindner's 1955 study The Fifty-Minute Hour.

It had to be said...

[vitalidea]

"I'm holding the Forgotten Realms hostage for $1,000,000,000 dollars!!! muhahahaha."

"ha... ha.. ha..."

"Uhh... Dr. Evil..."

"What too low??"

"Uhh... the state of inflation in the future might be a little different than today"

"Oh... I see..."

"I'm creating a new Forgotten Realms for $100,000 dollars..."

Re:Small prize for winner, bigger prize for WotC

[Allen Varney]

Forgotten Realms which, if I recall correctly, Ed Greenwood still owns the rights to

Untrue. Ed Greenwood sold all rights to the Forgotten Realms to TSR circa 1986-7 for $100. I have this information from Greenwood himself and from one of the TSR marketing execs involved in the purchase.

It's easy to shudder and say, "What a maroon!" But Greenwood says he knew exactly what he was doing, is happy with the decision, and would do it again. By selling the Forgotten Realms, he bought himself an entire career writing novels and modules for TSR/Wizards, has travelled the world as a guest at gaming conventions, and has made countless friends. No, the Realms hasn't made him rich, but he feels himself rich in other, more important ways.

This is a very sleazy trick

[billcopc]

Instead of hiring talented people and pay them a regular salary + benefits, they're going to ask everyone to pitch in with the promise of cash prizes. 100k ain't that much, considering they're going to be making millions by reprinting the winner's labor of love.

If I were a D&D fan and were to win this contest, I'd much rather win a full-time job at WotC writing more adventures (in addition to the one-time cash prize). I mean, if a guy can write 100 pages of good D&D documentation, he can probably do it again and again until he runs out of names for bad guys. WotC should see this and seize the opportunity, it would be much easier and safer than doing interviews and possibly ending up with an idiot that talks the talk but can't walk the walk.

Re:This is a very sleazy trick

[whizzird]

It does suggest a possibility of further work for TSR at the end of the document.
I'll take $100k for the game world I built for fun over the past years.

Read closer

[Planesdragon]

WotC only owns what they pay for--the three 100 page writeups & the final game awarded from that.

Everything else--well, if your 1-page or 10-page writeup is rejected, why not do it yourself?

www.freegamingassociation.org

You fresh-hound.

[jfisherwa]

I am Blackwolf, the Dragon Master!

d30 lives!

[xanthus]

I have 4 of them. Why? I couldn't possibly tell you. I saw them in the dice display, thought it would be fun to have them, and bought them. I had thought of using them instead of d20 for combat against certain creatures. Instead, I've used each one exactly once - rolling for a random day of the month. :sigh:

They're about the size of golf balls and roll around just about as much. :g: I'm still waiting for a real use for them, though.

Re:d100 handball-sized? Or, if you are more sane..

[Windcatcher]

I once bought a d100 for DnD. It's about the size of a golfball, and is actually made of two layers; the inner layer is white and has the numbers printed on it in black. The outer layer is clear plastic, with round flat areas for each of the 100 positions. The edges of the flat spots are rounded off and blend into the overall curvature of the "die". Inside it has weights (ball-bearings?" that lend it weight (the die is hollow). When you roll it, make sure the surface is COMPLETELY level or it will just roll forever (or at least off the end of your table). It was too cumbersome to use so it sits in a desk drawer.

I have one of those d30's too. Never used it...

even more offtopic...

[loteck]

The same cannot be said for the unlucky "participants" in the Social Security game.

Actually, the same can be said.

No one forced you to get a social security number, it is totally and completely voluntary.

That is to say, there is no law requiring you to obtain a social security number. "But,", I can already hear you say, "if I didn't have an SSN, how would they track my Income taxes?". Well, gosh, good question. If social security is voluntary, than...

Ah, shucks, nevermind, no one wants to listen anyway...

Re:even more offtopic...

[DunbarTheInept]

It is only voluntary if you feel like dropping out of modern society and not participating in any of those places that insist on using it as a form of ID. No matter how illegal that may be, people do it.

Re:even more offtopic...

[tedrlord]

You can always just use a fake SSN in those cases. It's generally recommended to use numbers that can't be mistaken for a real one, such as 078-05-1120, which was used in advertisements in the 1940s and 50s. There are situations when this is illegal, though, such as when applying for a driver's license.

Re:OT: D100, then back on {tackled]

[FreeForm Response]

I must admit I prayed to the dice gods more than once, making sacrificies, promising never to give up my sacred virginity, stuff like that...

If you were praying to the dice gods, I doubt they needed your pledge to ensure you stayed a virgin ;)

Dragonlance 5th age...

[Raistlin99]

is a shitty place to campaign. No powerful magic to cast. However the new trilogy that is coming out is awesome. It is the War of Souls trilogy. You can find it at B&N or Amazon. Its by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

That's why they made 3rd Edition

[The Raven]

The 'Players Options' were a giant Kludge, and the knew it. That's why the new optional class guides are much better... everything in them is actually OPTIONAL, and is not much better or worse than the normal abilities. Nor does using those rules break the normal rules.

There are a few minor unbalancing things in the optional rules... I recall one of the added exotic weapons in Swords and Fist was abnormally more powerful than any of the core exotic weapons. However, as a DM you can balance that by allowing them to buy the fancy exotic weapon... just never make a magical sword from one. Eventually they will become powerful enough to craft their own magical sword out of one, but by then the extra damage it does will be negligable compared to their character power.

In short (too late!) yes, Player Options in 2nd edition sucked. They do not in 3rd edition.

Clash of the gods

[Zaphod-AVA]

Of course there would be warring factions of clerics that worship the opposing gods Emacs and VI.

-Z

Use for a D30

[kaladorn]

You've obviously never had inattentive, annoying or sarcastic player! As a GM of more than 20 years now, I can attest the D30 is just large enough to offer:

• Good Weight for concussive impact
• Good Aerodynamics for throws under 10m
• Good Size for throwing ease (and hence accuracy) and speed of launch (fast reaction time)

That's the real purpose of the D30. "Attention Getter" would be another name.

The Anti-GQ

[Hoi Polloi]

Thanks for making me choke on my lunch!