Welcome back!

Hi all…

Yesterday saw the loss of a huge influence in my life. Yes, an influence from afar, but a strong influence nonetheless. Without Gary Gygax, I would not be half the geek I am today.

(Photo from Wired article)

At age 69, Gygax was the co-founder of Dungeons and Dragons in the early 1970s with Dave Arneson. He died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He had been fighting health issues for the last several years, but was involved in a regular game as recently as January 2008.

Gygax and Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons in 1974. It merged storytelling, dice, and medieval and mythical worlds. The odd-shaped dice made it stand out from other games, particularly along teen boys. And its influence was felt in video games, books, and movies even to the current day and beyond. Wizards of the Coast will be releasing Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition a year from now and has been actively working on several versions (3.0, 3.5, and 4.0) for the last decade.

From my own life, I was exposed to Dungeons and Dragons in Junior High — back in the 1980s. It was me and a few friends who learned the rules, read voraciously, and invented characters that went on to live in infamy as the killers of Tiamat. Yes, we were young geeks.

Dungeons and Dragons made me a better reader, a better critical thinker, and much more creative than I already was. Since then, those elements have continued in my life. I love gaming. It’s immersive entertainment that has no equal.

Though Gygax will be missed, his legacy will continue on forever in my mind. He and Arneson created a whole new way to play that will never end.

Gary, you will be missed.

–Fitz

Hey all…

As a long time gamer (Junior High was a long time ago) who has played D&D now in multiple forms multiple ways, I have to say that the announcement of D&D 4th Edition didn’t do much for me. But Massayrm’s article has made me at least consider looking at it, which is a step forward from where I was.

You can find his article here.

So here’s what I think (after the break)…

(more…)

Hi all!

Great news! The Moebius Adventures Core Rules book is available for purchase in both softcover and eBook formats on Monday, November 12, almost three weeks ahead of schedule!

To purchase the softcover book for $24.95 + shipping, go to the Moebius Adventures Lulu storefront.

To purchase the eBook for $10.95, go to RPGNow.com or DriveThruRPG.com.

And to help celebrate the ThanksGiveAway promotion from OneBookShelf, the eBook will be available for free for one day – Monday, November 12, from RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.

Please help us celebrate the release of the first Moebius Adventures book!

Thanks for your support!

–Fitz

Hi all…

Ok, I need to vent a little… I’ve been playing D&D since junior high… maybe 1983… yes, I know I’m old… I’ve purchased books from multiple vendors for different editions going forward, most recently for 3rd edition (3e) and 3.5 edition (3.5e)… Now next year we’re looking at 4th Edition (4e) coming out.

In the software world, when a new version comes out you have an upgrade path. Your old stuff doesn’t just immediately go defunct, but you have to upgrade to the new stuff before you can take advantage of any new features that may have been added in the new release.

However, Wizards of the Coast is evidently sidestepping the issue and just starting 4e without an upgrade path. Their statement is that you can play 3e or 3.5e as long as you want… But all the new stuff that’ll be coming out will be written for 4e — that includes all the major settings… Dragonlance, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and so on…

So now that I’ve invested in two sets of books for D&D in the last 10 years (3e came out in the mid 90s and 3.5e came out a few years ago)… I invested in lots of 2nd edition (2e) books before that… And now they want me to invest in 4e books?

Funny thing is, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) is a business. They’re in the business of selling books and games and all the accessories to customers. So new editions are good for them. New customers buy books and old customers buy books. And WotC makes money.

I get it. I just wish there wasn’t this “keep up with the Joneses” kind of mentality brewing. Wizards opened the door this year when they stated 4e was coming out and their message boards have been booming since then…

But it’s like dropping a meteor in a lake… there’s big ripples. The entire d20 industry, individuals and small companies developing gaming settings and additions, will need to change to keep up with things. And that’s time and energy that may kill a lot of independent publishers.

And as a publisher, I have to say that I want to focus on content, not rules — but when 4e comes out, the rules change. You don’t have a choice but to retool and tweak your content to match it. Balancing issues come up, any rules that you’ve written to add to the base have to be reconsidered and looked at to see if another rule has cropped up in the base and made your change obsolete, etc…

And as a publisher, this is why I’m not a d20 content producer… The Moebius Adventures system is a unique system that we can add or remove rules from and settings without affecting tons of folks downstream.

It just makes me feel bad for the 100s of small publishers who will be affected by this large fireball from WotC.

Anyway… That’s my rant for the day. Back to your business.

–Fitz

Hi all…

Those of you who know me, know that I’ve been a roleplaying gamer for a very long time… Probably since the 7th grade, which means it’ll be 25 years next year… Wow, I’m getting old.

Anyway… I wrote a roleplaying game with a friend of mine, Sean Bindel, and we worked on it from about 1994 or so until he died in 2000. It’s taken me this long to get some initiative and energy to work on those books again.

I’m happy to say that the first of these books, the Moebius Adventures Roleplaying Game Core Rules book, should be available in PDF and hardcopy form later this year – probably November or December. The plan is to follow it up every 6 months or so with a supplement based on the three settings we created — a traditional fantasy setting called the Age of Phaedrus, a non-traditional fantasy setting called Immortals’ Wake, and a modern book called Covert Directives.

I’m proud of the work that we did and want to share it with others with a passion for roleplaying. I will soon be putting up a website for Moebius Adventures and will provide a link from here — and will be blogging about my publishing efforts on a related site.

Please spread the word and we’ll see if we can tour the Moebius strip and return these books to the wild.

Thanks.
–Fitz

Hi all!

Ah, the entertainment. We played a one-off game in a little freebie adventure dungeon-crawl on Saturday to get a better feel for D&D 3.5E and how combat works, etc. It’s pretty easy to get the hang of, I must say. Even after not playing D&D forever, we were in the groove pretty quickly.
Compared to Hero, our last system, in which it took nearly 6 months to get semi-familiar with and another 6 to feel like I sort of knew what I was rolling on a regular basis…  D&D 3.5E had charts, diagrams, examples… I actually felt like I wanted to buy a miniature for my character so I’d *see* where they were on the map (as opposed to using a die as a marker, which does work in a pinch). The guys were like — you know you could’ve done that before! It’s like the Monty Python routine where the guy can’t say the letter C — “I never thought of that before, what a silly bunt.”
We did have some debate. It came up that the magic system in D&D has never been all that great. Wizards and priests and now sorcerers are all limited by the rules for game balance. Wizards can learn lots of spells, but only memorize and cast a set number a day. Sorcerers can learn fewer spells, but cast any of them a set number of times a day. And priests were another slight variation, but they had to pray for spells instead of memorizing them, and they were limited by the spell areas granted by their deities.

Ok, so I can see that D&D vs. Hero, Hero wins for creative spellcasting. I get it.

Another item that came up was the increased randomness of a d20 vs. d6 die. The average roll between 1 and 6 is a very different thing from an average roll between 1 and 20. And yeah, there is a much wider variance there. I actually appreciate the increased randomness, but perhaps that was from my early days with D&D and getting used to it.

Honestly, every system has a tenuous balance between rules and randomness. That’s one of the qualities of RPGs that is consistent, no matter what system you use. You accept the limits set by the rules and play in the world accordingly.

Hero is a very open system. It has its faults, just like every system. D&D isn’t perfect either.

But in the several hours that we played the one-off session in D&D, we worked our way through several combats and never got bogged down. If we’d been in Hero, we’d still be playing the first combat IMHO.

I’m not a combat monster or munchkin. I thrive on having a cool character in a world that’s rich and interesting and occasionally gets us into combat situations. Did we nearly die in a battle with huge ogres? Sure. Did we have fun and learn about tactics while nearly dying? You bet.

I appreciate having flexibility, but not at the cost of being able to play my character. Getting bogged down in combat isn’t my idea of a good time. I’d rather fly fast and loose and have less realistic combats — the idea is to have fun after all.

Anyway… That’s enough on this for now. Hope everyone has a great week.

–Fitz

This series of articles will explore some of the ways some of us have matured as gamers over the years. I know I have a different perspective now, as I enter middle age, than I had in the 7^th grade or even in college. We grow up, get jobs, get married, have kids, and life intrudes on our game time. But we persevere – and continue to play for a variety of reasons – including the fact that it’s still fun after all these years!

Many gamers started playing roleplaying games (RPGs) while in middle school or junior high. I started in the 7^th grade playing AD&D 2^nd Edition. I still fondly remember the red and blue box sets from those early days and the long afternoon and evening games over weekends at friends’ houses as we’d conquer evil, slay dragons, and hoard our own treasures.

It’s hard for me to believe that was almost 25 years ago. I’m still in touch with a few of the gamers from that early period, but most of them have gone on with their lives. I stopped gaming in high school for the most part – just not enough time between school and being a band geek. But once I got to college, I started gaming again with a vengeance. We played one day for 12 hours straight, with a 2 hour car chase in the middle of it for good measure. Yes, those were the good old days.

Somewhere along the way after college, I met a girl, got married, had children, moved around a bunch, and have only now settled back into a routine enough that I’m able to fit gaming into my schedule. I joined a group that’s been playing a campaign once a month for over a year now and am having a blast.

But we found ourselves discussing some things recently which led me to writing these articles. Mike, our GM, is running a campaign in a world loosely based on our own and we are in a Roman Empire-esque world where slavery is the norm. In the ancient world, and into nearly the modern day, slavery was just a part of life. Now we look at it and wonder how anyone could have owned a person as property, but throughout history it occurred again and again.

Even though we as members of the 21^st century might be diametrically opposed to the idea of slavery, it’s very interesting to be playing characters in a world where it is the norm. My character was born into slavery and escaped as a youth, burning his own flesh to hide the brands of his master. He has a very different view of slavery than the other characters in the group, an Asian monk and a mage, who, at least until my character joined the group, had never really looked at slavery as anything other than life as usual.

My character has thrill-seeker issues and as an escaped slave has some definite opinions about slavery as being a “bad thing.” He was tasked with visiting a couple of slave markets to see if he could track down some people we’d been hired to find. He entered the market and couldn’t resist the urge to free some slaves. (I did try to roll a Willpower check, but it was no use – the dice were not cooperating.) He deliberately killed two guards and cut a rope to a free a group of slaves roped together, and had to kill a third guard to escape the area.

Now, do I condone slavery? No. Do I condone killing people? No. Does my character as a rogue and escaped slave condone both of these? You bet. But as an adult, that distinction is more easily made than if I was a child or even a college student.

We had a discussion about the fact that each of our characters would have a different stance on slavery. The mage, after hearing of my rogue’s actions, went to another slave market to check it out more closely, considering the ramifications of what slavery means to him. Eventually we will discover if the mage changed his mind about it or will turn my rogue in for the reward money. But that’s a decision that character has to make.

My own character has well thought out opinions on slavery. Slavery in general is bad. But it’s only evil for those who are not given the choice (either by actions or consequences) to be free or a slave. Criminals can serve their time as slaves to the state for the greater good to work off their debt to society. And there are those people who would choose a form of indentured servitude (just a fancy way of saying “temporary slave”) to work off a financial or some other perceived debt to a person or persons.

But those people born into slavery like himself should be given a choice to live free. It’s not like the idea of the “stain of sin” in Christian beliefs where you’re guilty until proven innocent. He escaped the bonds of slavery and hides that fact as well as he can to avoid suspicion. For, if caught, he would be returned to his former master and probably severely punished.

And it’s these philosophical and ethical decisions by our characters that I have to admit I find fascinating. We are adults and discussing philosophical changes in our characters and discussing those same topics as players and coming to different conclusions.

I wouldn’t have been able to do that in the 7^th grade as I was killing goblins and contemplating killing Orcus on his home plane or listening to my friends talk about killing Tiamat and taking her treasure.

In college we played games like the Call of Chthulu and I recall one incident where my character went insane while holding a machine gun and managed to kill most of the rest of the party because they were evil. I think I laughed maniacally during that killing spree. But it wasn’t really discussed as anything other than part of the game. We laughed about it.

Now I feel I have the capacity to explore these characters at different levels and play them as well as I am able. And the fun doesn’t stop when the combat is over – the fun is in contemplating my character’s actions and consequences and finding out how the world will react to my little slave freeing spree.

I’m interested in hearing from other gamers, from all age groups, to hear what you think about. What excites you about gaming now as opposed to 5 years ago or 25 years ago?

Thanks for your time. Next time we’ll explore gaming as parents vs. as children. Take care

–Fitz

gaming

Hi all…

I’ve been a roleplaying gamer for the better part of my life — ever since Hodgkins Junior High… And I’ve played D&D and a large number of other systems, even helped write one.

But since I moved back to Colorado, I’ve been playing with a group that’s used the Hero System. For those of you who know RPGs, Hero started out primarily as a superhero-based system and has stretched far beyond that since its inception.

Our game is primarily low-magic fantasy, with thieves, wizards, and priestly magic.

Well, we’re shifting to D&D 3.5e in the next couple of months. Hero has proven difficult to manage as a system for our gamemaster and players simply because it’s so open and flexible. You can really massage it in a myriad of ways, which just makes things difficult to balance and keep things running smoothly.

My beef has been that it takes 2 hours to run a combat that in-game would amount to maybe 2 minutes. There’s something wrong with that ratio in my mind, where the system should serve to support the story, not slow it down or get in its way.

So we’ll be trying out D&D 3.5e. I haven’t played D&D for a very long time, so it will be an interesting transition for me and my thief.

We’ll keep you posted.

–Fitz