Highmoon's Ponderings

Last Wednesday (4/22) night, I went to hang out with my friend Braulio (whom some may have heard in the recent Kobe, Japan episode of The Gamer Traveler Podcast) at a local game store. That night he would be running his ongoing Star Wars RPG game and the idea was for me to go and play an NPC for the night, just to have some fun and have a chance to clear my head after many days spent in the hospital with Mom.

We got there around 6 pm, because the group had agreed to try to start earlier than the usual 8 pm starting time. While we waited, we played the Star Wars Miniatures Game, my first time playing it (I played the Rebellion and I lost). During the course of the game, two of his players arrived, and then they played a round of the minis game. By 9:30 pm it was clear that the other two players we were expecting were not going to arrive, so instead of not roleplaying at all, I suggested, “Hey, we can play Primetime Adventures!”

Setting Up

I gave Braulio my copy of PTA when I came to PR in Feb, so he had already read the book and was itching to play it. Mind you, we didn’t have the book with us, so we’d be going based on my play experience and what Braulio could remember. I explained the premise of PTA to one of the players and he was enthused, but the other one wasn’t too keen (he associated my mention of “story/narrative-driven” with Vampire/World of Darkness, and he apparently had some bad experiences with some WoD players once). I told him, let’s do the pitch session; if we’re not all fully into it, invested into the idea, we don’t play. He agreed to that.

Since we were on a Star Wars mindset already due to their regular game and the minis game we all played, I had the idea of pitching the same setting I’ve played for the last two years at Gen Con (and which I hope to be able to continue later this year): Star Wars Episode LV (55). Basically, it’s a thousand years after Return of the Jedi, a time when House Skywalker has become Sith and established itself as rulers over the galaxy, where Coruscant is orbited by six Death Stars, when there are the stirrings of a new Rebellion to bring down the Skywalkers once and for all. They bought in, adding they wanted to play characters that were, instead of members of the fledgling Rebellion, part of the Sith side, and explore themes of vengeance and redemption.

Read more…

I leave for Puerto Rico again today, and frankly, I’m not sure how long I’ll be there. My Mom has been back in the hospital for some time now and she needs my help. This is one of those times when I wish I could clone myself, but alas, there’s only one of me, and back to the island I go.

Online access will be spotty, so please be patient if it takes me a couple days to get to something. And needless to say, most work stuff is on hold for the time being.

More updates later on.

Over the last few days, while I’ve been celebrating Passover, some big events have occured in the gaming world.

First of all, Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away late Tuesday, April 7. I made a post about wanting to know more about Dave on Wednesday, as I was finalizing my preparations for Passover, only to have the confirmation of his death hit the gaming world later that day. I have been gathering posts in a “To Read” bookmarks folder so that I can learn a bit more about Dave before I sit down and record a short special podcast episode, much as I did when Gary Gygax passed away last year.

What most hits me about Dave’s passing is that I have been reminded of how ignorant I am of the history of this hobby that I continually seek to make my business in some way, shape or form. Over the last year we have lost a handful of early luminaries in the hobby gaming field — Gary Gygax, Erick Wujcik and Dave Arneson being but three names that immediately come to mind — and really, aside from the fact that Gary and Dave made D&D, and Erick made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game, I know little to nothingabout their history in our hobby, and what their true legacy is. This is a very young field, barely past a generation in age, and yet we have no formal history documents while we have already begun to lose the early pioneers. Something needs to be done soon.

The thing that I’m most bothered about relates to the second set of big news, Wizards of the Coast’s decision to pull all PDFs from all sales outlets. Thanks to that, I cannot get any old Dave Arneson products to read and have for posterity. Thanks, WotC.

The whole Wizards PDF thing has me aching to sit down and record an episode of The Digital Front Podcast, but at the moment I simply do not have the time for personal/family reasons. I have been catching up on the industry’s reaction to that bonehead maneuver by offering a number of sales on PDF products. Some retailers have thrown a tizzy over the PDF sales, but at least one publisher (ah, Nicole, I know I can always count on you) has fired back, and another retailer has flat-out stated why PDFs are good for his brick-n-mortar store.

Perhaps once I am done dealing with my current family issue I’ll have time to properly digest all the information that has come out and perhaps pull in one or two guests to record a show on the topic (in fact, I am looking forward to). In the meantime, I continue to marvel at WotC’s decisions, hoping they will one day get anything dealing with a digital component right.

So Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D, is still with us, though in hospice. I pray for his health and for as best a time as G-d sees fit to grant him still.

I realized yesterday, though, when all the rumors about Dave’s passing were flying around, that as a gamer of more than 20 years, I know very little about Dave Arneson and his legacy in roleplaying games and in D&D specifically. Grognardia published an early In Memoriam yesterday that has some lengthy info on Dave’s place in gaming. I can’t thank James Maliszewski enough for that, but I’d like more (and James delivers with a Retrospective on The First Fantasy Campaign).

Before he’s gone, I would love to know more about this man who co-created the game that I so love and about whom I know very little. I am in no position to research such a blog post/podcast show right now due to Passover and travel next week, but if anyone out there is, and can do a post, or better yet, a podcast episode, to bring Dave out of “obscurity,” I would appreciate it tons, and I know many others would as well.

That card makes me laugh. 

Almost done getting ready for Passover. Today is a very hectic day which began early as we did morning prayers then took a moment to recite Birkat Hachmah, the blessing of the sun, a blessing recited only once every 28 years, at the time when the sun is in the position in the sky as it was created on the fourth day of Creation. The rabbi said some words after the blessing that stuck with me (I paraphrase):

G-d gave us science to understand this world He gave us, but science is limited by our senses, by what we can perceive with them. We also have something that transcends the senses, we have emunah (faith). We see that nature works as it should, like clockwork, and this is because G-d makes it so every day; so it is with our lives, which we lead day by day, but which are also overseen by G-d to work as they should.

He said it far more eloquently, but that is the gist of it. Today we blessed G-d for continuing the work of Creation, and tonight we will bless Him for having liberated us from Egypt. Just as Creation is made every day at every moment, so will tonight we be liberated as well from our personal and collective Mitzrayim (the Hebrew word for Egypt, which also means limitation).

I must run now to burn the chametz and get ready.

To all the Jews out there, especially to all my Jewish friends, whatever your level of observance, I wish to you a happy and kosher Passover (Pesach Kosher v’Sameach). Remember to try to eat some matzah tonight or tomorrow, and if you can attend a seder as well (find one near you at any Chabad).

See you on the other side of the Sea of Reeds!

Because Passover starts tomorrow night, I don’t really have the time these two news coming out of Wizards of the Coats last night deserve to be fully unpacked, and I especially don’t have time right now to record an episode of The Digital Front Podcast. That said, here are some quick thoughts.

WotC announced that they had sued eight people (in the US, Poland and Philippines) for piracy of their new D&D book, Player’s Handbook 2. Whatever outcome can come out of that, I actually find myself applauding WotC’s decision to file the lawsuits and make a statement and precedent. Piracy is a reality for any media these days, but it is nevertheless a crime, one that needs to be dealt with so that people will begin to associate that downloading a pirated book is the same as stealing it from Borders. If anyone in the Hobby Gaming Industry has the clout and resources to do this, it’s WotC, so I am quite intrigued how this will develop.

Of course, this announcement comes out at the same time as WotC decides to end all sales of their PDF products and to have them pulled from all stores, such as RPGnow.com (see image to the left), DriveThruRPG and Paizo.com. The reason? They cite piracy of their digital products as the reason for this drastic and quite sudden move. The internet is literally aflutter because of this (just check out Twitter and RPGBloggers.com for a sampling), and with good reason: it’s a poor idea.

I hate to point out the obvious, but eliminating PDFs from legitimate download sources only hurts the legitimate customers, the ones sending WotC quite a nice amount of cash on a monthly basis (considering WotC has consistently been one of the Top 3 vendors at RPGNow/DriveThruRPG), not the pirates. They already have copies floating around, and will continue to do so now that WotC has eliminated the legal sources. Add to that the fact that before PDFs were widely available, there were already scanned pirate copies of books running around, and the piracy argument looses steam really fast. This isn’t eldritch lore, folks; it’s business and marketing info that’s out there.

I write all this fully mindful of what happened with one of my previous mentions of WotC in my blog. I stand by it as well.

Of course, let’s not lose sight of this last quote in the news release:

WotC is apparently not ruling out digital delivery of its products using a different format or model. “We are exploring other options for digital distribution of our content,” the spokesperson said.

Considering how poorly the D&D Digital Initiative has been going (to wit: Gleemax cancelled, Character Builder delayed though now operational, Character Visualizer TBA, e-Tabletop Application TBA), bringing in the exclusive distribution of their own digital products makes a ton of business sense, though the way they are going about it is just dismal. It does continue their abysmal performance in the Public Relations arena during the D&D 4e era.

I look forward to more developments, and after Passover I’ll try to sit down and record with whatever info is available at the moment.