Moving Day Finds

At my day job we are all moving up a floor in my department.  No I am not getting a bigger office, but I am also not getting a smaller one.  But I did find a notebook of things I had started working on during Gen Con 2010 and then when I was at the repair shop after we got hit.

Not sure what is in it, I saw some 4e material, what looks like some notes on The Witch, and some Savage Worlds stuff.  Looking forward to seeing what I have.

ETA: Seems to have some Cortex and Pathfinder stuff as well.

White Dwarf Wednesday #70

White Dwarf for October 1985 feels like it should be ushering in a new era in WD.  It doesn't, at least not yet, but there is change coming.  We begin with a cool cover of a barbarian of some sort fighting an undead wizard or lich and his demonic concubine/familiar/slave in front of a golden idol.  Pretty cool.  The cover is by Brian Williams.

Our editorial is interesting since it covers the demise of Imagine.  I picked up the first dozen or so issues of Imagine myself and wanted to do a retrospective of them as well.  When James over at Grognardia was doing his I was hoping that the months we reviewed would have been close together to get a good idea of what was going on in 1983-1985 gaming wise, at least from a perspective outside my own local one and my own remembrances. But like Imagine, the retrospectives stopped short of their full potential.  Pity really.  Maybe I will pick up Imagine someday.   Ian waxes nostalgic as well.

White Dwarf had been over the last few issues moving into newer games, mostly Golden Heroes.  This issue though is a pretty firm "D&D" one.  We begin with Graemme Davis discussing literacy and languages in AD&D.  The rules he suggests are more complicated than what most of us would want to use today, but I can totally see people using this.

The Coven is a group of super villains for Golden Heroes and the focus of Heroes & Villains this issue.  The members are listed, but only one is detailed.  They are a bit (ok a lot) cliched, but for comic book/supers villains they are not so bad.  There are five members and each one takes on the name of some other mytho-historic figure (Morgan, Salome, Cain, Moloch and Maximilian).  With some tweaks they could be fun.

Crawling Chaos has a great article on converting 1920s Call of Cthulhu prices from American dollars to British Pounds, Shillings and Pence (Britain was not on a decimal money system till 1971).  This article seems quaint to us now, not just because we have Cthulhu by Gaslight, but also because such things are easy to find on the net now.  Heck even in the 10 years since I wrote Ghosts of Albion this stuff is easier to find (unless of course you happen to have the rates of inflation between 1837 and 1845 memorized).

Open Box does D&D this month.  The X modules are reviewed, X6, X7 and X8 as well as the AD&D DL5 module. Graham Staplehurst reviews all four giving them 8/10, 8/10, 8/10 and 6/10 respectively.  Megan Robertson, who still reviews today for DriveThruRPG reviewed The Lost Shrine of Kasar-Khan. It is an adventure for any FRPG (coughh*D&D*cough) and gets 8/10.  The AD&D Battle System for large battles is reviewed by Graeme Davis. He says it is a good system but maybe over priced.

We get a Golden Heroes and Champions adventure next, Reunion by Simon Burley.  I was never sure why Golden Heroes was given precedence over Champions.  Must have been a local thing.

Diane and Richard John discuss Bounty Hunters as a career in Traveller.  Pretty much every character I ever conceived of in Traveller was some sort of bounty hunter.

In Too Deep has nothing to do with the Phil Collins song out at the same time but an underwater AD&D adventure for 3-6 characters. The adventure is quite detailed and I am struck by how I could work this into the whole Saltmarsh series with some tweaks.
Following up on this is Part 3 of Beneath the Waves.  This issue covers Creatures of the Depths.

Treasure Chest pretends to be Fiend Folio this issue and gives us some monstrous NPCs, a lizard man, a stone giant and an intellect devourer.

Tabletop Heroes covers customizing minis.  My favorite is the saxaphone playing T-Rex.

Gobbledigook is now a full page. The last few pages are all ads.

All in all I like this issue and I hope it is signals some positive changes in the future of WD.  Looking ahead I think I will be pleased, but I know the changes are coming.

D&D Rules Cyclopedia is up on DNDClassics

The PDF of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia is now up on DNDClassics.com, DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/17171/D%26D-Rules-Cyclopedia-%28Basic%29?affiliate_id=10748

Hailed as the best "1 book" D&D ever it is the evolution of the BECM (no I in this one) game.

If you don't own this one now is your chance.

Everything you need to play D&D from young farm-boy or girl to Master of all you survey and plenty of challenges in between.  Maps of the world of Mystara are a nice touch too.

This is the one edition of D&D I wish I had played more.

July? That can't be right?

Today is July 1st.

Wait-What??  That can't possibly be right.

Work is kicking my ass at the moment (I just picked up a new school to re-design their entire curriculum) so I have not had the time for fun things since most nights have me working till about 11:00pm.

So the time I do have to work on things, around 6:00am after my morning run, I am usually too brain dead to come up with anything. In fact I have pretty much been staring at this screen (of and on) for the last 4 hours.

So....
Let's see.

Google Reader is dead, or soon will be.
I could get some reviews up while re-charging my creative batteries. I have been itching to review Monsterhearts and Otherverse America.

I have been thinking about picking up one of those Chromebooks to just use for game writing.  Though I love my MS Word and have been a user of it since Edition 1.1.  Google Docs, while nice, is just not the same.  Anyone use one of these?

Zatannurday: Northern Belle Cosplay

This week I found Northern Belle Cosplay on Facebook.
She is more famous for her various interpretations of Marvel's Rogue, but she does other cosplays as well.  Including a kick ass Zatanna.

Here are some of my faves.

Photography by Clint Adam Smyth

I think that this one is my favorite.

Photography by Clint Adam Smyth

Photography by Scott McCutcheon, Norm Cheung 

Photography: Robert Brown, Norm Cheung P.C.

You can also find her at http://www.kristaroguebenjamin.com/

Stop by her Facebook page.  She will have some prints up soon.

Why Plagiarism is a problem

So I wasn't going to go on (and on) about this, but I had a number things happen this morning that made me rethink it.  For starters I read this posting in my feed today about how plagiarism is a huge issue in the novel writing business.
http://authortammydenningsmaggy.com/2013/06/28/authors-stealing-from-authors-who-can-you-trust/

Then there was an unrelated Facebook posting about reporting plagiarism and piracy when you see it (I am not at liberty to link that though).

And this one has been sitting in my drafts now for a bit.
http://www.themidnightgarden.net/2013/01/plagiarism-in-ya-community-my-own.html

Then to top it all off I got a renewal notice today at work that my subscription to Turnitin was updated.

One thing we should do though is talk about what plagiarism is and what it means to the gaming community.
Look, there is no why to gloss this over, plagiarism is theft. It is the theft of ideas, or expressions or words and it still theft even if you can't touch it or feel it. It is intellectually dishonest and frankly arrogant.  
Turnitin actually has a nice infographic on the various types of plagiarism and how prominent they are in academics (the data they have).   http://www.turnitin.com/assets/en_us/media/plagiarism_spectrum.php.

The types of abuse we see most often are of the CTRL-C and Mashup variety (and I can think of a few cases of the 404 Error type).

We have had our share in the RPG world of late. So for the Tracey Alley types she used something and then tried to pass it off as her own.  If you are smart you there two things going on here. There is the willful use of someone else's ideas AND the arrogant presumption that it was ok to do so because no one was watching.   Somewhere below that is the Mykal Lakim types that try to pass of someone else's work as their own and then stubbornly and arrogantly defends their rights to do so. Where you might argue that in the first case she "forgot" (which I don't buy) where the map and names came from, in the second there is art and text lifted right out of other peoples work.  The Jim Shipmans of the world might be the worse, taking the material from multitudes of others and passing it off not only as his own, but selling it as his own against the repeated requests of the IP owners.

Now bringing these to light is never a good thing really. It causes animosity and even ends up putting money in the pockets of the people selling stolen goods.  Hell I have to admit I have wanted to shell out the bucks for a copy of Lakim's Vampire book just to see how bad it really is.  But I am loathe to give him any money.

The accusations of being an "internet bully" also come up.  To that I say, what else do we have? Getting the word out is the only recourse a fan has. If the above linked authors (and more I know personally) are to be believed they are very appreciative of the negative attention thrown on the thief.   Plus I have purchased books from authors and game designers because their material had been stolen as a show of support.  I have this blog and a little bit of cash to throw at the problem.

But people around here will say, but what about the OSR? Haven't they based their entire existence on plagiarism of one level or another? Well I do believe in Intellectual Property (and Intellectual Capital) but I also believe in community.  The OSR as a whole is a community using a set rules release specifically for the purposes of sharing and publishing your own materials based on it. This isn't a contradiction. Now I do feel that some products out there are a little too close to the source material. I also feel we simply do not need another retroclone to play the exact same game we have been playing for years.  But I also know market realities.  I could have released my Witch book for example using a proprietary game system and my sales would have been about 5% of what they were.  The OGL does the heavy lifting it also brings in an audience.

Sometimes I feel this is often more Quixotic than some of my other crusades or activism. And I am atheist that grew up in the bible belt, so you would think I'd know a hopeless cause when I see one.

I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Do I have a point or should I just go back to my windmills?

Review: Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts

Finally picked up Dyson's Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts.

Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts (MT&DP) is an Old-school reference for all things Magic-user.
The book is designed with what I call "Basic Era" in mind, so the rules from right around 1979-1981 where "elf" is a class, not just a race. Overtly it is designed for Labyrinth Lord.  That being said it is still compatible in spirit to 99% of all the OSR and books from that time.

The book itself is 6"x9", black and white interior and 161 pages.  So for a "Class" book there is a lot here.  There are 5 Chapters covering Classes, Spells, Magic Items, Monsters and a section on using this book with the "Advanced Era" books (and their clones), along with an Introduction and OGL page.

The introduction covers the basics.  What this books, what it is for and it's very, very open OGL declaration.

Chapter 1 is the heart of this book really.  It details 13 Magic using classes. The two two core classes, Cleric and Magic-User (Wizard) and 11 new classes.
From the product page:

• Cleric (warrior-priests)
• Wizard (classic magic-users with 10 levels of spells)
• Elven Swordmage (elves from the core rules – arcane warriors)
• Elven Warder (wilderness elves, guardians of their kin)
• Enchanter (artists, con-men, and masters of… duh… enchantments)
• Fleshcrafter (twisted magic-users that work with flesh)
• Healer (compassionate and tough hearth-healers)
• Inquisitor (ecclesiastic investigators and master intimidators)
• Merchant Prince (elite merchants with spellcasting support)
• Necromancer (you know exactly what these guys do)
• Pact-Bound (magic-users who sell their souls for power)
• Theurge (divine casters who learn from liturgical texts)
• Unseen (thieves with an innate knack for magic)

Clerics are as you know them, but Magic-Users are now Wizards (since everyone here is a magic user) and they get 10 levels of spells.  The "Elven" classes replace the "Elf" class in the book.  The others are as they are described, but there is more (much more) to them than re-skinned Magic-Users (not that there is anything wrong with wrong that).  The classes are re-cast with many new spells, some powers (but nothing out of whack with Basic Era) and often different hit-dice and altered saving throws.
Nearly a third of the book is made up in these new classes.

Chapter 2 covers all the spells.  Spells are listed alphabetically with class and level for each spell noted (like newer 3.x Era products).   There are a lot of spells here too.  Many have been seen in other products, but some are new. In any case they are a welcome addition.
This section makes up slight more than a third of the book.

The last three chapters take up the last third or so of the book.
Chapter 3 covers Magic items. There are 28 new magic items with these spellcasters in mind.
Chapter 4 covers some magical creatures.  These are monsters listed in many of the new spells for summoning.  There are not a lot, but needed.
Chapter 5 is the Advanced Edition conversion materials. It covers HD changes, racial limits and multi-class options.

So what are my thoughts.  Well you get a lot of material in 160+ pages to be honest.  At 10 bucks it is a good price.  For me it is worth it for the classes.  Sure we have seen variations of these over the years, but it is here all in one place and they all work well together.  The spells are good.  At first I balked at 10th level spells, but really they are for the most part other people's 9th level spells, so they work for me.

The magic items are nice, but for me the value is in the classes and the spells.

Who should buy this?  If you play old-school games and enjoy playing different sorts of Magic-Users then this is a must have book.  If you are looking to expand your class offerings or even add a few new spells then  this is also a good choice. Personally I think it is a great book and I am glad I picked it up.

Does it Play Nice with The Witch?
Honestly I debated doing this section since it is tacky really to use a review to pimp your own product.  But in this case I decided to do it for the simple reason that people who liked my book will find things to like in this book as well.  MT&DP works great with the Witch.  The obvious and easy cross-over are the spells.  Spells from one book can be used EASILY with the other.   So easy I would consider even putting up a list of the Witch book spells with the spell levels of the various classes.
There is some of that now for the Wizard and the Cleric, but the rest of the classes too.  In terms of classes the Pact Bound is closest in theme to the witch, so what is true for one is true for the other.
In fact you could take the Pact Bound and turn it into a Witch Tradition, say the Pact Bound Tradition.   The Pact Bound's "Twisted Gift" becomes the The Witch's "Occult Power".

I like that Dyson did more or less the same thing with the Wizard that I did in my book.  No surprises at all, it seems like the logical progression.

So I will say this. If you liked and use my book in your games, then this is a great book to have.  There is a enough overlap to make them complementary but not so much that you think you are buying the same materials twice.

Of course if you are reading this because you own MT&DP and don't yet have the Witch, then it would be a 5 bucks well spent!