D&D Keynote -- A Focus on Vision Rather than Hype

In prior years, the Gen Con presentations by Wizards of the Coast have focused on selling consumers on an upcoming product. The staff of wizards would present the upcoming year's product line up, or try to sell the audience that the latest edition or product line was the best invention since the dawn of role playing. This tendency hit its peak with the launch of 4th Edition in 2008. The prior year's presentation was filled with advertising buzzwords and alienated some gamers.

This year, Wizards of the Coast decided to try an entirely different tactic. They still provided presentations about product lines that gave gamers a look at what was coming out in the near future, but they also sponsored their first Keynote Address. During the address, Wizards of the Coast CEO Greg Leeds discussed the company's vision as it faced the challenge of providing consumers with "D&D Next." That vision was to ensure that Wizards worked with the most talented designers possible, and to make sure that the D&D brand was controlled by the most important individuals. Who are the most important individuals to D&D and the brand? The fans. The vision of D&D Next and the Future of D&D is to let the fans make D&D the game they want it to be.

Leeds' comments were brief and to the point.  He wasn't selling a line of products or attempting to build hype for D&D Next.  In fact, his portion of the presentation was very low key.  He was focusing on the vision of the "Future of D&D."

After his initial presentation, Kevin Kulp of EN World came onto the stage to talk with three people heavily involved with the production of what will be the next edition of D&D, an edition that according to Mike Mearls still faces 2 years of playtesting.  Mike Mearls -- the head of the design team -- was joined by Ed Greenwood and Jon Schindehette who are involved with the creative side of the development of the next edition of the game.  Ed is working on the literary elements and Jon on the visual elements, and both are working with the design team to ensure that the next edition will work for a broader number of fans than the last edition.

As can be discerned from the above commentary, the focus of Wizards' vision is on fan involvement.  This includes more than having the fans participate in a two and a half year open playtest, it also involves letting the fans influence the direction that future content evolves.

Mearls described D&D as "more than a game, it is a shared experience.  It is about drama, the table, the thrill of victory, and the agony of a natural one."  He also stressed that the point of D&D is the people, the DM and the Players.  D&D -- at least in earlier editions -- is the one game where the rulebook tells you to break the rules.  D&D Next will be about putting the rules behind us and letting the players tell the stories they want to tell.

As an example, the Forgotten Realms will be the first setting released for the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons and like in previous edition changes there will be a major event that shakes the world -- an event called "The Sundering."

The highlight of the event will be a series of six books by many of the big Realms authors:

R.A. Salvatore will write the first book in the series, THE COMPANIONS
Paul Kemp will write THE GODBORN
Erin M. Evans writes THE ADVERSARY
Richard Lee Byers writes THE REAVER
Troy Denning writes THE SENTINEL
Ed Greenwood writes THE HERALD

These books will give points of view of the events that make up "The Sundering," but unlike in  previous editions, the players and the results of the adventures they play in the Realms will now shape the future of the setting.

You read that correctly, no longer will the "Giants of the Realms" like Elminster, Drizzt, Khelben Blackstaff be the ones who shape the world.  Instead the campaigns that people play in -- at least those who use published adventures -- will shape the future of the official world.  Let's hope that Wizards is able to use the skills they gained from the old Living City experience, as well as by watching the development of Legend of the Five Rings, to make this work fluidly.

Additionally, and most excitingly, Wizards will be rolling out their full back catalog of D&D products in digital form.  Starting early next year, Wizards will release the first wave of digital products.  They are using the lessons they learned from producing the collector's editions of the AD&D books to inform the production of these digital offerings.  Good news indeed, as the old scans often seemed rushed.  Wizards won't release all the products in one lump sum, rather they will release them in waves.  This ensures quality and means that Wizards will officially be supporting all editions of D&D.  They will truly be supporting all fans, even those who won't play D&D Next.

I for one am excited about the "Future of D&D."

Gen Con:The Finest Four Days in Gaming Have Begun

Gen Con, one of the longest running hobby gaming conventions, celebrates its 45th anniversary this year and continues to provide its trademarked BEST FOUR DAYS IN GAMING.  The event opened to the public yesterday August 16 and will continue through Sunday, August 19.

If you've never been to Gen Con, it might surprise you to find out that it is as much a collection of creative workshops as it is a fan convention.  This stems from the fact that Gen Con has been deeply involved with the role playing game hobby since the very beginnings of role playing as a hobby, and as James Wallis wrote quoting the now famous game designer Greg Costikyan in Interactive Fantasy (IF) issue #2 back in 1994,  "gaming is a democratic form of entertainment, placing the audience and the creator on more or less equal footing."  This is true of most gaming, but it is especially true of role playing games where an expected part of play is the creation of new content -- either mechanical or narrative.  Since the early days of the hobby designers like Greg Stafford have been arguing that role playing games themselves are art, "Role-playing games are a new form of art, as legitimate as sculpture, drama, or prose fiction."  Gen Con is filled with events for those gamers who wish to become artists.

The Writer's Symposium contains over 70 events focused on the creation and marketing of genre fiction.

The Gen Con film festival -- and supporting "how to" panels -- keeps growing every year due to the democratization of film making tools. 

There are game design workshops a plenty, and a vibrant artist's gallery where new artists and established names share their work and their expertise.  The Miniature Hobby Events feature skilled miniature painting and provide over 60 workshops from those who want to learn more about painting, building terrain, and pursuing this artistic avenue.

In addition to the artistic and creative events, this year's event has a couple of highlights.

• As mentioned above, Gen Con is celebrating its 45th anniversary.
• The convention is also celebrating its 10th year in Indianapolis.
• Last year's event saw four-day turnstile attendance of more than 120,000 and this year's event is even bigger than last year.
• Thursday night featured a Keynote speech discussing the Future of Dungeons & Dragons.  It was the first time that Wizards of the Coast has provided a visionary Keynote address.
• More than 45 brand new games will be on sale at the convention -- form family games to card games and rpgs Gen Con is hobby gaming's version of E3.

There is something for everyone to do at this year's convention.  If you are in town, you definitely want to stop by.  If you aren't here this year, you might want to visit www.gencon.com and consider attending next year's event.

In Preparation for Gen Con, I Have Joined the BDCA Network

That's right, I am a certified member of the the Dungeon Bastard's own Badass Dungeon Crushers Association.

Unlike the many who have been Judged Unworthy due to caring about things like "acting" and "plot" and "fair-play," I am one of the elite!

As an Official Member, I am now entitled to:

• Smack talk any character at the table who is shorter than your character.
• Invoke your Badass Aura of Awesome which gives you 10 temporary hit points and a +2 to attack and damage for the next 2d4 rounds.
• Once per combat, declare any dice result you don’t care for to be a “cocked dice” and immediately re-roll.
• Ignore any phrase the DM says that does not include the words “initiative,” “armor class,” “damage,” or “treasure.”
• Respond to any inquiry about your health, well-being, or mental state with the simple, muttered rejoinder of: “I’m crushing it.”

Barbarian Rage!

You Got Your TWILIGHT in My Fighting Fantasy Style Gamebook, and I'm Glad.

When I purchased An Assassin in Orlandes, the first of Tin Man Games Gamebook Adventures, I did so out of a nostalgia for the old Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson and other excellent books in that genre.  I had recently acquired my first smart phone and was impressed that many of the old Fighting Fantasy books were available for purchase.  It was nice to revisit the books that along with Tunnels and Trolls solos had been my proxy game group during my middle and early high school years.  During that time, I was only able to play role playing games sporadically and the game books were a great substitute.  The smart phone versions brought back fond memories, even if it was harder to finish an adventure where one couldn't "accidentally" read future entries for clues.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, and their eventual competitors, became a huge phenomenon.  One thing they never managed to do was expand their audience beyond certain market sectors which were mostly male readers.  TSR made a brief attempt at expanding the demographic with their Heart Quest books, but they didn't catch on for various reasons.

With the smart phone and the transition to ebooks, the gamebook has seen a resurgence.  One of the leading publishers in this resurgence is Tin Man Games, and with good reason.  When I began playing An Assassin in Orlandes, just to see how this "small upstart's Fighting Fantasy competitor" would fare, I was impressed with the thoughtfulness that went into the production. The book had a compelling narrative, a fun little game system (that also allows for a little "tilting" of die rolls which is a nice touch), and even had "Achievements" that could be earned by successful and unsuccessful play.  In short, it was clear that Tin Man was going to be big.  Their success continued with the acquisition of the license to produce future Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, taking them from competitor to partner, and the acquisition of the Judge Dredd license.  I've been playing around with their Judge Dredd gamebook app, and it is quite fun -- more on that later. 

Tin Man really seems to know what they are doing, and they are also doing what publishers should have been doing during the first boom.  They are expanding the pool of potential gamebook players.  While we geeks might be precious to protect our hobbies from "fakes," "hipsters," or "sparkly vampires," as John Scalzi points out -- we shouldn't be.  Whoever wants to be a geek should be allowed to be, and they should be welcomed into our hobbies with open arms.  One of the things that I've learned from living in Southern California is that everyone is a geek.  That's right...everyone.  Disneyland's profits are based on the premise, and have been working for years.  Walk around Disneyland one day as an observer of people.  What do you see?  People from all walks of life joyously expressing their love and affection for fantasy, science fiction, and cartoons.  It is a place where they let down their pretentious guard and allow themselves to have fun.  And that is what being a geek is about.  It is about never loosing the "Golden Age of Science Fiction is 14" attitude and making the Golden Age of Science Fiction right now.  The same is true for comic books, role playing games, or whatever else you geek out about.  When Vampire the Masquerade hit the gaming hobby, I remember those who wrong-mindedly poo pooed Goths coming into our hobby playing their "weepy Goth Anne Rice game."  While others were doing that, I was meeting some great friends who it eventually turned out happened to be willing to try playing Warhammer 40k and Globbo.  Trust me, if you can get someone to play Globbo you've won the pop-culture wars and I credit White Wolf with getting Vampire fans who would never think of playing Globbo in the first place to try it out.  VtM was the gateway game that lead to more gaming for a lot of people.

It appears that Tin Man Games is trying to give fans of the Twilight books and Vampire Diaries a gateway gamebook into my favorite hobby with Strange Loves: Vampire Boyfriends.  This is something we should be praising.  After all, how far is it from Vampire Boyfriends -- a book with game mechanics -- to Vampire the Masquerade?  And as I've mentioned already, Vampire the Masquerade can lead to Twilight Imperium play.

Check out Tin Man's book trailer for their new book Vampire Boyfriends, the first in the Strange Loves series.

 

You know what?  I think I might just pick up a copy of this book/game.

Nintendo and Why I Love Minor League Baseball

Bull Durham is one of the best baseball films ever made.  It's one of the classics like Major League, Bang the Drum Slowly, For the Love of the Game, Fear Strikes Out, and Pride of the Yankees (not a complete list by any means).  One of the things that separates it from those other films is that it is a story about Minor League baseball players who play for the Durham Bulls.  The Bulls are currently Tampa Bay's Triple A affiliate, but were an Atlanta Braves Single-A team at the time of the film.  The film's protagonist "Crash" Davis is a long time minor league veteran who had been playing AAA and is sent down to Single-A to season a pitching phenom.

"Crash" may be the protagonist, but the Minor Leagues are the spotlight character of the film.  If you follow the background dialogue, you get to hear about many of the unique events and promotions that happen in the minors.  Taco nights, Little League Nights, "Clowns of Baseball," hot dog eating contests, and a lot of other classic small town activities abound in their mentions.  Add to that baseball that is played at a level much better than most of us ever played the game, but clumsy in comparison to the play in "the show" and you have a perfect demonstration of why baseball continues to capture the American imagination.  Yes, home runs in the Majors and phenoms like Mike Trout are awe inspiring to watch, but games played by the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes which open with FUNTAINMENT are Americana at its best.  They are filled with hope, inspiration, and the delusion that if we'd only listened to our High School coaches a little more often, that we too might have a fun career.  As Willie Stargell said,  "It's supposed to be fun, the man says 'Play Ball' not 'Work Ball' you know.

And fun is what it looks like the players of the Dunedin Blue Jays are having.  They recently qualified for the playoffs, and have taken this as an opportunity to create a unique season highlight video.  They have created a fictional Nintendo Entertainment System baseball game that depicts their recent accomplishment.  The video is a good deal of fun, and shows once more why I love Minor League Baseball.

It brings back memories of the 8-Bit version of the infamous Bill Buckner World Series moment.

13 Game Books You Must Own

A couple of years ago, I blogged about how every gamer should own a copy of Rick Swan's Complete Guide to Role Playing Games.  I still agree with this sentiment, but I would like to share another 13 books that every gamer should add to their library.  I'll be blogging about these books over the next few weeks, but I thought it would be good to point them out as a group now.  That way, we can hopefully talk more specifics later as I hope some of you will add a couple of these titles to your library if you haven't already.  These will by no means be the last books I mention, they just happen to be the handful that I grabbed off the shelf today.

Every gamer has an aspiration to design, and to design one must know what has gone before and get some sense of place within the hobby.  The following books are a great place to start:

1. Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons: If you want a good glimpse of the game that launched our hobby, or at least the market for our hobby, this is a great place to start.  It is a "propaganda" piece, but it's still quite good.  I'll talk more about the strengths and weaknesses of this book when I get around to its post.
2. 40 Years of Gen Con: Robin Laws and Michelle Nephew give us a good collection that discusses the biggest gaming con in America.
3. The Complete Book of Wargames: Jon Freeman (aka John Jackson) gives an excellent overview of the War Game hobby at a time when that hobby was in an early transition.  By the late 80s, this hobby was nearly dead.  Today?  It likely has more players than ever, but its marketplace is very different.
4. The Fantasy Role Playing Gamer's Bible: Sean Patrick Fannon's excellent entry into the "so this is role playing and you should love it" library.  Try to get the purple 1st edition, the stick figure cartoons make the book.
5. Game Design -- Theory and Practice vol. 1:  There is no volume 2 to this book by Steve Jackson Games, but this is an essential addition to anyone's library.
6. Wargame Design: If you want to know the history of the gaming hobby, from its early Wargaming roots, this is a must own book.  The staff of SPI give a great overview of the hobby's founding, and present some good design guidelines.
7. A Player's Guide to Table Games: This is a great book to get your friends to bridge the gap from "mass market" games into "hobby games."  John Jackson (aka Jon Freeman) reviews and discusses everything from Monopoly to Sniper and the Sid Sackson revolution.  This book helps to demonstrate the Sackson/Euro link. 
8. Family Games -- The 100 Best:  This is one of two books that end up with 200 recommendations that every gamer should have in their library.  Trust me, these books provide a great "core" collection.
9. Hobby Games -- The 100 Best:  This is the second of the 100 Best books, and it contains titles that are less mainstream than in Family.  You should own every game in this book.
10. Heroic Worlds:  This book is a very good overview of the role playing game hobby as of the early 90s.  It is a vital research resource, and a good checklist for completists.
11. The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming: Nicholas Palmer's essential introduction to the war game hobby.  It includes an overview of systems, and some puzzles to work out.
12. The Best of Board Wargaming:  A second book by Palmer.  This one contains more detailed reviews of games, and a good discussion of Simulation vs. Playability.
13. The Playboy Winner's Guide to Boardgames: Jon Freeman's reprint of John Jackson's book, and why I believe they are the same person.  You'll definitely read this one for the prose, as there are no pictures.  This book extends the discussion in Player's Guide to include RPGs and Squad Leader -- thus includes essay regarding Playability vs. Simulation.

Fear, Dread, Imagination, and Pennies

One of the first lessons that I learned as the father of twins is that parenting is largely comprised of two emotional states, fear and dread.  The sense of dread at the nigh infinite array of terrible events that can befall vulnerable babies and toddlers is a constant.  It is the background music of parenting.  Fear is the musical stings, the cat scream in horror movies if you will, that jumps out at you and gets your adrenaline pumping.  Fear is what parents experience when their toddlers, who have just barely begun to walk, meander toward sharp objects and stairways.

In short, being a parent is exhausting.  Surprisingly so, even during moments in which not much really seems to be happening.  Fear and dread find a way to sap whatever energy you thought you might have.  I can't imagine how parents coped before caffeine.

All of that might make it seem like being a parent is a joyless chore.  Quite the contrary.  Much like a great horror film, one finds oneself almost inexplicably finding the fear and dread to be the most enjoyable emotions possible.  Only two things seem more pleasurable.  The joy a parent shares with his/her partner when the toddlers do something completely silly, being the first.  The second?  I think this picture is all that is needed to explain the second extremely pleasurable part of being a parent.

There are also moments which combine fear/dread with completely silly activities.  Jody and I recently encountered one of these.  Our daughters History and Mystery (shown above) are wonderfully creative young girls.  I have written before of how they have adapted Candy Land into a gingerbread man's journey to visit Hello Kitty and Boxie for some tea.  They have also recently turned bath time into Water Bending practice.  I'm sure that they'll be giving Korra a run for her money very soon.

Recently, History and Mystery decided that they wanted to develop superpowers like their brothers Superman and Iron Man.  They decided that a key to acquiring superpowers was to suck on a penny.  Doing so, they assured us much later after things went very awry, would give them stronger teeth and aid them in battling "sugar bugs."  To advance their plan, they scrounged a penny and began alternating who was allowed to suck on it.  First Mystery and then History, hand off, repeat.  They did all of this while they were playing "quietly" in their room.  Which should have given Jody and me suspicions that something was going horribly wrong, as quiet signals a rule #1 violation.

Parenting rule #1:  If play time is actually quiet, then something is going horribly wrong.

In this case, the something wrong was History swallowing a penny.  I think by the description of the twins' master plan to create an origin story, you probably guessed this is what happened.  Needless to say, History's throat hurt.  Jody commanded me to immediately go online to find which of the local hospitals was on our insurance plan, and began collecting as much information as possible regarding how History felt.

A trip to the hospital and three X-rays later, History acquired Wolverine-esque Copper and Zinc laced bones as the penny reacted with the X-ray machines photonic emanations...

Oh, wait.  That's not what happened.  The X-rays happened, all three of them, and they located the penny.  It had already wandered down to her stomach, which meant a couple of days of waiting before we located the penny during one of History's potty breaks.  She kept expecting to "pee" it out, but it came out in a more conventional manner -- which I won't attempt to describe.

Thankfully, nothing terrible happened.  There was no permanent damage.  But as Jody and I would rather not experience anything like this ever again, we had a long conversation with History and Mystery regarding not eating things that mommy and daddy don't say are okay to eat.  The girls aren't Matter Eater Lasses, after all.

It's a joy raising highly imaginative twins, but it does make for quite a roller coaster.  The film Parenthood was correct about parenting being a roller coaster, thankfully Jody and I were coaster junkies when we were younger.