Over the Edge Bundle

Over the Edge was one of the best of the 90's era of gaming, a weird minimalist game system about surreal adventures in the vein of Burrough's tales of Interzone, on the enigmatic island of Al'Amarja. There's a ton of PDFs now available for around $17 (at last check) over on the Bundle of Holding. OtE remains one of my favorite games that I've inexplicably never actually run....I think it was a game ahead of its time, and Atlas would do well to consider properly re-releasing it in a new edtion in this era where indie and experimental RPGs are all the thing now.

Shopping Around: Price comparing Nook vs. Kindle storefronts

Some discussion has been had on more than one occasion about the issue of pricing in the Nook and Kindle stores. The general consensus is that the Barnes & Noble storefront for Nook is more expensive on average, and the Kindle usually has slightly better prices across the board. I thought I'd put this to the test with a comparison of books in both storefronts.

To make this work I'm going to compare three sets of titles: popular current titles, new titles, and obscure titles. I tend to buy heavily from option #3 (obscure) and as a result may see more savings on average with Kindle than Nook....or so my buying experience suggests. So lets get on with this!

1st Comparison: Popular Current Titles

For this entry I'll look at the "top listings" for each store and pick a sampling based on subject mater: sci fi/fantasy for our purposes will be the control measure, using the top seller listings on each site as of 1/3/14. To qualify each book below must be on one of the two top seller lists:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card: Both Kindle and Nook list it for $3.99.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: $4.99 on Nook, $3.99 on Kindle.

A Song of Ice & Fire Five Book Set: $19.99 on Kindle, but $28.47 on the Nook. Interestingly, the Nook has the four-book Nook set for $34.99.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss $6.74 on Kindle and $6.74 on Nook.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. Kindle has this listed for $7.69 but the one-volume Lord of the Rings set for $10 (bwuh?) while Nook has the same exact prices, including a $10 one-volume set.

Result One: the prices match, with a couple exceptions. Kindle comes out ahead a bit due to Martin's books.

2nd Comparison: New Titles

For this entry I look at "newly listed" to see how the prices on these shiny new tomes appear. The source is this and this list as of 1/3/14. To be on this list it must appear on at least one of the two new lists, and be available now or preorder in both stores. Bias of Note: I am excluding any book that looks like a "urban fantasy vampire chick" novel from the test set:

The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks. $13.99 on the Nook and $11.84 on the Kindle.

Words of Radiance by Brian Sanderson. $12.74 Kindle edition and $14.99 Nook edition.

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (fyi this book sounds very cool). $13.99 Nook and $10.99 Kindle edition.

Halo: Mortal Dictata by Karen Traviss. $9.99 Nook edition vs. $8.89 Kindle edition.

The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor Part I by Robert Kirkman. $11.99 Nook edition vs. $9.83 Kindle edition.

Result Two: It's like this across the board....in terms of new, Kindle really wants your dollars, and B&N hasn't quite figured this out apparently.

3rd Comparison: Obscure Titles

I am a master of the obscure, as I expect many tabletop gamers are. What follows are a sample of my library, taken from both the Nook and the Kindle, for comparison:

Heavy Metal Pulp: Pleasure Model by Robert Vardeman. $7.59 on Kindle and $7.99 on Nook.

Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. $7.59 on Kindle and $8.99 on Nook.

Resident Evil: City of the Dead by S.D. Perry. $6.59 Kindle vs. $7.49 Nook.

Weird Space I: The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown. $4.61 on Kindle and $5.49 on Nook.

Punktown by Jeffery Thomas. $5.99 on Nook vs. $3.99 on Kindle.

I tried comparing recent favorites of mine such as Zombie Pulp and The Hive both by Tim Curran but they aren't even on the Nook store it turns out.

Result Three: the Nook isn't as interested in discounting these mostly obscure titles. The selection I picked was random, but I could unfortunately just keep listing and listing and listing...and it would still be the same; virtually all these obscure titles are a bit cheaper on the Kindle.

The question I might pose to those who self-publish and release books through both storefronts is: why is this? What policy is in place that ends up with a higher mark-up on the ebook at B&N than at Kindle? Do authors and publishers have much control of their pricing, and does Nook have a more difficult "discounting structure" than the Kindle, assuming that's a tool available to publishers? Is it just a market share issue? According to a recent article Amazon holds a 67% market share....could this be the reason?

The Final Resident Evil 6 Review: The Ada Wong Campaign

It has at last come to this. After three other reviews, along with a re-evaluation of the original review of the Leon Kennedy campaign when Capcom graciously patched the game in with a "casual" mode (read: mode for guys over age 35 with nominal reflexes) I have at last gotten around to finishing the final campaign in Resident Evil 6: the unlockable Ada Wong campaign.

Disclosure: This version is based on the PC edition, single player mode, with Casual on to make it a pleasant experience rather than a gruelling nightmare of hate and bile. There will be spoilers, too. This campaign is the one that ties the other three together, cleans up the plot holes and in fact makes the entire storyline make sense.

Ada Wong has been with the RE universe since Resident evil 2 when she was engaging in some industrial espionage, trying to steal the G virus. As it turns out, the whole reason for RE6's events boil down to two factors: a madman Mr. Simmons in charge of Homeland Defense who decides to manufacture bioweapons to keep his job viable, and one of those bioweapons turning on him: Carla, the C-Virus created clone of Ada Wong who, it turns out, spends much of the game sowing havoc and confusion for the other lead characters.

Ada Wong is brought into the fray when Simmons apparently decides to brag about what he's done, and perhaps get Ada to dispatch the rogue Carla for him. Ada begins piecing together the torrid puzzle of deceit, treachery and betrayal as she weaves through her own story bits as well as the portions of the other campaigns, interacting with all the major protagonists along the way. She's conveniently wearing a tight red and black suit, so if you play the other campaigns and notice that Ada shows up in either a purple blouse or a red blouse then you know which one (Carla-Ada-clone or real Ada) is onscreen at the moment.

Without giving too much away, Ada helps everyone out while tracking down her clone, then escapes her clone after Carla overdoses on C-Virus, then she helps put Simmons down and at last finds Carla's secret labs where she started the chaos and wipes it out. The journey (on easy mode) is actually quite fun. The most interesting part of the experience for me was seeing how Ada gets around when everyone else in the game is trudging along the hard way, one street or building infested with BOWs (bio-organic weapons) at a time. Ada uses the startlingly effective grappling hook to grab onto situationally specific key spots and keep her pace measured and overhead most of the time. She spends a lot of time up in the rafters snipe assisting Leon, or maybe in a helicopter (one of the few pleasant in-vehicle experiences in the game).

The campaign, despite revisiting many spots where she appeared in other tales of RE6 does not feel stale or rehashed; it's got its own pace and rhythm, and Ada's style carries through well. Ada actually gets to stop and deal with the occasional puzzle, something sorely missing from the other campaigns. The game does suffer a bit in that, like the rest of RE6, it's ultimately a structured linear corridor shooter heavily disguised to look like something else; you do have a few hub spots where you get some freedom of movement, but the game's linearity is still the underpinning of the design.

There are many other ways that RE6 could have been designed, and I hope that RE7 takes this into consideration. It is a fun game, and it does far better that Resident Evil 5 (imo) at evoking survival horror, but it also is a long way from the original premise and style of Resident Evil, something that is perfectly attainable in today's game design as demonstrated by Resident Evil: Revelations.

As a side note, I've played a fair amount of the multiplayer game options, and they are fun. Not "you have got to play this" sort of fun, but "I like RE and this scratched an odd little itch" kind of fun. If you have a choice of editions to play go for the PC Steam version, since it adds the Left4Dead 2 crew and monsters to the multiplayer.

It's been more than a year since RE6 was released, and I've played it in fits and spurts over that period. My initial foray into the game was excitement mixed with disappointment and irritation, but with the patches adding in casual mode, a way to pause, and cleaning up some odd bits, followed by the PC version (the superior version to play) it made the game worthwhile for RE fans. Given that you can find it for $20 or less now, it's hard not to recommend the game to those looking for something with a lot of cinematic action and a little homage to survival horror mixed in.

That said, I really think Capcom needs to think carefully about what the next iteration of the franchise is going to look like. There's a lot of competition out there, from Outlast to Slenderman and State of Decay, and Resident Evil can still pull off real Survival Horror in its own unique way without compromising its overall identity. RE6's greatest current competition is it's own sister title, RE: Revelations, and RE7 needs to be built with that in mind.

A-

Review - Monsters of Legend II

I finally picked up the PDF edition of Mongoose publishing's Monsters of Legend II. Last year was both great and terrible for BRP/D100 system players: it was a year with Runequest 6, Legend, Magic World, BRP, and Open Quest 2, not to mention the inception of the (late, of course) Call of Cthulhu 7th edition Kickstarter. There has literally never been a better time to be a fan of the overarching game system under which all these games loosely fit. The terrible part is the same problem: too much stuff! Decision paralysis over which iteration of the game to play can be a terrible burden, something D100 fans are not used to.

One of the perks of the BRP/D100 mechanic is that it's very consistent in its basic terminology; every version of the game to date uses the same array of stats and percentile skill system, and most of the tweaks boil down to how skill rolls are handled and combat is resolved. As a result, you can almost universally port any stat block from one edition of the game into another with minimal fuss, just tweaking the stat block by adding or deleting the specific set of info you need to make it work for whichever ruleset you're working with.

Because of this: Monsters of Legend II isn't just a useful monster resource for Mongoose's OGL-based Legend rules system, it's also a useful book for Runequest 6, BRP, Magic World and perhaps even Open Quest 2 (the only version of the game I don't currently own, although I plan to rectify that).

Monsters of Legend II is a 183 page sourcebook of new monsters for Legend. The format of the entries is fairly straight forward: each monster gets a page or more of background details and description, a one page stat block, and many entries then get one page for an illustration. The book includes details on 61 new monsters, as well as some discussion on creatures of the planes,a concept new to Legend (and BRP) as presented here.

A note about the art: Mongoose has a pretty large portfolio of stock art to choose from, but so far as I can tell all the art in this book is new. It ranges from average to pretty good; none of it is quite as good as the Runequest 6 art, but the book's got its own distinct look and the black and white line art will be very comfortable to old school gamers. In sharp contrast with some prior MGP products I did not detect any gratuitious pulchitrude, anywhere. Shocking!!!!

The monsters in this book are all new to Legend (although I think a couple may have previously appeared in some other tomes, such as Necromancy for RQII; others may have come from D20 resources, but I could not say for sure), and fill in some distinct flavor for the system, which right now has the distinction of being extremely generic in presentation, allowing GMs to make of the game what they want. If you're interested in a medley of weird undead, strange planar creatures, some odd fey and an occasional dungeon denizen MoL II has much to offer. Here's a quick run-down on what the book provides:

Alchemical Duplicate - a wizard creation, a hardened doppelganger of the targeted blood donor. Think "mentally challenged life model decoy with possible rage issues."

Amber Animals - creatures fused with the spirits of animals and plants made from amber.

Anachra - this includes several subtypes; Anachra are planar guardian servitors, and bear a slight resemblance to archons and other beings from D20. One gets the impression they are the equivalent of seraphs or angels, as they are aligned against evil, but the array is fairly diverse, with a cat anarchon, chain anarchons (chain-fighting butt-kickers for freedom), hammer anarchons (purveyors of conflict), herald anarchons (sort of a race of Hermes/Mercury types), storm anachrons (embodiment of righteous fury). The only negative here is that the text uses both anachra and anarchons as plural forms.

Barrow Trolls - bigger, nastier trolls with an aspect of death about them, now with 100% less Glorantha in them.

Black Shuck - sort of a ghostly haunted hound that emits deadly vaporous gasses.

Bladeleaf - evil fae pixies that are very "unseelie" and autumn-aspected. Utilize toxins and spells conjuring a storm of razor sharp leaves. I like 'em.

Bonecracker Ogres - if you thought the conventional Runequest ogre was a wimpy doppelganger, and the generic Legend ogre just a big orc, then these guys are right up your alley.

Candleman - these chaos beasts are really cool, men made of wax, whose burning flame represents their trickling life force.

Citywarden - the living embodiment or spiritual guardian of a old city. This is a cool concept, somewhere between "humongous poltergeist" and "city golem" in its execution, a protective spirit which protects its ancient living city.

Dissolute - if you are slain by an ooze while tainted this is what happens to you. Sort of the Legend stat version of the freaky zombies from the end of Planet Terror.

Dungeon Stalker - freaky ceature which was, if the legends are to be believed, formed from the oldest era of adventurers who delved deep into the earth, but were unable to return to the surface. They...changed....and now they hunt. Particularly enjoyable is the text description of their appearance vs. the picture, which both evoke a strong sense of "what the holy crap is that?!?!?"

Emergents - these planar elementals are a more conventional non-Gloranthoid version of elemental beings, including all four elements.

Eyeless - creepy otherworldly humanoids with dark sockets where the eyes should be. They have a haunting presence and can steal the eyes of their victims. The background on these monsters is very evocative; it makes me want to run a campaign with eyeless as a key foe asap.

Fingferfetch - undead evil strangling hands formed from the spirits of dead thieves.

Flaygaunt - flesh-flaying ghoulish humanoid carrion eaters,with a great illustration attached. They are reminiscent of the weird flesh-devouring beasts from the movie Beast Master, crossed with a cenobyte. Another favorite of mine in this book.

Harpooner - the Legend version of the piercer!

Headless Screamer - the hideous cross between the Headless Horseman and a fast zombie, these are some nasty variant undead that shake up the formula a bit, with hideous screams and head-tossing goodness mixed in.

Hearthfire Elemental - a variant on the kitchen god concept, an elemental that has taken residence in a home stove, hearth or fireplace. This, along with the citywarden, are examples of a special kind of grief monster, I believe, which depends on games like Legend/Runequest with stronger thematic ties to village/town/city raiding as a Thing adventurers sometimes do when they get all horde-like on the campaign.

Knockers - diminutive gnomelike beasties with earthwalking traits.

Lighting Elementals - exactly what you would think.

Living Ghouls - a nice non-undead weird Lovecraftian ghoul, carriers of a corpse-rupturing disease.

Mesmeric Specrtre - a domination-themed ghost which has bargained with its afterlife tormentors to be allowed freedom for a short time to harvest more souls for them. One of the better illustrations in the book, too.

Mirror Ghost - a hideous spirit bound into a mirror which is shattered the moment it commits suicide. Lots of glass shard attacks as a theme.

Mirthless - vile undead formed by necromancers to prey upon tomb robbers.

Nightrenders - a hideous monkey-man-cat that steals between shadows.

Oakstumps - stout little fey who are fond of lumberjacks and forest-trimming.

Parched Zombies - formed from those who died of thirst while wandering the desert these zombies can steal the moisture from their prey.

Platinum Unicorn - a planar unicorn, the platonic ideal of its kind. Designed to kick evil's ass.

Plundering Undead - piratical undead which would be very useful in a Pirates of Legend campaign.

Ragged Wraith - the undead spawned from those who were drawn, quarterered and/or mutilated at death.

Razorfiend - another monster made of pure awesomeness. These hideous planar beings were believed to be demonic constructs that became their own race. They are made entirely of razor edges, and their actual mass exists in another dimension entirely. They are capable of making everything around them sharper.

Root Guardian - the Swamp Thing of the Legend universe, now with more Druid Goodness.

Sanctified Defender - a grief monster, which the GM can use to attack players who trash temples for no good reason.

Sapphire Beetle - another planar elemental creature.

Searfellow - a heat-elemental of sorts.

Sentinels - more cool concepts ahead. The sentinels remind me of the ancient colossi in Shadow of the Colossus (a video game from the PS2 days) merged with the Titans of old. These ancient beings predate all other beings, and are literally the montains and other great monuments of the world. If you are fighting one then your campaign has probably jumped the shark.

Swamp Giants - large swamp hillbilly ogres.

Thing in the Lake - that creature in the water before Moria's Gates which tried to eat Frodo and co.

Thornsprite - even tinier and more evil fey fairies!

Thunderbirds - quasi elemental storm birds with weather mastery and thunderbolts.

Trash Rat - if you wanted ratkin in Legend, here they are. Trash rats are here for the enjoyment of everyone who ever wanted to play an anthropomorphic rodent.

Unraveller - sometimes known as the "End Boss" these are the antithesis of the sentinels, the creatures at the end of time which will unmake reality. Aside from the awesomeness their concept evokes, they are insanely powerful and aimed at legendary heroes as the sort of epicenter of an entire campaign. Or the ultimate grief monsters, your choice.

Vein - a hideous beast that looks like a mobile venuous circulatory system in action. Lots of blood-drenching powers.

Volcano Giant - that guy the villagers sacrifice virgins to.

Wastedwellers - remote humanoid race that is evoacative of Sand People from Star Wars.

Widowshark - ancient, pure evil sharks.

Windwarriors - air elementals who have learned to fight with sword and shield.

Wintersinger -a cold themed undead formed from those who die of frostbite and exposure in the cold.

Wise Hare - okay, I love this one. the wise hares are an anthropomorphic race of sturdy hares, who are ripped straight from the tradition of humanoid animal fiction. The wise hares, however, must survive in the dangerous human-and-monster dominated world of Legend, so they are a bit skittish. Runequest may have it's ducks (well, sort of....RQ6 sort of hid them) but Legend officially has its wise hares.

Withering Cadaver - a creepy half-formed undead that comes about when a more powerful undead's attempted creation fails. It likes to pull the flesh from its prey.

Woodsong - benevolent halfling-like fey with a strong penchant for music integrated with magic. Also the first friendly fey in the book, I think.

Wyrdling - a divine benefactor who seeks out reluctant heroes to give them a "push" in the right direction. A nice roleplay-centric creature.

So overall a nice selection of monsters, and a number of stand-out gems. Regardless of which edition of the BRP/D100 system you play I think you would find this useful, though the easiest versions to use it with will be, of course, Legend and RQ6. The book also has the distinction of making Legend's array of creatures more unique and distinct; the creatures in this book help solidify Legend as its own entity, a universe apart from its forebear. Well worth the time to pick up if you are a fan of monsters, and a fan of D100 systems!

All art in this article is from the MoLII book.

The Perils of Online Ordering: a bitch session

Source!

Warning: grumpy time ahead!

It was a weird holiday season for ordering online. I ordered a mess of books from Onebookshelf (rpgnow.com) and received them all with only a couple arriving after Xmas. Oddly, their publishing (Lighting Source) sent the books out to me as printed, so I received all five books in five different packages. Somehow this seems....inefficient, but hey, I got them in a pretty timely manner as POD goes.

Back in the beginning of November I placed an order for Chaosium, two of their newer fiction compilations (because Chaosium still hasn't gotten on the ebook bandwagon) and one physical print edition of BRP Mecha. Two weeks in and the order was still sitting at "in process." Tried emailing Aaron at Chaosium...his email bounced and their Mailer Daemon was explaining that he doesn't accept email anymore. Tried contacting literally all other available emails on their site and no one responded to me. Put a Paypal dispute in before a month was up (Paypal's witching hour for refunds), and the order magically went from "pending" to "complete." The package showed up the day after I escalated to a claim. Is Chaosium having some staffing issues? Poor online communication is a bad idea, especially during the holidays, and during their sale events (they had one three weeks after I placed my order, which was still absent, so that was just a smattering of bitterness on top of the rest, waiting so long for an order that I literally had it rubbed in my face that I had paid full price for stuff I could have gotten for cheaper in the interim. Sigh)

Then there is Paizo. First they have big sales and get overwhelmed with the response. On the plus side Paizo's customer service is excellent and quick to respond to queries. On the other hand, I put an order in on December 12th and it's nowhere near being completed as of today. Especially awkward because they don't charge you until it ships, which is both a pro (if you're a good book keeper) or a con (if you aren't and then forget they haven't charged you yet). I'm a reasonably good book keeper, but a floaty pending payment for over a month is more than my good accounting sense can take, so this makes two orders in a row from them I've requested a cancellation on because I can't figure out why you can go almost a month with no update on the order. In the world ruled by Amazon, this is just bizarre. Yeah...Amazon does have issues at times, but 95% of my ordering from them has been spot on and quick. UPDATE: Just as I sent them an email to cancel I finally got an email saying the order was shipping. Go figure! So maybe I'll get my Shackled City and Art of Dragon books after all...

One shining light in all this: Lulu, which took three days to print six books including a 448 page monstrosity from Mutant Epoch's latest module, and which sent them cheapo-rate and arriving another five days later. Yay for lulu.

Whew, got all that off my chest!

2014: The Gaming Resolutions

Sure, I've got plenty of Real World resolutions but this is primarily a gaming and SF/F culture blog so here are my resolutions for 2014 as relates to my hobbies and interests:

#10 - Play more GURPS

I like GURPS. I tend to get discouraged when I think too hard about the "time to play vs. time to prepare" component, but the truth is, as often as I get to play games that are not D&D and not Pathfinder GURPS is a fantastic game system for my needs.

#9 - Finally get a chance to run a Mutant Epoch Campaign

Mutant Epoch is an amazingly retro yet complex game which evokes the stuff I liked about Gamma World while coming in a fantastic, visually gorgeous package. It needs more love!

#8 - Run some Remnants

Even a short one or two session game. I am keen to explore this post-apocalyptic world with mechs that I stumbled across early last year.

#7 - Prepare for Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls

I am confident the Trolls will get DT&T out, maybe by April this year (hopefully before D&D 5th edition shows up!). When it gets here I'd really like to get a chance to play it.

#6 - Give D&D 5th Edition a fair shake

It's hard not to want to embrace D&D for me, and I expect to start a full-blown campaign with the new system when it arrives. My hope is that it is good enough to sell my players who have embraced Pathfinder on the merits of the new system.

#5 - Play More 13th Age

I started up a 13th Age campaign recently which will shortly resume in the new year. It's got its own thing going for it, sort of a "4E reimagined as a storytelling engine first, tactical game second" and I look forward to exploring it more before D&D 5th edition arrives and cosumes that time block. I am not sure 13th Age will survive the conlfagration of D&D 5E, Pathfinder and itself later this year.....but I want to have a full campaign under my belt when the clash of the three ensues in July or thereabouts.

#4  - Get that grand Zombie Survival campaign going

My dabbling in one-shot zombie apocalypse scenarios with BRP last year only whet the appetite. Now, with GURPS Zombies, I feel it would be well worth looking into a 5-10 scenario campaign of zombie survival horror. I could use any system for it, but will probably lean on either GURPS, BRP or Rotworld.

#3 - Run some Cryptworld one-shots

Cryptworld is a great game for short campaigns and one-shots. I have a real hankering for some werewolf-vampire-golem-slenderman madness and this is the perfect engine for the job.

#2 - Try to give Pathfinder a break

I've been running Pathfinder 1-2 times a week for close to three years now. It's a perfect system for what I need (customizable game engine to let me run games in my own campaign settings) but too much of a good thing can lead to burnout, right? D&D 5th may be perfect for my games as well, we shall see; likewise, I really have a hankerin' for some survival horror, post-apocalypse and science fiction gaming, three itches a fantasy genre system just can't scratch.

#1 - Clone Self to Make Above List Possible

Check!

The Year in Review Part III: Five Lessons Learned

This is a short one as I spent most of the weekend relaxing, playing with the kid and enjoying my PS4. Here, then, are five little factoids and lessons I learned in 2013:

#5 - The outgoing generation of consoles hung on about a year or two too long

When any serious PC gamer looks at the product of a PS4 or Xbox One, he will notice that the new consoles appear mostly to have caught up with the default expectations of the PC crowd. There are a lot of older gen releases which look great on PC but which are clearly inferior, displaying subpar graphics, framerate or even controls in their console counterparts. I expect a lot of "ultimate edition" ports of older games to appear on the new generation of consoles next year.

Factoid Learned: To console-only gamers this will just look like a stunning improvement, however...because it is! The consoles are once again on equal footing with PC standards, for at least a year or two.

#4 - Gain greater and more optimistic appreciation for tabletop RPG hobby

Just enjoying it, staying away from toxic gaming forum sites, and focusing on the community I've got locally has been one of my great pleasures of 2013. That I can still find time at all to game with the job and family is great enough; the last thing I need is to be letting the often pessimistic, toxic attitude of certain sites online foster pessimism within myself as well.

#3 - Ebooks are here to stay

I only buy gamebooks, artsy tomes and comics in print these days. There's simply nothing a print media book has to offer me anymore that a tablet ereader doesn't do better. Sure, there are still a few quibbles to work out (DRM issues with some books being one, along with the theoretically draconian consumer "ownership" trends set by Amazon) but by and large I can now read any book with a degree of customization and accessibility I could only dream about in decades prior. Lesson learned: not buying any more print books unless they are entirely unavailable in ebook format.

#2 - Addicted to tablets

I linger over their section in the retail stores. I study Ebay and other sites online just to compare deals. I haunt Best Buy and Office Max to see try out their floor room models. This despite the fact that I own a mix of no less than five ereaders and tablets right now, never mind what my wife owns. Lesson Learned: in 2014 I have sworn not to buy any more tablets, unless it's to replace and upgrade an existing one! (so, no lesson learned)

#1 - The open world sandbox games are king

I'm not talking about Minecraft, which is best described as an "open world crafting game." Rather I refer to those titles where you get opportunistic and powerful heroes for whom a grand city (or cities) are their playground of destruction and adventure. If I learned one lesson better than any in 2013 it was just how much more fun it is to play these games with a bit of heart and spunk. I was already addicted to Bethesda and Bioware games....adding Saint's Row III and IV along with Sleeping Dogs, the Assassin's Creed titles and Far Cry 3 into the mix pretty much has made my appetite for open-world sandbox games insatiable.

Factoid Learned: I can still enjoy a good corridor/linear path shooter, and the current big dogs of the genre (CoD, Battlefield, Killzone and Crysis) are certainly entertaining.....but just imagine a CoD-style game in a Far Cry 3 world, or Crysis set in a ravaged New York that offered as many options as Steelport City.

The 2013 Year in Review Part II: Was the DDN Playtest Courting the Wrong Crowd?

I've made an assertion on prior occasions that one of the key factors which I feel will determine whether Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition can make a comeback is if it's presented as OGL (open game license)....specifically, goes back to the 2000-2003 style OGL and SRD setup that 3rd edition spawned, and not the GSL of 4E. When you look at rpgnow.com and other online ebook retailers you can still see the fruit of the OGL, rife and pervasive. Not a day doesn't go by that we don't see a new Pathfinder tome, some D20 variant, or OSR module or retroclone being released. Some might argue that this is evidence that the OGL did lasting and permanent harm to the D&D brand by allowing it to fragment (in such a model 4E would just be the nails in the coffin) but I would argue that moving away from the OGL was what really let it out into the wild.

In 2004-2005 we saw the D20 bubble bust, when the glut of D20 based products reached critical mass and store owners couldn't dump their product fast enough. A handful of the most creative and resourceful third party publishers managed to swim when everyone else started sinking, and we know who most of the survivors are today (Green Ronin, Monte Cook, Paizo, Crafty Games and a couple others). The market didn't evaporate wth the arrival of 4E in 2008, however...all it did was spawn new paths or directions by which new 3PP could arrive on the scene, and the GSL was an effective deterrent against keeping with the brand-name D&D; in pharmaceutical terms we suddenly had a spawning of generics in the market: Pathfinder and the OSR movement being the top dogs in this creative venture.

Most people in RPG publishing are in agreement that had 4E stuck with the OGL then it is likely there would have been more buy-in and support from the 3PP. Odds are we'd have at least seen a better effort at adopting (and fixing/appending/expanding the options for) 4E D&D if that had been the case, which would have fed into a possible synergy for the game between it and its potentially expansive 3PP options, allowing the fan base to look to more choices than it actually got in reality.

Of course what did happen instead is someone else (Paizo and the OSR crowd) grabbed the OGL by the horns and kept it alive, with new brands. Pathfinder and its process is obvious, but if you look at the OSR as it's own umbrella brand, under which rests a bunch of little connected and mostly compatible efforts, all also OGL, it's fairly obvious to see where all the creative effort in publishing went...and remained.

So it's with some curiosity that I realize that in 2013, D&D and Wizards of the Coast spent a great deal of time courting the player base that was interested in play testing, but as far as I can tell it did nothing to try and court the interest of the other side of this equation: the 3PP support. Sure, it's easy enough to say that Hasbro's lawyers have WotC on a short leash about this, and I imagine someone at Hasbro must imagine that the OGL had long term damage on their brand and sales (after all, someone buying a 3PP product is not buying a WotC product), but surely they must realize that the problem lies not in ignoring the OGL, but accepting the realities of the Pandora's Box they opened nearly fourteen years ago, right? That the way to grab the audience for D&D and bring them back into the fold is to embrace both the consumers and the creators of content....that the 3PP sales are not something people buy in lieu of official content, but something they get in addition to it. The health of the game will be determined by the ability of its fans to partake in the process, and a structured OGL environment is far and away the most effective legal process I've seen in this hobby by which one can creatively partake of it (and occasionally make money doing so).

I have a mostly complete revision of my Realms of Chirak book sitting around waiting for me to decide what to do with it. I have a Pathfinder-statted version which I use for my own game tables since I formally embraced Pathfinder, and I have a more generic version which might like to nestle in with D&D 5th Edition, if only I knew whether or not it was worth the effort. A year or more before 3rd edition D&D ever arrived on scene WotC was courting interested 3PP with the prospect of having ready-to-go content right out the gate for the new edition, and it was a gamble which paid off in spades. I doubt they will even dare to attempt such this time around, but I can safely say that a failure to embrace the creative content-producers of the hobby is going to backfire on them. In a world where you have Pathfinder and it's full OGL toe to toe against the fresh and somewhat uncertain D&D 5E, supported by an immense volume of old product online but otherwise locked in.....if WotC doesn't see that they're about to find out if the gaming world can handle the equivalent of a PC vs. Mac split......(and yest the Indies are the Linux OS in this analogy)...well, then I just don't know what to say except: Please make it possible to support your game through the release of my own products. I want to be on board with the next D&D, but you guys need to own up to your greatest triumph: the OGL. Without it, I don't see how you can do more than flounder at the edge of the hobby.

The Habits of Reading Laid Bare?

There's a very interesting article at the New York Times about a new focus on start-up companies looking to offer monthly subscription services for books, in which the reading habits of the audience are tracked in detail.

I'm not entirely sure how this process would work, at least to garner meaningful data; I've sometimes had to set down my ebook on a given page to take care of business, only to come back some time later; do they have a way of gauging when you're simply fascinated by that chapter, or can they tell when you've been indisposed to handle other business?

Some of the article's data points are interesting, and reflective of the real problem the article touches on at the very end: the fact that tracking such data is going to create a problem for the creative process, when authors start looking for that smoking Chekov's Gun that will insure the readers keep pouring in and reading their book, will it lead to a stiffling of creativity? A sqluelching of risk-taking? Will authors motivated by the urge to get good metrics back from the readership start avoiding ideas which they might otherwise of entertained in exchange for the quick and easy buck?

In fairness, the authors who will use this and react to their audience are the sort who are on Smashwords cranking out the latest erotic not-Anita-Blake vampire porn novel, probably...or the latest zombie apocalypse novel, because after all we clearly don't have enough of those. I suspect that genuinely good authors, or at least those who are pursuing their own vision of their work, are going to avoid this service like the plague, or at best take a callous and morbid interest in it.

Worst case: a good author gets discouraged from even bothering after finding out that his audience only finished his books 4% of the time, and that 90% of them spend too much time lingering on the alien sex scene.

My personal preference is to avoid these services. They will only lead to more of the same (Publishers: this is not something all readers want, believe it or not), will make me self-conscious of my reading habits, and frankly I would personally like to put as many marketing gurus out of business as possible, or at least keep my money from getting into their pockets whenever I possibly can!

Camazotz's 2013 Year in Review Part I: Transitions

2013 was a year of transitions, some forced and others a bit more natural. What follows is the Death Bat's perspective on the things that made 2013 a "year of transition" if not change....

As always my perspectives are tinged with the discoloration of heavy bias! You have been warned. I'll do one or two a day until the year's end....

The D&D Next Playtest

The Dungeons & Dragons playtest pushed through to the point where it looks like a game worth playing, then went offline as the game prepared for final release.

The Good: Yes, D&D will be returning, and soon I hope to have a game system which will let me take Pathfinder, 1E, 2E, Labyrinth Lord and B/X modules and run them all under the same umbrella of a modern system with classic sensibilities, with minimal fuss. As of the last playtest package it looked like this goal was well on the way to success.

The Bad: WotC still needs to earn back the trust of its estranged fans. Not even releasing all editions in premium collector's editions, including OD&D, is enough for some people to erase the bad taste of prior gaffs. Nerd rage is a hard thing to quell, apparently.

The Console Generation Gave Birth to a Litter

The Good: not just gave birth, it like took fertility pills. Look around; there's the Ouya (fair disclosure: I got one yesterday), the Android or Apple marketplace for whatever's in your pocket at the moment, the Xbox One, the PS4, the Nvidia Shield, Wii U, Wii Mini, 2DS, PS Vita, Steam.....there's a mess of both instant gratification and cheap entertainment options stacked right next to premium hardcore experience out there for gaming right now. From a consumer perspective it's win-win. I literally could stop buying games today and would likely still have enough game content to keep me covered until my child was in college. Cripes!

The Bad: but this is also the year many console manufacturers tried to push the envelope. Microsoft either came out early on as severely anti-consumer or just plain misguided in an effort to set trends against the very concept of consoles as they have existed to date. Sony capitalized on this by touting the PS4 as more feature friendly, but it's a weird world we live in where the key selling point of a system is that it promises not to mistreat you (too) badly. Freemium games are now dominant, leaving us in a weird world where there are tons of games out there which espouse free content but cleverly find ways to manipulate the audience into paying dramatically more than they ever would have for a straight purchase. The audience, crazier than ever, willingly partakes of this process involving "free accounts and whales" in the marketing vernacular, while griping incessantly at the injustice of it all. We've all demonstrated that not even sapient intelligence can evade the Skinner Box.

This is the Year I Realized We can now Watch, Do and Play Anything on Anything, Just About

The Good: At some point this year I realized that my son is now growing up in a world where he can play, stream or otherwise access almost anything from any device in the house or in hand, so long as he has a working wifi connection. Also, its starting to get weird when a device doesn't let you engage with a proper capacitative screen. I look suspiciously at my TV and desktop monitor, wondering how much longer I must wait before I can at last simply point to what I want done. For my son, touch screens are just the way of life, and the fact the 55 inch TV is the only thing in his life that doesn't react to touch is a mystery to him.

The Bad: This means I get to be that dad who talks about how when I was his age, I had to deal with crappy commercial-full TV on a low res color screen that was bigger than a freight box while listening to a hand-me-down 8-Track tape player, and how in my day they didn't have touchscreens, tablets were only on Star Trek, and 95% of gaming culture consisted entirely of men; the prospect of a girlfriend or spouse who looked disdainfully upon your interest in comics, games and computers was a given.

Yay! I'm one of those guys now....er...crap!