Please make Magic Online 3 better… like real soon.

Yan, Math: I’ll tell you about BattleCruiser Magic next Friday.

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mxyzplks last blog post..Vote for the ENnies! Show some love!

While a 3rd party product can’t reprint character creation rules, using them in a character generator is not reprinting them.

That said, the license doesn’t cover/allow computer programs anyways (I can’t remember which).

As for the WotC Rules Compendium, WotC doesn’t operate under the GSL. The GSL is in no way holding them back from putting anything up.

I haven’t played Magic in years, it grew to be too expensive and another of those games where the person with the most money was most likely to win. After a while, that grew annoying as well as trying to keep up with all the new cards, which ones were obsolete, etc. That’s why I finally gave up on it, I even tried playing about a year ago with some friends but was completely lost with all the new rules. Seeing some of their products that they’ve produced, I’m not surprised that MtG 3.0 was a flop.

I don’t know if anyone here had followed up on WotC’s podcast, but it doesn’t surprise me that DDI wasn’t introduced with the release of 4e. If I’m remembering correctly, they were still finalizing things back in February for 4th edition, which didn’t give me much hope for the new edition. I was pleasantly surprised though when it came out on how well it was done. They seem to have gotten their act together and produced a viable system. Granted, my opinions of it are still neutral since I have yet to play it, but I have high hopes for the game.

Someone had mentioned earlier that WotC needs to stay with what they excel at, producing books. I agree with that, but I think they could still do a better job at producing books. The company is really good at coming up with new and pretty things to dazzle us with, but unfortunately the majority of the books I have come across are full of errors or inconsistencies. I ran two official D&D modules, and was making my way through a third, and there were definitely things in it that needed improving. Some of it was the author’s interpretation of the rules, but I still place the blame with WotC. They need to have someone who says, no this rule doesn’t make sense, we need to go with what is written in the books, but that’s just me being anal retentive. And concerning their splat books, if you take a gander at some of their sample NPC’s, they are full of mistakes as well. It looks like someone just thought, “Well, this is what the character should have, so we’re going to give it to them, even if it doesn’t follow the rules exactly.” That’s why I never completely trust their books, but then again 3rd party publisher can be just as bad if not worse.

WotC has made a big mistake in the new licensing system they’ve developed. I understand that OGL may have been a little too open, but the new system completely cripples anything a 3rd party could produce. There was a piece of computer software out there called DM Genie, which was produced for 3.0 and 3.5, with a decent support system from the developer and fellow users. It is one of the best character generators and DM helpers that I have seen to date, and priced reasonably. Unfortunately with the new licensing, they have no way of updating the program for 4e because you are not allowed to have anything concerning character creation, leveling, etc in a 3rd party supplement. So all it would be is just a bunch of links to the core rules, which seems to be what their Compendium is. It seems that even they are suffering under the tightness of that license.

Well, I think that is enough ranting for now. I want to thank you for actually putting this into words for the rest of us, even if it goes no further than this website. Keep up the good work.

As regards D&D, Wizards’ need to realize what they are. What they really, REALLY are, then do that, and nothing else.

Here’s a clue or two of what Wizards’ are:

They don’t make computer games
(they publish books)
They’re not Web 2.0 (heck, their site is barely Web 0.1!)
(they publish books)
They’re not making an MMORPG
(they publish books)
They don’t make Operating Systems
(they publish books)
They don’t make Warhammer 40,000
(they publish books)
They don’t make Second Life
(they publish books)
They don’t make films
(they publish books)
They don’t…….

Awwww heck, I bet you’ve got it by now. If only Wizards’ did the same. Publish books. Damned good ones, but they’re books whether in print or digital form (I prefer both, at the same time, for one price, but that’s another thing, not this thing). Once they realize that, they can start to do the things that book publishers do, such as:

- Release editions in different sizes and formats. Want a pocket-sized PHB? You got it! Want a softcover? Yup. Want a coffee-table edition? Sure! All the same rules, but diff’rent sizes and prices for diff’rent needs and wallets
- Sign a movie deal. A good on this time. Just once. Please?
- Book signing tours. We promise not to hit Mearls. Too hard
- Get the books in libraries. Get ‘em in schools. Get ‘em reviewed in the mainstream press. Get ‘em advertised on TV. You’ve got access to HASBRO’S marketing team. Yeh, them what make GI Joe. They’ve got marketers who know their stuff. So use ‘em and fire yours. They suck. Just publish the books already!
- Finally, USE demographics. Release a kids’ edition of the game. Kids love make-believe, Harry Potter and all the rest. Instead, you’re killing your access to that audience with your ‘net-based subscription models, loss of real-paper magazines (WHICH YOU DIDN’T EVEN MAKE YOURSELVES DAMN YOU!!!) and all the rest

Sure, Wizards’ are doing some of this to a lesser extent, but it’s being drowned out by them doing the stuff that they shouldn’t be doing. Focus, people!

Finally, /when you’ve got that right/, get people who don’t publish books to make the stuff you wish you COULD do if you weren’t book publishers. Ask Blizzard/Bioware/Ken the nice programmer down the road or whoever so make an official character generator. Make it the same one that any and all 4e computer games will use – so make it skinnable too. Just like SPORE, sell the generator for $10 and people will flock to the computer games. And from there to the print books. Which you make. Because you’re book publishers, remember?

And as for minis……..

Ok. I’ll stop now.

Rant mode off.

Sorry, Phil.

I work for a law firm; my employer spends many a platinum peice on secure backups of all of our electronic data, and of course malpractice insurance to CYA if those backups fail, and we don’t really deal with e-discovery at all.

My personally vital data, at home, is in electronic format for ease of use. However, it is also all in secured physical storage as well. Before switching to law as a para-profession, I was a history major with delusions of becoming a historian. I like books; they last darn near forever, hardly ever break down, and don’t require any electricity. I also only have to pay for them once.

Your a computer guy, if I recall: you work with computers all day long, know how to keep them ticking, and make them work for you. I’m a paper guy. Although I work with computers and know a thing or two more than the average bear, I am at heart a paper person. I know how to keep my books, and I know how to make them work for me.

In the end, I think, that it boils down to the proverbial person with no tool but a hammer… for whom most problems look like nails.

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All they had to do was extract that functionality into its own program adjust the source data to match the books, slap a print and save function on it and charge like $25 to buy it. Easy money and maybe slap a little update support on it. Ugh, they missed the ball on that one.

Again, my views on the matters of digital paper are skewed. I have an eBook reader, so I have a certain level of freedom from the wall outlet. I find that if there are errors in the electrical power in my house, I don’t notice them when I’m using the ebook reader. The ebook reader is also makes electric power highly portable once it’s charged, and a charge lasts at least a day. My particular ebook reader also allows me to mark up my media without actually damaging the original.

I also tend to store my digital media in more than one place (redundancy, which you can’t have in print without spending the cost of the magazine twice). How is it more difficult to archive a digital copy than a hard copy? Digital sure as heck takes up a lot less physical space. Fewer tupper-ware containers, by far.

There’s one thing I know about the formats in use right now: They work with the software and hardware that I have right now. At the very least, I don’t expect that to change. And I expect my hardware to be around for a while.

And, at the risk of cursing Adobe, I don’t think we’ll be seeing the PDF format (or at least Postscript in general, which it’s based on) going away any time soon. I’m also going to hazard a guess that a lot of the publishers out there will update their libraries for whatever the “next big thing” may happen to be. “Oh, PDF doesn’t do it any more? People want QST files now? Ok. We’ll go back to our sources and recreate our library as QSTs instead.” The company I work for has: pdf, ps, and dvi. All hanging around. We also have the original TeX files used to generate those.

Also, two magazines at $10/month total is $5/month, not $5.99. Not a huge deal, and not something that affects my argument, but it bothers me a little bit when people skew information.

Or $5.99 for a digital magazine that doesn’t have advertisements. That requires more effort on my part to access, read, archive, and so on and so forth.

An electronic magazine is dependent on equipment to be read, it can be affected by faults in external hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.

An e-zine requires electrical power. Electrical power is unreliable, prone to faults, and not exactly portable.

Formats may become obsolete and incompatible with future hardware.

If an e-zine’s storage device is stolen, lost, or broken beyond repair, all e-zines stored on the device may be lost.

I have had computers broken, stolen, power surged to death, and all those other maladies. I’ve seen formats that were considered too widely installed to ever be rendered obsolete rendered such.

Meanwhile, I’ve got magazines from 1916 in tupperware boxes in my basement, and my gaming bookself contains just about every Dragon magazine from issue #22 forward.