UncleBear Media

Wizards of the Coast has been letting a variety of its licenses to other companies expire, notably the Dragon and Dungeon magazine licenses with Paizo, and now the d20 licences with Kenzer & Co. Coupled with the announcement of the unfortunately-named Gleemax, this has many people speculating on the future of D&D Some of these theories seem sound and logical; others require a tin-foil hat.

Personally, I think they’re circling the wagons and bringing everything in-house prior to announcing 4th Edition D&D. I think that 4th Edition will not have an Open Gaming License, and will be considerable different from 3.x to avoid using material already available under the existing OGL. There are so many successful and popular “derivatives” out that don’t owe any fealty to Wizards (in the sense that one doesn’t need to buy a PHB or any other Wizards products) that some suit at Hasbro has to be looking at the OGL as a threat to their market share.

The problem is, the OGL and SRD are forever. True20, Mutants & Masterminds, Spycraft 2.0, OSRIC, Castles & Crusades… they’re going to go on. If 4th edition proves to be incompatible with adventures such as the Dungeon Crawl Classics line, then they can still be played with the clone systems. Kenzer has even stated that Kingdoms of Kalamar and Hackmaster will go on, but without the D&D and d20 logos on the new products (expect a sale soon to get all of the current logo-laden product out of the warehouses).

Bottom line, there’s no cause for concern regarding the future of d20 roleplaying. What I’m curious about is what 4th Edition will look like, assuming I’m right and they want/need to ditch material currently covered by the OGL. It would have to be pretty drastic. So drastic, in fact, that it probably won’t resemble D&D as we know it, which risks alienating the fan base.

Time will tell. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here in the corner making a new tin foil hat.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

More from unclebear

• Ask the Readers: Pathfinder or 4th Edition?
• Dr. Checkmate's Ode to Savage Worlds
• System and Theory

The more I get into pirate stuff, the more I get into pirate stuff. It resonates with me on multiple levels, and is unlikely to go away any time soon. In trying to get my head around the why of it, I’ve come up with the following:

The Minimalist/DIY Aspect: Shipboard life in general has always been about making the most of limited space and squeezing the highest possible quality of life from limited resources. Pirates didn’t have the resources of a navy or mercantile company backing them (most of the time), so they were incredibly do-it-yourself about everything.

The Grass is Greener, Metaphorically: I live in a desert. I live in a desert in the middle of a drought. Even though monsoon season is about a week away and we’ll have some glorious thunderstorms, I occassionally would like a change of scenery. The nearest beach is about 2 hours away, if I want to go to Mexico (I don’t, which has less to do with Mexico and more to do with the fact that my own government now requires me to stand in a long line and show my passport in order to come home). The next-nearest beach is a 10-hour drive to San Diego.

The Anti-Authoritarian Schtick: Governments and corporations want to control everything — for our own good, of course — and button things down with rules and regulations and rights and restrictions, yadda yadda yadda. The idea of saying “screw you,” hopping into a ship and sailing off to where you can make your own rules , or at least wrestle with the unbiased forces of nature instead of grappling with the laws of men, is incredibly appealing.

Fashion and Kit: Form follows function. In addition to looking stylish, pirates had awesome kit. They carried as little as possible on their person, but what they did carry was useful. This might be considered an extension of the minimalist/DIY line above.

Pocket Democracy: Most pirate ships elected their captain, and could vote him out just as easily. Shares of loot were distributed relatively equally among the crew, with extra shares awarded to those with special skills (like a ship’s doctor). Think about your own job. If you were standing at the watercooler and the majority of your coworkers all agreed that your boss was an idiot and that Frank from accounting would have been a much better choice for that management position, how cool would it be to tel the idiot to shove off and give the job to Frank?

Know your Role: Everyone’s job these days is incredibly complex, and what we do increasingly bears little relation to what we were hired to do. That can be rewarding and is rarely boring, but sometimes it would be nice to go to bed at night knowing that I’m, say, a bosun’s mate, and that tomorrow I’ll be a bosun’s mate, and next week I’ll be a bosun’s mate, and that my goals and definition of success weren’t moving targets.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

More from unclebear

• Worldbuilding 101: The Mashup
• Impressions: Houses of the Blooded
• The Successfully Unprepared DM