Kinslayer's Infamous Rants Page

With the fourth edition of "the world's most popular game system" soon out, I noticed a few things about it.

I love the inherent irony to it all. Pretty much every fantasy game from Flying Mice's Jalan to White Wolf's Vampire: Dark Ages, to my own beloved Midian, is considered by many to be a D&D clone. Oddly, this label doesn't get applied to video games, even though there wouldn't be a video game industry without D&D. Now, the situation is reversed. WotC is 'borrowing' from other rpg's & seems Hell-bent on making 4th ed as much like a video game as possible. By transitioning from publisher of tabletop games to subscription-based online gaming, they hope to make more money. The tabletop rules as mere descriptions of the video game are a big part of that.

Some of the specific things I've seen in the previews for 4e are that many things--from racial bonuses to weapon capabilities--are made up of chained attributes (in the Aristotlean sense). This works for video games, but is a drastic departure from prior D&D games. It's also not at all original... My own Midian game gives lots of traits to things--from characters to weapons--and these are sometimes broken into categories for easier reference: status, weapon feature, background, etc. I have seen experienced Midian players place all of their traits, backgrounds, et al. into one single list. For them, it's a better form of organisation as it's all there in one glance, and they already know what each little part does. Less-experienced players use the standard method, where most traits are listed with their appropriate attribute, skills are divided by category, & everything is kept separate. What I'm seeing in the new D&D is the one giant list for new players--and since it's a new system, everyone is new. When you add in that almost everything on these lists has some sort of prerequisite, and you will need a computer just to tell you what your current options really are.

All of the 'powers' that classes offer is just piss-poor resource management. Having a huge list of 'powers' to throw into an encounter works great if you are pulling off the top of a card deck, hold only so much in your hand at once, and discard to use. But when it's all always a part of your character sheet, with a number of times per day to keep track of, it's too much for most people to enjoyably handle. The alternative to avoid this overkill of power, is to scale it back, but that only ensures that power-creep will invariably become (yet again) a part of the game system. That's an even worse fate.

By the way, I see that many of the 'powers' (a nice descriptive to avoid them being either normal skills or magical gifts) are used one or more times per encounter. Gee, that doesn't sound completely familiar or anything (cough Midian cough)... The game still has feats, but now the feats give powers. Hmmm.

I love all of this. Why? The hands-down biggest excuse I hear from people when I ask them to play Midian is that they don't want the (apparently overwhelmingly difficult) task of learning a new system. Because, as we all know, every single human was born with instinctive knowledge of how to play 3.x d20 (or whatever) & comes through the birth canal with character sheet in hand. This brings me to the second biggest excuse: not wanting to give up your current over-powered high-level character. Every Midian GM I personally know has run groups of mixed levels successfully. You can team up a first level character with a twelfth level character, and it still works. Is it preferable to have everyone low-level characters hang out together? Sure, but the system doesn't break the fuck down like it does in all versions of D&D (or most other games, for that matter).

Geometric character growth makes even a few levels difference in experience insurmountable. Flat growth rates reduce this problem greatly, but don't reward experience. Systems without levels still have this issue--often even worse--but without the same degree of granularity or ability to rapidly compare characters. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. By going with a sigmoid function for experiential growth rates, Midian allows mixed groups while still providing worthwhile growth. It's no coincidence that overall experience growth follows the same competence curve as proficiencies, but that's design obfuscation & is deep magic, and I'm getting off-topic...

I do indeed love all of this. Indie gamers see 4e the way non-Windows users see Vista. We smirk while watching it fall flat on its face.

I just wanted to have this written down somewhere public & permanent: Shakespearean Monkey Collective This is the title (in reserve, currently) for a group writing effort. Of some kind--I don't know what yet. I just thought that the name was too good not to use, and wanted to stake my claim. The variant spelling "Shakespearian Monkey Collective" is also trademarked.

Battle Scars
Update time again, the forums are up and running just fine. My only complaint is that I can't set the number of posts for custom titles. I honestly can live without that. There's a whole integrated section called "Battle Scars" that includes the forums & some other goodies. It seems to be working out for us just fine.

Where the Hell have you been?

The fourms have died, long live the forums. For a good while, we used PhpBB for our boards; they're good, free, and both look and work how I want them. However, PhpBB is a victim of its own success, in that as a popular boardset, numerous jerkasses have worked to hack them. As a result of this constant abuse, our boards broke... perhaps irrevocably. Nameless has managed to crudely shove the collected database of all posts into one big text file, so the information is still there, just without context. It will take an indeterminate amount of time, if ever, to sort all of it out.

We had already created completely new forums quite some time ago, when the hackers first started their crap, and the boards started to get wiggy. The Snitz forums worked well, were rather easy to set up, and since they were ASP, I didn't even have to worry about Php being hacked anymore. However, since Snitz is designed as a simple & expandable forum, it doesn't have private messaging. Since the PM's got more traffic than the actual boards (for sneaky dealings and the like), that was not something I wanted to do without for the new forum. Not a problem, there's an add-on for private messaging for Snitz, that seems well-received and frequently used. Problem. It doesn't work. It seems that the PM mod is for the newest version of Snitz, and it had been upgraded since we initially installed it. So we tried to upgrade. Problem. The upgrade doesn't work with our version of Php... whose current version didn't work with our installed version of MySQL... and the PM mod still wouldn't install properly. I don't know how everyone else managed to make it work, but I ended up with Php and MySQL no longer on speaking terms.

"Such predicaments I must forge ahead." So I gave up on Snitz, and went with SMF, which had its own share of issues, mostly the fact that MySQL and Php were still refusing to kiss and make up. The biggest (current) problem is that SMF is coded oddly, so that it's impossible to install it from the computer that is to host/serve it... if you want anyone on the 'net to ever access it, at least. That is, if you are sitting at the keyboard of the server, it encodes "localhost" everywhere, and refuses to allow you to alter it for proper relative url's. Even attempting to force it to show relative URL's didn't work, since it was still trying to access the files as though from localhost on whatever computer you were using... Trying to force it to show the actual server name didn't work, since that only locked you out due to the resulting recursion (it trying to search for itself on the net, and refusing the returning packets) and prevented one from doing anything else without a wipe/reinstall. After fighting with THIS issue for over a month (remember, nameless and I collectively get less than an hour per week for all of this) I re-installed it remotely, so it would properly populate for non-localhost connections. As a result, I have no access to the boards from my own server... I have to go somewhere else to even log-in.

Hopefully, these new forums will work for a bit, as I'm sick of dealing with it. It's worth the hassle of needing to go elsewhere to access my own forums (or just use a proxy, but that's slow & buggy), if it means that everyone else can use them (just the opposite of the initial problem...). In our search for the replacement forum software, nameless and I encountered many of the tools used by the jerkass hackers (or wannabe hackers) that broke our old boards. Those that I were able to track down--both the creators of said hacks as well as those that actually used them to screw my boards--have been dealt with accordingly. Those dwelling in nations, such as the US, that take a dim view of such activities, I have reported to the authorities, their isp's, and hosts for their sites. Those that live in countries where they can get away with this BS, I went with the "good for the gander" theory: if it's legal and acceptible for you to break in and destroy files on my computer, it's all well and good for me to do the same to you... or worse, set nameless against you. After all, she's the one stuck with the bulk of the clean-up burden (which is why I'm writing this for the main page myself, usually her job, as well as using this as an exuse to add this update for my own personal rantz page).

Things have been outwardly quiet, but inwardly over-busy. That is, I haven't had the time to continuously plug this site on the forums I usually troll, nor been able to devote time to our own forums--even routine site maintenance has suffered. Things are up and running again, but I'm not so clear from my 'day job' in the forseeable future that I'm going to make promises for more attention that I'm not sure I can yet keep. As it stands currently, at best I can devote less than an hour a week total to this site or new material for the Midian DFRPG. Needless to say, reviews, aiding new game designers, promotion work, moderating for/contributing to other sites, prodding our own forums, and all the other things I have been doing prevously are going to have to be on indefinate hiatus.

Reviews in particular, are something that I'm not sure I'm going to resume doing. Originally, this was from a discussion with other publishers on RPGHost's forums. The idea was that we would peer-review each other's work, so that we would each get a review from someone that knew and understood e-publishing and other forms of indie press work, instead of being rejected out of hand as a 'nobody' or a would-be reviewer just trying to scam free product. I had hoped that in return for reviews--collectively if not tit-for-tat from the one I'm reviewing--that Midian would get a good review. There were two reviews on RPGNet from obvious and unabashed fans, which were promptly and cruelly shredded in the posted comments to those same reviews. Start with a few people who seem to have nothing better to do than trash reviews that aren't about their favourite system (and glowing) or nastily degrading in a 'humourous' manner... These posters take a few pot shots, more timid but no less vicious posters smell blood and jump into the fray, and still others go off on left-field tangents--obviously not even bothering to read the review, much less the game itself--add in personal attacks against me and the reviewers, and the resulting poor display from 'fellow gamers' just makes me feel ill... At any rate, since I have been unable to read the ever-growing flood of new games for review, and since the initial peer-review of Midian was obviously never going to happen, it looks like I'm out of the review business indefinately, perhaps permanently.

So, we've been busy, you know, trying to make money... This site, as well as the Midian DFRPG--though loved--is a money-losing endeavour. It simply must take a back-seat to earning a living. It hasn't been abandoned by any means, and we will continue to do more as time allows. I would like to reprint the main book, as well as Death (and we've had enough requests for Famine to merit it as a print-run), as well as finish War and Conquest, in addition to keeping our own forums active and the fun-stuff of BSing with my mates on other sites, but that's all going to be slow going for the time being.

In other news, dispite the promise CyberNETPro/World Wide Web Global Limited made that we would be able to keep Lost-Souls.hk.st forever, they decided retroactively that meant paying them a rather large sum for a simple redirect: 600 HKD annually... They still promise that it's a lifetime free deal... Thus, our URL is now http://Lost-Souls.co.nr/ or http://Lost-Souls.ht.st/ and while the latter is quite close to the original, it's a rather funky redirect.

I was just reading a Slashdot article (from an rpg link, I'm the "other kind" of geek) about "Shadow of Yesterday," winner of the 2004 "Free Game of the Year" from the Indie RPG Awards. I must preface that I have nothing against the game, nor Clint Nixon, but some of the comments on that article I found rather odd. The big issue seemed to be that the game was drafted using open-source software. That is, instead of using MSWord, Mr. Nixon used OpenOffice, for example. One comment in particular about this was that this meant that someone could modify the game's source code without having to purchase any programs... Clearly this person doesn't know what a real rpg is, and didn't look any further than the phrase "open source." I'm sure that this person was far from alone in this. Here's your subtle hint: it's a role-playing game. There is no source code, save for perhaps the text online. Modifying it needs only a text editor or word processor of any sort, or even just a pencil & scrap paper. Before you get on your open sourced soapbox, stop and think for just a moment before you scramble for the "reply" button. Don't misunderstand, I think open source software is a great idea, and was part of the inspiration for Midian's copywrong, but what tools the designer used to type out what is still essentially just text & pictures doesn't mean a damned thing. At what point do you stop looking at those tools? What about the keyboard used for the actual typing, or the device drivers, how about the operating system? Eventually, you get to a tool that was a commercial creation, or at least was itself designed by such, and from there it's turtles all the way down.

Another comment was that it was stupid to have any semi-simple combat system, because "everybody" has a laptop computer, so game designers should make all combat rules as complex as possible, with different angles of attack, hit location damage by type and impact, etc. Idiot. There are already enough people who complain about rpg combat systems that are too complex, with combat taking too much time. Conversely, despite the fact that no video game has combat with the complexity and structure this guy wants--which would take too much processing power, away from the pretty graphics--some people still say (as this poster does) that those games have systems that are too simple. Both sides use the same word to describe their complaint: "real." That is, the Less crowd wants a rapid pace for combat to be "real," and the More crowd wants detailed effects for that same situation to be "real" to them. Which is it, people; which one do you want?

Finally, one comment by Mr. Nixon does deserve special attention.

"I haven't seen another RPG (besides, well, some others of mine) that are specifically licensed to be freely used to create derivative works without restrictions."

Ahem. Perhaps he should spend less time sending press-releases to Slashdot in the guise of "news" articles, and more time learning about The Official Game of the Internet. Other games have been released under the same Creative Commons license, as well as other licenses similar to those used for open source software. Some have even been released under licenses actually designed for software, without changing any of the verbiage. The Share-Alike license is a great thing, and almost used it for Midian, but SoY isn't the first game to use such, not by a long shot, free or otherwise.

It's time for an English lesson, boys and girls.

The word "breath" is a noun, that is, it's a thing. Note the lack of a final "e;" it is pronounced {breth} with a short "e" as in the word "dead" (from being beaten severely for linguistic abuses).
Usage: "You will be out of breath from running away from your grammer beating."

The word "breathe" is a verb, that is, it's an action. Note the presence of the final "e;" it is pronounced {brEth} with a long "e" as in the word "beating" (what you will suffer if I have to repeat myself).
Usage: "You will not be able to breathe when I am choking the shit out of you for fucking these two words."

Don't ever let me catch someone writing "I can't breath; I can't catch my breathe." Just don't.

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