Mad Brew Labs

Yesterday was an interesting day for tabletop roleplaying games and crowdfunding (or at least interesting for me). I managed to publish my Age of Patronage article just as the Gamerati published an edited video of Lisa Stevens, CEO of Paizo Publishing, answering a question I submitted for a Google Hangout that Peter Adkison read to her.

I had asked for her thoughts on patronage and its impact on the tabletop gaming industry. I also asked if Paizo might ever utilize crowdfunding and she alluded to something to come in the near future. Then late last night Gamerati dropped a link to the Kickstarter below in the comments of the video. [UPDATE: Sometime in the night, the preview for the Kickstarter was taken down, but I did manage to grab the video and the important bits of the proposal and they are contained below. I'll leave the hyperlink in for posterity's sake.]:

From the Pathfinder MMO Technology Demo Kickstarter:

Our First Step

This Kickstarter will fund the Technology Demo of the Pathfinder Online Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.  The Technology Demo will be fully playable, integrating account management, character creation, a virtual world server, multiple simultaneously connected clients, middleware used for rendering landscapes and characters, basic game mechanics, and player communications.  The demo will only support a few simultaneous users exploring a couple of small locations, so the general public won’t be able to play it, but we will produce a short video of the demo that everyone will be able to experience, and a special longer video exclusively for backers of this Kickstarter.

Your support of the Technology Demo will help us raise awareness of Pathfinder Online and will show potential investors what the game is really about.  Funding this demo will also signal to potential partners that Pathfinder Online has an audience that’s large enough and dedicated enough to allow the long-term success of the MMO. Nothing speaks louder than a ton of people putting up money to show their support of a new concept—that’s the genius element of Kickstarter!

What Do I Get?

Since this Kickstarter isn’t meant to fund the final video game, we had to think outside the box a little bit. Pathfinder Online is based on the world created by Paizo Publishing for their tabletop Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so we thought it would be pretty cool to work with Paizo to create an RPG book that details one of the locations that Pathfinder Online characters will start in. We settled on the town of Thornkeep—that’s the very same “hive of scum and villainy” that the Pathfinder Online community named in our first online poll back in January! To make Thornkeep come alive, we’ve enlisted the talents of veteran game designer Rich Baker. Rich is going to give you everything you need to run a Pathfinder RPG game in Thornkeep, including the surrounding woods and a detailed dungeon below the ruins upon which Thornkeep was built. This very same dungeon will also be built as part of our technology demo, providing a great window into how tabletop design will make the transition to the digital medium.

And that’s just the first half of a 64-page book! The remaining sections will be written by our Pathfinder Online design team, letting you into Goblinworks’ design philosophy and giving you inside information gleaned from the development of our technology preview. The Thornkeep book will be produced to Paizo’s usual quality standards—perfectbound, printed in full color, with lots of all-new original artwork, including a brand new beautiful cover painting by fan-favorite Pathfinder artist Wayne Reynolds (the cover you see here is a mock-up).

We didn’t stop there either! We’ve built up a wide range of Goblinworks-themed merchandise, from posters and T-shirts to an entire day spent playing Pathfinder and dining out with the Goblinworks staff at one of the world’s finest restaurants! We have a reward level for every pocketbook, so give them a look and tell us what you think!

Listening to: Mastodon – Blood Mountain – This Mortal Soil

Mummy Outlaw concept art for Weird West Minis

Societal trends usually ebb and flow like the swing of a pendulum and we’re seeing the beginning of the return swing for the system of funding creatives known as patronage. The arts would not be where it is today, or at least not have such a rich history, without the practice of patronage. Since the beginning of recorded history, the wealthy, powerful, and influential have supported creatives via commission.

Patronage peaked during the Renaissance period, with the huge wealth of the Vatican funding many a famous painter and sculptor (see the namesakes of my beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). While patronage never went away, the Industrial Revolution and subsequent commercialization of creativity certainly changed the way society generated and experienced the arts.

Recently, there has been a resurgence of the patronage model. Only today, it’s not only the upper class that can participate, anyone with the means to electronically deposit a dollar can enjoy luxury of supporting projects which they find interesting. With services like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, creators and patrons can connect with ease.

An Answer to Piracy?

One of the primary advantages to funding a project using a patronage model/service is that it cuts out the middleman. This means the creator can potentially (see Pitfalls below) earn more from a successful project and it also allows for a direct connection between the creator and her audience. This connection can lead to some interesting collaboration and personal relationships should the creator take advantage of it.
Interestingly enough, a well-conceived and successful patronage project could even alleviate most of the concerns creators have for piracy. If you get compensated up front, then who cares if the product is eventually pirated… consider it free advertising for your next project.

Pitfalls of Patronage

Beyond cutting out the middleman and possibly earning a greater return on your investment, using the patronage model doesn’t actually alleviate creators of many traditional problems of producing a product. In fact, it may place many of the traditional concerns on the shoulders of the content creators. For instance, marketing is something that will still be important.

Creator

Below is a list of new problems specific to running a Kickstarter (or IndieGoGo) campaign (for a actual example see Star Command):

• Inaccurate calculations/predictions
• Keep in mind that the service (and Amazon for Kickstarter) takes a cut
• Overly ambitious rewards will cut deep into your funding
• Be aware of the hidden costs of publishing/manufacturing/shipping
• Lost payments
• Incorrect cardholder info can result in lost backers
• Insufficient funds will also prevent backers from sending funds
• Lost faith
• Failed projects can drive potential patrons away, narrowing the pool of potential backers
• Failing to meet campaign promises could very well open a project up to litigation

Patron

Much like pre-ordering a game, album, or book, since the product is not finished (and therefore available for inspection) there are no guarantees… only it will probably be more difficult to recover lost monies:

• No guarantees
• Time
• Quality
• Complete

RPG Related Projects of Note

Here are some open patronage projects I’m currently interested in that I think my readers may also find worthy of their backing:

• Weird West Minis – 28mm Weird minis for the Weird West RPG
• Prismatic Art Collection – Diversity in fantasy illustration
• Rappan Athuk- Return of Necromancer Games’ megadungeon for PFRPG & S&S
  

  Rappan Athuk Kickstarter

• Curse the Darkness – a postapocalyptic RPG about identity, memory and hard choices
• Pure Steam – A steampunk toolkit for the Pathfinder RPG
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess – Get the LotFP old school stuff in hardcover
  

  Lamentations of the Flame Princess Hardcovers

Listening to: Soul Coughing – Songs in the Key of X – Unmarked Helicopters

Oh how I’ve tricked the villagers beyond my dilapidated walls. No horrors have crept out of my laboratories for some time, and the peasants have been lulled into a false sense of security. But I’m still lurking… deep beneath the ruins above.

The Rumors of My Death…

Not that I really think anyone cares, but I’m still lurking around the blogosphere and various social networks. I’m still very much immersed with all things roleplaying, but have not had much to say and not a lot of time to say it anyways. IRL, my career in software development has snowballed and I find I no longer have the time I used to devote to writing for Mad Brew Labs.

The Night’s Watch

Something else taking up time is a new podcast I’m co-hosting for Bald Move: The Night’s Watch. My co-host, A.Ron Hubbard, and I are covering Game of Thrones television series, HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire. Tomorrow, our coverage of the season 1 finale will go live at baldmove.com and on iTunes. If you want to find out more, check out the blog feed, fan us on Facebook, tweet at us @BaldMove, or circle us on Google+.

A New Outlook on Gaming

Of course the lack of time is just part of the equation. I also find myself in new territory as far as gaming is concerned. I no longer search for satisfaction in published systems (though still have fun playing them); instead find myself more interested in my own rules. I’m not creating new mind-blowing concepts, I’m just making familiar mechanics work the way I want them to and find I gain a great deal of fulfillment in doing so.

Late last year, I failed a 24 hour RPG challenge, but that initial concept is now in use at my table. I’ve often thought about writing about the process, but feel it would mostly fall on deaf ears. Maybe once I get the document edited to my liking, I’ll publish it here and explain some of the design choices I made.

Future Contributions

As I settle into a new work schedule, I hope to begin integrating time to return to writing and creating stuff for this hobby, so don’t delete me from your feeds just yet. I’m re-writing my free Pathfinder RPG online character creator, VentureCaptain.com from the ground up, but this time I’m building it with accounts in mind and as a subdomain of a much larger site: GamingKeep.com.  GK will roll up all the RPG-related web apps I’ve worked on using an integrated account system.

So if you liked my Savaged Tools (a Savage Worlds dice roller, initiative draw, and logging tool), you’re going to see some similar (and expanded) functionality for PFRPG too. It’s all pie in the sky, and honestly, could end up in the geek project graveyard, but I’m working on the infrastructure now. I even plan on putting tools for my own RPG on GamingKeep, so as long as my interest in my homebrew continues, so will work on this site. I won’t even deign to put a timeline on the project, but I hope to have the site updated within six months (it is only me, and I have a new day job, after all).

When crafting or playing in the Weird West, it’s often handy to have some inspirational tunes spinning in the background. The band that I immediately think of for Weird West warbles is Ghoultown.

Ghoutown with Elvira

Their catchy hymns manage to strike a particular chord of the strange and horrific that is perfectly suited to a Weird West adventure. From tales of drinking with the dead to serial killers aboard trains, you can never go wrong firing up a track from one of their albums.

Life After Sundown

The flavor of their music is firmly in the realm of rockabilly/psychobilly; which means you get a fusion of hard rock riffs and lyrics mixed with blues and classic western guitar twang. Their is also a strong influence from south of border with a strong influx of mariachi inspired brass.

• Boots of Hell – 1999
• Tales From the Dead West – 2000
• Give ‘Em More Rope – 2002
• Live From Texas! – 2004
• Bury Them Deep – 2006
• Life After Sundown – 2008
• Skeleton Cowboys (vinyl) – 2008
• Mistress of the Dark – 2009

Their style eventually attracted the Mistress of the Dark, Elvira, to seek a theme song and video from the psyhobilly rockers from Texas. And for Vampire fans out there, their gig posters actually appeared in the 2004 Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines PC game. Well, enough of my wailin’s, I’ll their music speak for itself.

Wild West Weeks

• Welcome to Wild West Weeks
• Wild West RPG Database
• Into the Far West
• Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier
• Deadlands Reloaded
• Red Dead Redemption
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Part 1
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Core Mechanics
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Traits I
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Traits II
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Traits III
• Wild West Minis Database
• Legends of the West RPG: Vitality & Experience
• Tunes of the Weird West: Ghoultown

Listening to:  Ghoultown – Skeleton Cowboys – Hog Trail

Wild West Weeks

Wild West Weeks

• Welcome to Wild West Weeks
• Wild West RPG Database
• Into the Far West
• Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier
• Deadlands Reloaded
• Red Dead Redemption
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Part 1
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Core Mechanics
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Traits I
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Traits II
• 24 Hour Old West RPG, Traits III
• Wild West Minis Database

Over the next two weeks, Mad Brew Labs is hosting Wild West Weeks. For the following fortnight, I will be showcasing tabletop games, video games, miniatures, movies, music and other tools gamers can utilize to travel back in time and experience the freedom and grit of the Old West. The American Frontier is a setting rife with opportunities to be exploited at the game table.

The American Old West is more than a period of history; it has transcended mere historical record and become a mythology ingrained in American culture. Indeed, much of how our collective memory remembers the Old West is more legend than truth. While the frontier was dangerous and unforgiving, the violence and gunplay of the Wild West was exaggerated by the dime novels and media of the period (similar sensationalism is present in journalism today) and then perpetuated by Hollywood.

Yet, regardless of the embellishment of violence, the crucible of frontier life forged key ideals and aesthetics that comprise what many consider to be core American values. The American Dream was born in the wild and perilous frontier where there was seemingly infinite opportunity for those willing to wear the mantle of the pioneer.

Also, the Wild West represents end of the American frontier as the Anglo-American civilization conquers the wild hinterland and indigenous cultures. The encroachment of the government spells the end of some liberty as they impose law and no longer can a man keep all his wealth and earnings under the burden of taxes.

I think these themes of liberty versus safety, law against anarchy, independence opposed to conformity, risk over reward, and man versus wild provide a great atmosphere for roleplaying opportunities. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be reviewing several roleplaying games targeted at playing in the American West as well as provide useful resources for players and game masters in Old West campaigns.

I’ve also decided to try my hand at a 24 Hour RPG^[1] targeting Old West gaming this Saturday. A 24 Hour RPG is a design meme where an author only has 24 hours to produce a fully functional game within twenty-four hours. No prep work or help from external parties.

I’ll begin the game on Saturday at noon (Eastern Standard Time) and will put my pen down at noon on Sunday. I plan to live-blog the entire process, as I will write the entire thing in chunks on this blog and publish them as I finish up related sections. Whether or not I finish, I’ll release what I have under a Creative Commons license.^[2]

Listening to: Yoshida Brothers – Tsugaru Shamisen – Morricone

References

[1] 24 Hour RPG

[2] Creative Commons License

Fantasy Grounds VTT

I think we may be seeing a virtual table-top integrated with Pathfinder in the near future. While at GenCon, I spied some of SmiteWorks’ people speaking with various Paizo luminaries as well as Lisa Stevens herself intensely demoing something at the SmiteWorks booth Saturday. For those unfamiliar with SmiteWorks, they are the producers of the Fantasy Grounds VTT.

iCrit

During the Future of Paizo seminar at this year’s PaizoCon, Eric Mona and Lisa Stevens touched on integrating Pathfinder in technology. They of course mentioned the iFumble and iCrit (I abhor the iPrefix) iPhone apps that basically digitize their Critical Hit & Fumble card decks. They also mentioned their deal with HeroLab for character generation (my own VentureCaptain.com offers a free, unofficial character generator).

During the seminar, Lisa actually says:

We know there’s a lot of virtual tabletops out there, and this is something that, you know, we even have people in our office that are purposely doing games on virtual tabletops to learn what that’s like and what kind of limitations are there. What things they’d like to see and stuff like that.

There will be sometime in the future, there’ll be a way, or maybe multiple ways, to play Pathfinder games on a virtual tabletop in an official sort of way… We’ve been exploring, and talking to people… There’s a lot of questions. We’re actively exploring those questions, and when I mean actively… it’s a very high priority thing for the company to be looking at this question.

The Purple Golem Meets SmiteWorks?

It’s all speculation on my part, and d20Pro has a long standing relationship with Paizo, so maybe we’ll see more than one VTT integrate Pathfinder in a more official capacity.

Listening to: Gama Bomb – Tales from the Grave in Space – Slam Anthem

Pathfinder Battles Logo

Heroes & Monsters

Paizo ^[1] and WizKids ^[2] announced the Pathfinder Battles pre-painted miniature line yesterday, ^[3] just a few days before GenCon 2011, so I expect they will have samples at their booth (see interactive GenCon exhibit hall map ^[4]). This announcement comes practically on the heels of their first foray, the Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes ^[5] 4 mini set. The first set, Heroes and Monsters, includes 40 figures and will debut in December with the second 60 figure set to follow June, 2012 called Rise of the Runelords. No doubt we can expect some sort of collected hardcover anniversary edition of the Adventure Path of the same name.

Random Expensive

The good news is pre-painted miniatures are back (after D&D minis’ slow decline) and the promotional images make the sculpts and paint job look pretty good. The bad news is that they are random and expensive. Also, the look & feel of the minis is just a bit too stylized [anime] for my tastes.

• $3.99 for a single, random mini with a medium base (or two small based miniatures).
• $5.99 for a single, random mini with a large base

PFB Black Dragon

I think those prices are exorbitant for a single sight-unseen, random miniature.  A standard Pathfinder mini from Reaper usually costs around $5.99. ^[6] Yes, I may have to paint it, but I know what I’m getting. Random is synonymous with Collectable in this instance, and I’m not a fan of catering to the collector or speculative markets. It is standard practice in those markets to make things rare so people buy mass quantities of your product just to obtain key pieces… which are in turn sold on the second hand market for even steeper prices.

Case in point, the huge black dragon miniature offered through Pathfinder Battles. According to the press release, it can only be obtained through retailers who have purchased at least a case of minis. I can just imagine what unscrupulous retailers might do on eBay with these. Well, I guess it’s helping out brick & mortar shops; they need all the help they can get to survive.

PFB Dire Rat & Succubus

Cost Effective?

On the discussion tab of the product page, ^[7] Lisa Stevens (CEO of Paizo) points to the reasoning behind the randomness is because it gives them the ability to produce a wide range of miniatures while still being cost effective:

Randomized miniatures also allow you to provide more variety. Not only can you introduce more figures at once, but the fact that you make make some of them rarer than others means you can produce plenty of the figures that everyone needs, like goblins or skeletons, and fewer of the figures that have narrower appeal, like strange monsters or iconic figures.

Another factor to think about is the brick-and-mortar retailer. It’s much easier for a retailer to stock single booster packs than individual packaged minis.

Conclusion

PFB Gnome Fighter & Frost Giant

Paizo has earned a reputation with me for producing quality material and backing that up with exceptional customer service and fan support. They obviously are successful because they make good business decisions while I’m just vocal consumer with no experience with miniature manufacturing. Even so, WizKid’s business model seems to take advantage of the collector syndrome, which I’m not a fan of exploiting.

My strategy would have been to release themed sets, much like the Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes and like D&D tried to do but with better quality. I’d love to see a set of 10 or 20 figures for each Adventure Path or sets for PCs when major supplements like the Advance Player’s Guide are published. Then you can still produce those misfit minis that are needed, but not popular, because you’re not selling them singly. The press release does state that Encounter Packs of visible non-random re-sculpts/re-paints from the parent sets will be available, but I wonder if it will be enough to satisfy me.

PFB Troll

Listening to: Celtic Frost – Into the Pandemonium – Mesmerized

References

[1] Paizo, the publisher of Pathfinder

[2] WizKid, the manufacture of MageKnight/Clix

[3] The Pathfinder Battles press release

[4] An interactive GenCon 2011 Exhibit Hall Map I created

[5] Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes announced around PaizoCon 2011

[6] A Reaper unpainted, metal Pathfinder miniature

[7] Pathfinder Battles product page

Interactive GenCon 2011 Exhibit Hall Map

In case you haven’t caught it on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook, I’ve taken the liberty to create an interactive map of the GenCon 2011 Exhibit Hall. You can drag and zoom (using the mouse wheel or the up/down arrow keys) the map and when you rollover a booth, it displays the name of the vendor located there. If you click on the booth, it will take you to the vendor’s website (or GenCon.com if a website could not be found).

I’m hoping this will help everyone in aiding with finding, discovering, and planning this GenCon.

Listening to: Ramin Djawadi - Game of Thrones OST – North of the Wall

d20 Law

Intellectual property infringement was popular this week in the world of roleplaying games. We have seen an entire game company disappear seemingly after Berin Kinsman^[1] discovered and ousted obvious plagiarism and copy & paste jobs from two different products. And a small kerfuffle erupted over Paizo Publishing enforcing their rights as owners of copyrighted works.

RPG Plagiarism

From a Google+ post by Berin: Anaithnid Games’^[2] The Operation^[3] cuts and pastes swaths of John Wick’s Wilderness of Mirrors.^[4]

From John Wick’s Wilderness of Mirrors:
My game is about spies. My game is about spies. More specifically, it’s about creating the kind of atmosphere present in a James Bond or Jason Bourne
novel. Players want to be James and Jason and we should let them do just that. Not first level chumps who have to work their way up the ladder to become Mr. and Mrs.
Smith, but the kind of characters who can walk beside The Saint and Mrs. Peel without feeling like scrubs.

From Anaithnid Games’ The Operation:
This is a game about spies. Players want to be James Bond or Bourne or Burke when they play. Not first-level chumps who have to work their way up the ladder to become Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The kind of characters who can stand beside The Saint, Nathan Ford or Mrs. Peel without feeling like total losers.

Apparently, this is not the first product to be so blatantly copied. Berin also reported that this was after Anaithnid Games’ copied portions of Sword Edge Publishing’s Sword Noir.^[5] Luckily RPGNow/DriveThruRPG were swift in removing the infringing products, which is something that cannot be said of the digital book purveyor that Amazon.^[6] Since Berin reported the infringement, Anaithnid Games has disappeared from the web, even closing their Facebook fan page.

Paizo Publishing - This is fair use of the image, because I'm using it to clarify a news report

Infringing Upon Paizo

Geek Related^[7] first alerted me to the tempest in the teacup concerning a recent request from Paizo for the administrator of an Obsidian Portal^[8] campaign log to remove copyrighted images of scanned item cards from his pages.

Paizo has a long history of excellent fan support, and even provides a generous amount of imagery through their community use policy^[9] and community use package.^[10] Which, no one has to use, but you would be far more restricted in the use of that imagery if you only applied fair use as provided by US law.^[11]

There seems to be a lot of pissing and moaning about what Paizo did,^[12][13] and comparisons to what WotC & TSR did in the past. I also saw a lot of armchair attorneys talk about things they don’t understand (and I’ll admit, I’m not a lawyer either but have lots of experience/knowledge concerning IP). Posting scanned images of protected works, not matter how small they are or whether or not you posted copyright disclaimers does not absolve you of copyright infringement. It’s not transformative, like say the case of the pixel art cover to the album Kind of Blue.^[14]

This sense of entitlement concerning Paizo’s property is unfounded, and I think I have a very liberal philosophy about intellectual property. Paizo was even pretty polite from what I’ve gleaned from the discourse; Obsidian Portal and the offending user should be grateful they merely asked the service to resolve the situation instead of bringing legal action (cease & desist notifications, etc.) to bear.

Yeah, you bought the cards. Sure, make scans so you can create copies for personal use. But once you post them on a commercial site and make them available to the public, you’ve crossed the line. Be smart, gamers.

Listening to: Nine Inch Nails – The Crow OST – Burn

References

[1] Piracy, Plagiarism, & Hot Coffee by Berin Kinsman
[2] Anaithnid Game’s now dead Tumblr blog
[3] Anaithnid Game’s The Operation [no longer available]
[4] John Wick’s Wilderness of Mirrors
[5] Sword Edge Publishing’s Sword Noir
[6] Recent copyright infringement woes on Amazon
[7] Paizo Copyright Flap on Geek Related
[8] Obsidian Portal hosts online campaign journals
[9] Pathfinder Community Use Policy
[10] Pathfinder Community Use Package
[11] Copyright Fair Use
[12] Justin Mason complains about being asked to remove infringing material in the comments
[13] Eric Mona chimes in on the kerfuffle on ENWorld
[14] Kind of Screwed, fair use but still bulldozed

GenCon

Last night GenCon released the Exhibitor List & Map^[1] so future attendees can see where their favorite game companies will be positioned in the new expansion. That’s right, this year’s exhibit hall will not be in the same place as last year, but rather in the shiny new areas along Capitol Street. GenCon even made a video to walk you through the new area.

Exhibitor List (PDF)

GenCon 2011 Exhibitor Map

Listening to: Passenger – Passenger – In My Head

References

[1] GenCon Community – Exhibitor News Post