Mad Brew Labs

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

The ePawn Virtual Game Board

E3^[1] usually doesn’t have much to offer the traditional roleplaying and board game world. However, at this year’s E3 a 23” virtual game board was introduced. Behold the ePawn:

ePawn at E3

Gamespot reports that the large touchscreen device will retail for approximately $400.^[2] Gamespot also declares that the unit is a touchscreen, though I haven’t see anything directly from ePawn that says it responds to touch (but it would make sense).

What ePawn does claim is that it can track 100 objects simultaneously that have been configured (possibly using fiducials^[3]) to work with ePawn. In fact, it can track orientation and altitude (how high above the screen) of an object.^[4]

ePawn D&D

Another interesting specification is the ePawn does not come with an embedded CPU or memory. It works in tandem with a smartphone, tablet, or computer. So game designers can work with platforms they already know (their SDK supports Windows, Android, and iOS).

ePawn D&D Zoom

While I’m not exactly thrilled when the acronym DRM is said in the context of positive features, the ePawn provides a seamless DRM in the tracking technology. Which means game providers can limit their game to only work with their objects (which, of course, would be sold at a premium).

The Virtual Mat

There’s another virtual tabletop tool in development, and it’s called the Virtual Mat.^[5] What separates Virtual Mat from something like MapTool^[6] is that it presents the game space in 3D. It accomplishes this by re-using the models and animation from Neverwinter Nights.^[7] This means you’ll need to own NWN to use its resources. That being said, the NWN mod community^[8] has provided a ton of free resource that could be used.

Virtual Mat is written in Java (using the jMonkeyEngine^[9]), so it makes the software fairly cross-platform. However, like most virtual table tops, Virtual Mat has no plans to implement actual rules, but it is trying to hook a lot of the animations and models present in NWN along with common virtual tabletop elements like fog-of-view.

Listening to: Crowbar – Sever the Wicked Hand – Echo An Eternity

References

[1] The Electronic Entertainment Expo is an annual trade show for the video game industry

[2] Gamespot’s E3 2011 Gaming Hardware & Accessories report

[3] A fiducial is a mark that can be recognized by imaging technology

[4] ePawn’s official website

[5] Virtual Mat’s home page

[6] RPTools’ MapTool Virtual Table Top

[7] Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights

[8] Downloads can be found on Bioware^[7] and IGN’s NWN Vault

[9] Virtual Mat thread on jMonkeyEngine

Roleplaying Philosophy Series:

• RPP-000: RPG Theory Bibliography
• RPP-099: Mad Brew’s Gaming Philosophy
• RPP-100: Defining Game
• RPP-101: Defining Roleplaying Games
• RPP-310: Roleplaying Promotes Wellbeing
• RPP-399: 10 Reasons to Play Games at the Table
• RPP-401: RPG Community
• RPP-450: Roleplaying is a Pastime
• RPP-499: Gamer Elitism

Recent discussions among the online RPG community I follow and associate with has been focused on social theory. No doubt many readers will already be familiar with the post(s)^[1][2] that spawned the intense debate, so I won’t revisit the topic here. However, an interesting corollary of this recent trending topic is the question of what constitutes a community?

The Issue

Specifically, is there an online RPG community that consists of you, me, the RPG blogs, RPG fora, etc.? Some do not consider the relationship between bloggers, or bloggers and readers, or general fandom to be a community. Some also seen to believe the word community carries connotations of interaction of towards a common purpose. I disagree with these points and consider roleplaying blogs a community.

Academics of Community

It is certainly not the first (or last) time the definition of community was pondered and argued:

“In sociology, the concept of community has led to significant debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s.”^[3]

That’s quite a feat considering that there wasn’t much social science literature focusing on on community until 1915 when C.J. Galpin^[4] completed his Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community. A work on rural studies where the term community was used in terms of delineating rural socio-geographic areas (i.e. rural communities).^[5]

Definition of Community

The theory of community, while rooted in geographical context, has expanded to identify groups of living organisms that share a common characteristic. I’ve compiled a list of attributes that a community possesses:

• Consists of more than one living organism
• Share at least one identifying characteristic between members
• May be nested within each other and may overlap
• The Universe is the top level community

Mad Brew’s definition of community:

A community consists of two or more organism that share at least one identifying characteristic. Communities can be nested and may overlap. They are always part of a larger community unless that community is the Universe.

The only membership requirement is to possess the identifying characteristic that all members of a community share. This is where things become complicated and where most previously mentioned disagreements about community happen. There are different assumptions about what the key identifier actually is, because no one has taken the time to clarify it.

For instance, interaction between members, while is frequently present, is not necessarily a membership requirement unless such interaction is an identifying characteristic. Many people assume interaction to be a default characteristic while others do not share that assumption. How can these assumptions be reasonably dispelled?

Naming Conventions

Should a community not have an official name, such as the RPG Blog Alliance,^[6] then choosing a concise, yet descriptive name can be problematic. However, some choices are better than others. For example, what is the difference between the RPG blogger community and the Roleplaying blog community?

The former identifies a person while the latter identifies a type of website. Many would have the assumption that since the former identifies a specific individual, a person who writes web-logs about roleplaying games, then that community is limited to those people (i.e. not including readership). While the latter includes anyone who is engaged with roleplaying blogs, passive or active.

RPG Communities Defined

The above academic exercise is nice, but did it solve the issue of determining if there is an online RPG community that consists of you, me, the RPG blogs, RPG fora, etc.? Yes, by the definition provided. I would call it the Online RPG Community, the members sharing the characteristic of engaging in roleplaying culture on the internet. It includes both passive consumers of online RPG content and active developers of content published on the web.

Of course, there is no expectation that anyone will accept the provided definition. This is mostly for my benefit, allowing me to organize my thoughts and record them. However, I surely wouldn’t be opposed to other members referring to this article in their discussion about RPG communities (especially if they agree).

I have identified several roleplaying communities, which I present below:

The Roleplaying Community

• The parent community of all other roleplaying communities
• Includes anyone who has an interest in roleplaying games
• It’s parent community would be The Gaming Community
• Sister communities include The Wargaming Community and The Board Game Community

The Online Roleplaying Community

• Includes anyone engaged in roleplaying culture on the Internet
• Child communities include Roleplaying Game Forums, Venture Captain^[7] users, and Twitter users following or involved in RPG discussions.

The Roleplaying Blog Community

• Includes anyone engaging roleplaying blogs, including readership
• Child communities include the above mentioned RPGBA, the RPG Bloggers Network,^[7] and the Savage Bloggers Network^[8]

Listening to: Silent Civilian – Rebirth of the Temple – Divided

References

[1] Player Alignment Shift: Being Chaotic Good at the Gaming Table on This is My Game.
[2] You Don’t Have a God-given Right to my Friendship on The Angry DM.
[3] Hillery, George A., Jr. (1955). Definitions of Community: Areas of Agreement. Rural Sociology, 20 (4) (via Wikipedia).
[4] Galpin’s short bio via the Wisconsin Historical Society.
[5] Harper, E. H. and Dunham, A. (1959). Community Organization in Action: Basic Literature and Critical Comments. New York: Association Press (via Infed).
[6] The RPBA is a new community for RPG bloggers I recommend you check out.
[7] Venture Captain is the online Pathfinder RPG character creator I’m developing.
[8] I’m a long time member of the RPG Bloggers Network.
[9] The Savage Bloggers Network is an aggregator for Savage Worlds blogs.

Roleplaying Philosophy Series:

• RPP-000: RPG Theory Bibliography
• RPP-099: Mad Brew’s Gaming Philosophy
• RPP-100: Defining Game
• RPP-101: Defining Roleplaying Games
• RPP-310: Roleplaying Promotes Wellbeing
• RPP-399: 10 Reasons to Play Games at the Table
• RPP-401: RPG Community
• RPP-450: Roleplaying is a Pastime
• RPP-499: Gamer Elitism

Deadorc's Question

I’m officially dedicating this week at Labs to Deadorcs. In the same  Twitter discussion that inspired my last article, Randall Walker of Initiative or What asked a question:

deadorcs: So the question becomes: How do you make #dnd a “pastime” instead of a niche game? What social machinery has to be activated to make it so?

During the course of the discussion, Randall states D&D should (or asks how it could) transcend the status of hobby to be more ingrained in the culture, like grilling or going to the beach (two activities he cites as pastimes).

I believe that D&D, and roleplaying games in general, already are pastimes. Hobbies are inherently pastimes, if that’s what you usually do. To fully understand what I am about to say, we need to define pastime:

What is a pas·time?

noun /ˈpasˌtīm/

1. An activity that someone does regularly for enjoyment rather than work; a hobby^[1]
2. Something that serves to make time pass agreeably; a pleasant means of amusement, recreation, or sport.^[2]
3. Something that amuses and serves to make time pass agreeably.^[3]

From the above definitions, I think we can reasonably say that all pastimes are hobbies, but not all hobbies are pastimes. The trait that separates the two is frequency. Looking at the first definition, a pastime is something someone does regularly.

A National Pastime

What’s missing from Randall’s tweet, and what I think he’s getting at, is a social spectrum qualifier. What would make D&D a <insert community level here> pastime? Much like baseball is referred to as the “national pastime.”

So what would it take for D&D to become a national pastime? It’s hard to put hard requirements down because there are lots of variables. Recognition, intimate knowledge, and acceptance all play major roles (and maybe seasonal shelf space at Wal-Mart). I suppose A-list celebrities might help. But the complexities, requirements, and buy-in of D&D are too great for this too ever happen.

Pastime is Subjective

In the end, I came to the conclusion that, for the most part, pastimes are determined by the individual. I certainly do not consider beach-going or baseball pastimes (or probably many things other people do). My pastimes are playing RPGs, drawing, and shooting firearms (all usually while drinking beer and listening to metal).

D&D is a pastime; whether or not it’s recognized at a specified cultural level is irrelevant to me.

Mad Brew's Response

Listening to: Metalocalypse – Dethalbum II – Symmetry

References

[1] The definition of pastime via Google.
[2] The definition of pastime via Dicionary.com.
[3] The definition of pastime via Merriam-Webster.