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

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

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

Calibre - eBook Management

Print is far from dead, but digital is definitely here to stay. My eBook (inluding my RPG library) collection surpassed my physical collection more than a couple of years ago and its size has continued to grow exponentially. I spent a lot of time organizing, maintaining, and converting books in my library, which could be a hassle until I found Calibre.^[1]

Calibre is the most feature rich eBook management tool I’ve seen. Calibre can also be extended via plugins or by improving the source, which is open. Most of the following can be found on the Calibre site, but I’m so thrilled by the software I’ll repeat the features here.

Library Management

It manages your library from the concept of a logical book, which means it will only have one entry per book regardless of how many formats I have it in, which keeps the interface clean and concise. It can also sort on all the metadata you’d expect: title, author, date added to library, date published, size, rating, series, etc. It even stores covers. Calibre will even go online and download metadata for the book based on title/author or ISBN.

It also supports custom metadata via tags, which is especially great for RPG libraries. You can tag with system, version, setting, or as a third party publication. This makes finding all the relevant resources for your game a snap. I used to organize my library by publisher, but then I’d find myself needing to access lots of directories to get all the material I needed. You may also attach comments about the book.

Format Conversion

The eBook converter is pretty amazing. It supports more formats than I’ve ever used and it can rescale font sizes, detect and create structures (table of contents), and even insert metadata into the “book jacket.”

accepted input formats:

available output formats:

Device Sync

Calibre supports a large number of devices natively, but it be used with any eReader that exports itself as a USB disk. The following is a list of just a few of the devices supported: Android devices, Edge, iPad/iPhone, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and Sony PRS.

eBook  Viewer

Calibre can also be used to read your library and its viewer supports a wide array of formats. It also supports bookmarks, table of content, CSS, printing, and searching. You may also customize the experience by adjusting a user style sheet and fonts.

RSS Download

Of particular note to bloggers and blog readers is Calibre’s ability to automatically fetch feeds and convert articles into an eBook format. It supports about 300 news sites out of the box, but users can build recipes for new sites and upload them to the Calibre forum.^[2]

Content Server

My favorite feature of the Calibre program is its ability to serve my books so I can access them from anywhere. This feature is particularly useful for those of us with mobile devices that don’t have a lot onboard storage.

You can actually browse your collection from anywhere with an internet connection with a simple browser (like on your smartphone or even with the Kindle). Hell, this ability is even useful when running a game at home as it allows me to keep all my eBooks in one location but access them from multiple devices at the table.

Calibre gets my highest recommendation 5 out 5 flasks!

5 out of 5 flasks

Listening to: Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun – Green Machine

Resources

[1] Calibre’s official website

[2] Calibre forum

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

Deadorcs Question

Towards the end of last week, Deadorcs (Randall Walker of Initiative or What?) asked a question:

deadorcs: If #dnd were as popular as say (I don’t know) Scrabble or Monopoly (but not be a board game). What would that look like & how to get there?

Mad Brew's Response (1)

My reply was that such a feat was improbable. Mostly because the amount of involvement, buy-in, and general work required by players is a hurdle too great for most people to overcome. Indeed, the imagination required must have been unfathomable to a vocal part of the population in the 1980s during the prime of the D&D-is-satanic scare.^[1][2]

Mad Brew's Response (2)

Maybe I spoke too soon. I think I know what D&Dopoly would look like and how it got there.

Legacy

The anti-D&D fervor of the Eighties, while mostly gone, has still left a legacy. So in order for D&D to become a popular kid, it would have to put that legacy to rest (hopefully in a hole deep enough that when its remains become reanimated, the zombie cannot crawl out). While education, celebrity fawning, and wearing your D&D badge where everyone can see it does a lot to kill that legacy, time is D&D’s greatest ally in this battle.

Even harder to conquer than its satanic roots, is D&D’s hardcore geek legacy. Only geeks, nerds, and dorks play D&D, man, or worse. Right? Well, no one wants to be a dork, so the D&D player needs to be an everyperson: women, men, doctors, lawyers, factory workers, secretaries, plumbers, landscapers, actors, & lingerie models. Again, education, celebrity fawning, and time are the biggest champions here.

Simplicity

Even if D&D was the golden child of games, having been blessed by the Pope or promised virgins in the hereafter, it would still have to overcome the complexity of rules that are present. Also, let’s not forget the one element that truly separates roleplaying games, and thus D&D, from board games, and that’s scope.

D&D allows players to freely improvise character actions in order to achieve a possibly infinite number of goals.^[3] The scope of D&D is an impressive thing, so impressive it puts off prospective gamers because they like finite possibilities because they’re easier to manage.

But how can you simplify the game without sacrificing its identify? You could do watered down starter sets, but I think technology is the key [see below].

Market Penetration

The giant phallus of marketing would need to bury itself into the tight, little love channel that is the people’s game shelf. To be as popular as Monopoly would mean that just as many homes have D&D. What can marketing do?

First off, put the kibosh on shitty fucking movies and other media. Get them while they’re young (make an awesome cartoon series complete with posable dolls/figures, pajamas, and goddamned coloring books). Execute an effective transmedia attack on people. Yes, it would mean a serious investment, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

D&Dopoly

D&Dopoly is not what it sounds like… or maybe it is! Hasbro owns both D&D AND Monopoly, so why not cross pollinate and make D&D themed Monopoly boards? Put that in your merchandising strategy right beside your transmedia attack.

Anyways, what would the popular D&D, brother to Monopoly in every home, look like?

Well, it would be a couple of decades from now, when the biggest religious opponents from the eighties are now confined to filling their Depends while mumbling nonsense about the “good ol’ days.” Touchscreen tabletops, like the Microsoft Surface^[4], have pervaded people’s home (no doubt riding the coattails of the iPadXX). High society parties dress up like wizards and demons and play exclusive adventures written for them on giant versions of the tabletops found in normal consumer homes.

It’s all there, the rules (classes, spells, powers, etc.), the maps, miniatures (virtual or physical… which has its own memory to save your stats & loot), and even dice (again, virtual or physical), only the touch-app running on the table does all the calculations for you: movement (hopefully we’ve dropped grids & hexes by then), damage, and even what actions you may take.^[5]

The Awesome Part

You want to know the best part? The rest of us who already dig D&D don’t even have to wait. I say fuck popularity and to hell with whether or not roleplaying (D&D included) is as popular as Monopoly. Once it gets to that point, there is a decent chance you won’t like it.

Listening to:  Triptykon – Eparistera Daimones – Descendant

References

[1] Robertson Games has a recent article about Chick Tracts from the 80s.
[2] Anyone remember Patricia Pulling & her Bother About D&D group? Check out The Escapist’s write up on one of their brochures.
[3] I developed a pretty damn good definition of a roleplaying game a couple of years ago. Which is where I’m pulling this comment about scope.
[4] The new Microsoft Surface.
[5] Oh wait, there is shit like that already in development!

Savage Worlds Fan Site

At any one time, I probably have three to five personal projects (usually of the geek variety) happening at once. Some of these projects I find I’m not interested in anymore and they are scuttled to the bottom of the Sea of Dead Projects. Most of them are completed, but I keep to myself. The rest I deem worthy for public consumption and I release into the wild.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, I keep so many projects around to avoid burnout. I usually only have one primary project at any single moment in time, but it shares mind-space with several smaller distractions. These distractions allow me to stoke the creative fires when intense sessions with the primary project threaten to blowout the hearth.

Well, today, I present one of the distractions that avoided the Sea of Dead Projects and has been released into the wild:

SavagedTools

SavagedTools is a small, bare-bones application (semi-optimized for mobile devices) that combines card-based initiative, dice rolling (supporting aces & wild die, and hopefully any number of edges/hindrances), and a logger into one tool.

SavagedTools Login Page

It uses a simple sign-on that only requires display and campaign names. There is no registration. This means anyone can access your campaign’s log or impersonate you, but the damage is minimal (just create a unique campaign name and don’t share it).

SavagedTools Initiative

The sign-on allows your group to share initiative draws and dice rolls with each other in near real-time on the logger. Whenever the deck is shuffled or a player draws a card, the results are recorded in the log and the page is updated. Same thing with dice, and players can even assign a description to their roll.

SavagedTools Dice

What may be especially interesting is that all the important stuff happens server-side, so players cannot manipulate the results through JavaScript trickery. I’m also especially proud of the fact that random number generation is accomplished by using the API available from Random.org. Random.org uses atmospheric noise to produce true random numbers.

SavagedTools Logger

To keep my database size manageable, I’ve incorporated a routine that will destroy any data older than hour, so the logs are not permanent. Other than that, the tool is free to use and comes with no strings attached (for as long as I can cover the hosting).

I plan on re-using the dice library I wrote for my other online RPG tool, Venture Captain (a character generator for the Pathfinder RPG). So this distraction will also prove useful for my primary project.

Please check out SavagedTools and let me know if you encounter any issues.

Listening to: Testament – The Gathering – Eyes of Wrath

Venture Captain

I have finally opened up the online Pathfinder PRG character generator beta testing to the public. You can find the generator at VentureCaptain.com. I was surprised the domain name was available (considering all the “make money for nothing” schemes found on the web). I actually plan on expanding the site to host a suite of utilities for use with the Pathfinder RPG including a dice app I’ve been tinkering with that uses true random number generation, courtesy of Random.org. You can also follow Venture Captain on Facebook and on Twitter.

TECHNOLOGY

The character generator is a plain web app. It runs XHTML 1.0 Strict (every page but the contact page validates), CSS2.1, and JavaScript/jQuery. So it should display and render fine on most standards compliant-ish web browsers. The generator exports characters as a small PDF (~40k) file, so whatever platform you are using must support PDFs.

I’ve built the app according to how I plan on using it. I run Chrome on Windows 7 have no issues. Chrome renders JavaScript blazingly fast, but I’ve also tested it on Firefox 3.5/3.6 and it runs fine. On IE 7/8, the generator performs a bit on the sluggish side. I haven’t tested it on mobile devices, because quite frankly, there is just too much information to try to display effectively on such a small screen.

THIS IS BETA

I must stress that the generator is in BETA. There are obvious things missing, as well as ton of undiscovered bugs waiting to be squashed. I am working on tying up loose ends with the current implemented features before slaying the bigger dragons of Equipment and Spells. Oh yeah, and the only guy writing code for this app is me.

Some things I’m working on now is expanding the class feature information presented on the character sheet (displaying bloodline powers, school powers, etc.) as well as creating an interface for missing elements such as being able to choose what Mercy you get when you take the Extra Mercy feat.

This being said, if you find anything missing, improperly formatted, not compliant with the latest Pathfinder RPG rules, or have a general suggestion please do not hesitate to contact me via Twitter, Facebook, or using the VentureCaptain.com Contact page. I want this tool be the best it can be, so everyone’s feedback is important to me.

FEATURE ROADMAP

Below is how I think feature implementation will roll-out. I’m naming the builds after cities in Golarion, with the first build belonging to capital of the oldest empire.

v1.0 [Sothis] Feature Implementation (bold items are finished; italicized items are in development):

• Ability Scores (point buy, tier points, racial adjustments)
• Core Classes (alignment restrictions, favored class bonuses, selectable class features)
• Skills (class skill training bonus, skill focus bonus, racial bonuses, ability modifiers)
• Calculated Combat Stats (BAB, CMB, CMD, AC, Touch AC, Flat Footed AC, Saves, HPs, Speed, Initiative)
• Feats (Racial, class granted feats, full prerequisite validation)
• Equipment (calculate wealth, calculate encumbrance, attack/damage bonuses, highlight proficiency, equip to slots)
• Spells (select known spells, select memorized spells, calculate DCs, calculate dice/bonuses)
• Portraits by 60+ Terrible Portraits
• Save to PDF (complete with calculated values, racial & class features, custom landscape layout)

v2.0 [Oppara] Feature Roadmap:

• Prestige Classes
• Traits
• Language Selection
• Custom Magic Weapon & Armor
• Random Bio Generation (Name, Homeland, Age, Height, Weight, Hair, & Eyes) based on Race & Gender
• Aging Affects validation based on Age in Bio
• Rules Info (overlays with PRD definitions for class features, feats, etc.)
• Pathfinder Society legal character validation
• Save to HTML

v3.0 [Egorian] Feature Roadmap:

• Advanced Player’s Guide Update
• Non-core free entry for class, feats, traits, skills, equipment, & spells.
• Pre-calculated Combat Maneuver & Spell sheets
• Storage Solutions

IT’S FREE!

Did I mention this web app is free? Yeah, creating characters with Venture Captain costs you nothing (except whatever you pay to access the internet already). It will continue to be free for as long as I feel like covering the cost of hosting and development. There may be pay features in the future (storing characters in cloud?), but only for convenience services, never for content.

If you like it, please follow @Venture_Captain on Twitter and spread the word, like Venture Captain on Facebook, or even blog about it.

Venture Captain Online Pathfinder Character Generator

The online Pathfinder RPG character generator that I’ve been tinkering with in my free time over the last couple of months is quickly approaching open beta testing. I currently have all the validation implemented for core class features, feats, and skills. The sole remaining elements to work on involve displaying character information effectively in the PDF export. Just need to figure out how I want to render class features and feats and it’s ready to go.

Character Sheet

I’ll add equipment and spell selection during the beta testing, but before that, I want to optimize the validation logic performance. Seeing how sluggish the JavaScript performs on Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 bugs the hell out of me. Chrome, which blazes through most of the code, hits a bottleneck during skill validation (but only initially).

Class Feature Validation

Features Roadmap

I figured I might list some of the features I have already implemented as well as those I eventually plan on including. For the moment, I am only supporting the Core Rulebook, but as I find time (and motivation), I’ll add stuff from other Pathfinder products (hint: beer money is motivational).

v1.0 Feature Implementation (bold items are finished; italicized items are in development):

• Ability Scores (point buy, tier points, racial adjustments)
• Core Classes (alignment restrictions, favored class bonuses, selectable class features)
• Skills (class skill training bonus, skill focus bonus, racial bonuses, ability modifiers)
• Calculated Combat Stats (BAB, CMB, CMD, AC, Touch AC, Flat Footed AC, Saves, HPs, Speed, Initiative)
• Feats (Racial, class granted feats, full prerequisite validation)
• Equipment (calculate wealth, calculate encumbrance, attack/damage bonuses, highlight proficiency, equip to slots)
• Spells (select known spells, select memorized spells, calculate DCs, calculate dice/bonuses)
• Save to PDF (complete with calculated values, racial & class features, custom landscape layout)

v2.0 Feature Roadmap:

• Portrait selection (using 60+ Terrible Portraits^[1])
• Traits
• Random Bio Generation (Name, Homeland, Age, Height, Weight, Hair, & Eyes) based on Race & Gender
• Aging Affects validation based on Age in Bio
• Rules Info (overlays with PRD definitions for class features, feats, etc.)
• Pathfinder Society legal character validation
• Save to HTML

v3.0 Feature Roadmap:

• Non-core open entries for class, feats, traits, skills, equipment, & spells.
• Pre-calculated Combat Maneuver & Spell sheets
• Export/Import character from database (may charge fee for storage)

Platform Choices

It’s times like these when I begin questioning the platform choices I’ve made. The entire front end uses valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS2.1, and JavaScript. The back end is ASP.NET 4.0 & C#. I also have access to SQL Server 2008 in case future features require data storage.

I passed on HTML5 because I feel like there are too many compatibility issues that need to be addressed before you get a [nearly] uniform experience across browsers. Cross-platform is still ever elusive. Just take a look at percentage of browsers in use on W3C’s statistics page^[2] and cross-reference that with the HTML5 browser readiness site^[3].

There are still a ton of users out there with little to no HTML5 support. Now consider that each browser implements features in slightly different ways and you have a nightmare for a developer wanting to build a robust app and ensure a similar experience across the browsers.

The choice to build upon ASP.NET was easy. I work with ASP.NET in my day job, so I’m pretty handy with it. The .NET library I’m using to generate PDFs is pretty slick and I’m not sure if it would be as easy to implement with another server-side language.

Concerning CB

This line of questioning is especially germane with current hobby events as I saw my Twitter feed recently choked full of bitching and moaning about Wizards of the Coast’s choice in using Silverlight to develop their new online character builder^[4].

All the geek angst seems to originate from a ZDNet article^[5] that cherry-picked quotes from Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Someone thinks Microsoft is “deprecating” Silverlight (I could not find a direct quote from the conference that ever used the word, deprecate). And of course, all of the Apple iP* fanatics are sad-faced because Silverlight means it won’t work natively on their iOS devices.

Microsoft quickly cleared up any confusion about Silverlight (within 2 days of the ZDNet article)^[6][7], because there are a lot of businesses out their using the platform. Also, I’m sure you’ve recently seen a big marketing push for Windows Phone 7. Well WP7 is practically synonymous with Silverlight, so it’s most definitely still supported. You can now think of Silverlight as Objective C that benefits from browser plugins.

Listening to: City of Fire – City of Fire – Rising

REFERENCES

[1] 60 (108) Terrible Portraits for Creative Commons Release

[2] W3School’s Browser Statistics

[3] HTML5 & CSS3 Readiness

[4] Wizards of the Coast’s CB FAQ

[5] ZDNet’s Silverlight Article

[6] Bob Muglia, President of the Server & Tools Division at Microsoft

[7] Tim Heuer, Program Manager for Silverlight

Sunglar (of Stargazer’s World^[1]) kicked off a blog carnival on the Role Play Media Network^[2] earlier this week that focuses on how Social Media has impacted the hobby and the pundits surrounding it. Being keen on technology and its application on the hobby^[3], I felt this was an excellent topic to discuss here at the Labs.

First, let’s define what social media is. Social media are interactive networks and/or tools that store and transmit information. Forums, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Kickstarter, deviantArt, BitTorrent, Second Life, Digg, Reddit, YouTube, Picasa and multitudes of other applications and technologies are social media. Anytime users can rate, discuss, share, or otherwise interact with the data or each other, social media is involved.

Social Media Landscape by Fred Cavazza

I think social media has impacted five major properties of the hobby. Social media has increased accessibility to the hobby, decreased the time of distribution, expanded the reach of the hobby, made the permanence of the hobby mutable, and finally, social media has bridged gaps in intimacy between hobbyists as well as publishers & designers.

Accessibility

Before the internet and cheap (often free) social media tools, the means to produce and deliver content were cost prohibitive. It would mean spending money at a print shop and obtaining a mailing list of people to actually send it to and/or distributing it at local shops.

Anything beyond simple black & white facsimiles would require specialized skills and tools of the print industry. Today, one can leverage cheap or free drag & drop applications to create surprisingly good layouts for websites, e-books, and print-on-demand solutions. In essence, this means anyone can be a magazine/e-zine editor, webmaster, or author.

Time/Speed

Social media has significantly reduced the time required to distribute of content. In the print world, it takes days (newspapers) or even months (book printing & shipping) for content to be delivered for consumption. These days, as soon as the content is ready, it can be immediately published and ready for hobbyists to read and use.

With tools like feed readers, email, Twitter, and Facebook, the hobbyist can achieve near instantaneous awareness of when new content is available. No longer does one have to make a trip to the local shop or wait for a product to appear on a shelf.

Reach

Before the internet and social media, the reach of the hobbyist was pretty much limited to people known locally. Programs such as play-by-mail could transcend this limitation, but it suffered from extended periods of waiting by the mailbox and drew out play to a sometimes mind-numbingly slow one action per week.

With the internet and social media tools, the reach of the hobbyist is global. Even language barriers become easily scalable obstacles with a browser like Chrome (recognizes and prompts user if they would like to translate pages). The lone gamer stuck in the backwaters is only a click away from his hobby and others who share his passion.

Permanence

Social media and the internet have allowed what were once immutable and absolute to become evolving and sometimes even capricious. Before these tools, a game reached the hobby in what would be its final form. In order to fix/change the design, a new printing, supplement, or an entirely new edition would have to be created.

Today, errata and fan-made house rules and supplements make a game a constantly evolving beast (should you choose to let it). It seems like WotC puts out a new errata document while prominent bloggers offer optional rules and mechanics to spice up the game on a daily basis.

Depending on your perspective, the new mutability of the hobby can either be a blessing, a curse, or both.

Intimacy

I think the final property of the hobby that social media has changed is that it has allowed hobbyists and designers to develop (at least an illusion of) personal relationships. No longer are the names printed inside our game manuals some unknown being in the ivory tower.

Social media has allowed the hobbyist to glimpse into those areas that were once inaccessible. We can see behind the curtain and watch the processes that make a publisher run. We can give feedback and get answers direct from the designer (without having to wait to see if our question was answered in next month’s sage column).

Convenience

All of these factors add up to one property, convenience. Social media and the internet make it easier to organize, play, obtain content, and communicate among ourselves and with the industry. The ability to connect is nearly effortless.

Be sure to return to the originating post for this RPMN blog carnival, Social Media and its impact on RPGs to see what everyone else is saying.

Listening to: Murderdolls – Women & Children Last – Chapel of Blood

REFERENCES

[1] Sunglar at Stargazer’s World.

[2] The RPMN is a Ning social network for RPG hobbyists created by Berin Kinsman.

[3] Check out my many posts that deal with leveraging technology for RPGs.