It's Friday and time for my look around web. It's been an eventfully week, with more to comment on than normal. So I've picked two items from the blogs instead of one, I'll likely get in trouble with everyone with these.
First up was a great deal of ranting from the blogs about WotC pulling the plug on selling PDFs of their old work. This hit the 'old school' crowd rather hard, but from where I sit I can at best summon the effort to shrug.
They own the product, and can sell it or not as they like. Given that I don't like their products, the impact on me is effectively none. Those that do like them are understandably upset. But WotC is under no obligation to provide material that supports old games and thus undermines sales of their current publications. People claim that isn't the result, but the only people truly able to make this claim are those ranters buying and playing 4th edition. A passingly small number, and even those aren't singing the praises of 4th and thus marketing it on their old school websites.
Given that simple fact, those PDFs were in effect a net lost to a company who needs every dollar to go towards supporting its core business. Thus WotC's action is completely understandable.
I'm amazed that it took this long.
It also shouldn't impact anyone that much. There are now old school copy cat publishers out there, and people can make and add as much as they wish to out of print games, or even take the concepts and make their own.
Yeah, it's a bummer that something you like is gone. Now move on with your hobby- in whatever direction you like. If needed, leave WotC behind.
Second up is a two part series of posts over on Unclebear by a G. Kinslayer.
So the idea given there is to lie to your players, misled them, and in general cause them to waste their gaming time or worse.
How depressing.
That the author is a creater of a "dark fantasy" rpg is no surprise. And I guess that those drawn to 'dark fantasy' in the first place will likely enjoy such things.
But gaming isn't about that for me. In fact gaming is much closer to the ideas I found in this unrelated post on movies. Movies aren't rpgs, there are great differences. But the ideas I found in that article mirror those that I run my own RPGs with to a degree.
And those ideas don't have room for "screwing with the players".
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6 comments:
I read Kinslayer's posts with sort of a tongue-in-cheek atmosphere. I think it's satire and he is giving examples of what not to... but I could be wrong and maybe he likes to torture players.
@Mad Brew: Maybe. Maybe not. These days with the wide range of things people do- it's hard to tell.
Given some of the stuff I see seriously suggested, I have to take him seriously. It just wasn't over the top enough (or funny enough) not to.
I had read it as mostly tongue-in-cheek. Now I'm wondering if I should have. :)
The posts on Uncle Bear were a joke. If you read them as serious advice, you're trying to hard.
Surprised you didn't mention Dave Arneson's passing. As you don't like D&D, perhaps you didn't think it relevant, but I would have a hard time believing that.
@MJ Harnish: Shouldn't jokes be funny?
@icosahedron: I considered it, but really have little to say about a man and family I never met other than to express my condolences- and I thought that was a given.
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