There were several points in the piece that stuck with me pretty strongly. The first was a woman who lost her son to suicide. She found him dead at his computer with an MMO still playing on the screen. The second is the general group of MMO players represented as being a huge part of their lives and how they generally look like caricature gamers. In essence, pathetic social weirdoes that latch onto something not real. The last is how these games have actually benefitted people with disabilities who can enter these worlds and be something more fantastic than normal which is the absolute opposite of their reality.

My first topic will address the woman that lost her son and became an anti-gaming activist, even forming a kind of 12 step program to tackle it and try to “cure” addicts. First of all, the woman is not a psychiatrist or otherwise qualified to run such a program. She basically ripped off another 12 step program (AA) and started to try. While I don’t fault her for trying to do something, I do fault her motives. Something like this happened back at the birth of the PnPRPG hobby when a mother blamed her son’s suicide on D&D and started a Christian advocacy campaign against these games. The big problem is that people actually believe the games are the problem. The woman took her son to a psychiatrist who diagnosed depression disorders. The woman read these and basically took away from it what she wanted: gamers are depressed, because they play games, i.e. games are the cause. While I do believe that gaming was an issue with these people, it is not the issue. It is a symptom, much like drug abuse or drinking can be a symptom to a greater problem. These people looked towards gaming as an escape. Which brings me to a position where I think saying gaming as an escape is not healthy (rather keep it as entertainment) because if you are escaping from problems in reality one must first change their reality. Take ownership of it. Not run away to a bottle, a pipe or needle, or a game. In general, the woman misplaced her blame. She should be pointing to herself and her son. While the entire episode is sad, if she had been more open to looking at a wider spectrum of problems, instead of blaming the games she didn’t like or understand, her son may have gotten the help he needed and may be alive today.

The simple point is that if you are shutting off to play games, be them RPGs, MMOs, or even Farmville or Facebook, you are escaping reality to avoid your problems. Any AA support group will tell you that this only makes things worse. If you are playing for more hours than you actually live life, or you are so involved that the reality in a game is preferable to actual reality, then there is a bigger problem going on. And yes, this goes for you PnP Gamers as well.

This brings me to those people who do have real problems existing in reality. One person on the documentary was confined to a motorized chair, could not speak, and had only partial motor control in one arm. He prefers the reality of an MMO because he can run, climb, jump, even speak. In the virtual world he is not a victim of his disabilty. Now, some people with disabilities might get angry at this statement, but let me continue. I have a daughter with a disability, but she is in no way disabled from life. She walks with crutches and is every bit a normal 3 year old. However, her crutches give her away to society. In a church function one of the well meaning teachers was putting together a march. She decided to have the other children march in a circle around her. It was a nice idea, but completely wrong. She was capable of marching and doing everything else the kids could do. However, her crutches sparked a well meaning intention to keep her involved but make it easier for her. My daughter was clearly unhappy with this. She was set aside, made different, and this bothered her. To say that society doesn’t do this is to live in ignorance. So this man decided to live in a world where he could virtually do things he could not in real life, and in a world where no one knew anything about his real world physical condition. Is this wrong? I don’t think it is wrong for him. He is happy in that world. I do think it is a pretty powerful statement as to how screwed up the rest of the real world really is. This person already has a lot to overcome to live in a normal and find happiness. The people who don’t have these physical challenges that get lost in virtual reality to escape life are the ones who need real help.

However, there is a line between people who are passionate about their hobby and those who choose to escape reality. Too many people look to gamers of any stripe in a sad lens where they see pathetic losers who want to pretend to be elves and fight orcs. The problem is that they aren’t looking in the mirror very much. The reality of a game world, one where the participants and players are actively engaged, socializing, and working to enhance the experience together is no more pathetic then the group of people who get together to watch sporting events. Look at it this way, is the reality of my elf questing with your dwarf to kill an orc any more real than the football team you watch? Not really. You are not playing the football game. You normally don’t have any real relation with the people playing the game. You may know about them, but you don’t know them. They are characters on a screen, or field, playing a game for you to watch and be entertained. The players playing the football game are really playing a game. However, the game has no affect on reality. They do not affect global policy. They do not have anything more than a passing affect on the global economic markets (and no more than any MMO for that matter). They don’t affect the real world. It is a fantasy itself and no more real than any movie or tv show by virtue of it having real players, no more than a social game, rpg, WoW, or playing an online shooter with 15 other players in simulated wars. The same goes for people who can’t seem to miss the latest celebrity gossip, go to the bar to drink with friends, tool around with your custom car. These are all hobbies with no more real world merit than any other hobby. They contribute only to the enjoyment of your life and so are no more or less silly or pathetic than any other.

And, just like any other hobby, if it gets in the way of things that are important, like work, family, etc. then there is a problem. They guy that spends his money on a new part for his car but skimps on the food bill or does not pay his child support just as pathetic and broken as the guy that uses his vacation time to level grind a new expansion pack. Spending an entire Sunday watching the Super Bowl is no more stupid than wasting it on a 10 hour game session of any table top game. These are just the methods of entertainment we choose. I have personally run the gambit. I was a skater for about 5 years (even got invited to skate some Warped Tour events here in Florida), then I got into Jazz and night clubs, womanizing, video games, rpgs, CCGs. Now I have a family and my life revolves around that. Gaming is secondary to me, but it is no less a part of my life than skating was, or going to see a local punk band play downtown. I don’t get to do it as often, but that is how I spend my time now. Gamers may have met a past incarnation of myself and thought my hobby was stupid. I, at one point, thought gaming was silly. Its all a matter of perspective and personal choice.

Today, I am a family man, a writer, and a gamer. Two of those things will never change, but one, is my choice. I wave my geek flag proudly. I did not watch the Super Bowl, but I am looking forward to my friends adaptation of Silent Hill in about two weeks that we will be playing with Modern Sagas rules.

To end that subject, and to drive the point home, there is a man who became lost in gaming, became overweight, lost his job, etc. He gave up gamine, worked out (his goal was to get to 200), and got his life back in order. Now he wants to get to 180 lbs and seems obsessed with physical activity. While his new obsession is definitely more healthy and hygienically valid, it is still no less of an obsession. The guy still has some obsessive tendencies that he needs to address. Sooner or later a new drug will take gaming or exercise’s place. Either way, he is still virtually alone in the world as he doesn’t mention anything about being with friends.

One last point: if you want to avoid the negative aspects of being a gamer you must do some things with your life. 1. Shower daily. 2.Socially meet with friends in an environment that has nothing to do with your hobby. 3. Find something important to focus your life around and then keep your hobby a good distance in second or third place. The funny thing is, you probably won’t be forced into less time with your hobby. However, you may choose to do it less because life is just as much fun when dice aren’t being rolled.

Until Next Time: Happy Gaming!

First things first: this is what a load out interface looks like in the DPnP Character Management Software:

Its broken into 3 sections. The top left section is a simple list of buttons representing the available slots in a load out. The right panel shows the items that are available to use in that slot. The picture shows that the Primary Weapon slot is selected and has listed all the weapons the character can use in that slot, and only those weapons. The bottom panel is an information panel. It shows the information for the slot or item currently selected. If the selected element is an item, or a slot with an item equipped, the information panel shows the stats for that item, as it is used by the character.

There are two things, in my opinion, inventory management needs to have. One is proper organization. This is handled by the layout. We take special care to make movements with mouse seem natural. People tend to read from left to right, so we naturally want to work that way as well. So first you select a slot. Next we filter all the items that can be used in that slot. We move the mouse right to the panel that list these items.

The second most important thing about inventory management is information. Click an item to see what it does below. The text in the information panel is larger than the rest of the text so that it is easier to glance and get what we need. If we like the item we check the box to equip it.

These two things, organization and information, go hand in hand in the DPnP interface. In the case of specific items, weapons, and other equipment new buttons are generated. For the primary weapon for this character we chose an MP5. This opens up a bunch of new buttons. They include modification slots for the weapon, as well as the ammunition clip.

We have the Rail Modification button clicked. That lists the firearm modifications we can add to this weapon. Each one modifies the weapon differently. Look at the weapon stats in the picture above. It says the attack for this weapon is “d8+4”. If we add the Aimpoint modification it will give us a +2 to attack.

By only allowing certain buttons/items to appear based on selection we can completely eliminate any problems with organization. Furthermore, the software calculates how that item performs for your character which eliminates guesswork as to whether that item is going to do what you expect it to do. This also applies to using elements such as off-hand weapons, shields, ammunition types, etc.

We take, what is essentially a simple thing to do, and make it easier. I actually took a long look at standard management without software. I also looked at how many video games looked at inventory management and took notes on what I liked, and what I didn’t like. What I liked came down to how organic the process felt. The more times I hade to change screens, or how hard it was to actually understand what an item would be like on my character the more I began to understand how the interface should work. It actually affected how other wizards are looking as well as I have gone back and actually changed them to fit this new philosophy, The idea to make things work as easily as possible for the user.

What is ironic is how complicated it actually is under the hood. With so many options in how we can actually outfit our characters there is a ton of things that must be accounted for. Just like using a pen and paper you are able to set up multiple load outs. Completed load outs are part of your character sheet which can be printed all or in part. Making these changes makes the overall process much more forgiving and less intimidating. They are tough changes to make, because they ultimately mean delays. However, a delay today for a much better product on release is always worth it in my eyes.

Until next time, Happy Gaming!

Furthering this goal has been some updates to my PC, including the upgrade from XP to Windows 7. I am very happy with the upgrade and completely surprised with the aesthetic changes it rendered to DPnP. This means some adjustments on that end, but nothing too major. Over all, it looks much better running on Windows 7 than it does on XP, which is very exciting for me.

Unfortunately I don’t have any grand New Year announcements, and I am not making any silly promises. I am only hoping that 2010 will be the year for Ironwood.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

So, lets look at things in this way: our player characters have no qualms about hacking someone to pieces, setting them on fire, putting a bullet to the head, stealing, sacrafice, slavery, etc. They also deal with demonic possessions, massacre, genocide, etc. However, I think they deal with an idolized version of these “horrors”. While dismembering a living thing is still pretty hard core, it can easily be shrugged off as a simple exploitative byproduct of the simpler mechanic of the game. So there are these horrors of war we see in our games that are used in a more action movie kind of way, and then there are these themes we don’t use at all. Themes like rape.

While listening to the NPR story I was disgusted by the very idea of the acts committed without any details or poetic license. It was simply a clinical statement of events, which impressed me as being enough to feel disgust for the criminals (the overal story was pretty good as well). Rape is used to hurt enemy moral, or it is used to breed out a population, or 70+ woman were raped over 300 times collectively and some in gang rapes. Those statements, while not new to me by any means (I have known about Darfur rapes already) struck a chord of disgust in me that I still have not shaken.

Now I have, for better or worse, not shrugged away from including content I think may a little too real. I had absolutely no problems with child slavery in Prophecy for one. I did notice, however, that my bandits in my latest Sidetrack were severely lacking what made true mercenaries gone rogue such horribly scary people. So, I added the truly scary elements in.

So here’s the catch: when I talked it over with my wife she seemed very unsure of what I was doing. She immediately assumed I am putting in a rape scene. I would never do this unnecessarily, and it is unnecessary in the adventure. I simply want to shine a light, or rather leaving a clue, saying “this does happen”.  I am not exploiting it, as I think too many people do exploit the horrors of reality to appear “edgy”. I am simply showing a moment in time, an echo like a marking on a wall, that shows what has actually been happening. These things show the players that such events took place without showing them the event itself. Its like the old black and white Universal Monster Movies where the actual scary part, like Dracula biting the victim, is done away from the camera’s eye. You and I know what he is doing. However, just because we don’t actually see the act doesn’t make it any less powerful that it happened.

I also realise that people may not want these elements in their games. Games should be fun and having some kind of societal spotlight is not their thing. No one should force themselves to be challenged while being entertained. Life challenges us enough as it is. So these elements in my games are optional.

I am just hoping that people understand why these things are there. I would hate to be accused of exploitation or worse. I don’t want people thinking I am on some kind of artistic self important high. And I certainly don’t want people thinking that I am adding something like rape elements to my game to stir up some kind of controversy. I would prefer that any conversation about it be had with me privately rather than across internet forums. I certainly don’t want people to purchase the game because it has these elements in it.

I am simply trying to be honest. After hearing that news story I knew that something like this would have happened in a village taken over by mercenaries. After knowing it I couldn’t just ignore the fact that it would have occurred in the context of the story but I didn’t add it in because I was afraid people might misunderstand me. I am prepared for the misunderstandings, I just hope that some people will point to this post if they chose to defend my position on the subject.

Until next time,

Happy Gaming!

A Sidetrack Adventure

Diseased corpses mark the feeding grounds of a strange and terrible beast. However, while the dragon-like beast is a terror all its own, the true horror is its fatal bite. The desperate victims of the terrible beast fear a fate far worse than being eaten alive, as their own bodies waste away, delivering them into a painful and slow death.

Bite of the Lindworm is a sidetrack adventure that is designed to be played within a 2 to 4 hour game session. It includes the plot, creature and item statistics (for use with the E-RPG system) and full color scale combat maps. While the statistics are designed for the E-RPG system, the story, maps, and elements are easily incorporated into any game system set in a Fantasy of Sci-Fi world.

• Purchase the full color PDF for $3.00 at:

  

The character generator has had some serious issues, mostly design related. By stepping back and not looking at the problems at all I was able to make some attitude adjustments within myself. The attitude adjustments aren’t the flogging type. They are the types that revolve around an approach to a project. In this case, the approach was more complicated than what it needs to be.

The biggest problem is giving the player the ability to micro-manage everything. By doing so I found there was no really good and easy way for the player to do this. No matter what I did to the interface, things got worse, or just were clunky. In order to make things work, I scaled back on certain things. Now, the code determines certain things for you that makes it easy and accessible. That is, ultimately, what DPnP is supposed to be about anyways.

The second thing I am fixing is my approach to XML. A character has a llot of data associated with it, and that can take time to aggregate into an XML report. What I was trying to do was to use XML within the character generator so that users can create character sheets that they can use in the character generator. That put a large resource strain on the program that I didn’t like. My alternative, was to use some kind of text based report, but that was just silly, and ugly. So now, I am pushing XML to the back burner. XML will still be in the final build, but it won’t be used by the character generator. Therefore, if you want it, it is there. For the character generator, and the character sheets, I am just going with plain old HTML. I will also have a guide available at some point for creating your own character sheets for those who are adept at HTML and have the creative inclination to create their own sheets.

These problems now fixed, I can get back to work today implementing those strategies.

Until next time, Happy Gaming!

1/2 Selected PDFs you can use to enhance your horror game.

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There are some basic ideas in horror. One is a sense of risk, which the character could come to harm or die. Desperation usually kicks in when risk is high and the opposition weighs heavily against the character. For instance, an injured character in a movie limps desperately to safety as a horde of slavering zombies slowly overtakes him. The desperation lies in the dwindling hope that the character will make it. They are slow, the distance not closing fast enough. In fact, the distance between him and safety is closing much more slowly than the distance from him and zombies is closing.         

Hindrance is the best way to hold a character down. If a character is hindered through  the actions or failure of the player, or that the dice just didn’t roll in his favor, the player is more willing to accept it rather than a GM who throws amazingly obscene challenges at the player. The player always has to feel like there is a chance of escape, no matter how bleak, not that the GM is there to destroy each hope.

Then there is the character point of view. Stay with me as these things will merge together. Now, you, as a player, may not feel much of a sense of fear the first time your new character sees, for the first time, some supernatural horror like a zombie. Think about it, does your character become nervous, fearful, or any natural emotion, or do you start attacking? This is a sticking point for me as our Meta knowledge sometimes overshadows our ability to play our characters properly.

Here’s how it comes together. As a GM you can add a new element to your game that reflects your character’s first impressions of a situation. Now, I am not talking about some kind of insanity check or restriction on how your characters are role-played. I am talking about a modifier that actually will change the way a player plays the character. 

Try this: the first time a character sees a new horror, such as a zombie (for this example) make them roll a Wisdom test, or a Will save or some kind of mental defense test (whatever your game requires). The difficulty is based on your world, but lets assume that zombies aren’t something that is pretty common. Lets also assume the test is high enough for all players to fail. Now, take the number that they should have rolled, and compare it to what they did roll. The difference is now a modifier to any test requiring thinking, perception, etc.

 In Sagas this changes quite a lot. It alters initiative, spell casting, tactics tests, etc. You could also affect attack rolls, suggesting that the character is more concerned with defense (i.e. protecting him as a natural instinct) to the point that finer combat ability is suffering.

Now, this seems a little rough. However, we are not trying to kill the characters. You may have to point out that your characters are afraid, and that because of this they are not themselves. The best thing for the player to do would be to play defensively, maybe even retreat if things are bad enough. Are one character’s modifiers so high that it seems safe to retreat alone than stand with the group, i.e. running in a panic?

What will begin to take shape is the characters actions. Start describing the lousy die rolls. “Your character hacks desperately at the thing before you” or “You can’t seem to focus on your spell, what are these things? What are they going to do? You’re not sure what you should do!” or “You desperately fumble to reload your weapon and drop the clip on the ground.” Describing the characters actions for the players may help them to get the picture of what is happening to their characters. Fear, desperate, confusion, all of these elements should be present in the descriptions and moods conveyed.

Now, imagine it from their point of view. The players actually start to get the picture. Their characters are in a desperate situation. They could die because they are rolling badly. They are rolling badly because they are hindered with a penalty. Their penalty is caused by fear. The characters are afraid and could die because of it. Now, the player is actually hindered by what has become an overwhelming force. Sure, the group should have been able to kill the zombies with ease. However, fear changes the environment, hindering their ability to think and act clearly. Now the player has a weaker character against a force he isn’t so sure he can beat anymore. Now the player starts looking for a way out too. 

As in every situation you usually have a character with a more level head than the others. You will likely see that character cover a retreat or come up with a plan that allows the other characters to help with easy tasks. Eventually they will get away or defeat the encounter.

If they defeat the encounter it is likely that their fears will go away. You can choose to try this again, but lower the target levels significantly to reflect the new confidence. You may have one or two characters nervous, and hinder because of it. However, the overall group should handle things much easier.

Ultimately it feels like a cheap trick. Some players may hate the new test, but it will always work better than throwing overwhelming odds (i.e. higher level monsters or much more monsters than the characters can really handle) at the characters. That message is generally received as “The GM doesn’t want us to win here so run away” rather than any kind of sense of fear.

Give it a try this weekend and let me know how it works for you. It generally works better than “Your character has suffered from dragon fear and runs away”, or even “900 zombies come at you.” These things seem like contrived mechanics and don’t offer any real sensation. However, the contrived mechanic of adding modifiers that cause a change in behavior very well could.

I created a sidetrack RPG about a week ago. I had decided to actually pump out a few of these fairly quickly to cover up some Ironwood expenses coming up soon. Writing the adventure is usually the longest, and most fun part of the experience. DPnP won’t ever change that. It will help with organizing some threads and data, but ultimately you will generally write your own adventures. What DPnP is doing now is simplifying the tedious part of data entry. By this, I mean, it quickly and easily builds the new creatures, equipment, etc that is needed in adventures.

With the sidetrack I needed several new things. One was a new racial template, Dragons in this case. The dragons created were wingless and land based for such creatures as a basilisk, and for this story a lindworm. Which brings me to the next creation, the lindworm.

Here’s the problem when creating creatures as a publisher. First, it needs to fit the rules. Second it needs to have a certain level of balance. These things are much more comp-licated than simply saying “I’ll use creature X with certain modifications”. Developers don’t have the same luxury GMs have for weekend campaigns. Therefore, you typically have a design. Then you have to check to make sure the design conforms to the rules, then you have to check its encounter challenge against your target difficulty. Then, for good measure, double check.

Invariably there are problems. You will always find a mistake in rule conformity, and difficulty. Then, as you make changes in one spot, you find problems arise in another. It makes the entire creation process a huge endeavor. Very rarely do you get lucky enough to get it right in on go around.

DPnP fixed this by giving you a score for balance on the race and creature. It also does not make mistakes on rule conformity, so you don’t have to worry about that. In fact, the most difficult issue is choosing how best to apply your vision of the creature’s race to the overall difficulty it is presenting. Since this is easily represented with numbers all you really are doing is choosing how many skills/abilities/powers the creature is and how strong they are.

At the end of the day you are left with just being creative, and not any of the balance or mistake issues that make creating things a misery in some cases.

The entire process works for ever element, including new items, spells, and toxins/poisons. So, when creating the adventure I simply wrote a story, in effect. I then created the elements in DPnP, which was a fairly quick and easy process. It cuts development time down to a fraction (its still in editorial limbo however), and made the entire process more enjoyable. Meaning that one goal has been proven to a resounding success with DPnP: Easy/Faster product development!

The adventure creation program uses many of these same tools (they will be directly imported from the CRM) as well as adding a host of new features to further streamline the process. The entire scope has always been about fostering creativity. We filter out the cumbersome work and all we are left with is creating great content in an accessible way.

Until next time,

Happy Gaming!

First I think one should be advised of the pitfalls of adventure planning. There are some things that I will always avoid as a writer of published adventures that I think every GM should be mindful of.

Spotlighting GMNPCs

A GMNPC is a character, created by the GM and run by the GM and treated with the care one would give a player character. They are recurring characters, sometimes allies or villains, created with a large level of detail. While many admonish the existence of such characters in campaigns, I do not feel they are the bane of good GMing. I, instead, see that they may be necessary for the further enjoyment of GMs and in such light they may be used. However, they should never be used as a central player in any adventure. The rule of thumb I keep to in the philosophy of using GMNPCs is that they should be mortal and you, as their creator and the GM, should be prepared for their death in a manner by which you did not plan. Be prepared for the disappointment, and if the players are the willing architects of the character’s death do not besmirch their efforts with a contrived resurrection. In short, if you must use a GMNPC use them with the knowledge that the player characters are infinitely more important to your campaign and they will destroy any plans you have for the character.

Dependant Threads

An adventure writer is not a story teller. In fact, there is a glaring difference between the author of a good yarn versus the GM writing an adventure. In the case of the former the work is centered around the heroe(s) of the tale. The author of a story generally writes how the story is affected by the protagonists and we, as the audience, are taken upon a trip to suffer their hardships and celebrate their victories. The latter, however, should have the work centered around the antagonists. An adventure writer should not write in specific required events for the heroes to perform. You can’t script, with any measure of success, the actions of the heroes. In fact, you should write the story initially as the heroes did not exist at all. Having threads dedicated to specific actions by the players will usually lead to disappointment, especially if future threads in your story are wound tightly within those actions.

For instance, if the only way into a place is by means of a key on a character than you have made two mistakes. One, you have created an instance of one path to success. This means that the characters have to discover it which may mean that at some point you will have to railroad them into discovering the option. Number two is an NPC and the encounter with the players is central to getting the key. What if the something happened in that encounter which prevented future access to the key? You will have to revise your story to fit the new situation.

The Simpler Method

Rather than writing an adventure like you would a story, write your adventure from the point of view of the antagonists. For instance, you know that the villain wants destroy the kingdom. You write that he chooses to use goblins to harrie the outside villages. You also know that he is using captives for a blood sacrifice to summon a demon to do the great work for him. You decide how these events play out, the endgame for the villains, the steps he must take to reach his goal, etc. Your job after that is simply to write in how this will play out.

Once the details of the villain’s efforts are written out you can then return to the idea of the heroes. You fill in some blanks, such as how the heroes get word of the actions. Of course, the most likely will be the burnt villages. They may find it to be goblins and then they go to the goblin lair to find them. That is a natural progression and seems obvious enough. Now, as we wrote the villains plot already we know there are captives, likely being held in the goblin caves. Therefore we have an option to leave clues, such as the captives in the cave, that could lead to the villain’s plot. Also, it could be likely that a human agent of the villain is there with the goblins, and there may be written instructions for the agent or the goblins, perhaps even a map of where to take the captives. All of these elements make sense, do not rely on a single specific player action (aside from finding the goblin lair) and leave the entire tale of what the characters do within the hands of their player’s rather than you threads.

The Joy of Unfolding Stories

Some GMs like to tell stories. I prefer the unfolding of a story through player actions. To me, each gaming session is like the next episode of a TV show I love to watch. I may have an idea of what is coming in that episode, but I do not know how it will play out, what the end game will be, what will happen to my favorite characters, etc. That is part of the excitement of running adventures, that element of the unknown, watching the story you collectively create with your players unfolding and seeing how the villain will be vanquished, how will the world be saved, who will survive, who will do that extraordinary thing.

I guarantee you that these elements will be willingly contributed by your players without any need for the guiding hand of your elite story telling. I also believe that whatever they come up with will exceed your own ideas of what could have happened if your guiding hand was any more tangible.

Your players will always credit the success of a campaign to your adventure. In truth, any element they devise and add to your tale is because of the foundation for the adventure you created. Your players play off of the situations you create, so long as they are not tethered by boundaries, rails, or NPCs that have a greater impact on their play and the adventure than they do. You villain(s), the plots, the landscapes that are the stage for the drama, all of these come from you, are told by you. They are the foundation and the better drawn they are the more the players will play off of them in fantastic ways. Having characters with depth, but are regulated to supporting roles of the story, landscapes that breath and do not confine, and opportunities for the players to explore the plot in their own way will propel their own imaginations.

That is the greatest compliment I have ever received to running my own adventures. I love to to hear the ongoing telling of their actions, re-iterating the grand exploits or the nail biting situation. I love to hear the story of their characters and their playing because I know that the foundation was laid for the players to take it to new and unforeseen levels. I was a witness to a story I did not tell, but did help create. I enjoyed it unfolding in ways I could not have anticipated and seeing the results of those actions bare out in great, and sometimes horrible ways (some of my players have some disturbed minds I’m afraid). However it happens it is always a joy for me to be a part of it. It took me a long time to learn that more freedom is better, but too much is another problem entirely. I learned to build a foundation to work from, and let the players loose in it.

I can’t wait for the next episode.

Happy Gaming.

The Digital GM Screen was a last minute addition to the CRM. It actually evolved from an idea to allow GMs to use the CRM to easily add awards and logs to a DPnP character created with the Character Manager. The idea was that players can send the GM their character files, the GM then uploads them to the CRM while running the game. As events play out the GM can quickly click on characters and do things like add items, experience awards, and take them away as well. A little text box allows the GM to add a note as to why this was awarded, logging it into the player’s character log. 

Initially these were added directly to the character file. We started adding little things to make life a bit easier as well. We added a virtual dice cup, because it was easy to code in. We also added a tool to make target levels. We even added an option to create target levels based on a character’s specific difficulty, rather than an abstract difficulty that is usually done. Then we added function to the dice roller that would compare it to the target level and give you a success, failure, and the success and failure level.

As you can see, things started to evolve quickly. Furthermore, it started to look a little strange in the wizard. We thought to cut it, but it just seemed like something that should stay. Then we got another idea: manage combat initiate.

Now, in hindsight, that was probably something we should have not thought of. The problem is scope. How far is far enough? When do you finally have enough functionality in it and don’t run the risk of 100 requests for more features in it until you have what is basically a virtual table top? So, what we did do is treat like a list. The first step is to allow you to add campaign NPCs as well as access to the NPC wizard to add new NPCs. You also need to be able to quickly add multiple versions of the same NPC. Lastly, it should organize a list of combatants in order, but allow the GM to alter the order as needed based on surprise or any other situational modifiers.

So, after you set up an initial list you can then click a name and select an action, or a custom action level. This sets the character as being in an action phase. The character’s button changes colors to reflect this and the button moves down the initiative list to the coincide with the combat round in which the action resolves.

This way, the GM only needs to interact with the character whose button is at the top of the list. However, he can cancel, or change any initiative as needed. Furthermore, simple actions, such as drawing a weapon, movement, etc. are automatically calculated by the CRM by taking these straight from the character. For instance, attacking with a sword for one character may have an action level of 4. When the character declares the action the button changes to reflect the character is in an action phase (performing the action but not having resolved it yet) and the button moves down the list 4 levels (or last if 4 levels are not present).

At any point a character can change his action by cancelling it. When he or she does so the action is canceled and the characters declaration is moved to the top of the list. The character can now declare a new action.

GMs can also use the dice roller to automatically roll dice for the character’s test. This is mostly used for NPCs, as players prefer to roll their own tests. However, GMs may determine that certain tests should be out of the player’s hands such as with detection.

This combat manager takes the sorting and ordering of actions and simplifies it, and virtually takes it away. The GM doesn’t have to fuss over action levels or initiative values as the combat manager can do that for him/her. It allows the GM to focus on the action, and resolving it, which also means the GM can manage much larger encounters. PCs can now face hordes of enemies that the GM doesn’t have to cringe to resolve. Furthermore it helps to add in bonuses such as success levels by doing the calculations quickly and easily. This way your player won’t have missed an opportunity to add 3 more points to damage after scoring that incredible attack roll.

The CRM’s Digital GM Screen goes beyond a typical GM screen. It takes the tables and graphs and whatnots that flood the tri-folding piece of cardboard and converts it into an actual assistant to the GMs efforts. Furthermore, it adds easy tracking of events and developments for exp and other awards so that players, and more importantly the GM, can always know how that greatsword was acquired or how that skill suddenly seems much more effective after 3 game sessions. By logging these awards, and the Character Manager logging how they are spent, it makes record keeping as simple as possible.

The future is looking better with new features already installed in the CRM. When the final clean up is finished we can get closer to pegging a release and get this gaming revolution going.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

After you set your basic rules, description, etc for your game world you click on the Campaign Elements menu item. This brings up the option to Import Elements. Clicking on this opens the import wizard. This wizard lets you open any campaign elements package, such as Fantasy Sagas Skills. When you open the file a list of all the elements in that package are show, as well as detailed information on who created the package. Choose the elements you want to import. Then you decide if it should overwrite any similar elements. When you are done the elements you have chosen are now in your campaign. Repeat for each element package to include the elements you wish to use. 

You can get campaign elements in several ways. One is to purchase E-RPG content. When you purchase a book, such as Undead Creatures or Prophecy you get the elements of that book in a campaign elements package. For instance, with undead creatures you get the undead humanoid racial template, the 5 races, and 5 NPCs all contained in that book. With Prophecy you get the regions, new items, NPCs, skills, monsters, etc. found in that book. These official elements will be available on the same day DPnP is available.

The best way to fill up your library of content is to get free content created by other DPnP users. However, to have elements to download, community members have to share their own creations. That is where exporting campaign elements comes into play.

Exporting elements is done from the Campaign Elements menu. Select Export Campaign Elements to open the Export Elements Wizard. Once open you get a list of every campaign element in your campaign world. Just check the elements you want in your campaign elements package and name the package. For instance, want to create a library of weapons, select all the items that are weapons, name the package (i.e. “Bobs Great Bag o’ Weapons”) and save the file. If you want to create a forum post about the element click the Create Forum Post Content button. This will create the body of a forum post for you that you can save to the clipboard. Next go to the forums, create your post (paste the test body into the message window) and upload your file. Now the entire community can download and use your collection.

The final component to the sharing of content is file credits. When you first start the CRM you will be asked to fill out your Credits information. This is how you want your name to appear on any file element you create. For instance, when you create a unique spell you will see your name associated with that spell. If you modify someone else’s creation your name will be added as a contributor to that file.

What this does is two fold: first it gives you credit where credit is due. Whenever someone downloads a file with your content on it their campaign file will list you as a contributor. Second it lets people know the value of your content. This appears in the forum post body created by the CRM so that people can see your name in the created content. If you have a reputation for building good quality content and you will find your content used in other projects. You don’t have to worry about your work getting used and not credited properly because the CRM does that for you. 

When campaign books are compiled by GMs a credits page is created. Any content in the campaign that has your credits associated with them will mean that your name appears in the Contributers section of the book. When players get their rule books, or a GM shares the campaign the book will have your credits, just like if you had created a book with Ironwood.

When DPnP is released some community content will be made available for free from Ironwood, but it is up to you, the user, to make the content sharing a success. Consider the content you are creating and how much another user may be wanting the exact same content. Sharing content also gets your name on the lips of the creators of DPnP content and having a reputation for building new, origional, and well received content may lead to some other unforeseen opportunities (yes we will be culling the content creators for future contributors to our project development teams).

Until next time, Happy Gaming!

We’ve talked quite a bit about the content creation and options involved in the CRM. What we have not gone into a lot of detail with is what you do with this content. First, we know that the electronic files are used in other DPnP programs such as the character manager. However, this is only a small part. The CRM also has a component labeled “Reporting”.

The Reporting section of the CRM takes your information and presents it in a Rich Text Format, similar to what you find in programs such as Microsoft Word or Open Office. RTF is a standard for representing text in varying formats. This standard allows you to cut and paste it into Word Documents, as well as print them as is. It also allows you to customize the look of the report. You select the font and formats for 5 different heading levels starting with Heading 1, which represents title headings, all the way down to the base paragraph font and style.

After customizing how the campaign will look you can select what part of the file you want to show on the CRM’s Report. You can select from any single element type, such as just Skills, Items, or Races. Other elements, such as Character Creation Rules, contributors, etc. can all be viewed in their own reports.

Each section organizes your work. When you create something like a skill, you also create a skill group. Those groups are used like section headers. Each section header will then list its skills, or items, or whatever. If something requires tables, such as items, then tables for that section are also created.

Organizing content is done using the same format as E-RPG books. Therefore, certain item groups appear first, such as weapons, then weapon upgrades, ammunition, then armor, etc. Organizing in this way makes it easier for the reader as the more conforming a report is to a standard, the more easily information will be to find. After certain groups and types are organized to the E-RPG standard the rest is alphabetized to make it easy to find specific elements.

Each report for a specific section also shows you how much of what kind of elements exist. You will see at the top that X amount of item groups, and X amount of items exist in this report. Each report can also be filtered to hide elements not available to a player character. For instance, showing elements like NPC statistics are only valid for a player character if the character can be purchased like an item. Otherwise, these elements are not shown. 

Lastly, the entire collection of elements, or rather the entire campaign, can be compiled into one very large report. This organizes the work into sections, with page breaks appearing before each section. These sections are like chapters in the book. You start with the campaign overview, which shows the campaign description, credits, and character creation rules, and then moves on into Skills, Items, Races, etc. Each element is also organized in the same format as a Player’s Guidebook. Therefore, if you have Magic enabled a chapter on Magic is placed after skills. The last element of the book is a list of contributors, which are all of the people that made campaign elements you imported into your campaign from other people.

All of these features allow us, the developers, to quickly create the content, then let the CRM organize it, automatically create the tables we need, collate the information, give us a list of contributors to credit, etc. It basically takes the worst part of creating an RPG book, which is organizing and compiling all the written components, and automates it.

Now, no automation is perfect. The CRM makes certain assumptions with the information provided. The GM is still expected to review and make any alterations before sending the printed file to his/her players. However, creating a full fledged E-RPG campaign book, book of races, Grimoire, Archetypes Collection, Item Book, Regional Atlas, Skill Expansion, etc, etc, etc. is now more easily handled for you. As a matter of point, you may not even be someone who does create such books because they are such a chore to do. This is who this feature is for. You will find that while you may never have thought to create such a book, you will be doing so before you realize it because it simply is so easy and fun with DPnP. 

There is more as well. The CRM also compiles all of the information into an XML file at the click of a button. This allows you to use style sheets to further increase the formatting options. You can also take the XML files and use them to build campaign websites, Wikis, etc. 

Whether you are printing copies off for your weekly game, creating the next great E-RPG supplement, or building content for your own campaign website, the CRM handles all of nasty ugly grunt work for you. This allows you to do more, with less effort than ever before.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

The first, and most obvious place to start is with pre-generated campaigns. These are the generic settings such as Modern Sagas, or Fantasy Sagas. Basically, you want to start with one of those to fill in the most likely components for your game. There is absolutely no need to itemize every single item, skill, power, etc when there is a huge collection already available.

Once you have your basic campaign elements opened (by opening up Fantasy Sagas or Modern Sagas). You can then start customizing the rules. This is done in campaign options. In there you set things like racial balance, can you roll for attributes, use point buy , or both. What are the rules for creating a character? What elements can you use? Are there magic in the world, or modern weapons?

Once this is done you can look at importing campaign elements. These are specific packages of campaign elements, such as a collection of new spells or races. Import the packages you want, overwriting things as you need. Then you have the bulk of your campaign finished.

Next, you trim the fat. You simply remove the elements you don’t want. Furthermore, you can keep certain elements but remove them from player options. For instance, you can set certain races as being un-playable for players, but still usable for the GM.

Next, you add your own custom elements. This usually means adding new races, skills, etc. However, most importantly, it means adding factions, npc’s and regions. These are all elements you can simply add as you need them or try to build them all up front. For myself, I usually create a central area to start with, where the players will start, and develop surrounding regions. I give regions more details as the campaign evolves.

When you’re done you can print the entire thing as a rule-book, save the campaign and share (you’ll need to send the campaign to your players for them to build characters for it), or print out necessary section for your players.

Once shared, you can continue to evolve your campaign. Its a good idea to store it online for your player’s to be able to upload it whenever you update it (we provide space on our site to do this for free).

The entire process is as detailed and involved as you want. Your campaign will have the level of detail you commit to it, but that doesn’t mean that things will look simple and easy. As a matter of fact, we added the importing tools and element packages simply to make things as fast and easy possible. 

Next week I will move on to a general outline of the character generator.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

First and foremost, DPnP is an entirely new way of doing business. It allows us, the developers, to quickly create balanced and detailed content we can release quickly. As a part of that, it allows you, as a player/customer to do this same. This allows you to share your content with others and apply the content of others. This brings an unparalleled level of support to the system, creating a limitless supply of new items, creatures, skills, and even entire game worlds.

For Game Masters, this means you are never for want of new material for your game. If you need a new creature, or a new village or town, it is easily something you can download as well as create.

Secondly, unlike other support solutions, DPnP is not web dependant. You do not need an internet connection to enjoy its features. Sure, getting new content requires an online connection, but aside from that the entire program lives on your desktop, not an online server. This means that you can take the software anywhere you go on a laptop. You won’t be restricted by wi-fi or wireless internet connections.

Thirdly, it provides tools to simplify everything. Lets face it, we don’t have the time to dedicate to our games that we used to. That gives us a very limited range of choices in how we play. Most of the time that means playing simpler, easier to start games, that ultimately mean less depth. While E-RPG is a system with great depth, it also means there is a lot to it. With DPnP the crunch is simplified, if not removed, allowing the computer application to do all of the necessary number crunching and balancing you need. Furthermore, we have an entire list of features to enhance this we can’t even reveal yet.

Fourthly it makes everything much more accessible. The way it distributes information, such as character sheets which include not only a skills list but a section where it takes your character’s skills directly from the campaign file and reprints them in a sort of personalized skills chapter for your character (complete with the dice and levels used for test specified for your your character), makes things easier for both players and Game Masters. Players print out character sheets with all of the information they could want. Game Masters can also use the program at the table to quickly and easily find references. For instance, looking up a spell is much easier when you are clicking a few buttons rather than shuffling through a book.

DPnP doesn’t replace traditional gaming at all. It enhances gaming in much the same way that a word processor enhances writing. Today, we are still using a typewriter. DPnP adds features, tools, and abilities to your gaming that once required teams of individuals to provide. It organizes, collates, and presents everything in a way that will make traditional, deep role-playing experiences accessible, and even valid in an age where most gamers don’t have the time to commit to it. 

Its not changing gaming, it is giving it a much needed shot of adrenaline.

Over the next few posts I will focus on some specific areas of what DPnP can do for your game.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

Iron Wood Region

A DPnP CRM Ouput Demo PDF

This document is a free PDF demonstration of the reporting functions of the upcoming Digital Pen n Paper Campaign Resource Manager (CRM). The data, including all text and statistics, was creating using that program. It was organized and printed through the program as well. The only adjustments made to this document from that program were the inclusions of a table of content and internal hyperlinks. Lastly, the map is an image file created using Autorealms Mapping Software. The image was uploaded during the creation of this content through the CRM wizards.

• Purchase the full color PDF for FREE at:

Honestly, what is so great about that? Well, to be frank, it is the keystone of a campaign world. It is such a huge part of building and organizing a game world I am thinking of releasing it as a separate program. Read more to find out why.

Alright, everything you can build with the CRM allows you to create game rules including races, items, skills, etc. All of that is fine and dandy. However, that is really just the core elements of what your game is about. Your game has a world, or an entire universe. It is huge, or it is small, but it is a living world. It has NPCs, stores, inns, etc. It has all the elements in your game, but it has them organized in regions. Regions are collectively a game world.

Building a world is a huge and daunting task. It behaves in layers in some ways, with a world, broken into continents, countries, states/provinces, etc. Larger campaigns may have solar systems, galaxies, and entire universes. Planes can exist, Heaven and Hell could be included. The possibilities are endless. Where do you start?

Well, the CRM makes that easy. You start wherever the hell you want to. You can start by creating a few small towns that make up a county. Then, later, you decide they are part of a larger town or city. Then you build more counties, towns, cities, and continue growing.

Or, you could start at the top. Build a universe populated with galaxies. Add in a few planes of existence as side universes. Add galaxies, systems, planets, the continents, countries, etc.

You can easily create an idea of something here, and apply it to something else over there as you need to, when you need to. Or, better yet, you can add in regions created by other users to build up your library of regions. That way, you aren’t stuck adding every single little town to your growing country.

After all of that, you may get ambitious and print out a nice, neat, campaign world book. It will take your nice little collection of regions, super regions, NPC in your regions, landmarks, stores (including buy/sell inventory and rates of exchange), with all the pretty little tables and stats you need.

It is huge! What this tool does is basically take all the difficulty of organizing the resources of your campaign world and lines them all up. It then allows you to easily (simply change an entry field when editing the region) place the entry into an entirely new position. For instance, someone creates a game world you like. However, your game has an entire galaxy made up of worlds. Well, add the game world into your galaxy by importing it, and the set your new world’s parent as the solar system where it is found. Wham-o! An entire game world has just been added to your growing game universe.

So, I hope this helps wet an appetite or two. I know it has me excited. I am furiously working away (through a migraine mind you) to build a small little demo region. The content of the region will be available as a free PDF soon to show off how it all comes together.

Until then,

Happy Gaming!

My wife’s parents own a nice little house in a place called Negly. It is a small Ohio town and they have a nice chunk of land out there in a nice little out of the way place. It is nestled quite nicely in a heavily forested type of area, with a nice stream rolling nearby and a set of train tracks not far. At night the yard is alight with a festival of fireflies. During the day colorful birds flock in and out to feed on what is possibly the largest collection of bird feeders per square foot I have ever seen. A deer, named Baby, frequently comes by to visit my mother in law, and they play together. The deer made one visit to us and was immediately nuzzling up against us in greeting.

In all aspects this place is the complete and utter antithesis of the life I have always known. To say that things are slower and calmer here is an utter failing. It make crawling look hurried. Its beautiful, and natural, and quiet. I LOVE IT!

For my kids, it is something else entirely. My wife puts it best when she calls it Wonderland. For them it is freedom and childhood, and all those things they can’t do in a city. It means playing outside with the dogs and not having mom or dad around top make sure some horrible nightmare doesn’t happen. They laugh and play and enjoy a life kids should always get to have. Just hearing their play drift in from outside puts a smile on yopur face and makes you wonder why you ever go home.

We spent a week there, as I said. Mother and Father in law have their house conveniently located next to my sister in law. We take a nice little footpath through some trees, running not far from the stream, to a newly built foot bridge (a beautiful peace of work I might add by my father in law). 

On the first full day there I helped Father in Law clean Sister In Law’s pool. I am a certified pool operator so I have experience and knowledge that hel;ped solve a lot of their problems. I got a sunburn (don’t ask me how a Florida native gets sun-burnt in Ohio but it happened). We grilled out, and people complained about the hot 80 something degrees (it was nice and cool to me ).

We also got to camp out an a tucked away chunk of land far from view of any home, but close enough in case of emergencies (we have a 3 year old who got sick our first day there so we were very cautious). We roasted marshmallows and I blew up a bratwurst. It was good fun.

Out there it is very conservative. The family goes to church twice a week (more if they can I think) and everyone seems to have a closet full of guns. Now I am a fan of gun control. Being from the city and having a gun pulled on ou in violence twice does that to you. However, out there it is a different world and gun control is a violation of a right. I see their point of view and completely understand where they are coming from. Having never had to live with gun violence there is no threat of gun violence there. Father in law took myself and my son and eldest daughter out to shoot off some 22s. The wife also joined in. I got to shoot a 12 and 20 gauge, a 9mm, and a 357 as well as the various 22s. It was a lot of fun, and my first time shooting a firearm. It was fun to actually get to experience some of the stuff I had to write about and come up with rules on. My sources for that were good as the weapons fired and behaved almost exactly as I expected.

The food there is also a treat. I got to have what is now the best pie I ever had in the form of my mother in law’s strawberry rhubarb pie. There were two family picnics (one for each of my wife’s side of the family).

When we finally left we drove back in a new mini-van. We stopped in Virgina for one night to stay at my brother in laws. We played Rock Band and some games on Wii. The next day we made it to Jacksonville to stay with Willie Santana, long time friend and co-founder of Ironwood. The next morning we went with the Santanas to St. Augustine and visited the old town by Castillo de San Marcos and showed my kids the cannons and a nice chunk of wall littered with bullet holes that could only be the remnants of a firing line for executions. We had ice cream at this place that oozed with all kinds of wonderful smells as they make a wide variety of their goods in the store, including their waffle cones. At $4+ a cone it was well worth each cent and more.

A few hours later found us home. I got little to no work done, but I feel invigorated by the experience. I look forward to this week, catching up, and getting on. However, this week will live on in memory as perhaps one of the most wonderful weeks of my life.

Coming up, just after the 4th, Zach from RPGBlog2 will be getting an exclusive first look at Digital Pen n Paper. He is only getting it a very short time before release. Following his release of the first look and his opinions on it I will be sending out press releases marking the actual release date. Zach may even have that information as well.

A release date is nice and such, but ultimately it is only a date. As usual, I have more information on features that will be added, hopefully into the final release.

The Campaign Resource Manager (CRM) is getting the largest feature add ons. I am feverishly working on those right now. Two of these I will not mention. They are for Zach’s first look. Instead, I want to let you in on some better news.

Earlier I had mentions that the CRM will not include things for building a campaign world. I have since changed my opinion of that. Today I am hoping to wrap up three new additions to the the CRM. They are outlined as follows:

• Factions: NPCs have a dominate faction. They may be commoner, noble, bandits, monsters, or things more detailed such as Border-town Commoner, or Royal Family of Blah. Factions, in turn, have relationships between each other. This is a loose generalization of how a certain faction generally appeals to another. In this new wizard you create and describe a faction, then determine how that faction feels towards another, and vice versa.
• NPCs: This actually uses the similar wizards to the Character Manager. However, it is simplified, allowing you to simply make an NPC or creature, choose a faction for that creature, and your done.
• Regions: Regions are areas or territories. They break down from a root area, such as the world name, or continent, or galaxy, or whatever you choose. You then break them down into small groups. For instance, you would have Planet Earth -> North America -> United States -> Florida -> Orlando -> Downtown. Each are regions that share similar basic information. When you create a region you select dominate factions, and can also create a list of notable NPCs, as well as other notables such as shops. You can also set up racial density and more. It sounds much more complicated here than it actually is in the wizard.

As for progress on the Character Management System (CMS), I have some development news. For one, I have finished a prototype of an XSL character sheet. XSL are basically like style sheets that render the data from a character into a usable character sheet. The release version of the character creator will have one character sheet broken into several types. One is simple, which mimics the character sheets you get in the players guidebooks. Another is Extended, which includes all the stuff from your simple sheets but will also print your skills, equipment, magic, etc. as you see them in the player’s guidebook with your character’s stats attached. The third is NPC Encounter which is a very simple sheet that looks like the NPC stat blocks that appear in our published adventures. Furthermore, these will also be available in rich text format as well.

This also means that customized XSL character sheets are definately in. Anyone familiar with XSL will be able to create their own character style sheets, and we may even have some in the works as well for various adventures or campaign settings.

The character sheet display also has two views now attached. If you compile the character sheet you can look at this in a web browser in the actual character generator, or you can revert to the rich text format you have seen in the screenshots. All in all it adds different ways of viewing the same information. However, one is much simpler to render so that if something isn’t appearing properly you can simply revert to the other.

I still have some work to do to reduce the size of the XML data. Furthermore, the CRM will not have an XML output upon release, but will be patched in later. The XML data for the CRM isn’t all that huge of a deal since the rich text format renders nicely and is easily copied and used in a word processing document with formatting included. XML data will appear nice in a web page, but ultimately doesn’t work as well for using in a Microsoft Word type of manipulation. 

So I hope the above has settled the debt owed for failing to keep up with the blog. Anyways, I have much to do today. Until next time…

Happy Gaming!

Here’s the rub: I can release some small products (I have a few ready). I can also finnish up a few larger ones. Or I could finish DPnP. Or I could stretch it all a bit and do it all. So what is wrong with releasing these products? There are actually two answers.

The shortest answer is the simplest. Everything we have published and will publish will support DPnP. That means that I will have to re-create everything already released before I can release the actual DPnP. The smaller that library of content the better off we will be as I can get that ball rolling faster and easier.

The second, and longer answer, is also partly due to the first. In creating the campaign resource file for Fantasy Sagas I have noticed that re-creating certain cost items like spells, and races, actually wind up with different values. I can get some close, but some spells or items, or computer programs (in regards to Modern Sagas) come off with different levels. This requires updates of the books to to comply with DPnP.

Now I could just ignore DPnP calculations and plug in the values already printed. However, that is not entirely honest for me. I don’t have the notes to refer to on my logic behind the cost values of those items so I have to try and make a best guess. When they don’t add up with printed books people will notice. Therefore, I have to make changes. Making those changes takes time. The smaller the library, the less time required.

So while I feel really crappy about not releasing anything, there are good reasons. Some may not agree, and I completely understand the arguments. However, its one of those things where I am afraid that my feelings about it being worth the wait in the end will have to be seen and judged upon after release.

There is a silver lining to this. The simple fact is that DPnP is being developed now to help me make content. Therefore, content will start to flow more quickly once I release them. So, you should see a few new books released just following DPnP, including some equipment, monster, spellbooks, and paradigm style books, and some new adventures (mostly sidetracks which seem pretty popular now). Then you should see content coming out fairly quickly. I’d like to say almost weekly, but that may be a promise I can’t live up to.

Suffice it to say, while the offerings seem slim at this point, it is a birght, and rather productive future just coming over the ridge.

Last note: release dates may be coming soon so stay tuned!!!

Happy Gaming!

First off, DPnP development is suddenly way beyond my assumption as far as progression is concerned. If, last week, you had asked me how far along I was on the CRM, I would have said about 80%. I am happy to say, from what I have seen this week, I am way into 99%. There is only one single feature that remains to be added, and that is XML.

Yes, that is right, the same XML I said would likely be cancelled is going to return. 

Also, the character creator is about 45% along and that is a lot. The CC is about 1/10th the development size of the CRM (as it piggy backs alot of the code from that). I can predict with some confidence that I could move a good 10-15% of production along a week. That is major! What’s better is that it is now a full on Character Manager. 

If I had just left it as a character creator I could say that it is about 90% done. However, I feel that it really needs to be fully developed as a character manager to be the product I want it to be. And that is alot. The sheer volume of goodness wrapped into this is beyond my ability to iterate at this point. However, I can say that at this point I have already dabbled with making new archetypes for Modern Sagas and Fantasy Sagas as well as cranking out some mooks and villains for tomorrows game. This is going to be fun!

<Monday, Following the Test and Game Session>

Well, today I am exhausted. Not because of testing. My daughter woke up in the night with a nightmare. This is the second of the two daughters to do this to me in two nights.

I woke up Sunday Morning in cram mode. My youngest’s birthday festivities took out much of Saturday’s finishing. Therefore, after waking up late due to the waking up in the night, I had about two hours to cram in those last touches, when I had hoped for at least twice that.

Things started off fairly fine. I got player characters input-ed quickly, with little fuss. I then did some tweaking to the character sheets to show some more detail. As things got later, problems started to appear, problems I didn’t have time to fix.

One problem was that certain skill groups would not appear in the skill selection list. Another problem was that a tweak to the character sheet broke another part of the program. While these were things we could improve around to get our game going, it was still groan inducing to have my players huddled around to get their new PC character sheets get mucked up by minor problems I should have had time to find and iron out.

My other big problem was getting the program out of my house and over to my friend’s where we intended to play. My USB drive was missing and he usually couldn’t get an Internet connection. Finally we get that sorted by me uploading it to the site and him getting just enough of a signal to get the file downloaded. Only problem, I am missing the updated DLL files. So I have to run to my house and upload those. Then we have to do the “Get a signal” dance to get them downloaded. Of course some minor new bugs show up that I can’t fix because we don’t have the software to do that on my friend’s computer.

Finally, after two hours we get them all updated. We download CutePDF (again a dance for reception) and get them printed, uploaded, then off to the office to print them (a quick walk that is so no big deal). 

We finally get to playing. You know what, all of that drama didn’t hinder the simple fact that the information that the program prints is awesome. We had another new player this weekend. She didn’t have really any gaming experience so this was fairly new to her. She fit right in. Furthermore, all of the information that the character sheets gave her meant no rulebook flipping. She knew exactly what to do after a few minute of help from James.

A rule discrepancy occurred during play as well. This was concerning the Medicine Skill in Modern Sagas. The player question what the rule actually did. He reached for the game book and I told him to look instead at the character sheet. He had his answer on the third page.

By the end of this week, I hope, I should be able to get some screen shots up on this thing. That is how I will be best able to explain what it does and why it is a huge leap forward.

Anyways, I still have to write up my campaign log notes, so I am cutting this off. To close, I am still just as stoked about this as I was before the test. The minor bugs I fixed today already. A few larger (but not breaking) bugs are still left to fix, but that’s for tomorrow. The true test was not on whether or not the program would function, but would it help. It is a resounding YES!!!!!

Getting To Know You

First of all, I was unable to tweet like I wanted due to the connection at my friend’s apartment being utter garbage. That little explanation out of the way, onto the details.

We started with a kind of round table. I introduced the game to the new player, Jay (our other player, Terry, was a no show). Jon and James helped with the details, but Jay was rather up to speed having read the player’s guidebook I sent him. We discussed the game world, and the rules that are involved and then everyone discussed characters.

Character Generation

Everyone settled on their characters pretty quickly. I gassed up the Player Character Creator which allowed us to settle on attribute generation and getting the more time consuming part of character generation out of the way. I allowed the players to choose whether they wanted a random roll or point buy. Ironically it seemed that two of the random rolls allowed for a lower point buy cost than they would have had by using point buy. Still, the players stuck with the die rolls because they preferred the results. This was nice to see that they meta gaming aspect, i.e. having the most points on attributes as possible, was not really prevalent.

After that we spent skill points, money, etc. The game world is sort of a near future modern setting. Therefore, we had a good mix of more military like characters (with the exception of Jon).

The Player Characters

Jay plays a mercenary that provides heavy fire support. He carries a rather heavy machine gun. His character is big, tough, and ugly, but gets a lot of metal down field.

James is playing a more marksman like soldier. His character was an ex-intelligence, probably CIA. His talents rely on more precise shooting, which compliments Jay’s character well.

Jon plays a 13 year old with a pair of M9’s and a pension for grenades (the latter discovered during play). The character is a victim turned avenger. In the game world situation, young kids actually taking up arms is strange, but not unheard of. Jon’s character is by no means the youngest character to be found on the battlefields.

Starting the Ad Hoc Game

We than ran an ad hoc game that was rather surprising. I had not prepared for running my campaign yet, as there were too many variables left to discuss before I had settled on the overall direction. Still, the players wanted to jump right in. I tried to move to a Fantasy Sagas Sidetrack. However, as the players were itching to try out their characters, I fell to.

We all decided to set the game in Orlando and the surrounding areas. I am familiar enough with Florida after some extensive travelling I have done here years ago when I was skating shows. I chose to start them in Tampa, as I had little reference except for about a decade old memory. Non of the other players were familiar with Tampa so it was an easy sell. I also wanted the players in a more unfamiliar starting location.

Urban Patrol

In Tampa, in our game world, there is a curfew. Furthermore, the players are part of a group that aren’t allowed in the city. The group is helping some refugees come in that will be transported to Orlando. The players were given a cheap pick up truck to run patrols between observation posts scattered around the city. With radio silence in effect, to hide from police and military monitoring. After their first check in they find the next post surrounded by police, S.W.A.T. and other emergency vehicles. 

They moved around and onto the next checkpoint. They reported the situation. At this point the group starts packing up their operation. The players are told to make it to the next checkpoints to give them the same orders.

The game went on to them sneaking through back alleys to avoid police cars and helicopters to make it various checkpoints. Some were safe, others were compromised. Then, with about two left to go they turn down a side street to only have the top floors of the building with the next checkpoint explode. They police nearby spot the players and pursuit begins.

Gunfights and Car Chases

They evade that police car, but the helicopter makes things more difficult. They dodge into a parking garage and get ready for the inevitable ground pursuit to get to them. When six cars come to block the entrance Jay let fly with his machine gun as James floors the gas, rams through the barrier of cars, and push through the line. The ramming caused Jay to almost fall down into the bed of the truck. Jon, whose character was holding two grenades, nearly drops the live loads. The police start in hot pursuit. Jon lobs a grenade out the back and takes out one of the cars. His next three grenades go wide and harm no one.

A series of fast turns and bullets firing eventually brings the number of pursuers down to one cop and one helicopter. James is heading for the highway, hoping to hit an on-ramp that will take him back towards I-4 and link up with the rest of the escaping group en route to Orlando. However, his good driving, with only a few narrow misses, could not handle the fast turn onto the ramp. He rolls a 1 and drives straight into the barrier. The cop car squeals to a halt and our heroes leap out of the truck and use it as cover.

On Foot, Vs. Two Cops and a Helicopter

A brief gunfight ensues. James lets two rounds into the car, wounding one of the cops. The others miss, but Jay manages to mess up the cop car pretty badly with his 50 cal. A sniper round from the helicopter that narrowly misses Jay alerts the party to the danger above. Jon, whose character is extremely fast, ran out, popped to rounds into the cop car (missing, but providing enough cover) while Jay and James haul ass under the overpass and take cover into the columns. The fire fight is quick and bloody for the cops. Its an unfortunate loss in that way, but in this way, the cops are on the other side of a war so please look at this as an opposing force. The characters are not Criminals in the sense of modern criminals. They are soldiers in a global civil war.

Anyways, a message needs to be sent via the radio in the truck, and the helicopter is still keeping the players stuck under the overpass. Jon runs out to the truck, two rounds miss, and he dives into the truck and sends out the distress call. Meanwhile, while the sniper is zeroed on the truck waiting for Jon to try to get out, Jay creeps up the other side of the overpass, sets up his 50 cal, and zeros on the helicopter.

Jon gets out the message, but learns only that the entire operation has gone to crap fast. All operatives are heading out and things are too hot to send backup. They tell them to get underground and stay low if possible and try to find a way out of the city.

At this point Jay lets fly with the 50 cal. The helicopter is hit hard and flies off with fuel leaking and smoke billowing from its rear rotor. 

Aftermath

The fighting stopped, the characters take stock. The police car is inoperable due to the firefight (notable the 50 cal). The players do grab a police radio and then move into the city.

We stopped there. Now, with the characters trapped behind enemy lines, with no vehicle, limited ammo, and no friends in site, they will have to get out of the city and get back to Orlando. The next game session promises to be very interesting, and I am already cooking up plans to engage them.

Jon Soto (Ironwood Development Contributer and avid Tester) and I have been engaged in numerous discussions concerning the coming game(s). One thing has been some ironing out of campaign details. Many of the components of that discussion have actually led to multi-directional changes with my own campaign world, which is one we are planning on publishing once the major DPnP components are done.

Jon is a very experienced gamer. He has played more systems and games than I have even so much as read about. To say that this guy is an avid gamer is a gross understatement. His input on the game, from a player’s perspective, is invaluable in the development of a campaign even more so than during rule development. He has had some extremely insightful input on pacing, endgames, and surprises. One of those is content surprises. 

In this he brought up a situation where the players suddenly encounter something huge and unexpected. I can’t go into details. For a small example you could liken it to the appearance of tanks in the Battle of Somme (first introduction of tanks in major conflict in WWI). Soldiers were absolutely gobsmacked by the appearance of these monstrosities on the battle field. This kind of sudden dramatic escalation is something I think is perfect for my new campaign, and will be a prevalent theme in development.

As it is, time is ticking. I have some final preperations to get done. However, I will try to tweet the game developments as we play.

Until then, 

Happy Gaming!

Today is really just a meet and greet and open forum on character and campaign stuff. We probably wont play except to introduce the game’s concepts. I may, if time and energy allows, run a one shot with archetypes of Farmstead Witch or Unkindness of Ravens. Since James already played Farmstead, it may come down to wether or not he attends.

So anyways, other than that I got Firearms done (with a few minor bugs to iron out) in the CRM. It was a busy week. And since time to meet is closing in, I am wrapping this blog up. I may post a follow up later with developments.

Oh, I may be able to tweet during the campaign as well.

I took advantage of some of my sick time to read up on XML structure, as well as the benefits of using it. The reason why it interested me in the first place was portability. With XML, a user can take information from one program, and represent that data in a format that is both human readable, and programmaticly readable. That means that those of you out there that may be familiar with other languages, such as Java, or even Mac programmers, can develop tools to read the data from the DPnP formats. 

Originally I had thought this might be nice for those that wanted to develop websites or other media types to review the information. It is also a method of representing hat data in a format that can be customized aesthetically. I still have some issues with it. For instance, security is an issue. If the data is available in XML what is to stop you from getting, and copying, paid for content and distributing it freely?  I have not been able to answer that question to my satisfaction, aside from trusting my customers enough to hope that one would pay the modest price for the official content rather than stealing stuff from other users. 

Luckily, I trust in the good nature of people.

Unfortunately, due to some things that we want to release ourselves, the license for creating content that uses XML data will be limited to viewers. You will be bound to not actually be able to manipulate the data (i.e. change the data or create new data). You can, for instance, create a Character Sheet Viewer, but you cannot create a Character Generator. The reason is simple, we want you to have the best possible program. When  we create a program we are constantly looking at ways to make it work in very clever ways. For instance, we are adding XML, which has little benefit to us, but opens up some options for the user. The reason is, I thought to myself “as a user, what would I like to do with the data that I can’t do presently”. The answer was to have the data in a format that would allow interoperability between formats. 

When I created the CRM I thought “How cool would it be to share just portions of content. That way I could download a user’s creature pack to add to my campaign.” I looked, found, and designed a method to do that with as much ease as possible. 

To lay it out, we are not just trying to create the programs, we are trying to improve on similar ideas by adding in wish list types of items. There is so much being added that expands the programs, but actually cost us to add them. A simple program could have been released six months ago. However, it was basic, and offered nothing different than that of other programs I have seen that are similar. The only good would have been a short term group of sales, but not any kind of real value to those sales. Having a bunch of emails wanting both bug fixes, and features, would have not helped our customers feel supported, or present a focus on innovation on our part. I don’t want to create just another software suite for RPGs. I want to build the one that I wish I had whenever I look at all the others.

So, XML will likely be in the release of both the CRM and the CC. Its a bit more work, but I honestly feel that if it benefits a few users at the end of the day, then it will be worth the wait in the long run. In all honestly, it shouldn’t push things back any longer than my migraines have.

Those keeping up with the twitter feed already know this. I got the idea to add in a “Suggested Items” tab when purchasing items for your characters. This little tid-bit looks through all of your skills and attributes and finds the best types of items for you. For instance, if you have Large Swords as a skill it will add all the large swords to your list. It also checks armor and if any suits of armor and adds in those pieces that can be worn with a hindrance level (modified by your strength) of 2 or less. it also factors in some of the other items, such as ammo, and tools that match skills you have. For instance, have lock picking as a skill, then lock picks are added.

It is an aid, not any kind of hard line or predictive element. It is really simple in code. It just matches up certain skills with certain types of items, or matches attributes with modifiers (in the case of armor). It does not check prices, or likelihood of use. Its a simple way of filtering out everything you may not need, for those things you are likely to want.

Of course, it doesn’t do everything. For instance, it doesn’t buy adventuring kits, rations, etc. The reason is that these elements aren’t predictable is because of their type. Generally speaking, they are simple items that can take any type of name or shape in other campaigns. The code really only looks for items of specific types, like weapons, armor, and tools. These are distinguishable by their stats, which make things easier to categorize by your character creation needs.

Still, not a bad feature when you think about it. it helps eliminate oversights, or silly mistakes. For instance, say you do buy a crossbow skill. While purchasing your weapons you could accedentally purchase a longbow instead, or forget that you bought the skill entirely. Furthermore, it helps to remove some of the questions on might have with purchasing tools or armor. If it is on your recomended items list you can feel confident that it is something you could use effectively.

I can’t take full credit for it. The idea was inspired by Jon Soto.

Another thing that I worked on was getting some item tables done in the CRM. Now the items report creates nice uniform tables for each of the item types. These tables tend to exclude CRM/DPnP type elements, simple because the campaign reports are more or less used only for table top play. The DPnP elements, such as covering areas for clothing, and other list items, are too cumbersome for use outside of virtual use (where the computer can do all the work on using those stats for you). Item descriptions still retain these, but the tables do not in an effort to make them easier to read, and to save some space.

I also did a mammoth job on uploading content into the CRM. I am finding some very small, and easy to fix bugs that I still have to deal with, but overall, things are looking good.

Anyways, I am very excited about what is happening here. I am definitely looking forward to releasing this. It looks like release may be sooner than I had begun to think.

Aside from fixing the skill selections I finally went ahead and created some methods for saving and loading a character, and defining between creation of a PC or NPC. I am also creating an options panel. One option: cheating. Basically an NPC can be created with breaking the rules. By default, creating a PC is the same way with some notes telling you where you are cheating and how to fix it. For instance, if you choose to spend more points on attribute creation you can. However, your character sheet will tell you that you did this and how. You can disable this, and therefore negate the ability to cheat, by selecting the option to not cheat. In this way, only NPC characters can cheat.

I also started, on paper, a design for allowing the character creator to suggest items for your newly created character. The item purchase wizard in character creation opens on a “Suggested Items” tab. This tab suggests items for your character with the most expensive on top. It does not, however, determine the list of items by priority or by how much you can spend. However, as you spend items certain item tabs will turn red (or disable entirely depending on if you can cheat) when you can’t afford the items. Other tabs will be sorted based item types (Weapons, Armor, Tools, etc.).

Now, all of this fun and excitement has been marred by the frustration of the racial skill affinities. I have vented this frustration in my new video game purchase: Rainbow Six Vegas (1 &2). For crying out load this is a fantastic game. Thank God someone actually got tactical combat right. Perfect balance of strategy and fierce gun-play. Vegas 2 also has custom characters that gain exp to earn new gear. Not a full on RPG, but a great way to handle development in a shooter without allowing full time gamers to become overpowered with uber gear or skills.

I am looking forward to getting some X-Box live play on this game when I switch to gold. Btw, my gamer tag is ruelk, so feel free to send me PMs, or add me to a friends list. I will be looking for a good group to posse up with and go nuts.

BTW, send me your thoughts on a Rainbow Six RPG. Maybe Modern Sagas can do something in this direction?

Also, my gamer tag:

This week I finally (I hope) finished skill selection with the character generator. I was hoping to get screen shots up, but frankly, I didn’t get the character sheet looking right in time. While the actual interface is working pretty good, it all amounts to nothing if the character sheet appears ugly on the screen shots.

However, this is only the first difficulty, and one I am not really too concerned about yet, as I have time to learn some new tricks to making that work. Right now, the character sheet is just a simple list of text stats and your character’s picture. It is functional, but boring, with attributes listed in a format such as <name> | #level | # value | <dice string> . It is all rather dull to look at, but serves the purpose for now.

My more emidiate problem is that the interface for skill selection will not be a code template for the other interfaces like I thought. Sure, it will share some of the same code overall, but they will all have to work differently due to some organizational issues.

For instance, I have to figure on spell selection involving the ability for a character to know more than one magic skill. So a new format is designed for that. Second, Items are a much larger and broader range of data that skills so I have to think of a nifty way to organize that information.

Then I have to figure out a completely unique design for creating load out. Load outs are unique packages of items for specific reasons. I created them in Modern Sagas as I figure it was likely a character would use didn’t armor and weapon configurations for different types of missions. I thought I would extend that to other campaigns through the character generator as well. So designing and implementing this will be a curious exercise.

Anyways, this week will be creating the spell purchasing, psychic power purchasing, and get ready for generic item purchasing. Starting tomorrow I will be proceding with that. Today I am going to play around with some of the character sheet tables a bit more as it does give me some forward progress, but the work is nice and easy on my tired and overwrought brain.

Happy Gaming!

Years ago my friend Dekker still lived here in Orlando and my friends and I were all involved in a quest to get Ironwood going. We really had no idea how to do this, though we felt confident in our efforts to make it up as we went along. Dekker, however, had some contacts at Full Sail, which apparently is a school that a certain co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons was teaching at. Somehow, the connections were made and Dave Arneson and I got in touch and started talking. 

In downtown Orlando there was this great little Italian restaurant. It had a great vibe, was a bit pricey for the overall quality of the food, but I loved it. I personally always did my best meet and greets there, and before I got married it had become a frequent first date place for me. I thought that it would be a great place to meet Mr. Arneson for the first time. I also thought it would be a nice place to bring my wife, so I did both.

We waited until we saw Mr. Arneson for the first time crossing the street downtown with a warm smile on his face. Strikingly, the man did not seem like the co-creator of the greatest gaming machine on the planet. In fact, he seemed a standard fan-boy, though a bit aged. He even talked like one (though we really didn’t talk about D&D). After the initial meeting (of which my wife was a huge hit with him), we walked the half block to my favorite restaurant. To our profound sadness (or at least my own) the restaurant was closed down (tax evasion or something like that). We decided to walk a few blocks down to downtown’s nightlife hub to find some food somewhere else.

The entire time we were looking around we were hanging out with Dave Arneson. This is what it was like. It was simply a trio of gamers walking around the city looking for food and talking about…nothing at all really. Just talking.

We found a Vietnamese restaurant (very good but since then closed down for tax reasons). We had a slightly better dinner for slightly more money. The entire night was more of the same. We rarely talked about business, RPGs, gaming, Full Sail, strokes, or anything else. We just talked. My wife had his attention, as she seems to do with most people. She has this personality that just makes you have to talk to her. 

When we did talk about gaming it was brief. He never looked at my material. He never pried. We just talked about approaches, how I planned to publish, whether I was going to use the d20 license, etc. His single piece of advice was to work on modules, and to try just publishing that. Obviously I did not take that advice. I had already gotten more from him that that advice could ever do. I was inspired.

Dave Arneson was a gaming geek, plain and simple. He was lovable, personable, and open and honest. It is rare to meet anyone that you can just click with on a level that makes you feel like you had been friends for a long time. It becomes an opportunity to just spend time with another human being, rather than to take what you can from a legendary figure in gaming. I could have spent the entire evening not talking about Ironwood, he brought it up. It was an enjoyable experience just for that.

The single greatest gift he gave me, and the reason why I feel that the moment was a key moment for the creation of Ironwood, was that he put things into focus without actually telling me anything. As we sat there, enjoying each others company it struck me that the most important thing was not the games, or Ironwood’s success, it was that we were having a good time. The most important person at that table was not Mr. Arneson, but my wife. We were both more interested in hanging out with her than talking about gaming because people are far more interesting.

Here’s the thing that I walked away with that night: Gaming is a hobby, my wife is my life. 

It is funny how that entire episode could not have a single word whatsoever about that. What was clear is that I could be passionate about Ironwood and gaming, but I should always be more interested in the conversations with my wife and the other people around me than whether or not I even get Ironwood moving. If I ever got it running my priority should never be the company or Ironwood. It showed me how much more interesting life is than fantasy, if you just enjoy it for what it is.

Thank you Dave Arneson for being such a huge influence on my life in one fateful evening. It is because my priorities are for my wife and family that I was able to create Ironwood and release Sagas. It is because I took it all a bit less seriously that I was able to publish a labor of love, rather than a product of labor.

You will be missed.

Here was the philosphy: Create buttons as needed, then destroy them. This will make it so that a really huge list of skills will not make it take forever for the interface to load. It only loads when you need them. Then, it clears the buttons away when you don’t to clear up some memory space. This was fine in the CRM, but cannot work here.

The alternative was to create the buttons at the beginning, which I may do. A much more complicated method would be to only create them when you need them, but only hide them when you don’t need them any longer.

Both require different code. I will be trying out the latter first, as I think this is the best fit, even though it means more work for me. the difficulty is making it look nice, while still being functional. People really like the look of it, and have made comments about the aesthetic design right from their first look at it. However, because it is done this way, I need to look at more memory friendly ways of doing things. This is something that even experienced programmers wrestle with on a daily basis. I am a self taught novice, so there will be speed bumps like this. 

Hopefully it will progress better this week and I can get some screenshots up.

Anyways, back to work. 

Happy Gaming.

I HATE classes in RPG. For me, they represent a laziness in gaming. They show one of two things: the designer couldn’t balance their game without them so they will design a system by which you are constrained by whatever the GM has decided is the correct representation of the class. Or worse still, players that don’t really want to role-play a character they build and just want to crunch through a game. These players welcome the hand holding that a class provides because it allows them to not be concerned with their character. There is another group of players that like classes, but they also exist within non-class based games, and those are meta gamers that just want a class system because it can be easier to break the system for their benefit.

Here’s the problem with classes. A character class represents a predefined archetype in a game world. However, they often are restrictive. For instance, you can be a rogue and get a cool back-stab, or can use magic items, but not one class can do the same, at all. A fighter, no matter how good he works on it, can never, for some reason, figure out that while being unnoticed, cannot hit a vital artery on an opponent for their own sneak attack. He can, at his next level up, multi-class, but even that has some kind of fence around it. Your classes are based on what the developer believes is the correct way for that archetype to behave. Therefore, unless you take a special ability like a feat or perk, your mage can never use a large sword. He could have, in life, sacrificed any training in staff or club to instead learn a sword, but this is not allowed. Why not? It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if I had an opportunity to learn clubs and maces and forgo that to learn a sword that it is possible.

It is not allowed because of balance. In other words, my system cannot work because if you actually want to build your own type of unique character you will break the game. I will, as a developer, castrate you and make your character a RP eunuch by making sure he can never realize the potential you would want of him. It must be played in the way I, as a developer, believe it works, no matter how screwed up my rational is.

Furthermore, you should consider that most developers have no real idea how any of this stuff actually works in a real world. Their tropes are based on whatever fiction they like most. How many actually referenced this stuff historically, sought people out with experience in this stuff, and got some real information? With some exceptions, none. They aren’t building anything even remotely realistic anyways right? I mean, we are playing games with elves and gnomes and wizards. Why should anything be remotely realistic? So why bother actually understanding that a wizard could have trained with a sword instead of maces and clubs, or a fighter has learned a back-stab attack to enhance is fighting prowess? Why can’t a literate knight read a scroll and try to cast a spell (yes he will likely get it wrong but what if gets it right)?

The answer to all of these is that developers, and even players, would rather not deal with any actual creative liberty. Sure you can work the game mechanics, take the right feats, multi-class in clever ways, but this isn’t being creative. What this is called is working the system. You actually have to manipulate the rules in order to do something you want, when you could do this without classes at any point. You could, without classes, concentrate on your character development instead of worrying about how you are going to work the skill trees to get what you want out of your character. It is like having a toddler leash on you with the developer holding the leash. You are the bumbling toddler that has a false sense of freedom, but you will never be able to stray too far from Mother because of the leash. So while you see the shiny object, and you feel like you will be able to get to it, chances are you are going to run out of leash and not actually put your hands on that shiny thing you want so much.

I know that there is a disturbingly large number of people that would rather be hand fed there path in life. They love rules and structures, and feel perfectly comfortable with being stifled and love submission. I know that there are people that are more like drone bees than free thinking humans, and they are happy in this. They are similar to a Brave New World Epsilon in that they are happy doing what they are told or expected, but abhor any real free thinking.

But RPGs are creative games. By their nature one would think that creative, free thinking, minds would be the majority, not a minority. So why then, with such open creative minds playing these games do you deliberately choose to be bound to another person’s interpretation of your character?

I mean, to each their own, but thank God I play Sagas. I don’t think I could ever go back to playing a DnD like character class again. I enjoy my creative freedom.

Happy Gaming!

Starting tomorrow it is back to work on the character creator full time. This week was not totally without regard to this effort. I did do quite a bit of data entry (coding is too stressful for my first week without a smoke). I also made some minor code changes to fix some things that popped up (only two very minor tweaks so this was easy). I also did some work diagramming the actual interface for some of the character generator to better adjust from a past design to what actually got programmed. That is the problem with designs on paper. They show us what we want. However, in the process something goes wrong, or a better idea comes in actual implementation.

So, starting tomorrow I will be building the interface for selecting attributes. Following that will be skill and equipment. Once that is done I will work on adding this information to the character sheet you can print. Once all of that is done I can code things like spell purchasing and similar stuff.

That should end it all for now. I have some other features in mind that will get looked at in the end, such as actually managing character development (which is top of the list) as well as using some way of making custom character sheet layouts. There are a bunch of other things I would like to do, however, release is something that can’t take forever. So I will have to cap things at some point, be happy with it, and release it.

After release I will begin work on adding in extra features via patches or addons.

So, tonight, I will be taking it easy. I may go over my paper notes again, including the old ones to review things that are planned for it. I may play some Fable 2 or Guitar Hero with the wife. I will not be smoking, much to my annoyance. But, I will be moving on.

Happy Gaming!

Yes, I was, until today, one of the few, the proud, the smoker. Cigarettes have been a part of my life from the very beginning. My father smoked (as his father before him did). I grew up in a time when smoking in front and around your kids was fine. By the time my father quite about ten years ago, I had my own 5 year long habit. Now, here in Florida, prices have jumped to $6 a pack. Not too big a deal really. I had already cut back to a pack every 3-4 days. However, if I play a loose week, which I have been here and there, that could still be a pack every 2 days. At best, we are still looking at 12 bucks a week, which is almost 50 bucks a month. At worse, it gets close to $100. How in the world to I justify being out of work and smoking $100 worth of cigarettes to my family? You don’t.

There are alternatives, such as buying them online for less and such. However, in my mind, if it has to go so far that I can’t walk down the street for a pack, I have to send for them, there is a problem. I don’t like being addicted to it, but I really don’t like the idea of looking like a frickin junky over it.

Nicotine is gone form your body in three days. After that, there is a mental dependancies I need to overcome. I am not afraid of that. I can handle the mental part. The first three days are going to be hell. So, here I go.

Day one…

I had, some time ago, began some development of the Character Creator (CC). I had done this to dable with some ideas I had on its look and interface while also trying out some of the development I had already completed in the CRM to make sure this stuff would talk to eachother properly. After some initial builds, I stopped to refocus on the CRM, particularlly rewriting the items dll.

With the DLL finnished and the new item functionality complete, I began to build some content to use. This meant using the CRM as it is intended to be used by you, our customers, when it is released. I build about a hundred items, mostly weapons and armor, and included all the skills, powers, spells, and races that would be needed. Now, I have a small campaign resource file that will be used to help with the development of the CC.

The CC, at this point, is largely in interface design, more than functionality. Ballancing how the information is entered by the player is the first challenge, and not an easy one. Already I am having to make some tough decisions on lay out. 

Unfortunately, I woke up not feeling too well today. My daughter has been sick and I am worried I may have finally caught what she has had. I am writing this at the moment with while a faint dizzyness has me feeling clouded and light headed. I am not sure how productive I will be today or tomorrow. Still, I am exited about what is happening and I am looking forward to seeing how much gets accomplished over the next week. That will give e a pretty good gauge of when I may be able to release both the CRM and the CC>

I finally finished up the Items DLL this week. Having re-written the DLL with the new programming tricks I learned, and learning a few new cool ones along the way, has opened up a world of possibilities in the form of future updates. With the DLL file in its current structure, I can now add things very easily with minimal work in the future. This allows me to respond to user feedback and add things quickly.

I don’t have a development team on this. I have some very vocal testers who have been invaluable in the process that have helped. However, it can’t replace having a team of people cola berating on a project. As such, we only get what I think of putting in, with only my ideas on how to implement them. This means that I expect some feedback on how things could have been done better on release. Having this in mind, I try to program with an eye towards easy updates on how things work. Only time will tell if I succeed.

I have also browsed my only real competitor in this product line. I say this because while there are people making virtual gaming software, there are no companies that I know of, except Wizards of the Coast, deliberately adding a suite of tools to their own product lines. The idea of companies supporting their own products with such software is surprisingly new in the scope in which we are attempting. So I took a look at WotC own software thingy and was less than impressed.

There were some nice things about it. Number one, it is all online so anyone can use it. However, there is a subscription. So the pro is outweighed (in my opinion) by that con. I can’t see charging $9 a month to use their software. Furthermore, their software, while pretty, does very little. It lets you create and possibly manage characters, create encounters, and something else (I can’t remember but it wasn’t that big of a deal). It is surprisingly light on anything actually creative. While there is a house rules version for creating PC’s, I saw now house rules section for actually creating said rules. I also didn’t see anything to really create your own elements like campaign worlds, skills, powers, etc.

So I left my browsing with a feeling that the WotC program is a gimmick that is tagged on to what is essentially paying $9 a month for free access to their official content. That means that what was once free (in the form of their resources) is now subscribed to. It is an interesting model, but not one I can support.

DPnP is not a gimmick. It is a full suite of tools designed to fully realize the potential of E-RPG. The two elements, the DPnP and the printed material, are so closely tied together in my business model that I don’t see how they will be separated in the future. Furthermore, it could open an entirely new way for RPG companies to do business, if they get smart and realise how little investment this can make, and how much it can provide for the players.

While thinking of this, I thought of how greatly it could improve things, I decided to put it to the test, again. It was a self assuring exercise, but I need the validation. As some may know, we have released two spell books of three spells each for about $1.50 per book. This amounts to .50c per spell. I did the original six spells by hand using the player’s guidebook and knocked each book out in about a day or two. I decided to create three new spells and so I came up with three on the spot, and created them. I finished the print ready book of three spells in less than 30 minutes. I had no pre-designed plan for the spells, I just came up with an idea and used the wizard and wrote them up. I had done the same before with races and items to the same effect.

I know it sounds like the same drum I keep beating. You’ll have to forgive my excitement. I have so much involved in this, so many ideas that are coming to fruition with this, that I truly believe that the true measure of DPnP success will not be in its retail sales, but in its effect on other RPG business models. It is something to see, and hopefully you will see it soon.

Happy Gaming!

As I continue development I thought it would be nice to have a twitter account for quick one line updates while I work. This will give up to date info on what I am programming, how it is going, and other tidbits about my work with Ironwood. In general, it will only be about Ironwood development stuff, with maybe an occasional note on things going on arround me that may affect this, including inspirational influences as well as things going on with my family at the time that tend to get in the way.

The side bar on the right has a continuous update, or you can follow me on twitter by clicking here.

When I first started this I knew very little of a thing called Inheritance. Inheritance, in C# programming is a way of creating objects (classes in C#) wherein an object shares properties with another. It is like this: a seat could be a group of objects that have properties such as a seat and legs. You could then have an inherited class that has a back, and call this a chair. You could have a chair with other attributes and call this chair a throne. The chair inherits from the Seat, the Throne inherits from the chair.

Instead, what I did was create a class called items. That class had all of the attributes of every item type in the game. That was a lot of properties. When called, the item may have only used 5 attributes, but it still had a good 40-50 attributes in memory even if they weren’t used. Furthermore, it overcomplicated a lot of issues with how they could be handled.

I rewrote the entire DLL (the DLL is a file that contains a collection of code that is sorted for easy management such as keeping all code for items in a separate folder) to create a simple item class with about a dozen properties. Next I created inherited items for each type. This actually works better. For one thing, an item will only have attributes for that item in memory. Secondly, it streamlines how the code is managed. I can, now, easily add new item types with very little fuss. Additionally, I have working room to adjust and play with options for items. Therefor, many items got changed in how they are handled in the CRM. 

Now, clothing and armor can be limited to how they are used with creatures. Buying chain mail for humans would be different when purchasing chain barding. So armor now has a racial attribute for what races can use them. Furthermore, armor can be regulated to specific areas. You could create a helmet, gauntlets, breastplate, or full suits. This is because I created a Clothing class that inherits from items, and an Armor class that inherits from Clothing. 

This was a huge rewrite. I had to correct over 500 lines of code over the actual DLL rewrite. I also had to redesign some of the elements of the Item creation wizard to accommodate some of the new options. Some portions are still being re-written. For instance, we once had an item package item type that let you check off items included in the item. Now you actually can control the quantities for the items. I still have to create an interface that is easy to use for this.

I also still have to fix how magic items are built. The wizard for this was a bit different before as magic items were written through a different DLL. Now, items have an enchantment property in their item attributes. I did this to allow future programs to implement players or Game Masters to easily add enchantments or enhancements easily in other programs such as while using a virtual table top. Now, I have to rewrite the new code to actual copy an item and add enchantments.

There was a lot of work done, but there are still issues to work out. Yes, it is still pushing a formal release out, but it is for the good. I can now add things easily which will help future development and allow me to respond to requests and user feedback more easily. Today I hope to wrap up the item creation wizard functions and hopefully have the enchantments functions done by tomorrow. Then I will add modern sagas items. Last will be a compile for testing, I will send the file to one of the testing machines I have here now (I have to extra computers loaned to me for testing now) and try to break it. If all goes well I have to rebuild the content files, but that should take long.

If all goes well, and there is very little reason why it shouldn’t, I should have resource files completed very soon. This will then get exported into a campaign file which will then be installed and used to test development on the character creator. If that works out quickly (and it should) we could be seeing the release in a few short weeks.

Also, for future development, I have a couple of new programs on paper that will be developed shortly after. This is an un-official announcement but something that I think patient readers may find interesting.

• A character Journal that will manage player campaign changes including buying and selling items and skills.
• A Campaign world builder planned as both a stand alone universal product or a CRM add on.
• An Adventure Builder (yeah man this si going to be GREAT!)

If things are back on track soon I may have a post tomorrow. Otherwise, I will just have to skip this week. Sorry.

It all started with the DLL file for equipment that I have to rewrite. There was about 6-10 hours of code done on the new version. I have even been able to expand into some things I was not able to before because the system, at the time, would have been to complicated. There is a huge amount of tedium involved in this process, that feels like delivering mail. I put the pieces into their slots, look down to see my basket getting lighter, only to know I have a good 30 more baskets still in the truck.  It is tough because so much of the code is so similar, but still requires unique references. So I built, and built…

And built.

At some point I think my daughter must have hit the power button on my PC which set it to standby mode. I was done with the computer for the evening and didn’t think anything about it being turned off. I figured my wife may have done it, she would have saved and closed things out properly for me, and no harm done.

Instead, what had happened, is the PC went on standby. No big deal right? Well, the next morning I turn it all on and find it waking up from standby mode. Curious, but OK. No big deal. I see the IDE sitting their waiting for the next key stroke to begin the new code. However, I have chores first. Before I go to run off to do the chores a message box pops up with the update notice that things were updating while I was asleep. I make sure it isn’t saying it is going to restart. Instead it asks to install the updates. Fine, click OK.

So I get my kids breakfast. My daughters and I have breakfast together every morning if we can help it. I enjoy it immensely. Anyways, we finish up and I look up from doing the dishes only to find my computer is shutting itself down. Not restarting, not prompting, just restarting. I am thinking “Aw crap, I hope I saved the file”. To late to stop it now anyways.

Sure enough, it was not saved. It pulled up the “recovery” file of the program I was working on and guess what, it is sans the 6-10 hours of work. So everything cool I had done was gone! I was furious. Enraged. 

As one might expect, not much got coded that day.

Or the day after.

By the next day I was a little more reasonable to the entire having-to-do-it-all-over thing and began work. I was not as fast, focus, or efficient but I had made a good 60% of the progress back. The next day, my friend Jon Soto, who had disappeared for almost 2 months (there was a very good reason and I am glad that he manage to pull through OK). He and I went over some design elements for a fantasy campaign and I helped him with some contacts in the apartment industry to find him a new place to live. All said and done, not much work on Friday either.

This weekend was an exercise in over scheduling. That is all I will say about that.

So I am eagerly awaiting tomorrow and a fresh start. I have had several days of frenzy and fun and no programming so that I am ready to dive back in. Truth be told, I am on a hair trigger to start today. However, I am forcing myself to not do any work on  this stuff to make sure I am purged of last weeks frustrations. I am only writing this blog to satisfy that part of my that feels like I should be doing some Ironwood work before I go run off to play some video games, drink a cup of coffee, and in general goof off and enjoy a quieter day with my wife and kids.

What I really want to talk about is a thought that brews in my head from time to time. That is creating an official Fantasy Sagas campaign world. This is something I have toyed with for some time. However, I have had some serious dilemmas when creating it.

First of all, unlike most publishers, I am not going to release my campaign world. It isn’t one of those things wherein I just think my world is so cool that it should be published and thus it will be the next Forgotten Realms or whatever. Truth is, I don’t have a fixed campaign world I play in. I steal a lot in my private games from other companies and material. I usually play in existing campaign worlds but expand on them. This will not be a pet project wherein I release my Oh So Cool Campaign. This, if I do it, will be specifically designed.

I thought first and long about a campaign world where it is pseudo historic. I wrestled with this for a long time, thinking it would be fun. Truth is, it probably would, but they already exist. Lets face it, almost all campaign worlds are in some way pseudo historic. So eventually, I will probably create pseudo historic campaign source books, but they will not be based in a specific campaign. I know, sounds odd, but that is where I eventually landed in my thought process and I will expand on that when the time comes.

My next thought was one of my favorites, and may be developed later. The setting is low fantasy on another world entirely. It is an alien world, not a version of like most other fantasy campaigns. Firearms exist in very barbaric and primitive ways. Magic exists only in  the natural magic sense. There is no real Human race, all races fit along a specific territorial evolution. Therefore, there are races such as these mantis like creatures which live in the humid swamp like regions, and these rock flecked skinned people from the mountainous areas. There are other races as well, all fitting within a specific region. The world itself is apocalyptic, but not in the post-apocalypse. This is the actual end of days of this world that people are living through. Campaigns exist in surviving through the death of an entire world, or maybe on quest to try and save every0one from utter ruin.

Again, I like this idea, but there are too many sci-fi elements to really consider it fantasy so it is getting pushed to the corner of my desk.

Another is a near future modern setting. By near future I mean five to ten years from today. Dates are not specific for a good reason. Nothing else you will get from me on this as it is actually under production in a very small form. However, it is modern sagas material so not relevant to this article.

So that bring us to what will I do. Here are some things I notice in just about every fantasy setting.

1. There is a once mighty empire now on the decline (like Rome). It is both evil and good in varying respects and has a large, but dwindling influence on the world.
2. There is a group of wizards that are enigmatic. We don’t know if they are good or evil but they usually take the form of a villain.
3. There is a group of hero like people akin to Jedi. They are always lame but someone in the design thought they were cool. They meddle in the world either behind the scenes or openly trying to bind the world together in peace and love. However, people often resent them for whatever reason making their job more difficult.
4. There was some great cataclysm in the past (usually a few thousand years ago) that results in wastelands and ruins for your adventuring fun.
5. For some reason everyone speaks a common language. Also, though writing and libraries are few, every Jack the Farmer knows the names of heroes and villains and strikingly large specifics on things that happen thousands of years ago, even though in our modern world our history over the past few hundred years is vague and error prone to even scholars with access to huge electronic data bases and mass communication methods.
6. The near past was a silver or golden age, usually ended by the cataclysm mentioned above, now the remnants of great magical weapons and other wonders that can no longer be made are littered around the world and the current world is on the decline because said magical advances no longer xist.
7. At least two races (usually elves and dwarves) are bitter enemies because of some vague historical footnote usually having root in some war or conflict. Occasionally this actually may be something more realistic like a slight grievance like refusal of gift between kings. However, there is usually some element there so that a party can have an “interesting” dynamic with two of its members being of these opposed races and how they have to settle their differences and come together for the sake of the group.
8. Thieves guilds and assassins groups operate like medieval versions of the Mafia and so are underground crime syndicates that run everything from brothels to slave trades, even though the world is set in a period of time were slavery and prostitution were commonly legal in our own historical timeline.
9. Just about everyone can read, swing a sword, or cast a spell except the innkeeper, the local lord, or some other insignificant NPC.
10. There is monster races that are evil for the single point of being the evil race. This is a throwback from JRR Tolkien LotR so we all seem to have a race of Orks that will constantly plague the world with faceless monsters to slay without regard. They are the RPG version of Nazis in that they can and should be killed without thought or remorse, even though in our real world many German Soldiers in WWII were not Nazis and were likely conscripted again their world (the SS being the exception that proves the rule).

So, what can be said about this process? I began this as a writer, not a programmer. I learned programming and now can apply what I have learned to my writing projects. Today I wrote a lot of code. Probably upwards of 1000 lines or more. Today, I implemented some parts of the program that close the interaction between new wizards with the overall CRM that would have taken me days within a few hours. I have learned tricks and methods that enhance the process in ways that make me cringe to look at the code written in the early stages. It is one of those things where you feel like it would be great to rewrite the old stuff to be more in keeping with the new style. I won’t do that now. Perhaps, after I have the rest of the programs I want released completed first I can revisit the program and update it. But for now, fully functional code, even if it is ugly, is perfectly acceptable. The goal is a working and robust product. That goal has been met.

I am not done. I hoped to be finished by the end of the day, but a headache is slowing me down. The final beta update is scheduled for tomorrow and that may be met, but it is also likely that it may be put off a few more days. There are some things that still need to be wrapped up like adding in a few more item types to expand things into the Modern Sagas Content. I also have to fix some problems with the installer. These are minor, but do take time. With about 8 new wizards and some reporting functions created this week to support the content created by those wizards, I feel great about what was accomplished this week.

After I finish up the code I still have to finish writing the content packages. This means full packages for the Modern and Fantasy Sagas. I am not looking forward to that, but it must be done. This will mean element files such as packaging all of the Fantasy Sagas spells into a package, and then importing these into a Campaign file. Next, I have to create installation and retail copies of these packages. This is set up to allow someone who wants to own the Modern Sagas Campaign, but not Fantasy, to purchase just the Fantasy Sagas Magic resources at a reduced price. In all, purchasing a campaign will be a better bargain. It will be slightly cheap, plus you will get the entire campaign rulebook. However, while I think that it makes more sense from a publishing point of view to limit the retail packages, I think it ultimately will only restrict customers.

That is one of the great features of a package like this. You could, in all fairness, ignore purchasing campaigns and just pick up certain elements to build your own campaign. Each of these expansions are handled separately within the program as well as combined as a full campaign file. 

There are also plans in the works for more universal DPnP programs. Things like Player Journals which do not require system statistical data could work in a universal format and I have great ideas for these packages. My hope is to be able to integrate the universal/E-RPG content that is used. For instanc,e maybe a player journal allows you to use it with E-RPG content or content that has no system within the same program. I could limit the E-RPG packaged content manipulation in a way that lets you import journals of any type created with DPnP into other DPnP tools.

This is a hope I have to not have two versions of a DPnP product. Then, you don’t have to check a fine print to make sure you have the E-RPG version, or the universal version. Also, there is the small hope that people who have not intended to start with DPnP will see some of the great features of the system by using the same tool and switch over.

These are the thoughts I have as I wrap it up. I look towards future growth with the program, and the possibilities that this type of tool allows for. I also hope that this is something that other game companies will learn from. I hope it does what I think it should do, which is bridge a gap that determines whether or not people continue to play traditional RPGs instead of playing MMOS or video games. I said it before, we need to make our hobby more accessible to new players. Tools like this will help, and the more companies that embrace this idea, the better the hobby will do in the long run.

The CRM is kind of a rule-book creator. However, a GM is likely to need much more for their weekly campaigns. One of the most common things are NPCs. This is where the PCC comes in. It is a program for creating creatures, both for PC’s, and for GM NPCs and creatures. Therefore, it uses all of the content created by the CRM in different ways. A GM, for example, can use the PCC to create monsters such as dragons, orcs, etc. by using races they create with the CRM. They can add skills, magic powers, equipment, etc. while using the exact same interface that players will use to create their own creatures.

That is a nice, feature. However, one thing I think will be key is how this information is ultimately delivered to the the gaming table. One problem that customized campaign content provides is that players will want or need the content. This means that an ambitious GM could create a 100+ campaign resource package that every player would have to print out. When a PC only uses a very small fraction of those resources it seems like an unnecessary burden. 

The key focus on the DPnP project is making things easier on the the players and the GM, both on the computer and at the table. So I am constantly thinking of ways to make things work better. A standard character creator is expected to print out character sheets for the players to bring to the table. We all know and expect this feature. However, a though occurred to me when I was looking over some of my old gaming notes. Everyone had some access to the Player’s Guidebooks. One thing I also noticed was how thin the character sheets were. This wasn’t due to a design element. It occurred to me that it has always happened in gaming. Most players will simply record the nuts and bolts of things and rely on the rule books to fill in the blanks. This is why you have to look up the description for that spell you hardly use. Or, worse, when a method of play is called into question the character that used the power, item, or spell had to go look it up.

That becomes a serious problem with custom campaigns. The E-RPG character sheets leave room for recording all the elements you will use to some degree. One thing we did was allow space to record the notes about your powers. In the Modern Sagas we encourage having Load Out sheets for different equipment configurations. To one degree or another they are used to varying effect. I see spells copied exactly as I see them in my book, or a simple note “X does Y when I do Z” type of notes that don’t explain very much.

Now imagine that you are using a campaign that a GM developed and created your character through the PCC. Did you get a printed copy of the Campaign Resource to bring to the table? Most will say probably not, and they should. I should expect them to carry that burden. Not when I can solve the problem much more easily programmaticly. 

One of the key features with the PCC is that it will print out your character sheets, but it will also print out the content associated with your character as you see it in the rule book. These aren’t extra character sheets, these are laid out just like the rule books. It will have the name, level, descriptions, etc. just as you see them in a rule book printed in a separate sheet. That way, you don’t need to have a copy of the rule book with you. All you will need is your character’s print out.

It is ultimately real simple. You  buy a spell during character creation. That spell is recorded in your character sheet, but the game’s rule-book description (modified for your character) is also printed in a spell book type format. You will have Skill Book, Inventory Book, Computer Book (for computers that your character has and their programs), Spell Book, Psychic Powers Book, etc.

Why is this important? Well, look at it like this: Your character may have about 6-20 skills and proficiencies as most. The Campaign Resource could have over 100. You would have to look through the printed copy of the rules to find your skill just to reference what they GM who developed that skill had in mind for it. Or, you could flip through 1-3 pages of skills that include only your characters skills. You wouldn’t have to ask your GM what the rules were for because you could actually look it up almost as quickly as it would take you to actually speak the words “I want to do this. How would that work?”

It seems like such a small idea, even as you read this you may be thinking “Should help”. What I don’t think is easy to punctuate is how much more effective gaming will be when you have the resource so readily available. 

The same functionality is planned for future programs as well. For instance, with an Adventure Creator, the GM may have an option to separate items into individual print outs for handing over to players. So, if you kill monster A and get his armor, sword, and magic rod you won’t be copying the information from the GM. The GM will hand you 3 pages. One page for each item. The items may have been ported over directly from the CRM, but how much easier is it to have it re-printed when you print out your adventure?

Okay, sure, some people are thinking that it will gobble ink or waist paper, but think about this: How much note paper is waisted scribbling the not “got Bastard Sword” so that you could only add it to your inventory sheet later on. That piece of paper was waisted to remind you to do something. Alternatively, you could take a moment to look it up and copy it. But what if the GM is listing off the contents of a treasure box? Are you going to look over every single item? How much time are you wasting by NOT playing just to get the information already printed out?

The idea of the DPnP is to get you playing faster and more easily, but it can, if handled correctly, assist the quality of your playing. It can minimize looking up and copying notes by delivering as much information before hand as possible. 

It takes a while for such features to develop properly. It is thoughts like this that keep pushing back the final release of the program. However, it is this approach to the quality and functionality of DPnP that will ultimately change a lot in the industry. I think, in the end, that more companies will be building their own software for gamers, and you will not be surprised to find DPnP features will be standards for these programs. Right now, you may be thinking “Why has no one thought of that” or even “I thought of that once too”. However, in the future, it won’t seem all that brilliant. It will seem normal and everyday and it will only be notable when a program does not have that feature.

Anyways, that’s enough for now. In the next article I am hoping to allow for more discussion on how the programs interact for the GM.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

I had expected to have cut the cord on the CRM by now. However, I really just couldn’t leave it alone with the last wizards to be built. Those being the wizards for Modern Sagas Content, in particular the vehicles. The Software Wizards for MS were completed late last week. However, Vehicles are alot more complicated as they also include several wizards for their various components. There is a wizard for the vehicle, vehicle types, vehicle groups, vehicle system groups, and the coordination of those wizards through the CRM and reporting. New classes have to be created for them pragmatically and new base default systems and how they can be altered must all be created as well. In short, building just the addition of vehicles is like building a set of 4 other systems.  It is a bit of a mess.

Furthermore, the code has to include Credits, reporting string builders of various formats, file saving and recalling, etc. A lot has to go into building and adding new features. However, I believe it is a must for release.

That still leaves adding Modern Sagas items to the standard items systems. This shouldn’t be too difficult, however, it does mean that I have to add some things and figure out some relationships. For instance, what about night vision, or thermo vision? What about optical sights, firearms and customization, and more. So I guess the cord still isn’t cut. I think, at this point, finishing basic systems and vehicles will have to suffice. I am a bit worried about forward compatibility in regards to automation. For instance, if there is an actual virtual table top as planned I want it to automatically adjust for things like thermo vision and know the difference between thermo vision and night vision. At this point, I don’t know how possible it will be. It may be too much to expect this early in the game, and there may be some concessions in the long run.

I have heard and read so many things that try to cast an ill light on today that I am in some small part disgusted with some Americans and their doubts. I remind myself that even the greatest leaders have had their adherent detractors, including Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, and FDR. However, one of the things I have seen yesterday was something that made me sad for many people. I watched Dr. Kings “I have a Dream” speech yesterday on CNN for the first time in my life. Most Americans have never seen that speech in its entirety, and today, I sat my children down with me and watched. It was something so powerful that it brought tears to my eyes.

Then I read things that try to detach today from MLK’s dream and to those people I say this: No, Obama is not MLK. No one with half a brain equates the two. MLK and Obama are two different people with two different ideas. However, MLK would not, at least from what I know of the person I watched speak yesterday, would not say “This is great that we now have an African American President, but why did it have to be that guy?” The truth is that MLK would be proud of the country for its accomplishments over the past few years (it is less than 50 years since that speech). He would have been proud that Obama, as a black man and as an American, that overcame the statistics and rose to be the President in which the hopes and dreams of so many in the world rest.

I am confident in Obama not only because he may be a good President, but because he knows, as well as anyone, that the legacy of Dr. King and Lincoln, and all those who fought and died so that this country could have a Barrack Obama for President, reside on how well of a job he does. With so much history riding on his success I believe that this man knows he must succeed as the voice and will of a country and govern as such.

You might not agree with his policies, but as Americans we should stand together today in hope. Forget about your Right Wing philosophy and ideology. Put aside the bubble that makes you afraid. This country succeeds on the strength and unity of its people. You may not unify behind this man, but you can unify behind the country that has once again defined history.

And to put this into context, most first world countries do not have minorities in office of any kind, or if they do it is a rare and insignificant amount. The idea of an African American President is just a big deal for Americans, and a symbol to all minorities, as it is to all the other countries of the world. We are the first. We have set a new standard for the world. The world watches with love and respect as we welcome him.

It is time, today, to show the world how much love you have for this country and its will. Your country chose this Obama. Stand with your country and applaud our new President. Stand with your countrymen and welcome this new change for the world. Say it with me now:

God Bless America!

I am not a huge fan of shooting games. I got bored of them a while back. Frankly, the idea of running around and shooting things mindlessly is dull to me. Shooters have to offer something truly different to catch my attention. Some games, such as the Brothers in Arms series, are pretty evident in why they are different enough. Others, like Doom 3 might not seem too different, but in truth they are. More importantly, too me, is the nature of the game. If it is a tactical game, and handled well, then I am sold. It also has to really sell the experience. America’s Army and Battlefield 2 for the PC are great games as they emulate the experience very well and offer alot of tactical rewards. That being said, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) is something, like Brothers in Arms, that now resides in my mind as something truly special.

I have been a fan of the Ghost series since the first game. Unfortunately, as it seems to be the way with Tom Clancey shooters, the series got away from larger team management and tactical planning and evolved more into typical shoot territory. Unlike Rainbow 6, Ghost is forgivable due to what they make up for while taking away the larger elements.

I played GRAW for the X-Box and thought it was a good game and a solid and fun entry into the series. I never understood why it got bad reviews. I could understand how it wouldn’t stand up to its 360 and PC counterparts, as the X-Box just couldn’t handle a straight port. However, taken on its own, I thought it was just as good, if not better in many ways, than Ghost Recon 2. After playing a few hours this weekend with the 360 version I can forgive the reviewers as the 360 version of the game is truly a sight to behold.

X-Box Version

It got me thinking of Modern Sagas simply because GRAW is exactly what I am going for with MS. simply put, the combat is slow, tactical, and truly intense! You use cover, walls, tactical positioning, equipment like UAVs and smoke grenades, support elements like tanks and helicopters. You have a competant squad and a lot of cool gear.

The single player campaign, from the few missions I have completed so far, is truly breathtaking. Character movements, scenery, and just about every element of the playing experience contributes to this feeling of having boots on the ground. Every time you get to a corner of a building, look down the streets, you find your self stuck up against a wall, your trigger finger softy twitching in anticipation (and a bit of tense fear) as you do a quick head peek to see whats around the side. And by head peek, I mean litteraly a head peek. This isn’t the common “lean” function that most shooters have now. You peek is a gentle tilt of your head to get your eyes around the corner just enough. You can click the aim button to get your weapon to bear around the corner to. Using horizontal cover is just as good, with quick peek overs and the ability to vault over low walls much like Gears of War.

X-Box 360 Peeking around the corner

What is truly great about the way cover is used and the feeling of it in the game is when your trading rounds with enemy soldiers. The bullet effects on the walls and terrain is great, and really get you into the idea that this wall you are leaning up against is saving your life. In a game where on good shot can kill, and 2 bad shots can still kill, this game gives wall humping a new meaning.

All of this is fine. But how does it contribute to an RPG? It doesn’t, not really. A pen n paper RPG can not compete with this type of a feeling as there is very little actual stimulation that can emulate this in the same way. Tactics, high mortality, and all of that is fine. However, without the sound of stone chunks ripped off the wall and the enmy AK’s echoing down the street, the glare of the sun, and the obscuring black smoke training off the technical you just blew to hell, you are just rolling dice. I can’t think of a single way that a game rule can really make this work. But that is just fine.

Modern setting RPGs, are rarely so military minded. Most run in some kind of Cyber Punkian or spy vs. spy type of game. What I wanted to accomplish in MS was the firefights having the same kind of tactical vibe as GRAW. That, I think, we can and did handle. As I play, and now write about it, GRAW I also think about ROMP. The thoughts on romp go to the local multi-player I only got to dabble in. There are co-op missions that are different from the overall campaign that I dabbled with that got me thinking “this would be a fun Romp module”. From what I have seen so far, GRAW may be a guide post to how Romp modules will be laid out and played. I have to get some friends over to get a truly large feel for it. My son and I only fooled with it for a few minutes, but it looks very promising. If my early impressions of these missions is correct, this could be the multi-player game I was looking for to get some tangible inspiration for how the missions will look, play, and operate.

Here’s a fairly decent video of the game. And, yes, it looks and plays that good (plays better IMO).

In closing, it isn’t often that video games cross into my RPG development. Usually, it seems like RPGs are the influence for video games (4th Ed. D&D being the exception, but competing as a PnP against MMORPGs is an asanine thing to attempt in my opinion). This generation of games seems to be quite different. They can truly bring about a new level of play, and really push the envelop of the gaming experience. It is, in my opinion, why the PnP industry will always be regulated to a minor footnote in gaming hobbies for the forseeable future. RPGs used to have something that video games  couldn’t do. More and more video games are begining to show us that they can do it to. Eventually, it won’t be regulated to isolated experiences. All too soon I am afraid that video games will emulate the tabletop gaming experience far too well.

Until that day comes…

Happy Gaming.

It was a bit of a mess yesterday, and I really was afraid that all my work on building the content was going to have to be redone, or at the least, require some kind of conversion app written in to fix what had seemed to be a pretty big screw up on my part. However, several hours of diligent work, and a very real and literal headache, later I was able to solve the problem and things are back on track.

Sometimes, when I find a seemingly unsolvable problem it helps for me to vent out the fustration and get my feelings vocal. Hence yesterday’s post. It is the reason why I post things like that. For one, it gets me off the task for a moment which helps to break a chain of thought. Sometimes the chain of thought needs to be broken because you find yourself in a loop where you keep missing the solution due to your fustration. By taking a moment to stop, thereby breaking the loop, you find yourself tackling the problem from a new angle later, even if you don’t realise it.

So that is what happened. I stopped the endless loop. Even when I went back to work, shortly after the post and a quick lunch, I thought I was going about it more or less the saame way. I knew the problem lay somewhere in the vicinity of where I had been trying to solve it before. However, growing fustration led to me trying the same thing, or variations of the same thing, over and over again. I needed a clean slate. Venting breaks the momentum and it tends to help me.

So I am sorry for any undue durress I may have caused my testers on that one. Please disregard the madman that raged in that last post, and rest assured everything is fine now and the programs are right along track.

That track being that I am now building the character creator and it is using the content from the CRM. Also, on another positive, I am adding a new feature that is the derived from a conversation and a suggestion from one of my testers, Juan Soto.

Juan made a remark about a visual representation of your character build that would show you how your character stacked up in the game world. This isn’t possible as it requires information on other characters in the world not already built, or speculative input by the GM when building the campaign resources. Instead I have settled on another feature.

In the character generator you will have 3 bars at the bottom of the interface. They are Red (physical combat), Green (general, tech, and other non-combat type skills), and blue (for magic or other specialties such as computers). The bars will alter in length during your build showing the percentage of focus for your character build. For instance, as you build a more combat heavy character the red bar gets bigger, while the other bars shrink. They show a percentage, so you can never have all three, or any one bar, completely full. 

It doesn’t show how strong your character is in an aspect in the game world, but it does show your focus on the character. That way, you can easily see if a character is becoming too useless in one aspect or too strong, and ballance accordingly. Furthermore, it happens in real time. As you change an element, such as changing an attribute score, or adding a race, you will see the bars change dynamically. I am also layout out the groundwork for expanding the bars into a details page. In this, you can click on a button near the bars to expand them and gives you a greater breakdown of the buyild. For instance, combat could have subs for agile combat, strength combat, endourance, or alternatively it could represent ranged combat, melee combat, etc.

The bars take into account attributes, racial bonuses, skills, profficiencies, and weapons. At each phase the program determiens what you have built and rebuilds the data for the bar based on your progress.

Anyways, I just wanted to punctuate the fact that things are going smoothly and add that bit of a feature as a bonus to the apology. Hope that helps take the sting out a bit.

Anyways, back to work and Happy Gaming.

I am not a happy camper. 

It is a minor hiccup. Of course, it is time consuming to have to rebuild EVERYTHING as far as content files go. Oh well. Such is my life. Off to get started.

I was just posting this to let my readers no that things just got a little tougher for me, and that testing elements will have to suspend as I will have to re-release the entire program again for them.

I am sorry for all of those who have been building their content. The only thing I can suggest is to copy your reports to a word doc of something. That will help in rebuilding it later.

I will spend the rest of the day working on a fix that will work so that new content will not have to be rebuilt, but I am not counting on it working. If it works I will post a follow up tomorrow.

In movies content is generally cut for two reasons: time, and ratings. Content is removed because the movie runs too long and scenes are removed to shorten it and to tweak the flow. It is a story telling device and a good one. Though some scenes are missed, and people would argue their relevance, they are ultimately removed to make the project better. The second, not being relative to PnP gaming, is ratings. Movies want a rating within a certain range to increase sales within a target audience. PG13 ratings are optimum for summer movies as you can get a bunch of teenage dollars for good weekend sales. Rated R movies are fine if you demographic is for adults, but in some cases cutting a scene that is the only scene that would give you the R rating is worth cutting to get the PG13 rating. You get a bigger audience with PG13 than R.

In books, content is edited out because of page count mostly. This goes back to time. If you can cut out wasted sections to give a more fluid read then you should. In some cases an artists writes in a scene they want in a story that may be nice, but really doesn’t advance the story. There are many books that I read that could have stood a little more of this.

In gaming, particularly video games, content is cut due to publisher’s wanting to release the content. A publisher invests money to a developer to build the game. This pays the payroll of the developer for all the programs. A publisher wants a return on the investment. It falls to the developer to make benchmarks within a certain time or lose funding. This includes a release date. Most publishers understand that release dates are fluid and will change during development. However, at some point a publisher will exercise their right to stop funnelling money into a project and force a release. This was, in my opinion, what happened with KotoR2. When a developer begins a project they start by ironing out what will be developed first. They get the most important elements finished. Working from the top down they build the overall story arc scenarios and the necessary game play development done. They add in extra features towards the end. For instance, online play options. In a game focusing on single player play, online matches are at the bottom of the development totem pole. That is why some good single player games have terrible multi player. Multi player reviews tend to say things like “tacked on” and that is exactly what they are.

Ultimately, the developer has the responsibility of making the product and keeping the publisher happy. The publisher has a responsibility to fund the project and tug the leash. Developers being what they are, tend to keep going and if they were allowed would continue building on their project till until the end of days. They are artists working on a project. A publisher steps in and says “Good work, this is enough to release so you have to stop and release it now.” So the developer cuts out unfinished stuff, or stops developing certain elements to finish what they need.

In independent development the publisher and developer are the same person. There is no money guy in the corner stipulating what gets done, how or when. It is nice to be independent as you don’t have an accountant telling you what development decisions have to be made. You simply make them, knowing that the bottom line is either going to suffer or benefit from your choices. 

This is the problem with most independent developers. While you think it is great, you have to stop and remember to think like a publisher to. There is money involved and it is usually your money. So you have to think, on some level, like a businessman who is out to make a buck. At least, you are not dictated by it, but you are conscious of it. 

I wear two hats. The developer in me is working on projects, the publisher in me is looking at it and saying “Are you done yet, I think you need to cut the cord and run with it. You are going to have to sacrifice X and Y to have Z”. The two hats vie for dominance on my head, but they are, in some sense, both there at the same time. If I stopped listening to either points of view Ironwood will fail.

This weekend the developer in my had a great idea that the publisher in me said “Sorry, it is going to have to wait.”. The idea was to add in a few new features I had initially decided to leave out. One was adding images to the content creator. This allows you to upload images for the content. Sounds simple enough, and in truth it would be easy. The developer in me said I could just add the lines of code, real simple like, and I am done. The publisher in me said WRONG!

If you could imagine a meeting with two people like, developer Dan, and publisher Paul, it would have played out like this:

Dan: I think we should add in images. People will like being able to add images to their content and it will be real easy to add.

Paul: Sounds good but I have two questions: will that push back release, and how many images do you have ready to go?

Dan: It may push it back a week or so. We don’t have any images. 

Paul: Well, wouldn’t developing images for the content we have take longer than a week.

Dan: Absolutely, but we weren’t going to add in images for our content, just add the feature.

Paul: You can’t do that. One thing is that if you have the feature people will want artwork already there. Another thing is that you can’t release it without having images for your own content. It would look half assed and it would hurt the image of the product more than not having images as a feature at all.

Dan: Maybe, but I don’t see why not supplying images would be bad.

Paul: A reviewer or a customer may say “It would have been nice to have images,” and leave it at that. Or, you could add it in and get comments like “The image feature is nice, but there are no supplied images, not even for supplied content. Its like the feature is tacked on.”

Dan: ????

Paul: It is a matter of having a small line or a larger one. It sounds silly, but you can leave out the option, see how big of a demand there is for it, and we can add it in a patch. If we add it in a patch you can release that at any time, and with any level of additions, or none at all. At the same time, when you release the patch for free it shows that we are conscious of the needs of the user, and we will listen. I, as the publisher, fully support  more features, however, they must be implemented properly or not at all. We can’t keep a release date back to develop artwork for all the content. However, we can start working on artwork now and add it all in a patch later.

Dan: So we are not going to add it in?

Paul: No, we are going to add it in. We are just not going to do it now. What you can do is add in the code, but do not add the feature. Furthermore, you cannot push release back even a day. Therefore, if you add in the code, it better be real simple code or none at all and just wait for it to be done later.

Dan: [Dejectedly] alright. You are the publisher. We will add it in later. I’ll add it to the patch feature list.

Paul: Good boy, Dan. Now get back to work.

That is what it is like for me to make decisions with the projects. (BTW, while the above conversation is a bit of a parody on the process, the actually discussion of the feature of images was similar, but not entirely within that line of purpose. In other words, yes, I am adding in the images feature in a patch, but the cited reasons above are only part of a much bigger list of reasons to push it to patch rather than release).

Every single feature in the projects I work on gets that kind of discussion. There are about 75+ pages of rules not included with the player’s guidebooks because of time and space. One thing was simplified rules. I removed the simplified rules because of space, time, and confusion. I didn’t want a book with too many versions of rules. So I test those separately and release them as free downloads (simple combat for Fantasy Sagas being a prime example).

I know that independent development of anything has a two sided reputation. On the one side the content is usually more interesting because developers don’t have to worry about publishers or anyone getting uptight about what you are doing. It is not guided by the bottom line. On the other hand, it has the reputation of being unpolished or, at best, disorganized. This is because of the lack of a publisher. A publisher is necessary to keep the project in check. Without a publisher, or at least the attitude of a publisher, the project can run way off target and run into more problems. Independent developers call themselves independent publishers but this is not true. They are developers. They need to start thinking like publishers on some level or their projects will ultimately fail.

So, there will be features not included in my projects that I want to be there but I have to cut. One thing is that I want everyone to know that the cuts I make from my projects are done because it is better for the project as a whole, and thus better for the customer.  I make the choices as to what to cut because I know, deep down, that this is the best way to get the project into a format that the customer will enjoy. If a feature or element is not included I will almost always add it later for free, or release a different product that can give that feature the focus it deserves. 

One case in point, and I am closing with this, is that the CRM doesn’t include anything for building a campaign world. That is because I will release a world builder separately. However, the world builder is going to be very in depth. I could add something in the CRM for that, but it would be a joke compared to what I want to do. Why? Because if I added the full featured world builder I have in mind there would be way too much to the content creator. The idea is to make things simple and organized, but the more content you add the more complicated it gets. So the CRM lets you build the elements, another product, a big product on the size and scale of the CRM, will build the worlds. It is done this way because it is fair to the products, and ultimately to the customers who buy these products. They are cheap enough that it is obviously not a lame attempt to get more products sold. It is a simple truth that I want these products done right, and the only way to do that is to cut the idea that a world builder could be part of the CRM.

By the way, I decided long ago that they would be two different products. When I started writing the design docs I realized that I had to put the world builder into a different doc for organization. When they were both done, I intended to merge them, but they were so big in and of themselves that they obviously stood alone as separate products. They still work together (CRM files are uploaded to the world builder), but they are, and since the design docs, will remain separate programs. It is the publisher in me that made that decision and the developer in me agrees. Partly because that allows the developer in me to truly explore both projects fully.

Happy gaming!

Anyways, I will be cutting the cord on the DPnP CRM this week I hope and releasing a press release with an official release date. This means, I am calling it done, wrapping up a few more things, and cutting two features for release but hopefully will have them in a future patch.

There are two features I really wanted in the release but they are taking too long at this point to resolve. Furthermore, are just gimmicks. One is the XML output which will be a feature some people will love, but others won’t care about at all. So it is getting cut for the time being. The second feature is an auto-poster I wanted that would allow you to create a post to automatically share your content on the sagasrpg.com community website with no interaction. Basically you simply press a button and you will have a post with your exported content in the attachment and the description as the post body. You would not have to do anything except leave a checkbox checked in you application settings.

These two features are important to me, however, they do not change anything with the core function of the program. I could spend the next week trying to finnish those up, or I could add in Modern Sagas Wizards and call the package done. Then I build the character generator with the generated campaigns and tie it all together. So, it was a choice of what would be more benifficial to the end user. While having auto-posting would be good for Ironwood and the community web site, it won’t do anything for you as a customer in the long run. However, it is much more likely that you would miss being able to create vehicles or computer systems in the CRM. 

The same goes for XML. While this is important to some, it is not a game breaker. I am cutting this due to time constraints. There is a lot of silly and redundant code for this that can be built when I have the time to do it. Its one of those things that I can build when I am up late due to insomnia or when I only have about 20 minutes to code something before I have to run off and do something else. In short, it is something I can code between actually coding in-depth features.

So, I am sorry for those that want this in the final product. They will get installed in a future patch, but for now releasing with the features just doesn’t seem probable.

In 2008 I had hoped to release more large scale products and adventures as well as to launch some new game lines. Modern Sagas is still in beta largely because I haven’t found an editor to take up the task of finalizing the product. Furthermore, the scope of the products I wanted to release were very large and ambitious. Many game companies have teams of writers and developers to assist them. In 2008 Ironwood became a one man job for the most part. New artists like Marco Morte joined the development of products that are so large we are still testing them today. 

It is the scope of my ambition that is killing the releases. I want to release large and well developed products that require teams. However, teams are not available for us at the moment. So the development takes a long time. It became obvious mid-year that I would fail in my goals. I( accepted that but I needed a strategy for solving this problem in the future.

I fell back to DPnP. This product envisioned years ago was the platform from which I had planned Ironwood would do all of its development. Sadly, it did not get developed as I had planned at the beginning. Furthermore, it looked like it would not get developed at all.

Then I met a man named David Lawnicki. He is a programmer for a company that develops software for salons of all things. When I found out he was a programmer I began picking his brain. That conversation led me to the realisation that I could develop DPnP for myself. This is the spur I needed to meet my goals.

So I stopped development projects for the time being. This was a necessesity and a short term loss for a hopeful long term gain. The idea is that with DPnP I could use the tools to basically become a development team. I could, in theory, develop the products more quickly and with better quality. This will allow me to release material for existing lines quickly, and start developing new game lines. That was Ironwood’s initial goal for RPGs anyways. Now I could put it into effect.

So starting around October I was in full swing with the first DPnP product (which is now in testing and nearing a full release announcement). The CRM is the tool that I have needed to reach my goals. Other tools will be need too, but the base content creation was a real hangup for me. I needed to create new content for my releases but I needed to test them so thoroughly because I am human and my mistakes are wide and varied. The program fixes a lot of this. It makes sure that everything is balanced and uniform and I don’t have to site with books in hand and create everything myself. I don’t have to sweat calculations or ballance levels and beta testing can focus on the game elements rather than ballance. This makes the testing go faster.

I also invested in software I can’t produce, such as map making software which I have become quite proficient at (skill level at about 7+). This gives our products a much higher quality than we were capable of before. And again, things can be developed faster. To put it into prospective, I released prophecy with only a few maps because it took so damned long to develop the maps I wanted that I had to give up to get the product out the door. Now, good maps take less time to make than the story elements that surround it. 

So, could 2009 mean a new year of accomplishments that 2008 promised but couldn’t deliver? Well, I am wise enough now not to make promises. However, it looks like that can be the case. At least, I hope so. The projects I want to release are really great products. Now, with the tools to make it happen, I think 2009 could be the year for Ironwood.

Happy New YEar, and Happy Gaming!

Lets start off with testing the CRM. So far it seems to be going well. Initially one of my testers went about assaulting the program in an effort to just break it. He didn’t. However, he found 3 minor bugs which I fixed in due haste. While they diligently explore the CRM I continue finding minor little problems I am fixing and preparing to patch for them. Absolutely nothing in the program is game breaking. Furthermore, some minor features have been added by request as well, thus making the overall program run smoother.

Furthermore, I am bringing the CRM up to date to the Modern Sagas themed content. So a wizard for building vehicles and computer programs is in the works and getting ready for the final launch. The wizards operate smoothly, so I don’t fear a whole lot of testing required for these minor additions.

I have also started to build the Character generator. More and more I am considering adding a character management system into this, but there are no promises yet. Such an addition may be too large and may have to wait for a later release. If this is so, then it will have its own retail version. What may be included, and is far more likely than a full blown CMS is a simple little journal addition. A full blown CMS will require a campaign creator I think to develop the world as well as offline management options. For instance, allowing a player to purchase and sell items away from the table is an option with the CRM campaigns. However, there is not a way to management. Instead, a campaign world builder will have an offline character shop where you can buy and sell items restricted to this specific offline shop. You may not get the same value as doing the sales in game, but it will be a lot more convenient. 

Anyways, these are the things I think about instead of sleeping. It may not make a whole lot of sense reading it, but I think it is something that will answer alot of questions GMs would have when it comes to letting their players manage characters from their campaigns.

Also, you may be thinking now that this is really a first mention of a Character Manager for DPnP with some hints to what it will do. Well, that is about as far as I will go. Yes, I am developing a Character Manager. It will do what the title suggests and let you spend experience, buy and sell equipment, etc. There are some ways in which this will be approached and Game Masters will set the rules in their CRM or Campaign Worlds which will also have a DPnP solution.

So there is another hint for you. There is a DPnP Campaign World Builder. What this does is let you build the explorable campaign world. The CRM builds the skeleton. The CWB lets you build the living and breathing world.

And just for giggles I’ll give you one more secret. My version of a Christmas present. There is also and adventure builder in design stages that will be instrumental in future productions with Ironwood and I will release it as a stand alone product for you to enjoy.

That’s it, that is all your getting out of me. Mind, this is rambling and no promise, but there you have an un-official release list of new products for DPnP.

Happy Gaming.

New DPnP pages have been added to the site with screenshots of the Campaign Resource Manager. Here are the links:

• DPnP Page
• CRM Page

So testing is rolling and so you may be wondering what is going on and how is it going overall? Some of you may not even be asking the question as you consider testing to be little more than using the product until something doesn’t work. You would be partially right. We are testing it in normal operation, but we are also testing with a few people who are deliberately trying to break the software. Are they succeeding?

The short is that while they have found a bug here or there, the bugs are fairly minor and easily fixed. I really only have a short bug list left to fix, and some of those bugs were created through solving others. I have some extra features going in, but overall if testing continues in this vein we could possibly release this before next year.

So how do we test a computer program? Well, the first thing I did was release it without documentation. I wanted to simulate those people out there that download a new program and expect it to be easy to use. So far, I have got exactly zero “How do I do this?” questions.

Another thing we attempt to try to actually bypass rules that are coded in. For instance, not allowing entries to share names within their element types. In general, you can tell they work as intended. However, through some testing we found hidden instances where the rules were broken. They we hard to find. For instance, attempting to create a duplicate skill did not work. Yet, somehow, it created a duplicated item. These things were weird at first but then I found the pattern in the code that allowed for these and fixed them.

Other bugs were simply some syntax stuff that result in some formatting issues in reports. These are being corrected. 

After that we look for the features. Some features were obvious from outside the project. When asked for these features I wanted to slap myself for not thinking of them by myself. However, this is why you have testing. When it comes to a project like this you tend to overlook some of the more obvious choices because you are focused on a technical issue.

There are occasionally preference issues that I can really do nothing about. If one person wants something a certain way it can’t always happen. Sometimes a thing is the way it is for a purpose. I still encourage the dialogue because in many cases I have found a way to alter something for a single person that had little, if any, overal effect.

So today I am going to work on the last few features. I am hoping to have the Modern Sagas functionality done by the end of the week. However, today I am just going to finish content creation.

Until next time, have a Happy Christmas, or Hanuka, or whatever you celebrate. And Happy Gaming!

One of the things I find difficult in judgment making is when to test. Most of the time I set testing at a viable first draft. My first battery of tests is sent to a list of private friends and family. In one hand I send it off to players looking for their input, on the other I send it to non-players to get a kind of newbie response. For the latter it is a way to discover how coherent the overall project came out. For the latter, it is to find problems and correct them before release. However, there is always a gray area. A point where you feel that the draft is final, or close enough to final to announce it, and then move on to stage 2 which is open testing. This is where the problems really start to show up.

You can look at the first stage as a kind of aesthetic testing. The reason being is that group A, the players, know they are getting the next version very soon so only really breeze through the book. Group B is likely not going to care about actual play testing the game, so they aren’t going to find mechanical problems. So when you send it out for open, it tends to get a real test. For me, I send out demos, usually downloaded from the forums. I also send it out to my private list of people who were actively involved in any previous testing. I get fairly good responses for both, however, I get more responses on errata or balance issues after official release. I can almost see why many companies don’t really test as much as they say, if at all.

The DPnP programs are different. Simply put, I run them through their paces and wait for a bug. I find none, and then have some friends try it. Asstonishingly it took less than 2 minutes for James to find a bug that killed the program. So I went back to the table and started again, fixed the bugs, ran  through my tests, added some new features, tested those, etc. etc. etc.

So today I am finishing up one of the last features, and the last major feature. This is the content importer/exporter that is vital to sharing and building campaigns. I was going to leave it out for testing but I figured that it would be stupid to do so. So here I am, pushing back yet another deadline I set for myself to add in another feature.

Hopefully this will end it so I can get testing out the door. The only features not added at this point will be the xml report and adding in Modern Sagas Content. The framework for the latter is there, I just have to build the structure, the former is not even touched yet.

The effort to wrap up the exporter should be done, the importer is a bit more difficult but on its way. However, I am tired and battling a migraine that attacked me yesterday morning. This is clearly slowing down my efforts. Today, I missed such an obvious mistake that took me 2 and a half hours to find and 10 seconds to fix. WTF? I know, some would put it down and wait. however, even slow progress is progress. I get done what I can and when I am feeling better I’ll steam on through to the finish line. 

Some may say that I should rest, but the math wont add up to me. Even getting a touch more done is more done than I had before I started. As of now, the importer succesfully imports skills and skill groups, which is one of the larger batches to code out. Also, the bugs are all but gone in that portion so now all I have to do is add the other parts, utilizing the same basic code. So now it is just monkey work. 

I know this all sounds like a ramble, so what’s the point? The point is I should be done in a day or two, barring any other whopping and glaring glitches and can get this thing compiled and sent to testers for phase 2. Phase one was completed before James found the bug before. I have had great feedback on the program from phase one. It is easy to manipulate the resources you can build and understand the program’s design concept. The GUI is as simple as could be expected, or maybe even simpler if you have messed with any other similar programs (I have and they are not too friendly).

So if you read up to this point, happily (or not so happily) ignoring grammatical and spelling mistakes, then you may be pleased to know that you are invited to test the Campaign Resource Manager. I know I announced testing before, but I still have some room on the list. So don’t be shy, send me an email at crmtesting@sagasrpg.com

Until next time…

Happy Gaming!

First, we have to accept that the world has drastically changed. RPGs are more commonly associated with video games and MMOs than anything else. This has led some of us to believe that we have lost our audience to these media forms. However, I don’t believe that is true. I think MMOs and Video games have fulfilled the needs of many gamers in a much more convenient package. The tabletop RPG industry cannot compete with that. We will always lose. We tend to think that because we lost a good portion of our player base to such media that video game players and MMOs tend to have a majority of RPG gamers. That is not true, but the association still seems to remain in the dialogue. Our first mission then is to change the dialogue. TTRPGs offer something much different, but also more difficult to embrace. We can still maintain the element that makes us different. What we need to do is make RPGs easier to embrace.

So what makes it harder to embrace RPGs? Some may say it is the games themselves. This is partly true. However, it is still only a small part of the overall whole. RPGs are also entirely inconvinient. Video games exhist whenever the player wants to play and the most difficult thing you have to do is maybe install the game and upload some patches. Then you can play whenever you want with whoever you want. You get a wide variety of playing options and all you have to do is play. No scheduling, no GM cramming the night before to get the game ready. And best of all, the game does all the ugly modifiers and calculations for you. All you have to do is play.

Of course there is a trade off. Video games have limitations that game sessions with TTRPGs do not. However, the trade off is apparently a good one. As more people pick up video gaming on a daily basis more because it is easy to get exposed and learn it than it does to play TTRPGs. Honestly though, as a father and a professional it is so much easier for me to get a gaming fix playing Elder Scrolls than it is for me to get everyone together and organize an at home TTRPG game. Yes, the TTRPG game is more fun, but it is so much easier to have some fun, than it is for me to have the fun I really want. Doing the math, the little fun I get from having a few hours in Elder Scrolls over the four hours or more I might get a week doesn’t equal out. I can have many more hours of Elder Scrolls than I can at my TTRPG session with a lot less work.

The industry has to reinvent itself. Lets face it, even Star Trek fans know that Star Trek will not succeed by fan power alone. It can survive. But to succeed as a viable property it needs new fans on a regular basis. Do we know what Star Trek does? It makes new shows, new games, and new movies. It also has recently reinvented itself. 

Virtual Table Tops seem to be the next logical step. However, while many formats exist, not one company that I know of really embraces them in any shape or form. Now, these programs likely will support the most common game types. That is not the problem. The problem is that companies do not support them. My idea is not to embrace a single company producing a VTT. That would breed a harsh competition between the programs and the companies. There would be too many “I won’t play this game because they only use such and such virtual table top.” While I think these companies need to exist on their own, I think that the game companies need to embrace the concept. But not just simply coming up with virtual table top programs, but to actually embrace virtual table top gaming, while not abandoning standard table top gaming.

My thoughts are similar to my business model. I believe that in order for companies to make TTRPGs a viable industry again they need to expand their efforts. Look at it this way, just about everyone who games has a computer. They also know basically how to use it. While we have elaborate game worlds and rules systems we have no support for them aside from the printed page and some fancy web pages. Its like someone still watching television on a black and white tv with an analog antenna. Why in the world are we still in this technological stone age? We need to accept the fact that technology should be helping our efforts. The means are within our grasp and yet we are not even reaching?

Companies need to do the following:

1. Create or license software that supports that will help the GM develop content for their games quickly and easily. Make it fluid, and fast with the GM able to whip up a good four hour game session in a matter of an hour or less.
2. Make those programs easily accessible. Either sell it cheaply or give it away.
3. Make your printed content also digital, in a format that allows you to use the content in the program you have developed for your game. This way, if you sell a monster book, you GM can use the digital file in the program simply and easily. However, I think it would be foolish to sell the independently. When you buy a book, you get the file. If you make it either/or then you will segregate the gamers into table top and virtual and not solve your problem. You want both to work together, not despite of each other.
4. Consider an online gaming tool. Either work with a company that has one and license and develop around their code or create your own. If you aren’t planning on it, then start. At least let the players know they will have a choice.
5. Whenever possible the two formats need to be in sync. They need to compliment each other.  Make it as simple a decision as what font to use, or whether or not to make your book a PDF. At some point it needs to no longer be a part of the conversation. It needs to be a natural element, like breathing. 

Unlike most RPGs there is no gamist mechanic that grants your PC some magical or otherwise convoluted reason why your character suddenly becomes able to absorb more damage in the game. Your hit points are fixed to your toughness, which doesn’t change simply due to experience (you can raise toughness but that is seldom done). Instead, your characters advance in skill, and you as a player advance tactically in the game. You learn to fight better in the game, much like your character. As you play longer your character survives more because of what you do as a player in a combat encounter rather than simply stats becoming stronger.

However, there is still a serious risk of character death. This is not because one attack can kill. More exactly, a single attack can mortally wound your character, who then will likely die because of bleeding out, rather than a single all powerful attack. This is the fatal flaw to the players. They typically let their characters, or characters in the party, die for no reason other than they just seem to play it like they do any other game.

The truth is, combat is dangerous, but not necessarily deadly. It becomes deadly through player action. In a sample scenario you can imagine a party of characters in a battle where one party member takes a serious hit. Lets say this hit causes a wound and the character is knocked unconscious and is bleeding out. That is usually the line in the sand and most players simply give up and let the player die. This is unnecessary and not really what I, as a designer, was going for. Instead, a single mortally wounded character doesn’t just die off. Instead, the entire party’s combat encounter just changed dramatically.

In a real world scenario when a comrade is wounded badly one or two members of the party (squad/unit/whatever) breaks off to administer aid to that fallen person. If it is really bad one of two things happen. Number one, aid is called for and the group gets to a defendable position where the fallen person can be helped and only a single person or a small part of the group has to defend. When aid comes the group is evacuated and the fallen soldier is given aid. In another scenario, where one or more characters is mortally wounded, the entire group is likely to surrender the encounter. This may mean throwing down arms and being taken captive. It is not ideal, but one usually expects the captors to help mortally wounded captives. There is a hundred reasons why one can expect this, and they usually can. I won’t get into to those reasons though, as we are not discussing that yet.

The point is that the character is always given a chance to live. Sometimes the wounds or too severe. However, in all expectation a single wounded soldier can mean the failure of that combat encounter. This is because no one wants to see their comrades simply die in order to finish trading a few blows with an enemy. Ideally, in a tactical sense, the party is stronger, even in captivity, than they would be continuing the fight with a comrade dying.

When it comes right down to it, there is rarely ever a conflict that absolutely must be a life and death situation. Total party kills should be exceedingly rare as well. A story should not be derailed because a simple encounter went horribly wrong and the party had to escape. For these reasons and more one should not simply let a character die in the middle of combat when it can usually be avoided.

So why do we? Well, part of it is gaming habit. We usually play in the same fashion as the first game we ever played. So if that game had escalating hit points, such as in D&D and other games, we tend to fall back on the idea that our characters can survive 3-4 hits before getting killed. In truth, some E-RPG characters can, but most cannot. Secondly is the idea that the story was already written. This means that an encounter is likely just some quick point of action until you get to the real battle later. Therefore, that small encounter shouldn’t be lethal or too dangerous, and it most certainly is not something you can flee from. Some of us Game Masters, don’t even know how to write an adventure where the characters don’t win in a minor encounter. This is all because of other games we played. You know the kind. These are the games where you battle through a room of goblins, then move to the very next room to kill an ogre, then move on to the next, and so on. Combat has no meaning other than to be a quick commercial break for the game while you are playing it.

This is the ultimate problem. Combat has little real meaning in most situations, and is a fundamental flaw in most gaming habits. The reason is simple, when combat has no point, why is there a point to having combat? Is it really fun when you have to squash one group after another over and over again? While the answer could be yes, my preferred answer is that one single dramatic combat event with potential for death, disaster, or failure is much more appealing than a whole gaggle of the former simply because it offers so much more to all of the players.

But does it have to be this way with E-RPG? No, not really. I have run dungeon running variants of the game where characters have a skill called Endurance, or Vitality or some such that is added to their toughness value to determine life points. In this, the game plays much more like a standard RPG and you get the kick in the door gaming experience. E-RPG is versatile like that. But in original and default design combat is something your group should fear. This is because at the end of the encounter there is victory in just surviving and true triumph in winning the encounter. 

I mean, truly, how many games do you play where your character ends the combat encounter barely holding onto consciousness, bleeding from a wound, and clutching their weapon in a limp hand after a simple bandit ambush? When that character killed 2 or more and you feel a sense of real accomplishment? How many game systems let you take the credit for it over a simple use of a die roll and a combination of skills or feats? How many game systems give you a sense of really surviving a fight in the game? 

Many may do it, but I know E-RPG does. I know because I have lost characters over the smallest of encounters, and I have had characters that never should have survived do so because we as a party found one tactical advantage that turned the entire tide. I was there when one of the players in my group had a character leaning against the wall slipping into death from a bullet wound while I held back the attackers, frantically calling for the others to come and get us out. I was there when we got out. I was there when we went back, all of us, and enacted a heavy revenge on those attackers.

And I remember each and every time my character survived an encounter and how that felt. I remember talking about for hours afterwards with my wife. They were, and still are, among the most dramatic and energizing moments in my gaming history. We lost some battles in trying to survive, but the game was just as fun. We lost some characters because winning the battle was to important at the time, and those characters were a willing sacrifice to the overall victory. Not a single one was taken lightly, but every survival, and every death, added more to the game.

As described before, Digital Pen n Paper was envisioned long ago. It is designed as a large and organic project. In design, it will be composed of several programs related together by content. This means that whatever we build for DPnP works with, for, or along side other Digital Pen n Paper content. It is a tool, or rather a toolbox, from which players and GMs can get the most from their gaming experience by making things easier, accessible, and fun.

The CRM is the backbone of the system. What it does is create the resources for your game. In most program concepts it would be thought that these resources are only usable for the DPnP suite. However, this is not the case with any DPnP utility. The CRM is the best example of this. It does many things to help you build the content for your game. Secondly, it then lets you apply it in various formats. However, before you can deploy your creations in the various formats we should discuss what it can build.

The CRM builds Campaign Resources. This means skills, equipment, magic, powers, races, and more. It even goes into development of Environments and more. Upon initial launch the CRM will be able to build content from the Fantasy Sagas game line, and possibly Modern Sagas. Sci-Fi will be available in a future update. It isn’t excluded, its just that between now and deployment of the Sci-Fi Sagas there could be changes that will change how DPnP works with the Sci-Fi Sagas.

The CRM will be released with the Game Master Lodestar. It is free with that product and there will be no additional charges. CRM will be released separately as well. With the CRM you can build resources. However, admittedly, there is a lot of content to build. This may be daunting at first, so the best thing to do is also have a Campaign Resource Package. These are released with the Player’s Guidebooks. Therefore, if you buy the Fantasy Sagas Player’s Guidebook (or have the PDF through DriveThruRPG or RPGNow) you get the file with it. Furthermore, additional books which have content that can be used with DPnP, such as the Undead Creatures Sourcebook, will have campaign elements you can import into your campaign. When you buy those PDFs you get the associated content file as well. Furthermore, you can edit or change that content. For instance, if you imported the Undead Creatures CEP you can change those creature races into player character races and allow your characters to play as a zombie, a vampire, or whatever. Adventures will have new items, races, spells, or other content you can import as well.

The files contain DPnP content already built with the CRM. You can then load the campaign and create your own custom campaign by adding in new elements, removing stuff you don’t like, or change campaign rules (such as random/point buy character creation). Once done, you can do several things. This is how we deploy the file.

First of all, you can save the file as a CRF, which is a player created Campaign Resource File (you can’t save your file as a CRP). This saves all the content, including your changes, and any existing content from the origionalcampaign you built from. Players can then import this file into their character creator utility to build a character for your campaign, with all the rules, restrictions, and content you allow.

Secondly, you can export only your changes into a Campaign Elements Package. The CEP is simply a way of sharing your custom content with other GMs so they can import only your new items, skills, spells, etc. into their own campaign. The CEP is saved with your credits on the file for the content you created. When another GM creates a campaign the credits page will contain your name and all of your custom content listed.

Thirdly you can simply print your campaign. You can print just sections, such as your skills list, or you can print out the entire campaign for a custom campaign book. You can also print out the entire resources for that report, or print out only your creations or edits. You can also format the fonts and headings for the report with the CRM. That way, from one program, you can create your own campaign book with the style you want.

Lastly, you can export the resources or the campaign as an XML file. This will let those of you who have the tech savvy skills to present the data in your own way, such as via a website or a custom DPnP add-on (add-ons are not promised and I am still debating on them).

In this way, the CRM bridges some gaps. You don’t have to simply create DPnP content. You are building your RPG content which DPnP can use. When future DPnP products are developed, such as the virtual table top, your CRM files will be used with that.

So, as of now I am buttoning up the product. I am hoping to have the Beta version out in a few days. If you are interested in testing the CRM you can send an email to crmtesting@sagasrpg.com.

There are a great many things that during the initial design for Sagas had to be set aside in an effort to make the game as accessible as possible as well as keep things to a state where I was not including things not necessary to most players who would play a fantasy rpg. In the design we did things like make armor a piece meal concept where you bought and fitted armor pieces into suits. This was scrapped or rather refitted to a design where you just bought a suit of armor. Another concept was to actually have limits to things you can carry in packs. As it stands, only rational thinking allows a GM to say a character cannot simply place whatever they want in their packs. In effect, the backpack is what some of us like to call in most similar situations, a Bond Pocket (named after the N64 game Goldeneye due to James Bond wearing a suit but somehow having an arsenal equipped in the pockets such as 5 or six guns, grenades, and a rocket launcher). Well, I was able to put in a pack inventory system that I wanted but still allow it to basically be ignored if wanted to.

Digital Pen n Paper, by nature of being a computer program, can take these seemingly over-complicated concepts and shrink them down into manageable and accessible ways. It is one of the joys to me of the system. I can now explore all of these things that I wanted to put in and allow them to work for players in a way that can be ignored, or employed at the groups leisure. It satisfies both groups of people without having the seeming unwritten obligation that for some reason having them in a rule book seems to imply. The Sagas rule-books are a collection of examples created with the system, with every component being something you can ignore or forget about it even existing. Yet, somehow, people are convinced that because it is in the book that it must be there for a reason. The truth is, the only reason it is there is to provide examples of how things are created. It doesn’t mean you have to use them or even create them the same way.

DPnP will help with this because I can include all of those things I was afraid to put into the game that would make it seem overly complicated. In suits of armor the original idea is still in place. However, I just created the piecemeal suits for you. So now, I can let you either use the suits and concepts as they stand, or create your own piecemeal suits just like I did. Furthermore, you get it easier as in Digital Pen n Paper the calculations are made for you. Just check a box and away you go.

I wish I had this thing during original design for both Fantasy and Modern. Well, now I will have it for Sci-fi.

Also, coming up, a discussion on release formats for DPnP. There are a ton of ways to get this to market and I want to explore the most attractive concept to the customer. My thought is that the program is useless if no one buys it because it cost too much. Cost will be determined by what the programs offers. So maybe offering smaller versions  of the program, or components is a good way to go. However, like I said, a discussion for a later time. I will be laying out options and setting up a survey for this as I get closer to rolling out the Player Character Generator.

One last note, tons of new stuff rolling out with the character generator. Many new items, new races, etc.

Happy Gaming!

On Tuesday the world changed. To say that it has not is to put your head in the sand and ignore the sheer power and influence that Americans have in the world. We, as a country, have a power that I was utterly shocked to see. It was not a power or influenced imposed on the world. Instead, I saw the world reveal to us that we have a huge impact on the individual people that make up the world. This is not to say that we have a power politically, or a control. Instead this power is the power of influence, and obligation. The world watched with baited breath as we elected our president. The world cheered, and cried, and cheered some more.

I don’t honestly believe that the opinion of the world determined who our president was going to be. What I do believe is that they were as concerned for the direction of our country as we were. They don’t have the right to choose our president, and yet they went through this election with us. They prayed and hoped and watched, hoping that we would make a choice that would help us all.

This is because America is not apart from the world. The citizens of the world seem to believe in something Americans have forgotten. We are the leaders of the free world. Our country stands for something beyond just our own meager boundaries. Our influences, our choices, affect the world like no other country before it. Villagers in Africa feel the weight of our decisions just as strongly as the small towns in Ohio. It has shown me that beyond any doubt America is a guiding light and hope for all countries. Our success is a mark of hope to all people all over the world. When we fail, the world weeps, when we succeed the world cheers.

America showed itself to be the heroes of the world during the Greatest Generation. We changed the fabric of the world. Many would argue that we saved the world. America is the hero of legend to so many people the world over. They watched over the course of the election to see what choice their hero would make.

We have made mistakes in the past. We may have even made a mistake here. However, what matters most is not our mistakes. What matters most is that we learn and grow from them. That is what Tuesday meant to a lot of people. One of America’s greatest mistakes is often referred to as the Great Stain. This week we saw a chapter close on American history. The Great Stain is still there, but we have moved past it. We have grown. We are Americans after all.

That is what makes us the heroes of the world. We move forward and grow from these mistakes. Our choices are not always right, but we always try to correct them. We are striving constantly for hope. And hope exists in the world for us. And so they cheered.

Regardless if President Elect Barrack Obama is a good President in the future, he was a good choice for today. Many wounds were healed in the world. People have hope for us again. Many countries and the people of those countries are proud of us.

In Japan they cheered in the streets. In African villages they feasted and celebrated. In Germany American flags were waved in huge parties. In Spain the front page of the morning papers were plastered with our country, our president. Do we do the same for their leaders? Do our papers headline their elections? Do we gather in groups to watch their elections/coronations? Yet they do this for us.

There are those that say that it should not matter what the world thinks. America has to make the right choice for America. This week showed me that this is not true. The hope of so many people who are not American reside in our choices. Our choices affect the world, and so, now, it does matter to me that the world approves. We are Americans. We are not a world a part. We are part of this world, and in many eyes its leader, and for most we are its hero. While some may call us villain, and many try to destroy us, it is for one simple reason that we remain who we are. WE NEVER STOP TRYING TO BE BETTER THAN WHAT WE ARE.

Right now some of us are divided. Many people opposed Obama and think that we, as a country, made a poor choice. They are afraid of the future because their ideals lost to a vote they do not agree with. For those of you who believe this I have this to say.

I do not agree with much of Obama’s plans. I also fear for some changes that he will try to make. I also do not agree with one-party rule. That being said, we cannot allow this to divide us. All Americans, and the world, fear the future. We are going to be victims of his success or failure. We are all in this together. The world, the country, you and me. We must put aside our fears and offer hope. We must come together behind this man who is our president and offer our hands to help. We may not agree, but I know one thing. If we allow our differences to build walls we will accomplish nothing. We must grit our teeth, and accept that we are not supporting a Democrat, or the ideals of the Democratic Party. We are supporting our country now. Please, do not feel betrayed by McCain’s loss. The country chose, not the Democratic Party. George Bush did not lose  the election for McCain. The world is in peril and our country decided that Obama is the man to lead us through these challenges. We do not have to agree on him, but we all agree that we must work together to help our leader lead us through.

As of today, I am no longer an Independent in my mind. I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I am not pro-Obama or against him. I am an American. And I will accept and support our President, even his changes I do not like, until the problems facing our country grow worse through his leadership. If that day should come, I will vote against him. Until that day comes, I am an American, and as an American my President is Barrack Obama. As a citizen of this world, I look to our country, and our leader, for hope. I am only one man, but Barrack Obama, for good or ill, is the voice of a nation, our nation. We must respect that. With the world we cheer for him, or we weep his failure. Above all, we hope that we have learned and that we will continue to. We are the heroes. As heroes, we must band together and fight together. We must take up the sword that lie before us and bear the burden of the honor bestowed upon us by the entire planet.

We must be Americans.

Although while seemingly finnished, I am still planning on encountering a few bugs. This may mean that I will have to pause the clock and fix the bugs. However, I believe we are ready for this test.

I am setting up the time test basically to record how long it takes to build content with the Content Creator to show how much faster and easier it is over not using it. Still, I will have to admit to some shortcuts. I won’t be retyping descriptive text. This will be cut and pasted. However, that is only a small amount of time saved. Even if I were to re-type the text it won’t be 100% accurate for our purposes as writing text is something that is not fairly measured. Besides, there is the fact that I will have to be working to keep the content as accurate tot he player guidebook as possible.

There may also be changes to some content, such as spell sizes, and such. In this respect I may have to revise the player’s guidebook with the updates. So in part, while I am also attempting to test the software, I am also working on a revision of the player’s guidebook at the same time.

So here goes. We are off and running. You can track the time in the DPnP forum by clicking here.

There is still one more wizard to do, one I hadn’t even thought of until yesterday as I was compiling it all together. I have no way to determine relationships between spells and magic skills. That means, as it stands, a player building a character that is say a song magician could have a spell to create frost shards or energy balls. Not realistic for such a character.

Initially, Fantasy Sagas allows Game Masters to make the destinction, and one would think that it would be fine to leave it alone. However, I have to think forward in that I have to remember the program’s ultimate relationship with other programs. Therefore, it has to be addressed now. So I have to create some kind of interface to limit spells and aspects across skills. Sounds easy enough, but there is a programatic relationship I still have to settle on first.

So anyways, I am trying to design this one out and keep it so it does what it needs to, but in a way familiar to all of the other wizards. It shouldn’t take long. The wizard should be simple enough to code up with very few complicated elements. It is mostly a GUI design that will take time.

BTW, at this count Fantasy Sagas content has over 10 wizards to handle adding content. About half of that is specific to Fantasy Sagas. Realistically I am looking at at least 3-5 more.

Anyways, back to work.

I ran into a snag setting up a selection component for the last wizard. It was a major component that will be used in the character creator so it had to be fixed properly. As it is, it is functioning, but with a single minor bug. Still it works. I can get the bug out in the rewrite for the character generator. Still that single component took over two days to finally work out. It is finished, so I am wrapping up the last components. Hopefully, barring any other snags, it will be done by tomorrow afternoon.

Cross your fingers and toes!.

The depth of a universal system is staggering. The depth of E-RPG is unlimited, however, it is also a game with direction. There are universal systems that are relatively vague. E-RPG considered how things worked and made a structure for them. This has been a life saver through this.

When a system seems to have unlimited potential it runs the risk of being to hard to actually deal with. That is one of the reasons for DPnP. It shrinks down the creation of content. However, that is easy to do. I could have done the same with an bunch of excel sheets or something. The truth is that an application designed to make the scope of E-RPG more accessible can do so much more. One of those things is automation.

So this week, as I wrap up the final wizards, it has been about the wizards “talking” to eachother. This means that it simplifies some redundant tasks. For instance, if you notice that in the Fantasy Sagas Player’s Guidebook the skill groups for melee weapons match the equipment groups. So, to make things easier, when you create a melee weapons group in the content creator it builds an equipment group for you. Also, notice how most melee skills (and other ranged skills for that matter) seem to have proficiencies like “per weapon”. Well, that is done for you too. Create a weapon in the item wizard and it automatically adds the weapon to the skill’s proficiency list.

Of course, this is not set in stone. You are not required to have a proficiency list made for you and then keep it. You can still manage the list, add and remove proficiencies. All this really does is take the process down a notch and makes sure you don’t have to do a bunch of back and forth, and redundant, creation.

These are the types of things I am striving for with DPnP. It is not simply an application. Doing that is not doing anything special. There are virtual table top and campaign creation stuff out there. However, while they are focused on simply making you able to do certain things, I am focusing on doing these things in a way that the user will not find it a tedious event.

Imagine the possibilities of creating a detailed campaign in an easy way! This is the type of thing that will truly break down barriers in gaming. What you can do with this would require months of creation for a single team. You can do it in half the time as a single person.

This is it folks. The last portion of the Content Creator. Once these things are talking to each other a test will proceed. I will take the entire Fantasy Sagas Player’s guidebook and create the content in DPnP for the character creator, It is a book that took me years to write. Now, let see what it takes to create the book again in DPnP. Once I finish the creator, I will post a message announcing the start of the data input. I will then keep a log in the DPnP forums on time spent on data entry. We can see how long it takes to make it all come together.

Until then….

Happy Gaming!

I can’t really say with any surety what the release date will be. It is enough for me at this point to know that there will be one. DPnP was something I dreamed up a few years ago. I though I would have to give it up.  Life seems to have put me in the right place, at exactly the right time, with precisely the resources I needed to make it finally happen. I have met the right people, had the right discussions, and even those things in my life that seemed to be a hardship have all come together to conspire a way for me to make this all happen. And now, as I have this thing coming together in such a complete way, I can’t say for certain how I should feel.

Let me put it simply, I had very little programming experience. The dabbling I did with Never Winter Nights was nothing compared to what I have had to do here. Sure, it was a helpful primer. However, programming like this was way beyond any scope I thought was possible. I knew when I embarked on this trip I would have to try, but I have to say that my confidence was only so strong. I often feared that I would find myself way over my head, and floundering, would wind up having to give up all over again. That was my real threat. I don’t know if I could have regained the enthusiasm for the project if I had run into a wall I couldn’t overcome. And to be clear, some of the walls that loomed up looked nearly impassable.

More than once in the past few weeks I had to rethink my general approach, wondering if it was all still possible. One wall met another, and then another. However, like I said, I had the right resources. I read. I mean I read a lot. I dabbled and tried. I threw my hands in the air. I gave up twice. But, as with everything that is worth doing, you eventually come to a point where it all clicks. You just have to hold out for that point. And when it did, it clicked hard.

As I said with the last post, this is now down to just the legwork. The first real milestone will be a content creator that will populate the information for the character generator. Once that is done, there will be new trials, and new tests. I see the walls in the distance. But just to have even this semi-complete utility working and doing exactly what I want it to do is encouragement enough. 

I am sorry if this post seems a little odd, or like I am tooting my horn. It is just something I had to get off my chest. I don’t really go into how things like this feel. When I talk of progress to family and friends it is all about what was physically done, not how I got to this point. Please, don’t think I am trying to brag. I know that to real programmers the stuff I am doing will probably seem fairly basic. Still, I can’t help but feel proud that this thing is coming together, and by my own hand at that.

As for progress: The Content creator is made up of several wizards for creating each campaign resource type. Of those resource wizards I have 3 completely done. I have 1 more almost finished, and should have it done within a day or so. That leaves one more to do completely and another to finish up. That last one is dependant on the other. The only reason that one got started at all is that it depended on two other content creation types (3 wizards for those) so I thought it would be smart to start where I would need the most interaction between content.

Some wizards take longer than others. I finished 2 yesterday, one of which was started after I finished the other. The current wizard I started yesterday and may finish tomorrow or by Tuesday. The next wizard does not seem like it should be as complicated as the current one, but you never know. The final is a biggy and may take as long as the current.

After that, the wizards are done and I can build the actually resources. This is a simple matter of adding stuff from the books into the content creator, with maybe an extra or two just to show some love. There will still be more work to do on the content creator. However, that work is only for the release version. Right now I don’t need to do anything more than get Fantasy Sagas content created and saved. The other bells and whistles can wait until the character creator is finished.

That done, the file can be opened with the character creator (which just has to be set up to take the information). Last is setting up the export files (i.e. setting up the xml and print functions). The XML and print are still beyond my scope. That, like everything else, will be a learn as you go sort of thing. It has worked so far. 

And after I finnish these two, are we done? Not by a long shot. That just gives you a free Player Character Creator. The tru program, what I think will change everything, still has several more components to build. 5 more I think. Maybe more. Some are bigger than others. Some are absolutely huge in scope.

Still, not a single one of them is as overwhelming as the one that I had to start. The one where I knew next to nothing. Now, I know something. At this point, with my excitement up, I believe it is enough from which to build on to get the rest done.

Until next time…

Happy Gaming.

As for DPnP: things are moving along nicely. I have learned more than I ever thought possible within these few weeks. The overall program is taking shape nicely, and I am all but busting to get this wrapped and sent out. The major accomplishments this week was finalizing the core code that makes up the reports and objects that represent the different campaign elements in the Campaign Resource Manager. The CRM is part of the final DPnP release but is not part of the demo release. However, it is completely needed to create all the content for the Player Character Creator. Furthermore, it is also the component that will get some new products out quickly. This is the key component at this point. I hesitate to say (for fear of having to take it back later), but it seems that the key challenges have been overcome, and I just have to fill in the rest of the code. Next I take the data files and finnish up the Player Character Creator. The integration will be the last real challenge. For now, it is all just legwork.

This weekend is actually why I did not post sooner. I was contacted by a local GM interested in the system. He and his group invited me to guest GM their game. That also meant that I was using their chararacters, quickly modified to be used with E-RPG, and running their campaign in its current context. After pages of emails explaining the situation I ran a sidetrack adventure for the group.

The session lasted about 6-8 hours. The entire group was a blast to play with. There were interesting characters all around, and like my other groups, was nothing typical of your fantasy games. In fact, when selecting archetypes to represent (and then be modified) for their characters, they mostly selected NPC’s from the Paradigm sourcebook. There was alot of good role-playing using a wide range of skills. At one point a small combat encounter took place that resulted in a PC death. That was the only real game killer, and luckily it happened towards the end of the night. Once that event occured there was really no getting back on track.

Prepping for the game and then followup took a few days out of the normal development process. I still have some emails to respond to from that as it is. I spent the last two days catching up on the codework for DPnP, having just managed to solve some major roadblocks yesterday that threatened to have me beating my computer with a really big hammer. Roadblocks are past, and a good weekend of gaming, have enspired me to keep going. After I write this I will update some topics in the forums relating to DPnP development, then it is off to get some cofee, fold a load of laundry, then back into the DPnP code.

Until next time,

Happy Gaming.

I’ll have more information, such as thoughts during this development later in the week when I get some more time. Until then, sorry for being brief.

Happy Gaming!

Some may wonder why I would post about being over tasked in one post, and then follow it up with another about taking on something like this. The answer is that the latter is a result of some thought on managing the former. You see, finishing DPnP will actually make my product development faster in the long run. Even finishing the character generator demo will actually advance production by cutting some development process by at least 1/10th of what it was. Once other components are back online, the process will actually be much faster. I should be able to process these ideas of mind quicker than any other method would allow.

The only true difficulty will be the virtual tabletop application, which, as it stands, is so far beyond my ability to program I don’t realistically no a way to accomplish the task. However, that is truly the last component that is needed for development. It may even be something I could outsource or get from someone else in a partnership deal of some sort. The true key to DPnP are the applications that lead up to the actual virtual tabletop. The ability to create and manage your games, and how those are used. These are all details I cannot get into detail with for now.

Its the key components that make up the spine of DPnP. With this completed DPnP will take on its intended role within Ironwood and the gaming community. The virtual table top is a perk, not the actual draw of this project. At least in my eyes. The true draw is the ability for me to complete projects much faster, and much more coherently. In that way, it almost becomes a development tool. But even that sells short the possibilities and scope of the project.

As of this writing a basic character generator is working. It needs the campaign elements added, but overal functionality exists. I even have the actual GUIs working for much of the other components. Tying them together is still a task and requires still more learning.

Desecration testing is still on hold. This weekend I have a serious cold. I am writing this while wrapped in sickness. About the book itself…almost done. It really just needs that final rewrite that must wait until after testing. It is truly a shame to be so close to the end of this project but still be so far away. I eagerly await its release. But it must be handled properly.

The other content stuff I decided to wait until after the coinciding DPnP components are finished. After that I can really spit things out in a much faster and methodical fashion. Truly, the abundance of content one person could release once this is done is staggering. As for ROMP, well, lets just say that the core book has long been done. You won’t hear much more about this until I finish the modules for series one through three at least. At which point Romp will be released in bulk. This will also likely hinge on the development of the DPnP components as focusing on something like Romp will require other projects with DPnP to be finished first.

Will there be a Romp DPnP? Likely not for the end user. There may be a DPnP development tool for Romp games but honestly Romp doesn’t really fit into the DPnP mold. Romp could work better as an actual video game, rather than a virtual RPG simply because if it were to be played online it would leave the GM with nothing to do. This is not an admission to creating anything at all for Romp to be played online. I’m not closing that door, I am just not even looking in that direction at the moment. Romp is, at this point, intended only for table top play. Developing it into a virtual application down the line will remain up for discussion, but only down the line. Absolutely no further talk about it will be answered for until then.

I have also considered my personal programming limitations for DPnP. The truth is, if it appears beyond my resources to get the virtual tabletop to work, I may settle for releasing the development portions separately. While the character generator will remain free, other components will likely be retail. This will do two things. What that means for the xustomer will have to wait until I settle on it. The truth is, I have to weigh the customer’s needs. Does the customer want an online experience, or tools to create offline content?

The challenge is that I have to learn programming. While that seems a daunting task, it is not so daunting for me. I have worked on some mods for video games such as Neverwinter Nights. While this may sound fairly weak at first glance (and it is), it does give me some foundation. I have an idea of how programming is done. I understand some very basic fundamentals and structure. While this does not give me a lot of actual experience, it gives me a lot to build from as I don’t have to learn some very basic principles. I can apply some of what I have learned through modding into actually learning a full blown language.

So the task was, what language to use. I looked over a lot, the pros and cons, as well as something that resembled things I have done before. I settled on one of three, C+, C#, or Java. Ultimately, I am building (for now at least) in C#. It has a robust toolbox in the form of Microsoft Visual C#. I bought a few books last week, and I am off and running.

At this point I am only working on two components. One is my own development component which will build the resource files for the second component. This second component for you, the player. I am building a Character Generator first which I will release as  a free download. The character generator is actually one part of what will ultimately be a 4-part program. My dev program is actually another component, but this will only be released in the final program.

To give you some insight into what will come up for final release I can really only outline what will be released as a product. The first thing to answer is: yes the DPnP is a kind of virtual table top gaming software. However, it is designed for E-RPG and goes way beyond being a virtual table top program. The program will be released in three versions: 1 is the Player’s Client. It allows you to create characters and play them online. The second is the GM Client which allows you to build content and host games online for play. The third is the program with both components. The program will also be modular in that you will be able to purchase additional components such as campaign packages. Further, you can create and share content. Lastly, it will work for all E-RPG system games.

So, initially I am building part of one component, the character generator for the Player’s content, and the Campaign Toolbox which is part of the GM component.

There is, of course, a lot more to this than I can actually say. We are doing things with this program that I find funny that no one has done before. At least, in the sense that no one has thought to combine a lot of the features we are combining. Until I actually get working versions built and ready for release, I can’t give any details. I know that what I have given seems like nothing new, but trust me when I say, this is going to be something that you didn’t know you wanted, until you actually have it in your hands.

On one last final note, there will be no additional fees for running the games online or getting community content. You buy the program and you are done, unless you want additional official content.

I am also hoping to have a working prototype of the Character generator within 1-2 weeks. I have a couple more things to teach myself still. Truth is, there is only one more key component left to learn before I can tie the dev program and the character generator together. Then all I have left is to package them up neatly and get it ready. The actual program itself is usable. I could actually package it today and let you play around with it. Unfortunately, it is not doing exactly what I want, which is behind the curtain sort of stuff. So until I do get those working you will have to be patient.

One last note, simply because I am developing this by myself does not mean I am closing the process off. If anyone out there is familiar with C# or any other programming language that might be of help (such as integrating DB and such) I wouldn’t mind an additional brain to pick on sorting through some of the murk here. Please, drop me a line via email (use the info email on the contacts page) or through PM on the forums, or if you don’t mind being public you can leave a comment here.

My current open project list contains several projects. Here’s the list broken down:

1. Fantasy Sagas Desecration (still finalizing the testing and working on revisions).
2. ROMP Core Rule Book
3. Romp Adventures (of which there are 18 to finish before release)
4. A somewhat secret Romp Varient and its adventures
5. A Modern Sagas Campaign world and several adventures for that.
6. 3 more FS sidetracks
7. Meta-Humans
8. Reach Weapons
9. 3 more grimoires
10. A Paladin sourcebook
11. and a partridge in a pear tree

All told, there are about 40+ books under construction. That is a lot of writing, designing, layout and all the other development stuff that goes along with it. To say I feel somewhat overwhelmed at times may be an understatement. The problem is I get all of these ideas I can’t put down. As soon as I wrap up one thing I get ideas for 2 more. What’s bad is that all of these projects are things I really want to develop. They are all very interesting projects I feel compelled to write, even though I only have time to focus on one or two at a single effort.

Anyways, more of a rant than anything else. Sorry about that. I just thought I’d get that off my chest. I don’t exactly know what to do about all of these. I thought about going to other writers and seeing if they would want to do the actual content writing for the projects and I oversee them, but I fear that overhead would be beyond my means write now. Not many people writing on assigned books want to do so for royalties. However, it is something I may have to look in to. If you, dear reader, have any suggestions or know anyone that would be willing to write the content for the projects for a nice chunk of royalty drop me a line or leave a comment here.

I’m still treading water, but I may sink under the weight of my own ideas sooner or later. I really hate to toss some things to the wind, but it may have to be just so I can keep this going without completely going under.

Anyways, back to work.

BTW, two notable things:

Testing for Romp is open, so if you want to give it a go check out the forum announcement here.

Secondly, registered community members can download some previews of Desecration’s Temple dungeon overview and two encounter maps. They are low res and have the Ironwood logo stamped on them. But they are a nice little tidbit of what you will see.

I have been really looking forward to getting James’s input on Romp for a while. We have had a few discussion, light ones, about it conceptually. However, now that it is a full fledged system, there really hadn’t been as much talk through the process as there was for Fantasy or Modern Sagas. That is more due to the nature of the project, which while being ambitious, is still relatively small. The current draft is still under 50 pages and as of this moment may shrink even further as we trim off the fat. Having James give some input keeps me grounded and looking at different perspectives. Sometimes he offers things that I had already though of, or hadn’t, but in either case some of it winds up having to get nixed overall because of some other design choice that takes precedence, while other suggestions make nifty improvements to the overal scope. Still, you get good ideas in these sort of round tables and you also get to see how closely you are hitting the mark.

Secondly, I really needed to test the game in action with another person, someone who didn’t know much if anything about it. This was a big help as it helps me to isolate certain issues with the rules. You see, the biggest problem I find in game design is not the rules, but how easily they flow together so that you can remember them. After all, whats the good of having a rule you cant remember. So a few rules got changed, simply because they were changed at the table. How recoil is handled is a big one. Originally it was a sort of scaling increase. In a typical 3-round burst you have your first round go clean, then the second has a 2-point penalty, the 3rd has a 3 point penalty from that. So in effect a 10 point attack result winds up being a 3-round burst of 10, 8, 5. Seems easy enough doesn’t it? Well, in practice it was completely forgotten (I didn’t realize how badly we missed it until I was rewriting some of that particular chapter afterwards. In play we simply modified by a point so that the 10-round burst was reflected as 10, 9, 8.

The truth is, from a design and realism point of view the 10, 8, 5 seems more accurate. However, the 10, 9, 8 worked very well at the table. It was easy to use and did the job. So, I am keeping the 10, 8, 5 in a file somewhere and changing it to the 10, 9, 8 for the beta version instead. That way I can revisit both options during more testing but still design the game with a simpler mechanic in hand.

Ultimately that is what Romp sets out to be. It is a simple and effective emulator, while Modern and Fantasy were more simulation, romp will ultimately favor fast and fun over realism. Ultimately E-RPG can handle it (Romp’s A-RPG system is the same system just hacked into about 1/5 of the rules).

Some other changes were also made for balance reasons. James created a pretty decent assault rifleman for testing and we turned that into a squad of four clones. I also create a squad of 4 clones, which grew during battle with 4 more replacements. Unfortunately, James being new, still managed to decimate the intire opposing forces in 2 rounds. Being as he was using a starting character with a very basic load out I was shocked at how easily he could do that. Now, I was able to kill off 2 of his team, but that was just too easy for the party. It greatly showed the wrong part of the game play. As it stood, whoever had initiative would basically win the fight. I wanted it more about maneuvering, and fire superiority. So we tweaked some more basics and poof.

So now that there was an actually hands on and some issues got ironed out I can commence with the rewrite of the first book. This will help out with the other alpha testing I have been setting up as well (still could use some more volunteers for the testing btw). So, as I wonder off to begin the laborious process of re-writes I will leave you with a small battle map sample (still a work in progress btw) of a roadblock from a series one Romp module. In this action the PC’s must defend the roadblock from a impending attack and hold the position until reinforcements (in the form of a tank battalion) show up.

I got all of the artwork for Desecration including the cover artwork from Marco Morte. I am very excited about the progress on this. I really only have a few more testing sessions left before I can finalize the project and release it so it looks like it is coming up to release very soon.

The cover itself was a huge surprise. When you look for artwork you always want an artist that can evoke the theme you have for that project. To me, it always seems to be an uphill battle for the artist as they have to get into my head and understand what I see in the project in order to make it work. I have to say that Marco has done a fantastic job of meeting that need and likewise bringing in an artistic perspective I could draw from and use it to elevate the project as well. However, when he sent me an email about a water color painting for the cover I was a bit hesitant. However, after having seen his illustrations I was still very curious. In truth, if anyone else had said they would do a watercolor for the cover of this particular project I probably would have shot down the idea. Instead, I went with it. The worst that could happen was that he would have to go in a different direction.

Then I got the image. I was shocked. I actually had it in my head to go a bit darker, but the image did something different. It didn’t focus on the darkness of the story. Instead, it evoked the mystical aspect that really struck me and got me thinking about. The truth is, the plot for me is dark, but from the people actually living the story, the entire series of events is more mystical. There is a mystery and unknown for the player characters as they encounter an ancient civilization still living, while also exploring the dark ruins of a long dead one. Having come directly from civilization into this sort of wild world that lives on the outer fringes and in relative mystery, it occurs to me that there would be feeling more wonderment during the bulk of the adventure rather than doom or dread.

The image itself does not change the story. However, it definitely evokes more of the feeling I think most players will find in the adventure. To me, this is so much more important. And just so you know what I am talking about, the artwork is posted here (in lower resolution than will be in print).

What about Romp? Well, as you may know the first Romp game is set in the modern world. In it you play a member of a military joint task force as a coalition of U.N. forces become embroiled in an escalating conflict. Your team, made up of your player group, will take on missions, advance in skill, and earn access to a greater array of weapons and assets to help you accomplish your missions. You earn experience for completing mission goals and you are penalized for violations of your mission rules of engagements. The game is a high action, dungeon crawler style game.

I have finished the first initial draft and I am gearing up for alpha testing. I have started a thread in the community forums calling out for anyone interested in this early testing phase. The book itself still needs a lot of work. The design is done, but this is the easy part. Writing is as done as this phase will allow. That means that the book is written, but just about all of it is subject to an entire re-write. However, this rewrite occurs only after initial testing. It is the beta phase of testing that gets the draft that will be more or less the release edition.

I have also started the first four adventures (called missions) which encompass the series one books. Series is a term we applied to the missions that do several things at once. First, they give a guide to the overall character strength the players are expected to have. This is handled by expectation. Players are expected to have completed a certain number of missions in a previous series before playing the next series of adventures. The number of adventures is equal to the next series level. For instance, to play a series 2 mission it expected that two series 1 missions were already completed.

Secondly, the series actually occur within a time frame. Series Two Missions will build off of events that occured in Series One missions. However, it is not necessary for a player to have played specific missions. Instead, if a mission in a higher series occurs as a direct relation, or has characters or themes derived from previous series missions, it is assumed that another group of soldiers completed the mission. For instance, if a mission involves intelligence from an NPC that would have been captured in a previous series mission that wasn’t played by your group, then it is assumed that another group did capture him. Simply because your group was not involved does not mean that the mission did not take place.

As players play through missions the conflict begins to escalate. Players will find themselves at first playing through seemingly minor actions in missions that seem fairly simple. However, by the time the conflict really heats up they can see how the events in a series one mission actually set the groundwork for things as they develop. In this way, there is a meta-plot being explored. 

So progress is going good on two distinct fronts, and it is becoming more exciting by the minute as I delve into some of these new phases. The near future is going to be a lot of fun.

P.S. (dunno if these really work on blogs but what the hell)

I have come to a decision about one thing. Although I can’t be a soldier, I still greatly regard the men and women who make that commitment as true and real life heroes. I have decided that a portion of my own personal royalties from the Romp Modern game will be donated to the USO or some other military charity that I feel is a worthy cause. I will consider releasing books that don’t donate to these groups as well, as I know that some people out there may not want to support these institutions for whatever reason. However, I will only be actively promoting and linking to those books where the donations are active. 

My family and I made the hard decision several weeks ago after long hours of discussion. The choice to join the army opens up so many opportunities for me it seems like the perfect option. Still, there is something that I think I was utterly foolish about. The truth is the army is a thing for younger people. After 31 years of life I have developed a healthy series of obligations that cannot be set aside. I have a family, a family that cannot travel with me from base to base because they have a relationship with my son. My son, who lives with his mother, would effectively have the bulk of his family taken away from him if I enlist and my wife and daughters went with me. If they don’t, I will leave my family behind for 4 years.

Initially we were prepared to make that choice. Then I got stuck at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing) for two days. My wife got a test of what it would be like managing a home with a handicapped daughter, a full time job, and the other responsibilities, appointments, and duties that come with being a parent. She had it hard for just two days. I knew it at MEPS when I spoke with her on the phone for just ten minutes and she did not utter a single complaint. I knew then that there was something else that was factoring in here, something I overlooked. I needed to know what was really going on in her head and how my choice was really going to affect my family. So I signed up on delayed enlistment, took the oath of enlistment, signed up. I am ready to go. But is my family?

There are some people that may read this and think that there are plenty of single women or single parents that do handle these responsibilities on their own and do fine. It is hard, but they can do it. I am not saying my family wouldn’t be able to do it. My wife is strong, very strong. However, the question I didn’t ask was would they be my family when I got home? Would I be my wife’s husband when I got back, the guy she married? 4 years is a long time to grow apart from someone. It is a long time to change. Who would we be when we got back and how would we even begin to fit back together when we can’t learn and grow together? Am I willing then to gamble on that? To potentially lose my place within my family for my own ambition?

The truth is no. It is a curse that I brought upon myself at a younger age to sacrifice and live my life compromising one happiness for another. So my choice is this, be happy professionally and potentially lose my family, or keep my family and potentially never be happy professionally? The truth is, I should have done this a long time ago, but I didn’t. Now I have a choice between a family I truly always wanted, and the job I really want. There are other ways, harder ways, to get the job and professional life I must live. There is no chance I will ever get the family life I have, the one I always wanted. If I lose that, it is gone forever. I won’t choose to lose that. Ever!

So, the lesson of the day is this. While you are young take every opportunity you can. As you get older the baggage gets heavier, but harder to let go of. You can never go back and undo a missed opportunity. If you are young, early twenties, and you can do it then you should enlist. If you think you are too fat, not tough enough, or whatever, take the chance. The worst that happens is that they don’t let you in. The best thing that could happen is you could be someone better. It doesn’t even matter your political beliefs, and you don’t have to be an infantryman to be in the army. There are so many opportunities (the job I got reserved for me and in my contract was Nodal Network Systems Operator Maintainer). I recommend that everyone look into it. Try. In ten years you may be where I am right now, full of regrets and missed opportunities. I am willing to give it up for my family. However, it is still a dissapointing loss. I will live the rest of my life knowing how badly I screwed up and how I missed my calling when I was young to set my life on course.

A willing sacrifice. I can still wake up and get those hugs and kisses from these beautiful little people that depend on me for so much. It will soften the blow. But, in reality, how could I even think of leaving them for even the least amount of time. I may not get back this opportunity, but I will never get to see my kids grow up ever again. Between the two, I choose the hugs and kisses over push ups in the mud.

Now, back to work on Sagas and Romp!

My wife and I always knew that if things got to this point there is always one way out. I believe that I should be able to support my family. Not that my wife couldn’t if the means were available. It just means that if there is an option for me to continue I should take it. The fear was that this last resort would become our only option. Now, as it has come to the point, it seems that this last resort wasn’t something to fear. In truth, it has the potential to propel our lives forward into the direction we both want.

So what is that last resort? Inlistment. Truth is, I believe that just about any physically able and somewhat intelligent man can always do this as a means to provide for his family. The Air Force and other branches inlist up to 27 years old. The army lets you inlest up to 41. My first choice was the air force, but I’m too old. So the army it is. Truth is, I was worried about it, but the more we have looked at the better the option seems.

So I am seriously looking at enlistment. I have met with recruiters, taken the ASVAB (and scored obscenely well at it I might add), and am well on my way to becoming a soldier in the worlds greatest army. Sure the sacrifice for my family is scary. My wife and children are not going with me to live on base. There will be at least 9+ weeks of training where I will almost never get to even speak with them. Then I have 3+ years until I am done. I may get to visit them if I am stationed close enough to Florida. But this is a dim hope. I may get to take a week every 3 months to come home (army gives you 30 days vacation/year). Still, it is at least three years of my life I will be separated from my wife and kids.

So why do it? Well, Training. I get to pursue training in a new field to hopefully get into an industry I will actually enjoy. Secondly, college. I plan to attend college while in the army. Hopefully, if things work out, I will have spent 3-4 years getting my degree and 2 years experience in a new professional field. It is a huge short term sacrifice for a long term gain. It is a choice hard come to, but ultimately my wife and I agree that this is the best path.

So what about E-RPG? That will continue. During training I will not be able to pursue it properly at all. After training I will be working on stuff during my free time. I am hoping to have Desecration done and released by the time I leave so that will likely be the last release.  I am hoping to also structure some stuff for independant contractors to work on new products too. However, that will only come through after basic unless I can get someone to look these over for me while I’m gone.

So Ironwood will carry on. This site will stay up, but the original ironwoodnexus.com site will shut down and redirect here. I will hardly have enough time for E-RPG, I won’t be able to develop and manage the other aspects of Ironwood until I am sure I can handle the load.

Anyways, I will elaborate a bit more on this as progress resumes. Still, be assured that although we looked at this as though it were going to be a reluctant option, my family and I are actually very optimistic about the potential here. For myself, I am excited. I finally get to fulfill a sense of duty that I was too young to appreciate when opportunity was more conducive to this decision. Furthermore, I get to look forward to living an entirely new professional life when I am done.

The announcements and trickling of information regarding Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition was something that interested me on a strange level. I understand the design concept, and their desire to kind of draw in gamers from the MMO and computer and console markets. DnD, to me, was always a simple and limiting game. However, it still had this same underlying idea that most games also offer. That is, you play stories. It is not a general rule, per say, but it is an understood idea that you develop some sort of cohesive overlying plot. There is a world, and your characters live in the world. This really doesn’t seem to change with DnD. What I think is the problem with the new direction of DnD is that they want their cake and eat it to. They want to simplify the game, but it isn’t the rules that are complex. It is the worlds. Honestly, players don’t seem drawn to MMOs and such because of the worlds. The worlds may keep them there, but it is really the relationships between players. The games are really stupid and simple when it comes down to it. You kill monsters, get stronger, get better items. It can be done in any world. What sets these games apart is their mechanics and how they go about letting you kill monsters, get stronger, get better items, etc.

MMOsare simple because they don’t need any prep time. The GM doesn’t exist in the same context in an MMO. You, as a player, can log in and play. Simple as that. Anyone can pick it up and start having fun. With PnP RPGs we have a problem. Someone has to get the game going. They have to be the GM and build the world, tie it all together, and make it interesting for the players. We are holding on to the biggest problem here by not letting go of something. That is the world.

Now, I am not saying that the world is abandoned. What I am saying is that the GM’s constant attention to the world can be. I though about this for a while. I have always wanted an E-RPG that could bring in younger kids to the hobby. So I began development of a project towards that goal. I figured that parents may want to play but won’t have a large commitment to world building so I designed around it. The game has some very young teen male demographic content to it. However, it is open enough to branch from that demographic. However, it is not open enough that adult gamers would want to play. Most importantly, adult gamers who do not, or have not in some time, played an RPG. I figured DnD 4th addition may be an answer to that, but of course, it is not trying to be. So, why not make an RPG that an adult would play. I’m not talking about adult themes. I am talking about adult time.

Myself, I am 31 years old. I have a full time job that works me somewhere between 40-50 hours per week, I have Ironwood and E-RPG, and I have a wife, 3 kids, and one of them has special needs. I am busy. Real busy. So I thought that maybe I could make another game for me. Not like E-RPG, which is the game I want to play. I decided I want to make a game that someone in my shoes would want to start playing.

So here it is, the slightly official announcement of Romp. It uses a variation of E-RPG called A-RPG which is actually designed for the kids game (by kids I am meaning an age group of 12-16 years old). Romp has all the same buzz words as E-RPG, especially free form and open character development. However, it is pretty much a labor free game. You can GM this week, and next week, then take turns without having to worry about character continuity. It takes the big meta story out of the game. Each adventure is self contained dungeon romp style game. No overly developed world. No involving storyline. A simple game about killing monsters, getting treasure, and getting stronger. Something you can start playing just by sitting down with no GM prep at all! Absolutely none! You can build your own dungeons and stories, but the simple version is to just play the pre-made dungeons and you need no story tie in. That’s it.

I’ll be letting in more details as it is done. The news about it here is semi official simply because I want to know what you think about it. If you are reading this, then you have been more or less interested in E-RPG development so you deserve to weigh in with thoughts, opinions, or questions. However, I probably wont get too detailed about some of the more nitty gritty concepts until I get closer to an official release for it.

Oh, and by the way, the core rule book for players (and GM) will be absolutely free. No non-printable watermarked catches. It is the full featured book as a free PDF download. The general concept for making any money on it will be in the sale of the dungeons and any supplements. However, as with other E-RPG stuff, you will be able to create and share your own as well.

The Farmstead Witch

A Sidetrack Adventure

An angry mob of villagers threaten and accuse a grieving widow of witchcraft. However, the accusations are not far off. If the widow can convince the characters that her magic and intentions are simply rooted in love and grief, can they abide the horrible truth and even come to help her? However, the villagers are not quite finished, and return to vent their anger and disgust with weapons and flame. Unfortunately, with an angry mob surrounding them and intent on death, death itself intends to live. But something has gone horribly wrong and the characters find themselves between the fangs of a bestial undead horror, and the fires of a village’s retribution.

The Farmstead Witch is the next entry in our Sidetracks Series. Sidetracks are developed as single-session adventures to be used as diversions within a campaign. All Sidetracks are completely self contained, with all the maps, characters, creatures, and item statistics needed to run the adventure.

• Purchase the full color PDF for $3.00 at:

 In this sticky I will post some projects I am currently working above my focus project. The focus project is whatever project I am blogging about. However, while working on these I frequently dabble in other, smaller, projects that I release for about $2-3 in PDF or for free. This list is not necessarily definitive. It is just things I am pushing around. You can weight in on these projects here.

My first list:

Reach Weapons:
A small companion for those who like to use spears and pole arms. Includes new weapons and a breakdown on using these weapons with a focus on in game tactics to maximize their efficiency.

A New Grimoire
This might actually be 1-3 different books, depending on how I organize the new spells. Each book will have probably 5-10 new spells. The books will organize the spells by type so if you buy one you pretty much know that if you buy the Grimoire of Ritual Magic you are getting spells that enhance magic through ritual type stuff, while the Grimoire of Elemental Combat will feature spells for using elemental magic offensively. If you have ideas for grimoires you’d like to see just let me know.

Revised Campaign and Character Journal
I am revising the interior looks of these books and also releasing them on PDF with interactive form fields. I am currently using the Campaign Journal for testing Desecration and I have to say, this really are handy. If you aren’t interested in buying the hard copy you should at least look into the PDFs. They really do help keep things organized and the price tag (about $3) should make it a pretty easy grab. By the way, the PDFs, after purchased, should have any information saved on them saved as a new file (you don’t want to have to buy new books when you don’t really have to).

Anyways, desecration is still up as the focus project. Maps are all but done and the artwork is looking top notch. We are really just finishing testing while I wrap up some of the written content. Then its off to the editors. I don’t want to put a time line on this. However, testing will take at least 3-6 more weeks.

Ironwood is proud to announce the newset line of products for the E-RPG Fantasy Sagas Role-Playing Game: Sidetracks.

Sidetracks are short miniature adventures design to be a complete story that can be played in a single game session. Each adventure focuses on unique and interesting applications for the E-RPG rules systems, or new types of story focuses. These adventures usually include new content such as new creatures, archetypes, magical items, and many other possibilities. Many of these will also include full color battelmaps scaled for play with 1 inch miniatures created with the award winning Dundjinni software.

The first adventure, The Unkindness of Ravens, is available now, with more to come. The series has the potential to run indefinately, with new sidetracks for each of the Sagas generes. Each story will initially be released as full color E-books, which will retail for about $3. As these products are released, a hardcopy collection of up to ten stories will be released in softcover and hardcover print editions.

The concept for these stories is simple. Not only would we provide the small diversions that occur randomly along adventures that give worlds that extra level of realism born in seemingly random developments, but we can explore greater diversity in experimenting with the rules system in ways that can’t be done reasonably through full length adventures and campaigns. Each adventure will offer something new to the game experience, allowing players and Game Masters alike to enjoy not only a storyline diversion, but also explore new paths in gameplay as well.

For more information on Sidetracks visit our website at www.sagasrpg.com. Furthermore you can keep up to date on future products in this series through the Sidetracks RSS Feed and our Sagas RPG News feed.

A Sidetrack Adventure

  The first in our ongoing series of sidetracks adventures design for single game session diversions from your general campaign. Each sidetrack focuses on a different type of game play, sometimes introducing new and exciting uses for the E-RPG system.

The Unkindness of Ravens involves the unexpected discovery of a flock of murderous ravens controlled by an insane hermit with a powerful magical artifact. The adventure introduces new ways of applying combat that creates a perilous and horrific confrontation with the seemingly mundane enemy of ravens. Characters will have to create new tactics to survive these unique encounters.

This 15 page e-book includes 3 scale battle maps for you to print out and use for play with miniatures or other markers. It also includes a new creature archetype, the raven; as well as a new magical item, The Faun’s Syrinx.

• Purchase the full color PDF for $3.00 at:

In all of the adventures that we develop for Sagas I like to adhere to a single philosophy: adventures should be adaptable to the player’s and their characters. This is easily reflected in Prophecy, where we had three different paths for the story that revolved around combat, political intrigue, mysticism. This let groups that want to focus on 3 of the key adventure types to basically play the adventure they wanted to play, whether it be a combat heavy romp or a battle of wits and wills against a dark cult and its leaders. In desecration we don;t necessarily have the range of divergent paths. The story really only lends itself to taking side. At some key points the characters may find little clues or bits relating to a greater overall plot, or simply continue on towards the obvious plot. This has an added plot device by actually choosing the villains based on the paths they choose. This isn’t a matter of characters reacting to choices and becoming villains. Instead, the characters will choose a story track and a character manifests as a villain simply because the character is on that story path.

As I mentioned, our player characters are not your typical adventuring group. We don’t have the fighter, thief, wizard, and cleric party. Instead we have an elemental mage focusing entirely on water magic, a spy, and archer/fighter, and a psychic. None of the characters are ideally focused, which makes a typical dungeon romp a bit hard for them. So the standard and original story wasn’t going to work too well for them. Besides, as I wrote the original story I could see where some players would see potential in different areas of the story. These became developed into a larger overall story arch.

It turns out, without any real attempt on their own part, the player characters have stumbled into this larger arch. This arch is more in keeping with this group’s interest. They play strange and divergent characters because they like those types of games. So while they liked some of the events as we played through them, some players were ready to move on with the story. Now, what appears as an utter failure on their part is actually an open door. It is a plot device I borrowed from Robert Howard.

Robert E. Howard was the creator of the Conan and Kull stories, among many others (check out Solomon Kane for some good stories as well). In many of Conan and the like stories Robert Howard has some doom or other bad thing happen to Conan in the middle of his quest. He is often captured or injured beyond any real ability to continue on his own. Then the story turns as either through some device of the other characters, or our heroes own ability, a darker plot is revealed. It is a way of keeping characters going into the story, while also giving a decent segue into the overall plot. This is often how Conan learns of the mysterious cult or dark wizard, or some other beastly plot involved in a story that was. initially for him, simply a kill the monster and get the girl or loot and escape.

Granted, Robert E. Howard’s plot devices are often transparent. Often enough this may seem transparent in RPGs as well. My concern now is that the next phase is developed well enough to make it look real enough, instead of some deus ex machina save for the characters. I hate using the GM hand, and I don’t want to use it here. I’m not really, as the story and path of what’s happening is not designed to save the characters or to force a plot. It is there, because it seems realistic to me that it should be there. I just have to present it properly so that the characters can see it for what it is.

I’ll let you know how it works out in the next entry on the subject. Until then,

Happy Gaming!

You see, at my day job I have a rather unique skill set. That skill set gives me a higher price tag. Unfortunately, few clients need that skill set, and are unwilling to pay the cost of my employment for a skill set they don’t need. That left me in pretty dire straights.

As of Friday I got notice. I was laid off (with a fairly nice severance package), and sent on my way. It was a good separation. The company is looking for opportunities for me within the company still, and within other companies we work closely with. I still consider myself their employee until I find another job.

So, I am taking the first week pretty lightly looking for a new job. I have my resume out there, but I am not pursuing anything truly aggressively. Furthermore, I have some time to be picky.

I am also using this time to tighten up some Ironwood stuff. I have 5 products off to editors and artists and am waiting on those to come back. Then they will be released. I have a couple more I am plugging out too that may not need any editing, or at least just a light perusal by my wife. So some new content is coming. It is simply, at this point, waiting for others to do what they do best.

I’m also working on finishing up the Ironwood Site. That too is waiting on some things from other people before it can truly go to beta. However, I will probably go alpha with it in the next few days. The site itself will go live, but only Sagasrpg Community Members will be invited to register as project leads, with a few select exceptions.

Anyways, here we go, plugging along. I’ll keep you posted on further developments as they come available.

Currently I am almost a one-man-show. I am going through a lot of changes at the moment and I think I may have jumped the gun on that post. The biggest problem with that banner is that I didn’t anticipate the sky falling. In my personal life, that is almost what seems to be happening. My day job (I think we all know by now that Ironwood and E-RPG are not full time endeavors) is looking very touchy at the moment. My company, and myself, are fighting real hard to make sure I can keep going, but there are contract issues, placement issues, and salary issues that are making things very difficult. To put it bluntly, I have been offered a severance package in a “just in case” scenario. Just in case looks like it may just be the case.

I’m not giving up hope. I’m not even depressed or unduly stressed by this. I have faith that hard work, dedication, and loyalty all bear their worth with a little faith. I am not overly religious, and I don’t necessarily believe in a plan. I do, however, believe in something akin to karma. In this, I know, that some people steal success, while others earn it. Those that earn it must go through some difficult times, but ultimately will end up the true victor.

Now some people have made the argument that if this were the case then how do we account for evil men and women who do succeed? I tell you that they don’t. Not ever. They may have a run of success. They may even seem to have endless success. Ultimately it isn’t true. Everyone gets what they deserve.

So I work hard. I have faith. I work for a damned good company that really does live up to its claim as being a company that cares about its employees. I have seen this and know this to be true with them, and I know they are doing their best to make something work. We all are.

So I am, and have been distracted. I have made some progress on the sites. But this is utilitarian type work. The creative components were done long ago. Its creativity that con sometimes take a bit of a hit when times are tough. Its that kind of world now though. I’m not the only person rocked by our current economic troubles. Seems like it is a good time to be a fat cat. However, for the rest of us, we can pick our way along and just have faith that we do the right thing, and the right thing is done to us.

It just takes time.

On a good note here’s a list of the things that are/were the more in may products:

• Undead Creatures (full version)
• The Farmstead Witch (a Sidetrack adventure)
• The Unkindness of Ravens (another sidetrack adventure)
• Weapons and Tactics: Reach Weapons (expansion on tactics and new weapons)

The first big change is the relocation of E-RPG content to the new site just for that content. The new site is www.sagasrpg.com. Piece by piece the contents of the current IronwoodNexus are getting transferred over. As I do this, I am trying my best to make sure that the sites are linking to each other. So, if the community is moved (and it has) and you click the community link on the nexus site it will take you to the community page on the new site. Now, if you click a link like Developer Blogs on the new site (which hasn’t been move yet, it will take you back to the old site.

Some parts of both sites will get locked down for new content. You won’t be able to post on certain content pages, you won’t see any new projects listed, and new products won’t get listed until after they move. This is simply to make my life a little easier when transferring the content.

You may be asking why? Why fix something that isn’t broken? Well, in my opinion it is a little broken from a site admin perspective. However, it isn’t so broken that I couldn’t have fixed the issues where they sit. The real reason is that Ironwood is actually done with its trial run. You see, we publish rpgs, but that isn’t all we want to publish. Publishing Sagas was a way of testing out the Ironwood format. We needed to know how to make some things work, if they would work, and make sure we got the kinks ironed out (no pun intended) before we moved on with our true purpose.

You see, Ironwood is like a development studio/agency. When we put this together we ran wild with ideas on things we could do with the print on demand and other resources we have. We really had no limit to what we could do except for one thing. As diverse as our talents are, no one had all the pieces necessary to pull off a project, even with our collected efforts. We had to find help. To do this we came up with an idea.

The idea is simple. A person has an idea. If the idea will ever go to market that person is going to need talent to get the product finished. However, if you are like me, you may not have the money to hire an illustrator up front, or a programmer. Instead, we would get our artist interested on two simple principles:

1. Artists will work on projects they are passionate about. If the project is good, artist will know this and respond.

2. A product will be better delivered by someone who has a personal vested interest in a project rather than a person who got paid to finish the job.

#1 is pretty obvious. It is number 2 that needs explaining. Number 2 means that I can commission a guy to do some art. He will like doing the job, may even love it. however, at the end of the day he just got paid and walked away from the job.

Now, Ironwood actually does it a bit different. For an Ironwood project an artists gets a percentage of the profits. The artists is part owner of the product in a sense. Having ownership of the work does something a bit differently to the job. It isn’t another task. It isn’t just another piece in your portfolio or a credit for your resume. This is your work.

At the end of the day a product will succeed or fail by the collective efforts of all people involved. Because each of these people involved in production worked on it on the idea that they will only get paid well if sales do well, their efforts would reflect this. It is a pretty big jump from the normal every day way business is handled. And the truth is, as an artist myself, it is much more fair to the artists. The artists gets paid well for success. As opposed to this, a person working on a project that gets paid a flat rate gets the same paycheck regardless if the product is a commercial success or an absolute flop. However, the same artists will not reap any fiscal reward for a commercial success. That’s why there was a writer’s strike for television this year. Artist tend to agree. They should get paid for their efforts, especially when their is a great success to their efforts.

And so we did this for all Sagas books. Everyone gets royalty checks. If you see an artistic credit, that person gets paid only royalties. The system is working, and it works well.

So Ironwood is going to open it up a bit. It is going to allow all types of products and anyone with ideas to build their own project teams. Basically a project lead (the person who will organize the artists and determine the royalties) comes up with the project, posts a basic outline of the project, and gets things rolling. Interested talent can browse the projects and apply to work on it. If the project lead can agree on the terms they sign a contract and get cracking. The final product can go for sale on ironwood storefronts.

Pretty simple. And it is not all that new. All over the place you can find listings for artists of various projects. However, a person with a good idea has a lot of fishing to do. We simply turn it around. Let the artists compete for the project, not the project compete for the artists. It is really about passion for the project. You don’t want some guy just doing another job. You want a guy who saw the idea of your project and said “that is friggin awesome - I want In!”

So that is it. the building of a new way of doing things in a wide range of possibilities.

BTW, the RPGs are my projects, and they aren’t stopping any time soon.

Happy Gaming

It is still too soon to predict an exact date for the final turn around. However, we expect within the course of May. We apologize for any inconvenience.

So, here are some notes, edited for content to reduce possible spoilers.

One of the first major problems was actually read aloud text. This module is semi-dependant on mood and tone. Therefore, I included a lot of read aloud text boxes. This has worked well in some adventures I have run before. However, the initial boxes as written had two fundamental problems.

1. Too long. Read aloud boxes must be kept short. I need to truncate them.
2. No real ability to paraphrase. When players were getting bored listening to me basically tell them a story I moved on to paraphrasing. However, I had to read each section to myself just to get an idea of what to paraphrase. I need to find a way to highlight key points for paraphrasing GMs who want the gist of the boxes but don’t want to read the entire thing.

Another problem was getting them going. Shakespeare had some rules for starting a play that always got the audience hooked. Shakespearean plays start with one of, or a combination of, the following:

1. Violence
2. Teen Sex (not really a Fantasy RPG option but it is included here for accuracy)
3. The Supernatural

As it stands, the adventure begins with the characters coming to a village in the rain, overhearing a conversation they may or may not be interested in, then getting a room at the inn. Boring!

Now, I know, as a writer, that I shouldn’t have started with that as the adventure lead. I started the writing of the adventure there because that is where it actually starts. However, what I should have thought of was to go back and have something happen at the beginning that brought them into the adventure. Maybe something that gets them into the town, or the inn.

After the initial problems were identified I moved past them and avoided what I could. The group was great, and patient, which helps. Some reoccurring gags popped up throughout that were aimed at the earlier part of the sessions read alouds. One was made on my part where I did read part of one section where the text literally says “his overdrawn speech is violently cut short as the door bursts open upon him”. The obvious reference to verbose read aloud text elicited some laughs. Sometimes you just have to laugh at your own failures to move past them, grow from them, and continue on.

Other parts of the adventure were hit and miss. A part where the characters try to move along a muddy road in a fierce hurricane type storm has some tests to overcome the elements and get to safety quickly. This drew some interests from some players while others were frustrated by failures causing the scene to drag on from the point. So this was obviously a love it or hate it element. But what isn’t in RPGs. Some players love that kind of stuff, while others would rather move on to the next scene and get the story moving.

Overall, the adventure will continue and it looks like it might develop into a success. I have a lot of work to do with organization and truncating the read aloud boxes. By next session things should move forward much easier and the adventure itself will start to either prove itself, or need some more overhaul.

Until then,

Happy Gaming!

I have tested some new products, one being the first of a series of mini adventures. That is being edited now and will be released as soon as I get that back. I released the final version of the encounter maps, and they are great! I am also hard at work on Desecration, and now have some new incentive to get that wrapped up. You see, there is a new goal, and a new revelation, and it is all wrapped around DPnP.

DPnP was a huge injection of inspiration to Ironwood. It was the concept that re-built the concept of Ironwood as a company. However, it has been a very rocky road. My lead programmer now works for a video game company, and I have very few alternate resources available. Now, the new direction of Wizards of the Coast, and their online/virtual table top plans seem to be the foreshadowing of a doom over DPnP. When Hasbro goes one way, the industry seems to follow. Its a shame that we had the goal before them, but without huge corporate fundage we are much slower out of the gate. However, I am fairly confident that what they are planning has very little to do with what we are planning. From what I can see, there is very little more than the same old same old. Not very exciting.

So I am at a crossroad. I have two directions to go with this, both with very serious pros and cons. My goal is to get to these crossroads and then make a decision. Frankly, DPnP is a serious component to the future of gaming, and gaming with E-RPG. Without it, I don’t think the industry has any idea where to go. However, I am not simply going to tell them how to do it. It is my idea after all. So they can wait until I do it right, then they can jump on the idea all by themselves.

Anyways, I got new artwork from Marco for Desecration. Very good stuff, but I can’t show them to you because they could spoil some plot.

BTW, I am still working up the archetypes for modern, and some characters for the Modern Sagas Paradigm. Right now, its a lonely project for me, so bare with me. Ironwood is going a bit slow right now, and that’s because it is now a solo operation. While new sales products are going to drag out a bit, I would like to reach out to any of you creative types reading this blog who may have thought of writing up some content to share to please do so and post it on the Player Created Content Forum. I would appreciate it, and I know that other players would too.

Thanks, and Happy Gaming!

I have serious problem with that. I hate being limited by someone else’s idea of what my fun should be like. I get a game, it should be mine, through and through. It just felt like they couldn’t figure out a better way so they did it the best way they could and then forced the rest on us. It didn’t take long for me to start changing their plan.

When I stared running my own games I house ruled a lot. I found out that doing this was just plain impossible. House rules invariably break something, requiring another house rule, which would require another. It came to a point where every game session would have a point where we would have to fix a house rule. Eventually I learned the truth, all of the text in the book that said “Make this game your” and like minded nonsense was just a false sense of empowerment. It was a lie. Sure I could change things, but that would break the game.

The problem was that each system within the game system was a miniature game system. Take magic as an example. Magic would be a completely different system than anything else in the game. However, it is so firmly intertwined in the game that if changed, it unbalances the framework between character classes, advancement, etc. To fix advancement or relationships between classes I have to fix just about everything.

So I eventually decided that if I were going to have to rebuild the game, I should just start from scratch. However, I would base the game on an underlying idea, not a system, and build systems independent of each other. That is why magic in E-RPG is the way it is. It looks so familiar to the rest of the rules, but still seems different in some small way. This is because ultimately magic is still a skill test, not unlike an attack skill. In an attack you roll to perform, and then you roll to see the effect of the performed skill. That is exactly what magic is. So the effects vary, but ultimately it is the exact same system.

It continues on through modern, and will continue into sci-fi. It is constantly a game of rolling performance, and then rolling to see the strength of the performance. A hit to damage roll. In Modern things depend more on our technology. We roll for our manipulation of that technology, but then the tech takes over to a degree. So even in Modern, underneath the layers of attributes for your vehicles and computer equipment, is still the same philosophy. This makes E-RPG one of the easiest, if not the easiest, systems to manipulate. You can alter any system in the game, and it will not hurt anything else. It was designed so that a system in the game can get a complete overhaul without changing the overall dynamic of the game.

I think that is an important note about E-RPG. If you don’t like something, then change. Try to break it. I haven’t and I’ve tried for over 8 years.

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Almost 2 weeks ago I took on both business and artistic development for Ironwood. We got royalties sent out, and a host of sales organized and prepared. I also still had several projects currently under develop to reorganize to include some time for this new added duty. First thing on my agenda was simple, get ready to play!

We finally organized to follow up with a previous testing group. We reorganized the group to begin play testing of Desecration. Some player characters needed replacing as the testing for Prophecy left some characters in no shape to continue with their adventures. However, we would not jump directly into Desecration. Instead, we would first test out one randomly chosen sidetrack adventure.

The sidetrack adventures are a collection of small, single game session, mini-adventures designed to be self-contained. I had three prepared in a file folder, stapled individually. I randomly drew one out, and that was their off-shoot encounter. The primary test of the adventure was that it did not play like a simple sidetrack. It had to have enough depth to be something other than just a simple thing to throw on the road. This is no simple bandit attack or other contrivance. Instead, this adventure set the characters into a bit of a moral crossroad, where they had to choose to help someone do something they were not convinced was right, against a group of people who may be right. It all went perfectly, and smoothly.

The second point was to see if a small 8 page adventure would last long enough, or not too long. The overal adventure lasted just over 3 hours. This was more or less perfect. If the rest of the adventures work out this well then this new series should work out perfectly.

Another event that happened was that on Friday part of an order of galley proofs of some new products. The first was the Modern Sagas Player’s Guidebook. Up until now we only got to see it printed from our own printers, which offers a nice idea of how the book will look, but still has some uncertainty. Well, I received the paper back proof on Friday and it exceeded my expectations. Usually these proofs require quite a bit of layout and design changes when you are incorporating graphics into the overall layout process. The cover was beautiful, the layout perfectly represented. In short, aside from some minor proofing and editing issues, the book was everything I wanted it to be.  It was also a firm reminder that while the beta is available, the book is still long from completion. I still have some work to do there.

Another key testing component this weekend was the field test of a new game aid. This aid was developed through a passing suggestion by community member only known as Ralph. He suggested a sort of combat wheel for time keeping. I had seen some of these with other systems but never really had a reference name for them. He showed some ideas which was a decent starting point. the concept was simple, take the combat aid from the GML and represent it graphically.

But that is way too simple. There is so much potential to that.

As is typical of my development style I took a simple concept and decided what would be all the things I would want in one place to make combat resolution easier. So I put all of that into an Encounter Map. I have 2 more proofs of this on the way, but I didn’t have a full size version to test last night. Instead, I tested a smaller version of it which worked perfectly. Combat was much smoother, with everything everyone needed for combat being in one place and easily accessible to everyone. I am quite happy with this new product and I can’t wait to show off the final version to you. Here is a thumbnail of the forthcoming full release:

As you can see, there is a 1 inch scale combat grid surrounded by 2 rows of colored squares. The combat grid is fairly easy to surmise, you use that to track movement, possibly with miniatures. The colored squares are used to track initiative declarations and resolutions using cards or tokens. Outside of this is listed all of the combat modifiers, action level modifiers, situation modifiers, etc. that we could fit on the bar and would affect your strategic plans. Now combined with your character sheet, you can manage almost every part of combat from one easy to reference 2×3 foot game aid.

As stated, we tested a small version, primarily for declaration and resolution tracking, and it all worked perfectly. Feedback was great and combat was resolved much more definitively and quickly, definitely ramped up the time and intensity of the encounters.

So, yes, we covered a lot of ground this weekend. We tested two new releases, as well as got to preview the print version of the Modern Sagas. I feel very fulfilled and accomplished this week. So I continue on, back to work. I have to prepare for some more touching up and development. But first, I have to take my wife out to dinner tonight. Its our 5th wedding anniversary.

Until next time,

Happy Gaming!

 All images copyright Ironwood Omnimedia Company LLC

Ruel Knudson is currently producing his first full length adventure module for the Fantasy Sagas entitled Desecration. Details are still fairly scant, but we are expecting a large adventure, with multiple paths and tons of new content. This new book is also featuring the artwork of Ironwood newcomer Marco Morte.

Some of the new content is available now as a free download to Nexus Members. The first entries into these Excerpts from Desecration are 3 new traps and 3 new diseases that character will encounter in the game. Furthermore, Ruel has already featured small biographies of 3 of the cast members of this new quest on his blog.

We will feature new content and downloads as Ruel releases them.

There are, within this drama, three people of adventurous persuit, not unlike our happy player characters, that seek in their travels to do works benifit their goals. For one, it is the triumph over evil, the other, a life worth living, and the third, a guide now tasked through devotion, and perhaps love, to protect his allies and see them succeed.  Below we see for ourselves what sets these characters to seek out a temple only known by the ravings of an old man, a retired scout and bitter resident of Hillbury.

Bealan ‘ath’ Logonol
Bealan is a Knight and Protector of the Faith. He considers himself a crusader, and seeks to vanquish evil. However, his version of evil also includes pagans and barbarians. He is an accomplished swordsman and cavalier, and a capable leader. However, his religious convictions often leave him at odds with the various groups he has traveled with. He constantly imposes his beliefs on others and expects that tribute be paid from all loot collected to the church, before it is divided among the rest of his companions.

His most recent companions have only just joined him. They met when the caravan was collecting guards for its journey. His primary reason for wanting to see the temple is to simply remove whatever taint may be there. As a secondary objective, he hopes to find any treasure that can than be given to the church in tithe. His companions know about his plans for the treasure, but consider it the price of doing business with him. As neither of the other two are prominent combatants, they need is strength and sword, and are willing to part with the tithe to get whatever is left over. They grudgingly take part of his prayer rituals before setting off, just to keep him satisfied. Indeed, Bealan seems to have found two companions that he feels he has really connected with, even if their devotion to the faith is somewhat lacking in his eyes.

Bealan sees all savages, pagans, and barbarians as sub-human. Only those who have accepted “the true faith” are on any remote level of consideration as human beings. Converting such is only a passing thought to him, as in his experience it is often a pointless attempt. He would much rather move on past them, kill them all, or subdue and subjugate them rather than deal with them on any level. For those not formally involved in the church (other knights, monks, and priests) he looks down on them as being only partially faithful and most likely tools at their best. To the church and those officially involved he harbors his only measure of respect. He considers all such his brothers and sisters, and affords them respect bordering on admiration and genuine love. For this reason he is greatly respected in the church, even if the rest of the world finds him to be a boorish nuisance.

Bealan sees himself as the group’s leader, partly because he is the only true member of the church. He does not take suggestion well, and considers any motivation not in line with benefiting the church suspiciously. However, he does trust his companions, and respects their skills. His tactical leadership is very strong, though his social tactics are lacking at best.

Vivian Trap Springer
Vivian is a runaway. All she mentions about her past is that she gave up the “oppression” of her parents to live free and be young. From the tidbits she does mention it is clear she grew up in a port town, which has led her to hate the smell of fish. She drinks often and heartily, and is a bit rough with her tongue, often breaking into tirades against random offenders for little reason whatsoever. She is a fair of face and complexion, and has seductive look about her, and she knows it. She often uses her looks to flirt her way past guards or the constabulary as well as to distract marks.

Vivian is little more than a common pick pocket. She has some skill with knives and has learned some lock picking and trap springing skills on her few adventures with other treasure hunters. She hides her true nature as a thief from Bealan because of his religious overtones. She is sometimes frustrated that her flirtations don’t seem to have any effect on him. She has no amorous feelings for him, but still finds the challenge of disarming his resolution intriguing.

Her inexperience makes her a liability to her comrades. However, she hides this inexperience with carefully crafted falsehoods about her adventures and skills. Still, she is not without some merit and skill, just not as much as she makes out to have.

Garret
Garret was the lead scout and tracker for the caravan guard. He specializes in the trade way network and is a familiar fixture among the towns along its roads. Garret joined Bealan’s expedition partly due to his affections for Vivian, who he has become very attracted to over the course of their journey. Vivian seems to be oblivious to his desires, which is frustrating to Garret, but also seems to contribute to his desires. In truth, Vivian is also attracted to Garret, but sees in him a want for a slower lifestyle and settling down, which she is not ready for. It is because of Garret that Vivian shows so much concern for her companions when they become trapped in the temple.

Garret is a stern and silent wanderer. He’s a skilled tracker and huntsman, but a poor combatant in a fight. He generally sticks to using his crossbow to get him out of trouble. He is a skilled marksman, and frequently uses this skill to kill game and sell the furs and meat to the communities and caravans.

Garret plans to use his share of the treasure (if one is found) to purchase a small farm and settle down. His plan includes convincing Vivian to join him, though he hasn’t made this part of his plan known to her.

When the party first meets Garret he will not say much to them. He will simply nod his head if introduced to them, but will not offer more. If any PC seems to be interacting with Vivian in any way that seems more than casual he will become icy and removed. If Vivian seems to return any advances he becomes argumentative and cold directly, and deliberately, towards that character. For instance, if the PC’s offer to join the adventurers Garret will abruptly refuse them their chance while also glaring directly at the offending character. This will earn him some surprised glances from his own companions.

Sidetracks are mini adventures for plug and play into an adventure, quest, or campaign. They are kind of like one-shots, except that they are generally designed to fit into an existing campaign. They are designed to take about 3-6 hours to play through, and are focused as I kind of detour from the overall plot. They are small, about 5-10 pages each. They will be released seperately in PDF (and bundled of course once the collection is complete). They will also be available in hardcopy, but only as a collection. Each collection will contain about 8-10 sidetracks. These sidetracks will be compiled based on a theme. For instance, you will have sidetracks in town, on the road, at sea, in space, etc.

This also gives you a window into their function. They are there to break up the ordinary journey or downtime. They add some depth to the world that is independant of the overall story. Furthermore, they are largely just short stories. They are designed statistically for E-RPG but these stories work with just about any system.

So far, I have one sent to the editor today, and another just about wrapped up. Undead creatures is being edited this week, and I am supposed to recieve the artwork very soon. Desecration is running along just fine and I have just about all my testers lined up for some very secret projects coming by the end of the year.

This is a good time for Ironwood, or at least to be me. I’m inspired, and productive, two things that go very well together.

 Happy Gaming!

During all this, I have been able to continue writing. I have all but closed up our undead sourcebook, and have finnished a couple of small adventures. Furthermore, I have continued with Desecration, which is coming along quite nicely.

However, the schedule is getting tighter. This weekend and all of next week will be pretty much composed of my day job and packing. So little will be written and I don’t know when I’ll get back to the blog (sometime after I unpack and get settled probably). I will be checking the forums regularly, and responding to emails (although responses may not go as quickly).

After the move, we will have a free download ready to go, and may have one or even two new small PDFs ready to loose onto the public. More info on that as I get closer to the final stages. which will probably come with the next blog post.

Until then, Happy Gaming!

My grandfather was born in 1911. His name, Ruel Herbert Knudson, was passed down in part to my father, Ruel Kevin Knudson, of which I inherited that full name. I, in turn, kept the name going by naming my first born son Ruel as well. It was important for me to continue this to honor my grandfather. He was a strong man, what my wife describes as a gentleman’s man. He had class, and presence. He was a man define by his determination and loyalty to his family and friends. He was the type that you knew you could turn to, for the menial and the large. He had the wisdom borne of long life, but more so of a man who sees each action as a sort of definition to yourself. With a single look or word he could pass judgment on you, but you never felt that he ever imposed it. You could know that he either thought that what you were either acting as a man or not, or with humanity.

I learned how to be a man from my father. He learned it from his father. We all have a sense that above all else, the right thing must be done. You do not let yourself be bullied or your choices are anything other than your own. More so, however, it was my grandfather that set the standard for me of what a man should be. From his example I strive to live up to my namesake. I want my son to carry that name, knowing full well that this name, we carry it, but we must earn it. It is not our name, but his.

I love my grandfather. I will miss him, but it was time for him. His wife passed on about 24 years ago when I was only about 8 years old, and quite frankly I think he has gone on for so long only because I think his children and his family needed him. He refused to give in. But time claims us all. He is now reunited with the love of his life. Together, they are with us, so I do not miss him as much as some would I guess. I feel that he has passed on, but not away. For the rest of us, we must continue to live. For my father, myself, and my son, we must always live up to his name, and do that in honor of this great man, who everyone he touched loved him as a brother, father, and grandfather. He was that kind of man.

 Up to this point we have been strictly concentrating on large books. They weren’t huge, but 175-200+ page books with almost all text and few images they were big.It is a bigger challenge to coordinate with editors and make schedules with projects of this size. However, with Sci-Fi Sagas on the back burner I can focus on the things I really want to write. These include adventures and suppliments.

My first suppliment for E-RPG was Paradigm. It was a big book too. It had 50 pregenerated characters, including character sheets. If I had been thinking before I would have changed the book a bit and instead of releasing all five categories in the one book, I could have released six books. Each category would have been a single PDF with a sixth master paradigm book with all of them. Thats actually how I plan to do things this year.

I have some adventures that are big. They will be large books on the scale similar to Prophecy. However, I also have several smaller adventures I will be releasing as well. Source material will likewise be segmented. We are going to release a series of creature books. Each book will be a collection of 5 categorically similar creatures (Undead, Goblins, Meta Humans, etc.). I have some equipment expansions in mind for Modern Sagas as well as the Modern Sagas Dossiers. Both segmented by type.

My first thought here is that customers won’t have to wait forever to get a huge suppliment. Furthermore, they won’t have to buy a huge suppliment when all they really want is a single part. As it stands, if you want a pregenerated magic user for Fantasy Sagas you have to purchase the entire Paradigm. Why purchase the big book for more money when you could purchase a smaller book, with only what you need, for less?

Second, we can have a more productive release schedule. I can release more products for customers more quickly and of varying type. So instead of waiting a month for me to finnish a sourcebook to get your next adventure, you will only have to wait a significantly shorter time.

Lastly, I plan to put the choice of which product to release in the customer’s hand. I have already started a poll in the community forums which will choose the next Creature Sourcebook. While I will still determine which type of book I will be writing for, I will leave the contents of the book up to the customers.

Currently, I am finnishing up Desecration. Marco is chomping at the bit for this book to get the artwork done. I am also wrapping up the Undead Creatures Sourcebook, and starting in on a project called Sidetracks. So we have 3 new books on their way and we are rolling along pretty smoothly.

So I will wrap up here and get back to work on Desecration (btw, this is shaping up to be a really fun project!).

Happy Gaming

Amidst the development I thought it would be nice to update the community to the new phpBB3 forum. We installed it and I am working out the site template for it. Its coming along nicely. Everything looks like its on an upswing until….

Our host for the site apparently decided to make an unannounced update to their systems. Now, from previous experience with these updates/maintenance I have resolved myself to backing up the website completely and reinstalling it after the updates. However, without any notice, I can’t do this. The result was that the entire site went completely wonky. Apparently the upgrades changes some ways the scripts are read. So I have had to go back to every single page in the site and correct these problems. Furthermore, I have reached my ability in scripting and code and cannot fix some of the damage. I am having to find myself rewriting the entire code to make it work.

So the product development has stalled for the past few days as I try to repair the damage. I have been in contact with the host and been getting some help from them. My last response from them was a rather bland fix that only repaired some very minor problems. The main front page still isn’t displaying right. I just hope they actually have some techies in  the wings on the weekend to help me out. I would love to know what really happened to break the site, again.

I have one or two last minute tricks I have thought of to try. I will be attempting these today. If I haven’t gotten it fixed by lunch I am hanging it up until their people can look at the code and see if there is anything the can do. Once I hang it up I will either be writing more of the adventures, or finnishing up the new forums. I will decide that based on my level of creativity (the former requiring more).

Until next time….

My current project is a play on this. Good and evil are not so much a concept of right and wrong, but more a matter of who you think is right. Good is the side you choose to ally yourself with. In both cases, neither choice is really good, or really evil.

I have two characters working with entirely different motivations that seem to share some similar attributes. Both characters are religious. They are devout followers of the dogma of the faith. Both characters want to do the right thing. However, one wants to do the right thing based on what he was taught as being the will of the gods, the other is trying to do the right thing to protect his people.

However, both characters will dance with evil to get it. They don’t even see their actions as evil. They see them as good actions for a good cause. The reason is simple, and my favorite reason. They see themselves as good, so the opposite of them must be evil. In other words, if you believe in the something else, you must be evil.

Now, this might almost seem to be inspired by current events. It isn’t. Rest assured there is no allegory in my tale. It is simply a plot device. I am simply challenging myself with the task to explore good and evil based on the perception of the players. Some players