Everytime at a Table and BASHCon 2023

Spacers 12: 19.Mar.23

The third season of Spacers "The W&J Sector" started last Saturday night/Sunday morning. Peryton, Just Ben, and Iron Curtis showed up to reprise their Spacers. Nextremi 37 from Proxima Centauri, Gal Qixtar of the Gyyko Clan Devvah, and Alezander Captain of the Arcadia  were all set for the upcoming season. Alezander has grown a mustache, and Curtis roled high enough to make it a decent one. Not to be outdone by anyone, Peryton got a hat for Netremi,and no ordinary one at that but French tricorn one at that. Such Character development. We even got into Gal's subplot, he's just a spy for the 7th Kodoan Federation. Not everyone has such deep insights as a new hat and radical 'staches.
    Oh yeah, after playing doctor in Sick Bay, a new addition to the Arcadia Alezander and Doctor Orlando, one of the NPC love slaves now turned into ship's NPCS, discovered that the "cap-EE-tan" was actually a clone. Not just any clone at that, but a clone type from the Fastidious Wars on Earth some 150 years ago (subjective time). These clones would become inform and die without a certain biological additive to their diet once they turned 40. We determined that Alezander was only 32 so there was not a pressing hurry, but there was a reason to head to Earth sometime in the near future.
    Nextremi had developed a friendship with the Wise Key 27 Hive Queen, Arodda. They shared a nickname in common from their Uni-days, "b 364." Both had also played Zero Ball, volleyball in free fall, during school as well. Where the hat came from? We have no idea yet-- we'll probably have to do a flashback one session.

Those flame looking things are Plasma-Ferns of Galileo 3

So the Arcadia took off from Galileo and began navigating towards a FLAT point, places where gravitational effect is minimal upon any object there where starships can jump to other points. As there is nothing exactly stationary in the universe as far as I know, these are not static. "Star Maps" as seen in most sci-fi tales aren't that helpful for interstellar travel. Astrogation, per se, requires vector monitoring of nearby masses and correct knowledge of where stars are actually traveling to along what is known space. The model I gave was a giant beach ball filled with other balls of various sizes from ping-pong balls to beach balls to medicine balls and bigger. That giant beach ball was rolling as well. The various balls being systems and other gravity phenomena and FLAT Points are where balls meet.
   Before getting there, Sexy, the ship's AI, detected another manatee class ship. Identified by its transponder as the Nora Zedd, the craft was in bad shape and looked derelict. After a quick docking, without a Failure on the piloting rolls, the PCs suited up and entered ready to maybe salvage some stuff. The AI Sexy as well as the Dr. Orlando and Bloom the mechanic to look out for their ship and whatnot.
    Boy the players were ready. From aliens from Alien to even space zombies, these guys and gal had their cheese slicers ready. What they found was the remains of the crew that suffered sudden decompression, which isn't as violent as one would think. That is at least according to my research. This also caught a glimpse of a wonderful looking FLAT-capable 
   Then a Kastuk class (big fighter) with scorch marks all over it was detected. Now Kastuks were extensively by the Zentrum during the Corridor wars, so this was like a Dornier Do-217(a Nazi bomber), showing up to a yacht in need of towing situation indicating that raiding as well as salvaging was on the newcomers mind.
   Alezander decided that he was going have N-Zedd act as a torpedo against the pirates, while the Arcadia slips out the backdoor.
   That's where we left off. 

Was it already three years since?
Let's see. 2022, the near-divorce. 2020 the Great Plague. 2019, Cory ran the Wendy's Fastfood RPG in Toledo at BASHCon. Ayup three years. It certainly needed to happen. I've moved to Indianapolis, back to I should say, because the city is rather central to everything that I like to do on weekends. That is roleplay and take road trips.
  While I am recovering financially from the sudden relocations of 2022, I am a bit restricted in what I am willing to do-- that mean's if I can't buy a late model car in an afternoon, I'm broke. Still BASHCON is BASHCon and Peryton showed up. We were off for an adventure and, more importantly, Adventure Gaming.
   Getting to Toledo was a bit of adventure. Somewhere along I-69, north of Kokomo, the bafflement of my car's front end decided to come loose on one side. Stopping to check things out and get a snack, I moved the cheaply built piece to spot to where it wouldn't interfere with travel. It was kind of raining hard, so I felt very manly doing so. En route once again, Robin did her navigator job of looking up things on line. We found a service station in Toledo that would help us out. An hour and a half later, we were not charged a penny because the mechanic "only had to remove a bolt." It was nice to see that people still have pride about the jobs we do. I still made sure his next lunch was paid for.
   Mind you, I can do that level of car maintenance but rain and snow were moving sideways. A garage was needed.
   That bad weather was why JerryTel had to run his "Oh Dark Cha'alt" scenario at home and not at BASHCON. Robin and I would spend the evening at our favorite Red Roof Inn in the world, doing delivery pizza and salads to make the night decadent.
   The rest of the weekend was awesome without qualification. Note that the people that I've known as kids are stepping up to run some old fashioned tabletop gaming for us old folks.

Gonzop 1- Te Fulk

 On the world of Gonzop Fulk means "species" and "folk" in the Trade language known as Dooj. Here are the three main Player-Character races, the folk, to choose from.

Nimb- These humanoids are built for mobility with endurance and speed being their strengths. About two meters (six feet) tall once they reach adulthood. Most migrate from favorite to favorite spots, and consider themelves the lords of all around them. They are not afraid of much in their way, and when they need to be afraid, they’re usually faster. Others set up very hard to get to manors or ranches, and work on building wealth or knowledge.

Imby- Generally ranging in height a meter to a meter and half (three to five feet), they are diminutive when compared to other humanoids. Some have pouches like the Nimb folk, a few will develop an antenna or multiple antennae along their foreheads. Their skin color changes from season to season enabling subtle camouflage with their surroundings.

Grabber- Up to two meters tall (six feet), these folk tend to be more muscular than those around them. They also happen to be superb climbers, despite their weight. With their dexterous hands, and feet, they are also very good builders.

These tend to be the most technological advanced species in the areas that they live in.

Over Tolkien Rehash this Year

As you might've heard, Iron Curtis is complaining that Peryton Gamers group has been getting a little quiet on the RPG get-together side of things. He's right, our group's slow down for the Holidays has been going on for a couple months. Though Crazy Ivan, Ivan Richmond, has started highlighting his Dream of Dragons ("D of D"), but that is only one game. It's not the usual two or three campaigns that we have going on.
Here's the quick preview:
Beyond Bog, Not Desert Planet  (Spacers 22-23) March to November
Wobble: Alejandro Quest part 2, May, July, September
The Starry Tower T&T, concluded by June

At the same time, the TOG rules system takes things to 21 and beyond. It's a speaker going to 11 instead of ten, but for whatnot in a roleplaying game. Why stop at level 20? A bit seriously, I really want to try out the system. Yes sorry game designer friends, I wrote the product without years of brooding over the D20 yes, come on it's "roll over/under 15, always a success" already.  Over the Summer into Winter, and probably into 2024, even with the conventions, I want to try out the rules.

And I'm looking at an older campaign world that has cropped up here from time to time. Announcing the 21 levels of Gonzop.

The "gonzo" world, meaning fantasy with very few dwarven kingdoms, will be the map that I force myself to stick to for the campaign. It's not really post-apocalyptic, but rather post-human. Let's call it Ethanol-Punk or Sorcery and Solar Power as its subgenre.

BOT a Publisher

 Sitting around, watching soccer and chatting a friend up today, we clarified, among ourselves, what is going on in the RPG community. When I say "RPG community" I mean the table-top roleplaying cottage industry. I do not mean some sort of collection of people that look after one another. I don't care how good of friends that you are with other RPG content producers, it's a race. If you're not trying, you don't get to whine.

Where's WotC going?
No where. Not for at least a year. Their betters at HASBRO have had to step in and lecture them, maybe just remind them a little, about copyright law and more importantly HOW TO SELL A PRODUCT. My shares in Hasbro have decreased by 9% since the kerfuffle began. Before any redheaded webhead declares victory, I'm still up by like 80%, maybe 120%,  since I bought them in 2009. That's like over 240$ (US), at least, a share. Cool your jets, doom and gloom dice rollers.

So during my own cool down period, I will only look abstractly at my stocks (good advice for anyone that has a real job). What I will be looking at is the roleplaying, err RPG hobby. I'm done using terms like "TTRPG" because if it's not at the tabletop, it's a flop in about sixteen months. Sure the folks involved in owning this or that electronic game for your cell phone believe, but will you and the folks that played the game with you be spending Thanksgiving evening together playing it on your cellphones thirteen years later? If your answer is "Yes" shine on you crazy diamonds. Still I believe that when it comes to the cultural phenomena of "playing D&D" everyone wants to be at a table, even if hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles from each other.

 

Copyright 2023
Peryton Publishing and Teresa Guido

The sooner that white men leave the market, the better
As a dude that gets called a "troll" because I post thoughts when I disagree with others and they are unwilling to research what they are on about, perhaps I am immune to very slight provocations. Heading towards my sixth decade alive in a couple years and having had women and "people of color" in my gaming sessions since like my first time playing D&D, my feelings aren't hurt. I'm pretty sure that the players that show up at my tables like having me around even more so than the people that I work with in THE HOBBY after they displayed unprofessional conduct while doing so. Just ask the accused, they still work with me. I can get your their current email addys. Most of them are not old, white men.

Not sure if all you alt-right froggies in the OSR mire noticed, but WotC started finding their contributors' bad manners and anti-social tendencies after 5E started making for real moneys. That's like back before Moses was crucified on Gamergate. It was a way to insinuate problems with reputations without legally removing folks on a contract. THIS IS REALLY UGLY and as a company's practice. It needs to be redressed, BUT not by guys with silvering sideburns and silly glasses (so studious!) While not taking the fall for the OGL 2023 mishaps made by whomever, whom they alternately don't know about or won't speak about, Kyle B is lying hard. Do all the web interviews he wants, he's saying much of nothing and mentioning the word "community" about four times while doing so. This does not make anything right.
Noop the racial divide in roleplaying is a distraction. Find talent already, not agendas. Need a list of people of color that make great RPG products WotC? I have six on my phone and there are more. Stop demonizing the socially awkward guys that you once once liked when publishing 5E.

To the tadpoles of Mussolini
OSR just do something. Folks at WotC and their post-2003 alumni have backed you in a corner, but that was like in 2014 until like 2141. Stop leaning into the drooling racist mode while thinking that an acronym made by other folks, folks that have moved on, will save you from the likes of me making fun of you. Really, you guys have like 195% talent that gets wasted on putting out this or that fire because somebody is pranking you. Who cares that it's because you just can't get over a dude in a dress, that one that you met that one time in Memphis... . Mind you, the gatekeepers in your group are mostly to blame. They're as jealous of you as anybody on your left.

Bot A Publisher
I keep saying this. WotC is all about firing authors and firing up plagiarism. They have this thing called "artificial intelligence" that has moved from machine intelligence to text and image gathering and rehashing others' materials as fresh product all without paying royalties. Somehow for all of the product producers' high-minded intentions as proclaimed by its users, it just keeps saving big companies money on stuff like advertising and, soon to be admitted, content.
It really is time to start fighting this trend. That does not mean approving of children watching drag-queens in public libraries in Florida or showing up at my game at GenCon with .45 Colt with intentions to kill about a dozen people. It means, stop letting corporates tell you what is right.
Write it down, make it yours. Draw it, let others see what you did. Let editors and publishers be replaced by bots, not the human element in creativity.

No One Needs Permission to Be Creative
Even if your material is reliant upon somebody else's concepts, as long as you do not use use their copied and pasted material, you are more than likely within the guidelines of a legal concept known as "Fair Use." Oh yeah, don't use other authors' unique character and creature names and whatnot. While WotC has been the villain in displaying this precedent recently, the need to hide behind another logo is just a blanket.
Publish what you want, maybe with being a little paranoid about previews. If you cannot write something, don't create a facsimile. If you can't be an artist, don't fake it.

Games Without Frontiers

Corporate overreach into Copyright and Fair Usage precedents is over this season
So the power play is  done. Of course, it's just "for now," I mean come on. The thought of including the OGL in my works started officially for me like six weeks ago for me. Four weeks ago, WOTC got all weird very publicly-- mind you the true fans of D&D were getting worried since last August. What somebody has been trying to do with a hobby, to put it into an accurate metaphor, which has always included people not employed by them making money, has been like someone trying to monopolize soup recipes.

Besides starting to write scenarios compatible for friends that are all into D&D style play, I really shouldn't have cared. But I did... .

It's the fucking principle
For some background, let's go personal. When I moved my published RPG rule conventions in my products one step away from official T&T with the Red Bat system, it was because I didn't want friction with the folks that taking over to produce new official material. This was as the folks that I had agreements went on to do other things like die or take up an Instagram career. Even when interlopers into OUR GAME's domain like Webbed Sphere arrogantly asked me to remove Tunnels and Trolls from titles of works, Peryton decided for me, let's just get along. No one, though, buying a whole lot of my and others particular PeryPubber works will not think that that stuff is compatible with T&T.  It's called FAIR USE. When a brand is created from ideas that are based on parts that are already indigenous within the market it is targeted, the owners of said brand, are entitled to ownership of the name, not the elements therein. 

When I heard that WOTC was demanding that every GM that had published self-created material in their company-owned virtual table top, Dung and Dung for your CPU, would be owned by them not the creators I was not too offended. Then as something about an OGL Alpha needing to be revised, and the, let's call them, Contractees would need to agree that their stuff out in the for sale domain was owned by that company, I started getting worried. That is like someone agreeing that water from their own property should be placed into plastic containers that they themselves must pay for for before pouring into a glass, whether drinkable or not.
This "Drinkable or Not" thing is going to come up later

This was a fight not just interesting to me. It's my life out here in the turnip fields of RPGdom while you, Captains of Cottage Industry, have been strip mining for copper from OGL Kickstarter mountains. It's okay though, it's all ideas. As long as your 19th level Beholder isn't in an fight with an Illithid in the 4th expansion of Ravenloft, NO ONE OWES anything, except, maybe, to the IRS, if, even so.

The WOTC water holders versus D&D
Business minded folks, think on this course of points. Not to be too broad, but Creatives compliment RPG manufacturers. RPG manufacturers manufacture RPGs. Artificial Intelligence and phone apps are trappings that either help creatives or plagiarize them. The folks at WOTC should have already known this, instead they chose to take directives from their ownership and mishandle things as a heavy-handed, exclusive-minded derivative brand. The product thereafter will be making money marginally for about a year at best.

When asked "Can you deal with the real market?", the leaders at WOTC demanded tithes and overreaches into their fandom's creative nature. I am no Doctor of Money-Making, but that strikes me as the wrong response in such a marginal field of sales. The underlying excuse was something about being inclusive and wanting to do good. How long does it take you to ask them, who exactly is being excluded and wanting to do harm WITHIN the purview of the company?
The answer of course being NOBODY.
Now the question is begged, there is no call to do anything.
There is no rational answer for what has occurred. Whoever at WOTC that has sought to continue an argument from 2014 with whomever needs to be fired, AND SOON.

Zardoz Takes Place in 2293

 Despite a meme going around , the plot of the movie Zardoz takes place in the year 2293. Folks that have watched the flick and like it should know that. This meme was either posted by someone that needs to watch the movie or couldn't be bothered to think of a better reason to start giving their viewing audience some awesome fashion advice but to lie.

You'll take my thigh-highs from my cold dead knees!

 Lying seems to be the coin of the realm these days. By realm I mean the roleplaying hobby and by lying, I am sure you know what I alluding to. This is causing some of the weirdest reactions in the cottage of our hobby industry.

What is Paizo is on about?
The games like Pathfinder/Starfinder have been distinct enough from WOTC prroducts for years not to need bother label them OGL. I am pretty sure the stuff was included to just remind folks that if they like D&D, they'll like these as well.
Now that WOTC is working against the OGL from 2000/2003/ beyond, Paizo announced it was doing what WOTC wanted, which was remove themselves a step further from being D&D-ish.
This O.R.C. thing does what, exactly? They are joined, at least in typing, by other companies that have made butter from the OGL as well as Chaosium which didn't. I mean it's good that the "smaller" companies in the RPG field decided to come up with a name to get their name around, but the licensing thing with its eternal foundation would be a waste of money if it ever takes place as announced. Hiring a few lawyers as sort of shield in case folks in Seattle decide to go to court to revoke U.S. copyright law just doesn't make sense. Hasbro does not want 200,000$ from Paizo, Green Ronin, Kobald Press, et al for each of the millions each of their products make. They want WOTC to shore up the D&D brand. The Open RPG movement is capitulation not defiance.
Good on them too. There is no reason for them to fight the fight of making the RPG cottage industry into "the D&D club." It'll be nice to see some well-funded material that isn't our dads' D&D.

It's the OSR that WOTC is targeting
With WOTC's management long standing strategy of working against folks that wrote for 5th edition D&D, Hasbro is looking to seize the cultural movement that can only be called, "You guys wanna play some D&D?". Its outlet, the WOTC, wanted to "lease for free" all material covered by their OGL (whatever form it took) as material for its reference base for AI material producers. Failing that they'll settle for declaring this or that third party D&D contributor unworthy of being such for reasons of their personal beliefs and artistic styles.
I doubt though, that Hasbro really wants to enable its WOTC managers, who can't help but fumble when it comes to dealing people half-way read up on things like Fair Use and copyright law, to really start challenging the Nazis and bigots that are seen in every corner in their minds. I am betting the OGL-dependent don't need to start going on hunger strikes just yet. 

It's a good year not to quit drinking
This is definitely the year to drop the OGL from any product that third party authors write for their D&D compatible publications. Maybe all the grognards will start to admit that they are roleplaying with a lot of war gaming, instead of explaining to everyone what the spirit of Gary Gygax told them when they went Mount Lake Geneva and came down with their particular rules on stone tablets. As for all the competing clubs, groups under this or that license, we'll see how that looks in two years.

"The Designer Formerly Known as Gygax"

TOG refers to The Other Game

 

So, you might've noticed a new logo on the SantaCrawl release a couple of weeks ago. It looked something like the image above. As I said before, I was really starting to look forward to making scenarios with a brand attached and really no sweat as to whom I attributed as the system and where exactly it should be used. Indeed the three sub-brands enshrined are at odds with each other to the point that anybody running the scenario under the cover would recognize, outside of a recognizable format the rules had to be interpreted by the GM.

That hasn't exactly changed. Circumstances have shifted though. 

All I can say is that these works will be compatible with rules that the Designer Formerly Known as Gygax and other folks that would not have liked to be described as "Old School" anything would recognize. With totally unconventional phrases like Charm, IQ, and Hits, the player is invited to immerse themselves in a hobby of adventure gaming. They can even roleplay if they, and the GM ,want to, without owing anybody any money. Warm up your 30-sided die because when we say polyhedral, I mean it.