Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 31-01-2009
Category : Non-RPG, Open Game Table, RPG, Site News
With the upcoming RPG Blog Anthology some discussion about copyright and other legal issues on the RPG Bloggers Network was inevitable. Perhaps you already have read the posts on The Bonemaster and The Core Mechanic.
Jonathan from The Core Mechanic included comments from the original posts into the first draft of the RPG Blog Anthology. That is not uncommon for this kind of publication and it was his impression that comments are considered part of the blog post and that the comment’s author has already given the blog author the right to share, modify and republish the post. Others are not so sure and added some “Terms of Service” to their site to make sure they don’t have to ask the permission of the blog’s author when they want to use the comment in future publications.
And perhaps you’ve noticed that I decided to release the content of this blog under a Creative Commons license. Then it struck me! I already have a binding contract with Jonathan in which I gave him a non-exclusive license to publish one of my blog posts in the upcoming RPG Blog Anthology. Does he have to release the anthology under the CC now, too? Or have I broken my agreement with him? At first I was a bit worried, but then I noticed a small word that at once solves everything: non-exclusive. The CC license is non-exclusive, so as the owner of my content I am still allowed to enter any other non-exclusive agreements.
But back to the comments issue. From what I know the US law regarding copyright etc. has already been adapted to the internet age. That’s not the case in many other countries like Germany, where I live. That makes things a bit more difficult. But even without a TOS we can take some things for granted:
- the comments are owned by their respective authors
- the comment’s author already gave you a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the comment solely for the purpose of displaying on your blog
I thought about adding some legal mumbo-jumbo in addition to the CC license already there, but I decided against it. When I want to use a comment in something like the RPG Blog Anthology I will just ask nicely for the author’s permission. And if I don’t get it or I can’t contact him or her? Then I am obviously out of luck and live will go on…
Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 30-01-2009
Category : Non-RPG, RPG, Site News
I’ve finally decided to release my blog’s content under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
This means you can now share and remix my posts as long as you credit my work properly, don’t use it to create commercial works and you have to release your results under the same license.
To reflect this change I’ve added a CC logo to the sidebar and there are more extensive information on the site’s license on my About page.
If you have any questions and comments please let me know in the comments section.
Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 30-01-2009
Category : D&D4e, DDI, RPG, Reviews & First Looks
This morning I downloaded the D&D Character Builder Demo version. Within a few minutes I had created a sample character and I was surprised how easy everything worked. But there’s still some room for improvement.
Download and Installation
The download is advertised almost everywhere on the official D&D site, so it’s hard to miss. You then download a tiny program that then downloads the actual software. *Sigh* Why is this necessary? Why not link to the ddisetup.exe file directly? There must be some obscure reason I am probably too dumb to understand. When I am not mistaken you also need a pretty up-to-date version of the .NET Framework to run the CB. But when you have some high bandwith internet connection it just takes you a few minutes longer to install the program. The installation itself is pretty straightforward.
Creating a character
Creating a character starts with race selection. I was surprised that even the CB includes all races and classes released so far (including the ones from Dragon magazine that were released before you had to pay for DDI). And since all rules and flavor texts are included you could probably easily use these races and classes without even having the original books (or magazines). Of course you’ll run into trouble as soon as you want to bring those characters to level 4. The DDI subscriber version of the CB obviously includes all 30 levels.
Choosing the different ability scores, feats, skills, powers for your character is very easy and since you get all necessary information you can create characters without even looking once at your rulebooks. The Auto Pick function that auto picks ability scores, skills and equipment for you, works pretty well. This comes in handy if you want to create some run-of-the-mill NPCs fast.
Campaign Settings and Character Sheets
After you’ve made all your choices, the program saves your character and you can print out a character sheet that includes power cards and even cards for things like second wind. That’s a very big plus in my book and what could lead me to subscribe to DDI after all. Although I have noticed a few bugs here as well: the font on the “Dragon Breath” power card was way to big, so that instead of the full descriptive text you only get the word “Attac” in size 72 or so. I hope this is just a problem with either the demo or my PC. Has anyone else encountered this bug? And is it in the “full” version, too?
You can decide on which option you choose for you campaign setting. You can easily decide which books you allow and you can add house rules. The program even tracks is your character is still legal for tournament play (or whatever you call those RPGA events).
Final Thoughts
I am impressed! The CB is much better than I initially expected but it’s far from being perfect. You can get a character summary in text form to copy and paste into e-mails, forums, etc. but this summary doesn’t have the usual stat block format. You can’t export PDF of the character sheet and it would have been nice to be able to print out single power cards. I don’t want to print out the entire sets everytime I spilled coffee on one of the cards. But all in all it’s a pretty nice piece of software that helps you to create characters in mere minutes. That’s a feat that I was never able to achieve using the traditional method. It just takes too long to find the necessary information in the books. But I really would prefer to pay a one-time fee to download the CB instead of paying a couple bucks every month to use it. So I will probably stick to the demo version until Wizards decide to change their policy.
Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 30-01-2009
Category : Advice, RPG
Every now and then a mere player decides he has to rise above his fellow men and become a gamemaster. And trust me, being a GM is not as hard as it sounds. And if you really think that the GM is “better” then the players you really should rethink your decision.
“Games give you a chance to excel, and if you’re playing in good company you don’t even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.” (Gary Gygax)
In my opinion everyone at the table is responsible for the fun of the group. It’s neither the players’ job to entertain the GM nor the GM’s job to fight the players. In the perfect game players and GM experience an epic story together and everyone is contributing his part.
So, what do you have to do when you start GMing? At first I would advise you to choose a roleplaying system and setting you know. Especially when you are a newbie GM you shouldn’t try to learn two new trades at a time. Learning to GM is hard enough even when you know the rules and campaign setting by heart. Of course if you and your friends haven’t played a pen & paper RPG before, you’ll be forced to start from scratch.
→ Continue
Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 29-01-2009
Category : RPG, Site News
Stargazer’s World can now be followed on Twitter. Following the current trend to integrate Twitter with one’s blog I’ve added some plugins to my Wordpress installation to make sure that new blog posts get automatically send to Twitter. You can also view my five latest tweets on the sidebar to the right.
If you are also on Twitter, you can follow me the old fashioned way of course. Just point your browsers to www.twitter.com/sanastar and press “Follow”!
Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 28-01-2009
Category : Freebies, Other Systems, RPG, Reviews & First Looks
A friend of mine is an avid fan of ICE’s classic roleplaying game Rolemaster. I still have some very fond memories of our Rolemaster campaigns set into his homebrew world Ebur. When ICE announced HARP he preordered it and when it finally came out we tried it out as soon as possible. And it felt much like Rolemaster but more modern, more streamlined.
Rolemaster (especially in its later editions) can be mindboggling. If you like math-heavy and crunchy systems with a lot of tables (including very cool critical hit tables) Rolemaster is the perfect game system for you. But everyone else should have a look at HARP.
In my opinion HARP is Rolemaster done right. It still has the old-school feel of Rolemaster but is much less crunchy. And the best thing is that there’s actually a free preview version of HARP available. The 89-page PDF includes everything you need to play, including rules for character creation, combat and even a set of monsters.
By the way, my fellow blogger Zachary posted about HARP today, too, so check out his blog while you’re at it.
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