Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Swords & Wizardry Boxed Set Kickstarter


Matt Finch and Frog God Games is doing a new printing of Swords and Wizardry Complete and this time it is to be a series of digest sized booklets in a boxed set. It is nearing $50k at the time I posted this. The rules are the same as Swords and Wizardry Complete, but the kickstarter offers an array of extras to accompany the boxed set. Also I been told that the box itself is deeper than it needs to be to hold further expansion.

Swords and Wizardry Kickstarter

Why Swords and Wizardy?
Back in 2008 when I was deciding on what to base my Majestic Wilderlands supplement on, I found Matt Finch's Swords and Wizardry Core. Compared to the d20 SRD and the other retro-clone of the time, I found Swords and Wizardry, Core to be the closest thing to an ur version of DnD available. In addition it was accompanied by a version of the rulebook that was an editable document. I especially liked how Matt incorporated ascending AC alongside the traditional AC system.

So I used it as the foundation for my Majestic Wilderlands supplement and all the work I done for classic edition since. In addition I am making sure that the Majestic Fantasy rules that I am working remain compatible. That it can function on its own or as a supplement to Swords and Wizardry.

Digest sized books and The Boxed Set
I am partial to using digest size (5.5" by 8.5") for my rules material. It is great to see Frog God Games coming out with a version of Swords and Wizardry in this format. I also like the fact it is a boxed set. There been several attempts at releasing boxed sets for various clones. While cool it is barely on this side of doable for many OSR publishers. The handling and shipping is murder for most. It is great that Frog God Game taking a run at this and I hope it works out economically for them.

So if you are interested stop by the kickstarter and see it interests you.

Fight On!

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

More work on the Wild North

Working through the last of the terrain entries for the Wild North. It is a bit of a challenge to try to summarize dozens of square miles in a few sentences and make it a useful inspiration for a campaign.

One reason I added terrain entries is that during the Necromancer Games Wilderlands project I saw how useful they were to summarize an area of the map that would otherwise be a series of separate hex entries.

So after this I will have to go through the text and correct any obvious editing mistakes as well as consistency. Finally I will pick out a few locales and draw small local maps in the same way I did Castle Blackmarsh in Blackmarsh.

Finally I will able to get this edited and into the layout process. Below are some of the latest samples from the text.

The Frostgrims (Hex 0428)
Snowcapped spires reach into sky fencing ice filled valleys. Amid the shadows, Remorhaz (HD 6 to 13) tunnel beneath the ice and snow. Frost Giants (HD 10+3) dwell in castles built on the stony crags. They consider Remorhaz to be a great delicacy and hunt them alongside packs of Winter Wolves (HD 5).

Throughout the mountains are the ruined towers of Thules, Outposts established to harvest crystalline shards of viz that freeze out of the air in the early morning before dawn on the highest peaks (Hexes 0226, 0228, 0328, 0329). The Thules had to act quickly as they would melt an hour after the sun rises.

Searching for Viz
Typically 1d6 viz will appear 1d3 hours before dawn. Each viz takes 1 hour per person with arcane knowledge to find. A serious danger is the thin air, without magic characters have to make a saving throw every hour or pass out. It typically takes two hours of climbing to reach the peaks. The Thules used magic carpets or the fly spells to cut down on the travel time as well as using a lost variant of Control Winds to thicken the air in order to breath properly while searching.

The Great Glacier (Hex 0320)
Once covering nearly all of the Wild North, the Great Glacier is still slowly retreating to the northwest. It southeast face is riddled with crevasses and subglacial caves where icy cold streams emerge. Calving ice sheets are also a danger as in some areas the glacier’s edge forms a cliff 10 to 20 feet high. Travel on the glacier’s surface is also hazardous due to the numerous crevasses and moulins. A moulin is a sinkhole up to 10 feet in diameter that in a few cases reaches down to the bottom of the glacier.

Aside from the dangers of the terrain, the glacier surface is relatively free of animal life or monsters. A few small Remorhaz (HD 6 to 8) lair in the southern third. The white dragon, Rekokardek, is known to lair somewhere in northern third of the glacier (Hex 0215). The glacier’s flat surface makes surprising her almost impossible.

More common are the ruins of the Thules and the occasional Frost Giant castle (Hex 0421) found amid the nunataks jutting above the glacier surface. The ancient Thules used their towers on the glacier as a bastion from which to rule their fallen empire. They experimented with magic involving water and ice, some of which still remains undiscovered beneath the gravel and snow.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Zweihander, Open Content and a reply to Daniel Fox

The Old School Renaissance or OSR, rest on the foundation of open content released under the Open Gaming License. Open content is what allowed this segment of the hobby to become then just a regurgitation of classic DnD content and tropes. 

For everyone who worked to support the classic editions 'as is' dozens more emerged to take them into new direction. New genres, or infusing a new version with a different tone or tenor than the originals. All of this was possible because the use of open content placed no restrictions on the next author imagination. The main requirement being is that anything you use or is based on open content must also be open content along with retaining proper credit.

For over a decade this has fueled an amazing array of works and products using not only classic edition of DnD but other older games as well. Including hybrid fusing older concepts with newer mechanics and ideas. The result is a dazzling array of products and works for anybody tastes within the tabletop roleplaying hobby. Five thousand+ on DriveThruRPG's site alone.

Yes there are individual and companies that don't contribute open content yet strive to take advantage of the OSR label. One of them is Daniel Fox and his Zweihander. RPG. Recently Erik over at Tenkar's Tavern pointed out the incongruity of having a OSR community content program.

Daniel had this reply

Hi Erik,
Thanks for the post. A few points of factual clarification:
* Zweihander Grim & Perilous RPG was released under Creative Commons License non-commercial. This means anyone can take, remix, reduce and create their own free content, unbound by a license.
* Commercial efforts for community content can be monetized through the Grim & Perilous Library, our Dungeon Master Guild at DriveThruRPG. They are released in PDF, and print-on-demand starting in February. Commercial efforts can only be released via DriveThruRPG.
* RPGs Powered By Zweihander (our commercial IP license) are released by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Examples include the upcoming Colonial Gothic Grim & Perilous RPG.
My design intention: the argument whether Zweihander RPG is OSR isn’t ours to make, but our fans believe it’s an OSR game. The OSR was one of the design principles when it was written, influenced by Maelstrom and other older games that hadn’t been revived at the time.Thus, why we categorize it as OSR.
OSR isn’t just D&D. It may have started there, but there are numerous examples of games classified as OSR that aren’t D20-based

The argument that Daniel make is disingenuous, the debate isn't what rule system is to be considered part of the OSR, the debate is whether open content is to be primary driver of the OSR.

The first thing to keep in mind that Zweihander is the result of Daniel's own work. While inspired by the first two Warhammer edition it is not a clone in the sense that OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, or Swords and Wizardry are clone of various classic edition. It is a system that is design to appeal to fans of early editions of Warhammer Fantasy, and to easily be understood by those fan. This is important to understand because this mean that in regards to Zweihander IP, Daniel has complete control over how it is to be presented and used.

Unlike the situation I have with Judges Guild where I am licencee and thus limited in what I can do with it. For the recent Wilderlands releases only the Monster & Treasure section was released as open content. But where I do have complete control, I tend to release the work as open content under the OGL For example Blackmarsh, and much of the material found in Stuff in the Attic.

.  Why? Because it only fair. While I do a lot of my own work when it comes to settings like Blackmarsh, when it comes mechanics and rules, I stand on the foundation built by past authors. Those publishing in the 70s and 80s. Those publishing now in the 2010s. So it only fair that I contribute back, not halfheartly but fully in the same spirit that the material I used was given.

As for the OSR label, what it is the largely the work of hundreds of author doing their own thing. My voice may reach a larger audience but I don't have any bigger say about what the OSR mean then the individual who just shared their first adventure last week. But I am not going to stay silent when I see people not contributing or in Daniel's case justifying why they are not fully sharing.

Breaking it down.
* Zweihander Grim & Perilous RPG was released under Creative Commons License non-commercial. This means anyone can take, remix, reduce and create their own free content, unbound by a license.
This is a nice thing to do. However it is not sufficient. The reason many in the OSR prize the freedom to commercialize their work is that many project need some kind of return in order to happen. To buy art, editing, or layout services. The non-commercial restriction means you only have the freedom to do something if it on your own dime. Which is fine for somebody like me who makes a decent living from a job. But not fine for somebody who has little to no income.

Keep in mind that most OSR project are written, produced, and sold within somebody's time they have for a hobby. Usually the income these work generate won't make them rich but it will just enough to make it possible compared to what else they could be doing with that time.

Commercial efforts for community content can be monetized through the Grim & Perilous Library, our Dungeon Master Guild at DriveThruRPG. They are released in PDF, and print-on-demand starting in February. Commercial efforts can only be released via DriveThruRPG.
First of all the Grim and Perilous Library is not a DM Guild program. It is a Onebookshelf Community Content program. Each program has their own license and their own body of IP that they offer. The only thing in common is that they are managed by Onebookshelf through DriveThruRPG.

Second every program except the Genesys Foundry but including the Grim & Perilous Library has the following restriction. This excerpt is taken from the license attached to the Grim & Perilous Library.
(b) Except for short promotional excerpts used to promote your Work, you may not display, recreate, publish, distribute or sell your Work (or derivatives thereof) outside of the Program administered on OBS websites or through other platforms or channels authorized or offered by Owner.
(snip)
(b) Exclusive License to your Work. Effective as of the date you setup your Work through the Program on OBS’s website, you grant us the exclusive, irrevocable license for the full term of copyright protection available (including renewals), to develop,
license, reproduce, print, publish, distribute, translate, display, publicly perform and transmit your Work, in whole and in part, in each country in the world, in all languages and formats, and by all means now known or later developed, and the right to prepare derivative works of your Work.
 The implication of the above is twofold, the first is that you can't bring an existing work or existing open content into a worked released within the Grim & Perilous Library. Second, any work you release first within the Grim & Perilous Library, you lose the right to use it outside of the program even if you remove all of the Zweihander IP.

In effect if you wrote the Cave of the Night Warlock for Zweihander you can't release it later for DnD 5th edition even if you removed all of Daniel's Zweihander IP.

Needless to say, I very opposed to this provision and view as unnecessary for any program except those that are focused on sharing setting IP like Traveller's Third Imperium or WoTC's Forgotten Realms.

There is now an alternative, a few month back the Genesys community had an outcry about this issue. Fantasy Flight had OBS chancg the license. Removing the clauses limiting derivatives work and putting in new limit stating only FFG IP has to be remove for a work to be used outside of the program.

So it is within Daniel's power to have this changed for the Grim & Perilous Library.

My design intention: the argument whether Zweihander RPG is OSR isn’t ours to make, but our fans believe it’s an OSR game. The OSR was one of the design principles when it was written, influenced by Maelstrom and other older games that hadn’t been revived at the time.Thus, why we categorize it as OSR.
OSR isn’t just D&D. It may have started there, but there are numerous examples of games classified as OSR that aren’t D20-based
The debate isn't over whether the OSR label includes non DnD systems like Zweihander. That ship has long since sailed. The debate is whether the label OSR stands for sharing open content free from any condition other than to share. In my opinion a generous as Daniel has been with his IP, that generosity doesn't met the standard of many of us who use the OSR label who offer material free of any condition other than to share as we have.

What should be done about this?
As I stated many times before nobody controls the OSR label. It widely known because many, including myself, adopted it as a shorthand for their own work. What it is a result of our combined work over time not of any one person or smaller group.

But I do have opinions, and one of them that the OSR is at its best when sharing open content. A thing that doesn't just benefit a particular system or edition but the entire hobby. The way to ensure that the OSR continues to stand for sharing open content, is to share. Share your thoughts on open content, make content and share under a open license like the OGL, and support those who do share open content.

In doing these we will ensure that the next five thousand works are every bit as amazing as the first five thousand.

Update
So I talked to Daniel Fox over on Discord and learned something interesting about how OBS handles the Community Content Program. That is largely on the publisher to police including enforcing the above clause. Several people on in the Grim & Perilous program have published their work elsewhere. Daniel was receptive to changing the license to one more like the Genesys Foundry to better reflect what he is already doing.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

An update to the Majestic Fantasy rules

I hope everybody had a good holiday. To start the new year off, I am posting a small update of the Majestic Fantasy RPG rules which are based on and compatible with Frog God Games' Swords and Wizardry RPG.

I added some missing spells notably Magic Missile, but it left me with three blank pages. After looking through my draft of the full rules I added sections on Horses, and Dogs. Along with selected hirelings useful for level 6 or lower, Animal Trainer, Man-at-arms, Porter, and Servant.

You can download Revision 10 from here.

Bat in the Attic News
I am still at work on the draft of the Wild North. Currently I am finishing up the terrain notes. After that is finished, I will draw some maps of the main settlements along with some notes similar to Castle Blackmarsh in Blackmarsh. I am shooting for a first quarter release.

This will include a separate poster map option so you don't have to hunt down a printer to print the maps. I can't combine them as DriveThruRPG keeps their card ordering system (which posters use) separate from their book ordering system. The maps will be grayscale similar to those in Blackmarsh.

Remember this version of the Wild North will adjoin the northern edge of Blackmarsh as shown below.


Click you will see the full size map.