New Traveller PDF Beta

So over at DriveThru RPG, Mongoose is putting up a new Traveller beta-test buy in ($20 witha $20 voucher off POD or PDF). The most-famous misspelling of pen-and-paper sci-fi returns yet again to grace our gaming tables, and I have a couple thoughts on this.

Now, this is an interesting development. This is supposedly like the current black-book editions of Traveller Mongoose prints, but a cleaned-up, streamlined, and bug-fixed edition of the rules. I like this approach, printing the game as PDF-only during the beta while continuing to improve the rules, and also supporting the game via an early buy-in. It admits the faults of the RPG development model while minimizing the 'dead book' syndrome most all v1.0 pen-and-paper games have.

It feel so easy to put out a pen-and-paper game today that a lot of what we get are untested and beta versions of the game, and the next edition is really the one you want to play. I am not really a fan of fixing rules in later expansion books (Pathfinder's Unchained and D&D 5's Unearthed Arcana), as this just forces me to buy another book and support that at my table as well. It has gotten to the point where the pedigree of the company has to be really stellar or I will just buy the PDF and skip the printed book. Or we will play older games or community-supported retro-clones that just work.

So, new Traveller? I have so many editions of this game that we don't play I am hesitant to jump in, honestly. This feels like a Shadowrun situation for me where I bought into an older version (4.0) and don't play it enough to warrant going out and getting a whole new edition to learn and play.

There is also Fantasy Flight's Star Wars looming over my group's play time like a small moon. And that's no small moon.

Still, I feel Traveller is worthy of our support. Mongoose supports open gaming (I don't know on the OGL status of this game, but it would surprise me if they pulled back), and open gaming with build-your own licensing is pro-community and  pro-indie, and that is a good thing worthy of praise and buying in. Perhaps this version will be built with a more mod-able and open rules structure that more games can be built from. I will probably eventually pick this up, but I don't want to buy-in just yet, let my group blast through Star Wars first, then this game looks like a fun change-of-pace to run next year when things shake out and settle down.

So I am cautiously positive about this one and looking forward to seeing how this comes out.

Everyone Needs to Play This!

Yeah, that above line. That's what you want to hear. It's like the days when World of Warcraft was hot because that's what everyone at work played, and you had to too so you could be a part of the water-cooler discussions.

Pathfinder? D&D 5?

We're not there yet or the boat never got here.

Pen-and-paper games are terribly niche. It feels easier to sell a boxed board game in Barnes & Noble such as Arkham Horror or Risk than it does to sell a "concept" like "pen and paper roleplaying" to people. This is not for the faithful, this more applies to new players, you know, the next generation of players.

What would it take for fantasy roleplaying to go mainstream again?

You are platform building, like an operating system. Computer companies know how to get market share, and it typically goes like this:

1. Release an OS that is easy to pirate or get for free
2. Support lots of pirated and free software
3. When you control the market, lock things down because the party's over

It's a cynical view, but there's a truth to this. If your game or OS is everywhere, you will control the users, even if you are not making any money doing it. That's more important when you launch, because you can worry about locking in that user base later and monetizing them after they have built up a substantial investment in software or gaming books that it would be too painful to go anywhere else.

It was this way with D&D 3 and the OGL and d20 SRD. Paizo kept supporting those games, and took many of the locked in users with them. If D&D 4 was the "upgraded Windows 7 version" of D&D 3's "Windows XP," things would have been different. But D&D 4 went Windows 8 instead, and you got a split in the market where some people liked the concept, and some long-time users didn't.

So Windows 10 and D&D 5 feel like the "what did we do last night?" hangover games and OS's returning to the familiar way of doing things. They feel like iterative "return to the normal" experiences that you have to use rather than a breakout experience that causes a market hysteria and rush of new users and players. If you want to keep using a PC, yeah, you will probably need to use Windows 10 some day. If you want to be a part of the hobby store crowd, yeah, you will have to pick up D&D 5 and learn how to play. Pathfinder is always there for the D&D 3 crowd as well, existing like a Android or Chrome OS for those fans.

I'm reminded of Apple's new OSX Yosemite upgrade and how nothing really changed much but some backend stuff, the UI, and some icons. It still feels like the same solid design, and they didn't go all iPad on us desktop users and force a new way of doing things on us. There was no major change in the way things were done, there is no "hangover version" of the OS, and things still work the way they did. Apple is conservative, because it know not to mess with the way users know and love how to do things, unless a major-major change is needed and they have no good options (Final Cut, etc).

In a way, roleplaying is already mainstream, it's just online games and communities have taken the torch from pen and paper games and people "roleplay" in a million different ways in a million different programs everyday. D&D has to become relevant to those roleplaying fans again, a platform for people to express themselves in fantasy settings and worlds. They are split off roleplaying in World of Warcraft to Second Life, often roleplaying in games that don't even have basic support for meaningful player interaction or dungeon mastering.

Those are your users.

I feel we are three of four generations of D&D style games away from this point because we just don't have the vision and willpower to make this a reality. D&D does not need a new set of paper rules to get to the mainstream conversation again, it needs a vision of what the product can be.

The Casual Pen-and-Paper Gamer

This is the new battleground. The casual pen-and-paper gamer.

They are by definition exclusively new players too, drawn in from the world of video games, MMOs, cell phone games, Youtube, tablets, and other places. Forget the hardcore - they are already playing and bought-in, the profits and future customers of the roleplaying depend on new players.

Every industry chases 'the new player' and you even see legacy MMOs in decline trying to reinvent themselves to attract a new player base. This is where World of Warcraft is right now, a declining (but mature) hobby struggling to reinvent itself for that large group of casual players out there with little time to invest and who frankly aren't sold on the idea of logging to a faction grind in every day.

World of Warcraft's problem is essentially Zynga's with Farmville and Mafia Wars - how do you make a game interesting to play when it is essentially a game of "who gets bigger numbers?" Granted in each those 'numbers' turn out to be little pieces of gear, new critters for the farm, or a bigger number to bonk other players over the head with - but they are numbers hidden by 3d graphics, achievements, pets, or other virtual representations. Sometimes they are just numbers, like stamina or the endless faction reputation values in WoW.

Numbers are not cool.

Social, right? Our game is a social experience! World of Warcraft was like that for a while, you played because that's where everybody else was, but social is never a reason to play something when no one is playing, it's fire without fuel. Social can amplify a game's popularity, but you can't sell people on social in a barren desert. Unless you are Las Vegas, but that's only been done once.

So the casual player, that incredibly large mass of players out there with nothing else better to do than wait to play your game. Right? You have to answer the question, why should they? D&D 5, Pathfinder Beginner Box, or Five Moons, why play? What makes this as 'pick up and play' as the next Angry Birds? What makes this game so cool I will sit and watch people play it endlessly on Youtube? Look at your game. Is it really that casual? Is it really that fun? What screams at people and engages them? What makes this game so fun that you have to play it, or even watch people play it?

If your answer is "we have better numbers" you are not thinking it right.

There is a question, how many casuals pen-and-paper gamers are out there? While I love Pathfinder or even D&D 5 I know plenty of people that play casual games who's eyes would water just looking at the books and dismiss them as 'not for them'. Of course the hard-core players love these games, and we system wars ourselves to incredible lengths over them - that's just who we are. But those casuals. Who are they? What are they doing now? How do you entice them?

How do you get them to say, "This is cool! I wanna be doing this!"

Or most importantly, "I want to be seen doing this."

Preview: 13th Age

13th Age is a d20 based RPG put out by Pelgrane Press, due to be released in March 2013. It has a fascinating linage of designers, primarily Rob Hiensoo and Jonathan Tweet.  For those in the know, these are the lead designers of D&D's 4th and 3rd editions, respectively. This is like Prince and Jimi Hendrix coming together to do an album, so I was surprised to just discover this myself. Why this isn't getting more press, I don't know; since based on the preview PDF (pre order), this is a solid design and take on a d20 game, with a lot of what we liked about 3rd and 4th editions all in one game.

This is a d20 based game, maxing out at 10 levels. This is an interesting choice, but understandable. It seems that one level in TA equals about three in D&D, at least in character power. For those of you coming from D&D4, all the parts that require a computer are gone, which I thank the gods for! It is a simpler game, stripped down to the bare essence of a d20 based game, with the powers, magic, and monsters you would come to expect. The differences lie in character creation (backgrounds), and the way the characters interact with the world (icons and the relationship system).

There are a significant amount of differences here to set it apart form the sea of d20 clones, George doesn't agree, but I see quite a few evolutionary steps, along with a couple revolutionary ones. One of the most interesting is your base damage is equal to your weapon damage per level of character. A fifth level fighter using a longsword does 5d8 + stat mods. Spells can be upgraded with upgrade slots every level, which is another cool thing (a max-ed out magic missile does 10d6 - yowza). There are a bunch of things that scale like that, from spell damage to hit points, so it does definitely feel different. The difference in power between levels is dramatic, which is nice.

If I had to pin it down, I would say it feels like if someone took 3rd Ed D&D and made a scaling MMO system out of it - but retained the 3rd Ed feel. Where 4th Ed went off the rails with it's thousands of powers and computer required system, this is closer to the book, and keeps everything simple, while still allowing for the MMO power scale curve to take place. It does not feel like the MMO-ish 4th Ed, but rather a like a cool version of the Final Fantasy SNES game's power curve applied to a 3rd Ed ruleset.

The world is great, if you likes the whole 'points of light' world crafting of 4th Ed, you are in for a treat. Here we have 'points of light 2.0' with epic (godlike) beings that live on the world, a faction and relationship system, a destiny thing going on, unique backgrounds, and an avoidance of infinite planes of existence. The world is split into three parts, the normal world, an underworld, and a plane-of-air style place up above.  Ad nauseam wheels, parallel worlds, infinite earths, and other tropes are not mentioned here - you can safely assume heaven, hell, the realms of the gods, and everything else can be reached in the normal world by foot, hoof, boat, or wing.

The world also has normal area, champion areas, and 'even the thorns on the rose bush will kill you' epic areas - really cool. I like this feel, where places in the world are catastrophically dangerous - you don't get that in Pathfinder or other games. Even D&D4 reduced that dynamic in later books, so it is fun to see it come back. It allows for interesting world setups, such as, "The entryway to Hell is on the map, over there, knock yourself out." If you are looking for a spiritual successor to D&D4's fascinating world setup, you will find it here. George is pumped about this setup as well, and we both agree, it is one of the best parts about this game.

We will be play testing this more as we read through things, and eagerly await our pre-order book. Until now, the quest for "What comes after 4th Ed?" seemed to be a two-way race between Pathfinder and D&D5. Now, the best of both of those games comes together and throws a hat into the ring. 13th Age is an underdog in this race, but it is an important game - both in design, creativity, and history. Watch for this, it is not just another D&D clone, it is actually exciting and dare I say it (for a d20 game), cool.

Releases March 2013, pre-order on the publisher's site, and receive the preview PDF for free.