Clashlands and the Future...

Okay. I know it's been a while. Clearwire problems pretty much shot my ability to use the internet and though I have had it back for over a week, back on Comcast, I have been busy catching up on all the other crap I was behind on due to lack of net access.. I mean, I'm totally a first generation kid of the digital age. I don't even have a TV because I depend on the net for all my input... But anyway, I'm back but not yet back into the swing of things and when I am, finishing up my picture projects comes first... SO what's happenning and what's the plans?

Well, Dystopian Dreams RPG is definitely on my to-do list as leveless and fixed Hitpoint game concept based on the 3.5 d20 system, but it will be a while coming. Along side it, will be the Clashlands setting I was first focused on when I set up this blog in the first place, but I have bigger ideas for Clashlands that I am putting this out as a first call on, though it will easily be 6 months before I can get the foundations set up. My idea is to introduce the Clashlands setting first to players as a MUD... That's right.. a text based RPG MUD, and if I can pull it off, it will be a test platform for the rule system as well. That will be a big time consumer when the time comes, and is not something I am completely unfamiliar with having been involved in the design of a few MUDs and MUSHes over the years. The big issue will be that in doing it, I really do want to set it up from the core out as original code so it is not bound by any licensing restrictions on derivation from past MUD code. On the otherhand I do NOT mind putting it together with pieces of code that are GNU licensed.

In other news, it looks like the RPG4.ME idea might actually go somewhere. The friend I have been talking to about it likes the idea enough that she is supposed to be crunching out code to partner up on it with me and in the process launch her own market ideas in similar venues... The whole e-book market is something she never noticed before, so it's a bit of a shock to her, but at anyrate, I may be involved in setting up another e-book source on the net, and LPjr, I'd host you logo on my site.

Hypocritical douchebags...

Oh, this post doesn't actually have much to do with gaming other than why I haven't been able to actually do much of any lately. It's really about Clearwire and how I am jumping into the Clearwire sucks crowd completely. Oh, and do they suck.

A post on my photoblog preceeded this one by a few days. It basically explained that my efforts to upload images had basically been halted until Clearwire can clean up my connection issues or let me out of my contract. Well, this post is a followup to it and this blog I see more as my bitching post than my photo-blog, so it's being found here.

Months ago I had issues with Comcast harassing me in their collections department over a bill that was less overdue than their normal bitching point by a month. Suffice it to say I told them to shove it for harassment. Well, I'm going back to Comcast now, but still not planning to stand for anymore harassment from them... no advertising either. Clearwire is where I ended up. Talked to a local guy in one of mall kiosks. Clearly a fellow with some neurological issues and that's not meant insulting so much as an "it takes one to know one" sort of comment. It was in the facial expressions and speech pattern, but I'm really not intending to pick on anyone for any disabilities. My only issue for bringing him up is that it was a question I'd asked him that got me deciding on Clearwire and not looking for some DSL service.

I had asked the fellow if the service worked for watching video. He asked if I meant You-Tube. I was yes, like You-Tube, i-Tunes, Hulu.com, and other video sites. He said that it worked for them. I went on Clearwire's own pages and checked for signs of video support. What I found are multiple links to news in the form of videos, an installation video right on their homepage and video online ads in the form of video user testimonials (all from people who previously used dialup, mind you). So to me, I was no signs of lack of video support. If you want to check right now, go check. Go you clearwire's homepage and search for the word 'video'. At my time of writing this up, what mostly shows up on the list is news reports about Clearwire in the form of video clips... Nothing against video.

Now, you can check their services pages too. It will list download speeds of up to 25x dialup, and "Fast, reliable internet" and they throw around the word broadband. Oh, yeah, one of their techs on the phone tried to tell me broadband meant limited bandwidth and not broad bandwidth. He tried to tell it means there are a broad number of people trying to use a little bandwidth. Heh... No. Not what it meants.

At any rate, almost since I got the service back at the start of April, I been complaining about latency issues.. That is ping times over a second, and packet loss as high as 80%. Also seconds to minutes of total disconnections... Not fast. Not reliable. Now, they have this wonderful clause if you get into their service with any sort of a discount that charges outragious fees on cancellation, and they don't want to give it up no matter what, under no conditions without a legal fight... At this point, my service is being canceled and I been through 3 layers of accounting customer support, months of technical support hoops to jump through and they still can't tell me they have dropped the cancellation fee.

On top of all this, they keep trying to tell me that my desire to play videos violates their Acceptable Use Policy. Uhm... No... it doesn't.. Not without some serious reading between the lines on those "As clearwire deems under it's sole discression" crap.

No.. There was a recent court issue, though the details of the story slip my mind at the moment, that ruled for once and for all against the legality of advertisements which promise one thing in the big print and then take it away in the fine print. And in this case it's not even in the print. It's open ended loopholes they keep trying to call policy, but yet when I ask them to define it for me, they can't point me to solid limits or policies I am actually violating. Besides, with 80% packet loss and serious latency issues, I'm going to be pulling for a lot more bandwidth than I am actually needing because all those lost packets need to be re-sent or re-demanded. Lost downloads that are disconnected mid-download usually need to be started over from the beginning. Web pages that won't load because of latency issues need to be reloaded in full to get them to display. Really, I was happier 10 years ago on 756k DSL with a lot of garbage (about 125kps) coming down my pipe constantly than I have been with Clearwire. I was actually happier with 56k dialup before that.

So, anyway, I have reordered my Comcast at this point. It should be hooked up a week from now, next thursday. I have started the process of closing down my Clearwire account. Between the two, I might be semi-netless for a bit. And as far as how Clearwire settles the account, I'm going to be contacting my bank to tell them to change the card number on the account I registered with Clearwire, and then if they do try to still charge me a cancellation fee, I'll see them in court over it.. It's only about a 5 hour drive to their corporate offices from where I live, and I'm willing to pay the $150 it would take me to set up the small claims court case. I even have a relative in the area that I could crash with for a night or two and they just happen to be an Attorney.

What this sums up to mean is that I been pretty much tied up with Clearwire issues for days. My service has been so bad that trying to do more than just post blog entries is quite iffy. I am about a week behind on everything I been planning to because of ISP issues... Blogger could not be contacted, progress is unsaved errors keep happening as I am working on this and they almost never happened on Comcast. I'm not sure how much longer it will be before I can get things back into swing since most of what I do in some way relies on the internet, but next thursday my woes of the past months should be over and I should be back to my internet actually working in real time again.

RPGs4.me?

Uhm... Timing, timing, timing.... In my upset with the split in the gaming industry, RPGNow's deleting of the 4th edition compatible logo, etc., I been milling around in my mind the idea of pitching in at setting up a gaming store and game review site, not really run by myself so much as a similar minded group. Just another idea I been milling around.

I used to be camping on a few domain names for the possibility of doing just this, for years, anyway... I had RPGguild.net, RPGcorner.net, RPing.net and several others. Nothing ever came of any of it, and it got too expensive to keep camping on... and I've never been good at selling ideas.

So, all this in mind, I started milling through the old domains I let expire to find them all already taken by someone else that can afford to camp on them, so I started considering new name possibilities. While milling through new names, I noticed the new domain type of .me. Intended for personal sites like .name domains as well as new marketting site in the .me market... Well, Games4.me is snagged by someone already, but RPGs4.me wasn't... Anyone with marketting skills want to help me set up yet another online digital market for online materials that would work side by side with RPGnow's network of storefronts and Paizo?

Even if I don't get any bites, I will be doing something with that domain, even if it's setting up a reviews blog and some open forums on it. Infact I have a friend with all the skills to go in with me on this and make it work. I just need to call her. And with that, I'll be signing off with this update.

Pathfinder RPG rocks...

Okay... I've taken the time to look over the 3rd revision of Pathfinder RPG Alpha rules and I'll give it a thumbs up... For anyone that Likes the traditional D&D feel, complete with the Vancian style magic and all, it is definitely an solid score. The system does rock. I'd recommend it as good mining material if nothing else and will definitely be picking up my own copy of the final product... Infact, I'm thinking of shooting out a pitch to GM a pathfinder campaign in Fantasy Grounds II. Heck, I may contact Paizo and volunteer to do their core ruleset for Fantasy Grounds II. Not a short term goal, though with the irons I already have in the fire.

So, Clashlands?... Pathfinder?... Nah. Not quite.. Instead I'm leaning toward something I was brushing the edge of in posts on here some months back. I'm thinking of actually giving Paizo some competition (and selling it through their storefront) with the Pathfinder Ruleset. I'm really leaning toward doing the Dystopian Destinies RPG in much the way that Paizo is releasing Pathfinder as an offbranch of 3.5e, only with a bit more divergence from the core rules. For those that don't know yet, I don't like Vancian magic, and have several things about RPGs that I like done a little different than the traditional D&D methods. So, Clashlands looks like it may be back on the burner, but it will have to be done side by side with the Dystopian Destinies ruleset. That won't be near future. I have other work that needs finishing, TAGE playtest version and the small art related projects I also have in mind that will be coming before it. In otherwords, Clashlands has been pushed back in priorities... At least 6 months, probably more like a year before I'll really get back to it, but you never know. I might get inspired and throw the whole thing together in a couple weeks.

Now as far as that other work goes... It's been 2 weeks since the fair and I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the pictures. Since a lot of what I have ahead if me is pictures that can be batch processed due to common exposure conditions, I may actually be 1/2 done with processing the pictures and 1 day from making my next post to my photo-blog. Once that work is done, I will get back to the game stuff and the photography work will be a hobby level thing on the side for a while. And with that, I think I'm back to working with the pictures.

Still chewing on the options...

...concerning the future of Clashlands. I really do like the setting. It is not something I just came up with overnight but has really formed over about 20 years of my gaming experiences as a dystopian twist on the D&D settings. At the same time I am really still bent on this WotC licensing issue. I have also looked at some of the polls that are in some locations on the net concerning people's likelyhood to get 4e, and what I see among the more veteran gamers is that more veteran D&D players seem to be disinterested in 4e than those that have decided to move on to it.

So...

3.5e or 4e? Not 4e, and kind of not 3.5e either. I think I'm going to do an offbranch of 3.5e. I might do my own rule system, I might not. It all depends on how the Pathfinder system shapes up. I haven't even really looked at it (yet) but I will be soon. When I do, I'll definitely post my opinions on the system here, because I'm an opinionated kind of person.

Overall, the game stuff is still mostly on hold, save the notes here and there and thought time. In otherwords, I'm not going any real writing. I'm still busy on pictures from Oregon Country Fair this year. Looks like I may be busy for another 2 weeks at the rate I have been going. That doesn't mean I don't have more to share on the plans side. I have been thinking about these things. Just haven't had time to do much, other than keep posting on this blog.

As far as the other stuff goes, nothing new on TAGE - still on hold and still working on the graphic design aspects of it before getting back to the rules parts. I have decided what my first projects for actual publication are going to be, though. I really am multi-talented.. I belong to MENSA and really am a McGyver type jack of all trades. As such, I have quite a bit of training in the arts. I've decided that since I plan to mostly much solo my first few written publications I will need to be brushing up on my art. It's been a while, and I'm a little rusty. So, since I'm going to be working on art for the TAGE and the Clashlands works, that I might as well publish the art... What kind of art? Well, I'm thinking character sketches, printed miniatures, tokens, and dungeon tiles to start with. So when might I actually start my publishing? Well... Photo-work time plus design time on TAGE, plus time I plan to spend -WRITING- once I have a break from editing pictures, plus the learning curve time of getting my drawing and digital painting skills up to speed, and putting in a little conservative nudge on the time? I'd say 2 months at the least, but more realistically, 3 or 4 months out for my first commercial item, and then pretty regular after that, and I'm leaning toward printable miniatures as the most likely first products as it's something I used to do for my own games and know exactly how much work that entails.

All this said, I wouldn't expect much more of a post on here till I've gotten a real break from the photo work. As for now, it's time to get back to the pictures. I've already spent more time on this post than it took for the last batch of jpgs to be developed from the RAWs.

Advertising Reduced

Well, the RPGNow banner ad at the top of this page is gone, as is the link to my amazon picks. This has everything to do with the last article I posted. Most of my amazon picks are Wizard of the Coast products, which I'm no longer interested in having anything to do with, and RPGNow's clearly being in bed with WotC has me no longer wanting to have anything to do with them.

The 4th Edition Divide...

Well, it would seem that my rage over the changes Wizards of the Coast made in regards to licensing is not alone. Others seem to be upset over it as well. Enough so that there has been a rift formed in the gaming community which is going to slap WotC in the face with how powerless their license really is.

By copyright laws, no one can stop anyone from publishing games or game material except where one is also copying the way the rules are presented and the graphical style in which they are presented. The actual rules can't be copyrighted. As such, there have always been those willing to just publish for games whether they have permission or not. The original designers of the game can't really do much other than tell others not to use their trademarks to advertise the material.

Well, it has started with Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. There are now materials that will be coming out for 4th edition which do not have WotC's permission, or endorsement and are not allowed to actually use any of WotC and Hasbro's trademarks.

In the middle of this, and taking the sort of supportive step he usually does is Louis Porter Jr. He has now thrown up a freely usable logo that designates game material as being 4th edition compatible without actually using any of WotC's trademarks to do it. He had posted it on RPGNow, but it seems RPGNow pulled it down since. The future of the logo is questionable at this point, but if RPGNow is going to censor products and other materials on behalf of WotC, they have just lost a large amount of future business from me and once I start publishing they won't be selling my products.

As far as I stand, I am really still not sure if I want to even bother publishing anything for D&D anymore, with the foul taste that WotC's moves have given me around the game system, but at the same time, I cannot argue against the huge player base that D&D has.... so, I'm back to milling over the posibility of doing Clashlands again, just as I first conceived of it (being both 3.5e and 4e compatible) and just jumping in on the unsupported side of the rift WotC has created.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news, I have actually been making a little headway in the TAGE material too, but it's not in the rules department. After giving it a lot of thought and consideration and trying to figure out what the biggest factor is that is holding me back I have come to the conclusion that it's not the rules, but it is definitely trying to figure out exactly how to present them. This has had me put the actual attempts at writing it on hold and instead I am working on putting together a TAGE Style Sheet for setting up the actual layout, fonts, art styles and method of presentation that I plan to use throughout the TAGE material. It's not going quickly, especially with my still being very busy with photography work, but it is seeing some progress and once done it should make plugging the rules in the style format much easier than just trying to freehand it like I have been. Again, this is something I have to point to Louis Porter, Jr. for as it was the last of his RPG Publishing Gauntlets that got me thinking about it... And speaking of the RPG Publishing Gauntlet, hey, Mr. Porter, how about the next installment in it sometime in forseeable future. Some of us do watch them.