Well... I don't know if any of you own Hasbro stock (HAS), but ... last year they kicked tail and blew the doors down on profits DESPITE the recession. Today their Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript was released. Here's some excerpts as it pertains to our favorite game:

David Hargreaves : ... Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were $654.3 million compared to $653.5 million a year ago...

Margaret Whitfield - Sterne, Agee & Leach : You mentioned the spending on emerging markets, digital, etc. Can you quantify the spending in Q4 and for the year?

David Hargreaves : I’m not sure we have added it all up exactly like that but we have certainly indicated in the earlier quarters it was running around $20 million a quarter and it was to tail off towards the end of the year. So I would say in the aggregate somewhere between $60-70 million of investment spending behind these various strategies which include the emerging markets, advancing our in house force to support our EA initiative where revenues only start in the fourth quarter but we had people on board all year, included our Wizards of the Coast digital initiatives which is Dungeons and Dragons Insider which if you go to the internet and see now and so there was a whole bunch of initiatives that were included in there and the aggregate spending over the year was probably in the region of about $70 million...

... In the U.S. and Canada segment we also had increases in product
development and marketing expenses related to the investments we are making in
our core brands as well as our Wizards of the Coast digital initiative ...

Drew Crum - Stifel Nicolaus : Can you say what the games and puzzles business did in the fourth quarter in terms of year-over-year growth or decline?

Brian Goldner : Games and puzzles for the full year was down slightly while board games was up a few percent.

Drew Crum - Stifel Nicolaus : How about in the fourth quarter?

Brian Goldner : In the fourth quarter games and puzzles were down a bit more significantly as were board games.

Take home message? Hasbro is an 800-pound gorilla. They love D&D Insider as it fits into the Hasbro wide initiave to get into "digital gaming".

Maybe the executives at WotC pitched a new edition of D&D, along with D&D Insider, to Hasbroas a way to keep the D&D brand alive and fall in line with their parent company's desire to get into the "digital gaming space".

Wolfgang Baur has offered to write the foreword for the RPG blog anthology! Well, I suppose this has been the biggest development in the last week for the Open Game Table project. We are very excited about this news! Wolfgang's contribution will certainly give the anthology a major boost in credibility and exposure. I'm looking forward to his thoughts on the future of table-top roleplaying games!

Oh, maybe you don't know who Wolfgang Baur is? Well, check out his website site here or hop over to Kobold Quarterly. A list of his contributions to the RPG community for the last ~20 years or so can be seen at Pen & Paper here. Monte Cook also interviewed him as well. Let's just say -- I'm stoked.

In other Open Game Table news -- all the chapters have been put through a first draft and I'm in the process of assembling the final manuscript into one document. So far, it's looking to be about 120 pages in length (~85,000 words) at 8.5 x 11. The artists who are contributing have until the end of the week to send in their final inks, so as I receive them I'll be adjusting the layouts as needed. Also, I'm hoping to have made a decision about the cover art by the end of next weekend - that, along with Baur's foreword, will be one of the final pieces needed for the book.

Some of you have emailed me asking about a timeline - well, since this is a self-published book there's really no hard and fast deadlines. However, I do not want to get too far into 2009 before the book is published. That being said, I'm expecting to have galley proofs around the first week of March and the book to be available for purchase about two weeks after that. Stay tuned!

Sponsorships
In the past I've put out a call for individual and corporate advertising sponsorships of this project to help offset the costs for printing the copies of the book that will be provided to the 50 or more contribute rs to the project. I was surprised when this call for sponsorships was so well received, and thus far nearly $300 in personal and corporate sponsorship funds have been donated. Donations have been made by individual readers of this blog, as well as by Otherworld Miniatures and Rogue Games. THANK YOU!!!

My own goal for sponsorship funds was $500, which is enough to cover most of the printing & shipping costs of 50 or so copies of the book. So, once again, I need to ask the community for their goodwill. If you are interested in sponsoring the project as an individual, please do! Any amount, no matter how small, will be deeply appreciated and you will recognized in the book as an Individual Sponsor of the project. Simply use the PayPal.com link below and donate what amount you feel comfortable giving. Thank you!

Furthermore, corporate advertising sponsorships are still available as well. If you would like to feature a full page or 1/2 page advertisement of your company, website, or blog - please contact me directly at jonathan dot jacobs at gmail dot com for details.

Inspired by this post over at A Hero Twice A Month, I've decided to offer up something that might help DMs who are looking for a fix to rituals in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. First off, to use these new homebrew feats - you need make two changes to your game:

1. The Ritual Caster feat is dropped and replaced by other feats listed below.
2. Classes that normally gain the Ritual Caster feat as part of their design (clerics, wizards) gain, instead, three other feats (shown below).

The feats below are aimed at addressing some of the "issues" people are having with 4E rituals in that 1) money is the main obstacle towards gaining new rituals; and 2) anyone can be a ritual caster as easily as a wizard or cleric - thus devaluing the the importance of the ritual caster class feature.

Epic Ritual Caster
Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana or Religion, Paragon Ritual Caster Feat.
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. These rituals are limited to those of level 30 or below. See Chapter 10 for information on acquiring, mastering, and performing rituals. Even though some rituals use the Heal skill or the Nature skill, the Arcana skill or the Religion skill is required to understand how to perform rituals. Clerics and Wizards automatically gain this feat as part of their ritual caster class feature.

Heroic Ritual Caster
Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana or Religion.
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. These rituals are limited to those of level 10 or below. See Chapter 10 for information on acquiring, mastering, and performing rituals. Even though some rituals use the Heal skill or the Nature skill, the Arcana skill or the Religion skill is required to understand how to perform rituals. Clerics and Wizards automatically gain this feat as part of their ritual caster class feature.

Natural Study [Wizard]
Prerequisite: Int 13, wizard.
Benefit: You gain a +3 bonus to all ritual casting checks that rely on the Arcana or Nature skills.

Paragon Ritual Caster
Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana or Religion, Heroic Ritual Caster feat.
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. These rituals are limited to those of level 20 or below. See Chapter 10 for information on acquiring, mastering, and performing rituals. Even though some rituals use the Heal skill or the Nature skill, the Arcana skill or the Religion skill is required to understand how to perform rituals. Clerics and Wizards automatically gain this feat as part of their ritual caster class feature.

Ritual Mastery
Prerequisite: Heroic Ritual Caster, Paragon Ritual Caster, Epic Ritual Caster.
Benefit: You automatically gain mastery in two rituals of your level or below. You may take this feat multiple times to gain mastery in additional feats.

Scholar of the Sacraments [Cleric]
Prerequisite: Int 13, cleric.
Benefit: You gain a +3 bonus to all ritual casting checks that rely on the Religion or Heal skills.

Hopefully these rituals might provide a quick fix to anyone who is looking to make clerics and wizards the _real_ ritual casters in the game once again. At the same time, these changes don't prevent anyone else from learning how to cast rituals.

Comments? What do you think?

Well, I made it through the first week at my new job without any major problems. In fact, I managed to squeeze a fair amount of "auxiliary reading" in between all the other work-related reading and orientation meetings. What have I been reading this week? Well... take a look!

• Yet Another D&D Fanzine is going to be published by Goodman Games under the GSL license. Says Ogre Cave, "... According to Joseph Goodman, a primary goal of Level Up is to get gamers down to their local retail stores, so for the time being, a subscription plan has not been determined..." Well - at least the goal of the fanzine is somewhat novel. And I expect that FLGSs need all the help they can get these days to get more folks in the door. Purple Pawn also covered this news.
• Maps? What Maps? While not necessarily a post aimed at this months RPG Blog Carnival - Dragon Avenue wants to know where all the maps are for Thunderspire Labyrinth. Fortunately, a bunch of fellow geeks over at EN World made some to supplement those in the adventure.
• Oh THESE Maps... Speaking of maps... Zach over at RPG Blog II found another Hex Mapping application he likes. And NewbieDM gets a gold-star for being the first blogger to jump in on this month's theme for the RPG Blog Carnival. Monsters and Manuals also kicks out some new maps in "Unfinished Map of Mollusc-People States".. the Mollusk people. Mollusk people? Really? LMFAO...
  
• Join the Discussion... oh, and speaking of Zach... he makes an excellent point when asking the question "Are RPG Blogs Supplanting RPG Forums?". It's a topic I'm rather partial too... and from the looks of it... tons of other bloggers and blog readers are too.
• Remember the Masters. Uncle Bear wants the RPG blogosphere to remember Gary Gygax on the anniversary of his death by building a sort of "blog memorial". I think this is a great idea - but I'll likely honor the man by having a moment of silence on The Core Mechanic.
• Progressive Fantasy... I've been thinking alot lately about the evolution of technology in fantasy game settings. So, I've been doing a bit of rpg blogosphere research of sorts. Gamergrene wrote back in 2006 "Mix Genres, Open Doors", an excellent post about fantasy setting mashups. About a year later, the same site offered up "What I Bring to the Table #4: Magic and Technology" - which is a bit off target, but was worth the read nonetheless. Zach (again!) posted back in 2006 as well an article called "Failed Gnomish Weaponry", which gave me some ideas. KeyOurCars offers up "Warhammer Firearms for DnD" (which I may have linked to before) which is also relevant. I'm starting to think this sort of fantasy must have a name - but alas I can't find one so I'm dubbing it "Progressive Fantasy".

Well, that's about it for now! Stay tuned! On Monday I'll have the weekly update about the anthology project Open Game Table - there has been some very good news recently that involves these guys.

For those of you out there who are interested in the more theorectical aspects of roleplaying and game design; as well as the social impact and placement of roleplaying games - check out the International Journal of Roleplaying. They just released their first issue as a freely downloadable PDF. It seems to be a fledgling journal with a legitimate academic interest in roleplaying as social medium. If you look at the review board, you will notice that nearly all of them are either postdocs or professors at universities around the globe.

Very interesting at the very least...

Well, according to the schedule - it's my turn again to host the monthly RPG Blog Carnival. Wohoo! Last month, Berin Kinsman from UncleBear.com hosted the carnival with "RPG Blog Carnival: New Year’s Gaming Goals and Resolutions". His end of the month summary was just published and can be found here.

As many of you know, I'm working hard at getting the RPG blog anthology finished and published. These things take time, but suffice to know that I've added another artist to the existing team of volunteer artists (7 total) and all the chapters of the anthology are now done and in draft form. The editors and I are now going over it with a fine tooth comb to copy edit the text while we wait for the last (excellent!) pieces of artwork to come in. Hopefully by the 15th I'll have everything in place for a final round of proofs.

So, what does the Anthology have to do with this month's RPG blog carnival? 

Well, some time ago - early in the project - I did some market research to find out what people wanted in the Anthology. One of the top categories was "Maps" and another was "Monsters". The problem was that these categories were extremely underrepresented in the RPG blogosphere. Basically, the blog readers love these posts but we blog authors rarely post new maps or monsters for our readers to consume. So... to help encourage more MAPS and MONSTERS in the blogosphere I'm dedicating this months topic for the RPG Blog Carnival to the following:

"Post something that includes at least one map and one new monster for any RPG game system."

What do you think? Hopefully if the Anthology has a second volume for next year this month's carnival will answer what the readers want.

Don't know how to participate in the Carnival? Simply blog about something that fits the above topic and link back to this post here at The Core Mechanic to indicate you are participating. Also, leave a comment here so that people can find your blog post as the month progresses. At the end of the month, when the carnival closes, I'll post a wrap up of all the participants and blog posts. Its going to be MONSTER & MAP MADNESS!!!

Please check out the excellent previous RPG Blog Carnivals too! They have included:

1. "Character Death, Resurrection, and The Undead" (The Core Mechanic)
   
2. "Homebrew" (The Fine Art of the TPK)
   
3. "Super Heroes in RPGs" (Musings of the Chatty DM)
   
4. "Religion in the Work Plac...eh I mean RPG Land" (The Dice Bag)
   
5. "Transitions & Transformations" (Critical Hits)
   
6. "New Year's Gaming Resolutions" (Uncle Bear)

First off, this is not a post about roleplaying games (my usual fare). This is a post about blogging, specifically blog comments and who owns them.

Who owns the copyrights to comments left on blogs?

The comment author?

The blog author or owner?

You see, I'm currently working on publishing an anthology of roleplaying game blog posts from 2008 and before. The project, called Open Game Table, has been a labor of love for me and (much to my surprise) has benefited greatly from an overwhelming number of supporters and volunteers from the RPG blogosphere. The 48 blog posts that have been selected to be included in the anthology were selected from over 130 posts that were nominated by blog authors and readers. I'm now in the process of doing the layout, design, and editing of the anthology's manuscript and recently the subject of blog comments and who owns their copyrights came up. Two of the contributing blog authors expressed concerns over my use of selected comments in the anthology without the expressed consent of the comment authors. To be completely honest, this struck me by surprise as I had assumed that the blog comments were considered part of the blog article itself (much like an addendum) and were therefor the property of the blog owner. Thus, I had assumed that by obtaining permissions to publish the blog articles in the anthology from the blog authors this would in turn include the comments as well.

Not so fast.

It turns out there is very little in the way of legal precident for this. Go ahead and Google it. You see a whole lot of talk talk talk by blogs cut from all different cloths; but very little actual legal precedent. There's one case I know of that involved a MySpace blogger who refused to remove comments from their blog when the comment authors requested it. But that's about it.

Of course, standard US copyright law clearly supports the author in that [paraphrasing here] "as soon as you write it down it is copyrighted". This would lead you to believe that the author of the comments owns the comments, even though they appear on some other medium they do not own. Some would say it is fairly cut and dry. Others say that its not so simple.

But do they own their comments after they are published?

The comment authors have no control over them, since the blog owner can often delete, edit or otherwise suppress any comment left on their blog. Furthermore, things become much more complicated if you consider third-party applications that republish weblog comments, such as Twitter, Friend-Feed, Google Reader iPage, etc. Disqus does a good job of summing up the real issues here.

This becomes even more bizarre when you consider that many bloggers are running advertising on their websites that is context sensitive (such as Google AdSense; which is in place on this blog). If someone else's comments are helping generate the ads that appear on a blog due to their content, but that person is the owner of those comments, not the blogger, then shouldn't they be also entitled to some royalties or payments from the sale of ads? Surely not.

Where then do you draw the line?

What about then the situation with the anthology I am publishing. Each and every one of the blog authors have signed permissions agreements that stipulate that I have the right to republish their blog post in a printed book. Should I also then seek the permissions of each and every blog comment author whose comment (that adds value to the article as a whole) I may also want to include? What if the comment author used a fake email address or was simply anonymous? What if they were under the age of consent (18)?

These are all issues that bloggers should consider. Many bloggers outside our little RPG blogging community have already considered these issues. You will often find, especially on commercial blogs, a Terms of Service agreement that clearly stipulates the status of the comments left on the blog. I have added one to The Core Mechanic as a result of this minor brouhaha and you can find it in the footer below, or on the comment page. Section 5, Information Rights is the part you will want to pay attention to. I've provided here as well:

"5. Information Rights. The Proprietor does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service, including without limitation comments you post to the Service, you grant the Proprietor world-wide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, non-exclusive, fully sub-licensable license(s) to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

This basically means that the blog owner ("The Proprietor") can do whatever they wish with the comments left on the blog; and the author of the comments can as well. The copyright is, however, still technically owned by author. I've since seen some other blog TOS's where the comments fall under a Creative Commons license; still others I've seen where the comments are released into the public domain.

I would urge anyone who is writing a blog of their own to consider this issue of comment ownership and permissions; if only for a moment. You may never know when, in retrospect, you had wished you had a Comment Policy or some other TOS agreement in place. I'm not a lawyer, and after reading several dozen blogs and other websites about the copyright status of blog comments, one thing is clear to me: this is a very grey area that I have no interest trotting in ... I tend to think that blog comments are functionally the same as addendums to the main blog post and the comment author is giving up their control of the content once they post it on the blog owner's site. But, that's just my opinion - and with regards to Open Game Table - I'm not interested in putting everyone involved in the project at risk of some sort of infringement of copyright permissions simply because I wanted to include a selected number of comments in the Anthology.

In the meantime, I've stripped the manuscript for the blog anthology of all comments for the time being. I'm perfectly happy publishing the book without them included, although I do recognize that blog comments are our currency and often times it is the comments that "make a post", not the post itself. Bahh....

I was surprised when I was recently asked to review a portion of the newly released Kobold Quarterly #8, specifically the article titled "Tossing Kegs and Smashing Chairs", by Steven Furlanetto. And, although the article in question is mostly for 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons (and Pathfinder), I just couldn't say No since editions don't really matter to me - and I love tavern brawls.

"...Imagine the party wizard careening across the beer-slicked floor with angry peasants launching mugs at her as she slides by, the fighter wildly waving a broken chair while perched precariously on top of a rickety table about to be smashed by the town brute, or the rogue swinging to their rescue dangling from the chandelier..."

Furlanetto describes in detail some of the problems related to well... bar room fights. Usually in D&D, combat encounters are between the party (a limited number of 'heroes') and the enemy (a limited number of mooks). Of course, a bar fight is a completely different animal. You might be faced with an angry mob of disenfranchised dwarven mine workers who may already be six kegs deep into the latest union meeting. Or, you might be ducking the mugs and knives as the bartender quells a group of unruly thugs out for "a good time". You might even find yourself going to fisticuffs with fellow party members who "mistakenly" thought you were someone else before they crashed the chair over your head. Well, whomever the fight is with - a tavern brawl can work in D&D even though it should be non-lethal and often against many many foes. Fulanetto does a great job of pointing out the pros and cons of barroom brawls, and even provides some crunch for DM's asking questions like "I wonder how damage a small cask of ale would do? What about a large cask of ale?" For PCs who like to imbibe more than others, all this begs the obvious question: Can I get proficiency in Keg Throwing?

Heck, there's even a fair amount of "chandelier" mischief. Want some quick rules on swinging from a chadelier? Check. Want to fight a mob of  drunks? Check. What some ideas on how to incorporate a bar fight into an ongoing adventure? Check.

So if you are looking to add a little spice to your game by introducing your players to the fine art of drunken combat - pick yourself up a copy of Kobold Quarterly #8. Go break some kegs for me!

OK, it's a day late - these updates usually come on Mondays. may have also noticed my blogging frequency has significantly dropped in the last week. Let's just say "I've been swamped!" The Anthology project is now full-steam ahead as I am digging through the final entries, doing all the layout and design, and working with the other volunteer editors and artists. It is a huge amount of work - typical for me to propose a project having no idea how much effort will be required to carry it to the finish line.

OK, enough of my whining - what's been done in the last week? Well...

SAMPLE CHAPTER
A sample, or demo, chapter was put together and used as a working document with the editors to finalize font choices, basic layout designs, artwork placements, etc.. The biggest hurdle for me was to wrap my head around the use of "document styles" to control all the formatting. It makes sense of course, but I'm so thankful to have such an excellent team of professional editors to go to for advice, editing, and proofreading input. The chapter that was on was "Chapter 9 - RPG History & Commentary". It includes blog posts from such RPG luminaries as Ben Robbins, James Maliszewski, Jeff Rients, Berin Kinsman, and James Edward Raggi IV. The chapter weighs in at 16 pages (~11,000 words) and includes original artwork crafted specifically for each blog post by Crystal Frasier, James Keegan, and Jennifer Weigel. You can

I was very satisfied with the final edit of Chapter 9, so dove next into probably the hardest, and longest, chapter next: "Chapter 8 - 4th Edition: Classes, Equipment & Action Points". I've already finished the first draft of this chapter and it is expected to be no less than 30 pages once everything is all said and done. Just waiting on additional artwork and the first round of feedback from the assistant editors. Stargazer has already even blogged about it here, and seems to like what he is seeing. Wohoo! Hopefully next week I'll have some more information for you.

ARTWORK
I'm also very pleased to let you know that I've received a number of additional pieces of original artwork for the Anthology in the last week. Below is a sampling of some the artists provided to me - final inks will be forthcoming. Can you guess what blog posts these might be for?

Hugo Solis

Jennifer Weigel

SPONSORSHIPS

If you are interested in being an Individual Sponsor, please feel free to use the PayPal link below to donate. Your help is deeply appreciated and will go a long long way towards making this project a reality for everyone involved. These funds are going to be used to cover the printing costs for the complementary copies of the book that will be sent to the contributing authors and artists. I am honored and humbled that so many folks have pitched in to help support this project; thus far I've managed to raise about $280, which is more than half-way towards my personal goal of raising $500 to help offset the costs of printing, but unfortunately I haven't received any new sponsors in the last week. Want to help out? Become a Private Sponsor! Even small donations for a few bucks will be appreciated!

For companies or other RPG industry people - several advertising spots are still available! These include the inside first page (b&w) and half of the outside back cover (in full color). Please contact me for more information at jonathan DOT jacobs AT gmail DOT com. Advertising sponsorships will also be used to offset the printing costs for complementary copies being sent to the authors, artists, and volunteers.

Progress on the Anthology marches on. Since last week, the Assistant Editors and I have begun trimming down the book a bit as well as reorganizing and renaming chapters. Hopefully today I'll have the first fully laid out chapter done for us to wrangle over. One of the things I'm enjoying most about this project is that each week I encounter some new aspect of the publishing process I have had (yet again) no experience with. Thus, the process is constantly a challenge, especially because I want things to look right, I want the content to be just right and with the right artwork, etc. I'm learning as I go, but with everyone's input things are constantly moving forward. Its very satisfying nonetheless.

ARTWORK
Speaking of art, the team of artists who have volunteered their time continue to produce quality work. Below are some additional concepts they contributed in the last week.

Crystal Frasier

monk class concept

James Keegan

cover concept 3

 Jennifer Weigel

entourage gaming

SPONSORSHIPS
I'm very happy to report that we've received another $50 donation from an Individual Sponsor. In addition, Otherworld Miniatures has come through with the $50 in promised Advertising Sponsorship funds! Wohoo! THANK YOU!!! These funds are going to be used to cover the printing costs for the complementary copies of the book that will be sent to the contributing authors and artists. I am honored and humbled that so many folks have pitched in to help support this project; thus far I've managed to raise about $280, which is more than half-way towards my personal goal of raising $500 to help offset the costs of printing. This is simply amazing, since at the start I didn't think I would be able to raise any funds at all.

If you are interested in being an Individual Sponsor, please feel free to use the PayPal link below to donate. Your help is deeply appreciated and will go a long long way towards making this project a reality for everyone involved.

For companies or other RPG industry people - several advertising spots are still available! Please contact me for more information at jonathan DOT jacobs AT gmail DOT com.

Until next week, GAME ON!

Saturday is the weekly wrap up! Let's review what I've been reading (and not just scanning) this week.

1. More Firearms for 4the Edition from Key our Cars. "Warhammer Firearms for DnD". This is a good complement to Stargazer's article on new 4E firearms, as well as my own post sometime ago that brought current some ranged weapons from past editions.
2. More about Skill Challenges. I seem stuck on this topic lately, can't seem to get enough of it. Gamefiend at At-Will kicked off a new series this week, "How to Design a Skill Challenge, Part 1: Theory of Choice". This seemed very timely, since Donny_the_DM posted a new skill challenge in "I need another opinion, can I get a hand?", and then after some input from his readers (including yours truly), he updated his challenge with "...Adrift in a sea of flesh and steel...a 4E skill challenge of survival.". Josh, over at Pair O'Dice Games, also presents a new skill challenge about removing treasure from a dungeon in "Trapped Under Ground With a Whole Lot of Loot". Excellent stuff.
3. Gaming and the Economy. Well it's a good thing that GenCon is finally scheduled to emerge from bankruptcy, considering that the crappy economy might be a good thing for the gaming industry. Trask, over at LivingDice.com, had a survey recently about this but the results were mixed. I remain hopeful.
4. New Feats, Spells, Magic Books - this is just a quick link dump of some interesting posts I bookmarked for possible future use
1. 4e New Magical Items: Tomes of Wondrous Power - overpowered but very cool, from Dicemonkey.com
   
2. New Feats: Meta…power? (Metamagic feats for 4E, also from Dicemonkey)
3. Conversion: Hold Person - I just love this one. Very nicely done IMHO; from Onebadegg.com.
5. Otherworld Miniatures - thanks to Mike Mearls for giving the heads up about the owner of Otherworld Miniatures, who recently has fallen ill. This 1-man outfit produces some of the best old-school miniatures I've seen, and he also happens to be an Advertising Sponsor for the RPG Blog Anthology I'm working on. So, if you are in the market for some very cool new mini's - jump over there and put an order in for some right now!
6. Blogging and Self-Publishing - not really RPG related, but I've been doing a ton of reading lately on self-publishing, blogging, career development, etc. Two posts jumped out at me that gave some very excellent advice on these subjects:
1. Joanna at Confident Writing posts "What Advice Would You Give to New Bloggers?" While I don't really consider myself "new" - I still found this post helped in reminding myself what some of the basics were.
2. As for self-publishing, this is a big area of research for me, especially because so much of what is out there is extremely biased. Fortunately, David Carnoy at CNET Reviews posted a bit off topic for his tech blog with the post "Self-publishing a book: 25 things you need to know". The article, and the comments, were priceless. Super good article on the subject.

Well, that's about it for today. Have a great weekend!

Have you ever wished that you could get the latest copies of DRAGON or DUNGEON in print?

Well, I have. There's just something special about the tactile feel of reading RPG fanzines and not having to stare at our computer screens yet again - don't we all do that enough? This is one of the many reasons I'm drawn to these new indy press fanzines that have cropped up in the vacuum created by Wizards of the Coast's "digital initiative". It's not only that excellent mags like Kobold and Fight On! are well written and engaging, its also that they are delivered to your door - in the flesh. In my opinion, profitable or not, WotC really missed the boat on this one.

Well, it doesn't have to be that way any longer. By following the tutorial I've laid out below, you can have your issues of DRAGON or DUNGEON in print and in full-glossy color for about $20 a copy from Lulu.com. Willing to settle for a B&W interior? Then the price drops to about $6. Of course, physical copies of these magazines are for your own personal collection - not to resold or distributed (that would break about a dozen or more laws), but they look awesome once printed.

MATERIALS

• Adobe Acrobat (full version). The Mac "Preview" system application will also do, but there are occasional PDF rendering issues with it, especially with embedded fonts. Personally, I'm using Preview and Acrobat 9 together.
• A subscription to Dungeons & Dragons Insider. Without this you might have a difficult time legally obtaining copies of your favorite fanzine.
  
• About an hour of time.

METHOD

1) Download the latest Complete Issue of Dragon as a PDF and save it on your computer.

2) Open the document in your PDF viewer and note the document size and make sure it is still 11" x 8.5" and is a high-res document (in this case its ~38MB for 80 pages, so yes).

3) Next, rotate the entire contents of the PDF file counter - clockwise 90º so that the dimensions of the PDF are now 8.5" x 11".

4) Save the document. If you cannot save it for some reason (like its protected), then alternatively you can use your PDF printer to print a saved version of your document to a new PDF.

5) Next, return to the document and rotate the entire document 180º (clockwise twice more) and just print the first page to your PDF printer (as shown above). This file is going to be used as the actual cover file for your homemade print magazine. If you have options for High-Quality Print, or Press Quality Print, then use those options to print this first page. The result should be a very high quality PDF document of just the first page. Notice how the image preview of the document is turned 180º relative to the one before it.

6) Open the PDF print of the first page. Go to the file menu and save this document as a 300- or 600-dpi PNG file. You are now ready to upload everything to Lulu.com.

7) Open your browser and head to Lulu.com. Of course, this same process could be done with just about any other POD publisher as well. Once you are at Lulu, create an account with them if you do not already have one, then head over to "My Lulu" and choose "New Project".

8) On the next page choose Paperback book. Then title your work and leave a pen-name. PLEASE NOTE: You should also make sure that "Keep it private and accessible only to me" is selected. Publishing this magazine into the Lulu Marketplace will get you into trouble. Once done on this page, click "Save & Continue".

9) On the next page you'll see your publishing options. For the cheapest reprint (about $5.50), also choose Publisher Grade paper, and everything will default to the correct settings (B&W interior, 8.5" x 11", perfect bound). If you go this route, you might as well print it from your printer at home in my opinion. For a nicer, glossier finish in full color choose Lulu paper with full color interior. Of course, this is way more pricey at $21.50. If you are still up for the challenge, click "Save & Continue" and head to the next step.

10) Next, upload the rotated version of the PDF to Lulu. Note from the screenshot that you must OWN the PDF you are uploading. If Lulu gives you an error about embedded fonts (WotC uses a bunch of custom fonts), then go back to Adobe Acrobat (full version) and resave the PDF with fonts embedding enabled. When are done uploading, click "Make Print Ready File", then click "Save & Continue" on the next page.

11) Now you come to the cover, which could be whatever you want it to be. Personally, I like my fanzines to look like fanzines, so I would choose the option to upload the hi-res PNG file we created to use as the cover for my mag. Click on "Edit Picture" at the bottom of the cover editor, and then choose "Use a Different File", then "Upload a File" and point to your PNG file. Ignore the pixel size recommendations -- the image comes out just fine in the final product. Maybe not CRYSTAL clear, but looks better than my printer at home. Finally, click "Make Print-Ready Cover".

12) The final price is about $20. You could save money by bundling multiple issues together into a single publication, but Lulu maxes out full-color printing at 88 pages, so you would have to find another print service. After reviewing, click "Save & Finish".

You are done! You can immediately order your newly minted DRAGON magazine for personal use, and Lulu will deliver it right to your door!

Of course... would anyone actually be crazy enough to do this? $20 for one copy of Dragon?

Well, honestly I will be doing something similar by collecting all the articles from all the past and current issues of Dragon that are of the same topic and binding them together in one convenient book. Having all the new magic item or new monster articles from 30 years of dragon together in one book would just be nice to have.

Hmmm.. food for thought...

I have just acquired the domain name thecoremechanic.com for this blog. The new default address will be www.thecoremechanic.com, although anyone using an RSS feedreader should continue to pick up my posts since I use Feedburner for distribution. Also, thecoremechanic.blogspot.com will still work as well.

In the meantime, it should take a few days for the new domain name to percolate through the DNS. Please expect trouble (it follows me around like a shadow), but feel free to leave a comment here and let me know anyway; or email me directly at my new handy dandy email address - jonathan AT thecoremechanic DOT com.

Wohoo!

(chuckles)

When is something truly new and novel going to come along and really blow the socks of the fan base?

If you follow Turbulent Thoughts at all, you likely read Wyatt Salazar's recent review of Alluria Publishing's Remarkable Races series. In short, he gleefully puts the smack down on the whole product line; and that's being nice about it. I found his post hilarious... in particular this part:

"Then we have the god damn battletoads, and this is basically where I draw the line ... This is just surreal. Oh god that battletoad has a steel eyepatch. I’m getting the motherfuck out of here."

This was particularly funny to me because about 20 years ago (or more) I actually played a frog character for a campaign that lasted about a year or so. Yes... a frog. I was a bullywug, actually. A bullywug cleric, if I'm remembering correctly. Alluria Publishing calls them "Mogogols" (probably for copyright reasons), but they are basically bullywugs for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, this bullywug character I had was a really fun to play because he was a "good" bullywug pitted against his own people. It was 1st Edition AD&D, and we were playing in the classic adventure module Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The DM had just gotten his hands on a copy of the Fiend Folio in order to properly play the adventure, and while looking it over I was like "that's it! I'm playing a bullywug!" I'm kind of animated and jumpy in real life, so I guess it was a good fit.

Ok... it was silly. I admit it. Honestly, I played the frog until the end of the adventure, but then the ribbits and constant "I leap to charge!" was found to be short lived humor that grew toad.. i mean.. old after a while. I ended up playing a prisoner we freed. I think we ate the toad.

OK, minutiae... the offbeat obvious minutiae... you can call them bullywugs, mogogols, or battletoads, or whatever. It's all the same thing. Another example might be the Flump. I don't think WotC is planning on updating the Flumph for 4E, but that doesn't mean I need to release a 4E version of the creature either.

In fact, much of 4E is all the same thing we've all seen before, only updated for the new rules. This isn't rocket science; its expected in fact. New rules means everything must be brought to the current edition. What is interesting to me is that a portion of the indy press is looking for opportunities to publish material in the gaps of Wizards of the Coast's current or projected production releases. In this example, Alluria has published Remarkable Races and you might think they really were remarkable, save for the fact that all these races have been conceived before in one form or another. The difference now is that WotC has not made (or is expected to make) any official re-release of these creatures for 4th Edition, so the indy PDF publishing market is full of them.

I'll leave it to you to decide if I'm right, but it all just seems so obviously derivative. So I'll ask again: When is something truly new and novel going to come along and really blow the socks of the fan base?

STOP. Think for a minute. Relax.

How often do you do this for your game?

How often do you do this during game play?

For both players and dungeon masters of roleplaying games, sometimes the best advice is to simply stop and think about the game, the story, the characters, or whatever else you might be struggling with. We all seek to have fun while gaming, that's (hopefully) everyone's universal goal. But gaming involves group dynamics, and even in the best games can get sour if even one of the players is having a bad time. Everyone can feel it when it happens, but the DM feels it the most. They are the ones who invariably feel that it is up to them to make things better for everyone, but the biggest problem is that they can't share their plot hooks and cool ideas with anyone lest they spoil the story. It's a difficult situation, and often times the only other option is to throw in the towel (the horrors!).

When I'm frustrated with the game, or I'm having the DM's equivalent of writers block, these are the steps I generally follow. If this doesn't help, then its usually a sign that the campaign may have taken a turn for the worse).

1. Stow away the distractions. Put down the rules and the the sources of inspiration. Shut down the desktop and close the laptop. Put away the miniatures, the power cards, the stock photos.
2. Find a good place to think. Get up from your desk; its a place that says "work". Get away from the game table; its a place that says "go, now, play". Take a break and take a walk. Find a place to sit down. Take a notebook and pencil with you.
   
3. Shut out what is in front of you and focus. The world is a hectic place, and focusing on what's in front of you can prevent you from thinking about what is bothering you. Close your eyes if you have to, but the goal here is to relax while staying focused on the thing at hand: the game.
4. Relax and think for a minute. OK, maybe a few minutes, but I'm a person who believes in gut instincts and the first ideas jump into your head for first few minutes are often the best ones.
   
5. Jot it down. Put it to paper. Write down the first couple of things that come to mind, and then close the notebook and put the pencil away.
6. Walk back and get blind feedback. Take the long way around if need be, but try to clear your head along the way and focus on having an open mind. When you get back to the group, get some feedback. Blind feedback. Ask for honesty and blunt opinions. Questions like "if you were the DM, how would handle this current situation?" You might be surprised by what you hear.
   
7. Review your notes. After talking "blindly" with your players, look back at what you wrote down. How do your ideas now look in this new light? Have your players had any impact on how you see your ideas taking shape?
   
8. Wash, repeat as necessary. Hopefully this little exercise has helped. If not, try going back to Step 4 and start over with your newly minted - yet still half-baked - ideas. If you still can't get past whatever problems are ailing your campaign, then get out of the DM's seat for a while and let someone else play that role.

Sometimes problems come up that are in-game and storyline related. I'm talking plot, hook, background, and setting. Other times problems can crop up of the more mundane variety, like scheduling conflicts, interpersonal conflicts, group size, play styles, or player expectations (to name a few). Roleplaying gaming groups are sometimes like little families, sometimes like clubs, and other times are more like chess-in-the-park meet ups (RPGA, I'm looking at you). In all of these situations, the DM is burdened with an extra degree of responsibility, whether real or perceived, in resolving problems that crop up. After all, we all just want to have fun.

How do you find think through difficult game-related issues? What is your method to the madness?

"The Skill Challenges of War" was quite easily the longest running series here at The Core Mechanic, the second longest was my 5-part series "The New Cleric is the Old Cleric". I couldn't have done it without the help of my two comrades in blogging: Gamefiend from At-Will, and Madbrew from Mad Brew Labs. 14 Parts altogether! Also, there should be a 15th post soon that will present the whole series together as a single PDF for you to download and print out without all the adverts, etc.

Here I provide you with all the links to each of the other posts in the series.

1. Introduction
2. The Complexities of War
3. Diplomatic Mission Reconnaissance
4. Rally the Troops!
5. ... And the Body Will Die
6. Flush Out a Spy
7. Break the Siege
8. Holding the Line
9. A Forceful Seizure
10. Quick, Before They Report to the Enemy!
11. Find and Ambush the Supply Train
12. Forcing a Surrender
13. Routing the Enemy
14. Summary

All together its a solid series, and I can't thank Gamefiend and Madbrew for their efforts enough. Wohoo! Collaborations FTW!

The last week has been a busy one for the RPG Blog Anthology project. Last week's update was "major", but this week seems no less important. It seems like every time I check my inbox there's an email from someone working on some aspect of the book. Just yesterday the final / official permissions contracts have been sent out by DocuSign.com and most of them have already been returned completed by the Contributing Authors. Things just keep falling into place smoothly... Wohoo! It's good to be busy!

Assistant Editors
After I put out an announcement on the RPG Blogger's Google Group for Assistant Editors I got tons of replies - which was a pleasant surprise. So, four additional people will be helping me with the copy editing, chapter organization, layout, etc. Please welcome these four great individuals to the OPEN GAME TABLE team:

1. Ben McFarland from Open Design and Kobold Quarterly
   
2. Dave "The Game" Chalker, from Critical-Hits
3. Jeffrey Uurtamo from The Bone Scroll
4. Tasha Dalcher from Stupid-Ranger

Thank you for the help!

Sponsors
I'm very, super awesomely pleased that two additional Sponsors and another game company have stepped up to the plate and pitched in to financially support this project. Please join me in thanking our latest Individual Sponsors Beau Case and Donovan Vig for donating their hard earned cash to help the cost of printing! Also, I'm extremely pleased the ROGUE GAMES has joined us in being an Advertising Sponsor. They will be featuring a half-page ad on the last page of the book along with Otherworld Miniatures.

If you would like to also support the project with a donation, please feel free to use the PayPal link below. The funds donated will be used to alleviate the printing costs of the complimentary books that will be provided to the artists, authors, and volunteers who are working so hard to help make this project a reality. Companies interested in advertising space within the book (or on the exterior back cover) should contact me directly by email, jonathan DOT jacobs AT gmail DOT com.

ARTISTS
The artists who have volunteered for the project have been hard at work sending in more concept sketches for all the various blog posts that are being included in the Anthology.

Can you guess what blog posts these concept sketches are for?

Crystal Frasier

James Keegan

Jennifer Weigel