stevemangames

Mind you I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but after looking over the satement on WotC's new OGL plan. My reading of it comes into three bullet points. 1. This does not look like smokescreen for something more sinister. By stating publicly that they are not longer going to try to deauthorize the OGL 1.0a in such a public way, they are making it harder to try to deauthorize it in the future. 2. The SRD 5.1 being released under Creative Commons is a nothing-burger legally. The SRD is just common ideas to fantasy gaming and game rules, both things that re not copyrightable. However, by releasing it into the CC, they're ensuring that people will still use their derivative works. This is a bit sinister, as it completely undercuts Paizo/Kobold Press/Green Ronin's ORC license. 3. This is a double-edged sword for the industry at large. While it brought people's attention away from D&D for a time and got more attention on other games, it also ensures that D...

Where have I been? Mostly focusing on work and managing pain. However, a discord server specifically about small indie videogame development had a 48 hour game jam. I don't make videogame beyind poking around in RPG Maker for fun, nothing completed. But the rules of the jam did not ban tabletop games. The theme was Nostalgia so... I made a mostly complete OSR-adjacent trpg based on my nostalgia for Exodus: Ultima III (NES) and the DOS versions of U4 and U5. It's lacking dungeon creation guidelines, examples for traps, and setting information beyond telling you to go play U3, U4, and U5. I would also like to test it a bit more than just mathhammer and asking a friend of his opinions. It was the only tabletop game so the admins, while impressed, aren't putting it in the rankings instead just summarily creating a "tabletop games" subcategory and giving best in category to me. Anyway, here it is. https://www.mediafire.com/file/om5y7gbaahzi1vs/Ultima_TRPG.pdf/file Whi...

Second half of 2022 a heck I wanted to use this blog more but didn't. Have been working on my Dungeonpunk game. Overhauled my dice mechanic in a bout of inspiration and an inability to leave well enough alone. Picked up Battletech thanks to moving closer to one of my oldest friends who is huge into it. Finally refined the definition of the genre term I've been using for my Dungeonpunk setting. I have very little interaction with WotC's Eberron setting beyond meming about the lolipope but I think it als counts as anachro-fantasy as do most of the later Final Fantasies. Anachro-fantasy Anachro-fantasy is a neoglism that describes high fantasy settings where everyday magic is so integrated into everyone's lives, the people basically live like the modern day. It is a setting type where the referee or author selects a technology level for most things between the medieval and Renaissance era, then sprinkles in items from post-WWII. It marries the aesthetics of medieval fantas...