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Post by capvideo on Apr 27, 2023 11:54:28 GMT -6
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Post by capvideo on Apr 21, 2022 10:49:12 GMT -6
“If you wish to know more about Dungeons & Dragons, for some reason, you can find D&D paraphernalia at many hobby and game stores, or you may write to Mr. Gygax’s company, TSR Hobbies, Inc., at Box 756, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 53147. Among numerous other things, they offer a monthly magazine called The Dragon, which I understand is principally useful in obfuscating such portions of the game as you think you already understand.”—Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope
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Post by capvideo on Jun 18, 2021 10:46:26 GMT -6
Yes, MeWe is very much a Google+-style successor; I find MeWe much easier to navigate than Facebook, and much easier to take part in groups on. Posts are sequential, and don’t get hidden behind what some algorithm thinks I want to see.
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Post by capvideo on Oct 30, 2020 9:51:44 GMT -6
I don’t remember why, but I’ve always assumed that Hodgson’s pig-faced creatures in The House on the Borderland were orcs. This one? That’s the story. I’ve never seen that cover art before.
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Post by capvideo on Oct 23, 2020 11:12:35 GMT -6
I don’t remember why, but I’ve always assumed that Hodgson’s pig-faced creatures in The House on the Borderland were orcs.
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Post by capvideo on Feb 22, 2019 13:11:52 GMT -6
I am planning to be there. Will also run a haunted house adventure.
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Post by capvideo on Feb 15, 2019 15:54:08 GMT -6
I will be there. It’s been incredibly fun the last three years.
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Post by capvideo on May 18, 2017 10:22:16 GMT -6
Sam Hane, Private investigator in Call of Cthulhu Grale Mentros, fighter in AD&D
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Post by capvideo on Feb 9, 2017 10:50:30 GMT -6
“Apollo, we’re very anxious to hear your report.”I just recently, within the last half-year rewatched all of the original BSG shows. They held up surprisingly well. Not as much continuity as you would expect nowadays, but the stories were still interesting and despite the occasional cheesiness of the dialogue, they were all good actors.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 24, 2017 9:31:58 GMT -6
Don't tell me, tell Wizards of the Coast---they seem to have a completely different view than you, according to the email I got from them, quoted above. Their view agrees with what I've been saying. Get them to see the light and change their minds. We’ve probably hit an impasse in this discussion, where we just end up repeating what we’ve said before; I’ve acknowledged your court cases, but read them and thought the court clearly outlined that, for example, ReDigi was wrong because they’d copied and then redistributed the copies. As far as Betamax vs. Diamond, it cuts to the heart of our disagreement. If you believe that copyright turns purchased media into a license, you’re always going to see the same thing in different eras as something new, because you see copyright as granting the purchaser a limited number of rights and an unlimited number of restrictions. You’ll see copying CDs as completely different from copying broadcasts, because you see limited rights vs. infinite restrictions. You’ll also see the copyright holder—in this case, Wizards of the Coast—as the arbiter of those limited rights. Limited rights and unlimited restrictions is paralyzing. If, as I believe to be the case from the court cases I’ve read (including the ones you’ve cited), purchases are in fact purchases, then purchasers have an unlimited number of rights, and a limited number of restrictions on what they can do with those purchases, as defined by law. It isn’t up to Wizards of the Coast to tell the OP what their rights are, because Wizards of the Coast isn’t licensing them a few rights; they’re selling a product that has some restrictions on it not set by Wizards of the Coast. As a point of evidence, my theory explains why companies prefer to “keep things hazy and ambiguous” as you wondered about: it’s because, when they have a limited number of restrictions on our infinite rights, it is to their advantage to keep things hazy and ambiguous; it is to their advantage to always treat the same old situation in new clothes as a completely new situation.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 20, 2017 17:35:55 GMT -6
Perhaps you're saying, "space shifting" was already a right in 1992 as soon as George Bush signed the AHRA into law, because the Sony Betamax (1984) precedent somehow cryptically recognized that right, even though the technology to express those rights wouldn't even exist for 14 years after the Betamax case was decided… Yes, space shifting was already a right. The Betamax case was about taking media from one format one media (television broadcast from film) and shifting it to a different format (video tape). There’s nothing cryptic about it. It is space shifting with a time shift added (which is why it’s usually called time shifting—but it involves all of the requirements to make it space shifting). Again, this runs to the point you actually acknowledged, which is that copyright involves very specific restrictions on what people can do with what they purchase; anything outside those specific restrictions are still open to purchasers. One of them is watching that movie a few days after it aired by copying the broadcast to video tape; another is listening to music you purchased as an MP3 via your desktop workstation or as a CD in a music store, by copying it to your portable music device. And another is reading that PDF as a book by copying it onto paper.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 18, 2017 12:22:38 GMT -6
So Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus isn't relevant to what I was saying in the above quote, nor is it relevant to the OP. It is relevant to whether copyright means that things purchased are mere licenses, however. The reason that the first-sale doctrine doesn't apply to ebooks is not that ebook copyrights are licenses, but that the only way to resell an ebook (or any other digital-only work) is to make a copy and then distribute that copy, sans original. As far as I know, the controlling case is still Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc. This is relevant to the OP because it goes to the heart of whether they have purchased something (in which case they have all rights that have not been restricted) or they have licensed something (that is, they have only the rights that were licensed). A purchase of an ebook is still a purchase, and the purchaser has the right to use it as they would any other purchase, sans the specific copyright restrictions. It remains perfectly legal, for example, without any permission, to backup your ebooks and other digital-only purchases, and to transfer them to whichever display device you prefer regardless of which you purchased them on. In the US, you are allowed to rip a CD to your computer and then copy it to your iPhone, because there is a law and a court ruling that gives you the specific right to do so... The law is the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The court ruling is RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. (1999). That decision said "spaceshifting" is a fair use of music you legally purchased. You’re switching the time frame here. That space shifting is a legal right came earlier than the AHRA. The Supreme Court addressed it in the Betamax case in the eighties. The AHRA was passed later to require copy restriction mechanisms (mostly on digital recording mechanisms), desired by video and audio recording companies. It was mainly in response to the growing ability to make perfect digital copies.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 17, 2017 11:12:17 GMT -6
Just because you have purchased a book does not mean that you own the copyrights to the content (text, graphics) in the book -- you merely license the content from the copyright owner. This is completely untrue. If purchasing, say, a book, were in actuality a license, book publishers would be able to forbid you from reselling the book if they wanted to, as a condition of the license. They do want to, and have often tried. But the courts say that purchasing a book is not a license, but in fact a purchase, and you can resell it if you wish. This has been a consistent interpretation of United States copyright law up to the Supreme Court since at least Bobbs-Merrill in 1908, and continues to be the interpretation today. Copyright is specifically a restriction on the things you could otherwise legally do with what you purchase; it does not turn a purchase into a license.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 13, 2017 10:41:04 GMT -6
In the United States, in general, it is legal to make copies of things that you own. Copyright covers the right to distribute new copies. When you copy a CD to your computer so that you can listen to it in your jukebox software, you are not breaking the law; the same is true when you copy that copy from your jukebox software to your phone or portable music device.
When MP3.com got into trouble, it was because they were making one copy of a CD, and then distributing that one copy to everyone who showed that they owned a different copy that CD. According to the courts, if MP3.com had been copying each user’s CD, and then letting that user listen to that particular copy made from their own CD, they would have been fine. (At the time, this would have been prohibitively expensive due to the massive hard disk space it would have required.)
The same was true, and litigated as such, back when computer magazines included code, usually BASIC, that readers could type in onto their computers. Some third parties had the great idea of typing in each program and then, along with proof that their customer owned a copy of that magazine, sending a cassette or disk with each program from that magazine back. The courts said, that's great—but you'll have to type from each subscriber's magazine to do so legally without permission from the copyright owner. Again, this wasn't economically feasible given the technology of the time so such third-party typing services died.
This means that it is legal to print from a PDF copy that you own, and for third-party services to print from your PDF copy on your behalf, as long as you aren't bypassing any restriction mechanisms (laws other than copyright make some attempts to circumvent such restrictions illegal).
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Post by capvideo on Nov 11, 2016 13:55:47 GMT -6
This is pretty cool, although I have to admit I have never once thought of D&D as a toy. I think, in retrospect, that was one of its draws as a teen. It wasn’t advertised as for kids. It was advertised as: - The Original Fantasy Role Playing Game for 3 or More Adults, Ages 10 and Up
- The Original Adult Fantasy Role-Playing Game For 3 or More Players
- Dungeons & Dragons is a fantastic, exciting and imaginative game of role playing for adults 12 years and up.
I never thought of it as something for kids, and so never had any qualms about carrying it to college or into life beyond college.
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Post by capvideo on Nov 10, 2016 12:02:15 GMT -6
Surprisingly, a google search for "Basic Character File" (in quotes) finds practically nothing, less than a page of results, nothing apparently relevant.
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Post by capvideo on Oct 31, 2016 12:36:44 GMT -6
DragonDaddy’s maps remind of the very first campaign I developed. Before I’d ever even DMed, and I had no idea how to go about creating a map—and no idea that I didn’t have any idea. I mapped an island at 50 feet per square. I ended up with seven taped-together “scrolls” five sheets high, and every time the players went east/west I had to unwrap another scroll. Impossible to game with, but somehow we still had fun!
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Post by capvideo on Oct 30, 2016 13:16:24 GMT -6
Seeing that so many of you started around '80-'82, did you start 1e, and then go back to Brown, or did you start with Mentzer/Moldvay/Holmes, and then go back? - Like, Mentzer almost never gets mentioned around here, not even as a derivative. (Engrish?) We started with Holmes, but by the second game were using the PHB—while the DM continued using Holmes. We started on Halloween 1981; Christmas, I got Moldvay Basic (and perhaps Expert, although that might have come several months later on my birthday). In the fall of 1982, when I went off to college, I switched exclusively to AD&D; when returning home, my hometown group also used AD&D exclusively, except, of course, that we used modules interchangeably. It's probably just first-preference for me, as Moldvay Basic was the first D&D I read all the way through, but reading Mentzer many years later was much less magical. The text even seemed denser to me. Looking at them side-by-side now, I'm not sure that's the case, but the text is definitely thinner in Mentzer, and condensed into three columns instead of two.
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Post by capvideo on Oct 28, 2016 10:37:17 GMT -6
Yeah, I start by making maps. I enjoy drawing maps, so I take out a piece of paper—usually not hex paper at first—and start drawing stuff based on whatever idea I had.
Usually at some point when I start liking the map, I’ll write myself a short, one- or two-paragraph description of what I’m going for—what the milieu is going to be like, how it got that way.
Then I’ll think about some likely places to put first-level characters, do a few more maps, and build out from there, according to what interests me.
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Post by capvideo on Sept 16, 2016 8:01:10 GMT -6
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Post by capvideo on Apr 1, 2016 10:31:47 GMT -6
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Post by capvideo on Feb 29, 2016 10:15:27 GMT -6
…I had never heard it called the Trash-80. Supposedly that's what it was derisively referred as. I’m sure the term started derisively, but in our circle at least (and I think even in 80-Micro) the term was latched onto as a self-deprecating term of endearment. When I went to college, the two guys next door each had a TRS-80 Model I, which they referred to as Trash-80s occasionally; even while they brought me to the local Radio Shack and showed me exactly what I needed to buy to connect my own Model I remotely to the computer science department’s main computers. (Mainly, an acoustic 110 or 300 baud modem.)
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Post by capvideo on Feb 28, 2016 11:35:12 GMT -6
The tables in “Square Pegs and Round Holes” from Dragon 165 were created on my Model I. When I sent in the first draft of the article, the Dragon editor who responded asked me to rewrite it and include “a simple formula” to determine the probabilities of rolling any number on any collection of dice. Of course, no such formula exists, so I included the tables and the BASIC program to generate them. (They chose not to publish the BASIC program with the article.)
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Post by capvideo on Feb 28, 2016 11:25:02 GMT -6
The first computer in my circleof gaming friends was a TRS-80 Model 1. We didn't, so far as I recall, do anything rpg related with it... My first computer was a Model I as well. I wrote a complete AD&D character generator on it, including equipment and first-level spells, that beginning players could use to create a character very quickly to play in a game we might be about to play. I still kick myself for not keeping that program when I finally sold the computer after a house fire. The Model I still worked after the fire, but it looked like sludge, and by the time we were allowed into the house, many of the 5.25-inch disks had mold on them—despite that, many of them did still work. The wonders of low data density. But it was 1987, and I decided to sell the Model I to someone who needed it for parts, and switched to a modern operating system: OS-9!
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Post by capvideo on Jan 18, 2016 13:17:17 GMT -6
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Post by capvideo on Jan 13, 2016 11:11:46 GMT -6
If you don’t mind receiving promotional emails, make sure you have that enabled. They email me quite a bit about promotions. The email signup is at the bottom of their home page.
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Post by capvideo on Dec 30, 2015 11:14:21 GMT -6
Quests and sandboxes aren’t opposite each other; the opposite of a sandbox is the railroad. A sandbox provides the player characters the opportunity to discover, take on, or otherwise engage a quest if that’s what the players want. A good sandbox will have several hooks that can be used as quests; if you look in pure sandbox dungeons from Thracia to Stonehell, you’ll see things in them that could very well interest players enough for them to turn into a quest. Likewise, if the GM is inserting custom things into adventures, the players might find one of the Hammers of the God in, say, the Dragon’s lair in Thracia, research its origins, and then discover that there are more Hammers hidden in a mountain…
This is very different from a railroad, such as Dragonlance, where player initiative really doesn’t matter. DL3 starts where DL2 was supposed to end, whether DL2 ended that way or not in any particular campaign.
Castle Amber fits easily into a sandbox game: it’s a short adventure, the player characters can go where they want, and the adventure itself doesn’t kill the world if they fail. Even though it has very specific goals, the method of reaching those goals are wide open. Each world literally is a few paragraphs, leaving the resolution of those goals up to the players. That’s pure sandbox.
The Keep on the Borderlands could very well end up being a task-driven game, in fact, the introduction recommends it. The player characters can decide to clear out the area of evil, for example.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who “likes” sandboxes complain about having goals. The question is, who sets those goals and what happens if the player characters start diverting from the goal. Does the game force the players to move their characters toward the goal, or do the players move their characters toward the goal by their own choice? That is where the complaints about non-sandbox games normally are. Ones where the player characters are observers while the plot train steams forward regardless of their actions.
I’d also point out that while I haven’t read King’s Festival, your description of it makes almost all modules “Progression” adventures. If just rescuing the hostage is a Progression adventure, what goals aren’t Progression adventures? Is getting the magic item at the bottom of the dungeon a Progression adventure? Is escaping with your life a Progression adventure? Is making enough money to afford better armor and equipment a Progression adventure?
Most PCs have goals, after all. If having a goal is all it takes to be a Progression adventure, then all sandboxes are Progression adventures.
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Post by capvideo on Aug 20, 2015 10:09:50 GMT -6
Six levels is a lot for me, but then I also tend to sprawl them, too. I think the biggest dungeon I’ve created was four levels, maybe five depending on how you count them.
Even Caverns of Thracia, my favorite “big” dungeon not of my own making, only has four levels (five if you count 3A, which is a bit big to be a sublevel).
Which is not to say I don’t want to run Stonehell Dungeon and Castle of the Mad Archmage! But the thing about dungeons once you hit six levels or more is that they are pretty much the campaign right there. Which is kind of what the original big dungeons were, if I understand them correctly. People stayed in the dungeons of Greyhawk for a long time.
If I were to create a dungeon with six or more levels, I expect I would not make all the levels at once: I'd probably start with the first three or four, and once they hit the third level, start thinking about the fifth and maybe the sixth; and so on, building it down as the players went deeper. That way I could customize the levels to be the kind of things the group finds most fun. I think Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror came about this way.
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Post by capvideo on Jul 31, 2015 9:44:26 GMT -6
I'm really surprised Dungeon magazine is doing so poorly here; that magazine was an amazing value for all the material you got. I always treated Dungeon issues the same as modules—if I wanted an adventure in it, I bought it, but I needed to at least see the titles and descriptions first. (Fortunately, since Dungeon didn’t put descriptions on the cover like modules did, Dungeon wasn’t shrink-wrapped.)
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Post by capvideo on Jul 26, 2015 12:56:05 GMT -6
I received Dragon and White Dwarf though the mail for at least a little while, although I’m not sure I received them directly from the publisher—I might have added them to my Mile High account back when Mile High did automatic weekly shipments. I had gone from a college town with a great gaming store and comic book store, back to the small town I grew up in, which had neither, and to top it all off I was injured badly enough I couldn’t drive for quite a while.
But that was a long time ago, and besides, the magazine is dead.
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