Legal Limbo
I'm in somewhat of an awkward situation.
Last week, while I was out of town on vacation, I was hit with a "cease and desist" order preventing me from distributing the Fire From the Sky Gamma World module to anyone. Note that I say "distributing" and not "selling"... As per the C&D, I'm restricted from giving the module to anyone, even for free. FFTS is now a controlled substance.
NOTE: I have asked for authorization to publish the C&D letter verbatim as I received it, but have not gotten approval to do so. Just to be safe, I will not publish its contents until cleared to do so.
Since then I have attempted to contact the legal entity that sent the C&D for clarification on what the issue is, but there's a problem: the legal firm that sent the C&D is a law firm in New York City - Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP (hereinafter refered to as "PBWT") - and not Wizards of the Coast's legal team in Renton, Washington (who are the people I originally contacted). PBWT apparently cannot speak on behalf of Wizards of the Coast without contacting WotC first (they make no decisions on their own), so if I ask PBWT any question they must send it to WotC Legal in Renton, wait for a response, then respond to me. I'm dealing with a third party, not WotC directly.
I'm at one end of a legal grapevine, having to wait for my message to bounce all the way to Washington and back.
So I made an effort to contact someone in Wizards of the Coast, be they legal or not, in the hopes that someone could talk to me directly. I received the following response from Wizards Customer Support:
Unfortunately, our Legal Department is only available via mail. To contact them, please use the following address:
Wizards of the Coast
Attn: Legal
PO Box 707
Renton, WA 98057-0707
Seriously?!? What century are we in again?
It's been about three days since I sent my first volley of questions, and I have yet to hear anything. At this rate, it may be months before I have any idea what the issue is or what I am allowed to do in future products.
In the meantime, all my other projects...
- The Fortress of Dr. Neb, Gamma World module. This campaign may be pretty much dead at this point.
- A planned "GammaCore" module based on the LHC
- My big campaign, The Coming Dark, which is normal D&D 4e and not Gamma World.
...are on hold. I don't know what to do with them at this point. I'm afraid to work on anything, unsure whether I'll be wasting my time on a project that may never see the light of day.
I'm kind of hoping that there will be some sort of WotC legal representation at GenCon, so maybe I can sort out these issues in person.
In the meantime, I do have some news: a third party has contacted me and expressed interest in converting both Fire From the Sky and The Fortress of Dr. Neb for use in Pathfinder and the upcoming Warlords of the Apocalypse supplement, even though nobody seems to be sure when that supplement will actually be released (it's seem to have had quite a turbulent development history). So stay tuned for that!
On another note, I am seriously considering running Fire From the Sky at GenCon; although I'm restricted from distributing it, I'm not restricted from using it myself. The only problem: I haven't DM-ed an in person game in well over a decade, so I'm not sure if I can handle it. So I'll hang out and watch others DM for the first few days just to make sure I can be on par with everyone else, and if it does happen might be Saturday. Don't bank on it, but we'll see if I can muster the courage before I'm on the flight back.
I might even make a special "THE MODULE THEY DO NOT WANT YOU TO SEE!!!" cover for it.
In the meantime, if you have an "in" with someone at Wizards of the Coast I would appreciate some insight as to the issue with Fire From the Sky. I would be willing to provide you a copy of the module if you work for Wizards of the Coast; I don't think I can legally give you one if you're not.
Until then... I wait patiently, hoping for some clarification...
Cease and Desist
I'm on vacation right now, so I really didn't need this...
I just received a "cease and desist" letter from Wizards of the Coast's legal department that states that my Fire From the Sky Gamma World module "...infringes on Wizards' intellectual property rights..." and "...is an illegal derivative work of Wizards' copyrighted D&D GAMMA WORLD property and constitutes wilful copyright infringement..."
I have been instructed to pull the Drive Thru RPG listing (which I already have) and cease distribution of the module. It is now contraband!
Well *that's* a kicker, isn't it?
So as it stands now, there will be no more Gamma World content... that's for sure. Dr. Neb will have to stay silent and my planned GammaCore module will die a slow painful death.
Furthermore, now *everything* that I may publish under the 4e GSL is in jeopardy, including my non-Gamma World content.
As I said, I'm on vacation right now and can't really focus on this until Monday the 18th, but there you go. Discuss at your discretion.
Excess Houseruling
I don't mind houserules most of the time because there are certain things in the core mechanic that, to me, make no sense, are not covered or may not translate well to the format I normally participate in ("play by post"). I personally have houseruled things like critical hits, tough minions and skill challenge handling (DC 10 + 1/2 level for an assist... at high levels, work for it guys!), just to make it a little more interesting.
But recently I've been exposed to what I call "excessive houseruling". In other words, the DM has elected to lay down so many new rules that you have to wonder if you're playing D&D at all.
For example, in ONE recent game there are the following houserules:
- New rules for swimming: you move slower, or even sink to the bottom, depending on the armor you are wearing. If you're wearing scale or plate, you sink pretty much no matter what; you get a save after which you can shift two squares and become dazed, but if you fail you start to drown.
- If you get pushed over the side of a dock in to the water, you get TWO rolls: a "safety roll" (Athletics/Acrobatics, fixed DC) and a saving throw. Now don't ask me what happens if you fail one or both, but as far as I could tell there is no way to avoid being dazed, even if you succeed on both rolls. When it happened to me I somehow wound up dazed, prone and hanging off the side of the dock.
- Complete redefinition of the surprise round #1: No opposed check to see if the other group is surprised. Post surprise round and first round actions right out of the gate, regardless of whether the enemy can act or not. There is no initiative order, so act at your discretion (and the enemy acts or moves at will as well). You can take full round actions until you "make contact" with the enemy, after which the surprise round ends immediately and the initiative order takes over.
- Complete redefinition of the surprise round #2: In the surprise round, you get a full set of actions and every time someone attacks the enemy makes an opposed Initiative roll. If their Initiative roll beats yours, the attack does not take place. Note that this is a complete subversion of the initiative and surprise round mechanic in the first place... This rule was so confusing that it nearly wiped half the party on the first round, despite us already standing there, literally two squares from the enemy, weapons drawn an sensing danger. Most of us posted initiative rolls and nothing else (as is normally the case in PbP, so we know what order we attack in and can coordinate. Not to mention a warlord in the party makes things more complicated), and the DM assumed that was all we were going to do in the first round, so we stood there like idiots while the enemy proceeded to smash our brains in with a barrage of attacks (four Thunderwave attacks at least, not to mention several melee hits). The result was half the party dead (my character - the warlord leader - took a total of 74 points of damage at level ONE. For those keeping score, that's 2.5x my actual HP) and the rest bloodied in the first round before any of us even made a single attack roll. It caused such an uproar that the whole scene was retconned by the DM.
- You can now use an action point as a free action at any time, even if it's not your turn. And forget about milestones and need to keep track of APs; you get one per encounter no matter what.
- New rules for invisible targets: Cannot attack an invisible target with a "lucky" melee attack EVER, and the houserule has been worded in such a way that I currently have no idea if it can be hit with a ranged attack. Note that none of this has anything to do with whether a character is "hidden" or not; I could roll a natural 20 on a Perception check and pat the invisible gnome on the head, but so long as he's invisible I can't smack him with the warhammer that's bigger than he is.
- Skill challenge rules that I know I can't explain (I posted the link to the thread on Twitter once; three people read it and only reacted by saying "my head hurts"). Basically we're walking through a city and we need directions, so we ask people. So each character has to pick a race we want to target, then make an opposed skill check of some sort. There's also a bunch of modifiers or something that I don't understand or know how they apply. And the end result is that I have to do 9 successes before 5 failures. Or something. Who knows.
There came a point when I didn't know what game I was playing anymore; I spent more time trying to make sense out of the rules than I did anything else. The story elements became lost in the mess, and every other post was asking for a rules clarification. There came a point when I stopped roleplaying and posted actions because I could not intelligently roleplay when I had no idea what was going on. It was no longer fun... it was work!
So I withdrew from the game.
Until that point, I don't think I'd ever withdrawn from a game in my life (well, except for games in which DMs disappear off the face of the Earth... Hey, it happens in PbP). It was a play by post game that was supposed to be all about roleplaying, but I read the thread a dozen times and didn't know what was going on. I had sensory overload, being hammered with so many rules that I couldn't focus on being the character I wanted to be. And I liked my character, too (one was a dwarven warlord, other was a shardmind psion).
I play PbP a lot, and I use it to tell a story and roleplay with the players. The rules are sometimes secondary, and if the players want to do something dramatic that bends the rules so be it. I have a monk in one game I DM that bounces all over the place, jumping over enemies and the like... Is that allowed in the rulebook? Probably not "as written", but I have him make a skill check and life goes on. I don't completely redefine what it means to take a move action.
D&D 4e has the potential issue of not being specific on certain rules, but that's by design. It's not like earlier versions, where you have five pages of grappling rules or six different ways to cast the same spell. In some ways it's simplistic and I think that's a good thing, but when a veteran player who is use to having a phone book of rules to go by starts playing it, they find themselves filling the apparent gaps.
So I'm curious...
- Have you ever been a player in a game where some houserules were absurd, or there were too many to keep track of?
- Any special houserules you've put in to effect as a DM?
-=O=-
On an unrelated note, I am taking a brief hiatus while I leave town on business, so this blog will be silent until the 19th of July. How I'm going to handle this trip and GenCon shortly thereafter is beyond me, but I'll figure things out as I go along.
A New Beginning
Technically this post has nothing to do with D&D. Hope you don't mind.
A short time ago, Sersa V at Save Versus Death announced that he will discontinue support of that which we know as "Fourthcore". I admit I've been in that position before, and I can't blame him for feeling the way he does.
I've mentioned this before, I think... Game design is sometimes a thankless job, and there isn't a worse feeling in the world than looking at that which gave you so much joy and thinking to yourself "this sucks".
For every person that enjoys your creation, you'll always have ten others that will berate it every chance they get. Whether it's because they hate some aspect of it, whether they don't understand it, or even if they just feel like complaining about something... it will not be a pleasant expeirence. When you get a handful of people tell you "man, you're awesome!", you'll get a bucketful of people yelling "man, are you serious? What the hell are you thinking?!?"
As a designer, you are left with a difficult decision. The way I see it, there are three options:
- Continue doing what you do in the way that you have been: The critics will continue to complain about it, regardless of whether the points they make have any validity. Ignore them and continue to develop games the way you have been because you want to; it is what brings you joy, and there is no reason to change. If you choose this route, you must be ready to accept that, over time, you may be the only person who plays your own game and the whole world might hate every fiber of your being (I've brought you John Romero before; he actually received death threats after releasing Daikatana), but at least you and you alone will have a good time designing it and a lot of fun playing it.
- Change the way you do things in order to adapt to the majority: If you do this, game design is no longer "fun"... it becomes "work". It becomes grueling, tiring, monotonous, depressing, and you yourself begin to hate that which you enjoyed not long ago. This could be compared to "selling out", where someone gives up their principles in order to create something that many more would play just because "more is better".
- Do something else: Pack as much as you can in to two suitcases and change your identity. Clean the slate and do something different.
In one way or another, I've been through every one of the above situations...
When The Opera was in development, I was creating the game that I wanted to create. And because I was mostly catering only to myself, the game could never be perfect enough to satisfy my own vision, so I continued to work on it to make it perfect. It took over two years to finish it as a result, but damn was I proud of it when it went gold. When the first version was released, I think that it was on a whopping three servers... compared to over 1,400 Counter-Strike servers. Sometimes I couldn't even find the server sitting on the ground next to my feet in the in-game browser.
For the next version of The Opera, we decided to try and fix all the issues that people had with the game in the hopes that more people will play it. It went from "creating something cool" to "fixing something that's broken". The month before the release of The Opera v1.2 felt longer than the two years leading up to the first release, and it was such a frustrating experience that The Opera R2 never came. We just didn't have it in us, the excitement faded and the group parted ways.
All this was during the time that Counter-Strike was a powerhouse in the mod community. Every product that was released was compared to Counter-Strike, and if it didn't come anywhere near being as good it never saw the light of day. Some brilliant mods for Half-Life were created during that time - Action Half-Life, Firearms, Day of Defeat, The Specialists, Natural Selection, etc... - but under the 800lb gorilla that was Counter-Strike they had no chance of success. Many of the designers sat around wondering "why are we doing this?" when nobody out there even knew they existed, and pretty soon Counter-Strike was the only mod that anyone cared about.
That is the reason I no longer do video game design. It was an uphill battle that I could not win, and that which I had spent years doing was no longer fun... It was grueling, painful and demoralizing. I began to hate it. So I found something else to do; it's still game design, but not video game design. And I'm happy once again (at least for now)!
Now I have another product: The Coming Dark, Chapter One. Honestly, I've been editing the thing over and over again for the past several weeks because it's not up to my expectations (I don't think it will ever be, but that's besides the point). When I release it, I know full well that there are many out there that will consider some of my design choices "wrong", hate some of the things I've done in it, or even burn it in a ritualistic ceremony in the front lawn just because the world must be cleansed of it. I would actually be surprised if anyone ever attempts to run this campaign. Quite frankly, I don't care... I'm creating it because *I* want to, because *I* have to for my own peace of mind. And the day I release it I will begin writing up Chapter Two and Chapter Three. If there is ever a time when I no longer enjoy it, when I feel this is a hardship that drains all the fun I had in creating the campaign, the project ends there. I go do something else, and life goes on.
Fourthcore, at its heart, was a great concept: it was an effort to bring back the golden age of D&D, the kind of game that Gygax envisioned when he created Tomb of Horrors and similar modules. But a lot of people saw it as a subversion of 4e; it was simply "wrong" and had no place in the D&D 4e mechanic. It was something that was seemingly railroaded in to an existing system not meant to support it, a system that seemed to ignore a lot of rules and design guidelines that made 4e what it was (Note: I emphasize the word "seemed" because a lot of critics may not have ever read a Fourthcore module, and are simply basing their wild rants on what they think Fourthcore is due to its description). But being "wrong" isn't necessarily a bad thing; many wonderful things have resulted from someone doing something "wrong". I can think of several billion dollar industries that exist because someone created something "wrong" that had no synergy with its parent product, so they wound up branching it off and doing it on their own. Heck, you could argue that things like vulcanized rubber and microwave ovens exist because someone did something "wrong".
So rather than trying to hammer the round peg in to the square hole, Sersa is moving on to create an entirely new product: "Wrath". This gives him artistic license to do anything he wants, and he won't have to worry about appeasing the screaming critics out there that continue to point out how Fourthcore doesn't "fit" in 4e. "Wrath" doesn't have to be a part of anything else; it stands on its own. For that, I applaud him and wish him the best of luck in this endeavour.
As for the nature of Fourthcore itself, I'm sure it will live on. The concept of Fourthcore is bigger than one person, and I have no doubt many others will continue the tradition and keep the concept alive even if it isn't called "Fourthcore" anymore. For example, I myself am still considering the creating a "GammaCore" module one of these days. Sersa planted the seeds of Fourthcore, but in some ways it has taken roots all its own and will live on in the hearts and minds of its fans.
If you're a designer, any type of designer, odds are you enjoy what you're doing; the thrill of creation is the reason you're doing it in the first place. But there will come a time when you will receive criticism and question whether it's all worth it. When that time comes, don't surrender. Either continue doing what you do because it's what you want to do or leave it all behind and move on the the next big adventure. Never let an outsider dictate what you do to have fun, because when you do it's no longer fun... it's work.
And work sucks...
The World-Ending Bag of Holding
I don't know if I've mentioned it here or not, but when it comes to managing encumbrance in D&D I'm of the school that assumes everyone - even first level characters - has a Bag of Holding. I do not want to worry about the math involved in determining weight, and I refuse to believe that our heroes would be over-encumbered and suffer in combat because they're one pound over. Also, I'd hate to think of the chaos that will ensue if the heroes just toss aside their inferior magic items, leaving them lying about as if they're spent cigarettes. Imagine if a wandering goblin chanced across your +4 Mace of Chieftain Braining just because you prefer your shiny new +5 weapon instead (although, come to think of it, that's kind of a cool adventure seed!).
So unless you want to carry a different broadsword for each day of the month or enough suits of plate mail to equip the London Symphony Orchestra, I'm going to assume you can carry the item somehow, regardless of size or weight. Either you get to hold on to your old magic items or automatically have some way to convert them to residuum so you can sell them back in town.
But, in a fit of boredom, I began to think about what exactly is a Bag of Holding. How does it work exactly, and what are the problems you face for doing certain things to it?
Dungeons and Dragons 4e's listing of the Bag of Holding and its bigger brother, the Handy Haversack (seriously? That's what it's called? Sounds like something Dora the Explorer carries around), doesn't go in to much detail on the subject:
Bag of Holding - Level 5 Uncommon
This item appears to be a simple sack of brown canvas.
Price: 1,000 gp
Wondrous Item
Property: This bag can hold up to 200 pounds in weight or 20 cubic feet in volume, but it always weighs only 1 pound.
Drawing an item from the bag is a minor action.
Handy Haversack - Level 10 Uncommon
This ordinary-looking backpack is surprisingly light.
Price: 5,000 gp
Wondrous Item
Property: This backpack can hold up to 1,000 pounds in weight or 100 cubic feet in volume, but it always weighs only 1 pound.
Drawing an item from the backpack is a minor action.
NOTE: There are other similar items - such as the Deep-Pocket Cloak and Tinkersuit (both from the Adventurer's Vault 2), but the concept is the same.
Every time I make a character that's high enough level to afford one or the other, I get one. But I got to thinking... What happens if it rips? What happens when you turn it inside out? What happens when you put one inside the other? What happens if I stuff the annoying gnome in to one?
D&D 4e makes no concessions for such actions, leaving it irrelevant or up to the discretion of the GM. Which, quite frankly, is kind of dangerous... 'cause the first thing I think would happen if you put one bag in another is that the world would implode. For any of the above actions, GM's can do anything they want: create a rift to another plane, creating a miniature black hole, spawn Orcus, spawn a pony... GM had free reign. And God help you if your GM knows anything about physics...
Can you imagine what it took to create the very first bag of holding? How many mages are standing around the Astral Plane thinking "well that didn't work..." and wondering how they're getting home?
Looking back at previous versions of D&D you can tell that many people have tried the above "what if" scenarios, so the rule books had to be very explicit of what would happen. Here it is from the d20 SRD:
This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size. The bag of holding opens into a non-dimensional space: Its inside is larger than its outside dimensions. Regardless of what is put into the bag, it weighs a fixed amount. This weight, and the limits in weight and volume of the bag’s contents, depend on the bag’s type, as shown on the table below.
[Table removed - see above link]
If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever. If a bag of holding is turned inside out, its contents spill out, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again. If living creatures are placed within the bag, they can survive for up to 10 minutes, after which time they suffocate. Retrieving a specific item from a bag of holding is a move action—unless the bag contains more than an ordinary backpack would hold, in which case retrieving a specific item is a full-round action.
If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in the space: Bag and hole alike are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane: The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, destroying the portable hole and bag of holding in the process.
That's a big sack. Two feet by four feet is larger than my laptop bag; that's not a bag, that's an oil drum.
Think about that description, though... A 9th level magic item that is capable of creating a rift to the Astral Plane and sucking most of the party along with it. And you can stuff all the magic items you want in it, but if someone pierces it with so much a needle everything inside it is vaporized. If you toss in your brand new +6 Longsword of Cloth Piercing, goodbye worldly belongings.
It's almost like carrying around Pandora's Box. The thing should come with an instruction manual or warning label; thanks to the manual I don't have to worry about sucking my bathroom in to the tenth level of hell because I know not to use my blow dryer in the shower.
D&D 4e forgets all that, either pretending that those situations would never happen or simply leaving it up to the GM's artistic license. I don't have to worry about how many razor sharp weapons I'm tossing in, or even if the annoying gnome can breathe in there.
It's also worth noting that there are four types of bags, each with varying bag weight, maximum weight capacity and maximum volume (the largest bag can hold 1,500 pounds and 250 cubic feet). The handy haversack exists as well, working essentially the same as the bag but with the added bonus that "when the wearer reaches into it for a specific item, that item is always on top." D&D 4e allows you to pull anything out of the bag as a minor action, even if it's something you tossed in years ago.
The description brings up yet another object that could combine with the bag of holding to end civilization: the portable hole, which also exists in D&D 4e but radically different...
Portable Hole - Level 19 Uncommon
This handkerchief-sized black circle becomes a great hole when placed on a flat surface.
Price: 105,000 gp
Wondrous Item
Power (At-Will): Standard Action. Place a portable hole on a wall, a floor, or a ceiling. (The surface must be flat for the item to function.) The portable hole instantly creates a 5-foot-wide, 5-foot-deep hole in that surface. With a standard action, any creature adjacent to a portable hole can pick it up, provided there are no creatures or objects inside it.
What I find interesting in the above description is that it isn't particularly clear as to what it does. if the wall is 5' thick, does that simply make an opening? What if the object is smaller than 5'x5'x5'? What if I put this thing on the annoying gnome's chest?
For the record, here's the Portable Hole in the d20 SRD:
A portable hole is a circle of cloth spun from the webs of a phase spider interwoven with strands of ether and beams of starlight. When opened fully, a portable hole is 6 feet in diameter, but it can be folded up to be as small as a pocket handkerchief. When spread upon any surface, it causes an extra-dimensional space 10 feet deep to come into being. This hole can be picked up from inside or out by simply taking hold of the edges of the cloth and folding it up. Either way, the entrance disappears, but anything inside the hole remains.
The only air in the hole is that which enters when the hole is opened. It contains enough air to supply one Medium creature or two Small creatures for 10 minutes. The cloth does not accumulate weight even if its hole is filled. Each portable hole opens on its own particular non-dimensional space. If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole, a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in that place. Both the bag and the cloth are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane. The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, the portable hole and bag of holding being destroyed in the process.
Note the major difference: The portable hole went from being 6' wide and 10' deep to 5'x5'x5', no doubt to conform to the traditional "1 square = 5 feet" convention. Also, if something is inside the hole when it's folded shut, it stays in there in the same manner as a bag of holding; the D&D 4e version can only be closed if empty.
So in past versions of D&D these items were a disaster waiting to happen. In 4e, they're just another item that the players can use without fear of retribution or having an unscheduled visit to the Astral Plane. On an unrelated note: God, how I miss cursed items sometimes...
I'll continue to use them, just because it ensures I never have to worry about encumbrance. I'm kind of glad I don't have to worry about whether I will implode the world every time I put something in there.
As a 4e GM... Heck, I'd make *everything* include this technology one way or another, putting the players at great risk should they decide to put the would-be treasure inside their own bag of holding. But I can already see the problems with that: when a GM decides to take such liberties, the players might protest because it's not written in the rules anywhere. That still won't stop me from creating a world-ending cataclysm just because you put the wrong thing inside your little bag.
And if you're a gnome in my party, I'd be careful if I was you.
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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