PhilCon is this weekend. I’m going!!! My first SF Convention, ever. Finally a time when timing works out for me that I get to go. I’ll try to take notes on the panels I’ll be attending and post them afterwards. Let me know if you are going too.
When you’re going to do something big, you have to time it just right. Striking while the iron is hot is important, but so is being coordinated. At the end of the day, coordination is more important. Even a slow economy can work to your advantage. Being as professional as possible by meeting deadlines, having something finished before it is even announced, while taking your time to do things right goes a long way with consumers. I don’t remember who said it be someone said “Underpromise and Overdeliver” was the best business practice to live by. That’s my plan.
Those of you that follow Wizards of the Coast and the Dungeons and Dragons RPG, yesterday was the day the GSL went live. Companies that wanted to write material compatible with Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons can do so with the Game System License, or GSL for short. The GSL, as it stands right now is not a document that affords quality protection for licensee companies. Wizards could shut them down with a casual stroke. While I do not believe that Wizards today will do that, Wizards today is not the Wizards of 8 years ago and there is no reason to expect that the Wizards of 8 years from now will be the same entity.
Yes, Wizards is making changes to the license, but who knows when that will come. Its also true that these changes are because Necromancer Games said they cannot work with the license as written. But it is also true that there very nearly was no license at all.
In short, I don’t see a long term future with D&D so I decided a while ago to write for other systems. Pathfinder and Traveller is where I see a long term future and I will be happy to write for those audiences. So that’s where I will be going.
Ever play Traveller? I have. I’m still new to the game, and by new I mean I have played two sessions since the new rules were officially launched and two sessions of the playtest rules. That’s it. Its been around for 30 years and I played 4 sessions. I ran all of them. Last night was the first session in a campaign. It was fun, alot of fun. Simple mechanic, allows for lots of room for character development, and easy to write up characters, plots, etc.
So what exactly does this have to do with the big announcement. Alot. Exactly what, I can’t say for the moment. But stay tuned.
