Deal of the Day - Content Conversion Guide Second Edition (Pathfinder / 5E / P2E / OSR / DCC / d20 3.5 / AD&D 2e)

Some people do these conversions on the fly, based on feel. Others like to have it spelled out for them. I'm in the former category myself, but if you are in the latter, today's Deal of the Day - Content Conversion Guide Second Edition (Pathfinder / 5E / P2E / OSR / DCC / d20 3.5 / AD&D 2e) is the guide for you.

If you've ever wanted to take adventure content from one system and use it in another, this book has been designed to be of invaluable help. 

With full support for 3.x and AD&D 2e, you can easily convert decades-old campaign material for use with more recent rules systems, or vice versa.

Return to the realms of Greyhawk, Mystara, Planescape, Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, Kara-Tur, Birthright, and even Hollow World, or explore them for the very first time, in the rules system of your choice!

Extend and enhance the options available for settings that have been republished, but much more sparsely than the hundreds of sourcebooks and adventures that are available over the decades for older systems. Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, and more: if you liked the material that is available for 5E, you'll gush at the opportunity to delve into hundreds of sourcebooks that have come before.

Relive, or relish, HUNDREDS of ancient sourcebooks, adventures, and options, in the modern rules system of your choosing.

Take the hundreds of first-party, and thousands of indie, adventures and sourcebooks that have been published for P1E and other older systems, and use them in 5E or another supported system of your choice.

Convert any content, from any of the supported rules systems, into any of the other rules systems.

Only with the Content Conversion Guide: Second Edition.

Existing CCG Owners: Why Do You Care?

 The Tavern uses affiliate links

Support The Tavern: tenkarstavern.com/p/support

tenkars-tavern.games/DTRPG

youtube.com/@TenkarsTavern?sub_confirmation=1

I Don't Think Gamerant Gets D&D Treasure

I haven't picked up Baldur's Gate 3 (yet) but  came across this Gamerant article regarding the distribution of loot in the game vs. TTRP D&D. The title was total clickbait (well, at least clickbait to the likes of me): Baldur's Gate 3's Approach to Treasure is a Great Lesson for D&D DMs

Now I read the article and I don't think the author gets it. The core of the article, and coincidentally my problems with it can be summed up in just these two sentences from the article: "Crates, buried chests, and specialized loot containers are at every turn in the slice of Faerun players can access, something that greatly encourages exploration and thorough investigation. This is in contrast to the way many DMs approach loot, reserving piles of gold, consumables, equipment, and magic items for the post-boss treasure hoard."

Even in video games, and especially in TTRPGs, I don't think players should be rewarded with loot simply for walking around. Sure....walking around might lead to opportunities to adventure and acquire loot, but you shouldn't be picking up loot simply because you wandered around and tripped over some boxes. Sounds more like smashing every pot & crate in The Legend of Zelda.

I think that some of the best loot should be reserved for a post-boss treasure hoard. I mean, think about it.....the BBG (Big Bad Guy) is generally large & in charge, right? If he/she/it wasn't then there's nothing for the party to contend with. As the BBG, a good percentage of the available loot is going to be taken up to be hoarded or used. Sure, some items may be farmed out for minions to use, but the good stuff should be hoarded from and used against the party.

WTF would the BBG take all of the good stuff and box it up and store "at every turn....of Faerun"? If that was the case, wouldn't somebody else....hell, everybody else, be rooting around smashing & grabbing what they can?

I mean I kind of get wanting to have the players explore everything that the GM (or in the case of BG3, game designers) has created, but you know....that's not what being a GM/DM is. I do not feel it is the GM's job to get the players to explore every nook & cranny. The GM can dangle some threads for the players to pull on, but they should be running the show...making the actual decisions. Sure, there is some expected back & forth, but when the GM starts pushing the players to basically show off....that's not the name of the game here.

Personal Note: This is going to be my last regular post here at Tenkar's Tavern. I'm not even sure how many years I've been posting on Sundays, but I feel like the reasons I started doing so aren't relevant anymore and posting here has become a bit much for me. I'd like to get back to my own blog and doing reviews, free GM resources, and whatnot and honestly after posting on Sundays I'm not feeling like doing more over at my own space...

No worries. Erik & I are good and I'm grateful for the opportunity he gave me to share my thoughts here.

Wait, This is a Thing? (World's Largest D&D Game)

Yesterday was the biggest game of D&D ever played.

I only know because a buddy of mine was telling me about his weekend gaming plans and mentioned this was happening. My initial thought was, "Oh he's playing in a big-assed tournament." No, no he was not. Him and the Mrs. were slinging dice at the single largest group of players sitting down to the same game, not a single adventure being played at 200 tables of 5 players and a DM, but basically one big-assed table of 1000 players and 200 DMs.

Wait...what? This is a thing?

Well according to the Guinness World Records folks this is a thing, and is so knew it isn't even on the website yet, but the hosts have a pic of their record on their Facebook page.

The session was four hours and a massive war front against an undead army lead and the PCs, all 1K of them, are the ad-hoc army of the Kingdom of Grand. It was called Dead Wars.

It was a 5th Edition D&D game, which I know next to nothing about and probably won't (not any OSR snobbery, just my buddy said he really doubt I'd care for it and I trust his opinion to not waste my resources). All I could think of is how much of a logistical nightmare setting things up could be, both in and out of game.

Still, kind of cool to have the chance to participate in a bit of history and maybe even find some new gaming friends. Unfortunately for most of us, this happened in Provo, Utah. Now I used to live in Boise, so I know where Provo is, but for the rest of the US.....it's a suburb (of sorts) to Salt Lake City. Of course your probably guessed that because most Americans can only name Salt Lake City as a city in Utah.

Now I don't know how far those Guinness folks want to drill-down, but I'm down for a big-assed 1st or 2nd edition game.......

Oh, and congrats to We Geek Together, you pulled it off.

Two Weeks in: D&D Honor Among Thieves

 

So it's been two weeks since the D&D movie came out and I've been seeing a metric butt-ton of YouTube videos about it. A lot of reviews, good and bad, but I'd say at least half were "explanation" pieces trying to point out all of the D&D references or make me understand the ending of the movie.....I didn't know it needed to be explained, but whatever.

For the most part I'm so not a fan of having things pointed out or explained to me, but I did have one of these video slide-in behind the video I was playing in the background and I did learn something  that I will not outright share because spoilers and whatnot.

The real question I did have though was, "Is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" successful? Of course this depends on your definition of success, but I'm thinking along the lines of....."Did it make enough money to warrant a sequel?"

I've read online that the movie "cost" $150M, which....IIRC, is roughly 50/50 production costs and advertising.  According to Screen Dollars, the movie has made $37.2M in the opening weekend and $74M in the first two weeks (week three began on April 14th). Almost half of these sales are from overseas. Further reading online tells me, as much as these things can.....movie studios are known for doing weird math.....that for a studio to think a movie "profitable" it has to make 3x the production budget, so for the D&D movie that would be $225M. 

Personally I think that this movie might kill it with DVD/Blu-Ray sales, but that's even more fuzzy math I can't even fathom. What would be a better indicator is the drop-off in sales between the opening weekend and the second. "Normal" is about 40%, but 60% is considered problematic. This movie went down 47%, so more than normal, but not terrible......

....which not be a bad thing. The Super Mario movie is decimating the box office right now and John Wick 4 is doing twice as well as the D&D movie. If you factor in all of the box office shuffling because of COVID (yes, it's still affecting the movies and will be for a while)...well the jury is still out.

Sorry.....I started this post before I started my research, so let's look at some "critical" reviews:

Metacritic gives it a 72 (Generally Favorable)

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 90% Tomatometer (Professional/Critical Reviews) and a 93% Audience Score

My gut says that the movie will probably be declared a success, but not make enough extra cash for Hasbro to pony up for an additional film in the franchise.

I Saw the D&D Movie So You Don't Have to! (Mostly Spoiler-Free Post)

 

Ok, kind of kidding with the title. I did see the movie Friday at the 1st "regular" showing my local theater had, but I had an afternoon date and it was the best movie time that worked with both our schedules.

I mention the date thing because she is not a gamer and had pretty much no clue about anything RPG related, so I was able to get her completely different perspective on the film.

It is important to note that this isn't so much of a review because I don't want to spoil things, but assume there will be at least one important spoiler that you may actually want to hear....I think it is important to hear, because I think this alone makes it worth seeing the film:

If, like me, you saw pretty much all of the previews and teasers, you already know the rough storyline. No....no you don't. The movie I saw was NOT the story that was presented in the teasers and trailers.

This is HUGE....at least to me. I am sooooo tired of already knowing what's going to happen when I sit down for a film. I mean it can still be a good time, but films hardly surprise you unless they go out of their way to do so. I can think of a couple of examples, but one is a big spoiler (the most recent Red Dawn flick) so I'll mention the Southpark: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie. When the boys went hard R singing a few minutes in it was like a refreshing slap in the face if all you were used to was the TV show.....to me that was a great surprise.

Anyway, there was some good humor, plenty of Easter Eggs that didn't get in the way of the film (so no biggie for those that didn't recognize them) and I'll admit when the BBG fight went down I was going all Gamer and thought the PCs were going to zig...and they zagged. Did not see it coming at all and while I thought my idea was gamer-creative, I think it'd have been lost on the non-gamers in the audience and probably not a good cinematic/storytelling way for the PCs to win.

The only thing I didn't really like about the film is it just felt like there was a bit of name-dropping that might not have really added much, but my date didn't really notice because to her one name was just as good as another.

Honestly though, I think it has been the best D&D movie to date, which might not be saying much. It was enjoyable and I'll get it when it comes on Blu-Ray for sure. I would recommend seeing it, even if you bring a non-gamer. I'm hoping that they'll release a tie-in adventure or even a campaign (for all I know they've already done this) because there is plenty of main-storyline adjacent stuff to work with.....

So Ha$bro Called for an Armistice...

While I'm glad to see that Ha$bro has called a CHECK FIRE on the OGL 2.0 mission, I'm not convinced (clearly) that this isn't the end of things. I don't think we won anything.....hell, I don't think there were any winner here, everybody lost. I'm a big fan of win-wins, but this was a loss all around.

WotC has traditionally devalued previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, favoring the current/upcoming edition. It's arguably the reason we're on edition...5, 6....is 7 already in the works somewhere? It's the reason my beloved HackMaster exists (WotC traded off the rights to 1st & 2nd Edition because they were producing D&D 3.0). Things changed a little bit when Ha$bro figured out they could make a few bucks "reprinting" older AD&D material, really just printed PDFs. I'm of the belief that Ha$bro realized that they could squeeze a little more profit out of "the old stuff", but their focus was on the upcoming edition and this OGL re-write was really to maximize their margin here.

Ha$bro didn't expect the huge backlash largely because they didn't value those earlier editions. They still should have due to how messed up things would be for creators going forward, but that's what happens when marketers and analysts operate in a vacuum. I'm also of the belief that this withdrawal of the current OGL 2.0 is also monetary based in that Ha$bro doesn't want to spend what cash they have on lawsuits, especially when they already have enough bad press. Sales are down for the company and they're laying off 15% of its workforce.....not a good sign, even if WotC is doing (relatively) well.  

No, it's lose-lose for the most part. The player base knows that Ha$bro can't be trusted and they know that the player base can, and will, be vocal. Yes, they threw in an olive branch by making the 5.1 SRD a Creative Commons license, but they deliberately left the OGL 1.0a "untouched". I think that if WotC/Ha$bro wanted to really make a statement and address the real elephant in the room they would have come out with OGL 1.0b that simply made the OGL "irrevocable". The 5.1 SRD doesn't do a whole lot if you're making OSR material.....

What I think, and I'm clearly a pessimist, is that Ha$bro is biding it's time. There will be a OGL 2.0 and while it might not be as far-reaching as the last attempt, it will be the end of OGL 1.0a. Ha$bro will make sure they have their ducks in a line, plug any and all leaks that they can, and ram it down our collective throats when they think they can get aways with it. We taught them how not to disseminate bad news to the community, and they probably know who will be the most likely to bring expensive lawsuits. The 5.1 SRD changes might very well be to placate some of these other companies......like why would Paizo care about the OGL if they're covered by the 5.1 SRD? Now this is speculation on my part, I haven't done, and for my sanity probably will never, do a deep dive on Pathfinder &/or the 5.1 SRD.

Now is not the time to sit back and think that this is over and "we've won". Sure, the shelling has stopped....for now, but it can pick back up. At best Ha$bro called for an armistice, not a peace treaty.....

Please, continue to support the smaller publishers that would have been affected by the OGL 2.0 disaster, basically anybody wanting to use the Open RPG Creative License, but also those that are still sticking with the OGL 1.0a.

I hope it'll be years before we have to revisit this...maybe in time for D&D Ten....so maybe 2035?

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

There has been a lot of brouhaha over Ha$bro updating, or at least contemplating/trying to update, the Open Game License to version 1.1 and start skimming money "off the top". This whole thing feels so far past ridiculous as to actually be recockulous.

Now I understand that this is alarming to some people, but to the average gamer, and I dare say small publisher, that would read this blog....meh, it's not something to get too worked up about....well, at least from a more common-sense perspective.

I am fully cognizant that there is always the possibility of a "frivolous" lawsuit from a big company like Ha$bro, which could just ruin a "small guy" even if they're in the right....because lawsuits and lawyers cost money up-front, but I'm discounting that for the purposes of this one-sided discussion.

1st off, if you read the SRD-OGLv1.1 (published January 1st, 2016...according to the PDF) and the OGLv1.0 (pulled WotC via the internet archive), I don't think you can get much clearer than the Offer and Acceptance, "By Using the Open Game Content You indicate Your acceptance of the terms of this License." and the Grant and Consideration, "In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content."

This legalese was deliberately written in an easy-to-understand language for a reason. I will postulate that the reason was to entice people to write compatible 3rd party materials for D&D. This is a good thing for Ha$bro, and I will argue that it is still a good thing!

Unless you really want to use the shiny & new version of D&D and need to use the updated OGL & SRD, you can just use the old one......let's see...oh, yeah...in perpetuity.

A lifetime ago I worked in an overly competitive industry and my boss, ever the salesman, worked to break down some of this competitiveness. He realized that there was no possibly way for all these companies to be able to service all of the potential customers. There was always going to be some high-level competition for the high-end(paying) clients, but the well of customers was (unfortunately) never going to run dry and there was far more value in everyone working together.

One of his favorite sayings was "A rising tide lifts all boats."

If you are able to, look at your gaming stuff. Do you have more than one rulebook? More than one set of dice? How about adventures and/or other sourcebooks? If you're here odds are you have multiple game systems, multiple editions, and possibly even multiple copies of certain books of the same game system! I'm willing to be $$$ that you will be adding to your library of material. Most of my gaming friends like to share with new players and each other as well, and I think that's more common than not.

The thing is, all of as, as players, are not just going to pick up a Player's Handbook and call it good. You know this, I know this....hell, Ha$bro knows this! They should know this....I mean most companies do research and have marketing people! Heck, Marketers usually like to segment customer groups and give them interesting names somewhat indicative of their perception of said customer group..... 

I'm sure somebody at Ha$bro realized that everyone is making more money off of RPGs than they are, but I'm not sure that they realize that more than likely nobody is making more money than they are. Obviously by "everybody" I mean collectively. Trying to get a chunk of change off of everyone successfully making products using the OGL & SRD will only reduce the effectiveness of these 3rd party producers, raise their prices, and shrink the number of "competing" products. This is basic economics....seriously Econ 101.

The thing is, there isn't a set, defined pool of customers and customer dollars (although Marketers act as though there is). Getting a 3rd party vendor to lose $100 of profits does not mean that Ha$bro makes $100 more. Instead it just means there is less product "out there", which assuming full utilization of purchased products (no collections, etc.) means there is less gaming going on.

Ha$bro needs more gaming in general, and I'd argue it needs more new gamers than anything. Most of us reading here probably do not play the current edition of D&D, and even if you do, it probably isn't your preferred system. Now, this is going to be my weakest point because it is my "gut" feeling here, but I think there are two main purchasers of the current edition of D&D: die-hard fans, and brand-new-to-rpg players.

Some people will always pick up the current flavor and run with it until there is a new edition. These purchasers are not likely to be "lost" to 3rd party vendors and would be labeled, by the marketers, as "Brand Loyal". This OGL/SRD issue is lost on them.....

Now the other group, new players....they're going to pick up the core books and supplements/adventures. If they enjoy themselves they may pick up 3rd party materials and/or more "in house" products. With any luck, these new players, that marketers would label as well....I'll jokingly call them "Newbs", will become Brand Loyalists.

I've already insinuated it, but there is a 3rd group of potential D&D players and that is the established RPG player that isn't a Brand Loyalist or a Newb.....and odds are most of you reading this fall into this third group. For the sake of this discussion we'll say the Marketers label us as "Gamers". Now the Gamers might interact with the Brand Loyalists and even the Newbs, but this would be in addition to our normal gaming, and with regard to Newbs it might be to help establish non-players as Newbs. Gamers are much more likely to pick up a 3rd party vendor product for a variety of reasons, but one I'll highlight is the likelihood that there is little to no chance that a Brand Loyalist or Newb has seen the 3rd party product (pretty much by group definition). In this instance the availability of 3rd party OGL/SRD products directly impacts the the creation of a new D&D customer. This is a bit of a stretch, which I understand.

The absolute best way for Ha$bro to increase their sales of D&D products is threefold: Make quality products, making playing RPGs more socially-acceptable, and increase the number of RPG players overall.

1. The availability of 3rd party products does not have a direct impact on the quality of Official D&D products from Ha$bro, but if an author/designer is making good product for someone else, it stands to reason they could be a good designer/author for Ha$bro....
2. There has been a concerted effort by Ha$bro to make D&D more socially-acceptable. Movies, affiliated products, and time have all been a factor here.
3. More players means more customers. It doesn't mean Ha$bro gets a larger slice of the pie per se, but the pie itself is bigger, so kind of the same thing?

2nd (I had a 1st off, so I need a 2nd), if Ha$bro is going to play corporate fuck-fuck games, then they can probably expect more dumbfuckery to follow. I'm assuming that since the original OGL is pretty well spelled out that the only way Ha$bro is going to be able to get their skimming operation going is to force 3rd party publishers to update from the old OGL to a new one that has these profitable provisions in it. My assumption is that if you want to make "stuff" compatible with the newest, shiniest edition of the game you have to use the new OGL and it'll be provisioned such that you cannot use the old OGL. What can a publisher do?

I'll tell you...they'll form a new corporate identity to publish material just for the new OGL and keep the old company working under the old OGL. Clearly IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but since companies are essentially people, you just have one person doing one thing and the other person doing the other, and they're brothers in the same family. 

TL;DR

This whole Open Game License update is a lame cash-grab that is more likely going to hurt D&D and Hasbro than it is to bring in gobs of cash, unless you're of the opinion that any publicity is "good" publicity. Hasbro made a very legal promise to the gaming community and trying to rescind that promise is going to cost in multiple ways. They're much better off growing the gaming community overall than they are tearing it apart.

Christmas Gifting - D&D Classic Collection: Monsters A-C (Painted Minis)

As we await the release of One D&D, WotC and its licensees need to find a source of income for the inevitable "dead time" between editions. Lo and behold and to the surprise of no one, we have the release of the D&D Classic Collection: Monsters A-C from Wizkids.

Now, is it really a "complete" collection of monsters from"A-C"? Obviously not. It is, however, a collection of iconic creatures from the letters of the alphabet covered, and certainly hits some notes for a grognard like me. I'm not so sure I'd buy it for myself, but if Rach needs some ideas for a Christmas gift or two for me, I don't think she could go wrong with D&D Classic Collection: Monsters A-C.

I must say, I really do like the cover art ;)

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. 

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar  

One D&D - Will the New VTT Succeed Where D&D 4e's VTT Failed to Materialize?

Last year, when WotC put out their D&D survey, a limited number of survey takers were offered questions on a potential D&D VTT. 

This week, with the announcement of One D&D (or D&D 5.X, or D&D Eternal), an integrated VTT was part of the announcement.

The question of the day - Has WotC bit off more than they can actually deliver?

Remember the promised VTT for 4e? Its demo used the graphics from Fantasy Grounds for the virtual dice. It planned to sell us virtual minis via micro transactions. Oh, and it was never completed, due to a murder/suicide with two of the main programmers.

Here's the FAQ for One D&D and the accompanying announcements: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1310-faq-one-d-d-rules-d-d-digital-and-physical-digital

Here's the part about the new VTT:

Digital Play Experience

What is the D&D Digital Play Experience?

D&D Digital is in early development. It will be a virtual play space that allows Dungeon Masters to create truly immersive campaigns and players to enjoy a D&D experience where we offload a lot of the rules referencing. Our goal is to make D&D more immersive, faster, more fun, easier to play, and easier to create in.

What’s the difference between the D&D Digital Play Experience and D&D Beyond?

This is intended to be an immersive digital experience for your D&D sessions. It will be integrated with D&D Beyond, which will continue to offer tools for reference and play.

What about all the other digital tools I use today to play D&D?

Whatever tools you love using, keep using them. Our goal is to make the best digital play experience for D&D. And just like everything else in D&D, everything is optional.

When will the D&D Digital Play Experience begin playtesting?

This experience is still in early development. Everything we’ve shown is pre-alpha. We expect to start showing more to players with a closed beta later in 2023.

I have more questions about the D&D Digital Play Experience!

We know players have a lot of questions after getting an exciting first look at D&D Digital. What you saw is still a prototype and in early development. Expect us to share more details when they’re ready.

It will use Unreal Engine 5 to power it. 

Is it aiming to hit too high a bar too fast?

Tell us your thoughts.

Don't forget to subscribe to the Tenkar's Tavern Youtube Channel to ensure you don't miss an episode. https://www.youtube.com/c/TenkarsTavern

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar 

New D&D Movie: Honor Among Thieves

I really haven't been a fan of the "Dungeons & Dragons" movies out there. The first one was, maybe OK, but the second one......yes, there was a second pretty-much-straight-to-DVD second film, well let's just say I know I watched it, but I remember jack squat about it.

I do watch a lot of movies, but to basically purge it from memory except for my recollection of the perception (I don't remember anything about Eragon, except for the abrupt ending and me thinking, "Where the F*%k is the rest of this shitty movie?!"

No, the best D&D movies, to me, were so NOT D&D movies....well at least not outright:

• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
• The Gamers
• That other Gamers movie (The Gamers: Dorkness Rising)
• Willow
• The Last Witch Hunter
• Conan the Barbarian
• Dragonslayer
• Ladyhawke
• Time Bandits

OK, I added Time Bandits to see if you were still with me here, BUT it did have a bunch of time & space jumping Dwarves stealing everything in sight. It fits with the Fantasy and SciFi mashup that a lot of those early guys seemed to enjoy.....

So I'm not super excited about the new Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie that was just announced as the track record isn't that great. I mean the first one had some big names and fancy (for the time) special effects too. It's not like Jeremy Irons phoned it in or anything, but the movie was...again, just OK. I think the problem was that instead of telling a good story with some D&D elements they went with D&D-ish elements that were more important than the story.

Remember the Beholder?

Yep, a Beholder running around acting as an overgrown guard dog. New one for me.

Still, I'm holding out a little hope for this movie, even if my expectations are low. There really isn't much to go on right now but the trailer. I'm guessing the lead character is a Bard, but the others....no clue. Just seems like generic fighter-type, maybe thief-type, maybe a paladin-ish-type, a magic-user-type, and....druid-type? Actual classes, who knows. Is that one PC, er character, actually a high-level druid that can shape-shift into an Owlbear, or is there a weird new lycanthropy in the newest edition? Hell if I know.....just hits me a bit like the D&D-ish elements of the previous attempts. 

The basic plot seems like some type of redemption story, with the idea that the main character recovered a super-powerful magic relic and handed it over to the bad guy who does bad things and now he's forming a group to get the macguffin back? Interesting putting the lewt acquisition way up-front like that, but if it works....

...if.

I want to be optimistic because if they do a good job and the movie makes money outside of the nerdcore audience, maybe we can get more? I'm thinking if it does good, maybe not great, we can at least get a few more definitely-not-D&D-type movies out of the deal, and some of those might make it to the short list right above Time Bandits....

Here is a little info from a SDCC Panel.

Special Note: I started this post on Friday before Erik posted this same movie clip...and I finished it before he finished his post, but it was scheduled for "my day". I already gave him crap, so no need to bug him (or me) about that fact......instead bug him about other stupid shit. He just loves that!

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats......or Does it?

A lifetime ago I worked in an industry that often had way too much competition, which was kind of dumb (if you ask me) because the client base is/was simply too large to be serviced out of existence. Of course many companies spent a metric but-ton of money chasing after the top-end clients with top-end money. My employer felt much the way I did and did what he could to get the industry to work with instead of against each other.

One thing he frequently said with regards to this competition was, "A rising tide lifts all boats."

Now we're all loosely associated with another industry that seemingly has a lot of competition, but I like to think, "Does it really?" Sure, if you're at a game convention wandering the dealer hall and you only have $X to spend, there is going to be competition for said dollars.

Overall though, I think as gamers we tend to prefer one system (or three), but most of us buy a lot of stuff outside of our norm and it isn't uncommon to pick up new stuff to check it out and maybe beg, borrow, or steal it for our home game. Maybe I'm wrong, or this is more a behavior for us OSR types........but I think I'm closer to the truth than not.

Now I do not play the current edition of D&D and generally don't care about it. I mean I have actually purchased it, but IIRC I gave it away to a buddy's kid so they could game at school with their friends. I recall having to get it at the FLGS, which I'm generally happy to support. The thing is, as I also see things, the current edition of D&D is pretty much a gateway RPG drug, which is an inside joke.....

.....so imagine my surprise when I was walking through my local Walmart and I saw this gem:

OK, big freaking deal...I saw a lame-assed cookbook...actually is it lame? I have no *actual* clue as I haven't picked it up and looked at it. Honestly I already have too many cookbooks as it is, so one more...yeah, not something I need to have, and if I don't pick it up, I can't decide it is another cookbook I *have* to have collecting dust next to the others....

.....ok, I might have a problem, but whatever....don't judge me.

While I didn't pick it up, it did peak my interest and I turn around to find this:

Seriously? Of course this Monster Manual was upside down, but still......what else can I find? I'm pretty sure the MM was in the wrong spot, especially since I doubt it was $10.

It really didn't take me long to find the PHB and DMG, but then I stumbled across what looked like a hardbound adventure campaign book. Really not something I'm interested in, especially at that price point.

The cool thing is that I found these on the shelves pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I'd have killed to be able to get these books at the local store back in my day! Of course I remember getting the Magenta Box at pretty much any Waldenbooks cheaply enough we bought them just to take the dice out, ditching the rest. Sounds great, but the nearest Waldenbooks was a couple counties away so not as cool & convenient as it sounds.

I really think that the easy availability of D&D is great for our community at large. The more people that play the current edition of D&D, the more potential player we have for other editions of D&D and even other RPGs in general......

.....and it takes a LOT of books to enter the supply chain to get D&D on the shelves of a random WalMart, so if you haven't picked up the current edition, you'll eventually find some discounted somewhere when WalMart takes them down.....

Hasbro/WotC Acquires D&D Beyond from Fandom for $146.3 Million in Cash

Last year, after the D&D survey was making the rounds, I surmised that WotC would be staking its claim very firmly in the digital world and VTTs. Well, it looks like the first step has happened.

Hasbro/WotC just spent nearly $150 Million to buy D&D Beyond from Fandom. If this isn't the first step toward a WotC branded VTT, I don't know what is.

If I were Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and the rest that have a customer base that is mostly composed of D&D 5e players, I'd be very nervous right now.

Here's the WotC announcement.

Here's the BusinessWire article discussing the purchase.

Huge tip of the hat to Rob Conley over at Bat in the Attic for the heads up :)

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on YouTube - Tenkar

Spotting Some D&D "Out in the Wild", and I Don't Think it's a Good Thing

 

Now I know that Tenkar's Tavern is very much an OSR-centric blog, even if there is a good peppering of other games, systems, and general RPG news. Going off on a bit of modern/current edition D&D is largely going to be either "Who gives a rat's ass" or "Eff those guys." with our patrons here.

Still, something I saw today "out in the wild" really, really rubbed me the wrong way. Since I'm officially an old fart (turned 50 in June), AND I happened to have a soap-box, Imma going to bitch about it here....

.......and Erik will wonder why his stats show readers fleeing the page in the first 30 seconds.....

Anyway, I came across a couple of current edition D&D hardcovers at Target today. Now the last time I remember seeing D&D on the shelf at a big box retailer is...well never. Bookstores, sure, but a "regular" retailer, maybe I passed by some Magenta boxes on the shelves back in the day, but hell if I remember it. Waldenbooks was my go-to back then, and then it was usually just to rat-f**k the boxes for dice.

So while I think it is really great that there was not just one, but two D&D hardcover books for sale at Target (I didn't get a picture of the other one), the whole thing kind of pissed me off a bit. First off, where's the core books...where's the dice?

Don't get me wrong, I'd really rather see folks going to your FLGS to purchase gaming supplies, but if a retailer is going to sell a couple gaming books, then they should at least sell the bare, basic minimum of gaming supplies that you need to actually utilize these books. GMG, PHB, and basic dice....nothing fancy.

Again, while it seems like a good thing on the surface that these books are available at Target, what I'm thinking is going to happen is that these books aren't going to sell...especially at $35?! Really? Now I used to work retail management and while I'm not full-up on all the intricacies of purchasing at the corporate level, I do know that Target had to pick up a metric butt-load of these titles to get them on the shelves. I just checked and there are 1,909 Targets in the US, not to mention the distribution centers so even at a minimum...a bare minimum stocking level of 2 (one to show and one to go), then Target would need to purchase at least 3,818 copies, but more likely they got an average of six per store (some more, some less, and some still in stock at the distribution centers), so we'll round up to 11,500 copies.

Now I don't know about you, but I just don't see a great sell-through rate on those books, especially considering that you can't actually get anything else to run your game with at Target. For the sake of argument we'll pretend that they have a great sell-through of 50%, which means there are 5,250 books NOT being sold at your FLGS. 5,250 books not generating add-on sales of dice and other books.....

.....and what about the other 5,250 books? Those will probably get dumped onto the secondary market and also pull sales away from the FLGS.

Yeah, so all these reasons to bitch and moan a bit about Target selling D&D books.......that really isn't the reason I bothered to take the picture in the first place. Pretty much everything I've posted up until this point was literally off-the-top-of-my-head thinking as I started typing this out. Didn't even think about in general until I opened up Blogger.

No, what rubbed me the wrong way was the shelf tag. I know, who gives a fuck about the shelf tag? Well, I do a bit....remember I did work retail management for a few years and was a general retail peon for more than that. I actually look at those shelf tags, and this one bothered me. I'll give you a second to check it out.

Yep, the thing that gets me is that this $35 book is not a one-off, but the "May Title", which tells me that there is a distinct possibility that there were a couple more books I didn't see and this is the beginning of essentially another D&D "Book of the month" type-thing.

I did play a bit of D&D 3.5 back in the day and I strongly disliked the frequency of the hardbacks that WotC/Hasbro released and it felt like a book-of-the-month club. It really just got to be too much and honestly I thought that was part of the reason that 3.5 "died". The constant release of titles not only felt like a crash grab, but made it seem obvious that there was a preference for quantity over quality.

Now I could be wrong on the finer details so I'll be a bit vague here, but I recall a specific KenzerCo book that had a lot of potential, but fell short due to Hasbro's money grab.....I'm calling it as I see it. KenzerCo was planning on two versions of their book, one for D&D and one for HackMaster. The D&D version kept getting denied and kicked back by Ha$bro for "reasons" and then months later pretty much cancelled because Ha$bro put out their own version as the book-of-the-month. Now the KenzerCo version, now having had way too many revisions, was hastily finalized/mashed together because it had cost so much to produce (I'm assuming man-hours/resources) and it did end up having some issues. In any case, I've seen the D&D and the KenzerCo book, and even with my own inherent biases, I can comfortably say that the D&D book was quite inferior.

What I feel this hobby definitely doesn't need is a glut of product taking sales away from FLGS and a return to expensive products that emphasize quantity over quality. New people coming into the hobby most likely get the newer/newest version of the game and possibly...hopefully spread out into the hobby. Flooding the market with cheap (but NOT inexpensive) product will harm not just these newer players, but the hobby overall.

Of course maybe I'm wrong and I'm just an old man screaming into the wind......kind of hope I am wrong. 

Kickstarter - The World of Center Campaign Sourcebook fantasy RPG D&D 2e

"The World of Center Sourcebook presents players and DM’s with an extensive range of expanded material designed around the 2nd edition of the first and original Fantasy RPG. The World of Center was created to be a full campaign world where the DM and players are able to run adventures within the realms."

Here's something I don't quite get - the project creator is particular enough NOT to refer to D&D in the opening paragraph -  "designed around the 2nd edition of the first and original Fantasy RPG" and yet has D&D right there in the project title. He knows he should avoid referring to it, yet he wants it for search engine purposes. Sigh.

Alright, so what exactly is The World of Center Sourcebook? The short of it - Someone's 2e houserules and setting. The long of it:

The World of Center Sourcebook is the core reference guide providing the game features necessary to experience this expanded and augmented adventure setting. It is usable in whole or adaptable in part to any 2nd edition campaign and is adaptable to most other Fantasy RPG’s. 

The 280 page book contains expanded classes, races, spells, magic items, monsters, consolidated combat options, deities, religious orders and more. Individually, the subjects covered can easily be taken piecemeal and inserted into any campaign and collectively provide a fully fleshed framework of rulings and expansions to launch a World of Center campaign. 

I played - and ran - more 2e AD&D than I did 1e AD&D, but once the bloat of Complete Handbooks started, I longed to return to 1e. I have little desire to return to 2e at this stage in my gaming career. (come to think of it, I ran all of our D&D campaigns back in HS and College. Except for two or three sessions early on and two conventions, I only got to be a player in non-fantasy RPG campaigns)

Admittedly I find this project intriguing - price points aren't bad ($12 PDF and $25 for trade paperback print plus PDF) for 280 pages of gaming material, but 2e simply doesn't do it for me these days.

Add in this isn't just a "first created" but also "zero backed" and I'll probably pass on this one. Apparently, its all written and laid out (art included) and will ship next month. For the 2e fans, this may be of interest.

Oh, I do find the color art to be trippy ;)