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Thread: 4th edition

  1. #21
    Site Moderator Sorontar's Avatar
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    3rd party publishers will be able to get licenses to create 4e material from Wizards. (source)
    Fans will be able to publish material on Gleemax under (free) license from Wizards. (This material will be available to Wizards to republish; see discussion on Gleemax TOS).
    The OGL/SRD/d20 Licenses will still exist - details still to come (Source)
    My concern isn't with whether or not we have the *label* of being official or not. It is more to do with Br.net presently being given the rights to freely use copyrighted material to further the design of the product. If all fansites including ours are put in the same boat and the copyright permission is not granted to any fans, then we may have to rewrite major components of the wiki and the BRCS, or just stop "publishing" them altogether.

    After all, what happens if Anuire or Cerilia is a protected trademark....

    Mind you, we are co-copyrighters of what is presently on br.net ... to quote the agreement that br.net abids by as the "official website":
    Content created on the official website is considered to be derivative work (as it is based on the intellectual property owned by Wizards of the Coast). This means that fan-created add-ons (such as new net books, adventures, etc.) are jointly owned by both Wizards of the Coast and the creator; neither can do anything outside the official website without the permission of the other.
    I would be very disappointed if Gleemax claimed "ownership" over everything "published" within any new forum, rather than acknowledging that the fans are also copyright holders.

    Don't forget that the worse case scenario (ie. just being a mailing list on Gleemax) would just be a return to what we were in 2000. While the present situation is far better, the Birthright community survived then.

    Sorontar.

  2. #22
    To get a little discussion going...

    1. To be clear, does Birthright.net have the rights to do "official" releases for a 4th edition Birthright Campaign Setting, etc? The responses mentioned above were a tad bit vague.

    2. Assuming the answer is yes, should we do a 4th edition Birthright? It needs to be asked, as it does take a significant amount of work (note the semi-finished nature of the 3.5 rules) and play-testing.

    3. Should we investigate getting pre-release copies in the hands of key people to start working on a conversion?

    4. Assuming the answer is yes (to #2), then will we distribute it on Birthright.net exclusively, or also on Gleemax, or exclusively on Gleemax? This needs to be asked for a multitude of reasons. If we keep it exclusive to Birthright.net, it is actually less resource intensive, and has a different audience than adding in Gleemax would. I would suggest, that we strongly consider something on Gleemax. Birthright was never a huge seller or hugely popular due in part to TSR's financial problems, and if we ever want to see our beloved setting published again, we need to find a way to appeal to new audiences. Creating a 4th edition Birthright for Gleemax distribution, including extra content (more examples, streamlined rules, and starting adventure modules), would be a great way to put Birthright on top of the pile of old settings for them to consider for revival.

    4a. We need to be sure any play-online portion of 4th edition supports realm play and bloodlines if at all possible. This would be critical.

    5. What works, what doesn't, what is too complex, what is too simple, what is missing? Although we know little about 4th edition, there is some info out there - any potential conflicts?

    6. Products. It is seriously hard to make a product line and campaign setting thrive based on 1 rulebook, no matter how good. Birthright hasn't had more than 1 book/product since what, 1997? Thats more than a decade by the time 4th edition comes out! Given what exists in the original line, perhaps, when considering 4th edition, we should, as a community, explore additional products, conversions, and even books. This may range from simply converting existing products and re-releasing, to securing the rights to any products we do not have the rights to, securing permission to majorly change the setting (which we do not currently have), to securing new authors, etc.

    Perhaps this needs to be its own thread, but I didn't want to be the one to start it. It should all be discussed though.

    Instead of worrying about how this will negatively impact our community, we should instead look at the wonderful tools and opportunity we've been given. WoTC only has 2.5 official campaign settings for 4th edition (FR, Eberron, and arguably Greyhawk - I'd probably leave it at 2 personally). Of all the old settings, it's possible that Dark Sun and Planescape may have more fans, but due to a variety of factors (psionics, the planar re-ordering, and internal factors), I'd say Birthright, if it were to put in a strong showing, would have the greatest chance of making a revival (at least as a single rulebook). If we were to basically create a quality, well play-tested product (which this site has done in the past) that seemlessly fits into 4th edition, then it would be very, very simple for WoTC to pick it up and print it.
    Last edited by einstein_pi; 10-22-2007 at 09:20 PM.

  3. #23
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    1. From the quote given of Rich Redman it sounds like the 'official' status would be dropped of anything anyone does except Wizards themselves. We could curve around that a bit by saying 'From the creators of the official 3.5 Birthright rules', to make it sound official.

    2. I have a feeling they would pull out Ravenloft, Dragonlance and Dark Sun before they did a revamp of Birthright. That is unless they saw the potential that Birthright is fairly unknown to most and could be re-imagined easier than the other settings. So doing a 4th edition ourselves would be only as much worth as it would give your personal group or hobby satisfaction.

    3. Are you talking about the playtest rules of 4e? I think they pretty much have set their playtesting picking procedure.

    I think a couple things need to happen with Birthright/4th edition. Keep in mind, these are just my opinions at this point in time (who knows, they might change). Some of these ideas might seem extreme, especially to those established in their ways, but obviously something needs to be done to freshen it up. Birthright is kind of an oddity as a campaign setting, because basically it is not only a D&D game world with blood abilities added, but it is also a second game of running your guild/temple/wizard tower/etc. It can be one, the other, or a combination of the both of varying degrees.

    First, I think it needs to embrace the 4th edition philosophy to simplify a few things. 2nd edition it was pretty clear and easy to determine your regency collection. In 3.5, well when you are looking at 1/4th the sum of ranks in a number of skills to find the % of your collection, it is a little more complicated. I understand why it was done with multi-class combos and the math and logic works pretty well, but I think something cleaner is needed.

    Blood score and blood abilities... The original dragonmarks Bloodline and blood abilities should be separated up a bit. A wizard is going to want to be blooded, but not at the expense of his ability to cast spells (level adjustment). We know level adjustments are for 4th edition going away, and something like the racial level abilities might have to be done for the blood abilities. However I propose that the blood score and blood abilities shouldn't be directly tied. The bloodline score has a direct influence on the domain gameplay and blood abilities have a direct affect on either type of gameplay depending on the ability. So the bloodline score should be determined by some domain side mechanic, while the abilities only appear if they player wants to 'buy' them with their feats (or some other mechanic). The domain side would allow the gain of domain side powers while the adventuring side would gain combat/adventuring type blood abilities. I'm just brainstorming here and I don't have anything concrete. I can see some debate on which side a certain ability should go under, etc. and we don't know all of the mechanics for 4e.

    The gameworld: On the gameworld side of things, I think a major 'event' needs to happen like the spellplauge they are planning for FR. Perhaps push the date forward a bit, etc. 4e is going 'Points of light in a world of darkness'. I see Birthright as points of darkness in a world of gray. I'm not certain if this should change or not. Having the Gorgon and perhaps the Spider or some other Awn. spread out a bit and thrown into their lands a few fortified castles and towns (points of light) still held by the 'good' races would make for some good adventure level gameplay. But I'm not sure how well it would work for the domain level of gameplay.

    One more thing that I think should be looked at is the tie of nature to arcane magic in the setting. Their is speculation of martial, arcane, divine and nature (a few others I can't recall right now - like psionics that obviously wouldn't fit birthright) power sources for the character classes. If we could device a way to separate the druid and wizard vying for control of sources, (could tie this into the 'event'), giving the druid the nature based power and the arcane side a new 'source' of power it would clean things up a bit and also make the domain side of rules more adaptable to other campaign settings.

    Finnally, I think I'd like to see the new 4e cosmology used (personal taste and it would tie it closer to 4e). You'd still have the shadow-world for the halfling story/abilities, but it would tie in other stuff better.

    Another line of thought crossed my mind as well. They are from a design philosophy creating the classes based on role on one axis and power source on the other axis. We could throw 'bloodline' as a new power source into the mix and create a new line of classes from the Leader/Blood (Noble?) to the Striker/Blood (BloodStalker? - out of the blue name) and so forth.

    From the most recent poll of the Swordmage and other browsing over the years however, it seems that 'Leave it up to the DM' is a common motto for the old Birthright crowd, which means major change is going to be like pulling teeth (assuming doing any of this is allowed).

    The Gleemax vs. Birthright.net question, I would say is a tough question. Gleemax is a mess right now, so who knows what the final product will look like or can do. Being on Gleemax does sound like it would give more awareness to those who weren't around in the 90's for its release.

  4. #24
    Hrm. His response leaves a bit to be desired now that I re-read it.
    Last edited by einstein_pi; 10-23-2007 at 12:40 PM.

  5. #25
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bluntaxe View Post
    I think a major 'event' needs to happen like the spellplauge they are planning for FR. Perhaps push the date forward a bit, etc.
    Our current agreement prohibits major events, and the like. We can add detail, but we can't change essentials.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    Our current agreement prohibits major events, and the like. We can add detail, but we can't change essentials.
    It does, but it's amazing what a bunch of small things, and rumors can do to change the feeling of a setting.

  7. #27
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by einstein_pi View Post
    It does, but it's amazing what a bunch of small things, and rumors can do to change the feeling of a setting.
    Well I'd hope not to change the feel of the setting as I quite like it

    I would however probably want more chaos for a campaign less focused on politics - I wouldn't have thought that rotating regents or tweaking realms (other than the big 3 or 4) would be a major change, although getting rid of a major awnshegh probably would be.

    The realms, I note, suffers from popularity clutter - it has a lot of supplements, novels, articles etc - which means that periodically parts come into conflict or jar with the way the overall setting is moving and they need to go about pruning. BR had only just got started when they canceled it (relatively speaking, they did pretty well in the time they had) so is still in the opening stage.

    The sad thing is that of all the BR areas most likely to need updating for 4e its chapters 1 and 2 - which were the only ones of the play-test finished. The realm rules will still likely be setting specific so if those had been sorted then they'd be fine barring a few tweaks for knock-on changes.

    Oh well, at some point more concrete stuff will come out on 4e and we can get started, until then it's fluff ahoy and crunch on stand-by...

  8. #28
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    How popular is the holding system as is or with minor tweaks? How interested are people in seeing a dramatic revision. I don't mean committing ahead of time to a dramatic revision described in vague terms, I mean how many are not so devoted to the existing holdings system (tweaks aside) that if someone came along and said a new and finished domain system was significantly more compatible with the current rules set that you would give it a serious examination.

    For example, if I were pitching for BR today, I'd want three teams working on the following three systems - a 3.5 update of the holdings domain system, a skills based system of competitive die rolls where circumstances, holdings, and bloodlines were modifiers, and an elaboration of the organizations rules which appeared in slightly different versions in several books.

    I think the current BRCS was trying for system 2 but was trapped in the gravity well of system 1. That's the view of an outsider looking at the rules.

    4th Edition will present new challenges and opportunities, which as Andrew suggests, may not present themselves right away.

  9. #29
    I have been trying to read up on 4th edition. I can see where obvious changes are and how they will effect BR, but others would be more difficult. Really we just have to wait until release before we can judge.

    I would be in for keeping the same holding system but tweak it.

    Interesting things I have seen so far. Looks like they are going to a at-will/once a combat/once a day type of powers that could translate into BR. At will/ Once a month/ Once a Turn power.

    1. Max out a build action GB roll once a turn.
    2. Include an additional province in a Realm Spell once a turn with no cost.
    3. Personally agitate for yourself in local province once per month.
    4. Allow RP use to Rule a province once a year.

    Could be a good way to specialize rulers.

    -BB

  10. #30
    Ehrshegh of Spelling Thelandrin's Avatar
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    Well, regarding construction dice rolls, if the ruler isn't present, I always take a flat roll of 2 (if it's a d4) to indicate that the court is competent and plays safe, without being risky or too innovative.

    If the ruler is present in the province (spends a character action or happens to be there anyway), I let him roll, if he wants too. Thus it is generally better for a ruler to personally oversee his realm, but it's quite adequate of looking after itself.

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