4th edition

[irdeggman]

EnWorld has a very good summation of details of conversation with some major independents and WotC on this very subject.

http://www.enworld.org/

In essence the 4th ed SRD will not be a stripped down PHB (and other books) {like the present 3.5 SRD is}, you will not be able to play the game based solely on the SRD content.

The SRD is basically a set of design guidelines for writing material that works with the 4th ed rules - you will still have to have a copy of the 4th ed PHB in order to actually play the game.

So there is no way to have a 4th ed BR product from a fan site like the BRCS anymore

[ryancaveney]

does Birthright.net have the rights to do "official" releases for a 4th edition Birthright Campaign Setting, etc?

I sure hope not!!!

We should do a dozen *different* 4e conversions, not a single one of them "official" in any way! Same thing with Ars Magica, GURPS, Hero Quest, Role Master and everything else! The only thing that ever was or ever will be official is the original 2e boxed set, unless Hasbro decides to hire somebody to publish a revision in-house under their editorial control -- and even then all of us grognards here will just complain about it that much more, especially as we all recognize that the original was riddled with logical holes big enough to drive a tarrasque through. =) The BRCS is just one fish in a vast sea of homebrewed house rule sets, and no one should ever have treated it as more than that. We need a million different house rules on a vast smorgasbord, not some silly prix fixe that selects one and only one of the permutations of the vast array of options for every individual topic. The attempt to be official is what ruined the well-intentioned effort to produce a 3e fan consensus conversion, since the primary thing we learned in the initial discussions is that there just *isn't* any fan consensus -- sure, we all like something called "Birthright", but each and every one of us has a different idea of what Birthright "really" is. I haven't even thought about what's in the BRCS since the first month after it came out. I stopped caring long before that, since it had long before become apparent that it would be useless to me because its idea of what was important to change and what was important to keep varied so greatly from my own. The only thing about it which I found useful was the discussion itself, since it drew out such a wide range of options in so short a time. Any future conversion document should never say anything more than "on topic X, here are nine different things you could try." At most, list the results of a poll on the topic, but keep *all* the entries.

Please please please please please please please never try to make anything "official" ever again! The last thing this community needs is another multi-year argument over how to make just one conversion. "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend," but this time, *don't* execute dissidents like me.

[kgauck]

I hardly think there is no way to produce a 4e BR setting here. What I find in the document (and what makes perfect sense) is that they want to get away from a campaign setting having everything you need to play the game. They want players to own the PBH. I own five campaign settings and each one is a stand alone product. You can generate characters and have everything you need in that setting book. Why buy the PHB if all you want to do is play in a specific setting?

Now there is a good reason for this besides the business sense of the people who write the books. They were disappointed by how much the rules got cut and pasted into new settings. Part of the genius of the OGL in the first place is how it gave the framework of the game over to other designers to invent new things. Many were content to tinker on the edges and produce something essentially the same as D&D with a few house rules and some interesting setting color.

One way to look at this is that we can assume that people interested in a 4e BR have the PHB when they are looking at whatever we produce and we are free to concentrate on what BR looks like in 4e, rather than reproducing core rules for the sake of completeness.

[Rowan]

Ryan, I see where you're coming from, but I think we do need to work towards complete rulesets if we want Birthright to thrive. BRCS, however you may dislike it, has become a standard that people can easily refer to and discuss, and those without the energy and time to create their own solutions can plug and play a single, mostly consistent ruleset.

While a BR rules reference containing many options for each area that needs to be covered is valuable, its value is primarily for those with the time and energy to go through it and to hammer the disparate parts into a consistent, usable whole for their game. Then they have to teach that to their players.

We have an "official" BRCS for the same reason that we base Birthright on D&D at all--that people familiar with D&D can jump right into the system and reduce the learning curve by that much.

While we might shy away from an "official" BRCS next time, I think we still need to organize a project to create complete rulesets with internal consistency so that people can reference them as easily as they could download and use BRCS3.5.

Maybe there should be several of these; with the differences of opinion within the fan community, perhaps it would actually take less energy to originate several projects with specific guiding principles, goals, and objectives for each version (since there would be less dispute over just how to do something if you could didn't have just one do-or-die version to try to get your idea into).

For instance: I do like the idea of several levels of complication for game play, to nurture new gamers. Perhaps there could be two or three progressively more complex versions.

It would be useful to have a streamlined version created specifically with PBEMs in mind.

Other versions could have specific guiding principles, like a focus on war, diplomacy, civilization-liked development, historical simulation, etc. I'd favor a version that incorporated the Shadow World and other continents more, or played with the idea of making non-human races even more non-human and unique (like some of the discussions about just how alien the elves could be). We've also never fully broken the boundaries of Anuire, much less Cerilia, or different time periods of play...it seems to me that we've been shy to present Ruins of Empire details for these different time periods and geographical regions.

So just how much time and energy exists out there for BR?

[stv2brown1988]

So there is no way to have a 4th ed BR product from a fan site like the BRCS anymore

I read the article but I do not understand what your saying. I would view the 4th Ed BRCS (if one is created) as a campaign setting that is compatible with the 4th Ed version of D&D. As such, under the OGL, I do not see what could stop the members of this site from creating a 4th ed.

Hope that makes sense.

Steve

[irdeggman]

I read the article but I do not understand what your saying. I would view the 4th Ed BRCS (if one is created) as a campaign setting that is compatible with the 4th Ed version of D&D. As such, under the OGL, I do not see what could stop the members of this site from creating a 4th ed.

Hope that makes sense.

Steve

Problem with that is the way that the 4th ed SRD will be structured is that it will not be a "rules set", lke the 3.5 one. It will be a writer's guide with essentially no rules contained within it. There appears to be much more strict "licensing" approach in the future.

You will not be able to play 4th ed without the core books at all (so pretty much no rules content will be OGL as I can understand it).

Also the "official" fan site moniker will go away so that makes things very limited IMO.

http://www.birthright.net/forums/sho...5&postcount=16

So pretty much the only thing we would be albe to do would be a "color" and non-rules based project, which would leve things extremely "light" in my opinion.

But having said that only time will tell what the SRD will actually say.

[Rowan]

Just because the SRD won't contain rules doesn't mean that original rules content cannot be created. For one, it's not being sold, which essentially means that it's just as legal as house rules at your table, shared over the internet.

For another, original rules are original intellectual property, copy-writable by the inventor of them. We can't use "official" or logos, but we can always say "compatible with the 4e d20 system."

In fact, what is stopping us from creating "unofficial" campaign settings for Birthright, complete with realm rulership material and so forth? The very worst thing they could do is reclaim "Birthright" as a trademark (that we would then have to reference) and prevent us from using the logo. That would leave us with just adding the caveat: "compatible with" or "inspired by" or "based on" or similar weasel language. It gives credit to the original creators while remaining legitimate 3rd party material.

As I think was said here, earlier, WotC actually cannot prevent people from creating and even selling rules material that is designed to be compatible with their game system.

[kgauck]

There is no evidence that they are pulling back nearly this far. They are pulling back only enough that the core books are required to play. If one recalls the old sourcebooks from 2e, they assumed you knew some basic rules and then told you how to play in the Viking world, or in the classical Greek. Indeed the BR boxed set didn't tell you how to make a character. They told you how BR was different from the standard, but assumed you had a PHB and knew how to make a PC.

I think that's the assumption to make here, because everything they are saying suggests this is where we're going to be. If it was in the BR Rulebook, it will go in our 4e work. If it was only found in the PHB in 2e, then it won't be in the SRD.

Even so, this is not a bar. The princple behind the SRD and stated above by Sinister is that "You can't legally own a role playing mechanic, you can legally own the presentation." That means no cutting and pasting from the SRD, a stated objection in the enworld document, but right after word they actively encouraged creative new descriptions of the rules. So its not a ban on core rules they seek, but the rampant copying and pasting.

[bbeau22]

So I was looking at the Saga edition for for Star Wars Roleplaying game and knowing this is a bit of a preview of 4th edition some things struck me that would work really well with Birthright.

First is the way they use the force. This could be copied pretty closely to blood powers in Birthright. In Star Wars you need to take a feat called force sensitive to be able to use force powers. Once you have that feat you can take another feat that actually gives you a number of force powers equal 3 + your wisdom modifier (or something like that) that you can use per encounter. You can take that feat over and over and each time you will get force powers you can use per encounter.

With the force powers they have a one time use. Say you have a force power that shoves enemies back. If you take that as a force power you can use it once in an encounter. If you take that force power twice you can use it twice per encounter.

Blood powers could be similer in use. If a blooded character uses a feat he can get blood powers choosen from his derivation that he can use per encounter or per day or even per week.

Also instead of getting special abilities for classes as you go up in level Saga edition gives many of these abilities as talents and list many of them as options right at the start and as the character goes up he can pick and choose which ones they want.

In birthright blooded characters will be able to pick not only from their class talents but from a set of blooded talents depending on their derivation. These can boost their blood abilities in different ways. So regents will need to decide if they want more talents to rule better or increase their blood powers.

Thats all I got. I know it is early but I felt the star wars rules with force users are very similer to blooded people in Birthright. They have seperate powers no one else has. This helps even out the playing field with non-blooded and blooded because while blooded folks are using their talents and feats to increase blood abilities .... non-blooded folk are becoming better warriors or whatever they are focused on.

-BB

[Sinister]

Just to chime in....

I don't think I'll be playing much of 4E. The electronic content of 4E will be designed to make sure you pay the monthly fee to access all the extras, and its possible they will make new rules/special abilities/prestige classes part of that 14.99 access.

Most of my rpg collection has essentially gone out of print with 7th Sea, Classic Deadlands, and now D&D. Even L5R isn't publishing many books. I don't mind. I spent well over 3 grand in roleplaying books from about 94 - 2004 but in the past 4 years maybe, just maybe, 200 bucks.

There just isn't enough repackaging of mechanics to make me want to convert. They have already shown with 3.5 that a 4.5 is possible. How many times do I need to pay for books that offer just rule content and not much setting info anyway.

Even if it's a HUGE improvement, which it's not, it just isn't worth the cost and time and effort to convert the settings I love like ravenloft and birthright to a new system AGAIN. Not to mention the need to access content for a monthly fee just isn't my style.

I do want to try 4E just to see the differences but like I said it would have to be some sort of miracle super system to make me convert settings and pay a monthly fee. As I get older I want more and more of the work done for me, not work I have to do. If the made the birthright settting, maybe I'd go for it.