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  1. #21
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by irdeggman View Post
    A couple of major concepts I think you missed that need to be started at:

    3 types of play:

    (a) - Primary Domain level
    All I am focusing on is domain play - not that 3rd Edition was badly done...just I can't make a computer game with the rules & spells like they are right now. People would get sick of the rules being abused inside of a month & months to years of work would be wasted, if they even tried to take the dive in to the rules of our world.

    The idea of different levels of play worked fantastically for BattleTech!

    I remember there's some story about a group that came to the conventions where birthright was being advertised & played live demo's ... they got big props and such.

    In battletech conventions it's not a big deal because it's common to have handful of games going at even the small midwestern conventions. They were able to finish these games because of the levels of play. I'm sure the developers didn't say, lets make Battltech with training wheels ... they got feed back from people who had never played saying, I like the idea - but would not pursue on my own as a DM unless it was a bit simpler.

    Advertisements, pushing the player levels is putting the carriage before the horse. Our product offering is good, but needs to be targettted now torwards specific groups.

  2. #22
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thelandrin View Post
    I don't see why it should be any more or less difficult to attract players to an unfamiliar and complicated setting, regardless of the rules used.
    One of the differences in successful versus flashy marketing scheme's is how they tune their product & target different groups instead of having the funniest or coolest commercials. Combining the two together is the best result.

    The 3 levels of play lets us hit all the needed categories ...
    - Beginners who just want to try the ideas out
    - Balanced play for use when the groups are too competitive (who's lost a group because of mechanics allowing someone abuse rules?)
    - In depth, historically accurate long term unchanging world ... sometimes called realistic

    If it was just about markinget people would pay thousands of dollars for a piece of paper & a pencil - because the ad was so great & promised, "a world of fantasy that will provide years of excitement and be exactly what you want" as their plug line.

    Lets finish tuning the product, then worry about recruiting. I've gotten feedback from 12 players in the past 3 weeks & they still think it needs work.

  3. #23
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    The last option for expanding the game would involve either buying the rights from WotC (likely prohibitively expensive--would they even entertain the thought if it were less than $10,000?), or trying to enter into some partnership with them whereby they earn royalties off of anything we sell, and we produce and sell things primarily with the goal of making enough money to pay web hosting and minor marketing fees to expand the hobby; no one will ever make any reasonable amount of money off of this, unfortunately.

    So while I think it is an admirable cause to try to expand the BR community, I think it would be very difficult to do so, and I'm not sure we have the unity or energy or desire to do what is necessary yet. I don't think rules are a major driver of new participation even if they are wonderful, so I don't think we should approach rules under that illusion.
    If we could locate or get an idea of what they paid to buy BattleTech (infinitely more profitable with 50+ novels, 3 mechanic systems, 12+ supplements of equipment, three campaign settings)...well then we might be on a pitch to find a way. The real question is how many years of making cash off the google advertisements or maybe facebook apps do we need to get 10,000 or whatever it is they might ask for?

    Another consideration is maybe WoTC didn't buy D&D for the money it would be making (though they would certainly try)...but rather because they wanted to own the competition. We might be faced with the very real possibility that those fringe world games might be owned in order to keep them dead & prevent saturation ... it's a lot cheaper to develope one world & have everyone play it.

    OT: The end goal of every birthright campaign isto match wits and forces with the gorgon ... you can't put a guy like him in to the campaign setting without him being the last challenge. (I have a story arc where the gorgon harvests the last few bloodlines he needs & ascends - leaving a mess of squabling realms that will never unite armies again with the gorgon gone & the lieutenants of his vying for power).

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    The last option for expanding the game would involve either buying the rights from WotC (likely prohibitively expensive--would they even entertain the thought if it were less than $10,000?), or trying to enter into some partnership with them whereby they earn royalties off of anything we sell, and we produce and sell things primarily with the goal of making enough money to pay web hosting and minor marketing fees to expand the hobby; no one will ever make any reasonable amount of money off of this, unfortunately.
    Hmmmmmm . . . . Is $10,000 really that much to raise? I'm working on a JD/MBA and I could probably write up an actual business plan. But, I could conceivably see some dedicated fans and developers who might be willing to invest that sum for the "rights" to the Birthright Campaign Setting. Has there ever been a serious discussion with the company about that?

  5. #25
    One more musing from reading this thread . . . .

    When I first got involved in AD&D, I read something somewhere about how TSR didn't really want to alter settings dramatically -- killing off characters or pursuing dramatically world-changing storylines because that's what the PCs were there for.

    The setting was envisioned as a backdrop -- the perfectly developed setting with just enough definition and just enough ambiguities to allow a DM to insert a story that the PCs could run with.

    They didn't want to kill off major characters or dramatically redraw maps or such. There were adventures out there with the potential to do that, but it all happened in the "party's campaign world" rather than in the "universal game world".

    They got away from that in Forgotten Realms later and created a whole bunch of goofy variations -- like killing off Bane and destroying Zhentil Keep and making Manshoon's clones go crazy. And, I think what they lost some of the best aspects of their settings by doing that.

    I'd encourage you guys NOT to do that with Birthright. Create adventures. Flesh out potential storylines. But, don't try to change the whole "universal game world". Let players do that in their own tabletop games.

  6. #26
    Site Moderator Sorontar's Avatar
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    Killing off major NPCs etc is actually against the original agreement with WOTC.

    Retain the iconic heroes, locations, magical items, and artifacts. Official sites are not allowed to kill off major PCs, destroy well-known artifacts, and similar activities.
    Sorontar

  7. #27
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    At 05:01 PM 8/10/2009, Sorontar wrote:

    >Killing off major NPCs etc is actually against the original
    >agreement with WOTC.

    It was? That`s interesting.

    Of course, I don`t know if anyone creating fan material should really
    be worried about it, unless they wanted to be "official."

    Gary

  8. #28
    Site Moderator Sorontar's Avatar
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    I suspect that that part was to stop fan-groups doing exactly what we are talking about, inventing "Birthright: The Next Generation" with a changed world and different characters. They were happy for fans to work with the reality that WOTC had invented but didn't want too much of a change. They were happy about the D20 BRCS because it didn't change Birthright. It just cleaned up the existing rules for a new generation of players and a new version of the D&D system.

    So if we are to try and maintain following those rules, the "levels of rules" are fine provided they don't change the underlying essences of what is Birthright. Things like bloodlines and blood abilities, regencies, awnsheghs, domains and holdings, courts and domain actions, Shadow World and Seeming. Any set of rules would have to deal with all of them, regardless of how complex.

    Sorontar

  9. #29
    Ehrshegh of Spelling Thelandrin's Avatar
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    Well of course. The first you change in a future BR world is the ascension of the Gorgon and removal of the Chamberlain. Both represent unrealistic level of stasis in the campaign, one by being infeasibly powerful and not wanting to be a god (which really makes no sense at all) and the other by massively failing in his duty for five centuries and serving in a completely redundant role through sheer arrogance.

    Ius Hibernicum, in nomine juris. Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nicholas Harrison View Post
    One more musing from reading this thread . . . .

    When I first got involved in AD&D, I read something somewhere about how TSR didn't really want to alter settings dramatically -- killing off characters or pursuing dramatically world-changing storylines because that's what the PCs were there for.

    The setting was envisioned as a backdrop -- the perfectly developed setting with just enough definition and just enough ambiguities to allow a DM to insert a story that the PCs could run with.

    They didn't want to kill off major characters or dramatically redraw maps or such. There were adventures out there with the potential to do that, but it all happened in the "party's campaign world" rather than in the "universal game world".


    They got away from that in Forgotten Realms later and created a whole bunch of goofy variations -- like killing off Bane and destroying Zhentil Keep and making Manshoon's clones go crazy. And, I think what they lost some of the best aspects of their settings by doing that.

    I'd encourage you guys NOT to do that with Birthright. Create adventures. Flesh out potential storylines. But, don't try to change the whole "universal game world". Let players do that in their own tabletop games.
    I agree. One of the reasons I hated what was done with Forgotten Realms is that the main storyline was so wildly different from what I was doing with the game. My game had started before the Time of Troubles, and was indeed going to remake the Realms quite a bit, but in ways totally different than WotC did.

    Here, with BR, we have that same sort of happy individualization.

    However, one of the reasons people buy material is to save time inventing everything themselves and to enjoy someone else's ideas that they happen to like. This is where multiple timelines could work, and why we need good rules sets.

    As for buying the rights, I don't think it's ever been discussed. I question whether this community has enough unity to agree to a purpose and direction for a BR Co., however.
    Last edited by Rowan; 08-11-2009 at 05:23 PM. Reason: Added comment

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