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Black Flag Playtest Feedback 1

  1. Lineage / Heritage  The distinction between lineage and heritage does a pretty good job of kicking away the “culture is biological” thing that’s pervaded fantasy gaming since early days, but the heritages quietly (and likely not intentionally) reiterate the concept of “most cultures are mono-racial”. Setting up your wood elves and your high elves is dead easy and built right in; the wood elves have a Grove Heritage and the high elves have a Cloud Heritage.  No sweat. But something like "If you're from the forested kingdom of Velmet (which is, by the way, 40% Elf, 25% Gnome, and 35% everyone else) you likely have a Grove Heritage" isn't a first-glance option, and should be; lots and lots of settings are built that way around. Beefing up heritages a bit so they stand firmly as ur-cultures to be dropped in that way, and detaching them into a distinct subsection from lineages could get you both.  You'd still want pointers in the lineages naming the common heritag...
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D&D in the Sandstorm

The owners of D&D, by all indications, would like it to reinvent itself into a game that makes heavy use of digital tools, often including during play. Moreover, they'd like these to be digital tools they control to some extent, and which give them money. Additionally, they want added control over 3rd parties; something much less permissive than the open license of the current era. In hindsight, I think this was inevitable.  And not because of corporate greed (though corporate greed set the timetable and the demand list, and did it early ),  but because of the collaborative folk tradition of gamers. I enjoy OSR stuff; lots.  Also indie stuff and…. Uh, basically a bit of everything in gaming.  But the OSR stuff especially applies here. Over the last couple of decades, the era of the OGL, not only has publishing at the small scale gotten trivially easy, but there has sprung up a massive list of D&D-likes, hacks of it, and basically anything you want. Complete g...
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The ORC Project: Founding A Scene?

I believe that it's possible for the ORC project to actively and powerfully drive a fairly particular, generally beneficial (as in, everyone wins) open-source scene in tabletop gaming, above and beyond just providing the license, and that it wouldn't be terribly tricky to do. I'm going to break down this down into five parts. 1. THE LICENSE ITSELF Beyond what's already been made clear as the intent (similar in most functions to the OGL, but for any system, irrevocable, held by a party that aims to preserve it), I think the license needs this: Revise any "You may not name product identity" style statements to "You understand and agree that you gain no added rights to closed content" ones.  That is, they can still talk about their sources in their text like normal people would, and say that their work is compatible so long as there's no likelihood anyone will think it's "official". The absolute reservation of product identity never ac...
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Don't Expect A Morality Clause In ORC

While we're waiting for the first draft of the ORC, a recurring question has been "Is it going to include a morality clause?".   Eric Mona, publisher at Paizo, got asked this on-stream, and he had to do a little back-and-forth preamble, but the answer was "Probably not; if you have material you don't want terrible people to use, take care with how and if open that content up". On top of this, the official ORC discord has been discussing this over and over for it's first 24 hours, and there too the rough consensus appears to be "Yeah, we mostly don't want one". Reasons why not vary, but include: - I don't want to police everything downsteam of me; I certainly don't want to eat some kind of trouble for not policing it.  - I also don't trust anyone else to police use of my content, especially if that someone else might shift over time. - Policing this would mean court time and expenses for someone, and isn't that exactly what ...
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The Ethical Generation Of AI Art

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There's been a lot of discourse in the TTRPG space as regards AI art, and I've spent a lot of time thrashing out arguments about it's presence and use in that space.  Eventually I decided to compile my bits and blog it out so each thought can find it's proper length.  So here's that. (This piece has been updated.  Updates are in dark red.) ... First thing, I want to settle my basic ground on some stuff: 1. Nobody is obligated to hire or not hire artists.  Single instances  of the "stole a job" argument are nonsense in both directions; it's not a strong point to say that it did or a defense to say that it didn't.  If you're arguing on the basis of Bob Hiring An Artist Or Not, you're not on useful ground; Bob gets to hire who he likes or not.  However.... 2. Everyone is to some extent responsible for the systems they patronize, fund, and enable, and their wider impact on how things work.  If AI art pushes an local/sub/whatever economy in the...
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