I don't have any information on any of these details, alas.
Fair enough. :)
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I'd love to see these back on Paizo.com, and this is one of the first items on my to-do list this week. :) Liz, if you're able to snag them, will we have access to our previously-downloaded content again? I found out that all my WotC purchases were through Paizo...
Freude schoener Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, wir betreten Feuertrunken, Himmlischen, dein Heligtum! (bumdumBAdum!) Deine Zauber binden wieder, was der Mode schwer getielt, Bettler werden Feurstenbrueder, wo dein sanfter fluegel weilt! (Everybody! :) )
Thanks for the correction! :thumbsup:
It is unbalanced, mentally disordered people who play D&D and then do silly things, and then blame it/have it blamed on D&D who give it a bad name. All these people see D&D as something more than it really is. Or mentally unbalanced people do silly or tragic things and then someone else picking up the pieces makes a false causal link to the fact that said person played D&D/FRPGs, even if only a handful of times, such as in the case of "Bink" Pulling.
I am willing to try if it talks about Pathfinder, but my interest in retro clones is very low. You'll be happy then, Stereo, TSR just sent ouit an email blast to those of us who showed interest with the first issue's lineup, and a Pathfinder article is in the works. :)
From what I can tell, they're keeping it fairly system-neutral... lots of general gaming articles, sprinkled with some system-specific nuggets. I'm also impressed that Wolfgang Baur's KQ is getting a space inside the mag... so it looks like KQ's folding and GM's opening weren't totally unconnected... 
Oh, smurf it all, who dropped the "s" bomb again?
If it's any consolation, Evanier hated it even more than you do. And it was forced on the writers -- if you listen closely, there are quite a few times where Eric's objections are actually the most sensible course of action (even if they were again forced to make them come off as annoying, whiny and arrogant). In a later show Evanier wrote for, "Garfield and Friends," the entire point of his creating the cloying and obnoxious "Buddy Bears" was to drive several Ford Pintos filled with nuclear waste and explosives over the whole idea of "the complainer is always wrong." Take a look at this post for more info, straight from Mr. Evanier's pen.
Honestly, Aranna, the new going speculation among fans (at least on Trekmovie.com) is that the villain is Gary Mitchell and that it'll be a sequel to the IDW JJverse redo of "Where No Man Has Gone Before". My own feeling is that it's going to be a new villain, and that it's most likely going to draw heavily from "Heart of Darkness"/"Apocalypse Now" in its themes.
I don't know if you're Catholic or Protestant, but either way, this article (by Jimmy Akin, a former Evangelical, Catholic apologist and geek who back in the day did write RPG supplements) might help you :) http://jimmyakin.com/2005/06/dd_the_knights.html The takeaway graf from that one is: "In sum, though: There is nothing intrinsically sinful with RPGs, though they can definitely be run in a way that has a corrosive effect on the morals of the players. This is particularly true of D&D as it is commonly played. It all depends on who you’re playing with, how the GM or DM runs the game, and how you respond." By "commonly played", I'm assuming he's talking about campaigns that are "chaotic neutral by default solely because the GM explicitly banned chaotic evil." http://jimmyakin.com/2005/04/roleplaying_gam.html Here he makes the same point that there is nothing wrong with D&D in general, but that campaigns that veer so heavily (reading between the lines) towards little more than mindless hack-n-slash can be problematic, and quotes Steve Jackson about how many parties THINK they're LG but are actually CN or worse in actual fact. To be fair though, in the Catholic Church, there is no unified opinion (or really any official opinion at all) on D&D. I'd bet if you were to ask Pope Benedict XVI about it you'd get a "was ist das? Ich habe keine ahnung was Sie sagen" from him. There are apologists out there who do believe it is of the devil and those who say it's perfectly fine, There are those who have barely heard of it and have no opinion, and those like Mr. Akin (whom I respect) who says "It's OK, just be careful on how you play the game." Personally, I say "game on".
It depends on how they handle it. I've picked up gaming magazines for games I don't play (or more accurately, games I don't play very often, such as Traveller) and still found takeaways from them that I can use. It's a tightrope, though on a number of levels. On the one hand, they almost certainly do not want to be seen, due to the Gygax name as a house organ for either AD&D (which they can't claim, due to WotC) or Lejendary Adventures (because that would cause the rift between them and Gail over the Gygax name to possibly escalate into legal action). On the other hand, you're right that a general "covering all games" magazine is a tall order. The gaming world, as fragmented as it is, makes it impossible to cater to players of D&D/Pathfinder/C&C/OSRclones, White Wolf, Shadowrun, Warhammer 40K, Paranoia, Traveller and all other games out there at one go. Someone is bound to be annoyed that their favorite game is not going to be showcased. I'm hoping that the bulk of the content will instead be system-neutral (articles that anyone, regardless of the game they play can find a takeaway from) with a smattering of system-specific articles for seasoning. (BTW, I just realized it's been years since I was here last. Anyone got a dustrag for this avatar? :) )
Actually, I would suggest a story from the old series as well -- "Genesis of the Daleks" which RTD has said was the first salvo in the Time War.
The new Doctor looks like a potato. >:P In the preview, he is seen punching out one guy and later on smashing a Dalek with a mallet (being the second person after Ace to dare going up against a Dalek with a melee weapon :) )
I agree with Erik (not to be a sycophant). After having been warned about the last 15 minutes, I didn't find to be as unpalatable as it had been described. Yeah, it wasn't bad... it just seemed forced. In other regenerations, the idea was he'd hallucinate about previous companions, which worked out better than this pointless victory lap. In many ways, RTD has set everything up so that Moffatt can do whatever he wants with the program. It has been reset in such a way that it can go off in a new direction, but retain these five seasons as canon. At the same time, RTD has also given fans some closure. We don't have to wonder whatever happened to certain companions... or if the Doctor ever thought of them ever again. We know. Even then, I don't think we've seen the last of some of the characters: Rose is gone. Moffat probably won't be using her again, and while I liked the character, good riddance -- as another poster said, she had become an overused Mary Sue for Davies.
The one thing I liked about School Reunion was it was the first time we ever saw the Doctor held emotionally accountable for his actions. I don't actually hold the character responsible so much as the writers and producers, but the classic Doctors (especially Tom Baker) used to pick people up and drop them off without much of an emotional exchange at all. Bye! Actually, I thought there was a pretty touching goodbye scene with Tom Baker and Lis Sladen -- they were actually allowed to write their own dialogue for the scene, and again one a few years later when Tegan left the TARDIS ("Brave heart, Tegan".). But yeah, in the main, it was pretty much "see ya!" But I think, especially with Sarah Jane and the Third/Fourth Doctors, a major reason for the Doctor picking up companions and abruptly dropping them off is that he did not want to get emotionally attached -- he viscerally feared it, though for all the right reasons... The Doc pretty much gave that away in School Reunion, subtly implying that he had fallen in love with Sarah back then, but did not want to put either of them through the emotional turmoil of having to watch her age, decay and die while he remained in the prime of his lives -- he felt it would be supremely unfair and unintentionally emotionally cruel to her. Back then, he didn't know how to broach the subject (and in a meta-show sense, back then the writers really couldn't broach that plot point) so used his summons to Gallifrey and the fact that non-Time Lords were at that point banned from being on-planet as an excuse. It was a bit of moral cowardice on his part, but nobody said the Doctor couldn't have feet of clay. He was much more explicit on both points to Rose as well, indeed "giving away" his half-human clone to her so that Rose would have a Doctor whom she could grow old together with.I can see the frustration with Rose, being that she's had her final goodbye several dozen times now. I suppose one more didn't bug me as much as I thought it would. However now she has had her triple deluxe final goodbye and that should be it. Amen. Like I said, I liked the character Rose, but she's been overused. More Deuses have been pulled ex Machina to get her back to our universe than the suspension of disbelief can tolerate. And as another poster mentioned, even when she wasn't in an episode, she ended up being almost a physically present character anyway because RTD wouldn't let The Doctor shut up about her... Sigh. It's just time to let Billie Piper spread her wings and have success on Secret Diary of a Call Girl. All in all, I liked this final episode, though there were things that bugged me about it -- the pacing could have been better, as if RTD was trying to shoehorn everything in and yet still leave enough time to bring the plot to a screeching halt for 15 minutes for the victory lap sequence. I also hoped to see a bit more of the Time Lords -- perhaps even a sequence with the Doctor back on Gallifrey one last time in a duel to the death with either The Master or Rassilon. Also it torked me off that we still had no real explanation of the ultimate noodle incident -- how the Doctor destroyed the Daleks and Time Lords, ending the Time War and also his regeneration from 8 to 9. I was hoping we'd finally get at least a verbal description of what exactly he did, if not actually bringing Paul McGann and Chris Eccleston back for one last hurrah. But the acting was spot on -- as with part one, this Master scared the daylights out of me, because he was so unpredicatable -- unlike other Masters who were varying degrees of chessmaster, this ressurected Master really was randomness and madness personified. Wilf and the Doctor were able to get some very touching scenes (and I really do hope that we'll get to see Bernard Cribbins at least one last time at some point in the new season) -- the scene in which Wilf is begging the Doctor to take his gun and kill the Master is particularly effective, and performed by two seasoned masters -- and the Doctor's meltdown when he finally realized what "he shall knock four times" actually meant and regarded it as a cosmic kick in the crotch was beautifully executed. This episode really did transcend the "cheese factor" that sometimes gets into Doctor Who by dinto of the cast putting out A-level effort. And of course, "Worst! Rescue! Ever!" is a hilarious line. :D
Yep pretty dumb. You think that with a character like the Master they could write him as something more than just a cackling git. IMO, this was one of the better Masters in recent memory. He was dangerous and a threat. I saw him as something of a "Heath Ledger Joker" sort, someone who was a primal force of chaos, as opposed to the more suave and mercurial version we last saw. The early parts of the episode scared the living daylights out of me... Spoiler:
Then there was the whole "I'm gonna turn the entire Human race into me" angle, and yeah, that scheme was pretty lame, though it had some good one-liners and set-piece shots. The Obama reference... really? Trying to be hopeful for Part II but its pretty hard right now. Just hope Moffatt doesn't inherit too much of RTDs baggage. That Obama reference I found to be annoying. First we get Winters, an obvious Expy of Bush, get offed and they don't even bother to reset it along with everything else in "Last of the Time Lords", now we get Obama on the cusp of single-handedly fixing the world's economy? Anvilicious political statement much? I am still stoked for Episode 2, for if nothing else we get the Time Lords again... I wonder if this means Gallifrey is going to be permanently returned, or if they're back for a moment and the Doc is going to have to find some way to return them to oblivion to keep the fabric of space-time whole, or some such...
Spoiler: Exactly. This is a MUCH more satisfying answer to Donna's question in "The Fires of Pompeii" than the Doctor's "I'm a Time Lord. I won't. Deal." It's not that it's a legalistic thing, it shows that no matter WHAT he does, time will find a way to restore the proper order of things on those "fixed points." Also, it took away the objection that I had with "TFoP", which was that Pompeii was a "fixed point" only because the writers didn't want to deal with the historical changes they'd have to account for of the Doctor saving the populace of the city. Here, they show crystal clear the enormity of the Doctor's actions. I saw the last five minutes of the special as him being pretty brutally smacked down for his hubris and presumption.
I almost wonder if these games weren't made by anti-RPG groups just to have someting to point at and say -- "Look! Look! We told you those satanic RPGs promote antisocial behavior!"
Personally, I'm waiting with bated breath for this release. This and the news that RJK is distributing through Noble Knight rather than self-shipping (which is a long-overdue and sorely needed development) are great news. And yeah, I'm looking forward to see how the original Maure Castle stacks up :)
A very beautiful post, Dove. I am not a Creationist. I find the evidence for natural selection and a 5 billion year old earth much more compelling than the evidence for creationism and a 6,000 year old earth. I think the 'water canopy' theory used to explain Noah's flood is fallacious. That being said, I do believe there was an event in Mesopotamia that flooded the entire region or at least a good portion of it. All the differing religious traditions (going as far back as Gilgamesh) from the region tell tales of a great flood that covered the Earth, leading me to believe that some sort of massive disaster did occur, even if it was much more limited in scope. There are even theories of the Black Sea overrunning its banks. On the other hand, I do not find Christianity, to be a threat to science. Pseudoscience wrapped in Christian trappings, yes, but not Christianity. A person can believe in God, yet accept that science can offer no proof of his existence. A person can accept the wisdom of Genesis, without believing in its literal truth. A good story about that comes from my Catholic mother. While she was carrying me to term, she and my dad had gone to a bible study class in Pensacola, led by one Fr. Patrick Friar (who was apparently my namesake, and who was -- no kidding! a former Hare Krishna before taking his vows). At first it was ecumenical, opening the study session with "we Christians". Then Fr. Friar opened the Bible to a particular chapter, and talked about it being allegorical. He handled Jonah and the Whale in that manner. And Job, and Noah. Finally, after about three or four weeks, the opening was no longer "we Christians," but "we Catholics," as only the Catholics (who respect the Bible, but see it as guidelines and scripture and not the completely inerrant word of God) stuck in for the long haul. Those who go and say that everything in the bible happened literally, or see it as a fully innerant document (ESPECIALLY those who take the KJV as the only valid translation -- read "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Eherenreich to see just how bad a translation it is) are missing the point completely. Whether or not it actually happened is not the point. The point is the message -- be good to one another. Do good works. Don't kill your neighbor. Yet many atheists seem to believe that religion is anathema to science. They seem to believe that people who believe in God do not accept the validity of science. I find fault with that line of reasoning. Just because you recognize that God cannot be proved by science, does not mean that you reject science's validity. Just because you find power and meaning in the written words of the Bible does not mean that you cannot feel awe and humility when gazing at the cosmos or studying nucleic acids. Science and religion both have power, they both have meaning, and just because they operate in separate spheres does not make one any more or less valid than the other. Dove, why can't there be more people like you out there saying this? This is truth.
Back in the day, so I heard, they sent a C&D letter to FASA after FASA released "BattleDroids." they said they'd sue if FASA didn't change the name (at the time, Lucas was claiming exclusive rights to the word "droid"), and FASA replaced it with the familiar (and IMO, much better-sounding) "BattleTech." 1st Editon was "droids."
Everything Matthew told you is perfect. Total Warfare is the complete rules -- the intro box would be redundant... though apparently Catalyst is also bringing ouut a 25th Anniversary reprint of the original 2nd edition (the original 1st edition can never be reprinted thanks to LucasFilm), and it will even include the "unseens", 16 mechs that haven't been seen in over a decade due to legal wrangling.
I'm actually taking him at his word that "dead means dead" and that Wolverine is not coming back, mostly because he doesn't have to worry about being forced to bring him back, and also, I've got a hunch that Spoiler:
given what happened in issue 1, Kitty may have a bit more Wolvie in her than just his being a role model... Somewhere people forgot that in comics the good guys are supposed to win. We don't root for Cap because he's in danger, we root for him because he doesn't know he has 'PC Shields' we root for Cap because he does the right thing. QFT. Even antiheroes still are motivated by what's right. Han Solo may have wanted the money, but he still came back to save Luke's bacon at the end of the movie. They just go about upholding right in a way different from the stereotypical "knight in shining armor." But the post-modern BS of the "Dork Age" 90s threw that for a loop. I trace Cap going downhill to 'Truth'. It offended me that they'd a) trivialize the Tuskeegee experiment like that and b) they'd darken Cap's origin story. Steve Rogers has been risking everything since he first took that serum. Again, it's the idea that "everything you thought you knew is wrong" and "nothng in this world can go untarnished" with a hefty dose of politically correct sermonizing thrown in. And you're right -- the Tuskeegee experiments were mockeries of any sort of medical ethics and human dignity, and to turn them into the back-plot of Captain America? A disgrace. Wolverine lost his edge when he lost the mystery. If handled right, it could have worked. I just did not buy the convoluted BS story that was handed us in Origin. I liked the hints that Sabertooth was Wolverine's dad. Take away the shield and the stars and stripes, Steve Rogers <i>remains</i> Captain America. John Walker proved that. Well said. A true hero doesn't need fancy pajamas -- he just is.
Whatever time Pat's talking about up above. Spoiler: He dies in the next issue of X-Men Forever, burned to a crisp by we-don't-know-who-yet.
Wait. A Marvel character has died and could possibly return from the dead?!?!?! How is that at all possible? Marvel would NEVER do such a thing. I cannot tell. Is this an instance of your Earth "irony?" :P
All well and good till someone else comes along who liked said character and brings them back. I agree. That's while I applaud the balls of killing off Wolverine permanently, it seems, on the face of it, almost the apotheosis of the mindset of the titles in the past decade, treating Wolverine as a "uber-munchkin" who needs to be regularly swatted down by a killer DM. Then again, in the comics, Wolverine's healing has become ridiculous in recent years -- up to and including regenerating fully from a handful of cells on his skeleton, IIRC. And, of course, as you point out, that was meant both to show the badassitude of the new villain of the week, while preserving the "deceased" for later commercial exploitation. But here, it was also intended instead to send a message, just as Steve Rogers' death was in Captain America, that the game has changed significantly, that safe characters are no longer safe, that actions have consequences (remember, Steve didn't die at the hands of some badass new minion of the Red Skull, but instead to a prosaic lone gun(wo)man, with the at least estated motive being the events of the recently-concluded Civil War.) If done sparingly, it keeps the audience on their toes -- no longer are heavily marketable characters going to be spared for the sake of merchandising (and as to the other objection about XMF -- that a subsequent writer after CC could undo all of it, it's been pretty much made explicit that if CC quits the title, it will NOT be continued by others, as it is such a personal project, making him almost uniquely free from marketing dictates). Think of it like the new Star Trek -- Vulcan was destroyed so that JJ Abrams could say "This is not the predictable Trek Universe you thought you knew. Kirk may not get a bridge dropped on him in the future. He might die from eating a bad tribble sandwich next week." I don't mind the 'revolving door' when it's applied to characters who were ganked off in a fairly meaningless way, when a decent writer can latch on to some abandoned third-tier schlub like the Swamp Thing or the Sandman or Madrox or whomever and turn them into a character capable of maintaining their own book. I do, only because it's a cheap way out. It really is not valid from a story standpoint 75% of the time, meant only to allow subsequent writers/artists to be able to play with favored characters that previous creative teams killed off, or to allow the parent company to reintroduce a favored character whom the fans would buy multiple copies of an issue to see return, or for some other external reason that has nothing to do with the story. I agree with the "meaningless" part though -- a character's death shouldn't be a "whoops, he just slipped and impaled himself on his own Adamantium claws" sort of deal, but should have an impact on the story. While it was a blatant, brazen, meant-to-be-reversed-from-panel-one marketing gimmick, Superman's "death" was very much meaningful, "dying" to save Metropolis from the rampage. Marvel has traditionally been the worst at that sort of thing, with incidents like the 'Bar With No Name' incident, which firmly established Scourge as someone who would be... written off as boring and promptly forgotten and left fallow for 10 years! Yeah... Scourge was a wasted opportunity. They wove him in half the titles in the '80s as an omnipresent, creepy and cool serial killer/vigilante, and then promptly killed him like a chump. Also, though, the incident IIRC was meant to clear away some of the "chaff" of Marvel villainhood, allowing the editors at the time to permanently dispose of some of the more embarrassing baddies in a clear and unambiguous manner. I mean, really -- who misses "Turner D. Century", a villain who looked like he should be conning rich dowagers, starting a marching band in River City and riding bikes with a comically large front wheel? I guess I don't mind resurrection being cheap and meaningless, since the character's deaths have been mostly cheap and meaningless for the last decade or so. But at the same time, most of those deaths and resurrections (at least of major characters) were intended as marketing gimmicks, not organic evolutions in the book. If Claremont had had his way, Jean Grey would probably have stayed dead after Dark Phoenix, with Madelyne Pryor being just what she was billed as originally -- a one-in-a-billion perfect likeness of Jean, with nothing else special going on. Then, the X-editor at the time (can't remember whether it was still Ann Nocenti or if Bob Harras had taken over by then) decided to get the original X-Men back together as X-Factor, necessitating Jean's return. And the Goblyn Queen/Inferno. and Scott's out-of-character volteface going back to Jean. And the cockamamie plotline about Madelyn being a clone "honey pot" due to some bizarre infatuation Mr. Sinister has with the Summers family. And so on. In the same way, do you REALLY think that Supes would have been killed by Doomsday only to go through a drawn-out (and highly saleable as collector's editions) funeral and resurrection process if the Superman titles hadn't been flagging in sales?
That's why I'm waiting for X-Men Forever -- It's Chris Clairmont, with all that entails. :) Though thankfully he said he's striving to tone down the Tolstoy-sized ballons and the every-three-issue repetitions of how Rogue "cain't touch another livin' soul or Ah'll absorb their powahs..."What is this X-Men Forever you speak of? O_x [...and a faint hope that X-Men can be good again shines feebly within PDK's soul, as he awaits the answer...] Yes. Claremont had said in interviews that from now on, if he feels the need to use a dead character, his response to himself is going to be "tough s*** -- come up with someone even better."
Is this going to be an ongoing series? Chris Claremont is apparently hoping so. For the rest, time and the comic-buying public will tell.
That's why I'm waiting for X-Men Forever -- It's Chris Clairmont, with all that entails. :) Though thankfully he said he's striving to tone down the Tolstoy-sized ballons and the every-three-issue repetitions of how Rogue "cain't touch another livin' soul or Ah'll absorb their powahs..."
Will the Steve Rodgers Captain America be returning to Marvel? Jean. Grey. You do the math. :)
Just because they took away your old-timey Pies, Deliciously Filled (PDFs for short) doesn't mean you have to take your bitter bitterness out on me.Oh yeah?! At least you never hear of pies coming in half sheets. Screw this edition war. I'm going to donuts, where at least they keep the old-school tradition alive!
Tacos de Arrachera!Oh... my... god, those look good!!!!!!!!! They... are... the ... TACOS... OF THE GODS! :P 
SmuuuuuuurrrrrrrfSmuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrffffff??? There we go... finally said "smurf" without... aw, crap... :)
Smuuuuuuurrrrrrrf Smuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrffffff???
And: Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? (if you can find an old VHS copy, or have access to a R2 player and a bit of cash to spare)
Let's go smurfin now,
So how the Sm*rf are you doing that?
English is a bastardization of just about every, other known language. Really, just 3. The original Saxon languages were largely unified by the time of the dominance of Wessex in the 900s. Around the same time, English inflections (yes, Virginia, we were at one point an inflected languge) were shaved off to more easiy communicate with the Scandinavians occupying the north and east of England (the "Danelaw"), and the two languages, already similar enough, begand to meld together. Then, in 1066, the Normans invaded, and over the next century or two, English picked up Norman French. They're the three major sources of English as we know it, though loanwords from a myraid of languages have also been adopted.
Even more hardcore... she's the DM of a Pathfinder RPG Rise of the Runelords campaign! Ouch. That's harsh. I love it! :D
Wait -- there was a Star Trek V? When did this come out? I know of IV and VI... :P <snipped because Talesin Hoyle's already made a similar point.>
Let's not talk about posters on other messageboards here, please. Sorry, Gary.
Well, it's looking more and more likely, but color me hard-nosed: I've seen Wikipedia get corrected when it jumped the gun. *cough, cough*Sinbad*cough, cough...* /humor This is a sad day for FRPG fans. Last year we lost the George Washington of the hobby, now the Thomas Jefferson is gone as well. Rest easy, Dave. I hope you're up there rolling the dice with Gary, Tom Moldvay and Don Kaye right now.
Bold edited to clarify the original message. These people remind me of when I frequented the MacrossWorld (www.macrossworld.com, if you're a fan of the show :) ) message boards. We used to get these Robotech defenders who had this asinine idea that if Harmony Gold (sadly, the rights-holder for the series in America, and the reason I'll never get to see a R1 release of Do You Remember Love [thank God for Blu-Ray!]) acknolwdged and started releasing the original three series that made up Robotech in their original format, that Robotech would vanish, that some Gestapo would come and rip the Robotech tapes/discs out of their hands. It degenerated into flame wars and the exact kind of name-calling that Titanium Dragon is exhibiting. "Wah, wah, there's not enough room in the RPG industry for us, therefore if Pathfinder thrives, then 4E is doomed!"
Glad to make your day, good sir :)
Can I copy this in a mail, Pat? Go right ahead. You may want to change some of it, just as bits are personal and might not reflect your own situation (for instance, I doubt you're "MacrossSD" on the boards :) ), but otherwise, no worries!
And here is a copy of an email I've just sent to Wizards: To whom it may concern: I am greatly offended, angered and dismayed by Wizards of the Coast's recent orders to numerous online booksellers (chief among them Paizo and DriveThruStuff/One Book Shelf) to halt immediately their legal and authorized sales of Wizards of the Coast and TSR PDF offerings. I do not begrudge or challenge your right to do this, nor even the stricture that subsequent already-paid-for downloads were to be denied. I am angered at the unseemly haste and thourough lack of communication with your customers, many of whom are now bewildered by your actions. To this date, Wizards has not made an official explanation to the fans over the circumstances of the take down. I do not accept WizO_Trevor's posts on the official forums as such an explanation. His response states that your takedown, done at an astonishingly neck-breaking speed (Gary Teeter of Paizo was apparently given all of an hour's notice to halt PDF sales), was to halt piracy. This is akin to closing the barn door after the horses have not only escaped, but returned to dismantle the barn with crowbars. If you had taken these actions a number of years ago, or even in the past year (when the high-profile piracy of the first Fourth Edition books was hitting the gamer news) Wizards's actions might seem more credible. However, now that those files are "in the wild", they will be traded with impunity by those with so little moral fibre as to steal. All Wizards has done is penalize us, the law-abiding. When one man runs over another with a car, the proper response is not to confiscate all cars. With the rash of high-profile shootings lately, the proper response is not to confiscate all guns. When illegally-produced PDFs of Wizard's intellectual property are being distributed, the proper response is not to deny access to legally-produced PDFs. At best, the unseemly hast makes Wizards look like panicked fools. At worst, it makes them appear to be attempting to submerge the earlier editions of the Dungeons and Dragons family of games in favor of Fourth Edition. I am not, nor shall I most likely be a player of 4th Edition -- the game does not speak to me as previous editions did. This is not a fault in the game, but is my personal preference. However, with these actions today, that point is now moot. As of today, I no longer consider myself a customer of Wizards of the Coast. If I find old TSR material that I wish to have, I will buy it from any of the fine second-hand shops either in the brick-and-mortar world or online. Instead, my money will now be spent with other fine RPG companies, who have a conception of the value of their customers. My account name on the Wizards website is MacrossSD. Please delete me from your system. I'll leave you with this: Your company, Wizards of the Coast, back when it was still a company for gamers, bought an ailing TSR, brought to the brink of collapse by poor business decisions by the Blume brothers and then Lorraine Williams, including terminating licenses with Judges Guild (a long-standing partner of TSR's since the early days) and suing any fan who dared to post anything on the Internet devoted to the game, whether or not it directly challenged TSR's IP. With actions like the one two days ago, as well as other recent business decisions, Wizards is running the risk of following down the same path of plyer alienation as the post-Gygax TSR. And I truly think that would be a shame. Sincerely,
PS: I have also been dismayed by what appears to be a streak of favoritism amongst the moderators on the forums. There have been statements by those angered by the takedowns which have been censored (sometimes rightly, sometimes, in my opinion, wrongly) while a number of pro-Wizards posters have uttered very libellous statements, including accusing other companies of fraud (such as one I will append below), which have been allowed to stand without comment by the moderators. This speaks of a culture that goes by the adage "Marquis of Queensbury rules for you, we get to fight freestyle." http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=18281233&postcount=837
"Then why the hell couldn't they hit me, a freakin' untrained farmboy, when I was standing on a ledge with no cover a mere 30 feet away from them? Well?" You and your logic... grrr (shakes fist) :)
Gary, the Post Monster General, said he had 1 hour's notice. One Hour. "These weren't sandpeople. Look at the blast marks. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so preci--" "Then why the hell couldn't they hit me, a freakin' untrained farmboy, when I was standing on a ledge with no cover a mere 30 feet away from them? Well?" "Yes, Luke, I've got nothing. (I wish I were still doing Murder By Death right about now...)"
Welcome to the maquis. And us Chetniks, C&C players salute you, our brothers in arms! :)
There is NO way they can legally do that. They do not own those physical books anymore. If they do that, they might as well order EVERYONE to turn in their older-edition books (and Charleton Heston's already voiced my opinion on that ;)) The only reason they could pull such a takedown order is if they found one of the books to be legally actionable, and even then, it would most likely be the stores themselves taking it down to avoid prosecution or a legal action (in much the same way that the infamous Vanessa Williams-loses-her-Miss-America-Crown-Centerfold issue of Penthouse from IIRC '84 is forbidden to be sold in the US, because of a 15-year-old Traci Lords doing a pictorial). Even WotC would not be that stupid.
The moderators already warned the crowd a few times that everyone should honor the CoC and be respectful, but why these three posters which are the epitome of unrespectfulness are not already banned is beyond me. Because I wouldn't be surprised that the great majority of what they're saying is EXACTLY what WotC would like to say if they weren't afraid of being sued.
I keep dwelliong on it. I want them to f~~~ing fry, I've developed an increased hatred of homophobes. So does it make me a bad person that I want them punished as horribly as possible. I've never been a violent person but now ..... These lunatics beat a person savagely because of what he is (and they better not try the drunk bit too much, that's not really a defense, if anything all it would do is argue against premeditation), and YOU'RE the one feeling guilt because you want to see them get a rightful punishment? O.o You're not evil. You're not saying "I'm going to sneak into their cell and garotte them in their sleep" or "I'm going to go and kill their beloved puppies in revenge". You want to see them punished by a court of law. You want justice to take its course and find the lady witht he blindfold throwing her scales at them. This is not evil. And I have very short shrift with intolerant people of nay stripe myself -- what was that saying? "All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?" (As an aside, IANL, but unless you have a good bit of proof, the attempted murder charge, sadly, probably won't stick. But there are some very nice jail terms for felony assault and battery we might be able to interest you in... ;) )
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