Acaeum Wiki

Posts: 4467 · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:01 pm

jkason wrote:

Hey Mike.
Just noticed the tidbits you posted about dungeon 33 & 37, and was going to update Dragon 109 & 111, but you beat me to it.

Addictive is not the word.

Check out Dungeon 109 & 111 again, I tweaked them a little bit more.

Heh, sorry about that! Dungeon mags are a personal love of mine. I consider them possibly the best supplemental RPG item ever produced...3-6 adventures every two months for less than $5? Are you kidding me? Very Happy

What a deal! And I was a subscriber since issue #6. What a great mag! We used the hell out of it back in the day.

Mike B.

Posts: 178 · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:31 pm

Mike,
If you have time, I want you to check out the issue of Dragon I just put up (359).

Don't know if it has exactly the right "feel" to it. It could use a tweaking.

Maybe it's just becuase it's out of the chronoloical order.

Posts: 4467 · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:23 am

jkason wrote:

Mike,
If you have time, I want you to check out the issue of Dragon I just put up (359).

Don't know if it has exactly the right "feel" to it. It could use a tweaking.

Maybe it's just becuase it's out of the chronoloical order.

You're doing a great job man!

Just keep putting them up, doing all the hard work, I'll keep slipping in and adding the tidbits (the easy work) Very Happy

I thought the #359 looked alright..but since the last Dragon I own is somewhere around the #320's I can't really double check any of them that late in the run.

Mike B.

Posts: 8 · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:01 pm

Apologies to grubbiv for having to fix a pile of my "sort orders," I'll try to keep that in mind. I also like what you did with the Combatant's Guide as far as the acknowledgements went. It looks nicer in the list.

K

Posts: 50 · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:27 am

Kersus wrote:

Apologies to grubbiv for having to fix a pile of my "sort orders," I'll try to keep that in mind. I also like what you did with the Combatant's Guide as far as the acknowledgements went. It looks nicer in the list.
K

I may occasionally make a pass thru the articles to make some point of style consistent. The issue here is how we deal with an item like "The Adventure Begins". If you create a page with the same name as the title, it gets filed in the DCC category under T instead of A. Instead of creating the page name under "Adventure Begins" (which I was earlier doing) or "Adventure Begins, The", I'm now recommending creating the page name under "The Adventure Begins" and specifying the sort order when categorizing:

{{CL|Dungeon Crawl Classics||Adventure Begins, The}}

Even though this is a bit more work, I think it is worth it because the page name appears both in the URL and in bold at the top of the article. Unfortunately, it is necessary to specify the sort order for every category the page is put into. I haven't been doing it for people yet, because most credit lists are pretty short.

Newer versions of mediawiki have a DEFAULTSORT keyword to specify the sort order for all categories in one fell swoop. I wish we had that for our wiki, but we are using an older version of mediawiki to be compatible with php4.

Posts: 50 · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:32 am

People have been wondering whether to categorize early Kingdoms of Kalamar as AD&D 2E given that was not officially licensed but clearly intended for it. One option is to create a separate game category called 'AD&D 2nd Edition (unlicensed)'. That way people who are only interested in the official stuff don't have to look at it, but we aren't forced to file it under 'Universal Supplement'.

Posts: 377 · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:32 am

grubbiv wrote:

People have been wondering whether to categorize early Kingdoms of Kalamar as AD&D 2E given that was not officially licensed but clearly intended for it. One option is to create a separate game category called 'AD&D 2nd Edition (unlicensed)'. That way people who are only interested in the official stuff don't have to look at it, but we aren't forced to file it under 'Universal Supplement'.

Weren't there products that said they were for use with AD&D but were actually not licensed to say so?

It seems to me that categorizing early Kalamar items as unlicensed is making a much more ambiguous statement than intended.

Posts: 2280 · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:44 am

grubbiv wrote:

One option is to create a separate game category called 'AD&D 2nd Edition (unlicensed)'. That way people who are only interested in the official stuff don't have to look at it, but we aren't forced to file it under 'Universal Supplement'.

This is a tricky thing to deal with well but something that would be good to get organized early. There are lots of 3rd party items that are "generic" but may also contain D&D stats or stats for other systems such as Runequest, etc. Some say specificallly infer that they can be used with D&D where others may not explicitly state it but will have stats block that are essentially D&D.

For the early Kalamar items, I think they all state that they are suitable for any RPG including but not limited to AD&D.

Posts: 4467 · Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:20 pm

Mars wrote:

This is a tricky thing to deal with well but something that would be good to get organized early. There are lots of 3rd party items that are "generic" but may also contain D&D stats or stats for other systems such as Runequest, etc. Some say specificallly infer that they can be used with D&D where others may not explicitly state it but will have stats block that are essentially D&D.

For the early Kalamar items, I think they all state that they are suitable for any RPG including but not limited to AD&D.

I would say thumbs down to early Kalamar as 2nd edition AD&D. I finally looked at a few of the earlier supplements and while VERY evocative of 2E they are not officially that game system and very obviously state they are for any RPG. They seem to be pretty much in the "generic" category unless someone has evidence to the contrary (I only have a few of these).
I really think the "unlicensed" category is creating too much work.

Mike B.

Posts: 74 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:03 am

grubbiv wrote:

People have been wondering whether to categorize early Kingdoms of Kalamar as AD&D 2E given that was not officially licensed but clearly intended for it. One option is to create a separate game category called 'AD&D 2nd Edition (unlicensed)'. That way people who are only interested in the official stuff don't have to look at it, but we aren't forced to file it under 'Universal Supplement'.

Kenzer and Company is responsible for Knights of the Dinner Table. WOTC, years ago, published a Best of Dragon Magazine product for the computer that had all the magazines on it (I forgot what it was called). However, WOTC sorta forgot that they did not have permission to re-issue the KoTD comics on this product. Kenzer sued WOTC, and they settled it by allowing Kenzer to issue Kingdoms of Kalamar as a D&D Product, and to allow them to run Living Kingdoms of Kalamar through the RPGA Living Campaign system. Living Kingdoms of Kalamar ended at Origins 2008 as an official RPGA Living Campaign, and is now renamed Ledgends of Kalamar (being run outside the auspices of the RPGA).

And I didn't know that there was 2E Kalamar Product from Kenzer. I thought that this was all strictly 3E?

Posts: 2280 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:00 pm

Invincible Overlord wrote:

Kenzer and Company is responsible for Knights of the Dinner Table. WOTC, years ago, published a Best of Dragon Magazine product for the computer that had all the magazines on it (I forgot what it was called). However, WOTC sorta forgot that they did not have permission to re-issue the KoTD comics on this product. Kenzer sued WOTC, and they settled it by allowing Kenzer to issue Kingdoms of Kalamar as a D&D Product, and to allow them to run Living Kingdoms of Kalamar through the RPGA Living Campaign system. Living Kingdoms of Kalamar ended at Origins 2008 as an official RPGA Living Campaign, and is now renamed Ledgends of Kalamar (being run outside the auspices of the RPGA).

Do you have a reliable source for this? I would be interested in the details of what really happened. This Wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(magazine)

suggests that it is all KoTD's fault that the Dragon Archive is out of print and "hard to find" Smile

I thought that Kenzer negotiated the rights to use all the old D&D stuff for Hackmaster from this. For the Kalamar D20 items, there is an open license so they could say for use with D&D without any problem.

With the Dragon Archive, the copyright issue was not limited to Kenzer but to anyone who submitted an independent article or adventure or comic. The number that I heard floated around was that it added half a million dollars to the project. If you look at the downloads for newer Dragon magazines, some of them are not complete PDFs because of licensing restrictions.

Posts: 74 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:01 pm

Mars wrote:

Do you have a reliable source for this? I would be interested in the details of what really happened. This Wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(magazine)

suggests that it is all KoTD's fault that the Dragon Archive is out of print and "hard to find" Smile

I thought that Kenzer negotiated the rights to use all the old D&D stuff for Hackmaster from this. For the Kalamar D20 items, there is an open license so they could say for use with D&D without any problem.

With the Dragon Archive, the copyright issue was not limited to Kenzer but to anyone who submitted an independent article or adventure or comic. The number that I heard floated around was that it added half a million dollars to the project. If you look at the downloads for newer Dragon magazines, some of them are not complete PDFs because of licensing restrictions.

The conversation was with a former Living Kalamar Director. KenzerCo is not that big of a company, so I'm sure his conversation was with one of 3 or 4 full-time employees at the company.

And I'm sure that WoTC is blaming Kenzer Cool

Posts: 178 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:03 pm

Badmike wrote:

I would say thumbs down to early Kalamar as 2nd edition AD&D. I finally looked at a few of the earlier supplements and while VERY evocative of 2E they are not officially that game system and very obviously state they are for any RPG. They seem to be pretty much in the "generic" category unless someone has evidence to the contrary (I only have a few of these).
I really think the "unlicensed" category is creating too much work.

Mike B.

Should we move them to "Universal Supplement"?
There's quite a few links there already, and we wouldn't have to create a new "game", per se.

Taken right from the back of "A Foe In Need" (It's on the other Kalamar Quest booklets, too):
This game adventure and supplement is suitable for use with any fantasy role playing system, including, but not limited to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Rolemaster, and HackMaster"

Posts: 2280 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:18 pm

That's not quite as reliable as I would have hoped. Personally, I don't think Living Kalamar had anything to do with the KotDT copyright issue with the Dragon Magazine Archive. Here's why,

The Dragon Magazine archive is copyright 1999 and from what I can tell the Living Kalamar campaign didn't start until 2003. That's a big time discrepancy. This time frame also places Kalamar as an established campaign world for 3rd Edition, hence a good candidate for a Living campaign. Also, the Living campaigns were not restricted to TSR/WotC campaigns. Other companies had living campaigns before Living Kalamar came around.

Posts: 981 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:08 pm

jkason wrote:

Should we move them to "Universal Supplement"?
There's quite a few links there already, and we wouldn't have to create a new "game", per se.

The wiki is growing quickly and as expected categorisation is proving a challenge. My one immediate concern in putting Kalamar items into 'Universal Supplements' is that it would be confusing. The Kalamar items would drown out the other small cottage supplements. And it will be useful to keep 'Kalamar' grouped.

One possibility (and I'll discuss this with grubbiv), would be to have two Super-Categories: 'Universal Supplements' and 'Generic Fantasy Systems' or something like that. These could be bold text links under games in the front page. 'Generic Fantasy Systems' could then hold 'Kalamar' and some of the other d20 companies that produce large numbers of supplements. 'Universal Supplements' could group the smaller, older cottage companies like Bard Games and Reily Associates.

Thoughts?

Posts: 2280 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:09 pm

HermitFromPluto wrote:

Thoughts?

I don't really like the idea of having two categories defined in this way. It seems like items are placed into one category or the other based on a subjective opinion on the size of company or size of print run, etc.

With Kalamar, the early items seem to have a lower print run and are generic fantasy rpg adventures whereas their later items (some of which are modified versions of the earlier ones) are system specific to D20. It sounds as if you want to place all of the Kalamar items into one category but they really fall into two such categories.

I understand the feel you are aiming with the two categories - something along the lines of a small press category and a mainstream one but again this will run into trouble when you hit companies like Ragnarok Enterprises that I would class as a small press company but have produced probably 50+ products and had a fanzine that also ran for 50 issues. I would also class Bard Games as mainstream company - they also produced a number of books for Talislanta.

Posts: 178 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:11 pm

So why not just classify the pre-3E Kalamar stuff as a "Universal Supplement" in the 'Game' slot, and classify the 3E stuff as such.

The 'Setting' slot will remain the same, and keep all the Kalamar stuff together, the only thing that would change is that the pre-3E stuff will show up under "Universal Supplement" rather than "AD&D2E"

As a whole, I Believe there were only the 10 adventures, the 1 GW book (Beneath the Waves), and the Box Set (which I haven't scanned ....yet) for pre-3E.

On the other hand, there's a whole butt-load of stuff for 3E Kalamar that I haven't even scanned into the computer yet. And they Just released the 4E setting as a 500+ page PDF.

Posts: 4467 · Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 12:34 am

jkason wrote:

So why not just classify the pre-3E Kalamar stuff as a "Universal Supplement" in the 'Game' slot, and classify the 3E stuff as such.

The 'Setting' slot will remain the same, and keep all the Kalamar stuff together, the only thing that would change is that the pre-3E stuff will show up under "Universal Supplement" rather than "AD&D2E"

As a whole, I Believe there were only the 10 adventures, the 1 GW book (Beneath the Waves), and the Box Set (which I haven't scanned ....yet) for pre-3E.

On the other hand, there's a whole butt-load of stuff for 3E Kalamar that I haven't even scanned into the computer yet. And they Just released the 4E setting as a 500+ page PDF.

I agree with JK (trying to stifle my usual longwindedness) for just the reasons stated....!

Mike B.

Posts: 981 · Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:15 am

Solved then! - no major tweaking needed. Go ahead with your suggested classification jkason.

Posts: 178 · Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:11 pm

Will do.

(Wow. I actually had an idea that was lucid after working all day - and was able to articulate it in such a way that someone actually agreed with me. Things are looking up.)

EDIT - Aw, Maaaan. Grubbiv beat me to it. That's OK though. It shows that there's an interest and desire to get it right.