The Changing Face of Reading

[tenkar]

I kind of thought I was clear on this You can have local copies of websites that are entirely without any need for a connection. DDI may not work like that at present, but it's essentially no different from saving a single web page to your hard disc apart from savign all the pages on a site or game.

Try it. Treasure's in the sig. Choose the Win32 installer and there's even a proper uninstall, so you can ignore the game, look at the technology and delete the lot in an instant

Not gonna work with my iPad, iPhone or MacMini. My PC just boots up for gaming these days, and that's fairly rare.

For all of the faults of PDFs, they are system agnostic. HTML is too, but the install program for offline work in this case is not. Thus the disconnect. Your solution (at the moment) is geared to one OS (obviously the most popular). When it comes to mobile OS, i think the iOS might have that market.

 

[enpeze66]

Iron wolf,
so they released a red cheating box where you have a teaser only to lure you in order to buy the full 1000p+ product later? Do you really think the casual gamer is that stupid not to realize that this is only a teaser and not the real product? In the moment he looks at the myriards of nerdy rulebooks and unnecessary option books, (aka D&D 4) he walks immediately away in disgustment.

Paizo is not better in this respect with their cheating box of only 5 levels but full rule complexity. Do you really think that such a box will bring even one new casual? I definately doubt this. No, the solution is not to produce a teaser to lure the innocents in the "glorious PF game". The number crunching supernerds who love this type of overcomplex game often forget that the normal people are not like them but just want simple and easy entertainment.

In order to reach the masses non-supernerds, fantasy fans, gamers, casuals, part time roleplayers, out there, the real solution is to produce a full roleplaying game but with very simple rules and only a few pages to read AND good a marketing strategy (of the kind which only a big publisher is able to afford)

 

[IronWolf]

so they released a red cheating box where you have a teaser only to lure you in order to buy the full 1000p+ product later? Do you really think the casual gamer is that stupid not to realize that this is only a teaser and not the real product? In the moment he looks at the myriards of nerdy rulebooks and unnecessary option books, (aka D&D 4) he walks immediately away in disgustment.

These boxed sets draw people in with an initial set of easy to digest rules. Obviously WotC sets have varied over time, but they have made attempts to lower the hurdles and minimize initial investment to the game.

Paizo is not better in this respect with their cheating box of only 5 levels but full rule complexity. Do you really think that such a box will bring even one new casual? I definately doubt this. No, the solution is not to produce a teaser to lure the innocents in the "glorious PF game".

Yes to five levels, but we don't know if it will be the full rule complexity or scaled down somewhat. This product hasn't even been released yet - a little early to judge its success or not.

 

[tenkar]

Iron wolf,
so they released a red cheating box where you have a teaser only to lure you in order to buy the full 1000p+ product later? Do you really think the casual gamer is that stupid not to realize that this is only a teaser and not the real product? In the moment he looks at the myriards of nerdy rulebooks and unnecessary option books, (aka D&D 4) he walks immediately away in disgustment.

Paizo is not better in this respect with their cheating box of only 5 levels but full rule complexity. Do you really think that such a box will bring even one new casual? I definately doubt this. No, the solution is not to produce a teaser to lure the innocents in the "glorious PF game". The number crunching supernerds who love this type of overcomplex game often forget that the normal people are not like them but just want simple and easy entertainment.

In order to reach the masses non-supernerds, fantasy fans, gamers, casuals, part time roleplayers, out there, the real solution is to produce a full roleplaying game but with very simple rules and only a few pages to read AND good a marketing strategy (of the kind which only a big publisher is able to afford)

Swords & Wizardry White Box - A well written ruleset that won't overpower new or casual players. Marketing might be an issue tho.

Dragon Age - The RPG from Green Ronin claimed to be aimed at the casual player, but the initial box cuts you off at level 5.

 

[nedjer]

Not gonna work with my iPad, iPhone or MacMini. My PC just boots up for gaming these days, and that's fairly rare.

For all of the faults of PDFs, they are system agnostic. HTML is too, but the install program for offline work in this case is not. Thus the disconnect. Your solution (at the moment) is geared to one OS (obviously the most popular). When it comes to mobile OS, i think the iOS might have that market.

Dude surely you know me better than that by now You've got Safari. You've got Goodreader or the like which does offline saves of web pages from Safari? Lots of ways of going about it:

Download the zip version and unzip it on PC or iPad. The contents are simply Safari ready web pages saveable offline through Goodreader. Copy over from PC if that's the preferred unzip platform.

Go to the 'Live' version of Treasure and save it where you like. This may not be ideal as I haven't tried saving that to an iPad, so the links may not turn out right. Depends how GoodReader handles them, but it demonstartes it can be done.

Or, heresy, stick a .doc on the old PC and burn a PDF. An online PDF Safari extension or or service might do the same, but it'd be mangled doing the burning on the iPad. The whole game is a small download compared to a PDF, but burning PDFs online off an iPad's processor ain't an option. This won't give full interactivity, but it shows the ease of switching between the options with the original as html.

Basically, last I checked it's good with every major browser.

Overall, you get far, far more 'ownership' this way. You choose what media goes in the rules and can re-arrange, mark, hook-up and save completely personal or group local versions.

You're discussing offline, but if nothing else check out the live page in Safari. It's worth it to see what the autostyling buttons near the top do to theme any game. The download takes a little first time, but not too much as each style only has 6 or 12 images to load at a time.

I should add that I make no claims on how WotC will choose to deliver their media. Treasure doesn't try to be a swap out for a 4e or a Pathfinder, as it's tactically more like poker meets Traveller; but WotC, Pathfinder and Goodman Games will eventually give you various offline options simply because they have to compete over the same gameplay territory and, quite rightly, you guys want rules you own/ physically hold.

 

[enpeze66]

These boxed sets draw people in with an initial set of easy to digest rules. Obviously WotC sets have varied over time, but they have made attempts to lower the hurdles and minimize initial investment to the game.



Yes to five levels, but we don't know if it will be the full rule complexity or scaled down somewhat. This product hasn't even been released yet - a little early to judge its success or not.

Well as it seems now, I have to take back my initial judgement. As far as I heard today the Paizobox is indeed a SIMPLIFIED version of PF with only 64 pages with all game rules included (+96p GM stuff and modules) and not just a box with full complexity. So you have been right and I was wrong. (sorry my fault)

At least with release of this basic box it seems that Paizo understands the issue what to do in order to win new gamers.

 

[Stormonu]

Isn't that what WotC Red Box was supposed to be?

:: runs and hides...

I'll stress 'supposed to be'... I bought it with high hopes it might be what would get me back into 4e; it didn't, and I feel it was a rather poor attempt at making the game "simple".

I'd actually say that the D&D boardgames were better attempts to introduce someone to 4E, though I'm overall disappointed in how they play out.

I'm curious to see how Pathfinder will tackle this, though I fear they will overrought things as well for beginners.

 

[tenkar]

[MENTION=83796]nedjer[/MENTION] - you specifically sent me to a windows install. As a former follower of the Church of St. Jobs, and now a convert to the Order of the Holy Apple, I took offense

Seriously - yes, I can convert it to a PDF and read it in GoodReader (excellent app - I can mark up my PDFs with it) but why should I have to convert? I'll be getting a vanilla PDF, and in the right developer's hands, PDFs can do a hell of a lot more. Besides, there are many out there that will not know how to do such a conversion. Heresy, I know, but they are out there.

That being said, I opened the link you indicated in Safari and saved it to my Dropbox folder. When I break my iPad out before bed, I'll check and see how well the web page converts to being read with GoodReader.

I may very well be pleasantly surprised.

 

[GregChristopher]

Wow. I stepped out for a couple days there to deal with some real life stuff, and I come back to find a series of replies that just remind me how much FAIL is in the industry right now.

I thought I was pretty bitter before about how crappy the industry is at delivering what people want, but these replies just knocked me down to a new low.

I see I am not alone in feeling like the inmates are running the asylum. That's why I started writing free games, after all. Because the for-sale stuff was just too crappy to keep paying for.

 

[nedjer]

@nedjer - you specifically sent me to a windows install. As a former follower of the Church of St. Jobs, and now a convert to the Order of the Holy Apple, I took offense

Seriously - yes, I can convert it to a PDF and read it in GoodReader (excellent app - I can mark up my PDFs with it) but why should I have to convert? I'll be getting a vanilla PDF, and in the right developer's hands, PDFs can do a hell of a lot more. Besides, there are many out there that will not know how to do such a conversion. Heresy, I know, but they are out there.

That being said, I opened the link you indicated in Safari and saved it to my Dropbox folder. When I break my iPad out before bed, I'll check and see how well the web page converts to being read with GoodReader.

I may very well be pleasantly surprised.

Simply trying to suggest that all PC options are open to Mac users too and that years of PDFs as a 'locked down' format it's now a snap to move around the various formats. (You'd get a hyperlinked PDF, but I go with the unzipped version or unpacking and moving html files via Windows, as it places everything where you want and just works).

PDFs can certainly include a host of interactive features, but 'fancy' PDFs never seem to have materialised - due to the effort required to apply/ develop such features. It'd take me a few hours to add say content switching, Google mapping, PC gen menus and RSS hooks to PC sheets in html. It'd take weeks to do the same in PDF. The PDF would plain fall down if I attempted what I'm currently up to, i.e. starting to integrate the html with a full forum facility and multimedia campaign resource.

Getting over-enthusiastic again, but the options here are pretty huge. Any game group with a copy of my Wordpress shell, can click a couple of buttons and have an independent, portable, integrated forum, custom rule set, multimedia campaign resource . . . running in a few minutes. No html, css or php skills required, just plain Wordpress. So everyone in a club or a whole society can contribute, no company can take anything away and it all costs next to zero.

It'll take a while to populate and hook up our take on this, as we've only got it running over the last week and it's primary purpose is to support our new game Renegade. However, there's no doubt that players, groups and campaigns can already have an independent 'DDI' facility, and more, without jumping through IT hoops or paying.

Be most interested to hear how shifting it using the Dropbox route works, as that's not quite the same route as my wealthy iPad owning mates have shown me?