On June 15, you can celebrate tabletop role-playing games and get free RPG material at your local game business.
LCTT Free RPG Day is a celebration inspired by Free Comic Book Day, which has been held several times since 2007. RPGS are not what we would normally call computer RPGS, but board games with paper and pen, a form of traditional Western gaming.)
Have you ever wanted to give Dungeons & Dragons a try, but weren’t sure how to get started? Did you play Pathfinder when you were younger and have been thinking about going back to happy times? Are you curious about role-playing games (RPGS), but not sure if you want to play one? Were you completely new to the concept of board games and had never heard of RPGS until now? It doesn’t matter which one it is, because [Free RPG Day] 2 is for everyone!
The first free RPG Day was held in 2007 by board game vendors around the world. The idea is to bring new, exclusive RPG quickstart rules and adventures to novice and experienced gamers for $0. On one of these days, you can walk into your local board game business and get a brochure with simple beginner’s rules for tabletop RPGS that you can play with the people there or at home with friends. This pamphlet is for you. You should always keep it.
The event was so popular that the tradition continues to this day. This year, FREE RPG Day is scheduled for Saturday, June 15.
What have you learned?
Obviously, the idea behind free RPG Day is to get you hooked on tabletop RPGS. But before your instinctive cynicism kicks in, it’s not so bad to fall in love with a game that encourages you to read the rules and knowledge so that you and your family and friends have an excuse to spend time together. Tabletop RPGS are a powerful, imaginative, and fun medium, and free RPG Day is a great introduction to that.
Open source game
Like many other industries, the open source phenomenon affects board games. Back at the turn of the century, Magic: Wizards of The Coast, provider of The Gathering and Dungeons&Dragons, decided to adopt an Open source approach by developing an Open Game License (OGL). They used this license for versions 3 and 3.5 of the world’s first RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D. A few years later, when they wavered on edition 4, the publisher of Dragon Magazine recreated the D&D 3.5 “code” and released it in a mash-up version as Pathfinder RPG, thereby keeping innovation and the entire third-party game developer industry healthy. The company has only recently returned to OGL with the D&D 5E release.
OGL allows developers to use the game’s mechanics at least in their own products. Whether or not you can use custom monster, weapon, kingdom, or popular character names, you can always use the rules and math of OGL games. In fact, the rules of OGL games are usually distributed free of charge as a System Reference Document (SRD), so you can learn how the game is played whether you buy a copy of the rule book or not.
If you’ve never played a tabletop RPG before, it may seem strange that a game played with pen and paper could have a game engine, but computing is computing, whether digital or analog. As a simple example: Suppose the game engine dictates that the player character has a number that represents his power. When that player character fights a giant with twice his strength, it really gets tense when the player rolls the dice to increase her character’s power attack. Without a good roll, she could not match the giant in power. Knowing this, a third party or independent developer can design a monster for the game engine and understand how dice rolls might affect the player’s ability score. This means they can do mathematical calculations based on the game engine’s priorities. They can design a set of monsters to kill, they have meaningful abilities and skills in the context of the game engine, and they can claim compatibility with that engine.
In addition, OGL allows publishers to define product logos for their materials. Product identification can be a publication’s business look (graphic elements and layout), logo, terminology, legend, proper name, and so on. Any content defined as a product logo may not be reused without the publisher’s consent. For example, suppose a publisher publishes a weapons manual that includes a magic machete called Sigint that gives a +2 magic bonus attack value to all attacks against zombies. This feature comes from the story that the machete was forged by a scientist with latent zombie genes. However, the correct names of all weapons listed by the publication in OGL section 1E are retained as product identifiers. This means that you can use the number (durability of the weapon, damage it does, +2 magic bonus, etc.) and the legend associated with the weapon (it was forged by a dormant zombie) in your own publications, but you can’t use the name of the weapon (Sigint).
OGL is a very flexible license, so developers must read section 1E carefully. Some publishers keep only the layout of the publication itself, while others keep everything but numbers and the most general terms.
When great RPG franchises embraced open source, the ripples it caused throughout the industry are still being felt. Third-party developers can create content for the 5E and Trailblazer systems. The entire DungeonMastersGuild.com site, created by The company, produces independent content for D&D 5E and aims to promote independent publishing. Starfinder, OpenD6, Warriors, Thieves and Mages, Swords and Wizards, and many more have adopted OGL. Other systems, such as Brent Newhall’s Dungeon Delvers, Fate, Dungeon World, and more, are licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Get your RPG
On free RPG Day, you can head to your local game store, play RPGS and get materials for RPGS you and your friends will play in the future. Like Linux InstallFest or Software Freedom Day, the event is loosely defined. Each merchant’s free RPG day is different, and each merchant can play any game they choose. However, game publishers donate the same amount of free content every year. Obviously, what’s free depends on the situation, but when you attend a free RPG day, be aware of how many games are under an open source license (OGL is printed on the back of the book if it’s an OGL game). Trailblazers, Starfinder, and anything in D&D will certainly have some of OGL’s strengths. Many other systems use creative Commons licenses for their content. Some, like the Dead Earth RPGS resurrected in the 1990s, use the GNU Free Documentation License 19.
There are a lot of game resources developed under open source licenses. You may or may not need to care about a license for your game; After all, the license has nothing to do with whether you can play with your friends. But if you like to support free culture and not just the software you’re running, try out some OGL or creative Commons games. If you’re not familiar with games, try out a tabletop RPG at your local game merchant on Free RPG Day!
Via: opensource.com/article/19/…
By Seth Kenlon (lujun9972
This article is originally compiled by LCTT and released in Linux China