Finally Printed .81 of Quick Charts & Other Stuff

It took me three efforts to finally get Version .81 of the HotDC Quick Charts printed. What a pain that was. Apparently, the disc I used is bad, but only some times. Went to Kinkos Monday, and they could not get the computer to read the disc. The next day, I went elsewhere, and they had problems reading it on some computers. The one that could read it would not let them print. He tried for like a half an hour. Funny thing was that it read on both my computer and laptop when I got home. Weird.

I appreciated the effort, so I returned to that place the next day to make only my second copy of the Quick Start Charts pdf. The first was way back at Version .6. Success. I began another adventure at the local game store for a copy of Knights of the Dinner Table BOT 19 that hasn't ended yet, but I don't want to get into that. Was a bit frustrating, but oh well. Money saved, until next week anyway.

By the way, I find it very interesting that KenzerCo has elected not to renew their license with Wizards, which means the next version of Hackmaster will be with KenzerCo IP. It will be interesting to see what they come up with, and they say a Basic Edition of Hackmaster will be released as well.

Back to the printing. One reason I like doing this is because I can look up close at the printed work to find mistakes, and there were lots of them to find. I'm thinking of offering a 32 page version of this deal on lulu soon, and I want to flesh it out better if I do. All that you need to begin playing this game will be included, but if you want better explanations and better descriptions, you will have to wait until the rule book is done. When will that be? I don't know.

I've read the Quick Charts a few times and have added, tweaked, cleaned up and fixed it as best I can. I have a few other additions, but it's getting closer to 1.0, which means release that sucker on lulu. That's the thought right now anyway. I may add 3rd Degree Creatures to it, but we'll see. Gotta save something for the Basic HotDC Rulebook.

I've been reading with interest a thread over at enworld centering around the Old School Reference Document and the legality thereof. Goblinoid Games had asked one of the people responsible for The Wizard's OGL and D20 documents a question about OSRIC and his opinion of it. The answer was interesting in that this person still is troubled by some of it. I imagine that Daniel at Goblinoid Games may be concerned as well since he is set to release Labyrinth Lord within a few weeks.

I am very excited about LL myself and am considering whether to do an adventure for it, but the legality issues are a concern. This is why HotDC went where it went, away from 20 sided dice and D&D terms. I have gone out of my way to not use certain terms, even those that are likely not owned by The Wizards. This is because I don't want to be accused of stealing IP, even if some things aren't owned. I have tweaked some of my rules along the way to get further away from them, while maintaining that simple feel of the old school game, or so I hope.

I will continue to change it even more. I have my eye on a few things at the moment that I think need to be different one being the way in which Mages and Priests earn their Incantations at each Degree. I will discuss this more in the future as I make a decision on how to proceed. One of the nice things about printing these Quick Start Charts on paper is being able to look at them and adjusting them from there. I'm looking forward to a future printing where I go with an 11 by 17 printing in book form, which will help me determine if this sucker goes to lulu or if I wait for the Basic HotDC Rulebook to be finished.