D20-Team-Egoism?

[Azrai]

Hi there,

in the last day's it was obvious that not all people in the forum where "satisfied" with the work done by the "D20-Team". The main reason for this seems to be that many people here in the forum, which do not belong to the official D20-team made additional rules and spent a lot of work to extend "our" game.

The D20-Team seems to ignore all these rules, threats and discussions (correct me if I'am wrong).

I would like to have more discussions and overviews of the new rules the team makes.

Since the team members are not more professional game designers than the rest of the forum-community.

Please let us "fans" to make the best out of the new Birthright Edition, which satisfies a broad spectrum of people, not only the little staff of self-called-team-leaders. Please note that this statement here is not meant as an offence, only as a proposal of improvement.

Further this is an international forum with members all around the world, like Brazil, Portugal, Australia and Germany. In my opinion also this countries should be taken into account. there are a lot of game designers (which are also active in this forum) who have developed special rules for the game. The German Birthright Project for example developed the prestige classes for priests (the lady who designed them is also around in this forum, greetings Ariadne).

After all the 3.Edition is not a commercial product, only a fan-project. I see no reason why to deny the interests and ideas of some fans....

[Birthright-L]

I think we are beeing over-sensitive here. A project like this needs time
and space to work in, and having to constatly report your progress can be a
hindrance.

What you in the project could do if you REALLY want to WORK to keep open to
the fans is appoint one (new?) member of the project whose only duty is to
bounce ideas of the community. Such a person would have access to the
work-in-progress and your internal mailing list, and would take questions
and issues from these fora and air them here. He would also filter any ideas
that surface back into the project group, thus keeping the other project
members free to concentrate on their own work.

Just an idea, but it would probably save you a lot of fames.

/Carl


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[blitzmacher]

I say just lay off of those who are working on this project, they are spending their freetime to do this. I applaud the members of the D20 team, I think it is a good decision to keep the members of the team at a minimum number, two heads are better then one, but twenty of them can be a real headache. My only hope is that after each chapter is finished, that the team will let us have a look at it so the BR community can give its view on the chapters before the final drafting. It may take a little longer but the community by and large would be a little happier about the final results, if at least they had a say before it was finished.

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Starfox" <stephen_starfox@YAHOO.SE>
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 5:38 PM


> What you in the project could do if you REALLY want to WORK
> to keep open to the fans is appoint one (new?) member of the project
> whose only duty is tobounce ideas of the community.

I have been following this thread, and was also moving toward this kind of
idea. The specific model I was considering was parliamentary. In large
deliberative bodies, small committees work to produce drafts which would be
impossible in the open body. But the ideas don`t become formal they are
accepted by the whole assembly. Sometimes ideas are sent back to committee.

Such as person would need some parliamentary experience in managing the flow
of information back and forth between the committee and the whole assembly.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

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[geeman]

I do have one question about the whole conversion project. Is it "the D20
Team" or "the 3e Team"? I know that might sound like a bit of a semantic
nonesuch question, but there have been more than a few posts from people on
"the [adjective] Team" that would indicate that some favor making a
conversion that is as in-line with the core 3e materials as possible and a
few that seem to favor a more independant, D20 approach. What`s the
thinking on this?

I don`t really need previews or updates personally (though I sympathize with
those in the BR community who do--if for no other reason than because they
have been stonewalled) but I am curious about the basic approach being
employed. Which is it?

Gary

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[doom]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 01:12:47PM -0700, Gary Foss wrote:
> I do have one question about the whole conversion project. Is it "the D20
> Team" or "the 3e Team"? I know that might sound like a bit of a semantic
> nonesuch question, but there have been more than a few posts from people on
> "the [adjective] Team" that would indicate that some favor making a
> conversion that is as in-line with the core 3e materials as possible and a
> few that seem to favor a more independant, D20 approach. What`s the
> thinking on this?
>
> I don`t really need previews or updates personally (though I sympathize with
> those in the BR community who do--if for no other reason than because they
> have been stonewalled) but I am curious about the basic approach being
> employed. Which is it?

The driving goal in the inital draft has been to make the project as in-line
with core 3e materials as possible. I think that the FRCS is an excellent
"model".

- Doom

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[Azrai]

Could the D20 Team please make some statement to my claims?

[Peter Lubke]

On Fri, 2002-12-06 at 05:47, Azrai wrote:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at: http://www.birthright.net/read.php?TID=1115
>
> Azrai wrote:
> Could the D20 Team please make some statement to my claims?

Give it up.

Paladins of Nesirie must be female. Witches of Kriesha too.

For equality men should have the right to bear children. Of course
without a womb it`s a right that they`ll find hard to execute. So every
second woman should have hers surgically removed and implanted into a
donor male.

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[doom]

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 07:47:02PM +0100, Azrai wrote:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at: http://www.birthright.net/read.php?TID=1115
>
> Azrai wrote:
> Could the D20 Team please make some statement to my claims?

!!!!! WARNING --- LONG AND POTENTIALLY BORING !!!!!

If you aren`t interested in the bashing of d20 team volunteer threads
you can safely skip reading this message.

- Doom


--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Azrai" sez:
> In the last day`s it was obvious that not all people in the forum
> where "satisfied" with the work done by the "D20-Team". The main
> reason for this seems to be that many people here in the forum, which
> do not belong to the official D20-team made additional rules and spent
> a lot of work to extend "our" game.
>
> The D20-Team seems to ignore all these rules, threats and discussions
> (correct me if I`am wrong).

I do believe that correction is in order. All of the team members are
members of the birthright.net community, and most are on the listserv.
We participate to the same extent as most members in those
topics/discussions that pique our interest.

Of course, there are dozens of valid approaches towards any given
problem, and in many cases the "better" suggestions are quite
complicated. Thus, there must be decisions made. Given that there are
hundreds of such decisions that must be made, we feel that the most
effective mechanism for creating the best d20 birthright.net rulebook
possible is to have a much smaller group (the d20 team) make those
calls, and then present the result to the community for discussion. In
this way, the topics that _aren`t_ handled well will receive serious
discussion by the group as a whole, and the topics that _are_ handled
well can be hand-waved. If you feel differently, I would gladly
applaud an attempt to lead a large scale team immediately. This is
the best plan in our opinions.

> I would like to have more discussions and overviews of the new rules
> the team makes.
> Since the team members are not more professional game designers than
> the rest of the forum-community.

We definately welcome your input and look forward to seeing it.
The intent is to have all interested fans participate in a focused
discussion after the first draft is complete. I expect and hope that
there will be many errors caught, new suggestions incorporated, and
revisions made. Only after the consensus of the fans are satisfied
that the rules are as "good as well all can make them" will the draft
become "birthright.net sanctioned". That is all that the "official"
really means. We _plan_ and hope that this will become official, but
it may not. Realistically, there is no guarantee that we, as a group,
can even come to a consensus; but I`d like to think so.

None of the team members are more "professional game designers" than
the rest of the forum; nor do they claim to be. However, they were
chosen because of the quality of the work that they had released to the
public forum in a complete and pseudo-professional form. In
other-words, we did invite people that did not take (or have) the time
to put them together into an archival format for the community at
large. Its an arbitrary standard, but its the best one that we had.

It should also be noted that this was applied on the basis of
availability of the archival material. If someone had a relatively
complete conversion manual on their personal web page and I happened to
miss the post that announced it, then the error is mine for not
inviting them. The decision wasn`t even based on quality (since the
metric varies). Some of the rules that some of the team propose are
_totally_ inappropriate for my style of play; but these disagreements
hopefully lead to a stronger product.

> Please let us "fans" to make the best out of the new Birthright
> Edition, which satisfies a broad spectrum of people, not only the
> little staff of self-called-team-leaders. Please note that this
> statement here is not meant as an offense, only as a proposal of
> improvement.

Ah! Here-in lies the rub. It _is_ us "fans" who are making the first
draft. E-mails were sent out. Invitations were made: some accepted,
some rejected. There is no "old boys network" at work, people on the
team (to a great extent) didn`t know each other any more than any other
members of the list; all that they had in common was displayed
effort/interest/skill. More importantly it will be _all_ interested fans
who will be involved in the revision/play-testing of the draft. I hope
that _everybody_ contributes. The problem is that (IMO) the first draft
needs to be done by a small group in order to facilitate timely
completion. The group at large is way too big to make headway without
focus.

> Further this is an international forum with members all around the
> world, like Brazil, Portugal, Australia and Germany. In my opinion also
> this countries should be taken into account.

While that was not an active goal in putting together the team, the
team of course reflects the birthright.net community. I don`t know (or
care) where everyone is located; good ideas are good ideas. I do know
that we have several Americans, a couple of Europeans, and at least one
person from the "down-under". The editing is done using standard
American-usage English, as per Birthright and 3e products in general.

> After all the 3.Edition is not a commercial product, only a
> fan-project. I see no reason why to deny the interests and ideas of
> some fans....

It is inherently impossible for the team to deny anyone`s interests.
If someone else was to put together a better rulebook and get
birthright.net to sanction it then _that_ would be the "official"
rulebook. We certainly _must_ deny most ideas from final inclusion in
the rulebook that we release; many ideas conflict. Between those two
extremes we do the best that we can.

> Subject: Re: D20-Team-Egoism? [33#1115]

One of the reasons that I think no one was in a rush to respond to your
post was the subject... its looks like you are trolling for a flame
war. I`ll readily admit it; I have a HUGE Ego. I`m wildly successful
by just about every measure: reasonably smart, sometimes funny,
not entirely unappealing to the opposite sex, and I have my first
kid on the way (Which I find very exciting). That being said...
"say what"?

I don`t really thing that anyone on the team has ANY ego in regards to
the d20 project. This project is just hobby/fun time, just like all
gaming should be IMHO. I don`t _think_ that there is any thing that
anybody can reasonably be egotistical about. I _hope_ that all of the
members are proud of the final work, but we aren`t even to that state
yet. My professional reputation is important, but my _gaming
reputation_? Ooch. I hope that I`m never to wrapped up about _that_.

I will say this. My conversion manual was pretty ok - it sufficed for
my players (a fairly picky crew) for over over 2 years. Many .net
people seem to be fairly happy with it (or at least parts of it). If
you liked that manual, then you will probably Love what we have in the
works; it uses the stuff that everyone liked, and trashes the stuff
that people didn`t like. If you though that my manual was a steaming
pile, then you`ll probably think that this is two piles. Opinions will
vary.

(Hopefully that answers your question).

- Doom

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[Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel]

I just wrote a long post complementing the d20 team about their participation, mentioning my trust in their being influenced by the forum, and pointing out an occasion where these situations were not so apparent. But I just hit the back button, somehow.

I believe the Birthright d20 team has been and will continue to be influenced by forum. I believe that once they release their first product, we will all devour it. I also believe that we (the general forum-public) will strongly participate in its many revisions. I believe that the method they are using is the strongest method of getting to this point. I will site precedence by giving mention to Athas.org who has done an excellent job, so far, converting the Dark Sun setting. I also believe that patience should be the word of the day.

On the other hand:

Myself and a couple of other devoted birthright fans (non-team members) got into an argument with a member or two of the d20 team. It was during this argument when I had the least faith in the team. It was a nasty argument, where both (if there were only 2) sides were passionate and had valid points. However, as arguments often go, unfriendly tones crept into the argument, and there was more than a little condescension emanating from the d20 team-member participant(s). If the d20 team at large had this attitude for long, this site wouldn't exist, though. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, but just be careful on how you argue. (I don't have any hard feelings towards the team members involved, in case you were wondering).

Even before this, I believed that arguments that are supposed to be persuasive and progressive should be:

1. Civil (not-personal, petty, or insulting; respect all the participants)
2. Reasoned (look at both sides of the argument)
3. Open-Minded (remember, both sides have good and bad aspects)

This way, when there is argument, progress can result. I believe if the d20 team and general forum can both argue in this manner, everyone will be much more appeased. If you argue disrespectfully, you and your argument will be worthless, because you'll never convince anyone of anything.

Naturally, there will never be 100% satisfaction. I'm one of the most negative people in existence, a cynical perfectionist, maybe; thus, I will never be satisfied. But, when the manual is out, I'll definitely give credit to where credit is due.

Before I start babbling incoherently (more so), I will end this post.
([_] ([_] ([_] ([_] ([_] ([_]

[Lawgiver]

Originally posted by Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel
Before I start babbling incoherently (more so), I will end this post.
([_] ([_] ([_] ([_] ([_] ([_]

6 ales is more than enough to make one babble...
:P

[Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel]

Originally posted by Lawgiver



Originally posted by Arch-Sorcerer Gargamel
Before I start babbling incoherently (more so), I will end this post.
([_] ([_] ([_] ([_] ([_] ([_]

6 ales is more than enough to make one babble...

I was just getting started (The system administrator/bartender limits me to eight, though)