Gateway Games

Posted in Uncategorized by: Bob

In two weeks Wizards of the Coast will release Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition to the world. Within are mountains of changes, with the ‘core’ D&D experience supposedly intact. What is the ‘core’ D&D experience?

How can you distill the game into extra, changeable parts and required, necessary parts. D&D, at its core, might be about dice & chance, elves et. al., quests & adventures, treasure & loot, and dungeons & dragons. Although, I’ve also described WoW, Everquest, and innumerable other games played on a PC, console or with cards. Does D&D intrinsically require miniatures? or is that some ploy of WotC to get everyone to throw money at their specially designed 4E rules compatible figurines?

D&D to me, at its core, is some people getting together, to tell a story and throw in some rules for conflict resolution. Books aren’t needed, character sheets, minis, heck, even dice could be supplanted with a sufficiently complex rock, paper scissors series.

Lots of forums and websites have mentioned the new ‘fair use’ rules. How can we market D&D compatible products with the new release? It turns out WotC doesn’t want people to play their older games when they are releasing a new cash cow. Games won’t translate well, and players will be divided as to which version they want to play. WotC has a great business motivation for doing this, they don’t want people NOT buying their new books.

But why put out new books? WotC wants to regain control of D&D, which has been slowly leaking to other companies who publish adventures, addons, worlds, minis that work with their current ‘fair use’ documents. Why do they need to cut off everything before it? To rewrite the rules and keep their monopoly.

Posted in update by: Bob

Monthly obligatory update:

Dungeons and Dragons. The name conjures up dark basements, smelly preteen boys and weird elves and gnomes killing monsters with the help of dice. Not something most people would think of as a good way to spend an evening. But D&D, at its core, is interactive story telling. Most people love reading, and especially love to project their wills and emotions onto the protagonists of the story. How many times have you finished a book only to want another one continuing the story? A good story with great characters and setting is hard to close up. Readers will always want more story, what happens next? and after that? what then?

D&D is a novel solution to that problem, mixed with the unusual history of war gaming. The mechanics and dice and rulebooks are direct descendants of the D&D’s war-gaming past, but the stories that people can tell are so varied and creative that you don’t really need the dice, papers, rules, etc. How is it a solution? Well, take any book, story, idea you want and actually be the main character, let your friends be his companions and you’ve got the beginning to a story that you will tell. There is no ending unless you run out of ideas, and by then the story should already be over!

Most people are afraid of D&D because of the stigma of ‘gamers’ and complexities that are inherent in the game play. But I want to simplify. Take out all the rules for “how many miles and small statured elf can run while encumbered with 50 lbs on his back” or “percent chance to hit someone under their rib cage from 50% cover while its raining”, leave the game with the best part, the Story. It puts a lot on the shoulders of the Dungeon Master (Storyteller) at first, but as the players learn to feel and think like their characters everything balances out and the game is enjoyable for everyone.

Revamping D&D has happened many times. Systems like GURPS or Amber Diceless (notable for removing dice from the game, which I don’t like) haven’t made gaming accessible to the casual gamer. The Wii has opened doors for casual gaming and invited demographics usually opposed to gaming to the video game. The Wii is to video games as GatewayGames is for D&D. But I can’t do it alone and you can help!

If you are a gamer, leave a Comment! I can’t stress how important it is for me to hear your ideas. I want to create a small, compact, and understandable rule set that is 100% compatible with D&D but ignores large parts of the technical details. Over time, details can be added, but it shouldn’t break or be contrary to rules made for Gateway D&D. I have character sheets, but I don’t have any play testers. If you can download the sheets and get your friends and parents together to play a short game or 2 and tell me how it went, that would be wonderful! Working on a ruleset is my next big task, now that I have character sheets. I have played a game with some advance speakers of English here in Russia, but I mostly made up the rules as I went along. Now I have to set them into stone… or at least into Wiki form.

If you aren’t a gamer, find a friend who is and ask them to run, tell them about GatewayGames.net and get people interested. If you’re a wealthy non-gamer, pay-pal donations are a wonderful thing. The more money I have the less I have to work at a desk job and the more time I can spend on this project!

Posted in Uncategorized by: Bob

Last month’s first adventure release has turned into this month’s beta release. Unfortunately, work has progressed a lot slower than expected but I’m putting up some freebies so you can see what the system is going to look like. These are character sheets for the Barbarian, Cleric and Druid. All the pertinent D&D information is on there, along with a lot of simplification. Since the characters are pre-generated, you won’t be able to change things like equipment very easily, but that option will be part of the first set release of Adventure 1: The Tavern.

Barbarian Beta

Cleric Beta

Druid Beta

And remember, as this is in Beta, your feedback will help me create a better product! What do you think your friends and family members will like or not like? How do you envision introducing them to D&D? Will they be more willing to play a simple version before jumping headlong into 3.5?

Posted in update by: Bob

One day this will be a highly trafficked site, swamped with links from game distributors, convention organizations, gaming webrings, and gaming enthusiasts. You too will bookmark this site and remember to check back regularly for our awesome updates and new downloads.

The best part, is that everyday people will come here too. Stumbleupon, del.icio.us, and digg will all sing our praises and point millions of people here. Our bandwidth will skyrocket, our running costs will fly through the roof, and your donations will keep this site alive and well for years to come.

But first, I gotta get everything setup, cleaned up and put some real content at your fingertips. This month will see the release of the first 1 shot for DnD. Plus character sheets for the timid and fearful. This will be a version of the game your parents could play and enjoy, and their parents, not to mention younger kids with wild imaginations and no time for number crunching.

So if you’re here, you know ME and you know me. Right now, I’d just like feedback on the site color scheme and layout. Yes, I want you to comment. First, to see if I get any traffic at all. Second, to actually get some feedback.