MadMathLabs

Knowledge Arcana is re-released with a new layout and a new lease on life. In the premiere re-release Issue Knowledge Arcana introduces you to the world of Ayric. The introductory story takes place in the small country of Domer’el, a recently settled area with it’s birth marred with battle.

During the days of settlement a terrible three headed dragon, outcast from her own land and settled in the northern rocky hills, became interested in the powers of the wizards below. The dragon attempted to enslave these people by casting sleep on one or two of her heads and entering the dreams of the settlers.

Original Features

Knowledge Arcana Issue #0 is jam packed with gaming goodness. The introductory adventure path, Veil of Deceit, tells the tale of the dragon as she begins her escape from the prison she has been placed in. Inside this adventure path are two adventures, one for players who wish to side with Jonethan, the founder of Domer’el and one for players who wish to side with Wa’an Apla Teski, the dragon now deemed demi-god.

Competitive Play

The new Living Knowledge Arcana role play style allows for competitive play. Both sides of the story take part at the same time allowing two groups to interact on the same timeline but with different goals. Modular Components allow Game Masters to expand their game play by filling in the missing parts or with upcoming releases.

In this Issue we:

• Tear apart the small thorp of Noulph and all of it’s inhabitants.
• Introduce the Plane of Dreams, a plane of existence that neighbors both the Astral and Prime Material Plane and is twisted and shaped by all that live.
• Introduce Wa’an Apla Teski, her prison and how she manages to ‘touch’ the Prime Material Plane and the Dream Plane from within.
• Offer the Battle Mage and The Feal classes
• Play through Chapter 1 of the ‘Veil of Deceit’ adventure path.

Knowledge Arcana Issue #0: Buy it now at RPGNow!!

With summer almost here and spring on it’s way out the door it is time to plan out the summer road map. Viewers of my pages may have noticed the significant down time as I upgraded my software from Mambo too the Joomla! CMS. With this upgrade came only some minor changes; the content was salvaged.

I’ve looked over my spring road map and I am pretty pleased with my progress in completing that road map. I have merged the Shelf of Scrolls with my WeBlog here and I have even put up some code to start working on a Traipse Meta server. The Image Repository is not complete, but I do have a nice collection of usable images. There are more that I need to upload so they will come in time.

For an exciting event, I am about to make a nice 4GB RAM module purchase. This is one of four that I will purchase so I can continue working on Codename: Trekker, my multi touch table top computer. In the meantime this 4GB module will find some usage as I complete the final modifications to Knowledge Arcana Issue #0 and release it late in April. Having only 2GB of RAM really sucks.

So my spring road map was quite successful. Now for the summer road map. First of all, and most importantly, I have not been taking care of my web content as much as I would like too. This is due to me burning the midnight oil on the development of Traipse. I am going to shift gears and put Traipse development on a side stove for awhile for a number of reasons, and then I will focus on writing new content for both the magazine and the web pages.

I have decided to put Traipse development into my peripheral focus for two main reasons. One, I don’t hear many people with actual bug reports any more. There are a few and if more bugs pop up I will work on a Patch 2, but there are still not many. Second, I don’t want to set my focus on a new version that I know is going to be hard to adopt. The move to PyQt is, in my opinion, an awesome move but I know users are not ready for the switch .. especially when what they have already works great!

My main focus will return to the Open Source RPG books that I have on the Mad Math Labs page. The new page update organizes the content into an easier to maintain and update series of Sections and Categories, and I plan on taking full advantage of this. With this focus I will be working on the CCG, and the Combat Miniatures aspect of the game rules.

I will also return my focus to writing articles and adventures for the magazine. With the RAM upgrade I can start working on Campaign Cartographer again so I can advance my Living Campaign world and story line. All of these will eventually find their way into the magazine.

Once my magazine is released I feel people will see the direction that I am taking and I will feel comfortable behind the GM screen again. That may not happen until later, in Fall or Winter perhaps, but that is because I want to get my content out so people know what is mine and what is a knock off.

And that is the summer road map. I think it is going to be perfect for me because of the way the family likes to go travel and spend more time with family that is far away. I’ll be sure to pack my Mini 9 wherever I go, and if I wont have an Internet connection to grab work from my Pogoplug, I’ll have an 8GB SanDisk.

Just a brief update on the downtime today. I have decided to switch the CMS software I was using from Mambo to Joomla. Please bear with me as I change both of my websites to Joomla.

The decision was made due to lack of Mambo support. My heart really broke when I discovered the people that I was receiving help from on the Mambo forums decided to fork and create MiaCMS. I definitely wish them the best of luck, but as it is right now Joomla is the better supported of the three.

Mambo is the mother of Joomla, and I thought the mother was better. Well, just as people are discovering about Traipse, so am I discovering about Joomla. My mistake, and I think I have paid enough for it. But with MostlyCE being a MiaCMS thing, and Mambo 4.7 on the to do list still, Joomla looked like a nice option. So I re-worked my templates into Joomla templates.

There will be little changes, but the site has been fully transferred otherwise.

I have a few things on the spring road map that I would like to share. First, the Shelf of Scrolls RSS feed will be seeing modifications as I fully integrate the current blog into the Mad Math Labs blog. The blog allows me to quickly send news tid bits to several sites at once, so I want to keep it integrated into my web pages, and actually integrate it more fully into them. Categories will move around, appear and disappear, and the blog will become more organized so I can relay information where I want simply and efficiently.

Another project I would like to mention is the Pogoplug image repository I have begun creating for all users of Virtual Game Tables. You can browse the images here: http://my.pogoplug.com/share/po4CKDEVRjwd_hA5kKZFVQ/

The image repository is starting with some images Devin Knight of Four Ugly Monsters has kindly released for free, non-commercial use. I am hoping to have a solid database in early March. Right now I can say that I have some images up there, but I am not happy with the way their turned out, mainly the base I used and the scale I used. The future models will be using the base from Token Tool that has the black border around it and the scale will be uniform t the 3.5e system (ie, a 128×128 pixel image is a 5 foot space.)

The last tid bit of the Spring Road map is to have Knowledge Arcana Issue #0 released by late April. The magazine has been sitting on my desk for a long time, and while some artwork remains in limbo I never leave the scene without a back up plan. The magazine looks pretty spiffy currently, but I would like to see some artwork get a little more color added to it before the release.

I’ve never felt the need to hide the fact that I want to monetize on Traipse OpenRPG. I may not have come out and said it in every conversation, so I am saying it right now. I want to make money with the development of Traipse.

One of my hurdles is the General Public License (GPL). I am a big fan of the GPL but I have been torn in how it absorbs material that has been submitted. This is seen directly in how a plugin becomes GPL or is a violation of the software license.

In an attempt to get around this hurdle I have asked Chris about dual licensing Open RPG with the CCL-By-Sa. While the license is not recommended for software because it does not go into detail about source, it is still a license that can be used for Copyrightable works.

The CCL gives developers a bit more freedom in what they can do with their additions. With the correct permissions from the copyright holders a developer could change the License of the plugin from CCL-By-Sa to CCL-Nd-Nc, which would have been a great way to monetize for everyone.

Unfortunately Chris felt it was unethical, and while I may have shot off at the mouth in my disappointment I should mention that I do respect his ethics.

I have not given up hope on monetizing on the software, but the options are looking bleaker. Over the course of the next few months I will be working on some details to see if I can get a plan of action that I can use to make Open RPG more of a profitable venture. I think with the correct savvy I can create a plan that promotes the free software, retains it’s openness, and still turns me over a profit.

I have not given up on the CCL-By-Sa dual license though. According to the GPL FAQ I need permission from all the other developers .. whom I will be asking.

But probably not Snowdog or Dj. I can’t stand those guys, and I can probably re-work an older version they didn’t touch and get the same effect.

Data from reviews and polls are showing that readers do not like the current layout and design of the magazine. I felt it was in the best interest of both us and the reader to stop production of the magazine for a short time while the magazine undergoes a complete redesign.

The magazine will be redesigned from the ground up. The magazine will feature a new layout and customized artwork. I am not saying else much right now on what changes will be made to the magazine, but it should have a look that will knock the dust off the shelves.

Current issues can still be downloaded for the time we are on hiatus. After the hiatus is over the old issues will be removed and we will start fresh from issue #0, removing the old content that was uploaded after issue 9.

We’ve finally come to a stage in the production of Knowledge Arcana we had been aiming for.  Knowledge Arcana will be given a new design aspect on the inside of the magazine.  The layout is going to change dramatically.  We are now going to have a nice image on the background of each page.

This is a step we had been working towards.  We want to offer a set of high quality RPG resources for our readers, an immersing story line that begs getting involvement, and a high quality design that publishers would look at.  We are now one step away from bringing to you a magazine that we think could sit on the shelves of store.  I would also like readers to feel comfortable printing out their magazine.  It’s not very easy to lug around a computer when you need to go gaming, so with the new design issues will be released with a printer friendly version.

Before you ask, there are no plans to change the Free status of the magazine as of yet.  I had originally planned to to offer the magazine for a small surcharge of $1, but I am actually rethinking the idea.  Don’t expect to pay for the magazine anytime soon, and if we do decide to charge for the magazine we will take the printing costs to you into consideration.

This new layout does mean that I will be republishing the old magazines.  Issue 10 is still in a state of Limbo, but Issues 11 – 13 will see the new design.  I might even be able to make Issue 13 a smaller PDF in size…

I recently downloaded Ubuntu 8.10, and I am very happy this distro work with my Studio Hybrid.  I have been waiting to see how well the software would work with it.  After downloading and installing the software I was quite pleased with it’s stability.  DELL Computer is somewhat taking the OS into their arms by offering it on their PCs and Laptops.  This is a good thing and I have high hopes that one day the Ubuntu OS will be the Mac OSX for the PCs.  Mac OSX is a Unix-like OS just as Linux is, however Mac OSX is licensed under the BSD and is proprietary.

I spent sometime getting to know the changes in the new OS and found that 8.10 is very stable.  I also was informed of a Linux Client for NwN, so I will be having fun with that in the future.  I plan on sticking with Ubuntu for a long time.  Ever since the Vista OS came out I have had a very bad taste for Microsoft, and it looks like all Windows 7 is bringing is some ‘Multi-Touch’ similar to what the iPhone can do.

In the time I have been spending getting to know the new OS I spent some time tweaking a GDM Theme I found.  I have created two GDM Themes for your Linux distro if you would care to download them.  You can find them on the Free Downloads page.  Enjoy these GDM Screens and expect more in the future.

You are free to download and share these GDM Themes, however, some of the artwork was licensed to me.  Please purchase the license from the artists at RPGnow.com before publishing the artwork in another publication.  Some artwork is by Shaman StockArt and Sade.

I read a lot of fantasy novels when I was younger.  I loved the Dragonlance novels and the Forgotten Realms novels, and I even spent hours reading the first three books of the Wheel of Time.  However, sometimes during the novels I was reading I simply wanted to throw the book away.

Seriously though.  The story was great and I loved reading about the adventures of the main characters, but I was extremely jealous when they hit a combat scene.  I simply wanted to toss my book aside and grab my dice so I could get inside the combat of the story.

And that is what I want to give back.  This is my little ‘niche’ that I am making and it is starting with Issue 13.  If you have read Issue 13 and then the story Dangerous Dreams you might see that I am working the adventure into the story.  In Issue 14 I plan on continuing that trend.

Issue 14 is going to introduce Scenarios that you can play using your miniatures.  If you are familiar with the SRD or the OSRPG combat rules then I am sure you will be ready to get involved in a Scenario.  Each Scenario will be the combat that takes place during the stories events.

What these Scenarios will allow you to do is read through the story, and then instead of reading how the combat takes place you can actually grab a friend and some minis and Role-Play the Combat.  No more sitting on the side lines while the main characters have all of the fun.

I already have two Scenarios planned for Issue 14.  Each Scenario will come after a part of the two part story Dangerous Dreams.  And because this is Living Knowledge Arcana, the readers can take a greater hand in the action and tell us who won on their table.  If we get enough responses then the story will be shaped according to the destiny the players have rolled.

We really hope you like how the story turns out.  Take part in our adventure, and if you don’t like it change it.

I am finishing typing up the rest of the magazine and I wanted to post this sampler of how the new Living Campaign idea will work. This is a portion (incomplete) of one half of the adventure that takes place in Issue 13 (out Sept 22nd).

Give credit where credit is due, that is what I like to say. So in all fairness I want readers to know that the inspiration for the Living Campaign actually comes from the RvR side of Warhammer Online. But – it’s not even exactly the same.

The Knowledge Arcana styled of living adventure will introduce a number of new features. Two main features will be Modular Components, and an interactive story line.

Modular Components:
A module component is a portion of an adventure that doesn’t even need to occur from the PC perspective for the adventure to take place. They are components that do occur within the story, and they components that a GM can complete (we will in later issues too), and then allow for the same PCs to play through, or allow for more PCs to play through.

Interactive Story:
The interactive story line is a way for players to feel like their characters actually make a difference. In future editions the same style of module will be created within the same area, but as you will see in issue 13, there are two sides to the story.

Each Living Adventure will contain an evil adventure and a good adventure. After the Issue is released I will be looking for feedback on who plays which side and which side survived in their adventure. If I am given enough feedback the next chapter will reflect that feedback and players will change the future of the story.

So I give to you just a teaser of what is in store for the future of Living Knowledge Arcana.

A Taste of 13