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Communication: Fail

joby — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 04:00:15 +0000

I’ve been less than happy with the direction that Wizards has taken for Dungeons & Dragons. One small example is their horrible communication. As s DDI member on the Community site today I received an email with the subject of “New Broadcast”:

You have a new broadcast on your site at The Wizards Community!

WotC_Trevor from the group D&D Insider has sent you a broadcast.
Subject: Content Calendar and Article News

More information and discussion on the Content Calendar Changes can be found here. Also, Steve Winter talks about the new vetting process and for Dung…

To view the entire broadcast click here

So instead of sending me the broadcast message, I get a truncated notice that I should read a the new broadcast message on the Community site. So, so wrong — even Facebook sends you the entire message and includes the sender in the subject. So next I click the “click here” to be taken to the broadcast message and instead of being the content that I would care about, I get:

More information and discussion on the Content Calendar Changes can be found here. Also, Steve Winter talks about the new vetting process and for Dungeon and Dragon content and recent article delays in his blog.

You have to be kidding me. So not only does the email you sent me not have the interesting content, the email just links to a page that has a couple links where the interesting content was posted to the forums and a blog (which at least can now be followed via RSS).

You shouldn’t force your customers to read an email and then visit three web pages just to get some important information.

More Alarm Bells

joby — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:30:24 +0000

Wow, nearly a year again. At least I’ll have something to blog about in the near future (more on that later). My last post was on my fear that A Song of Fire and Ice would not be completed due to the author, George R. R. Martin, falling ill. And he’s stoking my fears again with a multi-day hospital visit. First, I am very happy that he is on the mend and hope he stays well. Bug George, I don’t care about side projects and the TV show (well not as much as the novels), so please finish the novels!

Alarm bells going “RINGY-DINGY”

joby — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:21:54 +0000

George R. R. Martin‘s recent post Grey Days on his Not A Blog blog, is setting off alarm bells. What does this remind me of: author of an epic fantasy series with thread control issues, about 60 years old, and “sick” — Eeeek. A Song of Fire and Ice has been a wonderfully unique addition to a genre that has gotten a bit stale — it needs to be completed…

A bad employment week

joby — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:53:37 +0000

Fortunately I’m still employed, but three companies that employ friends and family laid off staff last week. Zymogenetics cut 52 jobs, including my Mom’s — she took a voluntary early retirement package and is happy about her situation. Wetpaint also cut a bunch of jobs, laying off a friend from high school who had escaped from Microsoft for a much better environment — which turned out to be several rounds of layoffs. And Wizards of the Coast continues their holiday tradition of shedding talented staff via layoffs, luckily I haven’t heard of anyone that I personally know getting the axe.

This is all worrying. My job is pretty safe until the summer and will know more after the state confronts its large budget crisis. If the state heaps on additional cuts to the higher education budget I might be at risk. With the Democrats firmly in control at Olympia and already talking about a tax increase there is a good chance that I’ll be fine. The discussion of tax increases leaves me quite conflicted. I am philosophically against such increases as very bad policy — but I have a lot to gain in the short term from tax increases. Hopefully, I am not so selfish and self-absorbed as to compromise my evaluation of the wisdom of these tax increases…

What I learned on this weeks ‘Bones’

joby — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:13:46 +0000

Let’s see:

The movie Avatar is coming out
Avatar is a fantastic movie
If you are a geeky, smart guy, you should wait in line for days to see Avatar because hot chicks with tattoos will flash you and then desperately want to, as they put it in the show, “pitch a tent” with you.

I’m fine with product placement even if it is a bit obvious, but when the product placement is the entire ‘B’ plot of an episode you’ve basically jumped the shark. Five seasons is more than enough (particularly for a show with no arch) — come to and end and move on. Oh and I forgot to add that I also learned that a normal sex life involves having sex 10-15 times per week.

Been a while

joby — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:04:53 +0000

OK, so it was January when I last posted. Will try to be better.

Context

joby — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:30:23 +0000

I have long despised Santayana’s advise: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, because while there may be some superficial truth to the statement it is usually invoked by one drawing a parallel to between a historial incident and a current event despite being ignorant of the full context of both. Without understanding the facets of a historical event you can not understand the true reasons for success or failure, nor can you apply leasons learned to a current event if you do not have a fair understanding of its facets. In essence: Context Matters.

So to aide the few out there that read this, I will point you to David Bernstein’s post on the USSR’s malignant role in the Middle East. There is no grand wisdom or lesson to be applied directly to the current battles in Gaza — just an understanding of one of the key facets of the conflicts in the Middle East

Legislate like it’s 1999

joby — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:55:33 +0000

Heh.

D&D Fourth Edition

joby — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:15:51 +0000

At Gen Con last week Wizards of the Coast announced that they will be releasing the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons in the Spring/Summer of 2008. The announcement was, of course, accompanied with the regular complaining about Wizards. They are either ruining the game, demonstrating their avarice, or both. I am cautiously optimistic for the following reasons:

1) Third Edition was a vast improvement on Second Edition. Second Edition was an attempt to consolidate classes and rules into generics that could be easily specialized, but there was not sufficient organization and frameworking to allow this to be an easy or regular process. Third Edition (with all of it’s currently obvious warts) was a massive improvement. The design goal of simplification and standardization dramatically eased starting play and allowed for a framework that helped keep game extensions fairly sane.

2) Some of the recent innovative rules books (not the more generic stuff) have included some very good alternate mechanics that improve the game. This includes the Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic (I really like the mechanics of the Truenamer), and the Star Wars Saga Edition.

3) The deliberate manner in which Wizards has approached the Magic Items Compendium and the Monster Manual V (and seems to be approaching 4E) demonstrates a concern for simplifying management while enhancing playability.

We’ll see as Wizards slowly releases more information about the forthcoming Fourth Edition.

I wonder if Kelly has this?

joby — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:33:34 +0000

Serenity/Firefly Fan DVD