Today Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 for consumers.
“The question of, ‘What version of Windows are you running?’ will no longer be a thing,” Myerson says. “Windows is a service. Users will always be up to date.”
Woudn't be great if D&D was something like that? If question ‘What edition of D&D are you playing?" was no longer a thing? I have a dream it is possible with the concept of A Living Rule Set.
What do you think?
I think that Microsoft's troubles in trying to get me to use whatever they have decided is best would only be dwarfed by the difficulty anyone would have in prying my ability to play AD&D and D&D 5th edition interchangeably from the very depths of my mind and soul.
Sure, being able to be always up to date might be nice... if you're the type that prefers being "up to date" over "having what I like, how I like it."
Quotes from the article:
"If we know something is an issue, we’ll let you know that we plan to address it. When we have some ideas, we’ll put those in front of the community and playtest them before making any changes. If a change is well liked and solves problems, we’ll implement it as an option for DMs to use.
We don’t plan on rushing things. It might be a year from when we raise an issue to when we have a fix. But as soon as we can, we’ll share that solution as an option for DMs and players to use as they wish. Groups that never felt the effect of the issue in the first place can ignore it, while those looking for a solution will have a well tested, proven response."
"If we have an idea for improving the game, we can present it as an option for DMs, gather feedback, and make informed decisions for future products and potential changes to the core game. Those options can remain exactly that—options you can take or leave as you see fit"
That is to say, changes won't be hasty, immediate, or mandatory. They'll be there to patch holes that exist for some people. If you see a problem, now you have the tools to be able to fix it in your game. If you don't see a problem, then you are more than welcomed, and encouraged, to simply ignore it.
Yeah, I like my RPGs like I like my software - as substance, not services.
For me, things like the Open Gaming License are among the best things that could have happened to gaming, and that's basically as far from "service as a substitute for software" (call it what it is!) as you can get in an RPG context. The existing "standard model" (where a company releases an RPG product and leaves it to individual DMs to tailor) is still substantially closer to the free ideal than a service-based centralized model ever could be (which was one of the reasons why I really disliked 4e, actually). 5e embraces and encourages DMs taking ownership of the system in a way we haven't seen from WotC in years, yet with a better game engine (IMHO) than earlier systems that encouraged the same.
If Mike thinks that I am going to wait a year for him to figure out if there is a problem or not then he is dreaming.
If I see a problem then it is going to get a fix at the table and I just hope that if we get electronic support that it allows editing.
Talking about Windows 10
http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/21/7867641/windows-holographic-is-the-next-era-of-windows
Hope somebody will make a virtual holo tabletop for DnD
Cyber-Dave wrote:
ShadoWWW wrote:
ShadoWWW wrote:
ShadoWWW wrote:
edwin_su wrote:
SilentSin wrote:
I think this would be an even worse idea for D&D than it is for software.
And I am strongly against it for software.
Some versions of windows end up having the updates add up to double the size of the original program. I wouldn't use Windows as a yardstick for anything I like. I remember working with some GUI programs way back before WIndows 3, like DeskviewX(reminds me of some of the Apple OSs) and some others, that allowed you to have 5 or more windows open at a time, ran fast, was stable with no crashes, and were super easy for a user to learn....then a year or so later Windows was touting how their new system was gonna be able to have multiple windows open and would almost never crash. The IT department I was with got it and started playing with it and found it to be inferior in every single way to several other GUInterfaces we were using but we had to roll it out in the whole company and replace the existing programs with it. I detest Windows.
I am also sad to see subscription-based programs. You could buy a complete software program and you owned it. Now they want you to buy a monthly or yearly subscription to their program so they can charge you 3X as much over the life of your computer than they would if they just outright sold it to you, or they raise the price to buy the software so high that the subscription doesn't look so bad. At one time Office used to go for $40-50 and Window would run around $75-90.
THis would be a horrible thing to do to D&D.
I had a thought on this model for software a while ago. Interestingly, it was largely cosmetic. The thought was to create a free phone/tablet-based virtual tabletop that augments the actual tabletop, in much the same way that Roll20, MapTool, or OpenRPG did, but optimize it for tablets - and, while the tool would be open and facilitate long-distance online play, it would also be optimized (in every non-essential aspect) for WotC material, and linked to a WotC account, in order to keep corporate happy.
Me, in a (likely drunken) ramble: wrote:
I don't think it's terrible, but like many, I much prefer to buy, not lease, most products. I only rent because I cannot afford to buy a home, for example. I do at least own my car 
.
Video games, software, e-books, movies, etc. all moving to a 'service' model rather than a 'posession/property' model annoys the $*#(@@&! out of me.
Now, if D&D keeps up with the plan to release free PDFs (extras, errata, crunch, fluff...) every time a hard cover book comes out, I'll love that.
I don't know enough about Windows 10 to know if I like it or hate it. I have one PC running 8.1, another running Vista, and my tablet runs android. Oh, and my PS3 runs whatever PS3's run. That's plenty for me, lol.