4e / GSL WotC to Revise D&D 4th Edition GSL and SRD

[Ourph]

Originally Posted by Arnwyn

Then I wonder why you purchased 4e, from WotC, considering the behavior on their boards (i.e. "people associated with" WotC, using your words).

A rather interesting position of yours.

It's pretty simple actually.

I didn't need the WotC boards to inform me about D&D 4e, I got all the info I needed about 4e from ENWorld, from posters (both WotC employees and fans) who didn't have a "let's hope Paizo fails" attitude. Nothing in the threads I read about 4e turned me off. In fact, the vast majority of people posting information about 4e had a positive, helpful vibe.

When I went looking for the same kind of info from the Paizo boards and threads here on ENWorld about Pathfinder, I encountered a bunch of posts from Paizo fans and employees that were childish and rude, full of the "let's hope WotC fails" attitude that soured me on the whole game.

[Wicht]

Originally Posted by Ourph

I encountered a bunch of posts from Paizo fans and employees that were childish and rude, full of the "let's hope WotC fails" attitude that soured me on the whole game.

Might I challenge you to find me an example of a Paizo employee that wrote something childish, rude, or filled with hope for WotC failure.

I will believe it when I see it but not until as I think I have read most of what Paizo employees have written and can't recall anything even close. Except once... and that was a bit of bitterness about having stuff one of them had spent a lifetime writing about being tossed out the window. But even then it was neither rude nor childish nor did it wish ill upon anyone.

[Fifth Element]

Originally Posted by Wicht

Might I challenge you to find me an example of a Paizo employee that wrote something childish, rude, or filled with hope for WotC failure.

Might I ask that you do this privately? Please don't bring another board's edition wars here.

[Wicht]

Originally Posted by Fifth Element

Might I ask that you do this privately? Please don't bring another board's edition wars here.

Sorry.

I did not think it right to make accusations about specific individuals without proof and the employees of Paizo are not faceless entities. But I will withdraw the request.

[Ourph]

Originally Posted by Wicht

Sorry.

I did not think it right to make accusations about specific individuals without proof and the employees of Paizo are not faceless entities. But I will withdraw the request.

I didn't make any accusations, I posted a personal anecdote. This is the internet, not a court of law. I'm not required to provide "evidence" to back up my personal opinion. If you prefer to believe my opinion is wrong, feel free.

[billd91]

Originally Posted by Ourph

I didn't make any accusations, I posted a personal anecdote. This is the internet, not a court of law. I'm not required to provide "evidence" to back up my personal opinion. If you prefer to believe my opinion is wrong, feel free.

Yes, it's not a court of law, but if you're going to cast aspersions about some childish posts or make any other dubious or controversial claim, you should either back it up or back it off.

[Orius]

Originally Posted by Darrin Drader

So the half on this poll here Changeover poll who are not switching are non-representative? How about the 150+ people I talked to a week and a half ago at the convention in Spokane where I was a guest, half of whom didn't have very positive things to say about 4E? Or how about the local game store where I'm seeing the same trend? I suppose that you'd count that as anecdotal, or better yet, question my integrity since I've made up my mind about which game I'm playing.

Surely you know few people take internet polls seriously. In any case, there's no clear majority opinion in that poll, complete 4e and no 4e at all are tied, tried 4e and went back comes in 3rd, with various mixes between the two editions dividing the rest of the results. That poll doesn't convince me of 4e's success or lack thereof. Also, there's only 904 total votes while ENWorld has over 74,000 members, so that's only a small fraction of forum members (addmittedly many of those 74,000 are probably inactive).

And your own experiences are anecdotal, and may or may not reflect wider trends among D&D players as a whole. I'm not calling you a liar, I simply disagree with your opinion on that matter, that's all.

[billd91]

Originally Posted by Orius

Also, there's only 904 total votes while ENWorld has over 74,000 members, so that's only a small fraction of forum members (addmittedly many of those 74,000 are probably inactive).

Small fractions are fine - it's the self-selection of respondents that drives up the statistical error.

[Delta]

Originally Posted by Orius

Also, there's only 904 total votes while ENWorld has over 74,000 members, so that's only a small fraction of forum members (addmittedly many of those 74,000 are probably inactive).

I've been saying this a lot lately -- The overall population number is completely irrelevant to the accuracy of any poll (internet or not, self-selected or not). If the poll fails to be representative, it has nothing to do with the size of the fraction polled.

Statistical sampling theory in fact goes and assumes that you've got an infinite sized population, because it totally doesn't matter what that number is, and the math is simpler that way. It's when the fraction polled gets too big (over 5%) that you have to do an a bit more calculation to account for it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_...opulation_size

[Vocenoctum]

Originally Posted by Delta

I've been saying this a lot lately -- The overall population number is completely irrelevant to the accuracy of any poll (internet or not, self-selected or not). If the poll fails to be representative, it has nothing to do with the size of the fraction polled.

Statistical sampling theory in fact goes and assumes that you've got an infinite sized population, because it totally doesn't matter what that number is, and the math is simpler that way. It's when the fraction polled gets too big (over 5%) that you have to do an a bit more calculation to account for it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_...opulation_size

The "added math" is to account for the larger sampling having a smaller margin of error... in other words, more accurate. While obviously hyperbole, a smaller margin of error is not "completely irrelevant to the accuracy...".

Either way, taking a poll from ENWorld and applying it to D&D Fanbase as a whole is worthless.

[Maggan]

Originally Posted by Vocenoctum

Either way, taking a poll from ENWorld and applying it to D&D Fanbase as a whole is worthless.

And can also lead to interesting "results".

Say that 50% of the D&D gamers have switched/tried 4e. With an estimated player base of 4 million (from another reputable source, Wikipedia ), that means that 2 million people are now playing D&D4e.

Let's say that my anecdotal evidence of 75% of players owning the PH stands true, which would mean that WotC has sold 1 500 000 Player's Handbooks.

Quite a lot of books, IMO.

/M

[cangrejoide]

Originally Posted by Darrin Drader

So the half on this poll here Changeover poll who are not switching are non-representative?.

907 people out of a community of 70,000. Yeah 1.2% is very representative.

Originally Posted by Darrin Drader

How about the 150+ people I talked to a week and a half ago at the convention in Spokane where I was a guest, half of whom didn't have very positive things to say about 4E? Or how about the local game store where I'm seeing the same trend? I suppose that you'd count that as anecdotal, or better yet, question my integrity since I've made up my mind about which game I'm playing. .

150+ at a convention or fistfull of people at your LGS out of millions of players is hardly representative of a trend.

If you really want to see where the market is going , you should see the sales revenues.

Originally Posted by Darrin Drader

The difference is that the choice was taken away from WotC by Ryan Dancey and Peter Adkison eight years ago. It was the greatest gift they gave to the gaming community because it ensures that there will always be a version of D&D in print, regardless of what Hasbro ends up doing with the official brand. I'm flabbergasted that anyone who is passionate about the game would see this as a bad thing.

Good for you, you should also try OSRIC or LL or any other of the D&D versions outhere.

If 4E is not for you then there are a wide array of options. go play.

[cangrejoide]

Originally Posted by Darrin Drader

it's possible that Pathfinder is doing as well as they say it is, and that they're picking up a lot of business from the disaffected 3.5 players. In other words, why would they want to change?

And this is their target market right now "disaffected 3.5 players", maybe 2 or 3 years from now when the anti-4e furor dies we may see some Paizo 4E stuff.

[cangrejoide]

Originally Posted by Maggan

I feel the need to say this: the flaw in the poll system was known before I pointed it out, and was in all probability used e.g. in the "What should the Warlord be named?" poll. Prior art, so to say.

I felt that the right thing to do was pointing out this flaw in the poll system for people who were drawing far reaching conclusions based on the results.

I'm not the only one on these boards who knew about the flaw, and the voting pattern of lots of posts in short time for one side or the other side, ie "surges", was in my mind indications that such rigging could be taking place.

Sure, for all I know, every single one of those votes are legit. But I honestly don't think so, and there were 800+ votes before I "buggered" the poll, so if you trust that there were no problems before my "buggering", then just discount about 50 votes or so.

Whatever "buggered" is supposed to mean, btw.

/M

lol so the poll that every anti-4e poster has quoted been rigged?

If not, what do you mean by buggered?

[alanpossible]

I remember reading a blog post by (I think) Monte Cook. In it, he was lamenting the fact that so few people had taken the opportunity provided by the OGL to publish (for a dollar or two) the material they create for their own home games.

Those adventures and dungeons, monsters, quests and NPCs that take us so long to create could all be sold for a couple of bucks.

Personally, I'm hoping that the GSL will (in the future perhaps) be able to encourage such things. I realise it involves wading through a pool of bad 3PP stuff to get to the good bits, but the good publishers rapidly become known and I've often been inspired even by the bad products (usually by fixing them up ;D)

Anyhow, I won't start holding my breath. At the moment, the whole thing radiates a feeling of losing all my money if WotC decide they don't like me. And while I'd like to hope it'll become more small-person friendly, I'm not sure wizards are out to encourage that.

I *will* however be looking forward to the fan site policy

[Raven Crowking]

Originally Posted by Arnwyn

Then I wonder why you purchased 4e, from WotC, considering the behavior on their boards (i.e. "people associated with" WotC, using your words).

A rather interesting position of yours.

Duplicates my thought, and I am not particularly a "fan" of Pathfinder (recently being far more interested in Basic Fantasy and 3.5 as-is). When folks were (understandably) upset about shennanigans with WotC (including claiming that rumours the 4e announcement was close were false, cancellation of Dungeon & Dragon, broken promises about tiered licensing, broken promises about the DDI (when, and what it could do), and problems with the GSL, a lot of folks said, in effect "I'll buy or not buy 4e based on the game, not based on how I feel about WotC."

Now, I would agree with choosing to spend your dollars based on what you want to encourage the company to do, or what you want to encourage the company to produce, but a little consistency would be nice.

(Of course, I am also inconsistent here, because I recognize that what WotC does is more important to the market/industry/hobby as a whole than what most/any/all 3pps do. What WotC does impacts me; what a 3pp does, except in the case of what they produce, or in the case where they champion something of use to the market/industry/hobby....like Clark with the GSL and the APG....really doesn't affect me much.)

(Never hurts for a 3pp to be professional, though. )

RC

[Raven Crowking]

Originally Posted by Orius

Surely you know few people take internet polls seriously.

As proven by internet poll.

[Delta]

Originally Posted by Vocenoctum

The "added math" is to account for the larger sampling having a smaller margin of error... in other words, more accurate. While obviously hyperbole, a smaller margin of error is not "completely irrelevant to the accuracy...".

I'll say it again -- IF the sampled fraction is small, THEN the simplied math applies in which population size is "completely irrelevant to the accuracy" of the poll. And that's the case we're actually in, the case misunderstood by the prior poster, the case of any standard poll.

Whether the population of ENWorld is 25,000 or 75,000 or 1 million or infinite, the math is exactly the same in any of those cases. Any larger population number disappears from the calculation formula.

Which is why I was the one who brought up the above-5% correction factor in the first place. You want a small sample fraction, such as we have, to use the standard math, in which population size is irrelevant.

[rkwoodard]

Originally Posted by Delta

I'll say it again -- IF the sampled fraction is small, THEN the simplied math applies in which population size is "completely irrelevant to the accuracy" of the poll. And that's the case we're actually in, the case misunderstood by the prior poster, the case of any standard poll.

Whether the population of ENWorld is 25,000 or 75,000 or 1 million or infinite, the math is exactly the same in any of those cases. Any larger population number disappears from the calculation formula.

Which is why I was the one who brought up the above-5% correction factor in the first place. You want a small sample fraction, such as we have, to use the standard math, in which population size is irrelevant.

yep, my master's thesis (industrial/organizational Psych) used maybe a thousand people filling out questionaires and was used to extrapolate correlations to "university students" all of them, everywhere (ok maybe just US college students but still not even 1% of a %.

rk

[Arnwyn]

Originally Posted by alanpossible

I remember reading a blog post by (I think) Monte Cook. In it, he was lamenting the fact that so few people had taken the opportunity provided by the OGL to publish (for a dollar or two) the material they create for their own home games.

Those adventures and dungeons, monsters, quests and NPCs that take us so long to create could all be sold for a couple of bucks.

Hopefully the person who posted such a thing wasn't surprised by that! Once legal text becomes involved, then of course the vast majority of the populace won't bother becoming involved. That much is obvious. And then, adding the time, effort, and costs to "sell for a couple of bucks" (where? how? etc.) on top of that and very few people will even consider such a thing.

The GSL certainly won't change anything (and unless it's worded to make it even easier to use than the OGL, there may even be fewer who bother).