General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
__________________ [A]ny good dungeon will have undiscovered treasures in areas that have been explored by the players, simply because it is impossible to expect that they will find every one of them.
RCFG - My free mostly-OGC OGL game! RCFG is intended to be a fusion between OS & NS playstyles, giving the advantages of SRD-based gaming coupled with quick character and adventure generation and an Old School feel.
That one line is where I started disliking 4e, as opposed to not liking what they were doing with the licenses and the marketing. It took 23 words to make me decide that the game was not for me, even before details of the GSL locked that decision in stone.
The Auld Grump, I like games where the PCs traipse through faerie rings and interact with the little folk. Heck, I do that with Spycraft, which is hardly less combat centered than 4e.
This is evidence for Hussar's point. You based your decision on just these 23 words, while apparently ignoring the other words around them, which when taken as a whole provide a pretty balanced viewpoint and include some words that explicitly agree with your likes.
__________________ Iain Fyffe
Original member of the Rouseketeers!
I have played 4E. And just like all other editions of D&D, it is awesome!
no one quotes me in sigs - Crothian
For some reason, this doesn't fill me with rage. I must be interwebbing wrong. - Cadfan
I could take from this thread that people prefer to be lied to professionally by marketing then hearing designers honest thoughts.
If a designer tells you an old rule didn't work well and was "un-fun" and he has created a new rule that works better and is more fun, is that really an insult to you? Or is it not more a promise: "I think I found a flaw and found a way to fix it."
I don't mind being told a designer's honest thoughts. I'm afraid I do expect it soft-pedaled just a bit though. Being considerate of your audience is always cool. Saying things that sound "edgy" and "controversial"... not so much.
Just a bit is all I ask. Being told some rules element is categorically "not fun" makes my hackles tingle. "Fun" is a loaded word; it's too subjective. Some things that are "fun" for me are "snoozeworthy" to others. So being told, on the other hand, that that same rules element presents a problem at a lot of tables, that it could stand improvement, that it needs streamlining, that extensive research shows players overwhelmingly try to work around this rules element instead of using it (which is objectively bad in this context)... something like that can still be totally honest and, at the same time, sound better.
Same goes for story elements. Being told that certain critters were being mercilessly yanked because they were objectively pointless makes me grind my teeth a bit. Being told, on the other hand, that the new edition is re-racking the Outer Planes in a way that makes them vastly more flexible and that, while there certainly is room for these critters, they're not appearing right away in the new source material... again, could easily be totally honest that way without sounding like somebody's got a chip on a shoulder.
So not marketing-speak per se ("New! Improved! Use Less to Do More! Gets Out Your Toughest Stains!"), but maybe kid gloves.
I think what could have worked better from a marketing standpoint is if the changes in 4th edition had been emphasized as an evolution of the game's elements rather than a complete reinvention. The planar setup of 4th edition, for example, is pretty cool and succeeds in keeping a lot of elements that the old cosmology had. The way it was first previewed, though, was a designer saying that the Great Wheel was not enjoyable and this new thing was much better. Stuff like that gets taken as a loaded statement. Sure, some people would have complained either way, but they would have been fewer in number.
WotC did a lot of, "This part of 3rd edition was just bad, 4th edition has something new to replace it," when I think they could have used more, "4th edition takes this part of 3rd edition and improves it in this way." I don't think the developers ever meant to tear down 3rd edition to build up 4th, but that's the way they made it seem by using terms like "broken," "badly designed," and the dreaded "unfun."
__________________ SHADOWSLAYERS: A full fantasy novel, now available on Kindle for only 1 dollar! REALITY CHECK: Everything you know is wrong.
I could take from this thread that people prefer to be lied to professionally by marketing then hearing designers honest thoughts.
If a designer tells you an old rule didn't work well and was "un-fun" and he has created a new rule that works better and is more fun, is that really an insult to you? Or is it not more a promise: "I think I found a flaw and found a way to fix it."
I would take this thought one step further.
If someone was working on 4e who did NOT think they were going to make a significantly better game and that they could identify and fix numerous weaknesses in the old system, I would not want them anywhere NEAR a new edition.
The worst thing you can get in a new edition is timidity.
This is evidence for Hussar's point. You based your decision on just these 23 words, while apparently ignoring the other words around them, which when taken as a whole provide a pretty balanced viewpoint and include some words that explicitly agree with your likes.
Maybe, but 4E killed good creatures on Monster Manual and lived to be true to that words: you can't find such kind of adventures on official 4E products.
Check Dungeon adventures. Nothing there reminds of fairies and rings. It's all about PEW PEW PEW kill & loot.
Everything that isn't combat is pushed to DMs, like, "we only want combat, if you want silly RP games figure out yourself." Fantastic system, horrible fluff, IMHO.
BTW, I never used page 42 and I'll never will.
As always: not a 4E basher, check sig, my problem remains with 4E fluff and ideas.
__________________ And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
While I think, in retrospect, that I would have eventually not converted fully to 4e, even with better marketing, the marketing of 4e more or less led to a series of events that insured I did not even buy a set of the rulebooks.
When 4e was announced I was in the market for a new set of books. Not because I disliked 3e but because my 3.0 books were finally looking pretty used. I had purchased every set of rules from 1983 on and fully expected to like the new rules. When I heard about 4e I was optimistic and fully expected it to be my new edition of choice. About the same time I was looking to restart a subscription to Dungeon Magazine. But when I went to get a subscription I found that the magazine had been discontinued. So I subscribed to Rise of the Runelords instead as it looked to be a good product.
Meanwhile, the more I read about 4e, the less I found I was looking forward to it. The tone of the marketing struck me not so much as insulting as it was disrespectful to the history of the game I had made my primary hobby in life. When Paizo announced that they were going to forgo 4e and stick with the OGL, it was an easy decision to go with them. Thus the tone of the marketing, the GSL debacle and the cancelation of Dungeon all worked together to mean that not only did I not switch, I never even bothered trying 4e.
Therein lies the crux. I don't believe that people came to the table from a position of neutrality. I think people came to the table openly hostile (particularly after the debacle of the Dragon/Dungeon thing) and made finding offense their primary goal.
This is an interesting proposition, and I don't necessarily entirely disagree - but it begs the question: Why didn't people come to the table openly hostile during the advent of 3rd Edition?
Speaking only for myself, 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons marketing was fairly disastrous. Especially because it failed to deliver on the electronic front. I, along with many others, was there at GenCon when they rolled out the 4th Edition announcement. Part of the biggest push for 4th Edition at rollout was the Virtual Tabletop. It has since become vaporware.
Simply put, WotC has failed to deliver what was promised at launch. It would have been one thing if the Virtual Tabletop was only a side benefit or a little something extra for the fans. But there it was, front and center, as a large component of what they were pushing.
That, to me, is a fairly noticeable failure in terms of marketing. Promising something really big, but failing to deliver on it.
Again, at the end of the day though, who's fault is it? You're NEVER going to win when the girlfriend asks you "does this make me look fat?" In the same way, I think WOTC could have groveled at the feet of every earlier edtion, debasing themselves frequently, and people would still have been saying, "You are hating on my playstyle".
Again, how did WotC pull off this magificent feat during the change from 1st to 2nd? From 2nd to 3rd?
Last edited by Toben the Many; 9th September 2009 at 09:51 PM..
If someone was working on 4e who did NOT think they were going to make a significantly better game and that they could identify and fix numerous weaknesses in the old system, I would not want them anywhere NEAR a new edition.
The worst thing you can get in a new edition is timidity.
There's a huge line between not wanting to be told that the current edition sucks and wanting marketing people to lie to you. There are a lot of ways to say, "we improved upon X" without also saying, "X was no good from the beginning," or worse, going as far as saying, "people who like X don't know what fun is."
From my own point of view, I was fully expecting the 4th edition designers to believe they had created a superior product. Honestly, for the type of game they wanted, they totally did improve upon 3rd edition. The slip-up marketing-wise was not that they said 4th edition was a better game, but rather that they called out key aspects of 3rd edition as being objectively bad. The end result is that people who liked those aspects got turned off not because the designers thought that 4th edition was a better game but because they felt the need to slam the edition people were currently playing and enjoying.
__________________ SHADOWSLAYERS: A full fantasy novel, now available on Kindle for only 1 dollar! REALITY CHECK: Everything you know is wrong.
Again, how did WotC pull off this magificent feat during the change from 1st to 2nd? From 2nd to 3rd?
To be fair, the transition between 1st and 2nd edition drew a lot of hate. Not as much for the transition from 2nd to 3rd, but I think that's more because 2nd edition had been floundering for years before the announcement.
__________________ SHADOWSLAYERS: A full fantasy novel, now available on Kindle for only 1 dollar! REALITY CHECK: Everything you know is wrong.
To be fair, the transition between 1st and 2nd edition drew a lot of hate. Not as much for the transition from 2nd to 3rd, but I think that's more because 2nd edition had been floundering for years before the announcement.
Okay, well that brings up another point of discussion. Why the hate for 2nd Edition when it first came out? Was it timing? And, more importantly, was the time right for 4th Edition? Timing and choosing the right time for an edition change is part of marketing.
Okay, well that brings up another point of discussion. Why the hate for 2nd Edition when it first came out? Was it timing? And, more importantly, was the time right for 4th Edition? Timing and choosing the right time for an edition change is part of marketing.
You're missing the point. All new editions inspire hate. 2E, 3.5E, 4E... heck, I'll bet AD&D honked off a whole lot of OD&D fans. 3E was the exception because 2E was so obviously moribund.
No half-orcs, no demons, no devils, no assassins. (Giving in to the criticism from certain groups.)
Admittedly the hate there was rather misplaced, since that edition provided more material for demons and devils than had existed prior (and by page count quite possibly more than all other editions before or since combined). It just took them what, a year and a half or two years to have them in a book (MC: Outer Planes Appendix) rather than being in the first 2e monster books?
__________________ "I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase"." - Ken Marable
Maybe, but 4E killed good creatures on Monster Manual and lived to be true to that words: you can't find such kind of adventures on official 4E products.
That's true, though I doubt in fairy-traipsing adventures you really need to know how many hit points that little fairy person has. 4E is definitely geared towards the slay-the-evil-monster type of play, the designers were never shy about that.
And focusing on that style of play does not mean the designers consider other styles silly. Just that they didn't focus on them.
__________________ Iain Fyffe
Original member of the Rouseketeers!
I have played 4E. And just like all other editions of D&D, it is awesome!
no one quotes me in sigs - Crothian
For some reason, this doesn't fill me with rage. I must be interwebbing wrong. - Cadfan
Admittedly the hate there was rather misplaced, since that edition provided more material for demons and devils than had existed prior (and by page count quite possibly more than all other editions before or since combined). It just took them what, a year and a half or two years to have them in a book (MC: Outer Planes Appendix) rather than being in the first 2e monster books?
Oh, absolutely - in time it was fine.
But at the beginning - they were out - and that was very disappointing.
You're missing the point. All new editions inspire hate. 2E, 3.5E, 4E... heck, I'll bet AD&D honked off a whole lot of OD&D fans. 3E was the exception because 2E was so obviously moribund.
With respect, I don't buy that argument.
First of all, we can look at other games and their iterative editions. New editions of RPGs are sometimes looked upon favorably, but sometimes not. There is no overwhelming tendency to hate all new editions upon release. One might say, "Ah, yes. But Shadowrun fans are not like D&D fans." To which I would say, but the same people who play Shadowrun are the same people who play D&D!
And you also seem to contradict yourself as well. You claim that 3rd Edition is the exception to the rule - meaning that the rule of New-Editions-Are-Hated can be, in fact, broken. To add to that, as I recall it, AD&D was another welcome edition into the fold. I remember getting AD&D and becoming excited. "Wait. Elf isn't a class? Whoa. I can be an Elven Fighter, Elven Wizard, etc? Whoa! No way!"
I think it's too apologist to simply say, "All new D&D editions are hated. Nothing anyone can do about it." If that were true, why bother with any kind of marketing campaign at all, since all of them will be doomed to failure?
First of all, we can look at other games and their iterative editions. New editions of RPGs are sometimes looked upon favorably, but sometimes not. There is no overwhelming tendency to hate all new editions upon release. One might say, "Ah, yes. But Shadowrun fans are not like D&D fans." To which I would say, but the same people who play Shadowrun are the same people who play D&D!
And you also seem to contradict yourself as well. You claim that 3rd Edition is the exception to the rule - meaning that the rule of New-Editions-Are-Hated can be, in fact, broken. To add to that, as I recall it, AD&D was another welcome edition into the fold. I remember getting AD&D and becoming excited. "Wait. Elf isn't a class? Whoa. I can be an Elven Fighter, Elven Wizard, etc? Whoa! No way!"
I think it's too apologist to simply say, "All new D&D editions are hated. Nothing anyone can do about it." If that were true, why bother with any kind of marketing campaign at all, since all of them will be doomed to failure?
There also isn't necessarily a correlation between the size and intensity of the debate. A small group of intensly angry people can seem a lot bigger than they actually are.
There also isn't necessarily a correlation between the size and intensity of the debate. A small group of intensly angry people can seem a lot bigger than they actually are.
True. And there is always new edition hate--it happened with 3E (oh, I remember the flamewars of 1999--and there was some 2E-'bashing' in the marketing then), it happened with 2E (some people on rgfd back in the mid-90s still held a grudge), and it will happen with 5E. The question generally becomes, how large and/or intense is the dissatisfaction?
The 2E-3E conversion didn't seem to evoke as much, IMO, for a variety of reasons:
1. The game hadn't undergone a major overhaul since AD&D was created in 1977, and most everyone was ready for some of the underlying problems to be fixed.
2. The changes to playstyle didn't feel as dramatic as the 3E-4E changeover. I'm not saying that they weren't, but it was generally framed as opening up options and making the rules more coherent, not the near-total rebuild of the system that 4E comes across as. Likewise, there was a greater sense of setting continuity--the two settings that made the transition in the first year (the Realms and Ravenloft) actually had minimal world-shaking events going on to accomodate the new rules. Indeed, Ravenloft's only dramatic change for the start of the 3E era was a restoration.
IMO, most of the ways 3E changed the style of the game were 'emergent' features that were discovered in play over the course of the next few years (I think this was part of the reason for Revised 3rd--and we can blame ourselves for the '3.5' label, lest we forget). 4E, by contrast, makes them clearer up front.
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