Tony Vargas
Legend
One of those accidental breakthroughs, like penicillin, I guess...
... if the medical establishment had successfully suppressed it because it didn't conform to the miasma theory of disease, that is.
The roots of 4e exposed?
... if the medical establishment had successfully suppressed it because it didn't conform to the miasma theory of disease, that is.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Another interesting read in this series:
http://dmdavid.com/tag/the-unintend...hance-of-success-but-proved-great-for-gamers/
This is about the transition that Paizo had to go through, and how WotC treated them (better than it could have been, turns out)
http://dmdavid.com/tag/the-unintend...hance-of-success-but-proved-great-for-gamers/
This is about the transition that Paizo had to go through, and how WotC treated them (better than it could have been, turns out)
Eh, kind of. They wanted Paizo writing adventure paths for 4e. The decision to give a year's notice in that context makes perfect sense. It would have been stupid for them to make them into adversaries by giving no notice right at the launch of 4e.
Which of course makes the decision to try to force them to only write 4e material with no notice at the launch of 4e…
Tony Vargas
Legend
Seems to me like it could have been a lot better.
I also don't get what point the writer makes in saying there was a 'benefit' to the community. Maybe if 4e, PF, & the OSR were all still being published, he would have a point. Though, really, even then it'd speak more to the overweening dominance of D&D crushing diversity in the hobby - because, since 1975, we have had other games to choose from, but none of them could challenge D&D as the entry point to the hobby (Storyteller came closest in the 90s - PF may have rivaled sales of D&D w/in the industry, but it's mainstream name recognition was nil, in the mainstream Pathfinder is an SUV). So the idea that PF was finally an alternative to D&D makes sense only if you discount the rest of the hobby & it's history out of hand.
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It's probably glass half full vs. glass half empty thing. If you're neutral about both game systems and think it's a good thing that Paizo doesn't go out of business, then you're probably happy that a business did you a huge solid by giving you a year to plan how to avoid being dead..when their contract with you gave them the very real ability of putting you down permanently.
Bottom line: No Pathfinder and players would have gone to 4e or stayed with 3.5. Eventually 3.5's warts would have sent more people to other games OR 4e would have fared better. Neither of those two outcomes were as bad for WoTC as having PF1 around.
(edit: and given the stellar production quality of Paizo, I think everyone would be hard pressed to say the community didn't benefit, even if my present opinion of the Pathfinder rules system is terrible due to inelegance)
Thanks,
KB
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Celebrim
Legend
The irony is that I got banned out of innumerable threads for saying things that are in this article. In fact, to this day there are people who will claim that any statement that suggested 4e took design hints from World of Warcraft is blatant nonsense and such statements have ulterior motives.
Honestly, I'm going to stop reading the article before it finishes, because it's bringing back such hard feelings about how I was treated here, that I find myself thinking of quitting EnWorld just reading it.
The real irony is that when I started saying things like this, I wasn't by and large being critical of the new design. I was in fact actually happy with what I perceived as some of the goals of the design. It was only later that people took up my comments about how the design was taking cues from World of Warcraft as a sign that the new design was "too video gamey" or that the design was taking queues from how the MtG team had cleaned up the rules in 6e to make them more machine readable "too much like a board game". My core complaint against the design as it actually emerged is buried innocuously in the article at the point I stopped reading: "Ideally, it would help DMs enough to make running a bad game nearly impossible." That idea was the one really bad idea that I feel undermined all the other ones.
Honestly, I'm going to stop reading the article before it finishes, because it's bringing back such hard feelings about how I was treated here, that I find myself thinking of quitting EnWorld just reading it.
The real irony is that when I started saying things like this, I wasn't by and large being critical of the new design. I was in fact actually happy with what I perceived as some of the goals of the design. It was only later that people took up my comments about how the design was taking cues from World of Warcraft as a sign that the new design was "too video gamey" or that the design was taking queues from how the MtG team had cleaned up the rules in 6e to make them more machine readable "too much like a board game". My core complaint against the design as it actually emerged is buried innocuously in the article at the point I stopped reading: "Ideally, it would help DMs enough to make running a bad game nearly impossible." That idea was the one really bad idea that I feel undermined all the other ones.
Tony Vargas
Legend
There's a difference between designing a TTRPG to be accessible to potential crossover fans from MMO RPGs (or CRPGs or CCGs, for that matter), and designing a 'tabletop MMO.' And, frankly, as MMOs /are/ still RPGs, even that's not as bad as the actual claims people had push back against: that 4e somehow "wasn't an RPG."
But, it was ultimately a fool's errand, I suppose. The path just hasn't ever been mainstream > MMO > TT, it was never going to become 'all paths lead to D&D.' Probably there's a lot more TT > CRPG > MMO than the reverse. You discover TTRPGs, your group breaks up (or you never can find one in the first place), so you turn to a CRPG based on it, then MMOs when they come out. If you're an MMO fan, and your MMO goes bust, there'll be another one along soon, if your guild breaks up, there are others forming all the time. TT is just less convenient to pull together.
It'd've been great to bring in more new players from anywhere - MMO, CCG, or direct from the mainstream, since D&D has the name recognition - but that had to be tempered with remaining acceptable to the existing hard core, and I guess there just wasn't enough appeasement on that end.
Nod. There's legitimate observations, and then there's h4ters running with 'em and making them out to be something they're not. (I expect there will be folks quoting the article as 'Proof 4e was never an RPG!')
It doesn't seem, on the face of it, to be a frightful idea: Make the game easier to run, so that when a new group does form spontaneously, the novice DM won't accidentally deliver a horrible first experience and knock himself and half-a-dozen friends out of the hobby for good.
It does seem overly ambitious: "Easier to Run" would've been plenty, considering how challenging DMing has always been.
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All discussions take place within a context. It has been several years, and the context has changed significantly.
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Maybe, maybe not. 3.5 isn’t my favorite RPG- that would be HERO- but it remains my favorite iteration of D&D. I’m not the only one.
Raith5
Adventurer
I also like 4e but I think the related but bigger issue is engaging with community more. I personally liked the way that 4e took on longstanding concepts and sacred cows - I think it needed to be done. For eg, I think things like the mechanic of rolling against static defenses is simply way better than the saving throw mechanics. In my mind it is simpler, more elegant and allows a wider range of representations of monsters and PCs.
The problem is that I was in a minority in for being ready for this and they did not do a great job of engaging the community and explaining why they did things or providing options. Then were small things like replacing feet with square for movement. It all become too much for too many people. It is unfortunate because I think 4e could easily replicate things from previous editions - but it was buried in poor explanation.
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