D&D 4E 4E: What we think we know

[TerraDave]

the 4th ed website is back up. I think most of the stuff from it has been posted.

Still at:

www.tsr.com

 

[theemrys]

Just wish they'd post at a site I could see from work... of course, my work is probably happy they're blocking these sites and keeping me from just reading them all day...

 

[TheLe]

You may not be the only one thinking it, but you're definitely for it, while I'm definitely against it - both as a 3rd party publisher and as a gamer. If a company had to pay that type of licensing fee, you can bet the cost would then be transferred to the price of products, resulting in higher cost to gamers. Especially for the smaller companies.

I don't think that's the case at all, at least not in PDF world. People are already paying $2.00 for 6 pages of crap (I have made no secret about my disdain for pdf pricing, which I believe is too high). And now that Rpgnow has merged with DTRPG, you are probably seeing alot fewer books on sale since Dtrpg customers are willing to pay the higher price tag.

I think the current pricing is going to remain pretty much the same, but more customers means bigger profits for those companies.

Like I said before, it's good for publishers, but bad for customers. I have no problems if they do a licensing or go straight d20 ogl. You can certainly quote me for saying that I wouldn't mind a 1k-2k licensing fee, but you should also quote me as saying "free and open OGL is just fine for me," because I believe it is. But don't think for a moment that I matter in these discussions.

On Gleemax a WK staff member said this, "We have discussed a fee based license for the d20 system trademark but fees are not a guarantee of getting only quality publishers. Nothing as been decided yet and there are many options on the table including a hand selected group using the d20 STL or none and just having everyone use OGL." (found here)

Now you tell me -- are the big publishers that players know and love going to push for "a hand selected group" or are they going to push for "everyone use OGL".

Probably the hand selected group. Big publishers that players love are in the industry to bring creativity to the game, but they can't do it unless they are making lots of money. So no matter what you think, always remember that in the end, publishing companies are greedy bastards.

So, for the record, I couldn't care less if they force us to pay a license or make it open for all publishers. I have a good report with my core customers, and I try to focus on fun and interesting products. As long as I put out a quality product, I will have customers. I just hope they Wizards doesn't decide to give in and make "d20" a "selected group of publishers" option only. That would be terrible for the customer.

~Le

 

[Baumi]

A cool (Video-)Interview with Andy Collins:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=welcome/conventions/gencon07#3

 

[hopeless]

Hmm...

I don't understand this D&D Insider thing. Specifically, I don't understand the limits on the system.

Limiting you to three games per month is possibly reasonable, if they're concerned about people sharing passwords. This makes it so that sharing your password with someone else directly reduces the amount of times you can play. But there's objections to this: first, why three times? If a game runs on a weekly basis, that number needs to be 5 (to encompass 30 day weeks where the game starts on day 1 or 2). And second, there certainly has to be a better way to do this than to impose an arbitrary limit. Many other online communities have handled password sharing problems, I'm sure D&D could do the same.

What really doesn't make sense to me is limiting a player to 10 stored characters, and/or 10 stored versions of the same character. Why? It can't possibly be file space. A character sheet is a low file size item. Even if you allowed players to upload multiple high definition jpegs of their characters, you wouldn't expect to pass a megabyte in storage.

Off the top of my head I'd assume they're expecting a massive response to this so 3times per month to them means how many times they expect thiese particular players can access their online facilities due to the numbers of people using it.

 

[Bacris]

So, for the record, I couldn't care less if they force us to pay a license or make it open for all publishers. I have a good report with my core customers, and I try to focus on fun and interesting products. As long as I put out a quality product, I will have customers. I just hope they Wizards doesn't decide to give in and make "d20" a "selected group of publishers" option only. That would be terrible for the customer.

~Le

TheLe - first, thanks for the thought-out response. I think we both see eye to eye, just a matter of text-based communication losing the nuances

 

[Cadfan]

Server capacity can't possibly be the reason. Given the speed at which players will be inputting data while playing, this ought to be about as server intensive as a chat program used by people who can't type.

 

[Greg K]

James Wyatt can produce excellent stuff. Rob Heinsoo... I have no opinion. Andy Collins - I've got a mixed opinion - I think he does great stuff, but I'm not agreeing with everything he likes.

And it needs more Mearls!

Cheers, LT.

My take (and this is just as designers, I am sure they are all nice guys)

Andy Collins: My favorite book is UA (but disliked that he admittedly let several things go in underdeveloped so that others can develop them). I liked Dragonomicon and Complete Warrior (the only complete book that is worth a damn now that the Spell Compendium has collected spells and domains). FInally, his website includes ideas that I think are , imo, more interesting than the majority of stuff coming out of WOTC.

James Wyatt, I haven seen anything by him that I liked outside of a few Dragon articles and Heroes of Horror. He has been responsible for what I consider to be among the worst DND books Book of Exalted Deeds, Defenders of the Faith, and Magic of Incarnum. I even found Complete Divine to be less than unimpressive outside of the domains.

Mike Mearls: The last thing that I saw from him which I liked was the Book of Iron Might. I disliked Iron Heroes, but was initially ecstatic about him joining WOTC based upon his work for AEG, FFG, Mongoose, and Book of Iron Might. Unfortunately, I have been unimpressed with his WOTC work including ToB: Bo9S, the PHB2 Knight class as well as his musing on monster design.

Rob Heinsoo, no idea. Didn't he work on stuff for AEG?

 

[Glyfair]

Rob Heinsoo, no idea. Didn't he work on stuff for AEG?

Robin Laws sticks up for him. In his blog today he said:

At dinner, any concerns I might have about WotC screwing the pooch on the new D&D are 100% allayed by the news that the lead designer is none other than my boon compadre Rob Heinsoo. Whenever I’ve asked him what he’s working on over the last year plus, Rob has responded with this peculiar spasm of guilt, then mumbled something about new collectible projects. Now that I know what he couldn’t tell me it all makes sense. I absolutely trust that Rob knows what needs to be done to make the game faster and easier to run, while still hitting the pleasure centers of D&D fans everywhere, and has the design moxy to implement the vision. I am also very heartened to hear that Mike Mearls is on board as developer and James Wyatt is steering the story team.

So when asked what I think about the new master plan, I don’t need to lay out one of my usual long-winded, either-or scenarios. All I have to say is: “Heinsoo. Wyatt. Mearls*. It will rock, end of story.”

*This is not to imply, of course, that any of the other members of large team of people working on the game will not also be heavily responsible for its rockage.

 

[nute]

So far, I think I like what I'm hearing - with the caveat that this is only the first *EVER* information released about 4th Ed. Granted, my opinions tend to be based off two questions:

a) "How are the fighters?"
b) "How are the rogues?"

If those two give me happy feelings, then I consider it a success.

1) Base classes being statted out to level 30, with no dead levels? AWESOME. Having actual differentiation between an axe fighter and a flail fighter? AWESOME.

2) Streamlined combat and quicker turns? SWEET.

3) Something something OGL words words words licenses... don't care, we'll call it AWESOME.

4) Online content. Neat, but just frosting. Unless the character generation is ONLY online, in which case that would be BAD. But the game can still be played with just books, pen, and paper? Cool. If they're describing the online functionality as similar to the bonus features on a DVD? I'm all for it, I don't watch bonus features or director's commentary anyway.

5) Apparently WotC lied to people at some convention. Ah well, wasn't there/don't care, they didn't lie to me. Way to go, WotC!

6) When 4th Ed comes out, a magic spell will spread through the land and blank the pages of every 3.5 book, dice will no longer roll, and jackbooted death squads will patrol the streets, looking for those who are still trying to play 3.5 and dragging them off to the salt mines.

Oh wait, that's not going to happen?

Then 4th Ed is a good thing. So they might not be publishing Yet Another 3.5 Splatbook. If your game just can't function without Absolute Complete Flumph Handbook II, then I suppose WotC has lost your money and they will crumble like the House of Usher.

7) They can't charge me money to play the game the way I want to play it. I don't have to use D&D Insider. I don't have to resort to online chargen and mapping software. Cool for folks who do, but I don't, hence I'm apathetic to how much they charge for it. As long as I have core books that give me the tools I need to have a fun gaming experience, I am all for it.