Gen Con: Slavicsek says core books will continue to be published, other tidbits

[Rex Blunder]

We went to the "Gen Con Design & Development: Presented by D&D Insider" talk. Bill Slavicsek was among the presenters. There were some answers about Essentials as well as other miscellaneous future-plans comments:

1. Bill Slavicsek confirms that Essentials will not be replacing the PHB 1. They will continue to print the core books as needed. (Slavicsek said the no-reprint rumors were untrue and seemed a little annoyed about the whole rumor.)
2. The monsters in Essentials will be iconic d&d monsters, like goblins, orcs, giants, and trolls, but they won't be replacing current MM1 monsters, just adding new varieties of those monsters.
3. Essentials won't have a slew of new feats, since there's kind of a sense that D&D 4e already has a bit too many feats.
4. Some powers will be updated to make them slightly stronger/weaker with the essentials release. Example: Lightning Bolt will have a new keyword (evocation, which matters to essentials mages) and do half damage on a miss.
5. Essentials will also be helping codify skill challenges, expanding on work already done in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2.

The rest of our notes will go up at
Gen Con design and development seminar « Blog of Holding

 

[The Little Raven]

1. Bilsend confirms that Essentials will not be replacing the PHB 1. They will continue to print the core books as needed. (Bilsend said the no-reprint rumors were "absolutely untrue" and seemed annoyed about the whole rumor.)
2. The monsters in Essentials will be iconic d&d monsters, like goblins, orcs, giants, and trolls, but they won't be replacing current MM1 monsters, just adding new varieties of those monsters.

Hopefull this will silence all the misinformation on these two points.

3. Essentiyals won't have a slew of new feats, since there's kind of a sense that D&D 4e already has a bit too many feats.

GOOD.

4. Some powers will be updated to make them slightly stronger/weaker with the essentials release. Example: Lightning Bolt will have a new keyword (evocation, which matters to essentials mages) and do half damage on a miss.

We already knew that all wizard encounter powers were getting half damage on a miss, but its good to see that some of the new Essentials stuff is getting applied to the original content without affecting how the previous builds use that content.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

1. Bill Slavicsek confirms that Essentials will not be replacing the PHB 1. They will continue to print the core books as needed. (Slavicsek said the no-reprint rumors were untrue and seemed a little annoyed about the whole rumor.)

I wonder how much of his annoyance was due to the fact that it wasnt really a rumor and was an actual leak of their plans... And now they have continue printing just to stymy any major issues that could arise... Just a thought...

 

[Riley]

I wonder how much of his annoyance was due to the fact that it wasnt really a rumor and was an actual leak of their plans... And now they have continue printing just to stymy any major issues that could arise... Just a thought...

How 'bout just taking them at their word?

 

[ggroy]

I wonder how much of his annoyance was due to the fact that it wasnt really a rumor and was an actual leak of their plans... And now they have continue printing just to stymy any major issues that could arise... Just a thought...

Perhaps he should have "pleaded the fifth" on that question.

 

[FireLance]

Hopefull this will silence all the misinformation on these two points.

Yes , it would certainly restore my faith in humani-

I wonder how much of his annoyance was due to the fact that it wasnt really a rumor and was an actual leak of their plans... And now they have continue printing just to stymy any major issues that could arise... Just a thought...

Oh, wait. Never mind. Carry on.

 

[Mouseferatu]

How 'bout just taking them at their word?

Especially since there is no way that the company's plans would have changed that quickly, based on complaints (however "rage-y") from a small population of certain messageboards. Seriously. Even if the uproar had been overwhelming (which it wasn't; it was only a portion of people), these sorts of decisions take time.

 

[Henry]

I wonder how much of his annoyance was due to the fact that it wasnt really a rumor and was an actual leak of their plans...

Oh, come ON, now... Besides, I believe this was clarified by another poster working with one of the book distributors as a misquote, they weren't printing any more at the current time because they had sufficient warehouse stock for the forseeable future. Which, in some people's minds, probably means doom because D&D is "flooding the warehouses with unwanted product."

I am glad to hear the rest of this confirmed, though I would have at least liked to see the new monster stats in the Compendium. I can understand why they wouldn't be changing these values left and right.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Yeah...on the one hand it would have been nice to have updated MM1 monsters...on the other hand...MORE MONSTERS!!!!!


More feats, not good.

More powers, not necessarily good.

More magic items, not good (except for that book next year)

But...

More monsters is ALWAYS good.

 

[doctorhook]

We went to the "Gen Con Design & Development: Presented by D&D Insider" talk. Bill Slavicsek was among the presenters. (Sorry, I don't think Bilsland was actually there, the post title is inaccurate!) There were some answers about Essentials as well as other miscellaneous future-plans comments:

1. Bill Slavicsek confirms that Essentials will not be replacing the PHB 1. They will continue to print the core books as needed. (Slavicsek said the no-reprint rumors were untrue and seemed a little annoyed about the whole rumor.)
2. The monsters in Essentials will be iconic d&d monsters, like goblins, orcs, giants, and trolls, but they won't be replacing current MM1 monsters, just adding new varieties of those monsters.
3. Essentials won't have a slew of new feats, since there's kind of a sense that D&D 4e already has a bit too many feats.
4. Some powers will be updated to make them slightly stronger/weaker with the essentials release. Example: Lightning Bolt will have a new keyword (evocation, which matters to essentials mages) and do half damage on a miss.
5. Essentials will also be helping codify skill challenges, expanding on work already done in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2.

The rest of our notes will go up at
Gen Con design and development seminar « Blog of Holding

Thanks for this, Rex! I'm grateful for the scoop, but I'm a little disappointed that this seems to be the only GenCon scoop available right now. Where's the torrent of cool new info?

PS: If you want to edit the title of the thread, go to the original post, click on "Edit", and then click on "Go advanced"; then you can edit the topic at the top of the page.

I wonder how much of his annoyance was due to the fact that it wasnt really a rumor and was an actual leak of their plans... And now they have continue printing just to stymy any major issues that could arise... Just a thought...

Respectfully, you must have failed your "Just a thought" check, because that's all kinds of silly.