If WotC Released D&D 3.75 Tomorrow....

[Pentius]

In general, no, I wouldn't be interested. Then again, I'm a known 4e fan, so that should be no surprise.

Okay, related but separate - If WotC came out with a 'Rules Light' version of D&D, somewhere between 3.5 and B E C M I (or Cyclopedia) would you be interested?

Again, 4e remains supported, full OGL, and solid support, etc..

I will start off by saying this would interest me more than a 3.75 - I think that Pathfinder fills that role, and fills it extremely well.

Assumptions:
1. Miniatures are supported, but play does not rely on them.

2. Sold as either a series of boxes, or as thin paperbound books, with a hardcover when all the sets in the line have come out.

3. Adventure creation very similar to B E C M I. You could run Keep on the Borderlands with it. A statblock covers about a inch on the page.

The Auld Grump

Depends. I like rules light systems, in general. If it was somewhere between 4e and BECMI, probably yes. Between 3.5 and BECMI, well, it depends on how the system turns out, but maybe.

P.S It matters not at all to me if play requires minis. I consider minis required for all games, due to my horrible sense of spacial awareness.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If I were WoTC I'd put 3.0 and prior editions out on Print on Demand and PDF. And just have started 3.5. A 3 year gap after every new edition while the previous one was out of print to try to convince people to switch - then milk the older editions if there was money there.

 

[delericho]

4. 4e remains covered by the GSL, and does not open itself to the OGL..

Incidentally, it occurs to me that the smartest thing WotC could do at this point in time might well be to open 4e under the OGL.

Here's my thinking;

- WotC do a poor job on adventures (to put it mildly). They have also shown they have very little interest in doing adventures, since they don't make money. Opening the game just makes it so much easier for others to support the game with adventures, which can surely only be a good thing.

- Likewise, WotC's support for settings has been very limited - for each setting they do a couple of books and then stop. Again, there's not much money in settings. So, it probably makes sense to make it easier for others to support the game with settings material.

- In the area WotC do care about (player-side supplements), they don't have to worry about competition. The DDI is the killer app, and it's something that only WotC have access to. Thus, there's no market for third-party competition in this area.

Of course, this would also open the door for Paizo (or someone else) taking the 4e rules and incorporating them into their own game. Which seems like a pretty big risk, except:

1) Paizo won't do this. One of the big selling points of Pathfinder is that it is not 4e. Pulling in the 4e rules, in whole or in any significant part, would be a bad move.

2) If someone else builds a 3.75e using 3e and 4e mechanics, that's just more competition for Pathfinder - any competitor would be too small to seriously bother WotC.

3) If and when someone does lift some part of the rules and develop them in an interesting manner, those advances would necessarily also be open - meaning that WotC could take any good innovation and roll it right back into D&D.

4) There's almost nothing in 4e that can't be done using the OGL anyway. Healing surges are pretty much just a re-codification of Reserve Points (which are in Unearthed Arcana, and so open content); Daily, Encounter and At-will powers all already exist, if not by name; Minions are just weaker monsters, and elites and solos more powerful ones; and so on. All formally opening the rules actually does is remove even the risk of litigation from the equation.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Okay, related but separate - If WotC came out with a 'Rules Light' version of D&D, somewhere between 3.5 and B E C M I (or Cyclopedia) would you be interested?

Again, 4e remains supported, full OGL, and solid support, etc..

I wouldn't buy this. I've already got the Rules Cyclopedia, and would prefer it to the stated product.

I probably would buy, however, a RC/4E mix. Or specifically, I'd buy a product with the RC scope and sensibility built mainly on 4E design principles. But again differing from your question, one of the things I would expect to win out there is the RC sensibility on miniatures. That is, such a product really should use some kind of abstract positioning that makes miniatures not only optional, but really no more than fluff--with perhaps a side of imaginative visualization.

Since I already run 4E with a heavy dose of RC sensibility, this would come as no surprise to the folks at my table. It would simply make my life even easier, and make any adventures written for that product line more likely to be usable.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Incidentally, it occurs to me that the smartest thing WotC could do at this point in time might well be to open 4e under the OGL.

Would it be possible to do a limited form of OGL such that a 3rd party adventure/sourcebook writer felt safe, but other options were out? That's the only way I see WotC every doing such a thing again.

 

[delericho]

Would it be possible to do a limited form of OGL such that a 3rd party adventure/sourcebook writer felt safe, but other options were out?

Probably not. Things are either open or they're not, and I think that if they opened enough to do adventures (more than people already can and do), I suspect they'd need to open enough to do everything else.

That's the only way I see WotC every doing such a thing again.

Indeed. I don't see any chance of this actually happening, just that I think it would probably be smart. But then, I'm one of those crazy people who think that the OGL was good for WotC, and not just for everyone else.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The company name on the box means nothing to me.

If I want to play a 3.5 era game, I don't need Wizards of the Coast to produce it. There are plenty of companies that have produced plenty of material in the 3.5 era-- changing, updating, adapting, and reworking the material every which way there is-- that there's no shortage to use and enjoy.

If WotC was to produce more material... their new stuff would just join the pile of other 3.5 era material to choose from, and anything picked up would be on a case-by-case basis. Just having the name 'Wizards of the Coast' on it would not push it to the top of the pile.

 

[Desdichado]

Okay, related but separate - If WotC came out with a 'Rules Light' version of D&D, somewhere between 3.5 and B E C M I (or Cyclopedia) would you be interested?

No. My issue remains more or less the same; I'm pretty happy with the game options I have in front of me right now. I've long ago moved on from a place where system interests me for its own sake. Unless it offers something really radically different than what's already in the market... and more to the point, what I already own... I don't see what this offers me that I'd be interested in.

I will start off by saying this would interest me more than a 3.75 - I think that Pathfinder fills that role, and fills it extremely well.

Agreed. Relatively speaking, I'd be more interested in something like this than 3.75, which steps on well-established Pathfinder territory. But I also wonder what this would do that's new, or doesn't step on territory already covered by something in the OSR range, or somewhere else. This sounds quite a bit like Labyrinth Lord (if leaning more towards BECMI) or Basic Fantasy or Castles & Crusades (if leaning towards 3e a bit more) or any number of already existing, supported, and reasonably highly regarded systems. It's not quite a much an uphill battle as competing head-to-head with Pathfinder, I don't think, but I still wonder who this would appeal to and why.

 

[The Shaman]

If WotC were to announce a revised version of the D&D 3.X architecture would you be interested?

No. Not even a little bit.

 

[Croesus]

Okay, related but separate - If WotC came out with a 'Rules Light' version of D&D, somewhere between 3.5 and B E C M I (or Cyclopedia) would you be interested?

I would certainly take a look. Reasonable people will disagree on which parts of 3.x should be kept in a lite system and which can be left out, so the final design might not be what I want, but a lite ruleset is much easier for me to tweak to my group's preferences. So, yeah, I'd give it a shot.