Interesting Post by Mearls on rpg.net

[pawsplay]

Presumably, the smart thing for SPI to do in this situation would be to license out some of their hot properties to competent computer game companies to get a share of the cash while it's flowing. In the mean time, in house they look at new directions in game design, redesign products that don't make money to make better use of their resources, and look at ways to produce a game that will sell to a young audience. Down the road, they can license a successful computer game in order to produce their own hex and counter game based on it, tapping into an existing market.

I think a lot of game hobbies flourish when brilliant designers have access to lots of capital. Later, when major brands are being run by more mediorce designers or by "the suits", things bump along until cash flow problems, unrelated or not, sink the ship. The Suits need to keep tight control of what resources are going in and looking at what comes out. In a situation where they are peddling brilliance and have room to allocate resources to different projects, this is great. In situations where they are selling not-so-great projects or the best projects are starved for design resources, the customer base goes into a death-spiral. When your market shrinks, you shrink your staff and operating costs down to what it takes to keep turning out the good stuff, but not to less than that.

It's like GM. It's not that people don't drive cars any more. It's just that you had a bunch of guys trying their hardest to sell cars that hadn't changed a lot in a long time, weren't brilliantly designed, were compromised every step of the way by a cost-cutting mindset, and in many cases were sold to devoted but decidedly niche segments.

I mean, heck, I still occasionally look for reasonably priced, exciting-looking hex games that can be played in under 6 hours. I just haven't seen too many lately, and I don't know where to shop for the small press items. If I saw people raving about it in the non-RPG sections of my favorite RPG sites, I would definitely check it out.

 

[AllisterH]

I do understand that rationale. It makes total sense. It's a good reason for becoming "WoW-like" in moderation. I've never seen many overt parallels with WoW even in 4e, and I'm never against taking good ideas from electronic gaming (I don't subscribe to any notion of it being an unimaginative taint on the hobby).

However, it is the rationale of a follower, an also-ran, not a market leader, an industry-maker.

It assumes other people are doing things you're not doing. So instead of capitalizing on your own unique contributions, you end up following along with the new big dogs, trying to play catch-up. Playing catch-up is always a losing proposition (doubly true when you're trying to play catch-up to a fluke like WoW).

What I do, is I run as fast as I can in the exact opposite direction. I capitalize on the things that I do that they cannot do. I make things exceptional and unique, things that help re-define the thing they got from me.

In the land of imagining to be a fancy elf with sparkles (where D&D and WoW do overlap), my reaction to something like that would be to take the good ideas (there's gotta be a few!) and run screaming to the other extreme. Be the Anti-WoW. The Non-WoW. Be brazenly social. Be fast-advancing. Be customizable, epically changeable. Emphasize interaction more than combat.

Someone made new rules on you? Great. Make new ones on them.

Perhaps it is good I am only an MBA, not an actual leader of a company. ;-)

That's kind of what they did with 4e.

4e has REALLY, really focused on making it attractive to DM (something which I think previous editions didn't really focus on) and that I think at its core, is the strongest argument for RPGs. Namely the human component and that the game seems more alive with that.

The combination of DMG1, DMG2 and DDI has caused an upswing among my friends of those who want to at least TRY DMing. IME, this has always been the main thing that dictates how many games of D&D you find. It's not the players that people have a problem finding, it's finding a person willing to DM.

In a lot of ways, 4e has run in the opposite direction of the current real-time RPGs. As I mentioned in another thread, 4e is the worst set of D&D rules EVER that one could try to translate to a real-time game and like others, I think they took a look at what worked there and what didn't.

Aggro vs the Defender mechanic is a good example as well as say the typical MMORPG "healer" class (just heal all the time) vs the leader classes of 4e (do something cool and heal as an incidental).

 

[Andor]

I do understand that rationale. It makes total sense. It's a good reason for becoming "WoW-like" in moderation. I've never seen many overt parallels with WoW even in 4e, and I'm never against taking good ideas from electronic gaming (I don't subscribe to any notion of it being an unimaginative taint on the hobby).

However, it is the rationale of a follower, an also-ran, not a market leader, an industry-maker.

It assumes other people are doing things you're not doing. So instead of capitalizing on your own unique contributions, you end up following along with the new big dogs, trying to play catch-up. Playing catch-up is always a losing proposition (doubly true when you're trying to play catch-up to a fluke like WoW).

What I do, is I run as fast as I can in the exact opposite direction. I capitalize on the things that I do that they cannot do. I make things exceptional and unique, things that help re-define the thing they got from me.

In the land of imagining to be a fancy elf with sparkles (where D&D and WoW do overlap), my reaction to something like that would be to take the good ideas (there's gotta be a few!) and run screaming to the other extreme. Be the Anti-WoW. The Non-WoW. Be brazenly social. Be fast-advancing. Be customizable, epically changeable. Emphasize interaction more than combat.

Someone made new rules on you? Great. Make new ones on them.

Perhaps it is good I am only an MBA, not an actual leader of a company. ;-)

It's worth noting however that the company the most "You're killing D&D!" ire is directed against, Blizzard, does not innovate. They never have, they probably never will. It's not what they do. What they do instead is find something fun and popular and then spend the time and effort to do it really, really well. They don't release buggy betaware. When you buy a blizzard product you know your going to get a game that works, works well, and is fun (assuming you like that sort of game to begin with.) You do not buy one expecting to be wowed with avant guarde design, because you won't get it. But it's a buisiness model that surely works for them.

BTW my chief problem with 4e is that it got rushed out the door half-finished and unpolished. And I just don't see any excuse for the unquestioned industry leader to act like some lesser publisher that has to go to print now or they won't make payroll.

 

[BlightCrawler]

BTW my chief problem with 4e is that it got rushed out the door half-finished and unpolished. And I just don't see any excuse for the unquestioned industry leader to act like some lesser publisher that has to go to print now or they won't make payroll.

That's my opinion of WoW's release. Perfectly playable and fun, needed some tweaks. If you thought 4E was "half-finished" and "unpolished" I'd hate to have you as an editor.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

He seems to imply that a major motivation for WotC when designing 4E was that pandering to their existing base wasn't the best way to go.

 

[Umbran]

In the land of imagining to be a fancy elf with sparkles (where D&D and WoW do overlap), my reaction to something like that would be to take the good ideas (there's gotta be a few!) and run screaming to the other extreme. Be the Anti-WoW. The Non-WoW. Be brazenly social. Be fast-advancing. Be customizable, epically changeable. Emphasize interaction more than combat.

You've got an MBA? So the phrase "utilizing your core strengths" should not be new to you.

There's a problem there - the questions aren't only "What do those games do well that we could also do?" and "What do we do well that they cannot?" But, "What can we sell to our chosen target market?"

For example, the basic D&D market likes the combat. Even the deep immersion role players like an occasional combat for the dramatic tension and plot motion it creates.

As a general rule, running the exact opposite way is not a good deal, if that's away from some of what you already do well. That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

 

[ashockney]

Sue their pants off.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Sue their pants off.

You have no standing whatsoever to do that.

 

[Mercurius]

ok, so leaving the anology (good as it might be) I have to say Wow is the way of tommorro for rpgs weather we like it or not (I choose not, since I hate the game with a passion).

The one thing to keep in mind is, that tommoro is not for some years still. Until they can generate enough of the world to keep the plot running without repet dungeons (What I call dumb) it will not replace a person. But as we see game tables to paper and dice rp over the web, as we see MMorpgs grow and expand, maybe one day I will run my D&D world online...or maybe my grandchildren will.

That day is comeing (Boy does that thought make me cringe just typeing it), but by then we will have to accept it.

Except that MMOs will NEVER be able to replicate human imagination because human imagination is limitless, whereas MMOs are, by definition, finite and programmed.

It is the same reason why the "virtual" will never be as good as the "real."

About five years ago, Monte Cook said in a blog post that one of the mechanical things they hardwired into 3e was System Mastery. They took inspiration from M:tG, where you have some subpar cards, some better cards, and it was a Reward for the player to discover what those choices were and use them. So toughness was meant to be a subpar option from the get-go. Whirlwind attack was meant to be not as strong as other options. It was up to the player to figure this out.

This was the 3e designer's philosophy. Whether you agree with this or not, this is how they designed the system. But, if I were to say, "3e is just like M:TG", I do not think I would be right. Even though the designers explicitly looked at something that M:tG did (and did well) for inspiration.

This is exactly what I don't like about 3rd edition--that the more you know the system, the better you are at the game. It is a "munchkin's" wet dream.

 

[Jack99]

BTW my chief problem with 4e is that it got rushed out the door half-finished and unpolished. And I just don't see any excuse for the unquestioned industry leader to act like some lesser publisher that has to go to print now or they won't make payroll.

Is this about the Skill Challenge rules?