Is WOTC/Hasbro mismanaging D&D?

[Rune]

Yes, the "feel" and "style" are different. As I have said before, I see it as "scientific" rather than "artistic". For a DM, it confines his/her ability to be creative within the set of rules. For players, it makes them focus on the rules rather than roleplaying. Hence, emergence of a vast army of "rules lawyers" like never before.

Strange. This has not been my experience. To me, the feel and the style are more fantastic (less euro-medieval based) and just a little more edgy. Furthermore, I've found that the new edition of the rules allows for far more creativity within the rules than the older editions. The older editions forced you to go outside the rules to be creative. Remember how every DM had a big binder of house-rules? How is that less "scientific" or more "artistic?" It just means that the rules are probably more ill-conceived and the rules lawyers have to be familiar with the house-rules.

But 3e rules have many good points in that they provide a logical framework and leaves out a lot of guesswork for creating your own rules. I think it is an improvement overall, despite being so cumbersome.

Quite so. Except that I've never found them to be cumbersome in the slightest. 2e Combat & Tactics, on the other hand...

I will admit that this may be because I was hanging around Eric's site since shortly after it went up and had a pretty good grasp of the combat mechanics before I ever got my hands on a PHB. I never, for instance, had a problem with WotC's explanation of the AoO, because I already knew how it worked and under what circumstances. Ultimately, however, the d20 System streamlines things. The point was to make D&D less cumbersome. Thankfully, it worked marvelously well.

As for you analysis of my logic, you will need to read other people's posts as well as my own to understand that I was quoting another person on point "C".

I did read the context of your posts and I still maintain that "~C" does not follow from "If A, then B." Whether you were quoting another person or not.

 

[SemperJase]

Re: Ahhhh, napalm!

I doubt my point of view is going to be popular, but here goes. (Remember that I'm not a MBA, or anything.)

Don't sell yourself short Khur. That was a great analysis. You don't have to be an MBA to have a legitimate view of business.

 

[Khur]

Thanx!

Don't sell yourself short Khur. That was a great analysis. You don't have to be an MBA to have a legitimate view of business.

Thanks. I take that as a great compliment from someone who lists their occupation as "financial services".

 

[Mahiro Satsu]

I was very happy with DnD when it was ADnD 2nd ed. and owned by TSR. There were many different campaign settings, some of which were less attractive to me than others, but there were many campaign settings. That is what I miss most. I liked the idea of running a few Darksun games then maybe switching to the arabian one. The stranger and more different the settings were the more i liked then, and the less they sold apparently.

Hasboro I feel is killing the DnD creativity. I have little proof, but thats what it feels like. I hope they let some more interesting idea through.

 

[Olive]

wow... what a rude discussion

anyway: perosanlly, i voted no. this because i don't think what sir edgar is talking about is mis management. if he said 'is cutting some of the best creative talent from WotC mismanagement' i probably would have voted yes...

but i think 3e is great. i think most of the stuff released is great. i wish that D&Dg had all the demihuman deities, and would happily have lost all the 'real world' pantheons, but its certainly better than the original D&Dg, i mean at least it discusses the belief systems of those gods, not just stats.

the whole beauty of the OGL is that books like Tome of Horrors can be released! thats why i think WotC is doing a fine job generally.

also, while its true that just because we are buying the books doesn't mean that we are totally happy with them, i think that the fact that 3e books are selling better than 2e, and the number of people who are playing DnD again, as well as those who are excited about it more (like me) as a result of 3e shows that we're in a lot better place now than we were 4 years ago, even if there isn't an official yeti conversion

 

[Mercule]

Strange. This has not been my experience. To me, the feel and the style are more fantastic (less euro-medieval based) and just a little more edgy. Furthermore, I've found that the new edition of the rules allows for far more creativity within the rules than the older editions. The older editions forced you to go outside the rules to be creative. Remember how every DM had a big binder of house-rules? How is that less "scientific" or more "artistic?" It just means that the rules are probably more ill-conceived and the rules lawyers have to be familiar with the house-rules.

This has pretty much been my experience. I suppose one could argue that the books are more rules-oriented than in previous editions. I'm not sure that I'd agree that was true, nor would I agree that having a rules-oriented rules-book was bad.

What I've found is that the 3E design team put a lot of thought and effort into tightening down, balancing, streamlining, and just stabilizing the core rules set. This allows me, as a DM (or player), to just be creative. I don't have to come up with a full-blown mechanic for every detail of my world. Most of the time, it's "use this skill/ability/level-based-value to roll against a DC from this table". (This is actually my beef with some of the 3rd party products out there: They still seem to want a brand new, full-blown mechanic for every new idea.)

Being a computer programmer, I relating it to building an application. Previous editions are like the hobby-shop crud I do for my own use: I have to jam in some odd input values to get the answer I want, if I click the buttons in the wrong order I'll get a memory leak and things will crash, no help file, etc. You've almost got to be a programmer (game developer) to use it. Heck, sometimes I've got to go in and change a hard-coded value or routine everytime I want to do something even slightly different.

3E is more like what I do for pay: Consistant interface, input boxes are actually labeled, etc. The idea is that anyone can come in and use what I've created. Basically, just sit down and _use_ it instead of tweaking while using.

What's the difference? The amount of attention I pay to and the effort I put into the code structure/integrity. The same is true of the 3E rules. Their much more "stable" and internally consistant that earlier editions. The difference is that all the work is laid out for people to look at in D&D, so it can be a bit jarring when you realize that a solid framework is more obvious than piecemeal.

 

[rounser]

A rebuttal to the 3E more creative crowd

A higher degree of codification of character abilities in 3E can spark ideas, but it can also focus more attention and time on the ruleset rather than the imagination. There's more time spent sweating over stat blocks this edition, which detracts from the creative element. Perhaps not much, but I know I'd rather run 1E on the fly than 3E....a lot less rules, skills and feats to worry about and know when improvising.

Is it worth the payoff in terms of streamlining and codification of fun stuff? I think so, though I think there's room for 4E to improve on 3E with regard to stat bloat if it ever gets made.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

OK, let me clarify a few points.
Books-They make money, and are a mixture of useless, semi-useful, and useful, so they are a decent product, no problem there.

Now, to clarify a few other things.
I understand that Hasbro is all about the bottom line, and I still maintain that because that is their total mantra, and in some ways they are very short sighted about the bottom line, that will result (and is resulting) in mismanagement.
And yes, I have used e-tools, one of my gaming group rushed out and bought a copy. He's very upset. Had I bought it, I would have drove to Seattle and gotten my money back. I do better with PC-Gen and stuff I wrote awhile back.
I didn't mean to sound all X-filey on you with the last statement. Sure, they probably did it as a PR stunt, but so what? If someone publically slanders you does that mean you should say: "Aww, it was a PR stunt." When they want to be your friend, or should you always remain a little suspicious?
You can disagree all you want, that's your right, but I still feel that Hasbro is mismanaging WotC.
They worry about the bottom line, how to make inferior products and still get top dollar for them. Do you think that we as the consumer will reap any of the savings that they get for canning these top level people? If you do, more fool you.
Hasbro makes crap video games. They did with Microprose, they did before that. They are still doing it. What that shows me, is when it comes right down to it, if it isn't a board game, the board of directors, thier marketing, and thier R&D section probably can't comprehend it too well.
While WotC understands the gamer mentality, I serious doubt that Hasbro does.

And remember, just because Hasbro bought the game, doesn't mean things will get better or worse. There is no real "Mr. Hasbro" just a bunch of people sitting on a board, figuring out how to stuff their pockets full.
Whether or not this will turn out to be the RPG version of Enron or not, only time will tell.

 

[Mahiro Satsu]

Warlord Ralts

I concur completely.

 

[Sir Edgar]

I was going to say pretty much exactly what Rounser said. Don't get me wrong, I think 3rd edition is great. But the focus has shifted a considerable deal from creative ideas about plots and character development to stats-building for npc's. Think about how much time it took to do a stats block during 1st edition (a few minutes) vs. 3rd edition (30minutes-1hour).