Monte Cook speaks ... and he doesn't hate 3.5!

[coyote6]

3.5 is baaaad

Now we know where Emiricol stands. Even the Chaotic are up in arms! (Albeit strangely sheepish about it)



Originally posted by Emiricol That IS taking things out of context.

What? Oh. My bad.

 

[Kai Lord]

None of which required anything on the scope of what WotC's actually doing. No, I think the point goes to Monte on this one.

Interesting, considering it wasn't Monte's point.

If you buy that a "3.5" version is what fans were actually calling for, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
I myself like many of the changes that they're actually doing, dislike some others, and think that 3 years is an absurdly short amount of time to carry what was fundamentally a very solid game. In short, I agree with Monte on all points as far as I understand him.

Its a good thing you put "as far as I understand him." This has got to be one of the silliest controversies I've seen on these boards.

As if some honored principle is being broken by giving consumers a better product now as opposed to two years from now. Bizarre.

 

[Kaiyosama]

So Monte said:

Here's the very next line, which no one refers to:

While I agree with the point of the statement and understand that his was a rantish post, I would take objection to the "Which no one refers to" bit. Some of us did (it might have even been quite a few, but I'm mostly just speaking for myself right now). Granted it may not have been as obvious as look at this here, following that line in bold (though I believe someone did that as well), but some of us did notice it and point it out. Well, at least some of us who weren't busy hating a hobby we all love.

 

[spunky_mutters]

Here's the scenario I'm worried about. But first, my assumptions:

I'm guessing that Hasbro indicated to WotC what their revenue expectations were. WotC did market research, conducted informal polls, tested out different strategies, and decided that the only way to meet these targets was to have product that sold like the core books. Okay, so they do a revision.

Now what happens next year, and the year after. Presumably the pressure from the parent company will continue, and there will always be the 'easy out' of doing a revision provided enough time has passed. If you know you're going to get another chance to fix things that get messed up a couple of year down the road you'll be more likely to play around with things that may not have been completely broken.

I don't know how close to reality this is, or where the decisions get made, but I do know I don't want to buy another revised edition 3 years from now. I would also be unsupportive of products put out to sell extra crunch to gamers at the expense of system integrity. Oh well, if things really go off the rails we'll always have the SRD.

 

[SemperJase]

From an economic aspect, I can't see how anyone can fault them for doing this. From the POV of customer satisfaction, there's divided opinion.

RPG's are a good, not a service. WotC would look at demand for new books. Not whether owners of old editions don't want the company to produce new ones.

Demand doesn't necessarily mean that people are "asking" for the new edition. Just if they will buy it if it is published.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

What I don't want to see happen in WotC is an adoption of the "GW Syndrome". That being, with every new revision you improve the game's system significantly, but leave in some obviously 'broken' mechanisms that will need fixing (such as magic), or else design broken army books/codices (Chaos) so that you have a 'valid' reason to revise the core rules and its associated supplements every 5 years or so.

We know this isn't true.

 

[woodelf]

Arcana Unearthed is not my version of 3.5. It's not meant to make you throw away your old PH.

Well, then quit putting so much cool stuff in it!

 

[William Ronald]

M own view is that WotC is expected to contribute to Hasbro's bottom line and that there was enough grumbling about different aspects of the rules to make a revision likely. (There is a pattern of revisions a few years after a new D&D edition. 1st edition had revisions such as the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide that introduced skills. 2nd edition had the Skills and Powers rules. Mind you, it does look like the pace of the release of revisions has bicked up.)

Now, I do not know whether or not Hasbro said that WotC had to release a revision or not. However, as consumers, we can vote with our wallets.

I have listened to more than a few arguments over the 3.0 rules. There is at a minimum some desire for rules clarifications and revisions.

So, I think the best thing to do is to determine if the product will make our games more enjoyable. (Though I would hope that a 4th edition is still some years away.)

 

[Beretta]

We know this isn't true.

Psi - I'm not sure what you're referring to. If it's my description of GW's practices then I disagree strongly - WHFB is up to 6th ed and you'd have thought that they'd have gotten it right by now, and - while it is the best incarnation of the game thus far - there are still problems with it borne over from previous editions that they *still* haven't fixed.

If it is in reference to the rest of my post, note that I said that "I don't want to see happen in WotC" a mimicking of GW policy.

If you were to relate the 3 core books as equivalent to 1 GW rule book (WH40K or FB) and the splatbooks as codeci, you can see the parallels in them releasing the revision and the splatbooks (Complete Warrior being the first).

While I'm not saying that WotC are adopting a similar policy, the parallels (if you follow my analogy above) are appearing, and I am hoping that it is just paranoia on my part.

I should reiterate that I'm glad for 3.5 and will be amongst the first to get my copies when they become available. But this time I expect a lot more than 3 years to transpire before I see 3.75 or 4.0 hit the shelves (and more than the 5-6 that GW take).

 

[Umbran]

It's clear that there are elements of D&D 3.5e that are already generating, umm, vigorous discussion of the sort that allegedly prompted D&D 3.5e. .

And each and every supplement to 3.0 has generated discussion. And 3.0 generated discussion. And 2.0 generated discussion, and 1.5 generated discussion. In each stage of White Wolf Storyteller games revisions, there's been discussion. When Shadowrun rules got revised, there was discussion. In the older cases, the discussion was a bit less noticible, as we lacked some communication technologies available today, but it was there.

There is a simple fact that folks tend to miss - you can't please everybody. It is unreasonable to expect that WotC, or anyone else, would please every single player with any given change. And any time there's someone who isn't perfectly pleased, there's discussion.

The whole purpose of EN World is to enable discussion. There's been discussion here for three solid years. Discussion is part of the nature of the gamer beast. They could put out the most perfect game ever devised by human minds, and there'd still be discussion. The existance of discussion is not evidence for anything other than the fact that gamers like to talk their blooming heads off. Specifically, it is not evidence that designers and companies are deliberately designing sub-standard games.