7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

Fildrigar said:

It seems clear that the "plan" and "what actually happened" are not the same things. So it's at least a small bit disingenuous to point and say that the edition change was planned all along, when the plan was to reissue the books with errata, clarifications, and new art.

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The original claim was "I don't think WotC has ever looked at the sales and said, "Welp, time for a .5!" " and Montes quote shows that actually yes that was exactly what WotC was planning right from the start.

pkt77242 said:

Did you ever think that WotC/Hasbro is requiring the plan? Many companies demand long-term plans (usually around 5 years or so), so it should not be shocking (or upsetting) that he is working on a detailed business plan for the next 5-7 years.

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You think Perkins is working on a detailed business plan? He said he is working on storylines. I have no inside knowledge, but I assume that this is done so that Wizards can coordinate with their partners that need longer lead times for video games, miniatures, etc.

Wicht said:

"folk hero," "champion", and "shield mastery" are all perfectly normal words. Dragonborn is a race. Only "Chainlock" is new and its obviously a class.

In conversation, context and the normal usage of words allows one to keep up very easily with the words you gave. Likewise, most of the words introduced by 3e were fairly intuitive. And things like "MAD" were not actually common words associated with that edition outside of certain small groups (I certainly never used that term). People playing 3e and people playing 2e could have a conversation about their game and aside from THAC0 they were all talking about the same basic things.

But then came 4e and the parlance completely changed. I would lurk in a 4e thread and it felt like the language was completely different.

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I don't really understand why.

I can describe the PCs in my 4e game, and I'd be surprised if the descriptions caused any deep puzzlement: fighter/cleric, demigod ranger-cleric, invoker/wizard/divine philosopher/sage of ages, sorcerer/bard who is an emergent Primordial, questing knight paladin of the Raven Queen who is a Marshall of Letherna.

The only thing there that you mightn't recognise is the placename Letherna - the realm of the god of death.

I can talk about the abilities they use - "Blazing Starfall" and Demonsoul Bolts for the sorcerer, Enfeebling Strike for the paladin, Twin Strike for the ranger, weapon AoEs for the fighter, spells like Twist of Fate or Hand of Radiance or Tide of the First Storm for the invoker - and they shouldn't be any more or less opaque than spell and ability descriptions from any other version of D&D.

I'm puzzled as to what the "completely changed" parlance was. Acronyms for ability durations (EoNT, SoNT, etc)? Role labels (striker, defender, controller, leader)? As someone who has played B/X, AD&D and a little bit of 3E, I didn't feel the parlance had changed very much at all. Maybe I have a good tolerance for jargon?

That said, when I read a 3E or PF thread I sometimes have to Google and acronym or a piece of terminology to work out what is being talked about. But that's just part and parcel of not being familiar with a particular game system.

TwoSix said:

These sales arguments are simply pedantry framed as historical accuracy disguising the attempt to make a moral judgment on the worth of 4e. Either

A) "4e's failure is due to its rejection by the marketplace because it was an inferior game." or
B) "4e was a great game, and its failure was a due to a combination of corporate mishandling and the intransigence of a segment of the playerbase."

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I think 4e was a great game, and its "failure" (ie that it is no longer being published) is obviously due to the "intransigence" of a segment of the playerbase (ie they didn't buy it).

What puzzle me about this thread (and not just the sales argument part of it) is the normative overlay on so many comments: "betraying fans", "not meeting expectations", etc.

WotC are a commercial publisher (among other things). They will publish stuff that they think makes money. Because of the other things, their decisions about publication will also be affected by their thoughts about how publication interacts with those other things. But they don't owe any duties to me, or other past customers. They do owe duties to present subscribers (namely, supply the subscription or pay for terminating the contract). But that's about it, really.

If customers are "intransigent" and don't buy stuff, c'est la vie. (Even as we speak I am intransigently not buying any Pathfinder books!) If WotC is "intransigent" and doesn't publish stuff, well that's its prerogative, and its look out if it goes wrong. (But the idea that it is obviously making a mistake strikes me as ludicrous - no online poster has the access to financial information that WotC's managers do, and that informs their decisions.)

4e, like many other great games before it, is no longer in print. That's what can happen when popular culture is owned by private commercial entities. It doesn't seem to me to have any deeper moral significance.

pemerton said:

I don't really understand why.

I can describe the PCs in my 4e game, and I'd be surprised if the descriptions caused any deep puzzlement: fighter/cleric, demigod ranger-cleric, invoker/wizard/divine philosopher/sage of ages, sorcerer/bard who is an emergent Primordial, questing knight paladin of the Raven Queen who is a Marshall of Letherna.

The only thing there that you mightn't recognise is the placename Letherna - the realm of the god of death.

I can talk about the abilities they use - "Blazing Starfall" and Demonsoul Bolts for the sorcerer, Enfeebling Strike for the paladin, Twin Strike for the ranger, weapon AoEs for the fighter, spells like Twist of Fate or Hand of Radiance or Tide of the First Storm for the invoker - and they shouldn't be any more or less opaque than spell and ability descriptions from any other version of D&D.

I'm puzzled as to what the "completely changed" parlance was. Acronyms for ability durations (EoNT, SoNT, etc)? Role labels (striker, defender, controller, leader)? As someone who has played B/X, AD&D and a little bit of 3E, I didn't feel the parlance had changed very much at all. Maybe I have a good tolerance for jargon?

That said, when I read a 3E or PF thread I sometimes have to Google and acronym or a piece of terminology to work out what is being talked about. But that's just part and parcel of not being familiar with a particular game system.

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Firstly, I am upfront that this is my experience and that the experience of other people may vary.

Secondly, I think it fair to distinguish here between the conversations of char-op types (or any other small subset of the larger community which develop their own jargon not actually found in the game) and your more regular gamer.

But here is my take, and its just my opinion on the matter from an outsider's perspective (outsider to 4e)....

4e lent itself to a more mechanically oriented talk than other editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Board Games of a certain type often have this problem, where learning the game involves learning a particular shorthand for how to talk about the game. But while such jargon is useful to players of the game, it does tend to isolate the conversations from those not playing the game. All games have this to some extent, but my observation was that 4e had it far more than BX, ADnD or 3e. I think, and this is just my opinion again, that this was largely due to how the rules were presented in the rule books.

My second observation was that there was a difference in how 4e players tended to describe their games. I know, and you don't have to convince me that it is so, that it is possible for 4e players to talk about the game from a story aspect. I have seen it done and believe it can be done. But my personal observation was that this was not the typical way for 4e players to discuss the game. Most often they seemed to me to be discussing it from a more mechanical or gamist perspective. Again, I think this is simply the nature of the system lending itself to a particular sort of viewpoint and I see it all the time with boardgames. Its not a bad thing, it merely is what it is.

But I am still glad I have an easier time talking with 5e players about their game.

Trickster Spirit said:

Sure, but given that they've prioritized seven years of storylines over the conversion documents, they likely view the conversion documents as an afterthought. Something it would be nice to give to fans, with the staff working on it when they have some dead space in their schedule to fill, not a priority with a deadline even. Which would be a possible explanation for why one person's absence could derail the conversion documents - having to shuffle everyone else around might mean assigning more projects to everyone, leaving less time to work on non-priorities like conversion docs.

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Sadly, projects that are going to be sold have to be prioritied. And that's not a "big corporate Hasbro" dig. Any company of any size that needed to back burner a project is going to back burner the freebee first.

weldon said:

You think Perkins is working on a detailed business plan? He said he is working on storylines. I have no inside knowledge, but I assume that this is done so that Wizards can coordinate with their partners that need longer lead times for video games, miniatures, etc.

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Yeah, I'm going to agree here and speculate that the tidbit from Perkins is more about R&D planning than sales targets and cycle planning. The positive to this is R&D sees at least a 7 year future for 5e. Of course, the financial situation X years down the road could cause WotC to reassess, but they are optimistic at present.

pemerton said:

I'm puzzled as to what the "completely changed" parlance was. Acronyms for ability durations (EoNT, SoNT, etc)? Role labels (striker, defender, controller, leader)? As someone who has played B/X, AD&D and a little bit of 3E, I didn't feel the parlance had changed very much at all. Maybe I have a good tolerance for jargon?

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I don't know what EoNT or SoNT are, or most of the other 4e acronyms. The role labels are more accessible.

A lot of it, I think, can be attributed to the internet. Rather than isolated groups of players that require a common language to communicate when they meet, the internet created a single group that was able to rapidly evolve and disseminate it's own jargon

pemerton said:

I don't really understand why.

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Are you interesting in TRYING, or do you just want to convince him that his opinion can't possibly exist?
It seems the latter.

This closed minded approach has been a bane of 4E from day 1.

Nellisir said:

I don't know what EoNT or SoNT are, or most of the other 4e acronyms. The role labels are more accessible.

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End of/Start of Next Turn. These were fairly common durations in 4e (replacing the "1 round" duration of a spell like Command, but much more widespread than in AD&D).