An open letter to Randy Buehler

[reveal]

This is true. I'm just growing weary of Hussar speaking from a position of ignorance, especially when it concerns my company or its products. I should have read through the whole thread, but I wanted to nip it in the bud as soon as possible.

I'm glad he copped to his mistake, and hope that he will refrain from strident posting about things he doesn't know much about in the future.

--Erik

I have a question for you, Mr. Mona. Paizo did not put out an overview for Shackled City, but did for Age of Worms (a bit late but it was there), and then one prior to Savage Tide. Why the change of heart? What did you learn from the first AP that made you want to design an overview for the other two AP's?

 

[Spatula]

I have a question for you, Mr. Mona. Paizo did not put out an overview for Shackled City, but did for Age of Worms (a bit late but it was there), and then one prior to Savage Tide. Why the change of heart? What did you learn from the first AP that made you want to design an overview for the other two AP's?

...change of heart? Where did they take a "no overview" stance prior to publishing one? How many people thought such a thing would be useful prior to Shackled City, the first plot-centric 1st-20th adventure path?

 

[catsclaw227]

I see Hussar confirmed it himself: Petulant posturing.

Suggestion: In future, if you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut.

Easy Tiger.

Erik, I dig many (most) of the things you have done with Paizo and WOTC, but maybe it would have been better for someone else from Paizo to step in and comment, and with less emotion.

Admittedly, though the Paizo APs did provide some general overview, the Dungeon Mag one's weren't perfect either.

Shackled City didn't have one that I could find, AoW Overload was late and changed (again, nitpick mostly), and STAP's overview came an issue BEFORE the AP started. Hussar admitted to missing it because he bought Dungeon for the AP starting with the first issue of the AP. Oh... and you had to BUY the STAP overview by purchasing Issue 138.

Still better than WoTC's excuse though.

Like the other poster's have stated, I am a DM and I want an overview. If you want me to run the darn thing for my gaming group, I recommend getting an outline in my hands. I promise I won't hold you to every letter and I won't nerd rage if you change the plot a bit mid-stream.

 

[reveal]

...change of heart? Where did they take a "no overview" stance prior to publishing one? How many people thought such a thing would be useful prior to Shackled City, the first plot-centric 1st-20th adventure path?

No, but they didn't put out one and, as far as I know, didn't plan on putting one out else their record makes me believe they would have. So somewhere along the line they changed their minds and released them. I would like to know why. I am hoping the Mr. Buehler can learn from Paizo's example.

 

[Staffan]

I don't doubt his M:tG qualifications. I think that it is great he worked his way up the Magic ladder. All that experience however doesn't necessarily translate to electronic development.

Yeah, from my armchair-management position here it does seem like Randy is an example of the Peter Principle - do well, get promoted, until eventually you get to a position you're not competent enough for.

 

[Erik Mona]

I have a question for you, Mr. Mona. Paizo did not put out an overview for Shackled City, but did for Age of Worms (a bit late but it was there), and then one prior to Savage Tide. Why the change of heart? What did you learn from the first AP that made you want to design an overview for the other two AP's?

Good question.

The outline for Shackled City was only a few sentences per adventure, and as I recall only the first few plots were even sketched out. When it was started, the editorial staff wasn't really even sure where it was going to end. Authors deliberately threw in dangling plot threads to be followed up by other authors, and everything was a bit of a mess at the beginning.

This is to be expected, as it as completely new ground. A brilliant, mad experiment.

A little too mad for my tastes, so when I took over the magazine around the 4th installment I decided the path needed a more complete outline. We had a meeting at Paizo with all of the AP authors past and future and plotted out how the whole thing would come together.

Still, I wasn't satisfied with the final result, so for Age of Worms I wrote a much more detailed outline, including plotting certain encounters into the outlines.

The players had been asking for a complete outline since the beginning of Shackled City, so we knew we needed to include it into the magazine at the start.

Unfortunately, the content for the first installment--which I (over)wrote personally--was far more than we could fit into a single issue, so we had to move the overview into the Age of Worms Overload download. Because _that_ had to be produced outside the breakneck magazine schedule, it took longer to come out than any of us wanted.

When it came time to do Savage Tide, we made sure to include the overview in the magazine itself, since we were not comfortable with the hoops people had to jump through to get the outline in Overload.

You learn a lot each time you do one of these. Part of the current issue, in my opinion, is that the current DDI staff is going to need to learn all of these lessons over again, whereas we are building on cumulative experience each time.

--Erik

 

[Pygon]

The players had been asking for a complete outline since the beginning of Shackled City, so we knew we needed to include it into the magazine at the start.

This is what I'm hoping WotC changes their mind about, because people are asking for it right now.

 

[Erik Mona]

Shackled City didn't have one that I could find, AoW Overload was late and changed (again, nitpick mostly), and STAP's overview came an issue BEFORE the AP started. Hussar admitted to missing it because he bought Dungeon for the AP starting with the first issue of the AP. Oh... and you had to BUY the STAP overview by purchasing Issue 138.

These things are going to change. In fact, it makes sense to put that out there up front, but that's also something I wouldn't know if not for having done it several times already.

My problem with Hussar's point is that he was speaking from authority about something he actually knew very little about. I appreciate that he's copped to his ignorant mistake, but if Dungeon #139 was really the first issue he ever bought, what business at all does he have commenting on what was or wasn't presented in the issues he did not own?

Rather than say "I don't have the earlier issues but..." or "I can't remember seeing..." he said:

Funny, when Paizo did Dungeon, there was never, not once, an overview of all the adventures until after the entire AP was released. Why should that change now?

What business does he have saying "never, not once" about at least 24 magazines he does not own, and presumably has never even read?

Again, he's copped to it so I don't want to press the issue any further, but when this sort of thing is posted about stuff I worked on and I see it, you can be sure that I'll set the record straight.

--Erik

 

[Shemeska]

Yeah, from my armchair-management position here it does seem like Randy is an example of the Peter Principle - do well, get promoted, until eventually you get to a position you're not competent enough for.

I can't say if he's the best fit for the position or not, given that I'm not really sure just what the position of VP of Digital Gaming actually entails. However I can say without a doubt that whatever group of managers has been in charge of the various digital initiatives for WotC over the past year has repeatedly and continually done a botched job. Gleemax was dead on arrival and the coding group behind it and the DDI kinda faded from the spotlight at the same time everything 'transitioned to in-house'. Edragon and Edungeon have been largely house advertising organs for 4e with the occasional good article, but certainly not anything to justify canning the print magazines over. The various elements of the DDI missed their initial release date, and now they've gone into an apparently phased rollout with the (incomplete and still rather buggy) compendium being the first thing, and the others still somewhere in vaporware land till proven in public betas rather than constructed and hand-held demonstrations.

But what has me most worried about the status of the whole thing, and the management behind it all, are the new slew of hirings which are positions you fill when you start a new project (or scrap one and start over from the ground floor), and the following statement from Mr Buehler the other day:

"I don’t plan to spend a lot of time discussing the Game Table in this column in the near future because it’s not done and lots of features are still subject to change between now and when we eventually launch it."

You don't talk about a problem project when it was supposed to be out by now and it was intended to be part of your company's major revenue stream by this point. That's not a good sign for healthy development. Time will prove me wrong, but I'm calling this one now: they're partially or wholly scrapping the code on the game table. It's buggy and not up to snuff, and so they're restarting development, probably heavily using any new hires from those open positions. Don't expect to see it in 2008.

Edit: And if I'm wrong, I'll buy Mr Buehler a beer at GenCon '09.

 

[Vocenoctum]

This is true. I'm just growing weary of Hussar speaking from a position of ignorance, especially when it concerns my company or its products. I should have read through the whole thread, but I wanted to nip it in the bud as soon as possible.

I'm glad he copped to his mistake, and hope that he will refrain from strident posting about things he doesn't know much about in the future.

--Erik

Yeah, sure, but when you read the thread and saw the error pointed out by myself and a couple others, most of them more polite than the way you put it, and then saw he himself admitted his error, you just posted more snark rather than edit your post?

Even this where you admit he corrected himself, you still take the time to personally attack him.