When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[scruffygrognard]

Neither are valid arguments. 4E's success as a whole does not depend on you buying it, or people who frequent the stores you do buying it. You haven't even based you conclusion of the actual number of copies actually sold by your local retailers, just the number you perceive (or assume, or guess) to have been sold.

I'm sure that 4th edition is selling REALLY well but, as far as I've seen, no one I know who has played 4th edition wants to stick with it.

I TOTALLY realize that what I'm seeing among the 20-odd gamers I know may may be an anomaly... but it's odd that such a popular game could lose every potential customer that I know personally.

A the same time, most of these players have bought the PHB or the core set but won't be subscribing to the DDI or purchasing any other 4e products. This, to me, points at great initial sales of 4th edition products with a sharply declining market afterward. As I've said this is based solely on what I'm seeing but that (and my gut feeling) is all I have to go on.

 

[Thasmodious]

But I can speak generally and say: build for modularity and playstyle inclusivity. The founding philosophies of "this is fun... anything else is not" that seem to inform 4e--and are so much as spelled out in the 4e DMG and dragon articles--to me betray an exclusivity in the design and (as put by Irda Ranger in another thread) monoculture at WotC's D&D design team.

I couldn't disagree more and I don't understand this stubborn insistence from some that 4e is a limited focus game that attacks other playstyles. It isn't backed up by the system as presented, nor the design philosophy.

4e IS built for modularity and playstyle exclusivity. 3e wasn't. The designers tried to design every little subsystem they thought anyone might want and cram it into the overall game structure. It ended up limiting, rather than expanding game play, as you were stuck with the designers half-baked craft system instead of a well thought out, balanced one (for example). If crafting wasn't a part of your groups playstyle, those rules were a waste or resulted in actual conflict with the system (endless gold loops). If your group was all about the crafting, the rules that were there were not nearly sufficient and you had to houserule them to death anyway.

4e is modular. The core books present the core system and the core component of D&D gameplay - encounter resolution. With a solid, balanced system you can plug away, easily adding whatever subsystems you want. You can take them easily from past editions, other games, whatever, and thanks to tables such as that on pg. 42 DMG, and advice from the section on house ruling its easy to do in a balanced manner.

Want to plug a more involved economic system on the core equipment rules, easy to do. For core gameplay, mundane equipment is largely irrelevant to adventurer wealth. This is, obviously, consistent with every other edition. In 4e though, rather than devote pages to it, and come up with starting gold tables, all PCs get the same and the prices are set a bit artificially because you only do it once. Want more for a low magic game or one where secondary gear (like pitons, chalk, etc) prove very important (such as an exploration/wilderness focused game)? Its easy to institute your own starting gold tables and expand the lists using information from past editions. The gold scale in the game really applies to magic items, so you can even just plug the equipment straight from 3.5 into the game with no problem.

Want crafting or other skill sets outside of the core adventuring set of skills? Easy. Add them in, decide how many of this extra set of skills each class gets to pick. They can do this without affecting their ability as adventurers. Want those choices to affect their abilities as adventurers, add the skills, don't give any from free, just add access to the class lists.

Crafting rules? Use the craft points system from UA or the crappy 3e system if you really want. Use the table on page 42 for the DCs.

The design of 4e lets you add anything your group wants into the game without worrying overmuch about its interaction with the core rules. It also has the added benefit that if your group wants something as part of the game, they are unlikely to look to abuse it, but to use it in the spirit intended. For some optimizers in 3e, all the crafting system or the artificier were good for were endless gold loops.

At no point does the game system tell you how you must play the game. It makes it easier than ever before to tailor the game to your groups playstyle without interference from the rules. The only conceit the game engages in is in saying that the core of gameplay for D&D games is - gaining levels and treasure through defeating monsters and enemies. If this isn't part of your gameplay, then D&D, not just 4th edition, is not for you.

The assumption is that gamers are generally a creative, imaginative bunch. I've never understood the attitude of some in saying - "they took away xxx, my group likes to xxx, now we can't xxx, 4e sucks". Especially as the system is designed to be modular. This will be a major area where 3PPs will find wiggle room, I would imagine - building subsystems (craft, profession/background skills, alternate skill systems, etc.).

 

[The Little Raven]

Why not? Often, publishers release numbers if their book is selling well.

Because Wizards of the Coast is a subsidiary of Hasbro, a publicly traded corporation. There are laws that regulate the flow of information from publicly traded companies, and their subsidiaries, to the public in order to prevent things like insider trading.

 

[DaveMage]

I'm dubious about that.

1e was a fledgling game, and there was a lot of undiscovered country then. New races, classes, proficiencies, and settings were all things that came out in those early years, and came out slowly.

3e did not start out from ground zero here. 3e was built on the shoulders of a giant. It incorporated many of the features that showed up in 1e supplements right out of the starting gate, and whereas it took years for FR and Dragonlance to come out for 1e, dozens of settings were available for 3e in the first year.

It seems that you demarcate 3.5 as a new starting point. It's even less so than 3.0 was. It was a refinement of 3.0. The resetting of the supplement curve would be even less drastic.

Perhaps there were more options that could have been tried, but fundamentally, each supplement sells less than the last. I can see there was a genuine economic need for a new edition to "reset" the game in the time frame it happened.

What I disagree with is the shape 4e took. A system could have been designed that addressed the tastes of a broader degree of the existing market.

I use 3.5 as a starting point becasue a lot of the products updated 3.0 material for 3.5 (in other words, it was the same stuff re-presented). And, as you say, it pretty much covered the 1E rules as well, but not the other stuff.

And, don't think rules supplements. I think there were too many of these. (So for rules supplements, I agree - enough already.) But think adventures. Think locations. Tell me it wouldn't have been cool to have the Palace of Bones as a product. Tell me it wouldn't have been cool to have Abysm detailed. Tell me it wouldn't have been cool to have Undermountain (or some other mega-dungeon) designed by WotC in 3.5. And I cannot be convinced that there aren't products out there that I can't even fathom that would be great additions to the 3.5 multiverse.

Bruce Cordell wrote the incredible "Return to the Tomb of Horrors" very late in the 2E life cycle. That was a fantastic product. There is much potential for that type of stuff at any point in a product's life cycle.

 

[Carpe DM]

Because Wizards of the Coast is a subsidiary of Hasbro, a publicly traded corporation. There are laws that regulate the flow of information from publicly traded companies, and their subsidiaries, to the public in order to prevent things like insider trading.

Um. No. Rule 10b-6 does not cover that eventuality. There is no law prohibiting the release of number of book sales. And we can see why: half the bestseller book jackets out there would be illegal.

-Carpe

 

[Cadfan]

I TOTALLY realize that what I'm seeing among the 20-odd gamers I know may may be an anomaly... but it's odd that such a popular game could lose every potential customer that I know personally.

I don't think its so odd that groups tend to go similar ways.

 

[Windjammer]

To me these complaints seem to be more of "I personally don't like the changes made, so there must be something wrong with them."

I think it was mentioned before in this thread that, among other things, what put people off playing 4E was the rabid fans on the net who deteriorated into personal attacks and feeble ad hominem argumentation in response to arguments that were neither. You might want to consider that.

I like how you jump from "3PP stuff is more imaginative" to saying that Mike Mearls, who started out with 3PP, doesn't know what's good for D&D.

Ridiculous. Mearls exchanged the creative freedom he had at Malhavoc for the coolest thing ever: to officially design his own D&D. I suggest you read Book of Iron Might and Book of Nine Swords side by side. If you think Mearls' design principles haven't changed inbetween these products, I conclude you don't really care about the man beyond him sticking his name on a book. Another very, very good comparison would be to see how Keep on the Shadowfell fares with Necromancer's Siege of Durgam's Folly (in my humble estimate, Mearls' finest adventure to date). It's basically the same plot idea, except that the execution couldn't differ more: the first one is low on non-combat resolution, hyper-linear and an offense in railroading of the very worst sort, where Durgam's Folly shines in non-linear module design and endless opportunity for non-combat roleplaying challenges. To see how much WotC' ultra-linear delve format is out of touch with Mearls' own creative principles - hence, to see how much of creative control he had to sacrifice for working on 4E - read this article . And to see how much Mearls' design principles changed on the side of crunch, I recommend this insightful article on the "Design Ethos at Wizards". (It chimes well with what Psion said in this thread, if I may say so.)

I don't have high expectations from any game that Slavicsek is responsible for. On the other hand, Mike Mearls is the head developer for 4th Edition. Mearls is responsible for a slew of high quality D20 supplements and the generally excellent Iron Heroes. Unfortunately, since Mearls started working at WotC, there are plenty of indications that he's swallowed the Kool-Aid. Which leads to the other big strike 4th Edition has against it, in my opinion: the new Design Ethos at Wizards.

For the nuts and bolts of the arguments to back up the last line, follow the link I just gave.
​

 

[Psion]

Bruce Cordell wrote the incredible "Return to the Tomb of Horrors" very late in the 2E life cycle. That was a fantastic product. There is much potential for that type of stuff at any point in a product's life cycle.

Yep, that was a great adventure.

But how well did it sell? Is a worthy revenue-generator for a company like WotC?

Certainly there are great ideas and great books that could still be written. That's sort of not my point. Great new products can still be written for an old game. But it will still probably generate less sales than the product before it, as a variable independent from quality.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Since I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of your, RCs, or (especially) pemerton's playstyles, I couldn't begin to guess.

But I can speak generally and say: build for modularity and playstyle inclusivity. The founding philosophies of "this is fun... anything else is not" that seem to inform 4e--and are so much as spelled out in the 4e DMG and dragon articles--to me betray an exclusivity in the design and (as put by Irda Ranger in another thread) monoculture at WotC's D&D design team.

So, yeah. I guess what I am saying is I agree to disagree. I don't propose that it's easy. Just that it can be done.

And what's with the beginner? That doesn't even know how to play any RPG? How will he react to a lot of "modules" he has to plug together and figure out what he likes?

And what is with play-testing and balancing the system? "You know, we still need 4 play-tester groups for the Vancian Spell + Martial Token System + Wound & Vitality. "

The way I see it, 4E Core Rules presents us with one module. But there are several points where you could exchange game aspects.
Healing & Hit Points for example - you could change a lot here. You could add wound tracking, lasting penalties (disease track => injury track). You could exchange the encounter/daily power system with a "skill challenge" variant that uses attack rolls. You could change how rituals operate.
We are already seeing ways to repurpose stuff like skill challenges (use them on an "adventure" scale), disease tracks (why not for poisons and injuries?) and multiclassing (why not use them for low level Prestige-Class like aspects or Spellscars (Spellfire)?)

And all this is far easier to create and build then ever before.

The modularity is already there. The modules just need to be created.
And here lies at the moment the greatest weakness - the GSL sucks compared to the OGL. It will probably always create a hindrance to real innovation from 3PP. But that doesn't mean that the DMG II, III and IV or the 4E equivalent of the Unearthed Arcana won't eventually add such ideas. Of course, there is also no guarantee it happens. I certainly can't do so. I have no insights into WotC plans or their designer ideas. I hope something like this will happen.

All this doesn't help people that want to play D&D 4E NOW and expect it to have the "modules" they prefer.

 

[carmachu]

Its hard to find out, isnt it?

There's no set time or limit. Both WotC and Games Workshop...I've discovered I'm not the target anymore....