When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[Rel]

A reminder to everybody to keep this conversation civil and polite. Part of that includes not assigning motivations to those on the other side of the discussion, no matter which side that may be.

 

[Vocenoctum]

The feel of the game is just changing too much for me to be excited about the new edition.

Looking at books like the new FR campaign, with the much larger type, bigger spacing, and greater use of large images, I can tell when I'm getting charged more for far less content, and that's adding to my inability to get excited about what they're doing with the game.

At this point, they money that I was spending has gone more towards electronic entertainment, at this point. I guess if WotC is happy with that.

Banshee

I posted a long time back, right around the time of release, of how this edition drove me to WoW. Every little kick pushed me from someone that bought 90% of the books, so someone that currently only owns the PHB.

 

[Andor]

You don't hear from many people who had an open mind all the way, looked forward to the release of a new edition, then thought it was complete crap and will never play it again. People made their decisions months in advance. I went the same route. When I first heard the announcement, my reaction was negative. Then I thought about it a bit, remembered how I've loved every edition of the game, even 3e, which I was very skeptical about before release. So I decided to not sweat it this time around and just look forward to a new edition.

You don't? There are dozens of us on this board. I play dozens of different games. I've seen many different new editions. I was looking forward to 4e, bought the books, and have played multiple characters in multiple games. And I don't care for 4e. It's a nebish game in it's own right and it feels less like D&D than it does like Earthdawn.

Furthermore I'm playing in a group that is new to gaming. The GM picked 4e because they had few e books and it was the new thing. And he is absolutely floundering outside of combat. Has no idea what to do or how to resolve things. But roll initiative and suddenly everything works.

I've never seen that before, and while I don't put all the blame on 4e, it surely doesn't help.

 

[Psion]

1) Those buyers who help support an edition by buying the vast majority of it are always going to be the ones that get screwed. They buy all the kit and help the edition be successful, only to feel totally abandoned when a new edition comes along, invalidating huge swathes of their collection. It's hugely ironic that those that buy the least (and by proxy, do the least to help support the game) are always the ones that lose the least.

This isn't a criticism in any way - just a reflection. Many people who are right now stuffing their shelves with 4ed books will one day find themselves in exactly the same situation and are likely to feel just as abandoned.

I guess the answer is - keep your purchases to a minimum and buy only what you need and will use. That way, when the system changes, you'll be happy that you haven't lost too much and that you've got good use out of what you did buy.

Or alternately, pick an edition and stick with it.

3e/D20 is an embarrassment of riches for me, support-wise. I could run things for years (maybe even decades) and still not get to the stuff I have in my collection that I want to get to.

Or alternately, learn to adapt the material. I've had no trouble adapting material made for any edition to other editions. Yeah, it takes some time, but that's far better than letting all your prior investment go to waste.

It's my experience/opinion that only certain sorts of materials convert well or are worth the effort. I lurve Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Changes in the placement of creatures on the power spectrum made this a real bear to convert to 3e. Would I do this for a lesser 1e/2e module? I think not.

 

[teach]

While it applies for some people, it's nowhere true for all. I had at least 90% of all released 2e material, yet I was more than happy to switch to 3e. I had at least as much 3e material as well (Official that is) and yet, I had no issues with switching to 4e. In fact, I was more than happy to.

I guess it how you look at things. When I buy D&D books, I do not expect to be using only them for the rest of my life. Just as with my computers, my TVs, my kitchen utensils, my cars, I buy them fully accepting that at some point, within a foreseeable future, they will have to be updated, if I wish to have the newest stuff.

I think I have the same view. I don't view my purchasing habits as "supporting" an edition or WOTC, rather, I'm buying things that I will be able to enjoy and use. Eventually, though, these books are going to be sitting on my shelf more than being off it, because I'll have moved on to something new. However, I still take my old planescape campaign boxed set off the shelf and reread it, but it's days as something I use at my gaming table are likely past.

 

[Hussar]

You don't? There are dozens of us on this board. I play dozens of different games. I've seen many different new editions. I was looking forward to 4e, bought the books, and have played multiple characters in multiple games. And I don't care for 4e. It's a nebish game in it's own right and it feels less like D&D than it does like Earthdawn.

Furthermore I'm playing in a group that is new to gaming. The GM picked 4e because they had few e books and it was the new thing. And he is absolutely floundering outside of combat. Has no idea what to do or how to resolve things. But roll initiative and suddenly everything works.

I've never seen that before, and while I don't put all the blame on 4e, it surely doesn't help.

See, this confuses me.

I look at my old Basic and Expert books and there is almost nothing in those books for what to do outside of combat. Very, very little. Yet, even when I was ten or eleven years old, learning to play without the benefit of any experienced gamers around me, and without the benefit of a plethora of other role play games, both computer and tabletop, I still got the idea of what to do outside of combat.

There's a very large amount of advice in the DMG on how to run an adventure or campaign that centers on all sorts of things that have nothing to do with combat. Certainly far and away more than what I got when I started.

So, I kinda wonder how someone could fail to get the concept. Assuming, of course, the person had been exposed to role playing in SOME form previously.

 

[Halivar]

It's my experience/opinion that only certain sorts of materials convert well or are worth the effort.

This was certainly true of 3.x. Converting modules from 1e/2e was a complete chore. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't find the time to put in the effort. In 4E, I can convert a 3.x Dungeon adventure in minutes. Monster at the wrong level now? I remake it from scratch, easy as pie. As soon as the current story arc in my Wednesday game is finished, I plan on revisiting some of those 1e adventures to see what I can squeeze out of them.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

...I'm going to say that the parts of the game you really liked, like exploration, are every bit as alive in 4e as they were earlier.

I'll go back to my earlier point and say that without a self-consistent world to explore, exploration is not as alive as it was in other editions.

Hussar, I agree that a lot of modules in earlier editions of D&D focused on combat. But it seems clear that 4e does focus on combat more than earlier editions did. Just going by page and word count devoted to combat options, equipment list, magic items list, utility spells, animal companions, henchmen, leadership, cohorts, summoning spells, page and word count devoted to skills, page and word count devoted to default setting, page and word count deovted to back story of monsters, tables for getting lost, encountering wandering harlots, types of madness, types of gems, historical interpretations of side effects of herbs, rules for building castles, rules for establishing strongholds, level titles, bards, random dungeon trappings, planar setting information - it is clear that 4e core focuses more on combat than on exploration and other things as compared to earlier editions. I mean, that list took me literally a minute or two to type, off the top of my head - there are probably a zillion other non-combat, exploration things emphasized back in earlier editions moreso than in 4e.

Windjammer, great post.

And here I don't follow. 4E seems written as if the rules need to tell the DM that he shouldn't teleport Graz'zt away since that takes away from the fun of the (skirmish aspect of) the game when
1. this is precisely the sort of thing a self-respecting RPG should leave to a self-respecting DM, and
2. the reason for not teleporting Graz'zt away shouldn't be rationalized by recourse to a consideration that only concerns the skirmish game perspective.

...

So yes, 4E very clearly limits the options on both sides of the screen, and it has its good reasons to do so. On some days, I share those reasons and play 4E ...

... On other days I wince at the restrictions 4E places on my behalf, and happily go with playing 3E

I'm in the same boat. 4E is a good game. It's fun. I play it, I DM it, and I enjoy it. 3.5e is also good, and fun, and I play it and DM it. They're just different, and frankly I wish that 4E would have blown 3.5e completely out of the water so I wouldn't have to keep the old ruleset in my head (along with all the other games I play!).

 

[Hussar]

Ycore Rixle - you are mixing a few editions together there, but, I see your point.

However, there's absolutely nothing in 4e that prevents you from having any of that. Yes, it is not presented in the core books, that's true. But, it can be done and done fairly easily.

The problem with your point is that you mix editions together and claim all this massive support. A page on gems in the DMG is not massive support and the fact that it appears only in one editions DMG and no other pretty much speaks to how important it was to gamers or how much it got used at the table.

But, where I think the problem is is in the terminology. To me, an "exploration game" is one where you start in the bottom right corner of the map and go forth and see the world. Well, all that stuff about what's in that world is the DM's job to create.

The rules are simply there to resolve events. Nothing more. When the results of a given action matter and are in question, that's where the rules should step in. All that extra stuff that was in the DMG or whatever book, was just so much wasted space as far as I was concerned.

You bring up the gems for example. How many people actually used that? How many people actually use the rules for getting lost? How many people actually rolled on the random harlot table?

I'm going to take a stab and say very few. If it was lots, you'd see it still in use.

I've been harping on this for a while, but, to me, the best rules set is the one that you use and use often. If it almost never comes up, do you really need rules for it?

Anyway, I've gotten a bit off topic. My basic point is, for my definition of "exploration game" which is traveling in character into an unknown area and finding out what's there, I don't see how 4e is any different than any other edition. Heck, I look at the World's Largest Dungeon, which I did run and realize that it would work considerably better using 4e rules. That's about as "exploration game" as it gets. 20 3e levels of nothing but exploring the unknown.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Some people are insinuating that an exploration type game is impossible without heavy simulationism.