What would it take for 4E to win over the old guard? (Forked Thread: Changeover Poll)
- Thread starter Samurai
- Start date
Aeolius
Adventurer
Seriously. No sea elf, locathah, or merfolk. No sea hag, greenhag, or annis.
"Now eventually you might have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right? " - Dr. Ian Malcolm, "Jurassic Park"
Shemeska
Adventurer
Wootz
First Post
Who says?
Sorry if I seem a bit pessimistic, but I get annoyed at people ranting about how 4e isn't 3.5. Whatever. I'm sure the point of releasing a new edition is to give people more of the same.
Why does the "old guard" complain that a different edition is different? If you don't want variety, then don't seek it. Plain and simple.
I'm not terribly familiar with all those monsters you mentioned, nor do I work at WotC, but from the looks of if I'm willing to bet that they avoided underwater encounters early on so that newer players wouldn't be scared off by all the rules for doing so (learning to keep track of things in a game you've just started learning is kind of hard y'know)
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For the win!Right now I find myself wishing that other gaming products I enjoy could be given the 4e treatment. Like Battletech, which is presently being crushed to death by its own fans like a baby rabbit being petted to death by a little girl.
Never gonna happen, though. The grognards own that one.
I'm not sure that 4e needs to win over the old guard.
A lot of what makes gaming fun is nostalgia and habit. I mean, when I hang out with my high school friends we play Goldeneye. On the N64. Now obviously, objectively speaking, there are better systems and better games. I'd be an absolute moron if I tried to claim that N64 Goldeneye was the One True Shooter Game. But we have fun, and as long as we're having fun, who cares? Now, if gaming stagnated with newer versions of Goldeneye, that would be bad. Not only does console technology advance, and not only are new ideas invented, but tastes change. And on top of that, there's value in just plain doing new things because the old things already exist and when you do new things, there are more... things. That sounded more profound in my head. But everyone gets the point, I hope- change for the sake of change is actually good, particularly when the change is purely voluntary on the part of the adopters.
Never gonna happen, though. The grognards own that one.
I'm not sure that 4e needs to win over the old guard.
A lot of what makes gaming fun is nostalgia and habit. I mean, when I hang out with my high school friends we play Goldeneye. On the N64. Now obviously, objectively speaking, there are better systems and better games. I'd be an absolute moron if I tried to claim that N64 Goldeneye was the One True Shooter Game. But we have fun, and as long as we're having fun, who cares? Now, if gaming stagnated with newer versions of Goldeneye, that would be bad. Not only does console technology advance, and not only are new ideas invented, but tastes change. And on top of that, there's value in just plain doing new things because the old things already exist and when you do new things, there are more... things. That sounded more profound in my head. But everyone gets the point, I hope- change for the sake of change is actually good, particularly when the change is purely voluntary on the part of the adopters.
Well, I can't speak for all of the Old Guard, but for me the problem isn't that it's different. It's that it's inferior. YMMV.
As for releasing a new edition, I've got two schools of thought on it:
1) Release a new edition when the previous edition has grown and evolved that necessary clean-up, tweaks, and re-org is necessary to make the game easy to enter for new players. By way of example, although GURPS isn't everyone's cup of tea, GURPS 4e did this for GURPS 3e.
2) Release a new edition when the previous edition is out-of-print, owned by a prior entitity, etc. where it's difficult for new players to obtain the books or interest has decreased to Chicken-Little levels.
I'm not a fan of the "Nuke the site from orbit approach b/c we need a revitalized revenue stream and core rulebooks sell best." This, IMO, is what WotC did with 4e. From a business standpoint, it's certainly valid, but if you're going to do that (esp. while simultaneously trashing the prior edition, telling people they're playing wrong, and choosing to leave those "old guard" players behind), then that new edition better be the gold-medal standard of that RPG's editions. A significant number of people don't feel that hurdle was cleared.
My main group is in our 30s and 40s, we've apparently liked 4E because we all went to it either completely or a good deal. One guy still runs 3.5 Paizo stuff, and for good reason (without giving out any personal info on him), but he plays 4E and seems to like it too.
My secondary group is running a game for 19-22-year-olds. They all like 4E.
IO
My secondary group is running a game for 19-22-year-olds. They all like 4E.
IO
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
I agreed with all of this except the "trashing" the previous edition part. I've read this on quite a few posts and just don't understand it. I think it's a pretty safe statement to make that no edition or rules-set is perfect. Also, there were a lot of 3E players and DM's, myself included, that had (and still have) very real issues with certain shortcomings in 3E's rules. Now, I feel that 4E didn't fix those problems, so I've stuck with 3E with houserule "fixes" for the parts I don't like. But, I don't see how discussing those perceived problems with 3E, or talking about ideas and concepts to fix those parts that a lot of people felt were wonky, is "trashing" the previous edition. And I don't recall WoTC ever telling me or saying that I, and anyone else that preferred playing 3E, were wrong. That seems to be a very "personalized" and strong emotion on the bahalf of a concept and rule-set which obviously, doesn't care if it's bad mouthed or not.
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My main group is in our 30s and 40s, we've apparently liked 4E because we all went to it either completely or a good deal. One guy still runs 3.5 Paizo stuff, and for good reason (without giving out any personal info on him), but he plays 4E and seems to like it too.
My secondary group is running a game for 19-22-year-olds. They all like 4E.
I didn't like any of the voting options, they seemed to be written by someone who hates 4E and isn't trying to be objective.
My secondary group is running a game for 19-22-year-olds. They all like 4E.
I didn't like any of the voting options, they seemed to be written by someone who hates 4E and isn't trying to be objective.
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