WotC 4E D&D bloat (was Forked Thread: Pathfinder (PFRPG) bloat)

[malraux]

I suppose with all the bloat produced for 3.5E by WotC's proliferation of their own splatbooks, it made 3.5E D&D more and more into a huge mess. Perhaps in effect they were trying to "destroy" 3.5E, to make way for a 4E.

Personally, I think that's just an artifact of the 3e system that couldn't be avoided while still publishing books for the system. IMO, the relative completeness of the core 3 books in 3e was a bug, not a feature. It made subsequent books focus on increasing narrow topics.

 

[Cadfan]

How is it going to be any different for retailers now with even just pure WOTC items? After 2-3 years release, a retailer will have what:

3 sets of core players, DM and MM books.

plus what 27 more books of various types-adventure vault, draconmicon, etc..(9 per year)

plus 3 sets of campaign settings- world and player books and any otehr supporting items.

PLUS any sets of adventures they produce.

Thats just WOTC. Thats not even including say what Goodman puts out.

How is that not bloat?

Feel free to read the rest of the post from which you quoted. It will explain matters. But since I can't seem to shut up, I'll explain again!

The third party "bloat" that people talk about generally refers to a large number of 3pp releases which were purchased in a sort of speculative bubble by gaming stores. As a group, these products did not sell as well as anticipated, though certain individual products sold quite well. Gaming stores felt burned by the large number of products which did NOT sell well, and felt that they did not understand the third party press market well enough to adequately sort the wheat from the chaff- making further purchases a dicey proposition. As a result they did not reorder much 3pp material, nor purchase as much additional 3pp material, as they otherwise might have. This left significant amounts of picked through junk on the shelves. Eventually, as time went on, this sorted itself out as companies went under, stopped releasing much in the way of product, and other companies built solid reputations on which gaming stores could rely in making purchasing decisions.

If products sell well, and if gaming stores understand how much to stock of what, then this is not a problem. That means that WotC products, which tend to sell better than 3pp products and with which gaming stores are likely more familiar, are less likely to suffer from that sort of bloat.

Just counting up releases is useless. Its not about the number. Its about the ability to strategically purchase products for your shelves, which is easy in an information rich environment with known players, and difficult in an information poor environment with relative unknowns.

 

[Cadfan]

What? I can't even wrap my head around that statement... how can you possibly arrive at that idea? I always try to see more than one side to an argument but I honestly just don’t see that at all.

Really?

Its not that tough.

Look at Arcane Power. It supports two classes from the PHB, one class from the PHB II, and one class from the Forgotten Realms Player's Handbook.

That's WotC assuming that you own other books. Without them, the product is a lot less useful. Of course, DDI makes this a lot easier to assume, since it spreads around universal knowledge of the entire WotC product line.

Early 3e style, which did not assume you owned other books besides the core three, was different. In a book like Complete Warrior, you got support for the core tank classes, plus some new tank classes and their support. Then, for a very long time, that was it. There were no further releases specifically supporting the new classes released in Complete Warrior, because they weren't core.

Eventually WotC relaxed these rules, and occasionally a Dragon article would be printed, but that's the contrast between the "[x] is core" and "everything is core" strategies.

 

[ggroy]

IMO, the relative completeness of the core 3 books in 3e was a bug, not a feature.

This I can believe with 3E D&D under the regime of Ryan Dancey, Monte Cook, etc ...

 

[carmachu]

The third party "bloat" that people talk about generally refers to a large number of 3pp releases which were purchased in a sort of speculative bubble by gaming stores. As a group, these products did not sell as well as anticipated, though certain individual products sold quite well. Gaming stores felt burned by the large number of products which did NOT sell well, and felt that they did not understand the third party press market well enough to adequately sort the wheat from the chaff- making further purchases a dicey proposition. As a result they did not reorder much 3pp material, nor purchase as much additional 3pp material, as they otherwise might have. This left significant amounts of picked through junk on the shelves. Eventually, as time went on, this sorted itself out as companies went under, stopped releasing much in the way of product, and other companies built solid reputations on which gaming stores could rely in making purchasing decisions.

If products sell well, and if gaming stores understand how much to stock of what, then this is not a problem. That means that WotC products, which tend to sell better than 3pp products and with which gaming stores are likely more familiar, are less likely to suffer from that sort of bloat.

The part that everyone seems to be leaving out of the "bloat" thread of 3PP is the fact that alot of game stores got stuck with stuff when Wotc went from 3.0 to 3.5....effectively killing the items on the shelves as well.

Then it happened again when they went from 3.5 to 4e.....Last FLGS I walked through during teh 4e runup had a ton of Goodman Games modules lying around.....

 

[thecasualoblivion]

The part that everyone seems to be leaving out of the "bloat" thread of 3PP is the fact that alot of game stores got stuck with stuff when Wotc went from 3.0 to 3.5....effectively killing the items on the shelves as well.

Then it happened again when they went from 3.5 to 4e.....Last FLGS I walked through during teh 4e runup had a ton of Goodman Games modules lying around.....

From what I heard, the bottom fell out on the 3PP glut before 3.5E hit. The 3.5E launch just iced it.

 

[RefinedBean]

The part that everyone seems to be leaving out of the "bloat" thread of 3PP is the fact that alot of game stores got stuck with stuff when Wotc went from 3.0 to 3.5....effectively killing the items on the shelves as well.

Then it happened again when they went from 3.5 to 4e.....Last FLGS I walked through during teh 4e runup had a ton of Goodman Games modules lying around.....

Which is why 3pp is fairly risky, as is retailing. 's the name of the game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

What? I can't even wrap my head around that statement... how can you possibly arrive at that idea? I always try to see more than one side to an argument but I honestly just don’t see that at all.

It IS what is meant. The idea of "core" is that the game "assumes" the use of all the other core books. And not "assume" as in required. "Assume" as in most people will have this, the game will be designed around the fact that people playing the game will have picked up all the books, and so on.

You can see this in a number of design decisions. For instance:
-All races and classes in PHB1, PHB2, EPG, and FRPG are in both FR and Eberron and are referred to in the campaign specific books
-The MM1 Hydra won't be errated. Instead things like the new version of the Hydra is printed in the MM2 and it is assumed that if you want a Hydra fixed, you'll just use the one in the new book
-The power level of a class overall is balance assuming a choice of all their powers from their Power book as well as the PHB they appeared in. When problems are discovered with a class, rather than errata the powers, they simply come out with new ones that rebalance them.

Obviously Core doesn't mean required. Nothing is "required". And they are designed in such a way to be modular and easily removable. But I can tell you that when they playtest a MM5, it'll be with characters that have feats and powers from Martial Power 1, 2, 3, and 4 as well as The Great Book of Powers 1 and 2. If that means that the general power of characters has increased since the release of the PHB1, it will mean the monsters will be more powerful too.

It's the same way that when an expansion comes out for World of Warcraft, it is assumed everyone will have it. Some people won't. But if there is a new race in that expansion it IS playable in the game of WoW. It may not be playable by player X as he didn't purchase the expansion....but it is part of the game. You'll meet NPCs who refer to that race, you'll see other people playing the game who are that race, you'll see magic items in the game that refer to that race, and so on.

 

[Windjammer]

-The MM1 Hydra won't be errated. Instead things like the new version of the Hydra is printed in the MM2 and it is assumed that if you want a Hydra fixed, you'll just use the one in the new book

That's a bit harsh. It's not that the MM 2 hydra replicates the MM 1 hydra except for fixing its hp and damage output when bloodied. There's plenty of other differences, both mechanical and flavour-wise, between the two.

I've recently submitted a lengthy review of MM 2 (it's in German but people will be able to read it on dnd-gate.de in a week or two) and I went over both books very carefully. While there are a lot of MM 1 monsters in MM 2 (angels[FONT=&quot], predatory vine, beholder, troll, cyclops, hydra, eladrin, gnolls, gnomes, goblins, hobgoblins, humans, oni, shadar-kai, troglodytes, warforged) [/FONT]no single entry reads like an errata. As with the hydra, the MM 2 entries show a lot of mechanical innovation (well beyond fixation) and variation in flavour.

What's more, the elegance and simplicity of 4E vis-a-vis 3.5 means that you can correct MM 1 monsters "on the fly" if you wish, the official recipe for solos "the MM 2 way" being: [FONT=&quot]20% fewer hit points, –2 to defenses, increase damage output by 50% when bloodied.[/FONT] (Fans produced more accurate versions than this, but this one has the benefit that you can work it out in 30 seconds.) Using that recipe on the MM 1 hydra will feel different to anything that MM 2 offers, so no, MM 2 has far from rendered MM 1 obsolete.

I whole-heartedly recommend people to get the MM 2, but precisely because it complements the MM 1 so well, not because it supplants it.

 

[AllisterH]

re: Hydra

The thing about the hydra is that the MM1 hydra is frankly boring. The MM2 hydra is actually more interesting to run.....I've used both actually as a mated pair and surprisingly they work well together I find..