What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[renau1g]

Yay, I can spend more money to get monsters that work right in my game!! Just like skill challenges!!

Ahh..nice post. Very open discussion. Ok, OTOH you can look at a company that is trying new things and makes some mistakes and works to improve them...or you can just post like this.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm with MerricB on this one.

For better or worse, there's a movement in the contemporary RPG scene which takes the view that RPGs are games, and that playing the game by the rules should deliver the promised experience. That's fundamentally at odds with some more traditional ways of designing RPGs, which are all about having the rules of the game model the ingame world, and then relying on the GM to judiciously suspend the rules in order to deliver the desired play experience (fudging death results against low-level PCs being the most notorious example of this).

But if you need to fudge, then the rules do not model the ingame world. They model some idealisation of the ingame world that your game sometimes approaches. This is a fail at the level you claim you want to succeed.

I've said before that I see 4e as a bet by WotC that Ron Edwards is right in his view that the way to significantly increase the popularity of RPGs is to design them as games from the ground up, dropping whatever elements of world-simulating mechanics are necessary to achieve this. Presumably WotC have some market research to support their bet, but some aspects of what's coming out about Essentials and other downstream developments make me (as a 4e fan) worry that the bet may not have gone as well as they hope.

Say Usenet rather than Ron Edwards. IMO, the Gamers/Dramatist/Simulationists setup makes far more sense than Ron Edwards' GNS.

Basically: What's the point of targeting teens with the goal of growing a long-term customer* pool, if you treat your long term customers in a manner which says: "only the new customers matter"?

It seems to me that working at keeping customers is just as important...

What do you think things like Errata are for? It's the experienced players that care, not the new ones who haven't found the reasons.

Point being, that 3.5 or its implements can support the things you said. Explosive Spell metamagic feat was not core, but spread around people hit by a fireball.

So Fireballs and other things only ever explode with feat support.

Bullrush push people.

Bullrush is the opposite of what I am talking about. In a Bull Rush you take a running start and try to slam into someone. You are really trying rather than simply driving someone back because that's how you roll.

Shield feats in pathfinder make S&B awesome AND make you fighter push and smash people.

Shield Slam is just about starting to get there. But it's again trying too hard. It's not that I hit someone with my shield. It's that I'm a large arrogant SOB with my shoulder behind my shield - and I am going to try to force you backwards and pin you against a wall automatically.

Simply put, 3.5/Pathfinder design seem to put , maybe slightly, more emphasis on the way this happens in the gameworld. I Push people with my shield because I perform an action similar to spartans in phalanx, say.

Um... no. You push people with your shield because you use your shield to punch them out. A better method would be crowding them out - using your offensive weapon and crowding forward, your body behind your shield and forcing them to backpeddle. Which is exactly what any fighter (no BAB +6 requirement here) who wants to use this sword and shield style can do. And that is the way I fight much of the time when reenacting and armed with sword and shield. Shield bashes are something else.

So it takes a BAB of +6 and three pre-requisite feats to get your alternative to my RL combat style - and that's a wildly OTT charambara style rather than the controlled and disciplined one I'd expect. Right.

Of course you can roleplay powers in 4th, but sometimes happpens that powers seems first conceived mechanically, then "fluffed".

Name three martial ones. (I'll grant you a few from the Swordmage list starting with Lightning Lure - but this is less of a problem for spellcasters as they can work on what they want to do first, then calculate a spell). IME, martial powers are fluff first then mechanics - and sometimes the mechanics don't quite live up to the fluff (see: Come and Get It).

Another thing: 4th edition simply refutes to support mechanics slightly out of push, damage or some utility. This is great or lame, basing on your gamestyle. Let me make an example.

OK...

In 3.5 and Pathfinder, Efreet can gran Wish to mortals. I see that many people see this as a great risk of gamebreaking. In fact, they see it as a potential abuse of the spell planar binding. What happened in 4th edition? At least in MMI (don't know others) Efreet are apparently far more cool in combat, with all their flames and whirling, flying scimitars. But designers removed the wish feature, because things like that are unthinkable in 4th edition.

No. In 4e, Efreeti can grant Wishes to mortals. However this is solely under the control of the DM because Wishes are always plot devices. And as a plot device, the DM needs almost complete oversight. If an Efreet regularly grants wishes, it becomes almost unusable for anything else. If not, it's entirely up to the DM.

Of course, the monster is very balanced, but, instatnly, any root with legends an arabian nights, any possible RP implication about desperate heroes, crazy summoners and twisted wishes is gone.

Say slightly suppressed at most rather than gone.

Moreover, in 3.5/PF, if you advance the efreet with fighter, sorcerer, eldricht knight levels, you come up with a far more cool monster (IMO, this is debatable because of monster creation guidelines).

Very debatable. And coolness out of combat is up to the DM - whereas in combat it only needs enough coolness for the length of time it lives. (I'd say something about the Phane if I knew what one was).

[quote] point being, that, reading your post, seems that balance is a big priority... myslef, restrict the wishes of the Efreeti only to the fluff is really maim a monster.. take away something that makes it special. Destroy a whole story that could spring from a wish, a wish abuse, a clever rogue that found a bottle in a lost temple... is take away some magic, some inspiration from the game. From my game, from my tale.[/quote]

But by moving the wishes to the fluff, you don't change a thing. The Wishes are going to be given out by DM fiat and interpreted by DM fiat anyway. The DM can still hand out wishes from the Efreet as a plot device when he wants to. Nothing has really changed here. A clever rogue who finds the bottle in the lost temple still gets a plot device coupon (which is what a Wish is). Nothing has changed here.

If anything, I'd say that restricting the Wishes of an efreeti to the specific 9th level spell of the same name and thereby rendering them mechanical is the part that's taking away some (trivial) amount of magic.

 

[Imaro]

That depends, would you rather fight one dire wolf, then a pair of goblins, then a quad of kobolds (who all go down in one or two hits) or have one battle with all of them? The focus of 4e seems to trend towards less, but more important battles. I'd much rather have one or two very important combats (story-wise and combat-wise) per session (which also isn't my experience, in most 4 hour sessions with fit 4 combats easily + other stuff).

The funny thing is that the 4e modules don't back up your claim of running less but more important fights... where are you getting this philosophy from because I haven't seen it expoused in the books either? And I have never had a 4 hour session of 4e that fit 4 combats (unless they were all super easy) and a bunch of other stuff. I'd love to listen to a podcast or see a write-up of that session.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The funny thing is that the 4e modules don't back up your claim of running less but more important fights... where are you getting this philosophy from because I haven't seen it expoused in the books either? And I have never had a 4 hour session of 4e that fit 4 combats (unless they were all super easy) and a bunch of other stuff. I'd love to listen to a podcast or see a write-up of that session.

Most 4e modules suck, no argument.

But I'll run three major and tense combats (with at least one PC on negative HP at the end of most fights) and a fair amount of RP in a three and a half hour session including wondering why the dead PC is still walking. (At least that's what I did last Sunday).

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ahh..nice post. Very open discussion. Ok, OTOH you can look at a company that is trying new things and makes some mistakes and works to improve them...or you can just post like this.

Trying new ideas and offering errata to correct mistakes are good qualities. Charging customers a premium for playtesting your product-not so much.

 

[renau1g]

Ah, I don't run many modules, so I can't really speak to that. I guess that's how I've seen it and conducted it. I don't podcast things, I don't even know how to do it, nor do I have any desire to. I also don't feel like wasting my time writing up a session for you as I have gotten better things to do. If you don't believe me, that's cool, that's your right, but I am telling you my experiences, we've played up to around 8th level or so.

 

[renau1g]

Trying new ideas and offering errata to correct mistakes are good qualities. Charging customers a premium for playtesting your product-not so much.

Not sure what you're talking about here? So... they should release a perfect product without any flaws? They did playtest, but once you give thousands and thousands of players the rules than new things do come up and they have taken steps to correct them.

 

[Umbran]

Makers of sheet music, printers of comic books, novels, magazines, newspapers and so forth are all involved in both printing physical and supplying digital IP- not a one of them I know of has reacted to piracy by withdrawing their product from the market.

Except WotC.

Comic books, magazines, and newspapers are all periodicals. They are expected to have extremely limited lifespans in the market. Novels, even, are mostly "read once, then stick on a shelf".

Only one of the things you mention - sheet music - has anything like an extended time where you expect to use the content, and it still doesn't call for continuing support - nobody is concerned that your copy of Chris Cross' "Think of Laura" might not be compatible with your copy of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or whether one represents power creep with respect to the other, or something.

And, I think your statement about removing content from the marketplace is not nearly so clear cut as you state it. The content they currently support is in the digital marketplace as the DDI. And that form is rather like what Marvel Comics is doing - they don't sell you pdfs once, and then forget it. They give you a subscription to a library that you may peruse at your leisure. When your subscription runs out, your access likewise runs out.

But while there isn't a new computer game or movie (thank God!) out there right now doesn't mean D&D isn't leading into other projects: they've got books, they've got HeroScape, minis...and who knows what they're negotiating for? Not to mention "stealth" products- I don't know of any that WotC has in particular...

Loss-leading is a risk - like all marketing - and so risk management comes into play. You loss-lead when the expected payoff overwhelms the risk. Thus, you expect that they won't loss-lead until the thing they're leading into is sufficiently large to merit the risk. I recall no announcements of anything so large that would nearly guarantee a payoff.

You cannot look askance at their strategies base on things the might be doing. They might be negotiating a partnership with Virgin Galactic, but I don't wonder why that doesn't lead them to develop a sci-fi game. Things from my imagination are not things I expect their strategy to match.

The argument for withdrawing pdfs- which have a lower per unit cost and higher profit margins than physical books- from the market because of piracy is just as valid if not moreso for physical books.

Dude, how many times do I have to say this? I don't claim that the move was smart. I claim that the fear that led to the move should be understandable.

Last I checked, perfect rationality was not actually a trait of humans. And companies are made of humans. While we can expect companies to be a bit distant and detached from our day-to-day concerns, that doesn't mean they aren't victim to human foibles.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Not sure what you're talking about here? So... they should release a perfect product without any flaws? They did playtest, but once you give thousands and thousands of players the rules than new things do come up and they have taken steps to correct them.

Interoffice playtesting as the only playtesting is darn near none at all.

It is the same as an author proofreading his/her own work.

A product should see at least one or two rounds of blind playtesting before release.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

And quite honestly, "magic item emporiums" has always had a negative connotation associated with it among old-schoolers, who tend to associate it with Monty Haulism.

Speak for yourself. This old-schooler liked books like the Magister and that other one that tied in with Basic D&D.

I'd love to see something like Aurora's Whole Realm Catalog back for 2E.

Agreed.

One of the things I find interesting about this whole line about marketing to a younger generation is that D&D has traditionally relied on older players to pull newer players in and teach them the game.

My group of friends learned how to play without the help of any older players.

They assumed that everyone ran super long campaigns into high levels, on a regular basis... when I would argue that is probably a small subset of DM's.

The only assumption I would assume they made is that people buying the game would want support for all levels covered in the rules. And I think the high popularity of Paizo's Adventure Paths shows strong evidence that the E6 & E8 groups were the small subset.

Personally I find games with consequences for my choices more rewarding than a game where I can make almost any choice and the system protects me from myself (I find this causes me to become bored and less interested in a system)... again, different strokes and all.

I prefer that consequences for my choices occur during play, not during character creation or advancement. 4E provides this for me.