D&D 4E No more reprints of the 4E core books?

[Orius]

On the other hand, Skills & Powers was pretty widely considered to be "2.5", even though it was never marketed as such. If people has thought along those lines back then, Unearthed Arcana would have been considered 1.5.

I'm curious whether Skills & Powers was literally considered "2.5" back when it was released. I was only playing intermittently at the time, but I don't recall anything like that. I've always been under the impression that "2.5" was applied retroactively to Skills & Powers when 3.5 came out.

I'm going to chime in here with the others and say the whole Player's Option books were never a 2.5. They were suppliments and options, not a replacement like 3.5 was. There may be some confusion because at the time TSR did release new printings of the PHB and DMG with the same black covers and interior layouts that they used with PO so the books would look the same (I think the Tome of Magic got the same treatment too). The revised core books weren't a huge change, they just changed typos and corrected minor errata. I have the horse PHB and the black cover DMG and played 2e like that, so no there was no difference. But this change is comparable to the idol and demon covers and later Easley 1e covers, not the 3.5 revision. Much of the change was cosmetic, as the intro to the black DMG says, the look of the books that were produced in 1989 weren't as stylish in 1995, so they changed it for marketing purposes. The whole "2.5" bit only emeraged when WotC pulled that 3.5 stuff.

As far as 3.0 to 3.5 marketing... yeah, I'm sure one of the lessons they learned was that the way the change was marketed didn't go over very well.

Yeah, I think there were a lot of customers who felt burned over it, or that it was a huge money grab. Some of it I didn't like either. But I think it's because the whole three book model is obsolete and too costly, and probably was by 2002 or so when the decision to market 3.5 was made. And another problem is that selling a new set of core books probably produces a notable spike in sales that isn't sustainable over a long term, once players buy a set of core books, they don't need more right away, and not all of those buyers buy splats. TSR made the mistake of trying to drum up sales in the 2e days buy selling tons of campaign settings which failed spectacularly for the business end of things. A lot of people accused 3.5 of being a money grab for this reason. WotC may be fazing out the core books and instead looking for DDI to provide a more stable long-term revenue stream, since it needs to be renewed more often, while selling a more modular game.

If WotC is going to stop printing the core books and switch to the Essential lines instead, they'll probably announce it at GenCon.

 

[DracoSuave]

The -other- thing that they've said is that all the rules changes that were planned for Essentials were not made -for- essentials but, well... they were doing anyways.

So, even if they stopped selling PHBs (which they've confirmed they're not, they're just not printing new stock because they haven't gone through the current stock yet), and focused solely on Essentials from now and forever, everything you need to make past material compatible with Essentials material is available with minimal inconvenience.

Most of it's months old by now.

You already -have- it, in other words.

As well, Essentials was designed to be as compatible with pre-Essentials as the PHB2 is with PHB1. Did PHB2 make PHB1 no longer work? No?

Okay. You can stop panicking now.

As well, it's not like 3.5 was some sort of 'stealth' revision to the rules. Again, they were advertising it AS a revision for a year in advance. Don't believe me? Go grab yourself a handful of Dragon magazine and see. They DID NOT stealth advertise it. If you think they did, it is because you were not paying attention to the appropriate media at the time.

So, why would -any- rational individual claim, based on fact and history, that they'd stealthfully sneak in a reboot of 4e, not call it a reboot, and not hype the hell out of it AS a reboot? Based on some paranoid ramblings that 'they did it before' which I find crazy talk and completely incongruous with what they actually said.

How people felt about the revision that they were fully open and honest about is a different story. Perhaps some bitterness about them putting in a reboot of 3rd edition and only giving them a years warning about it still festers. But the fact is, they didn't sneak it up on anyone. They were open about the changes they were making, and lauding them. You knew what they were doing with the ranger MONTHS before a book hit print.

Dark Sun is getting more hype than Essentials.

Just sayin' you need to pay attention to what is actually happening.

 

[ourchair]

So, even if they stopped selling PHBs (which they've confirmed they're not, they're just not printing new stock because they haven't gone through the current stock yet), and focused solely on Essentials from now and forever, everything you need to make past material compatible with Essentials material is available.

Exactly.

Considering how many times I've seen people go batshit crazy on message boards because of a company declaring 'we're not printing new ones' or 'all copies sold out!' I'm beginning to think that companies are better off not saying this at all.

"We're going to second printing" doesn't mean the first printing was eaten up. It means they think people want more. "No more reprints" doesn't mean that production is scarce, it means we want to start printing according to conservative demand estimates. And lastly, "All copies sold" doesn't mean that there are no more, it means that they are no copies lying in the company warehouse.

[quote-Dracosuave]Just sayin' you need to pay attention to what is actually happening.[/quote]More importantly, if you missed what is happening, that does not by any stretch of logic, mean that they were trying to sneak it past you. That's like assuming everyone who drank the milk in the fridge while you weren't looking was hoping you wouldn't notice.

 

[Greatwyrm]

You knew what they were doing with the ranger MONTHS before a book hit print.

And we had one build from pretty much every new class before PHB3 came out. A much better way to handle things.

Dark Sun is getting more hype than Essentials.

I so wish Dark Sun had generated so many bazillion-page threads instead of a non-controversy like this.

 

[ggroy]

As well, it's not like 3.5 was some sort of 'stealth' revision to the rules. Again, they were advertising it AS a revision for a year in advance. Don't believe me? Go grab yourself a handful of Dragon magazine and see. They DID NOT stealth advertise it. If you think they did, it is because you were not paying attention to the appropriate media at the time.

Which particular issue of Dragon or Dungeon magazine did it first officially mention that 3.5E was going to be released?

Offhand, the earliest official online announcement of 3.5E D&D I can find was in a January 2003 previews article.

Previews: See What's "In the Works"

 

[Henry]

Which particular issue of Dragon or Dungeon magazine did it first officially mention that 3.5E was going to be released?

Offhand, the earliest official online announcement of 3.5E D&D I can find was in a January 2003 previews article.

Previews: See What's "In the Works"

Not sure, but I do know we were talking about it on ENWorld as early as November/December 2003. I don't believe it had a full year, but more like 9 months - which in my mind is still plenty of warning and notice.

 

[ggroy]

In the recent WotC podcast, they mentioned they have been working on 4E Essentials since September 2009. (The release date of the first few 4E Essentials books will be September 2010).

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (D&D Podcast: Essentials)

(This is mentioned at around 00:01:30 , approximate at the beginning of the podcast).

This suggests that there's around a one year period of time to do the work.


If there was at least a one year period of time to do the work for individual D&D books back in 2002-2003, then it wouldn't be surprising if they were already working on the 3.5E core books sometime in mid-2002 (if not earlier during early-2002).

Looking through my shelves, the printings of the 3E PHB I have are second, third, and fourth printings. The second printing explicitly states that the printing was done in November 2000. The third and fourth printings don't state any explicit dates, but were most likely printed during 2001 or very early-2002 at the latest (ie. January or February 2002). It would be largely pointless in doing any further printings of the 3E PHB once they were already working on the 3.5E core books (sometime in mid-2002).

(So far I haven't seen any fifth printings for the 3E D&D PHB).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm going to chime in here with the others and say the whole Player's Option books were never a 2.5. They were suppliments and options, not a replacement like 3.5 was. There may be some confusion because at the time TSR did release new printings of the PHB and DMG with the same black covers and interior layouts that they used with PO so the books would look the same (I think the Tome of Magic got the same treatment too). The revised core books weren't a huge change, they just changed typos and corrected minor errata. I have the horse PHB and the black cover DMG and played 2e like that, so no there was no difference. But this change is comparable to the idol and demon covers and later Easley 1e covers, not the 3.5 revision. Much of the change was cosmetic, as the intro to the black DMG says, the look of the books that were produced in 1989 weren't as stylish in 1995, so they changed it for marketing purposes. The whole "2.5" bit only emeraged when WotC pulled that 3.5 stuff.

Yeah, there was no real talk about editions at all back in those days. Support for 2e never wavered. The options/P&S stuff etc let you add in new stuff or replace certain subsystems/modified kits or whatever but it really didn't matter. The groups I played in when UA came out never bothered to use 95% of it, nor did most of them use 95% of the 2e options stuff, just whatever bits and pieces fit with that DM and campaign. In both cases it was basically no different from what you got out of Dragon, just in hardcover (and most of it WAS reprints of stuff from Dragon).

Yeah, I think there were a lot of customers who felt burned over it, or that it was a huge money grab. Some of it I didn't like either. But I think it's because the whole three book model is obsolete and too costly, and probably was by 2002 or so when the decision to market 3.5 was made. And another problem is that selling a new set of core books probably produces a notable spike in sales that isn't sustainable over a long term, once players buy a set of core books, they don't need more right away, and not all of those buyers buy splats. TSR made the mistake of trying to drum up sales in the 2e days buy selling tons of campaign settings which failed spectacularly for the business end of things. A lot of people accused 3.5 of being a money grab for this reason. WotC may be fazing out the core books and instead looking for DDI to provide a more stable long-term revenue stream, since it needs to be renewed more often, while selling a more modular game.

If WotC is going to stop printing the core books and switch to the Essential lines instead, they'll probably announce it at GenCon.

I think 95% of the grief about 3.5 had mostly to do with the rapidity with which 3.0 was replaced. The community was used to the way things worked for 25 years with a major new version every decade+ and maybe a rules supplement every 5 years in-between. 2e had started tossing out a good number of minor supplements and there was already a feeling of annoyance about that to some extent. I think people were just totally shocked by a new edition coming out 3 years into 3.0. The blame on WotC though should go more to criticism of the fact that they released such a miserable edition as 3.0. It had a lot of interesting ideas but the implementation was TERRIBLE. Even a cursory reading of the 3.0 PHB was enough to tell me the thing was unworkable as-written. 3.5 was pretty much mandatory, they couldn't pretend 3.0 was supportable for a normal 8-12 year edition lifecycle.

The thing with edition launches and then ongoing support is there are opposing requirements. It makes perfectly good sense to release 3 books as a new edition. Yes, its somewhat costly, but you can't just release a new system as a rump, it has to do most of what the previous system did. Its also pretty pointless to release a new edition as if it was a bunch of supplements, the formats serve different purposes. There's no rational way for instance that 4e could have been released as several power-source focused books, you STILL need all of them to have a game that allows all the basic stuff, but at the same time you DON'T need the more obscure classes to begin with. Supplements make perfectly good sense to be focused and can be whatever size is most easily salable, the core really can't be.

So you will always run into this mid-edition sort of nebulous point where it seems like the format was 'wrong' or needs to be reorganized, but it really isn't so.

 

[DaveMage]

In the recent WotC podcast, they mentioned they have been working on 4E Essentials since September 2009. (The release date of the first few 4E Essentials books will be September 2010).

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (D&D Podcast: Essentials)

(This is mentioned at around 00:01:30 , approximate at the beginning of the podcast).

This suggests that there's around a one year period of time to do the work.

If there was at least a one year period of time to do the work for individual D&D books back in 2002-2003, then it wouldn't be surprising if they were already working on the 3.5E core books sometime in mid-2002 (if not earlier during early-2002).

IIRC, Monte Cook indicated that 3.5 (or some revision) was planned from the start of 3.0.

Refreshing the Core has traditionally been a good way to generate D&D sales.

With regard to the whole reprinting/not-reprinting of PH1, DM1, and MM1 rumor, since they (or the distributors/channel) apparently have plenty of back stock, someone would likely take a financial hit if they *did* reprint, so not reprinting certainly makes sense.

What will be really interesting to see going forward is what non-adventure/non-setting rulebooks are released and how are they branded (e.g. will they use "PHB4" or a new style of title).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think 95% of the grief about 3.5 had mostly to do with the rapidity with which 3.0 was replaced. The community was used to the way things worked for 25 years with a major new version every decade+ and maybe a rules supplement every 5 years in-between. 2e had started tossing out a good number of minor supplements and there was already a feeling of annoyance about that to some extent. I think people were just totally shocked by a new edition coming out 3 years into 3.0. The blame on WotC though should go more to criticism of the fact that they released such a miserable edition as 3.0. It had a lot of interesting ideas but the implementation was TERRIBLE. Even a cursory reading of the 3.0 PHB was enough to tell me the thing was unworkable as-written. 3.5 was pretty much mandatory, they couldn't pretend 3.0 was supportable for a normal 8-12 year edition lifecycle.

3.0 was such a major revision of D&D rules that errors were to be expected. Also i don´t think 3.0 was much more lousy than 3.5. Both were really good systems, an improvement over ADnD, but by improving the game overall, balance in higher levels was destroyed. Also powergaming in this fashion wasn´t to be expected... (the availability of best builds in the internet)

Actually i was sad about a lot of changes (sleep allowed a saving throw, spells were more hardcoded/broken into different pieces, grid was expected, facing was completely taken out) but in hindsight, most of those changes were for the better...

All in All, the d20 System was a great way for people to get into the game. DMing was made so much easier, because at least at lower non powergamed levels, the math (CR etc) more or less worked out and every character could pull its own weight in some fashion.