pawsplay
Hero
Plus, it was a very feedback-driven process. Much as with the Pathfinder core book, people are willing to sink a few extra dollars into something if they feel it's well-tailored for their needs.
Pathfinder 1E If Paizo can, why can't Wizards of the Coast?
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
Plus, it was a very feedback-driven process. Much as with the Pathfinder core book, people are willing to sink a few extra dollars into something if they feel it's well-tailored for their needs.
ExploderWizard
Hero
This is the way things work in many industries. If a big movie studio takes a property with a huge fanbase and spends a large budget yet still manages to churn out a crappy movie the outcry is larger and more bitter because of the increased expectations of the fans. If a small unknown studio makes a film just as crappy the fans respond with "meh, I wasn't expecting much from them anyway."
Mercurius
Legend
OK, I'm back, child picked up, lunch eaten.
Yes, agreed. My view is that the 3E to 3.5E "debacle" was an overly hyperbolic knee-jerk reaction that hurt WotC's credibility in the eyes of those that reacted, and also helped create a partially false perspective that edition changes and revisions with regards to D&D are primarily slimy and money-grubbing activities.
All well said. Sort of like the Great American Novel that will probably never be written, the Holy Grail of D&D seems to be how to create an iteration of D&D that appeals to the widest possible group of players, from Grognards to WoWers, from sandboxers to railroaders, from wargamists to narrativists, etc. Like the Great American Novel as a final omega product, I don't think it is possible, but like Zeno's Paradox we can get closer to an unreachable target. So for me it is, at the least, fun to think about what this "perfect" D&D would look like, and how one could make a rules-set that would accommodate such a wide variety of styles.
And? I hear your point but my response is, "so what?" What's the big deal? In my opinion this element of the discussion is mainly due to the very human resistance to change and a limitation of human imagination and creative flexibility.
I think we need to be careful with our selectivity of memory--notice how you don't mention the jump from 2E to 3E, which at the very least is in the same ballpark as 3.5E to 4E, maybe even a greater jump. If I remember correctly, there wasn't a huge uproar and people were generally excited about 3E (like the good Eric Noah site!), but that may largely be because of the "Dark Ages" of D&D in the late 90s. 3E was a huge boost, it re-vivified D&D in an unprecedented way and in such a way that wasn't as necessary in 2008. However, what was necessary in 2008, at least for WotC as a company, I would guess, was a major new burst in sales and, it could be argued, a cleaning up of the vast mess/wealth of 3.5E and OGL product.
Yes, very good point. At the least, WotC could have handled things better with the release of 4E, both in terms of building it up in an exciting way and perhaps delaying it until some of the kinks were worked out (e.g. skill challenges, magic item economy, etc).
Yes, true. The analogy is particularly apt in a way that you might not have intended: Despite the crap churned out by Hollywood, people still keep going to see movies. I am the first to admit that I get excited about "teh shiny" and will buy any new edition and at least half of what WotC churns out, and all of it at the beginning of a cycle and then only gradually weed out what I don't find worth the money (e.g. the "Power" books, race books, Player Strategy Guide, most Dungeon Tiles, etc). But I'd be happy to see a re-boot of D&D every five years or so, both because I think the evolution of the game warrants it and because of my not-so-latent materialistic tendencies
Yes, agreed. My view is that the 3E to 3.5E "debacle" was an overly hyperbolic knee-jerk reaction that hurt WotC's credibility in the eyes of those that reacted, and also helped create a partially false perspective that edition changes and revisions with regards to D&D are primarily slimy and money-grubbing activities.
All well said. Sort of like the Great American Novel that will probably never be written, the Holy Grail of D&D seems to be how to create an iteration of D&D that appeals to the widest possible group of players, from Grognards to WoWers, from sandboxers to railroaders, from wargamists to narrativists, etc. Like the Great American Novel as a final omega product, I don't think it is possible, but like Zeno's Paradox we can get closer to an unreachable target. So for me it is, at the least, fun to think about what this "perfect" D&D would look like, and how one could make a rules-set that would accommodate such a wide variety of styles.
And? I hear your point but my response is, "so what?" What's the big deal? In my opinion this element of the discussion is mainly due to the very human resistance to change and a limitation of human imagination and creative flexibility.
I think we need to be careful with our selectivity of memory--notice how you don't mention the jump from 2E to 3E, which at the very least is in the same ballpark as 3.5E to 4E, maybe even a greater jump. If I remember correctly, there wasn't a huge uproar and people were generally excited about 3E (like the good Eric Noah site!), but that may largely be because of the "Dark Ages" of D&D in the late 90s. 3E was a huge boost, it re-vivified D&D in an unprecedented way and in such a way that wasn't as necessary in 2008. However, what was necessary in 2008, at least for WotC as a company, I would guess, was a major new burst in sales and, it could be argued, a cleaning up of the vast mess/wealth of 3.5E and OGL product.
Yes, very good point. At the least, WotC could have handled things better with the release of 4E, both in terms of building it up in an exciting way and perhaps delaying it until some of the kinks were worked out (e.g. skill challenges, magic item economy, etc).
This is the way things work in many industries. If a big movie studio takes a property with a huge fanbase and spends a large budget yet still manages to churn out a crappy movie the outcry is larger and more bitter because of the increased expectations of the fans. If a small unknown studio makes a film just as crappy the fans respond with "meh, I wasn't expecting much from them anyway."
Yes, true. The analogy is particularly apt in a way that you might not have intended: Despite the crap churned out by Hollywood, people still keep going to see movies. I am the first to admit that I get excited about "teh shiny" and will buy any new edition and at least half of what WotC churns out, and all of it at the beginning of a cycle and then only gradually weed out what I don't find worth the money (e.g. the "Power" books, race books, Player Strategy Guide, most Dungeon Tiles, etc). But I'd be happy to see a re-boot of D&D every five years or so, both because I think the evolution of the game warrants it and because of my not-so-latent materialistic tendencies
To the OP, a few points:
1. Paizo can do it with the campaign sourcebook b/c:
A) It's an optional component of the setting, not a RPG book that is primarily rules-oriented like the core book or APG.
B) It's an expansion of the original. It is not designed to invalidate/outdate the original book. There is no Realms-Shaking-Event equivalent.
2. As much as I like the Crafty crew, the errata'd edition annoyed me. I bought the PDF and original rulebook. I would have waited for the errata'd version had I known it was coming. However, as with #1 above, it's errata & clean-up; not an edition-change or modification on par with a .5 release. (I can't comment on whether Essentials does or does not meet that level of system change.)
3. WotC (& TSR before it during the 2e days) typically goes for the drastic change. This is a conscious decision to attract new players as well as migrate the existing customer base -- a clear demarcation from the old to the new. While I can respect the validity of doing that from a business perspective, I instinctively reject it from a customer perspective. YMMV.
1. Paizo can do it with the campaign sourcebook b/c:
A) It's an optional component of the setting, not a RPG book that is primarily rules-oriented like the core book or APG.
B) It's an expansion of the original. It is not designed to invalidate/outdate the original book. There is no Realms-Shaking-Event equivalent.
2. As much as I like the Crafty crew, the errata'd edition annoyed me. I bought the PDF and original rulebook. I would have waited for the errata'd version had I known it was coming. However, as with #1 above, it's errata & clean-up; not an edition-change or modification on par with a .5 release. (I can't comment on whether Essentials does or does not meet that level of system change.)
3. WotC (& TSR before it during the 2e days) typically goes for the drastic change. This is a conscious decision to attract new players as well as migrate the existing customer base -- a clear demarcation from the old to the new. While I can respect the validity of doing that from a business perspective, I instinctively reject it from a customer perspective. YMMV.
I think you'll likely see lots of edition-complaining from any game that is splat/supplement heavy. White Wolf certainly got lots of flak any time it put out a new edition.
I do think that with D&D the compatibility issue is a big one, in large part because new editions of D&D seem to be designed with the goal in mind of being as incompatible as possible with previous editions, to feed the supplement treadmill we all know and love.
I do think that with D&D the compatibility issue is a big one, in large part because new editions of D&D seem to be designed with the goal in mind of being as incompatible as possible with previous editions, to feed the supplement treadmill we all know and love.
$10 for the print version of the latest edition of the rules and the old supplemental stuff isn't that hard to use. I assume that's part of it.
ShinHakkaider
Adventurer
Here is the bottom line: Nothing is invalidated in the D&D tradition, nothing lost, and nothing no longer usable. DMs are, or should be, an inherently creative bunch, and it doesn't take a lot to convert Death's Ride to 4E, if you so desire. This is not to say that Wizards of the Coast, as a subsidiary of Hasbro, a company--like 99% of companies--primarily interested in making profit, doesn't have business in mind when they come out with new books, editions, and sub-editions, but that no matter what they do, it does not invalidate previous material.
There are a bunch of things that the OP said in his initial post that I disagreed with but the above statement just REALLY rubbed me the wrong way so I'm going to respond to it.
It's fairly easy to convert a module from Red box basic to A&D. I've done it with The Keep on the Borderlands . In fact Keep on the Borderlands is what I call my baseline module. If I can convert it fairly easily to a new edition then I usually adapt that new edition.
converting it to 4E was more trouble than I had anticipated and definitely more trouble than it was worth. Even Mike Mearls says that a straightforward conversion is going to be more trouble than its worth and for 4E the encounters need to be "re-imagined". After trying to convert the Kobold lair I had to change so much of it that I realized that I was better off creating completely different encounters. If that was going to be the case then no I cant use my older edition adventures or crunch without spending an inordinate amount of time to make them work with the new edition.
So yes, DM's are and should be a creative bunch, but when the editions design philosophies are pretty much diametrically opposed to one another it makes a "simple" conversion a huge pain in the rear and nowhere as trivial as you make it out to be.
I was the guy who was very skeptical about 4E and has a metric buttload of 3 & 3.5 material as well as 1st and 2nd edition stuff. I still gave 4E, what I felt was, a fair shot. But I knew if I went 4E the majority of the materials for the previous editions would in fact be useless. 3.5 and Pathfinder are speaking the same basic language. A HD adjustment here, calculating the CMB and CMD and you still have materials you can use back and forth.
4E saves are calculated differently, the BAB is calculated differently, Powers instead of spells (for all classes) and that's just for starters. Look 4E is not a bad game. It's a well designed game. It's just not a game that I care for for a number of reasons that I wont get into here. I think that the people like yourself who are a going on about how easy it is to convert things from older editions either haven't actually tried to do it or have done so in a very loose manner ignoring things like how the balance the encounters using the rules in the DMG.
Either way it's nowhere as easy as people like to say it is. Also if you find yourself changing so much about the encounters in the module you're trying to convert then why even bother? See what I'm saying? Anyway I'm done.
There are a bunch of things that the OP said in his initial post that I disagreed with but the above statement just REALLY rubbed me the wrong way so I'm going to respond to it.
It's fairly easy to convert a module from Red box basic to A&D. I've done it with The Keep on the Borderlands . In fact Keep on the Borderlands is what I call my baseline module. If I can convert it fairly easily to a new edition then I usually adapt that new edition.
converting it to 4E was more trouble than I had anticipated and definitely more trouble than it was worth. Even Mike Mearls says that a straightforward conversion is going to be more trouble than its worth and for 4E the encounters need to be "re-imagined". After trying to convert the Kobold lair I had to change so much of it that I realized that I was better off creating completely different encounters. If that was going to be the case then no I cant use my older edition adventures or crunch without spending an inordinate amount of time to make them work with the new edition.
So yes, DM's are and should be a creative bunch, but when the editions design philosophies are pretty much diametrically opposed to one another it makes a "simple" conversion a huge pain in the rear and nowhere as trivial as you make it out to be.
I was the guy who was very skeptical about 4E and has a metric buttload of 3 & 3.5 material as well as 1st and 2nd edition stuff. I still gave 4E, what I felt was, a fair shot. But I knew if I went 4E the majority of the materials for the previous editions would in fact be useless. 3.5 and Pathfinder are speaking the same basic language. A HD adjustment here, calculating the CMB and CMD and you still have materials you can use back and forth.
4E saves are calculated differently, the BAB is calculated differently, Powers instead of spells (for all classes) and that's just for starters. Look 4E is not a bad game. It's a well designed game. It's just not a game that I care for for a number of reasons that I wont get into here. I think that the people like yourself who are a going on about how easy it is to convert things from older editions either haven't actually tried to do it or have done so in a very loose manner ignoring things like how the balance the encounters using the rules in the DMG.
Either way it's nowhere as easy as people like to say it is. Also if you find yourself changing so much about the encounters in the module you're trying to convert then why even bother? See what I'm saying? Anyway I'm done.
Asmor
First Post
Because WotC matters.
n.b. while I'd love nothing more than to leave this as a short, tongue in cheek comment, I know that someone's going to take offense and accuse me of being a fanboy or something... so I'll simply add that this is my honest opinion as to the apparent 'hypocrisy.' Anything WotC does will have vastly more exposure, and vastly more of a reaction in both directions, than anything Paizo or anyone else does. But with that out of the way, can we pretend that this whole footnote doesn't exist, and all I said was "Because WotC matters." ?
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