Pathfinder 1E If Paizo can, why can't Wizards of the Coast?

[Scurvy_Platypus]

RE: Monster Builder, listen if I cant set up an encounter without using a proprietary tool that I have to pay for monthly then I dont want to be bothered.

Totally with you. I don't have and don't plan on ever having a DDI account.

Setting up and converting an adventure from one edition to 4E is not as simple as hand waving if you want to retain the feel AND structure of the original source material. If so much flat out had waving is required then as I said before what's the purpose of converting the adventure in the first place.

Hmmmm. "Structure" of the original source material.... that's a bit shaky. Mainly because previous editions have had a different structure. For example, AD&D relied on characters getting XP for gold. Lots of GMs houseruled that out, and it produced much slower leveling games. When 3E rolled around, lots of people pitched a fit because 3E revised the monster XP to push it back to the roughly expected leveling times; lots of people felt that the leveling rate was "insane" and "videogamey".

You don't have to handwave massive amounts, but some is required, yes. What's the point of converting an adventure in the first place? It's fun, there's still a rough structure given you might simply need to adjust it some (or a lot depending on the adventure).... there's a number of reasons for it.

But this goes back to the crux of my point. With 4E I'm not able to use pre-existing material from older editions easily. You can be dismissive of it if you want to but I'm not talking out of the side of my neck here. I've ACTUALLY TRIED TO DO IT. and it sucked.

Hmmm. I think it's actually a middle ground: you can use a fair amount of pre-existing material relatively easily. Some stuff is going to be harder than others.

For example, some of the stuff out of Ptolus requires some serious reworking. This happens in part because of the reliance and expectation on certain types of magic/spells, some because the encounters in 3.x are very static and rely on few creatures, whereas 4E expects a significantly greater mobility and groups of stuff.

Having been on the converting end myself, I'd say it's a mixed bag. It's really helpful if you've got a good mastery of one of the systems. On my end, I've got a decent enough grasp of many of the monster/encounter building aspects of 3.5, so I can then turn around and rely on stuff like Page 42 from 4E and other bits to try and reproduce a rougly similar experience.

I think you're kinda wandering into edition war territory. To keep this relevant to the OP, I'd say that a number of your points kind of feed back into some of what's been said before: WotC has dropped the ball on a number of occasions. Given their position (800 lb gorilla) there's no way that they're not going to take flak for that ball-dropping.

And they shouldn't be let off the hook.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I think you're kinda wandering into edition war territory. To keep this relevant to the OP, I'd say that a number of your points kind of feed back into some of what's been said before: WotC has dropped the ball on a number of occasions. Given their position (800 lb gorilla) there's no way that they're not going to take flak for that ball-dropping.

And they shouldn't be let off the hook.

Not trying to start an edition war and honestly dont see where you go that from. I dont care for 4E but I've said in a previous post that I think it's a well designed game. It just so happens that the things I dont like about it outweigh the things that I DO like about it is all. Every now and then I crack open the Monster Manual (my favorite of the 3 4E core books) because I like the simplification of the monster stat blocks and pretty much try to replicate them for my Pathfinder games on some level.

I also dont love every edition of D&D and I've been playing since red box basic. I love Red Box and AD&D. Could I ever go back to playing / running them? Probably not. 2nd Edition I dropped once the kits and stuff started coming into play. Loved 3E (3 & 3.5) and loving Pathfinder and some of the OGL derivatives (FantasyCraft and M&M 2E especially).

 

[Wicht]

So we have three car companies, all with popular sports cars.

The first, chaostechium, says, we're going to come out with a new edition this year but instead of a deep red, its going to be midnight blue. And all their fans rejoice and tell them how impressed they are.

The second car company, Wotsees, says, we're going to come out with a new edition this year but instead of four wheels, it will have six for better offroading. And we're replacing the gas engine with a diesel engine and we're removing the three extra bucket seats and replacing them with a truck bed. And half their fans go, wow, that's different but I'm interested, and the other half begin wondering what happened to their favorite sports car and talking trash about the company.

The third car company, Golemworks, also releases a new car but they take a popular older model, use the same engine and body as the original, replace the cloth covered seats with leather bucket seats, and add a cd player and gps as options. Many fans of the older model rush out to buy it and while there are mixed feelings on the value of the leather seats, everyone generally likes the gps and even buys the upgrade for it a year later.

So all three car companies came out with new editions of their sports cars but the one gets grief and the other do not. How is that fair? Like the OP, I must say its a bit of a puzzler.

 

[jaerdaph]

Since Paizo hasn't released or even announced a revised edition of the Pathfinder core rules yet, I couldn't tell you.

So put me down in the apples v. oranges category.

 

[Voadam]

Since Paizo hasn't released or even announced a revised edition of the Pathfinder core rules yet, I couldn't tell you.

So put me down in the apples v. oranges category.

Beta was the best of the three PF editions to date.

 

[jaerdaph]

Beta was the best of the three PF editions to date.

And what did you pay for those?

 

[Beginning of the End]

Yes, true. But again, I think the hyperbole about incompatibility is a bit extreme.

Speaking from personal experience, I can say that I've frequently played Call of Cthulhu games where different players were using different editions of the game and rarely, if ever, run into problems or hiccups.

The same, unfortunately, can't be said about the 3.0 -> 3.5 change. Changes to core classes; the rearrangement of the skill system; and a few other radical points of re-design caused constant friction when I've played at tables where people are using rulebooks from each edition.

OTOH, the incompatibility between 3.0 and 3.5 can also be radically overstated. For example, I've had players run 3.0 rangers and druids under the 3.5 rules and never had a problem. And I don't have qualms about pulling material from 3.0 supplements and plugging it straight into my 3.5 campaign (because I can deal with the niggling incompatibilities on the fly).

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.

One of the reasons it was viewed as "slimy", however, is because WotC lied about the severity of the changes. This had a profound impact not only on fans, but also on the industry: Companies producing D20 supplements got severely burned by the 3.0 -> 3.5 switch in a way that wouldn't have happened if WotC had been honest about the fact that the 3.0 -> 3.5 changes were going to render 3.0 products effectively obsolete.

And that burn passed down to the local game stores, as well, who got stuck with a ton of dead product that they had been told would still be compatible with the newly revised rules (but wasn't). (Yet another example of WotC's policies ing over the FLGS in a tradition dating back to at least 1993.)

(WotC, of course, also has a long track record of lying about edition changes. There may be sound marketing reasons for this. But at this point I pretty much just tune out anything they have to say about new editions of the game until I can actually hold the edition in my hand and see it for myself.)

And, frankly, I think any rational analysis of the release of 3.5 makes it pretty clear that a major reason it was released ahead of schedule in 2003 was because WotC needed to re-launch their core supplement lines as hardcover books that could better compete in the D20 market. This may have also contributed to some of the changes in the ruleset which specifically broke backwards compatibility.

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,

Having made (or attempted) both jumps, I'd be forced to disagree. 3E cleaned up a lot of the rules (and seriously broke stat block compatibility by making all the numbers add in the same direction), but gave us a game that was fundamentally the same in most respects. Even most of the stuff that people considered radical or new in 3E had actually been part of 2E for half a decade (having been added as part of the Players' Option series), in much the same way that a lot of the "new" stuff in 2E had actually been kicking around in 1E for half a decade.

4E, on the other hand, is a fundamentally different fantasy roleplaying game. This isn't much of a secret, although it's an observation that can apparently cause some people to flip out. But ShinHakkaider has already made a great post showing that the proof is in the pudding: I can take modules from 0/1/2/3E, plug in the stat blocks for whatever edition I'm actually using, and the modules work just fine. But that doesn't work for 4E, because the game doesn't play the same way.

The switch of 2.0 -> 3.0 was certainly larger than 3.0 -> 3.5, but both pale in comparison to 3.5 -> 4.0.

 

[Umbran]

Speaking from personal experience, I can say that I've frequently played Call of Cthulhu games where different players were using different editions of the game and rarely, if ever, run into problems or hiccups.

Yes, well, here's a possibility that sounds like semantics, but isn't: are they playing with different editions of the game, or just different editions of the book?

There's a trick in the world of academic textbooks, where they change the problems at the end of chapters, swap out some of the art and diagrams, and call it a new edition. Since the old books don't have the same problem sets, they can't easily be used by students for homework and such. While the book's real content has not significantly changed, it is a "new edition" and the student can't buy the old (used) books.

It seems to me that there's a point at which changes are so minor that while the people who own the property may claim it is a new edition (as is their right), functionally it is more like the previous edition with some errata.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Scurvy Platypus has disabled XP, but I want it on the record that if I could, I would have given him XP for his posts in this thread.

 

[Shemeska]

So we have three car companies, all with popular sports cars.

I want to give you XP, but I can't give you any more yet.