[WotC's recent insanity] I think I've Figured It Out

[Cyronax]

Actually, most of my group and I work at a used bookstore in Redmond. Most books are available for half price. But the PHB, which we've only gotten one copy of in the last year..55 bucks and sold in one day. Sadly we don't get much of a discount on out of print stuff. I think I'll just end up breaking my no laptops rule.

Wow that is surprising. Prices are up.

 

[mattcolville]

Good points, Matt. I do, however, think you are missing something very key, which is that while 4E may be fun it can't possible compete with the style of funness (or funnity?) of World of Warcraft and other computer games. No matter what nifty gadgets and doodads it employs, no matter what modernized tropes it utilizes and idiosyncratic sacred cows it slays, it can't compete with CGI, with MMORGs, with Playstations and XBoxes.

The great thing about kids is; they have lots of free time. It's not either or for them. We had video games in the 1980s. My friends would disappear when the new Ultima game came out. We played D&D several times a week and other RPGs and Axis & Allies and lots of other games, and we went bowling and to the movies and to the beach and we all had girlfriends and spent hours and hours with them.

It's not a time factor. It's about what the game brings to the table.

My concern is that Wotc, not 4E, is driving the game toward a board-game like experience. Witness the Virtual Tabletop.

It's not a virtual tabletop. There's no functionality for art, handouts, notes, campaign maps. None of that. None of the stuff you do at the table. It's a Virtual Encounter environment. It puts one map in front of you, not a table, a map, and all the functionality is about using that map to fight encounters.

Look at D&D Encounters. Look at Essentials, where Rituals have evaporated.

WotC seems to have identified the World Outside the Encounter as a bug, not a feature, and this and this alone is why 4E won't be able to compete. Not because of video games, we had those for literally as long as we've had RPGs, but because they're jettisoning the only thing D&D had that set it apart from everything else.

I've said this before, as loudly as I could, but people seem not to have picked it up. 4E makes killing monsters more fun than it's ever been. We have enough content now that we could all play every week for the rest of our lives and never experience it all.

So I say to the DevTeam. Guys. Killing monsters is a solved problem. What's next?

If everyone started asking this, we'd see change. But I don't think people perceive the problem.

Killing monsters is a solved problem. What's next?

 

[rounser]

Killing monsters is a solved problem. What's next?

Not even that is solved, as it's been done in a way that takes far too long to resolve, meaning that a campaign with the scope of say, Becmi is no longer possible, because people don't have that kind of time. So killing monsters is still a problem unless this is DDM or Warhammer Quest campaign scope.

 

[darjr]

Yea, my exp around here is that 3.5 phb's and dmg's are scarce. Cheapest on ebay with a quick look is $36 for the paperback phb.

 

[jeffh]

I think this gets to the crux of where things have gone so wrong; applying too much logic to as ornery a beast as D&D.

Logic suggests that simpler rules are better, and this is the error you're making here - if that were true we'd all ditch D&D for FUDGE.

I'm not sure what you mean by "logic".

Logic is a set of principles for making sure you don't come to false conclusions from true premises. By itself, it is completely neutral on which rules are better.

Common sense, which it sounds like you might actually have in mind, does not suggest that simpler rules are better - at most it suggests that all else being equal, simpler rules are better. The difference between the two positions is extremely important and almost universally ignored in online discussions such as this. The former claim is obviously false, because rules that are too simple just can't do a lot of the things they could do if they were a little more complex. The latter claim is obviously true - if two rulesets accomplish your goals equally well, of course the simpler ones are better.

In short, speaking of "simplicity" as the culprit is a red herring - even if, for the sake of argument, I grant the (IMO ridiculous) claim that 4E is "dumbed down" from previous editions to any significant degree. Whatever it is you're objecting to, it can't be simplicity; if it were, you would either be complaining about something that doesn't exist, or saying something obviously false.

The designers of the new edition simply have goals you disagree with. You don't want the rules to hang together logically or focus too heavily on tactical combat (though how you figure 1E and 2E, with their obvious roots in miniatures wargaming, are an improvement in this respect is lost on me). But you don't want the rules to be complex for the sake of being complex. That would be ridiculous, and it just confuses the issues to talk as though that were your complaint.

 

[JeffB]

I do agree with the post. I'm very disgruntled myself, trying to run a 3.5 game with all the players huddled around my single PHB because they can't afford to buy the 50 to 60 dollar out of print books.
It would really be incredibly easy to pacify me. A reprint.

I'm sorry but expecting a company to support an out of print game in this way is ridiculous. Or any company with any "out of print" or discontinued item for that matter.

Why can't your players afford the books? Do they work? Waste money on other stuff like getting an expensive coffee, going to a movie, or eating out? If they have time to play games for a few hours, they could be working to get money to purchase them, no? I've got no sympathy for the "poor player" excuse when it gets tossed around. If you want something bad enough, ESPECIALLY a luxury item like a game book, you can work for it. I don't get pissed off I cannot afford $300 for a decent set of LBBs and complain that it's WOTCs fault, and they should make a re-print (even though they should! ).

 

[rounser]

The designers of the new edition simply have goals you disagree with. You don't want the rules to hang together logically or focus too heavily on tactical combat (though how you figure 1E and 2E, with their obvious roots in miniatures wargaming, are an improvement in this respect is lost on me). But you don't want the rules to be complex for the sake of being complex. That would be ridiculous, and it just confuses the issues to talk as though that were your complaint.

No, I like good rules, just not rules that sacrifice every other darn thing of worth in the game for sake of axiomatic metagame consistency (e.g. The kind of thinking that says we need to fill out some game design aesthetics matrix of power sources and controller/defender types). That's the insanity we're courting here, you just have to deal with the fact that fantasy sword and sorcery worlds cannot be codified completely equitably and believably unless you want shades of beige. And the design path where logical rules artefacts decide what exists, with flavour filled in in support of whatever that suggests, is a pox on the game and has been going on since 3e (where there was a quota of sound based monsters to meet in the mm so bards could use their abilities sufficiently). That's the crazy path that D&D has gone down, unchecked, and it's just as bad rules but not on people's radars as being such because it makes so much logical sense if you're a rules design wonk.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I've been playing since 2e, and man, WotC hates me so much they made two editions that were better and are incredibly fun that I love.

DAMN YOU WOTC!

OD&D and 3.5E?

 

[FireLance]

No, I like good rules, just not rules that sacrifice every other darn thing of worth in the game for sake of axiomatic metagame consistency (e.g. The kind of thinking that says we need to fill out some game design aesthetics matrix of power sources and controller/defender types). That's the insanity we're courting here, you just have to deal with the fact that fantasy sword and sorcery worlds cannot be codified completely equitably and believably unless you want shades of beige. And the design path where logical rules artefacts decide what exists, with flavour filled in in support of whatever that suggests, is a pox on the game and has been going on since 3e (where there was a quota of sound based monsters to meet in the mm so bards could use their abilities sufficiently). That's the crazy path that D&D has gone down, unchecked, and it's just as bad rules but not on people's radars as being such because it makes so much logical sense if you're a rules design wonk.

Okay ... axiomatic metagame consistency I can live without.

However, I fully endorse metagame considerations that provide the PCs with sufficient opportunities to use their abilities. Putting sound-based monsters in the game so that bards get to use their countersong abilities is to me no different from putting traps in the game so that rogues get to use their trapfinding abilities.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm just... baffled. If you could put forth some evidence that suggests they're not interested in catering towards long-time fans, it might make this more of a conversation, and less of a puzzling rant.

I think we have different senses of humor. As I have already explained, my post began rather facetiously and became more serious. I don't really think that WotC "hates" old-timers, but that they have lost sight of certain elements of what makes D&D a unique experience (see mattcolville's excellent post a few before this one which I will respond to in this post).

The thing I feel gets overlooked is that video games and tabletop have always appealed ,to me anyhow, for completely different reasons. I don't think bringing new players in is going to happen by imitating the video game medium. I think the focus should be on what makes it a unique experience.

This is well said and resonates with my view (although video games don't appeal to me and I do dislike WoW for various reasons, although I don't dislike WoW players! ).

It's just gone way too far, even if I can see the WHY of it, because the WOTC designers do to an extent explain their thinking, but the blind spots are huge IMO.

And the grandfather of RPGs perhaps isn't the place to try out certain fundamental rules overhauls in the core, even if everyone in the room agrees with you...

Good points. I don't entirely agree about the last part, but I do think it (4E) wasn't thought through as well as it should have been. At the least I think it is pretty safe to say that WotC couldn't possibly have expected the sheer degree and quantity of negative backlash.

It's not a time factor. It's about what the game brings to the table...

...snip...

Killing monsters is a solved problem. What's next?

This was such an excellent post (xp to come) that I had a hard time cutting out parts of it. I agree wholeheartedly and this is a major aspect of what I was trying to get at, but put more concisely and clearly.

What's next? Great question. I'm afraid more of the same--more ways to support your combat encounters. Virtually, of course.

Why not something different? Why not, for instance, a guide to sandbox campaigning? Or a toolbox book for improv DMing? Why not a new campaign setting? Why not alternative sub-systems for the game, or new creative approaches like Weapons of Legacy or Magic of Incarnum?

But of course we know why: Because that sort of thing has a low profit margin, or at least lower than books with more options for how to kill things. Because a new campaign setting is risky, riskier than another re-boot. And so on.

This is not to say that WotC hasn't taken risks or that they haven't tried to innovate - they have. But what seems to have happened is that the all-powerful Combat Encounter has become a kind of massive attractor, a vortex into which everything gets sucked. Of course we have the power to break out of it, to run our games as we want to, but it would be nice for WotC to provide more tools to help us along the way, or at least diversify a bit.

In summary, I think you are right: D&D is in danger of jettisoning what makes it (as a tabletop RPG) unique, which is the play of imagination within fantasy worlds. This is the factor that should be explored and nourished. The bifurcated concepts of "crunch" and "fluff" exemplify this: "fluff" is what the DM reads at home so that he can offer flavor text between encounters, while "crunch" is what we do within the game session.

Again, no one is forcing anyone to play D&D this way, but WotC certainly advocates and encourages it.