FWIW, generations of teachers have made complaints along these lines, with only the names of the pop-culture items changing.
[WotC's recent insanity] I think I've Figured It Out
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
FWIW, generations of teachers have made complaints along these lines, with only the names of the pop-culture items changing.
Crazy Jerome
First Post
As far as I'm concerned, the elephant in the living room has only been aluded to, thus far in the discussion. I would state the problem as, there are two competing ways to state the goals of a modern edition of D&D:
1. Make the best possible game you can make, where "best" is defined any way you want, but has to involve a steady stream of players (i.e. at least slowly growing), some minimal threshold of elegance in the mechanics and efficiency of results using best game design, and likewise some minimal fidelity to D&D traditions.
2. Do the best you can with the above, while also making something that sells multiple products on a somewhat regular schedule.
I'm fairly certain that lasor-like focus on the goals in option #1 would preclude option #2, because "best" is not going to be served by a stream of products. You can have "inspirational" gaming materials produced, but you can't have them produced by a team of 20-30 people, every month or two. Inspiration doesn't work like that, not even for the best writers.
As just one of the more obvious examples, they could easily make powers more elegant. There aren't enough differences in powers to justify many of them. But this would make the list of powers much shorter. And thus, there would be a lot less power books. Note that this is not only a 4E problem, either. 3E and 2E had it as bad (as do many other non-D&D games), merely in different areas. Each edtion has tried to circumvent this basic problem by thinking up something else to talk about a lot, but you can't solve, "we need to talk less about X," using that strategy.
(And yes, I understand exception-based design well enough to know that it is a good strategy for design, but when pursued strictly for design reasons, you don't have that many exceptions--especially, when the exceptions are essentially cosmetic. From a software design perspective, what we have in D&D is a failure to "refactor" exceptions that aren't necessary into higher level constructs.)
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but that's the way I see it. The only way out I see is to "shoot the moon". Build that best possible game without trying to sell a steady stream of supplements, and then determine how to make that game profitable--whether by building network, leveraging the network for other games, online social networks, gametable, etc.
1. Make the best possible game you can make, where "best" is defined any way you want, but has to involve a steady stream of players (i.e. at least slowly growing), some minimal threshold of elegance in the mechanics and efficiency of results using best game design, and likewise some minimal fidelity to D&D traditions.
2. Do the best you can with the above, while also making something that sells multiple products on a somewhat regular schedule.
I'm fairly certain that lasor-like focus on the goals in option #1 would preclude option #2, because "best" is not going to be served by a stream of products. You can have "inspirational" gaming materials produced, but you can't have them produced by a team of 20-30 people, every month or two. Inspiration doesn't work like that, not even for the best writers.
As just one of the more obvious examples, they could easily make powers more elegant. There aren't enough differences in powers to justify many of them. But this would make the list of powers much shorter. And thus, there would be a lot less power books. Note that this is not only a 4E problem, either. 3E and 2E had it as bad (as do many other non-D&D games), merely in different areas. Each edtion has tried to circumvent this basic problem by thinking up something else to talk about a lot, but you can't solve, "we need to talk less about X," using that strategy.
(And yes, I understand exception-based design well enough to know that it is a good strategy for design, but when pursued strictly for design reasons, you don't have that many exceptions--especially, when the exceptions are essentially cosmetic. From a software design perspective, what we have in D&D is a failure to "refactor" exceptions that aren't necessary into higher level constructs.)
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but that's the way I see it. The only way out I see is to "shoot the moon". Build that best possible game without trying to sell a steady stream of supplements, and then determine how to make that game profitable--whether by building network, leveraging the network for other games, online social networks, gametable, etc.
A
amerigoV
Guest
Starcraft 2! (Spelljammer!)
jbear
First Post
Not surprisingly this thread has quickly devolved into the exposition of the merits of one or the other game system, not dissimilar to a tennis match only (more?) boring.
If I was WotC I'd certainly be up to my ***** with the constant, unyeilding criticism. I guess I'm not really one of their 'regular clients' ... I get the goods, get out and get on with the game. I don't buy every single thing they publish, only those I'm certain I will put to good use. With the possibility of irregular subscription patterns to update crunch on the CBuilder gone, I'm potentially even less interesting to WotC now. The online Cbuilder was dropping the ball, for sure, but I really don't care. It affects me so little. I have such a solid system to build the game I want to play upon I really don't need much else at this point.
I guess you could say I don't need WotC, and WotC doesn't need me.
But I do appreciate them for the awesome tool they have given me. I don't need any more inspiration to make the bits in between, during, before and after combat 'more than just a board game'.
And yet their change in marketing has piqued my interest. Monster Vault = wow!! (wow as in the word wow, not the abbreviation for World of W ... anyway I digress). The tokens that came with that box has me really thinking whether I need to buy minis any more. And another one is on its way next year? If it goes down the same line of monster that appears in book has a corresponding token, well, I guess I'm going to get snagged again. Ravenloft board game ... yep I want that too. And when they release the boxed set that fits into the Underdark ... well depending on what is inside thay may get me again. Pretty smart of them, at least from where I'm standing.
As for their recent insanity... I'm unsure what Mercurius is referring to exactly. The most recent debacle has been mainly concerned with DDI. I don't know what is going on there either, but I don't think it has much to do with WotC's desire, or lack thereof, to alienate themselves from a now unwanted older fanbase. I think it's more of a desperate attempt to defend themselves from piracy. This has stepped on a lot of toes. But I think with regards to piracy, although the battle is not won, they are certainly putting up a decent fight. As for the mags, well people say that the content is waning. Shrug* This sounds to me like that is probably due to financial decsions/restrictions that go far beyond Bill Slavic's control. Anyone mentioned yet that we are presently in the heart of a rampant world economic crisis?
The other point I'd like to comment on, that nobody has mentioned yet, is Mercurius' idea that WotC has already failed to pass the D&D torch onto the next generation. That torch is in my hands. And yours, Mercurius. Have you attempted to begin a game with any of your students only to have it fall on its face because they weren't into it? Or with any of these hopeless young people you know: nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, grandchildren? My kids are 5 and 2 respectively. We have a game going with 5 other children involved the same age based on simplified 4e rules. The parents help and 'surpervise' the character sheet business which has a lot of visual icons drawn on them to represent powers (as they are still in the process of learning to read). To put it plainly ... they absolutely love it. Yeah, they like videogames too, and movies. But they also totally get into D&D.
I'd say this would be a pretty universal experience. Kids enjoying actually sitting down with their parents and playing an awesome game with miniatures, dice, monsters, magic, danger and mystery, instead of being thrown in front of the idiot box and left to blob out so that dad can get the dinner ready and mum can finish checking the tax returns.
What the future holds for WotC ... my guess is only as good as the next guys. Colour me as concerned as I am for the welfare of the Mars company who makes Snickers bars which I very much enjoy eating, much to the detriment of my good health. But you can be sure as cheese on toast that I'm going to do my damnedest to get my kids into D&D... And from the looks, it isn't going to take much of a struggle at all.
Hmm ... maybe WotC needs me/wants me/loves me after all...
If I was WotC I'd certainly be up to my ***** with the constant, unyeilding criticism. I guess I'm not really one of their 'regular clients' ... I get the goods, get out and get on with the game. I don't buy every single thing they publish, only those I'm certain I will put to good use. With the possibility of irregular subscription patterns to update crunch on the CBuilder gone, I'm potentially even less interesting to WotC now. The online Cbuilder was dropping the ball, for sure, but I really don't care. It affects me so little. I have such a solid system to build the game I want to play upon I really don't need much else at this point.
I guess you could say I don't need WotC, and WotC doesn't need me.
But I do appreciate them for the awesome tool they have given me. I don't need any more inspiration to make the bits in between, during, before and after combat 'more than just a board game'.
And yet their change in marketing has piqued my interest. Monster Vault = wow!! (wow as in the word wow, not the abbreviation for World of W ... anyway I digress). The tokens that came with that box has me really thinking whether I need to buy minis any more. And another one is on its way next year? If it goes down the same line of monster that appears in book has a corresponding token, well, I guess I'm going to get snagged again. Ravenloft board game ... yep I want that too. And when they release the boxed set that fits into the Underdark ... well depending on what is inside thay may get me again. Pretty smart of them, at least from where I'm standing.
As for their recent insanity... I'm unsure what Mercurius is referring to exactly. The most recent debacle has been mainly concerned with DDI. I don't know what is going on there either, but I don't think it has much to do with WotC's desire, or lack thereof, to alienate themselves from a now unwanted older fanbase. I think it's more of a desperate attempt to defend themselves from piracy. This has stepped on a lot of toes. But I think with regards to piracy, although the battle is not won, they are certainly putting up a decent fight. As for the mags, well people say that the content is waning. Shrug* This sounds to me like that is probably due to financial decsions/restrictions that go far beyond Bill Slavic's control. Anyone mentioned yet that we are presently in the heart of a rampant world economic crisis?
The other point I'd like to comment on, that nobody has mentioned yet, is Mercurius' idea that WotC has already failed to pass the D&D torch onto the next generation. That torch is in my hands. And yours, Mercurius. Have you attempted to begin a game with any of your students only to have it fall on its face because they weren't into it? Or with any of these hopeless young people you know: nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, grandchildren? My kids are 5 and 2 respectively. We have a game going with 5 other children involved the same age based on simplified 4e rules. The parents help and 'surpervise' the character sheet business which has a lot of visual icons drawn on them to represent powers (as they are still in the process of learning to read). To put it plainly ... they absolutely love it. Yeah, they like videogames too, and movies. But they also totally get into D&D.
I'd say this would be a pretty universal experience. Kids enjoying actually sitting down with their parents and playing an awesome game with miniatures, dice, monsters, magic, danger and mystery, instead of being thrown in front of the idiot box and left to blob out so that dad can get the dinner ready and mum can finish checking the tax returns.
What the future holds for WotC ... my guess is only as good as the next guys. Colour me as concerned as I am for the welfare of the Mars company who makes Snickers bars which I very much enjoy eating, much to the detriment of my good health. But you can be sure as cheese on toast that I'm going to do my damnedest to get my kids into D&D... And from the looks, it isn't going to take much of a struggle at all.
Hmm ... maybe WotC needs me/wants me/loves me after all...
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Apparently they're also very happy with what they did with the Forgotten Realms too. So? Most FR fans I've heard from are pretty confident that they wrecked it.
Most people tend to like the way things they created are, and have passion for them, because they created them that way because that's the way they think it should be done (and are proud of the creation, of course). Slush piles are full of such material.
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JoeGKushner
Adventurer
In terms of what they may be doing, I wonder how much of it is to fight piracy. You can't download a boxed set.
On the other hand, I wonder how much money they're leaving on the table by not having PDFs of the tiles and mosnter tokens in the first place.
On the other hand, I wonder how much money they're leaving on the table by not having PDFs of the tiles and mosnter tokens in the first place.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
Because of course everyone has the same idea of what's fun. ... No, wait a minute, that doesn't sound right ...
Mercurius is pretty much right. WOTC is in a bind. Do they design for those of us who've been playing RPGs forever or for the new kids coming in? Because these groups have different enough ideas of what is fun that you can't make them both happy. And neither group is a very attractive market for the product. The veterans are diminishing and for the new guys you can't out-World of Warcraft World of Warcraft with an RPG. WOTC seems to have tried to make both groups happy and have succeeded with neither.
Utterly irrelevant to the subject we were discussing.
Because of course everyone has the same idea of what's fun. ... No, wait a minute, that doesn't sound right ...
Mercurius is pretty much right. WOTC is in a bind. Do they design for those of us who've been playing RPGs forever or for the new kids coming in? Because these groups have different enough ideas of what is fun that you can't make them both happy. And neither group is a very attractive market for the product. The veterans are diminishing and for the new guys you can't out-World of Warcraft World of Warcraft with an RPG. WOTC seems to have tried to make both groups happy and have succeeded with neither.
And yet I, who started in 2e, enjoy 4e.
I gurantee I'm not alone in this.
Perhaps - and I'm stretching out on a limb here - you don't speak for everyone who started playing before 4e?
WotC isn't in any way in a bind. Here's another magical secret that I will deign to share with the rest of you: "old" gamers and "new" gamers are not different species. Many of them even like the same kind of things! Shocking, yes, but true. There is no magical or neurological divide there.
pawsplay
Hero
I think of RPGs as being like opera. They have a select audience, they are no longer as popular with the masses as they once were and probably never will be again, and the audience is absolutely remorseless in its criticism. And justifiably so. When the lead soprano misses a note, it's not like there's anyone else who can sing it for her.
It probably didn't matter that TSR printed however many thousands of pages of stuff that is basically precycled paper. On the other hand, when a writer in a much smaller field turns out stuff that is almost, but not quite, good, expect criticism. Sometimes this is characterized as a sense of entitlement, but I think it's just a matter of judgment. It's a sense of sense of entitlement to say, "I made this game to be FUN, and I made out of love, for YOU!" and then complain when people don't like it. People are allowed not to like it.
Wizards seem to have done a great job of fostering an environment of creativity, collegialism, and affection. However, i think the whole design process has been tainted from the beginning by a priori business decisions. There is nothing about 4e's overall design goals, on broad outlines, I particularly object to, I just object to the staggering majority of decisions made about each and every path to those goals. Ultimately, 4e was about D&D back into Target and Toys R Us, which is a laudable goal, but I think real compromises were made that plenty of people are probably feeling remorseful about now. Further, I think Wizards was way optimistic about getting technology done that could match their crackerjack approach to game design; Mearls et al. are some of the best hired guns you could get for game design, but anyone designing software for an outfit like Wizards is probably a lower-earning developer, assisted by several abused interns.
I think Paizo took the right approach, and Wizards, the wrong one. Does anyone else remember Little Caesar's foray into the delivery business? It wasn't a crazy idea; it's not like they were not allowed to do what other pizza businesses did. The problem was this: Little Caesars's existing customers were takeout customers, and although they might take delivery at other times, they wanted something specific from LC. Hot n Ready, on the other hand, was successful, because it reinforced their existing customers, who wanted something cheap that required no advance planning and entailed no unexpected delays. Simply because some, perhaps most, LC customers said, "Wouldn't it be nice if you could get this delivered?" did not mean that their loyal base wanted to give up what they had, and people who insist on delivery are already ordering elsewhere. Cheap, tasty, delivery... pick two.
Wizards was trying to design something fun and boardgamey, which, while theoretically appealing to many people, didn't really have any advantages over, say, boardgames, especially strategy or miniature games, they already owned and played, in addition to RPGs. Trying to create an accessible game is great, but I think it's just a mistake to think of D&D as a sort of product you can sell to people the way you do Scattergories, or even Settlers. It's not like J. K. Rowling sat down one day and said, "Hm, what if instead of a last Harry Potter book, I wrote a script for a PC game that would allow you to play it?" In general, companies do not do well that try to make products other than what they have always made, unless the new direction is obviously demanded by the current business situation.
Bottom line: Who really thinks D&D should play like Savage Worlds and sell like Civilization?
It probably didn't matter that TSR printed however many thousands of pages of stuff that is basically precycled paper. On the other hand, when a writer in a much smaller field turns out stuff that is almost, but not quite, good, expect criticism. Sometimes this is characterized as a sense of entitlement, but I think it's just a matter of judgment. It's a sense of sense of entitlement to say, "I made this game to be FUN, and I made out of love, for YOU!" and then complain when people don't like it. People are allowed not to like it.
Wizards seem to have done a great job of fostering an environment of creativity, collegialism, and affection. However, i think the whole design process has been tainted from the beginning by a priori business decisions. There is nothing about 4e's overall design goals, on broad outlines, I particularly object to, I just object to the staggering majority of decisions made about each and every path to those goals. Ultimately, 4e was about D&D back into Target and Toys R Us, which is a laudable goal, but I think real compromises were made that plenty of people are probably feeling remorseful about now. Further, I think Wizards was way optimistic about getting technology done that could match their crackerjack approach to game design; Mearls et al. are some of the best hired guns you could get for game design, but anyone designing software for an outfit like Wizards is probably a lower-earning developer, assisted by several abused interns.
I think Paizo took the right approach, and Wizards, the wrong one. Does anyone else remember Little Caesar's foray into the delivery business? It wasn't a crazy idea; it's not like they were not allowed to do what other pizza businesses did. The problem was this: Little Caesars's existing customers were takeout customers, and although they might take delivery at other times, they wanted something specific from LC. Hot n Ready, on the other hand, was successful, because it reinforced their existing customers, who wanted something cheap that required no advance planning and entailed no unexpected delays. Simply because some, perhaps most, LC customers said, "Wouldn't it be nice if you could get this delivered?" did not mean that their loyal base wanted to give up what they had, and people who insist on delivery are already ordering elsewhere. Cheap, tasty, delivery... pick two.
Wizards was trying to design something fun and boardgamey, which, while theoretically appealing to many people, didn't really have any advantages over, say, boardgames, especially strategy or miniature games, they already owned and played, in addition to RPGs. Trying to create an accessible game is great, but I think it's just a mistake to think of D&D as a sort of product you can sell to people the way you do Scattergories, or even Settlers. It's not like J. K. Rowling sat down one day and said, "Hm, what if instead of a last Harry Potter book, I wrote a script for a PC game that would allow you to play it?" In general, companies do not do well that try to make products other than what they have always made, unless the new direction is obviously demanded by the current business situation.
Bottom line: Who really thinks D&D should play like Savage Worlds and sell like Civilization?
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