D&D 4E [4E Players, mainly] Ever thought of defecting to Pathfinder?

[Almacov]

I already vote with my dollar by paying for things I'm interested in and not paying for ones that don't win me over.
I've cancelled my DDI autorenew, and there are plenty of WotC products I just haven't been interested in purchasing - thus haven't bought them.

I'm not interested in Pathfinder because my group already knows 3.5 very well, I have loads of books for it, and Pathfinder isn't sufficiently different to warrant learning all the changes, buying all new books, and converting all the stuff I'd want to. It has no appeal to me. (Especially since I don't ever run published adventures.)

My group plays both 3.5 and 4e on occasion, and there are plenty of other games I own and would like to try when we get the chance. (Including one I'm working on the design for on and off, for that matter.)

Right now... I have a 4e session to prepare for.

 

[zoroaster100]

I'm not interested in switching to Pathfinder. I've very disheartened by WOTC's recent behaviour. But even if the worst happens and they abandon 4E and just end up trying to squeeze money from customers with silly accessories like collectable cards, I will still play 4E and buy plastic miniatures from other companies. The main thing I'll miss from WOTC is if they fail to provide an affordable useful updated character builder. It would be great if WOTC would license 4e adventures back to the Paizo folks or other competent adventure writers since WOTC has rarely done a good job with adventures, but the 4e rules system is now robust and fits my needs just fine as is.

 

[Mercurius]

OK, a few posts have helped me whittle down my view to this:

I prefer 4E as a game over Pathfinder, but prefer the style of Pathfinder (thanks, Goonalan) and the "vibe" I get from Paizo as a company. That's the core of it, although with lots of other bits attached.

I think some miss the point that the desire to support one company is not a mark of immaturity or petulance; in fact, it is being more involved on a deeper, subtler level - voting with one's dollar and time, taking responsibility for what one supports. In the same way that I don't only buy organic and non/less processed foods because they are better, healthier products, but also because I generally agree with the business and environmental practices of the companies that make organic foods. A McDonald's hamburger isn't produced in vacuum as a product that one can purchase on its own merits; it is from the meat of cow raised on soya crop that is planted through cutting down countless swathes of Amazonian rainforest - when you purchase anything at McDonald's you are supporting that.

Just as when I not only buy WotC books but also play their game, I am saying "I support your business." As I said, WotC is not Monsanto or McDonald's, but on a much smaller scale they have exhibited behavior that I feel is problematic and lacking in basic interpersonal understanding and skill, to say the least. I feel that Paizo is better run, with a more sustainable and fan-focused approach. This is not to say that Paizo is perfect or that they are not out to make a buck; any business has profit in mind--but it is that it is my sense (perhaps naively) that profit is not the bottom line, not the driving force. I don't think it is with the WotC designers themselves, but that they do have the pressure of Hasbro.

In the end I will continue to support both companies. I don't want to see WotC drop 4E and I hold out hope that they will pull themselves out of the whole that they have dug themselves into. I am hopeful but not confident, as it seems that the Dancey Death Spiral Prophecy is becoming more and more truthful.

My plan at this moment is to continue playing 4E, continuing buying Pathfinder stuff (mainly the Chronicles books), and dabble a bit more with customizing 4E to my likes. I'll let you know how it goes ;-)

 

[jbear]

I think 4e is a great system. When I first began RPGs I basically made it up because I was forbidden to play D&D by my parents. I had played HeroQuest and read Pick-a Path books, and based on that I made up m own game.

A few years later a guy at my school started a lunch time game which I dropped in on a few times but never really learnt the rules.

Buy the end of that year me and two other friends got a game going. I still didn't want to play D&D so we put our heads together to make up a similar, less 'divine-based' game based on what we knew. We were 13 going on 14.

The year after my friend borrowed his friends AD&D books and we started actually playing something similar to AD&D 2nd Ed.

Even when I moved away I never lost my passion for fantasy.

When I was 21 I began travelling with a circus in Italy. The kids didn't even enjoy reading books. But they sat around int he evenings listening to me tell them the story of Lord of the Rings like hungry wolves. So I decided to teach them D&D based on what I could remember the rather loose version I had played 7 years earlier. It goes without saying they loved it. And they started asking for books for birthdays and christmas presents

It wasn't until I settled down and began a family that I bought my first D&D books and got a proper grop going. 3.5. Shiney! Drool! I loved all the rules that were laid out to help you resolve every situation.

But what i didn't like was that there were so many of them that I couldn't memorise them all. I had to stop the game all the time to look them up. I wouldn't do that now even if i was running 3.5. But that is what I have learnt after playing 4e.

In the end i've come to think that the system doesn't matter. It's just a vehicle to driving forward an awesome adventure shared amongst friends. Hell, I've been playing fantasy RPGs since I was 10. I didn't even need a system to do that. Actually I all I had was the pick a path map I had drawn with a pencil and two six sided dice.

For me little has changed. Except now I have the engine that i want to drive forward my adventures. And that is 4e. WotC has already provided that for me. From here on out, anything else is icing on the cake.

I can't think of any reasons why I'd want to move to Pathfinder. Especially not out of spite. Or some hypocritical feeling of indignation for some imagined offense I may or may not have suffered at the hand of WotC.

There was a time I wouldn't have stepped in the door of a McDonalds restaurant or drink a bottle of Coca Cola, and that had nothing to do with liking or not Big Macs or Coke. But I guess I came to think that the only way I can withdraw my support of companies whose business practice I don't like is by withdrawing myself from society completely. I have kids, so making such a decision is extreme. So I suck it up and accept my hypocrisy for what it is. Unavoidable. We all do it. Without exception. Some of us are aware. Others less so. What are you gonna do about it?

 

[Prestidigitalis]

This might sound a bit "ditto"-ish at this point, but you did ask...

No. I would play Pathfinder if there were no 4e, but there is.

I like 4e. I love Essentials -- I wish they had gone down the Essentials path from the beginning and regret them walking away from it now, if indeed they are.

There are things that I was skeptical about when 4e first shipped. I didn't like the simplification of skill training ("What do you mean you don't train skills one point at a time???") but have come to accept the new system without thinking. I thought the Wizard class had good fluff mechanics (cantrips and rituals) but was otherwise a bit awkward; I still think that but don't really care because I have so many other classes to play. I thought the Stealth rules were too complex to ever get my head around, but they fixed them. 4e is a fine system.

There have been some disheartening developments recently: missteps with the CB, news about product cancellations, and the general incoherence of WotC's PR. But come on -- there is a lot of material available.

Overall, I would say that 4e is in better shape today than 3e or 3.5e were at the end of their runs. WotC never did fix the problem with monster stat blocks, or the balance issues with multiclass and prestige class dipping, or the CoDzilla, or the overly complex skill system, or the paucity of feat slots, or the weirdness of spending XP to craft magic items, or... Well, insert your favorite pet peeve. By contrast, 4e has been streamlined and improved in significant ways since its launch.

This thread is actually better than some of the others posted recently, in that it asks a question the people at WotC are probably asking themselves. But the fact is, WotC is stuck with 4e for the time being, and what they do with D&D in the next few years will be all about 4e. No amount of Kremlinology will ever change that fact.

 

[Mercurius]

I can't think of any reasons why I'd want to move to Pathfinder. Especially not out of spite. Or some hypocritical feeling of indignation for some imagined offense I may or may not have suffered at the hand of WotC.

In case this is a backhanded remark towards me, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with "spite" or "indignation for some imagined offense." I think I've been pretty clear on that.

There was a time I wouldn't have stepped in the door of a McDonalds restaurant or drink a bottle of Coca Cola, and that had nothing to do with liking or not Big Macs or Coke. But I guess I came to think that the only way I can withdraw my support of companies whose business practice I don't like is by withdrawing myself from society completely. I have kids, so making such a decision is extreme. So I suck it up and accept my hypocrisy for what it is. Unavoidable. We all do it. Without exception. Some of us are aware. Others less so. What are you gonna do about it?

It doesn't have to be either/or, jbear - either engage and support all aspects of society or withdraw from society completely. That is kind of like saying either one should be a celibate monk or have orgies with prostitutes - there are many variations of middle ground!

By way of example, I have been a vegan or vegetarian for most of my life - starting when I was 16 (I'm 37 now). I work at a boarding high school that serves organic meals; the cook is very conscientious about where he gets the food from, especially the meat. Over the last couple years I have been eating some fish and, on occasion, chicken. While as a long-term vegetarian I realize there are ways to get protein I have felt strong cravings for meat and feel that I am stronger physically with some meat in my diet, maybe twice a week. My older, 5-year old daughter loves meat and my wife (who has been a vegetarian since she was very young) and I have decided to feed her meat (my 2-year old seems indifferent).

In an ideal world I would not eat meat - for various reasons that aren't necessary to get into. But I have found that eating some meat some of the time is beneficial to my - and, more importantly, my daughter's - health. I will not eat meat at McDonald's or at restaurants; I will eat meat that I feel confident has been raised in a relatively sustainable and humane way. The same goes for eggs - I will absolutely not buy conventional (non-free range, non-organic) eggs or usually food at restaurants that has eggs in it (we actually have our own chickens, which produce incredible eggs - it is hard to go back!).

We all draw the line somewhere, but it doesn't have to be all or nothing - that's my point. We don't have to be Jain extremists that can barely take a breath for fear that some micro-organism will be harmed, nor do we have to be megacorporations raping and pillaging the earth in the name of the almighty dollar. I try to veer more towards the Jain side of things, with the understanding that extremism of any kind is problematic, to say the least.

Of course this is all a bit of tangent To bring it back to RPGs, I would say that I'm one of the fortunate that likes all versions of D&D (including Pathfinder) and consequently don't understand some of the hate (towards a game, no less!) that goes around. That said, I do prefer 4E and, even more so, my own hybridized, house-ruled version, or ideas of a version of 4E.

 

[Neurotrash]

Nobody is less happy with the direction WotC is going than me, and unless things are fixed with the CB, Monster Builder, and online content, I certainly will be canceling my DDI subscription when it runs out. Looking at their print content, I only see two books that I have any interest in this year, so I will be voting with my dollar.

However, I don't understand how playing a different game punishes WotC. They don't know if I'm playing 4E. I've got a bookshelf (and harddrive) full of content that I'm perfectly happy with, and I can play for decades with what I've got. Whether I continue to play 4E or switch to something else makes no difference to WotC, unless I'm buying new material, which will only happen if they stop making such terrible decisions.

 

[Mercurius]

Who said anything about "punishing" WotC?

 

[ggroy]

No.

Pathfinder isn't compelling enough for me to go back to playing 3E/3.5E D&D style game systems. It still has the same problems/issues I had with 3E/3.5E (ie. high level play, etc ...), and has sort of a "been there, done that" meh vibe to it.

Also locally, the existing 3.5E/Pathfinder groups still around which I'm aware of (at gaming stores or want ads), either consists of individuals I refuse to play rpg games with and/or they only play once a month (or once every two months).

 

[moxcamel]

I think there's room enough for both so that a real RPG enthusiast wouldn't have to "defect." I stopped playing AD&D and played Runequest exclusively for a couple years, but I never considered myself a defector. I eventually gravitated back to AD&D, but didn't consider myself a defector from Glorantha.

I'm a player in a Pathfinder game, but I don't think I'd ever want to DM one. 4e, for whatever the faults of its owners, is a solid heir to the D&D system, and it's by far the easiest system to DM, hands down. I've gotten so spoiled in fact that as much as I enjoy my Pathfinder campaign, I could never DM it. (caveat: famous last words. I also swore 3.5 was the last version of D&D I would ever own, so there's that.)

There's a lot of things I would like changed about 4e. I would like the owners to get their s*** together. I would like them to open up the 4e SRD like they did with 3e. I think DDi is too expensive for what you get, I think the quality of some of the products has gone downhill, and the list goes on. But comparing systems in a vacuum, and granted that Pathfinder is far superior to 3.5, I still believe 4e is an amazingly well-designed system.

There might come a day that WotC does something so mind-numbingly awful as to alienate me enough to stop buying their products, but at least for now I'm not going to switch systems just because I don't like what the company's doing.