The fragmentation of the D&D community... was it inevitable?

[Mark CMG]

Ability Score Checks were the forerunner of Secondary Skills and, later, skill checks. A DM simply asked a player what a character was going to do then, if more than one ability might be brought to bear, might ask for how something was to be done, then asked for an appropriate Ability Score Check. It was a pretty common sense system that voided bogging down the game when fast pacing was in order but could be more granular when a more intricate focus needed. Like with later systems, best for the DM to roll these to keep the level of success or failure secret unless it was to be obvious.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Although, Shadzar mentions something interesting...


What if they really decided to switch gears and fully support all editions?



The 100 year "so called spellplague"....what if it became...IT'S OWN SETTING?

I know, I know...Forgotten Realms is a setting, but the way things are, it's not...it's two similar settings with the same name. (And some might even say that the leap of 4e is analagous to this...too much change without a convincing "bridge" of change).


Here's an idea that really appeals to my own sense of consistency:
What if they released a 3e/4e HYBRID set in the time of the spellplague?


I think that they made a huge mistake when they decided to wipe lore with a simple "excuse"...just as I think they made a mistake by changing the game so radically without incorporating customer buy in first (they did so a bit later on, but did not do so first).




I'd be excited to see an honorable treatment of the spellplague wherein players get to stand alongside/witness/kill? some of the major players and places that are wiped out.

Also, it might be really fun to have a semi random "decay" mechanic (or upgrade as you might say, but given the "spellplague" the theme seems more like loss than empowerment). What if, similar to the "Taint" (horrible name) mechanics in some of the late 3e materials, there was a "evolution" mechanic from 3e to 4e?

What if I could make a 3e fighter and have him slowly evolve to a 4e fighter, perhaps over the course of gaming sessions...as the spellplague "diseased him"?

 

[DandD]

The only ones to care about spellplague stuff are forgotten realms player who still believe that they must follow the lore or else they get eaten by a grue.

Releasing a hybrid between 3rd and 4th edition is pointless, and serves nothing for anybody. Nobody really wants such a thing, and WotC won't make money with it, so it won't ever be considered in the first place.

 

[shadzar]

Although, Shadzar mentions something interesting...

I have to quit doing that!

Playing through the changes of the spellplague actually sounds interesting, and could be done starting from ANY edition pre-4th, moving through to the story that was caused BY 4th, but not necessarily using the 4th mechanics anywhere.

Would give those people hating the mountains of canon their chance to do away with lots of that canon, by their own hands. For me, just be fun to see what would kill the Seven, Elminster, etc. while playing it out. But would many see it as just another Time of Troubles?

And FR due to Realms-shattering events is likely more than just 2 settings. But that is a discussion for the thread about fragmen....oh wait, that is this thread.

The only ones to care about spellplague stuff are forgotten realms player who still believe that they must follow the lore or else they get eaten by a grue.

...or the ones that, I don't know, actually liked the lore because the world had a wealth to use and you could plop a game session down anywhere and have little work to do to find something for the players to do as opposed to having to come up with your own cities and stuff if you were busy.

The problem was never the people liking the canon wanting to use it, but the people not liking it, just ignoring it. Don't like the Harpers, remove them...

Its when the two played together the problems come about, so don't force others to paly a game they don't want, let them play their own, if you end up with two groups of players with not enough to play a game with, then pick another setting to play in you CAN agree on...since there are like 300 of them.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

The only ones to care about spellplague stuff are forgotten realms player who still believe that they must follow the lore or else they get eaten by a grue.

Releasing a hybrid between 3rd and 4th edition is pointless, and serves nothing for anybody. Nobody really wants such a thing, and WotC won't make money with it, so it won't ever be considered in the first place.

Well THERE'S an insulting post.



Lemme prove you wrong:

1. I don't care that much about FR realms lore, but I like the idea of a bit of continuity rather than a "wave of the hand, now everything is different!"

2. Nobody wants such a thing? Well, I do. Sooooo wrong again.



Try again with less hyperbole and more insight?

EDIT: I mean, disagree if you like, but "your ideas are badwrongfun that nobody ever in their right mind would even consider"... not really helpful or to the point.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

With this in mind, I have three questions:
1) Is it possible to create an edition of D&D that could largely satisfy 90% of the player base?
2) If it's not possible now, was it possible in 2007, before 4e was released?
3) If it's not possible (now or then), what should Wizards, or whoever owns the D&D IP in the future, do about it?

Since you've had many good answers by now, I'll just go ahead and assert that those are the wrong questions.

By that, I mean essentially that there are limits to market research vis-a-vis good game design, and those questions run right into them. Market research may be able to answer questions like, "Which races do people want to play?" but it can't really answer questions like, "Is Vancian magic fun?" The reason is that careful construction of the first can filter out issues of mechanics, and get to the flavor and fun inherent in playing elves or not playing gnomes or whatever. The second one is too wide-open. All you can really do with a question like that is build a particular magic system that is a flavor that could be called Vancian, and then playtest it. If it looks promising, broaden the test.

So I say the answer to, "having a lot of people play something called D&D," whatever the percentages involved or other concerns, is: Have a fairly small group of talented and interested designers do the best they can. Call the product D&D. Try to insulate them from direct market research and other outside concerns.* Have a second, internal group doing the fluff by making homebrews and playing the game, and then giving feedback to the first group. And see what happens. If the game is good enough, a lot of people will play it.**

* Specifically, they need to know some of the useful data gleaned from the research, such that the percentage of players that like humans for flavor reasons, but nothing that will actually affect the game design itself.

** You'll note that people will play it, not that it will necessarily make a lot of money. This is a problem for a corporation trying to solve this issue. I still also assert (earlier topic) that the best possibly designed version of D&D would not make very much money, because the amount of material to support it would be rather small.

 

[billd91]

This is because they were saying one thing and doing another. These were largely all long-time gamers who obviously had learned to play under 2E, 1E and older editions. They understood and personally embraced the principles espoused by Gygax in the 1E DMG and had no hesitation about making the game what THEY wanted and the "rules" be hanged. But the version of D&D which they had produced for WotC had little to say about such ideas if anything at all. The official line of response was ALWAYS, "If you have a question or an issue about a rule then ask us and we'll give you the official answer," rather than suggest that anyone should ever just make something up on their own. By rights even 1E should have had that written at the top of every page of the DMG.

This was WotC's approach. It may even have been a formal policy. They had books and magazines to sell and it probably seemed wrong to them as businessmen to suggest that you might EVER actually not need them to tell you how to play. But that approach was a key factor in making D&D as successful as it had been prior to 3E - ENCOURAGEMENT of active creativity right down to the level of the basic rules. WotC felt it was in their own interests to always leave people with the impression that WOTC was the source of rules - not individual gamers. And to exacerbate that they built the concept of "rules mastery" into the rules themselves.

The result is a generation of RPG gamers trained as rules lawyers because they've been effectively taught that the fun of the game is to be found in manipulation of the official rules - and official rules come first from WotC. But the personnel at WotC knew better for their own games and routinely told the rules to go stuff it.

Except that this is really not at all what they were doing - ever. The desire for "official" rulings was pretty much always from the fans, even back in Basic and 1e AD&D days. People were always writing in about how to adjudicate something. "Sage Advice" articles were the response so they wouldn't have to mail back a reply.

3e and WotC are no different from TSR in this in any significant way, shape, or form. The people crying RAW from the rooftops were always fans and not the designers. Reread your 3e DMG or even many "Sage Advice" columns if you don't believe me. Pay particularly close attention to things like the sidebars in the DMG offering tips for customizing games and page 14 of the 3.5 DMG. WotC's designers advised DMs to have a care about coming up with house rules, they did not advise DMs to slavishly follow the RAW.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

There was basically never a mythical golden age in which nobody ever had rule complaints or problems.

The only difference is that the questions have gone from certifiably insane ("What are some rules for being pregnant?" "Is my paladin allowed to be married?" "Do half orcs have souls?" "My character is level one thousand, what do you think about that?") to mechanical, and the answers have gone from hilariously pointless and absurd ("How much damage do bows do?" "None, arrows do damage :smug:") to...actually, Sage answers pretty much lived to be absurd, regardless of edition or era, didn't they?

Note that all those insane questions were real ones. I couldn't embellish questions that insane.

 

[lutecius]

By that, I mean essentially that there are limits to market research vis-a-vis good game design, and those questions run right into them. […]
So I say the answer to, "having a lot of people play something called D&D," whatever the percentages involved or other concerns, is: Have a fairly small group of talented and interested designers do the best they can. Call the product D&D. Try to insulate them from direct market research and other outside concerns.* Have a second, internal group doing the fluff by making homebrews and playing the game, and then giving feedback to the first group. And see what happens.

I think that’s more or less what they did with 4e. in-house playtesters were all about how cool the game was going to be. I don't think the result is as appealing as it could have been with better market research, though.

The only ones to care about spellplague stuff are forgotten realms player who still believe that they must follow the lore or else they get eaten by a grue.

Releasing a hybrid between 3rd and 4th edition is pointless, and serves nothing for anybody. Nobody really wants such a thing, and WotC won't make money with it, so it won't ever be considered in the first place.

ah, there's a couple of things to be said about that but considering the tone of certainty in your post, saying you're wrong will probably suffice

 

[DandD]

I think that’s more or less what they did with 4e. in-house playtesters were all about how cool the game was going to be. I don't think the result is as appealing as it could have been with better market research, though.

ah, there's a couple of things to be said about that but considering the tone of certainty in your post, saying you're wrong will probably suffice

If you believe so. However, Aberzanzorax also disputed my point and opened a poll to see how much merit his idea has.

Suffice to say that it did not met his hopes.