Did WotC underestimate the Paizo effect on 4E?

[BryonD]

No, people who use SoDs do, because that's literally what a save or die does. You roll your save. And then if you fail, you die.

You obviously don't grasp the point I am making.

That's...not what the bomb example is. It has nothing to do with disarming the bomb

Disarming, escaping, whatever... Saves, be it one or three are not about *knowing* there is a bomb, they are about avoiding the RESULT of the bomb. And I have no idea what YOU meant by the example, but I DO know that Hitchcock was talking about the impending doom and the need to avoid it, not simple awareness.

SSSoD and SoD is the difference between suspense and surprise. SoD - you look through the window, woops, gaze attack, roll a save. BOOM! You're dead. SSSoD - each round is a progression on getting worse, with the situation growing more tense, until finally either the sigh of relief at the condition ending, or the dramatic ending of the last failed save.

Wrong. Again, obviously you have completely failed to grasp the point I am making.

It's the difference between a big surprise then boom, and the suspense of knowing the danger and seeing it creeping up.

And repeating the same misunderstanding does not improve it.

Complete non sequitur.

Not if you get the point. It perfectly "follows" if you do.

Nonetheless, the Save or Die goes as follows: You roll a save, and then you die. The end.

Yep, you don't get it.

You're only proving that stories - and your signature - don't equate to gaming.

chuckle. I honestly feel sorry for you. You have NO IDEA what you are missing out on.

 

[BryonD]

I've played in more than a few games like this, and I absolutely detest them. There's nothing that makes a game less like the source material of books or movies than a group who over-prepares for everything. One group I played in, for instance had spells like Death Ward operating on the entire group all the time. One of the players maintained an excel spreadsheet of the group's buffing equipment. Wow that was fun.

That does sound like crap. Sorry about that.

 

[BryonD]

Hey Prof, just for the record, I'm cool that you play a radically different game experience than me. Just understand that my game style does exist.

I accept that in YOUR games SOD means X.
You seem unable to accept that in other people's games there is a wildly different dynamic.

If you continue to reply by demanding that my game experience must be analyzed through your limited window of interpretation, then it doesn't add anything and there is not point in discussing it further.

If you want to go back and actually address the points I expressed earlier today, I'll be happy to follow up. But I won't hold my breath.

 

[SteveC]

That does sound like crap. Sorry about that.

Well it's no big thing... that's why I moved on to other games. For me, there are many games that bring more of what I'm looking for to the table, including 4E. Obviously a lot of people disagree, and more power to them.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

This week in my Tuesday night Pathfinder game, the party ran into a 13th level cleric with the destruction domain. I run my game with several house rules to help foster an old school feel. For example, disintegrate, um, disintegrates. Destruction is save or die and harm has no save. In one encounter, the cleric hit one player with all 3 of those. He was the biggest threat at the time. He made both saves and survived the encounter with 4 hit points. It was a great battle and the tension was thick in the air when he rolled both saves. With SSS or die, you get *failed save - yawn* - *failed save - yawn* And then you get tension on the last roll. No one cares about the first two.

 

[El Mahdi]

@banshee

Well, hindsight is 20/20. Paizo's gamble looks like sheer brilliance now. But at the time that they made their decision to create Pathfinder, it was a huge risk. There was no guarantee that sufficient numbers of customers would stay away from 4E to support Pathfinder...

I believe you are working on an assumption that may or may not be correct...though I think it's probably not. The assumption is that players had to stay away from 4E in order to have a sufficient number of people to support Pathfinder.

Why is it that we assume that if someone plays one of those games (4E or Pathfinder), that same person can't, or won't, also play the other?

Why is it that we also assume, that had 4E been more popular and garnered more 3E fans to it, that Pathfinder (or any continuation of 3.x) would not have been possible?

I think we are without sufficient data (outside of WotC and Paizo market research and polls), to allow for such assumptions. I also believe there's an "Us versus Them" and "Either/Or" presumption present in such assumptions.

...I can only speak from personal experience here. I know I waited before buying into 3E. And I waited with 4E. I wasn't enamoured of the changes I was reading about....but in my area, everyone seemed to be moving over. Then Paizo announced their plans, and released that first beta, and I decided instead of biting the bullet and buying into 4E, I'd wait and see if Pathfinder was any good. When the successive betas came out, and I had a chance to see the changes, I was hooked. If it hadn't been for Pathfinder, I'd have bought into 4E at some point. Now I don't have to.....and that's pretty cool!

This seems a bit contradictory to me, so I'm attempting to gain some clarification so as to avoid making any assumptions...

If most people in your area seemed to be heading towards 4E, and you felt you were probably going to need to also (even though you weren't attracted to 4E), was it because you felt you wouldn't have enough people left to continue playing 3.x...?

If the above is the case, then what difference did having Pathfinder make? If there weren't enough players available for 3.x due to the majority switching to 4E, then how were there enough people to play Pathfinder? And if there were enough people that didn't switch to 4E, why didn't you and they just continue with 3.x...?

Was it "cool" that you didn't have to buy into 4E (due to the development of Pathfinder), because it meant you didn't have to buy into a system you weren't enamored of...or did you mean something else?

Also, since you seem to have a good read on your area, can you tell me how many people in your area play both Pathfinder and 4E...?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Hey Prof, just for the record, I'm cool that you play a radically different game experience than me. Just understand that my game style does exist.

I accept that in YOUR games SOD means X.
You seem unable to accept that in other people's games there is a wildly different dynamic.

If you continue to reply by demanding that my game experience must be analyzed through your limited window of interpretation, then it doesn't add anything and there is not point in discussing it further.

If you want to go back and actually address the points I expressed earlier today, I'll be happy to follow up. But I won't hold my breath.

All you did was reply to all of my statements with one liners followed by insults, so I'll respond to points when I begin to see them.

Incidentally, you seem to be unaware of the bomb under the table, as it has nothing to do with avoiding or disarming or getting rid of the bomb at all. Here:

"There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In an SoD, there is no suspense. There is "You are attacked roll your save welp that's it." It is surprise. It's a sudden "Oh no!" followed by "Welp that's it!" You have yet to comment on this.

In SSSoD you have a moving transition from healthy to non-healthy. You have the tension of knowing what is coming, and watching it get worse with each failed save. The bomb is ticking every round, and when it goes off, it's not a surprise, but a culmination of the applied tension.

Let's talk tension. There was actually a game called Tension, or The Void as it became here in the States. I won't go deep into the game, but the primary focus of the mechanics is based around color. Everything you do costs color - even doing nothing - and you have to constantly collect more to avoid dying. It's an incredibly, incredibly tense atmosphere of constantly dying and needing to reaffirm your life.

That's tension. Watching things slowly get worse. A big surprise isn't tension. A half orc suddenly critting you for all your HP with an x4 greataxe isn't tension. It's a big surprise. Wow, that sure was a 20 the horc rolled! But that's it. Tension is in a disease that slowly saps at you, eventually immobilizing you. Tension is a slow death, not a quick one. It's something tied into a lot of 4e - it's why you have healing surges instead of just "lots of HP," because they don't come back, and they show your physical peak descending, right until that last fight where there's no healing left and it's do or die.

This week in my Tuesday night Pathfinder game, the party ran into a 13th level cleric with the destruction domain. I run my game with several house rules to help foster an old school feel. For example, disintegrate, um, disintegrates. Destruction is save or die and harm has no save. In one encounter, the cleric hit one player with all 3 of those. He was the biggest threat at the time. He made both saves and survived the encounter with 4 hit points. It was a great battle and the tension was thick in the air when he rolled both saves. With SSS or die, you get *failed save - yawn* - *failed save - yawn* And then you get tension on the last roll. No one cares about the first two.

You realize that failing the first two saves actually DOES do something to your character, right? It's not just giving you two extra saves - each time you fail those there's a penalty. So in a paralysis example, first you are Slowed, then Immobilized, and then turned to stone.

Again, it amuses me that when I talk about 3e it comes from literally years of experience, and when so many talk about 4e it comes from the experience of hearing about something you think was in the book you haven't read.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

@
I believe you are working on an assumption that may or may not be correct...though I think it's probably not. The assumption is that players had to stay away from 4E in order to have a sufficient number of people to support Pathfinder.

Why is it that we assume that if someone plays one of those games (4E or Pathfinder), that same person can't, or won't, also play the other?

I think that using these boards as well as Paizo's and WOTC's as an example I think that his assumption, no matter how much you may want to call him on it, is a fairly obvious one to come to.

The edition warring that went on here, the Paizo bashing that went on on WOTC's forums (and to an extent here as well) and the disdain for Paizo on forums like RPG.net would definitely make it seem as if people have chosen sides. After 4E came out and even before it was actually there were MANY, MANY people here proclaiming that they would NEVER touch 3x again. That the game was broken, that save or die sucks (In fact, I think this discussion is STILL being had in one of the other threads on Enworld TODAY.) that confirming crits suck (they kinda do...), the 15 min workday, Casters in 3x being too powerful, OMG the PREP!!! and so on and so on. And the same kind of complaining from people who wanted to stick with 3x. 4E is a video game, don't like being forced to use miniatures, everyone is the same and it's variant everyone is special so no one is, 4E is table top world of warcraft and other dumbness.

It's toned down a little bit since 2 (Has it really been that long?) years, but the animosity is still there. Even my players in my Pathfinder game some of whom had played 4E, take opportunities to talk about what they really didn't like about 4E. So yes there are people who play both but I think that they are
a small group and everybody else is playing one or the other and it's not an improper assumption to assume that.

As far as personal experience goes, my group meets at least once a month in the Complete Strategist here in NYC. Every now and then our game is scheduled on the same day of the D&D Meetup group. When 4E came out people were playing 4E like it was gangbusters. I was pretty much the only person trying to run a 3.5 game there for a while and a couple of the organizers were real douches about it, so I stopped going and tried to avoid scheduling my games on the Meetup days. Like I said, every now and then I do meet on those days and I've noticed that not only are there fewer people showing up to play 4E on the Meetup Days (to be fair they meet in other locations around the city to play on the weekdays) but at least two of the groups that started out playing 4E are playing either Pathfinder or 3.5. I think maybe the guy who runs the other Pathfinder group might ALSO still be running 4E on occasion but the last time he was definitely running Pathfinder.

 

[El Mahdi]

...And there was what....a year long delay from the release of 4E to the release of Pathfinder?

I believe there's an error in the timeline that you remember.

Pathfinder, in alpha form, was released in March 2008...before 4E was even released. Although not the final form, it was available for play even before 4E was. Players did not have to wait a year in order to play the game. And even better than not having to wait, they were all invited to playtest the game (for free) and actually encouraged to provide feedback, input, and suggestions directly to Paizo...so I don't understand how there was a "risk" due to a year delay, or even understand how this defines a "delay"...

 

[Banshee16]

@banshee
I believe you are working on an assumption that may or may not be correct...though I think it's probably not. The assumption is that players had to stay away from 4E in order to have a sufficient number of people to support Pathfinder.

Why is it that we assume that if someone plays one of those games (4E or Pathfinder), that same person can't, or won't, also play the other?

I'm not making that assumption at all. I *know* that some groups are doing both....my old group is doing that...they play 4E Fridays, I believe, and Pathfinder Sundays. Now, that having been said, the ones I've talked with have mentioned they may be quitting the 4E game since they just don't really like it.

Of course, whether that dislike is because of the game, the campaign, or the ruleset, I don't know.

Why is it that we also assume, that had 4E been more popular and garnered more 3E fans to it, that Pathfinder (or any continuation of 3.x) would not have been possible?

I think we are without sufficient data (outside of WotC and Paizo market research and polls), to allow for such assumptions. I also believe there's an "Us versus Them" and "Either/Or" presumption present in such assumptions.

I don't have an answer to this one.

What I would say as an assumption is that I *feel* it is reasonable that, given the multitude of edition wars, flame wars, articles, and general navel gazing regarding the popularity of 4E and the split in the fanbase, that a relatively large number of D&D consumers chose not to change to the new edition.

If these consumers didn't change edition, then they became potential consumers of Pathfinder products.

So, I'll admit this is an assumption. The paragraphs above outline the line of thought I pursued to make that assumption.

If most people in your area seemed to be heading towards 4E, and you felt you were probably going to need to also (even though you weren't attracted to 4E), was it because you felt you wouldn't have enough people left to continue playing 3.x...?

If the above is the case, then what difference did having Pathfinder make? If there weren't enough players available for 3.x due to the majority switching to 4E, then how were there enough people to play Pathfinder? And if there were enough people that didn't switch to 4E, why didn't you and they just continue with 3.x...?

Was it "cool" that you didn't have to buy into 4E (due to the development of Pathfinder), because it meant you didn't have to buy into a system you weren't enamored of...or did you mean something else?

By no means do I believe that I know even a decent percentage of the players in my area. There are hundreds or possibly thousands. I've probably gamed with maybe 20-30 of them in my city over the years.

So when I say that everyone seemed to be changing, I developed that perception based on talking to people at the local FLGS, including the owners, and seeing the number of people buying into the new edition, seeing that all the games being run in the public game rooms were 4E, the owners of those shops were talking about how cool the new edition was, etc.

On top of that, in my own group, opinion split. Generally it seemed like the more casual players seemed reluctant to change, whereas the die hards, rules mechanics etc. wanted to change. As a group, we discussed it, and I wasn't really interested in changing editions. Since it was my campaign at the time, we kept playing 3E. Yet, there was still interest in trying 4E.

I had to end the campaign when I was laid off, to focus on a job search, and in my absence, they started a new 4E game. So, yes, I had some concern about being able to find a group playing 3E games, when I was ready to get started again.

At that point, it seemed like I might not be able to find groups playing 3E since all the postings I found seemed to have to do with starting 4E games. But as more info about Pathfinder started to come out, even members of my old group started talking about it. The new game came out, my old players started playing it, and I started to see postings about Pathfinder games. And at the local FLGS', the number of Pathfinder products started growing....talking with the owners, a few of them mentioned that sales seemed to be 50/50. It didn't start that way.....at first Pathfinder seemed to just be for hold outs.......but it seems to have grown.

This is all just my observations. I don't claim that they're correct, or correct beyond my area. They're just what I can see. It helps that I know personally the owners of 4 of the 6 game shops in my city. So they're always willing to talk. But it's not like they lay out their sales figures. They're just making anecdotal statements.

Banshee