Monte Cook back at wizards

[Scribble]

But in 3.0 they were clearly intended as optional, in 3.5 they were the default.

Well.. I think this isn't so "clear," considering we're having this debate.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The push toward minis began long before 3.0. Not counting 2e's Battlesystem supplement, which was just that -- a supplement for tactical wargaming, the push toward minis as the standard began in Player's Option: Combat & Tactics. It was still optional, as the name implies, but it was something that came out post-TSR, and was probably released with the business plan of selling piles of minis with an eventual (at the time) third edition of the game.

Yeah, it began in Men and Magic! lol.

Every edition from 1974 on has ASSUMED you kept track of exactly where the PCs and monsters were, and it was generally assumed that was done with minis on some form of 'battle map'. 1e DMG shows pictures of which squares and hexes an attacker would be attacking from a flank (and thus bypass your shield). 1e and earlier never ever actually explicitly mention a grid or even really assume one, but they certainly are based on the assumption that the players are well aware of such things.

Anyway, I would think that Cook et al. simply continued with the assumptions of 2e AD&D, which were pretty much identical to those of 1e in that respect, Combat & Tactics excepted perhaps (never read it myself). 3e really doesn't IME make a lot of really new play style assumptions. It just codifies things more accurately and explains things that were never explained at all before (movement during combat was a VERY murky area in the AD&D rules, depending on how you read them once you engage an enemy you really can't move at all). The end result was that the long-existing requirement of having some sort of map of what was going on in combat simply became a lot more apparent, and then 3.5 further cleared things up and a grid/minis became virtually mandatory.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well.. I think this isn't so "clear," considering we're having this debate.

I would check it out, but my elder brother drowned most of my 3.x books...

if those links are an indicator...
http://www.dragon.ee/30srd/
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/movementPositionAndDistance.htm#measuringDistance

But I admit, combat and tactics of ADnD had a very narrow focus on a grid, as it was ditching the idea, that a combat round is 1 minute. (With 1 minute rounds, tactical movement on a grid would have been silly to be hones, as in 1 minute there was a lot more going on, than jst walking in a straight line. All those tactical movements were more or less comprised to: in the last minute you could dance around and intercept goblin A while he tried to reacht the wizard, pinning him down on that space.)

And I am clearly not opposed to minis, but having a grid and counting squares is not really something i like that much.

 

[Sonny]

WotC is a big company, it can survive and make long-term plans while moving towards whatever direction it wants to take in 5 years slowly and in a measured way.

Yes, WOTC is a big company and can survive and make long term plans. The people running the D&D division can't. How many great D&D designers who worked at WoTC have been canned? Yeah, LOTS. Nearly every year they lay people off. Whether times are good or not.

A few, like Rich Baker have been there long, but for most, there is no job security with Wizards.

And that's the thing, if you're one of the people working on D&D, you can't afford to play the long game because you don't know if you'll even be there next year.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, WOTC is a big company and can survive and make long term plans. The people running the D&D division can't. How many great D&D designers who worked at WoTC have been canned? Yeah, LOTS. Nearly every year they lay people off. Whether times are good or not.

A few, like Rich Baker have been there long, but for most, there is no job security with Wizards.

And that's the thing, if you're one of the people working on D&D, you can't afford to play the long game because you don't know if you'll even be there next year.

Yes, but having worked for large companies I can pretty well guarantee you that some guy who was hired in at a non-management grade a year or two ago even KNOWS what the strategy might be for the product he's working on, and surely has zilch input on anything like that. Mike probably has a good bit of input, and product line/brand managers, etc. Releasing a new version ASAP as some kind of strategy to keep Joe New Guy developer in work is not really their concern.

Besides, you're working on some kind of assumption like 4e is horrible bad, going down in flames, ZOMG. Actually it looks like as many people buy 4e as buy PF and there are certainly plenty of people playing it. Of course they want to sell more and no doubt they find PF to be somewhat alarming, but that doesn't mean they're desperate or feel the need to ditch their entire product and start over.

Remember, it gets pretty tangled. 4e is now tied in with a bunch of board game products, novels, DDI, etc etc etc. You don't light half your game division on fire because maybe one set of books didn't do that well. Notice how they're still putting out 4e books and other products pretty frequently too. Obviously they can make money on those products or they wouldn't exist. It might not be all they could wish it to be, but it ain't cat spit.

 

[Mercurius]

Mike Mearls + Monte Cook = Pure Unadulterated Awesome.

Their love-child will be 5e and it will be so good that it will create a utopian gaming nirvana where all fans of all editions will come together in peace, harmony, and the Gygaxian Way.

Best post ever. I can't XP you, though.

 

[Sonny]

Yes, but having worked for large companies I can pretty well guarantee you that some guy who was hired in at a non-management grade a year or two ago even KNOWS what the strategy might be for the product he's working on, and surely has zilch input on anything like that. Mike probably has a good bit of input, and product line/brand managers, etc. Releasing a new version ASAP as some kind of strategy to keep Joe New Guy developer in work is not really their concern.

Besides, you're working on some kind of assumption like 4e is horrible bad, going down in flames, ZOMG. Actually it looks like as many people buy 4e as buy PF and there are certainly plenty of people playing it. Of course they want to sell more and no doubt they find PF to be somewhat alarming, but that doesn't mean they're desperate or feel the need to ditch their entire product and start over.

Remember, it gets pretty tangled. 4e is now tied in with a bunch of board game products, novels, DDI, etc etc etc. You don't light half your game division on fire because maybe one set of books didn't do that well. Notice how they're still putting out 4e books and other products pretty frequently too. Obviously they can make money on those products or they wouldn't exist. It might not be all they could wish it to be, but it ain't cat spit.

Losing half your audience isn't somewhat alarming. It's really bad. I can't think of any business that loses so much of their audience to a competitor and thinks they should stay the course.

I still don't think D&D 5e will be around before 2013, but really if publishing 4e books was really profitable for them, they would be doing it more.

And switching editions doesn't mean they can't keep 4e their board game version of D&D.

I don't think they're in panic mode, but, I do think since they do have all the sales data we don't, they likely do have a very good reason to bring Monte Cook back, scale back their publishing of game books and start talking about the future of D&D already.

 

[Matt James]

I used minis in AD&D. Just sayin' --they were way too cool not to use, and I had no other use for the little pewter dudes.

 

[Scribble]

Losing half your audience isn't somewhat alarming. It's really bad. I can't think of any business that loses so much of their audience to a competitor and thinks they should stay the course.

This subject is interesting, and I think hard to define in normal terms, since it involved an edition switch.

A couple of questions we'd need to know:

1. Were all of the people who now play Pathfinder actually customers of WoTC or were they simply playing some version of 3e? (For instance prior to 4e I played 3.5 however WoTC very rarely saw any of my money. I would hardly call myself a true customer.)

2. Does WoTC garner more income now, with the DDI then it did prior to 4e with the 3e game, and if so, does it matter that audience size is smaller?

3. What do edition switches normally entail as far as lost customers?

4. Do we even know if the audience size IS smaller? It could be that a lot of people stayed with Pathfinder, but an equal number of new people started playing 4e.


One major thing I think they didn't account for well enough was the ramifications of the OGL.

 

[Dannager]

And the most important question: Why do we assume that a person who purchases a Pathfinder book is a lost customer for WotC?