Would Paizo Make a Better Steward for Our Hobby?

[Jester David]

Though, even when I started playing D&D the rules were the rules and were not to be broken. "Out of the box thinking" often had another word in our group: "cheating". If our DM allowed a plan to work that was completely crazy then people would call them soft and make fun of them for allowing players to walk all over them. The smart DM saw through the player's ploy to get way more power than they should have and simply said no...or made all plans turn out for the worst.

That is so far away from how me and my friends play I'm at a loss for words...

But so long as you enjoy it all the power to you.

 

[GreyLord]

...5E?

In your dreams.

C&C is far closer to 1e than what I've seen of 5e.

Then again, if you want AD&D, the core books are re-released. And for D&D, the rules cyclopedia is for sale in PDF format.

 

[GreyLord]

WotC didn't give them a reason to switch, didn't encourage and motivate people enough to try their game. They just assume everyone would play and switch because it was D&D. They've said as much in interviews the last few years.
That's on them and no one else.

So, really, the best lesson is that WotC might not have been the best stewards of the hobby...

And THIS is the true bitter pill for 3e/3.5 players. They created the doomsday machine.

When 3e came out, the brilliant plan was to kill off AD&D and D&D and replace it with D20. How to do this...simple...don't print anymore material for the older editions. Make it so that hardcopy is extinct.

Basically, if players want to play D&D, they HAVE to switch to the new edition. It was said, it was done, so it was history.

It was highly successful. There was NO reason, or so WotC thought, that they could not replicate this exact feat once again. They basically did the same thing to 3.5 as they did to 2e/D&D/AD&D. Exact same playbook, exact same plays. If you look at the early marketing campaigns for 3e, it's remarkable how closely they mirror 4e's marketing.

If you call 4e's marketing arrogant, 3e's was just as arrogant.

There was one difference though, and you can blame Ryan Dancey for that. The seeds of what occurred with 4e started all the way back prior to 3e's release, and that was when the idea of an OGL was created.

What 4e's release had to contend with that 3e did not, was an OGL. That's what made PF possible, that's what made other systems possible, and that's why what worked for 3e's release did NOT work for 4e's release.

IF T$R had release and OGL in regards to AD&D, it's actually quite possible you'd have seen a similar scenario happen with 3e's release.

I point this out to say, I can actually see the idea where if PF was not created, 4e may have been FAR more successful. I won't say it would have been, but at the same time, I'd say there's precedence for it.

Personally, I'm wildly glad at this point for the OGL and Dancey's idea. Why? Because I absolutely love PF and what Paizo has done.

But, the problem with many people is while they complain about how 4e came out, they are blind to their own actions and how 3e was put out, and how that was the pattern that was created for 4e's release as well.

It's basically a...you reap what you sow...type scenario...both for the Players of D&D/PF and for WotC.

 

[Hussar]

It might be good for the proverbial "RPG community" for a single over-arching system to prevent fragmentation, I don't think that it is either realistic nor healthy for there to be one-way regarding anything for anyone. It may be true that fragmenting the player base hurts the RPG community overall and may lead to the end of RPGs in the long run - I don't ever want to participate in one way of thinking for anything: politics, religion, gaming, any subject. One game system sounds like monopoly to me, and would rather the community disappear altogether than to cleave to a single system just to prevent the game from becoming extinct.

Doesn't this pretty much exactly describe d20 and everything D20 was meant to do? One system that is applicable to a wide range of games, taking over the hobby to create network externalities that will continue to prop up the hobby and keep it healthy?

Are you saying that D20 was bad for the hobby? That the OGL was bad for the hobby?

 

[MichaelSomething]

That is so far away from how me and my friends play I'm at a loss for words...

But so long as you enjoy it all the power to you.

Do you think a single steward could create/manage a game both Oakheart and you would enjoy to play(and more importantly, buy books for on a regular basis)?

 

[billd91]

And THIS is the true bitter pill for 3e/3.5 players. They created the doomsday machine.

When 3e came out, the brilliant plan was to kill off AD&D and D&D and replace it with D20. How to do this...simple...don't print anymore material for the older editions. Make it so that hardcopy is extinct.

Basically, if players want to play D&D, they HAVE to switch to the new edition. It was said, it was done, so it was history.

It was highly successful. There was NO reason, or so WotC thought, that they could not replicate this exact feat once again. They basically did the same thing to 3.5 as they did to 2e/D&D/AD&D. Exact same playbook, exact same plays. If you look at the early marketing campaigns for 3e, it's remarkable how closely they mirror 4e's marketing.

If you call 4e's marketing arrogant, 3e's was just as arrogant.

<snip>

It's basically a...you reap what you sow...type scenario...both for the Players of D&D/PF and for WotC.

I can see where you may get that, but I don't agree with all of your points. For one thing, shifting production from one edition to the next is pretty normal within the industry. GDW stopped production of MegaTraveller material when they published Traveller: New Era (losing the support of third party Digest Group Publications in the event). R Talsorian stopped production of Cyberpunk 2013 in favor of Cyberpunk 2020. Villains and Vigilantes had an adventure in development when they shifted from 1st to 2nd edition and so published stats for both editions in one adventure, but every adventure after that was all 2nd edition. So I don't think it was really arrogance that drove WotC to do the same for materials when going from 2e to 3e. That was simply the standard practice. Why would you split your company's resources on two editions rather than focus on the current, in print one?

3e was a significant change from 2e's mechanics in many ways, sure, but WotC took steps to ameliorate the problems that could arise from the change. They published a free conversion document that, in many ways, made the conversion fairly easy. The changes to multiclassing meant those characters need more significant reinterpretation. But, overall, game play could often proceed in a very similar manner and I, at least, found the transition to be pretty easy and smooth. Most adventures weren't hard to convert at all. Dragon magazine was also a pretty useful resource at this time with a lot of supporting articles on the new game.

Where you see arrogance in the 3e edition change, I see a company working to smooth the transition and foster the adoption of the new edition rather than simply ramming it down our throats. Moreover, the open license meant someone could produce other materials to ease the transition or provide tips on analyzing and playing the game. They may not have done so with an ant's humility, true, I really can't see what they were about then as being a function of arrogance

Contrast that with the 4e change and I see a company really excited about what it was doing, selling (!) some of its major marketing efforts as books, and making a game that allowed for no easy campaign transition. They were upfront about that, but the company had gone from making a game that was different but allowed for adaptation to one that was different and didn't allow for easy adaptation. If you had a long-running campaign from previous editions, they didn't seem too interested in compatibility. That was info and developments coming from the creative end of the game, but the business end was busy too. They produced an initial license that prevented third party producers from supporting multiple editions or producing dual stat products capable of being used by both the old and new editions. Now that's arrogant.

I suspect WotC deliberately went out to try to kill the companies working the OGL in support of 3e assuming that the vast majority of D&D players out there would transition to 4e and cause the OGL product market to collapse. I won't put that on the R&D team at WotC. By pretty much all accounts, they get along fine with companies like Paizo and Green Ronin. But someone devised the GSL and made it pretty toxic, keeping most companies out of 4e material production and keeping companies from fully supporting both editions. Fortunately for those of us who didn't like the way 4e gameplay changed D&D, they couldn't take back the OGL and a company like Paizo was able to produce a version of D&D that we enjoyed.

 

[pemerton]

selling (!) some of its major marketing efforts as books

Worlds & Monsters, at least, isn't a marketing effort. It's one of the better GM guides published for any fantasy RPG. The 4e DMG would have been notably better if it had included a lot of the material in W&M.

 

[Campbell]

I'm somewhat nonplussed by the idea that role playing games need a single gate keeper or gateway. There is a remarkable amount of diversity even within the D&D community. It's not really a singular hobby, but a group of interrelated hobbies. If recent history has shown us nothing it's that we think about and play games in incredibly different ways, and I think that's a good thing. Role playing games are a pretty personal experience and as varied as the groups that play them.

 

[Zardnaar]

And THIS is the true bitter pill for 3e/3.5 players. They created the doomsday machine.

When 3e came out, the brilliant plan was to kill off AD&D and D&D and replace it with D20. How to do this...simple...don't print anymore material for the older editions. Make it so that hardcopy is extinct.

Basically, if players want to play D&D, they HAVE to switch to the new edition. It was said, it was done, so it was history.

It was highly successful. There was NO reason, or so WotC thought, that they could not replicate this exact feat once again. They basically did the same thing to 3.5 as they did to 2e/D&D/AD&D. Exact same playbook, exact same plays. If you look at the early marketing campaigns for 3e, it's remarkable how closely they mirror 4e's marketing.

If you call 4e's marketing arrogant, 3e's was just as arrogant.

There was one difference though, and you can blame Ryan Dancey for that. The seeds of what occurred with 4e started all the way back prior to 3e's release, and that was when the idea of an OGL was created.

What 4e's release had to contend with that 3e did not, was an OGL. That's what made PF possible, that's what made other systems possible, and that's why what worked for 3e's release did NOT work for 4e's release.

IF T$R had release and OGL in regards to AD&D, it's actually quite possible you'd have seen a similar scenario happen with 3e's release.

I point this out to say, I can actually see the idea where if PF was not created, 4e may have been FAR more successful. I won't say it would have been, but at the same time, I'd say there's precedence for it.

Personally, I'm wildly glad at this point for the OGL and Dancey's idea. Why? Because I absolutely love PF and what Paizo has done.

But, the problem with many people is while they complain about how 4e came out, they are blind to their own actions and how 3e was put out, and how that was the pattern that was created for 4e's release as well.

It's basically a...you reap what you sow...type scenario...both for the Players of D&D/PF and for WotC.

Erm 3rd ed did have the OGL to contend with. All those retroclones for example. The push was not there though as 3rd ed did mostly unify the fanbase as it was very popular and swamped the AD&D hold outs. The OSR revival one could argue is partly triggered by 3rd ed players going back to the retroclones as if you get burned out on d20 and did not like 4th ed there is really only one way to go.

You could have created a clone in 2000 or 2001. I think C&C was the 1st one to turn up in 2004. 3rd ed did have to deal with the OGL, everyone was to busy playing 3rd ed though.

 

[Weather Report]

I am hoping for a 2.5, all the vitriolic 4th Ed avenging naysayers, can, ya know....