The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

[Joshua Randall]

I want to assure you this happens in every d&d sales discussion regardless of edition.

Citation needed? I have never seen someone demand the OD&D guys talk about sales before they're allowed to have fun.

 

[FrogReaver]

I have never seen someone demand the OD&D guys talk about sales before they're allowed to have fun.

Literally no one demands that of any game, including 4e.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Literally no one demands that of any game, including 4e.

Dude. DUDE.

Have you READ this thread? It's ALL WE TALKED ABOUT for like 5 pages.

 

[haakon1]

Pathfinder RPG's "Beta" rulebook at Gen Con in August of 2008, which sold out almost immediately (I know, because I bought a copy there).

I found a pre-release version of Pathfinder at an FLGS (I lived not far from Paizo), snatched it up, and I gave it to Wolfgang Baur. I don’t know if it was the official Beta or something else, but he was glad to get it and hadn’t seen it, so probably before it was at GenCon.

 

[FrogReaver]

Dude. DUDE.

Have you READ this thread? It's ALL WE TALKED ABOUT for like 5 pages.

Yea. And who first brought it up? And what was it brought up in response to?

 

[Mannahnin]

EDIT: Minute 1:40 he says that the streams where the game were played happened all up to 5th before (which was the other video I posted for 4E). So the stream of 4E did happen before this. The panel on 3rd edition the day before was a similar interview. So I mixed up a bit the order of when the game streams happened and when the interviews, but the 4E gamestream happened before this interview.

Ok, I re-listened and yes, I was mistaken. This is a GenCon panel on 4E, the 3E panel was the day before, and the play sessions were in the weeks leading up to GenCon. So yes, the designers in the 4E panel/play session did already deny that a couple of weeks before this panel and Jon should certainly have been aware of it.

Can you point me at the part where Jon says what you're claiming? Are you talking about 32 minutes in, where he says "people have connected" the 4E roles to different character types in MMORPGS? Because earlier, for example at 20:51, he's talking about the technologies in WoW and understanding its analog roots- ie: the ideas WoW took from TTRPGs. Saying that people have made that comparison isn't quite the same thing as asserting that one is based on the other.

At 31:00 he's connecting dailies vs. encounters to MMO cooldowns, and Rob actually says something affirmative to that comparison, although I agree with folks earlier in this thread that I don't think that's really a good comparison. Are there MMOs which have powers which don't reset until the next day?

 

[Joshua Randall]

Yea. And who first brought it up? And what was it brought up in response to?

Are you for real right now? OK let's do this.

• Post #1: the drive-by of the blog article.
• Post #2: me, complaining about its inaccuracies, including release dates of 4e relative to Pathfinder (the game system).
• Post #3: Alzrius debates my Pathfinder dates. This continues for a while.
• Post #15: Tigris mentions that sales of 4e --> Essentials may have dropped more than 3e --> 3.5. However he mentioned it in a neutral way and it's relatively noncontroversial. He very importantly does NOT say "and you are a fool if you like 4e because it sold poorly".
• Post #24: pedr is the first to advance the claim the 4E didn't meet the financial goals WOTC set for it. Fortunately, he still does not say "and you're a fool to like 4e because of its (supposedly) poor financial performance".
• Post #41: Staffan says 4e was a failure and "everyone" agrees on this. -- this includes financial failure, of course: "a game with those sales would have been a roaring success for any other company, but not for Wizards". So here we start to link finances to whether it's OK for someone to enjoy 4e as a game.
• #53: mamba would like to reiterate that 4e sales dropped before Essentials. Cool? I don't think that was ever being debated?
• #75: in response to Ezekiel's claim that 4e didn't fail, mamba drops the hammer with, "it was the worst selling edition with sales falling off a cliff pretty soon [...] Did 4e have some fans, clearly, we still have them lamenting the fact that it failed and even claiming that it did not fail, that WotC was just unreasonable and shelved it."
• and on and on from there

So if you think you tricked me into showing that >I< was the one who brought up sales? Nope.
That >I< was the one who tried to tie a game's financial performance to how fun it is? Nope. (In fact I specifically mocked this.)

I didn't bring the fight but I also won't shy away from it.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I didn't bring the fight but I also won't shy away from it.

I think the 4E art direction was all pouches and no soul.

I will expect your formal invitation to a duel at sundown promptly.

I am laundering my finest cravat in anticipation.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I think the 4E art direction was all pouches and no soul.

I literally do not know what that means LOL

I'm not much of an art guy. Other than mocking Wayne Reynolds' inability to draw feet, that is.

I am laundering my finest cravat in anticipation.

I shall prepare my justaucorps for the occasion.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I literally do not know what that means LOL

I'm not much of an art guy. Other than mocking Wayne Reynolds' inability to draw feet, that is.

As someone who was a fan of 4E's artstyle (and by extension, all of Pathfinder's), I took a look through his portfolio, and he seems to draw feet just fine? I've definitely seen worse in official art, anyway.

Now, if you were talking about, say, Rob Liefeld... THAT I could understand.

Edit: Hmm, now that I'm really scrolling through... he does hide his feet a LOT.