Search results

RPG books are such a miniscule part of their revenue that, even if they can't return them, they're not going to get "burned." Besides, consider how well the 4e core rulebooks will sell in the first few months that they're out. Book stores will go from selling a trickle of RPG books every month...

Backwards compatibility would sacrifice #3 for #2. It would make it easier to convert, but it would also make the upgrade less significant, with less new features and less fixed problems. I suspect that #3 will be the most important factor in most people's decisions. #2 is fixed, there's...

I think the opposite. :) I think WOTC should put out several settings over the years, and do only the main campaign book and 1-3 supplements total for each. I voted for: Forgotten Realms - It's not my favorite setting, but I play in a longstanding FR game, and the realms have lots of...

The new playtest report has the following quote, talking about converting characters from a 3e game for a 4e playtes: "Rich’s character was tougher. He was playing a warblade/warmage in the 3rd Edition game, which didn’t really convert at all. Fortunately, he was able to pick a class that was...

This could be one of the reasons why they've explicitly made power source a game mechanic. I just hope that they make it a lot easier to choose powers for higher level characters. In ToB as it currently stand, you almost have to go through the class level by level, picking and then...

I'm curious too. If you go back into the Wizards archive a bit, you can find the design questionnaire that Mearls filled out when he applied to work for them. There's a question to the effect of "what mechanic from a non-RPG game do you find interesting, and why?" Mearls wrote about how the...

I'm in complete agreement with Mouseferatu about this. While on an intellectual level it's tidier to have everything work the same way, in practice it leads to overcomplication, unneccessary rigidity, and odd side effects. In the D&D podcast a little while ago, one of the designers talked...

Scott Rouse is the Alan Smithee of the RPG world. Clearly, Monte Cook was originally one of the major designers of 4e, but he hated what Wizards was doing with it so much that he asked his name to be taken off it, and "Scott Rouse" was born. ;)

That's the impression I got too. Maybe it's a prestige class, maybe it was once in the game but has been removed or renamed by now. I hope that if it is in the game, that they rename it. Warlord is too strong and specific a name for a 1st level character. Marshal is much better.

You want WotC to stop publishing D&D entirely for three whole years, because they had started preliminary work on the next edition? I don't know about you, but I've bought some great books in the past years and got some good use out of them. And imagine the uproar! "3.5 only came out 2 years...

A wuxia martial artist that can be as adept with weapons as unarmed? That would be nice, though probably better suited to a supplement than the core rules.

A creature shouldn't have to have lots of skill points, high will saves, and lots of feats just because it's big. Blue whales are not sages any more than killer whales. Your point about racial skill bonuses is well taken, but it's just one way to patch the problem. It would be better IMO to...

There's been no mention of the monk whatsoever. A lot of people are predicting that it will not be in PHB, replaced either by an unarmed combat talent tree for the fighter, or given as a complete class in a later book, maybe one dedicated to oriental adventures. The design article on the...

No one knows yet. It's not going to be $20 each, since that price was 8 years ago, and at the time it was a loss leader (ie. purposefully underpriced in order to make the transition easier) for a limited print run. Even the $30 current price tag will be 5 years old by the time 4e comes out...

"I don't use the rules" isn't an especially good justification for keeping the rules as they are. :D It shouldn't be so much of a burden to create NPCs and opponents that ignoring the rules and making stuff up becomes neccessary. I'm all for improvisation and faking it, but that shouldn't be...

Bear in mind that the Soldier gets 3 skills at first level, while the scoundrel (the closest to the rogue) gets 4, the scout gets 5, and the noble gets 6. It isn't a 2 vs. 8 like in D&D. Also, soldiers get 5 bonus feats at first level, while the rest only get 3 or 4.

There was a quote from one of the designers, to the effect of "Andy doesn't want Alignment to have game mechanical effects? Okay, it doen't have a mechanical effect." I haven't had luck tracking down the quote.

Oh definitely. But the guidelines are imperfect, and the calculations are a bit obtuse and sometimes counterintuitive. So are the guidelines for creating monsters, and the monster 'types.' In a recent D&D podcast, one of the designers said that while they were creating monsters for a more...

Take a look at Star Wars Saga. "Fast, easy, and complex" is a perfect description of it. Its gameplay is streamlined and easier to pick up, and character creation has gotten rid of a lot of calculation cludge, but characters have tons of options to choose from. Characters in it are far more...

He's said that he's decided to move on to writing fiction. IMO it's likely that after 10 years as a game designer, part of that as a publisher, he just wants to do something different.