D&D 4E 4E: What we think we know

[Yair]

I can't help but wonder if WotC acquired extra bandwidth and server power for the big reveal. Something tells me a lot of computer screens would be directed at their site in about 7 hours...

 

[dagger]

Or better yet, what happens to us, Linux users ?
Most DRM have the bad habit of not being compatible with Linux...

Dual boot?

 

[Aeolius]

"...more clearly defined monster roles"

Does that mean it will be easier to play monsters as PCs (which would be great)? Or the opposite; core races for players, monsters for encounters (which would be awful)?

 

[Horacio]

Dual boot?

I've moved to Ubuntu only two years ago, no Windows licence here

I hope they don't link all their online offer to Windows or worse yet to Internet Explorer...

 

[TerraDave]

-could be cool
-good
-irritates me as not being "true" D&D but is probably good for a cleaner port to a CRPG/MMORPG
-good
-I've heard only good
-excellent
-a technically fine drawing that is not to my personal taste

They are saying the right things. They have been studying us.

And I called it.

Yet I worry.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

A high licensing cost ($1000+) will easily eliminate 50% or more of the publishers out there.

I don't consider $1000 "high," just as a round figure, and completely out of context, for any startup business.

I can say with some confidence, for example, that $1000 would NOT have served as a signifcant toll-gate to slow down some of the more prominent sh*t-shovelers of 3rd edition.

Anybody who has the budget to actually go to print can probably afford that fee, and can probably recoup it fairly quickly, regardless of the quality of their work. At least, they could have then-- this is now. The market might be more discerning this time around.

However, a $1000 fee is crippling to a PDF publisher. That fee will likely wipe out a good many PDF publishers of excellent quality.

A $10,000 licensing fee would probably restrict publishing to the half dozen or so prominent d20 publishers at the top of your mind right now. But the thing is, in my opinion, publishers who can afford a fee that high really don't need to prove themselves, for the most part.

There is some discreet point at which the fee is high enough to weed out so many publishers that WOTC would be far better served to just make a judgement call on who they want to publish, and who they don't.

 

[Remathilis]

"...more clearly defined monster roles"

Does that mean it will be easier to play monsters as PCs (which would be great)? Or the opposite; core races for players, monsters for encounters (which would be awful)?

Nah, it means what Mike Meal's said about them in "How to make a Monster Manual"; creatures will fall into natural niches like "mook", "mastermind", "wild beast", "Brute" and "caster". This will allow DMs to get a better feel for what a monster is capable of...

 

[OptionalRule]

I'm a little confused as to how we go from this in Feb:

The 4th Edition Question gets a lot of laughter.

"I'm surprised it took this long for someone to ask that. It's going to come at some point. It's a long ways away. You'll get an announcement when that happens, but it's a long ways away. We have a lot of good stuff coming out through 2008."

to now?

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I can't help but wonder if WotC acquired extra bandwidth and server power for the big reveal. Something tells me a lot of computer screens would be directed at their site in about 7 hours...

Remember how the site was up and down and up and down yesterday? Probably reorganising their entire webspace. They'll need an awfully large amount of bandwidth for the DI anyway, so I imagine they're prepared.

Whoever said something about DRM: if I was designing a system to host games/characters/your d&d books, I'd make it all 'web 2.0'. No need for anything but a browser (and probably flash or java), the books will likely be slick webcode or PDFs you can't download, and all the other features will be proprietarily loaded through web apps.

 

[Wormwood]

Whoever said something about DRM: if I was designing a system to host games/characters/your d&d books, I'd make it all 'web 2.0'. No need for anything but a browser (and probably flash or java), the books will likely be slick webcode or PDFs you can't download, and all the other features will be proprietarily loaded through web apps.

That's how I'd do it. Looks like they are making a sizable investment here...the last thing they want is to have everything on P2P an hour after launch.