D&D 4E 4E WotC way of saying your fired?

[Raven Crowking]

What I was saying boils down to (and I thought it was obvious, but I guess not) I feel like the products they're making and the decisions they're making are not in my best interests as a customer or a D&D player.
Canceling Dungeon and Dragon adversely affects me as a customer.
Relaeasing a new edition 4 years too early adversely affects me as a customer.
Making the mechanics of the game resemble "Final Fantasy"would adversely affect me as a customer.
I wasn't saying I wanted to be "in on" the development process.
I just feel that WOTC don't have my gaming group's best interests in mind when they make their decisions. My wallet will, of course, vote accordingly

I could not have put this better.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

I find it remarkable that the argument goes 3.x has too many rules options because players keep buying these books and bringing them to games and expecting to use the new options*, yet apparently regular players don't buy supplements at all. It's almost as if the argument changes depending on the point being made.

You know, I just read the second paragraph, and you once again have an argument that's 180 degrees from the argument I normally hear; that players don't want to crawl inch-by-inch and search everything in detail with their 3d6-in-order PCs, mapping every inch of the dungeon to find the secret alcove with the +2 sword, they want to roll Search checks and wrestle demons and play half-dragon frenzied berserkers with spiked chains, point-buy stats, and average wealth per level. That the tone of D&D at the table, if the players had their way, would be nothing like the D&D of old. Yet you're telling me it's the precise opposite, and except for having feats and skills (which change the tone immensely) you could mistake a 3e table for a 1e table. Someone's very confused here, and I doubt it's everyone else.

But this...

Thus, I think WotC is actively seeking a different market demographic. And it ain't me. So I feel I am perfectly justified in looking at what they are offering and saying, "That ain't D&D."

is a leap of logic I couldn't manage with Ninja Scout levels and a Ring of Jumping. "I don't like this, so it's not what it says it is." I can hate the Dodge Neon 'till I'm blue in the face - and have - but no amount of angry stares and fist-shaking is going to make it not a car, and especially won't make it not a Dodge.

* I have no idea if you personally have ever made this argument, but it's certainly common and it's strange to see someone assert that the actual situation is the complete opposite.

 

[WayneLigon]

And that's the thing. 3E was, when it appeared, "very D&D" and has become less so through 3.5's life.

No, we went through this same thing before. The entire same silliness went on before: (1) It ain't my D&D (2) We'll have to buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff all over again (3) WOTC is spitting on decades of tradition. The only thing we're not seeing from that time is (1) ZOMG! They're going to make the rulebooks collectable (2) D&D is going to use the Magic: The Gathering world as the setting and (3) D&D is going to feature Pokemon monsters.

Then they saw that the game was good, even though it changed a lot of things. And the vast majority of the people who said they were giving up D&D forever and never giving WOTC a dime bought 3E and played it. And almost all of them did the same thing for 3.5.

Just like they'll do for 4E.

But those average gamers don't buy supplements, either, and

Certainly they do or there wouldn't be any money in making them.

they play the D&D, tone and flavor wise, that's been around for 30 years.

And you know this how? Personal experience is a very hard thing to base things on so unless you have a marketing research division under your bed or something, there's just no way you can know this.

My personal experience? It's seemingly vastly different than yours. We, the groups I've been most involved with, haven't played D&D with that tone and flavor for like 15 years. We did it for 10 years under 1E and the beginning of 2E (we have a large age range in the group) and got bored to tears with it. We broke off and did other games, and brought the style and sensibilities from those games back to the D&D rules. It wasn't a good or pretty fit most of the time so D&D got left behind. 3E allowed us - since it had at least the beginnings of a modern game design - to do those things and do them much easier. That's why we have played D&D virtually exclusively for the last seven years. That never happened before, at all.

In tone and flavor our games more resemble Call of Cthulhu, modern fantasy novels, horror movies, action movies, westerns, soap operas and comic books, and anime series. With a few dashes of light romantic comedy.

Yet, we still play D&D.

Our adventurers are hearty bold rogues who go out and slay monsters and take their stuff. They're just vastly better dressed than a group of Dark Agers who haven't bathed in weeks because they don't have a sorcerer with the Prestidigitation spell. Killing things and taking their stuff only stays fun for a certain amount of time, though, and this is what a more modern RPG recognizes.

They also solve mysteries, investigate things, follow tracks of clues across continents to find the bastards that put those monsters there and paid them the stuff that was taken. Then they kill them and take their much better stuff. They go to parties where they realize that the Duke is not the Duke but something dressed in his skin. They parry verbally with him in several social encounters during the evening, eventually coming up with a plan to get him away from civilians so they can kill him and be given his Stuff by a grateful Duchess. None of us want to go back to the days of 'OK, you're mapping, you're in a corridor that T's, the right branch goes 30' and bends, the left branch goes 10' and ends in a door' 'OK, we push the thief up front to check for traps'.

Given what I've seen happen in other groups, given what I've read on these boards for the past several years, I'll be more than willing to consider my group's experiences and attitudes to be more like the majority of players out there than a group that's seen no reason to change that tone and flavor for 30 years.

You do eventually change or you lose players. It's as simple as that.

 

[Glyfair]

The entire same silliness went on before: (1) It ain't my D&D (2) We'll have to buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff all over again (3) WOTC is spitting on decades of tradition.

Yes. People have forgotten it was out there.

I do think there is at least one major difference between 3E & 4E. 3E had such a strong buzz at sites like Eric's because a significant amount of interest came from lapsed D&D players. Look at all the 2nd edition disappointed you hear from long-time players. That group of disaffected players were looking forward to a radical departure from AD&D and when 2nd edition didn't give it to them they wandered to other systems.

Why isn't that same group there? Likely because they are more things distracting that crowd (WoW, for example) and because there are more options. 3E is pretty modular, and there is lots of room for adding and tweaking. Because of the OGL, you don't have to do that work for yourself. There are plenty of complete alternative systems and subsystems floating around.

Indeed, those extra systems is probably an additional reason why WotC needs to break significantly from 3.5 and make it something that addresses foundational shortcomings of 3.5. Shortcomings that are on the surface are easy enough to tweak that someone else has probably done it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Wotc does not "intend" to fire their existing 3x customers, its just that they don't care whether those customers choose to "fire" themselves. Wotc will do what it thinks is best and too bad, so sad, if someone can't be reasonable and see it their way.

Which, to be honest, is fair. I mean, when I set up a game, I set up the game I think is best, and if someone doesn't want to play in that game, that's a perfectly valid choice. As far as that goes, I have to say that it is better that WotC does what it thinks is right rather than what it thinks is popular.

I just don't happen to agree with about 50% of what WotC thinks is right.

I'm pretty sure that I would support a 3.75 from Paizo & Necromancer, though. If Goodman Games was in, that would be better. If Green Ronin were in, that would be best.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

You are seriously naive if you think that an OGL-using 3rd party of small size can compete with Wizards.

Heh. I'm old enough to remember when folks were saying the same thing about TSR. See, this upstart card game had appeared, and some thought the little company that manufactured would be awefully naive to imagine that it could ever compete with the giant....

In any event, a 3rd Party wouldn't be competing with WotC. It would be competing with the bottom line expected value that Hasbro requires to keep D&D as a WotC product.

As a parallel, no Star Trek movie has ever lost money, but a lot of Star Trek movies have made less than they were expected to make. This fact has caused movies to flounder, formulas to be changed (or copied), and so on. Enterprise didn't die because it was losing money; it died because it wasn't making enough.


RC

 

[Reynard]

You know, I just read the second paragraph, and you once again have an argument that's 180 degrees from the argument I normally hear; that players don't want to crawl inch-by-inch and search everything in detail with their 3d6-in-order PCs, mapping every inch of the dungeon to find the secret alcove with the +2 sword, they want to roll Search checks and wrestle demons and play half-dragon frenzied berserkers with spiked chains, point-buy stats, and average wealth per level. That the tone of D&D at the table, if the players had their way, would be nothing like the D&D of old. Yet you're telling me it's the precise opposite, and except for having feats and skills (which change the tone immensely) you could mistake a 3e table for a 1e table. Someone's very confused here, and I doubt it's everyone else.

I think you are missing my point, probably because I am not explaining it very well. If you take out the mechanics changes between editions for a second (and yes, i know, mechaincs have a lot to do with the tone and inherent playstyle, but bear with me) and look at the implicit setting and Core fluff (and it is important to make the distinction between fluff and Core fluff), you have a relatively consistent subgenre of fantasy that can be called D&D. There's been refinements and modifications, certainly, but not the kind of absolute overhaul that we are being "teased" with for 4E.

On the mechanical side, if you take the Core, even 3E didn't make a huge divergence from the default assumptions of D&D -- and in fact intentionally returned to some of the old AD&D1 concepts that had been lost in 2E -- expct in a couple places (race-class-level limits is one, multiclassing in another). As I said, it was a "Back to basics" approach. Remember that 3E grabbed a whole bunch of lapsed gamers that hadn't played in 10 years and got them excited about D&D because although it was different, 3E was recognizable to them. 4E appears to be going the other route, seeking out the non-gamer (TTRPG gamer, anyway) and trying to make it familiar to them and therefore changing its tone and mechanics to match that with which they are familiar -- things like WoW and Guild Wars and such.

But this...is a leap of logic I couldn't manage with Ninja Scout levels and a Ring of Jumping. "I don't like this, so it's not what it says it is." I can hate the Dodge Neon 'till I'm blue in the face - and have - but no amount of angry stares and fist-shaking is going to make it not a car, and especially won't make it not a Dodge.

I keep trying to make it clear -- and I am obviously not doing a good job at it -- that me saying "it ain't D&D" is my feelings and perspective on it, based on 22 years of playing and running the game. there's lots of "car guys" out there that would look at the new model of a Dodge and say "that ain't no dodge" because it is sleek and sexy and not a Charger or (tee!) Dart.

And note also that i am talking largely about the Core game -- PHB, DMG and MM. Every edition has veered off in strange and interesting directions with supplements and settings. Some are to my liking, some aren't. that's okay. Supplements and setting are purely optional. But the core game, the one that is the common language, should maintain that core experience of D&D -- I think it is one of the most important factors in why D&D has always been the #1 RPG.

 

[Dacileva]

HASBRO want to make money from D&D. Of course they do. They do that by producing new product. But, after a time, and the threshold is different for different gamers, new product no longer sells. So what to do?

Well, MMOs have a monthly fee. You pay it to keep your character ready for the next product (expansion), even after you've finished playing the stuff they've already done. In an MMO, that fee also lets you have another go, so HASBRO/WotC need to stick something else in with the fee to make it worth paying for. Thus, the DI.

Simply put: continuous revenue stream from D&D players and DMs, something that RPGs don't tend to produce in the way that MMOs, CCGs and the like do. This means keeping as many customers as possible and convincing them that $10 per month is a great subscription to pay for.

And even more importantly as a result of this, and this is something I think a lot of people aren't seeing...

A continuous revenue stream allows them to spend a much longer time supporting 4e.

If they'd had a continuous revenue stream through 3.x's lifespan, they probably wouldn't have gone with as drastic changes as they're making for 4e for a few more years, or even several more.

Continuous revenue streams also let them experiment more, and a digital distribution network allows even more experimentation and immediate feedback.

People complain about D&D becoming "too much like an MMO"...

You know what? I hope it does. But I don't mean that in the way the naysayers almost always mean it, because they're often being ignorant of what an MMO is actually like, when they say that.

What I mean is this:

When I have a problem with WoW, Blizzard fixes it in the next patch, or the patch after that, or the patch after that. No longer than a year since my first griping about my rogue having to take 5 unnecessary points in Subtlety for Improved Sap just so I didn't destealth when sapping, they fixed Sap to not de-stealth by default. I complained about my tank warrior becoming ineffective after all the PvP-related nerfs... Six months later, Thunder Clap became usable in Defensive Stance, and Prot got a nice, solid buff. I want something new? Ten more levels, new dungeons, new continent coming next year. I'm getting tired of handling my guild's common possessions through my bank alt? Guild banks, coming in 2.3 within a few months, tops.

Support. Continued support. Fixes and patches that don't cost me anything other than my contribution to their continuous revenue stream.

So yes, I do hope D&D becomes more like an MMO... It's entirely likely we'd all be treated to better gaming because of it.

 

[hazel monday]

Support. Continued support. Fixes and patches that don't cost me anything other than my contribution to their continuous revenue stream.

So yes, I do hope D&D becomes more like an MMO... It's entirely likely we'd all be treated to better gaming because of it.

I couldn't disagree more. If I had to pay a monthly fee so they could change the rules on me and my group every time they felt like it...
Well, I just wouldn't do it. A move like that on WOTC's part would insure my group sticks with 3.5 until they came to their senses.
For me, that would be like paying a monthly fee to get kicked in the groin.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

I think you are missing my point, probably because I am not explaining it very well. If you take out the mechanics changes between editions for a second (and yes, i know, mechanics have a lot to do with the tone and inherent playstyle, but bear with me) and look at the implicit setting and Core fluff (and it is important to make the distinction between fluff and Core fluff), you have a relatively consistent subgenre of fantasy that can be called D&D. There's been refinements and modifications, certainly, but not the kind of absolute overhaul that we are being "teased" with for 4E.

Alright, I'm following this, and I both agree and disagree with it. It's possible - okay, really likely - that in fact my entire view on this subject stems from my approach to DMing, campaign building, and D&D in general. I consider the homebrewing of fluff, putting your own stamp on the implied setting of D&D as offered by the rulebooks, to be a fundamental part of the experience. World building is simply something the DM does; sure, there are established campaign settings, but I've always felt those are for modules, fiction (and an avenue to draw fans of the fiction into D&D), and people who are really busy but still want to DM.

I don't feel you can extract mechanical changes from the change in tone, personally, and in that respect 3e changed a lot more than you seem to feel it did. Magic item proliferation. PC templates. The new emphasis on melee damage relative to previous editions. Nearly free multiclassing. The world the PCs represented was fundamentally and irrevocably changed, even if all the old monsters were there and you had spell slots. Unearthed Arcana was arguably the fourth core book at a large number of tables, and hints of it (EDIT: 'it' being 4th Edition) can be seen in some of the rules for offer there.

Remember that 3E grabbed a whole bunch of lapsed gamers that hadn't played in 10 years and got them excited about D&D because although it was different, 3E was recognizable to them.

Personally, I believe a large number of those gamers were people who hit the dungeon in the old days exactly like a surgical strike, maps and minis in hand, and they left when D&D went the route of metaplot-heavy setting-shaking campaigns and tightly plotted modules. 3e represented 'back to basics' in that you could play it as an almost purely tactical exercise, trading treasure for magical power because everything has a market value and facing challenges that were close enough to balanced - or specific amounts of "easier than normal" or "harder than normal" - as to be gameable.

4E appears to be going the other route, seeking out the non-gamer (TTRPG gamer, anyway) and trying to make it familiar to them and therefore changing its tone and mechanics to match that with which they are familiar -- things like WoW and Guild Wars and such.

I don't believe, in these days of ubiquitous internet, that these markets are as different as you appear to believe. I'm also considering the fact that this may be a shift to market D&D more heavily in foreign markets - Asia in particular? Idle speculation on my part, but worth considering, IMO.

I keep trying to make it clear -- and I am obviously not doing a good job at it -- that me saying "it ain't D&D" is my feelings and perspective on it, based on 22 years of playing and running the game. there's lots of "car guys" out there that would look at the new model of a Dodge and say "that ain't no dodge" because it is sleek and sexy and not a Charger or (tee!) Dart.

Alright, fair enough. It's just that that isn't what those words mean.

And note also that i am talking largely about the Core game -- PHB, DMG and MM. Every edition has veered off in strange and interesting directions with supplements and settings. Some are to my liking, some aren't. that's okay. Supplements and setting are purely optional.

Granted.

But the core game, the one that is the common language, should maintain that core experience of D&D -- I think it is one of the most important factors in why D&D has always been the #1 RPG.

Also granted. I just think we disagree on what the core experience is that sells it to the largest player base.