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

[Kae'Yoss]

Why can't Paizo have mini-adventure path?

You could always get GameMastery modules.

 

[Maggan]

Also 1,000,000 people send WotC $10.00 a month to play MMOD&D, for one year. Think about it. Thats a lot of $.

I've thought about it. And I don't get what you're saying. The adoption of D&D Insider will in my mind be a fraction of 1 000 000. That just won't happen, at least not overnight.

And I don't think WotC is aiming at those numbers. They need to attract new players and keep a substantial percentage of old players.

So I seriously don't think WotC is sitting there saying "let's fire all our existing players, beause we can easily recruit 1 000 000 new players to D&D Insider."

What they might be saying is "we have to make choices that alienates a percentage of the existing players, so that we stand a better chance of recruiting new players."

It's a world of difference.

/M

 

[Azgulor]

Now the TRUE design flaw of 3.X ... you want to know it ?

It's an empty rules system with nothing to remember it by !

WhaddI meanby this ? People do not remember 1.0 because of the rules. They remember it because they were scared shitless in I6 : Ravenloft or because they slew Lolth in Queen of the Demonweb pits.

WOTC has kept publishing various rules supplements over the 3.X life, but the adventures were here only at the very end. Who has played them ? Did anybody ?

The source of fun for 3.X was DUNGEON. DUNGEON, yes. Made by ... PAIZO.
It's not a surprise to me that it was the first thing to eliminate to make way for their new line.

Between this and the not-so-friendly attitude of a lot of 4e "fans", I am convinced that I will not buy 4e or anything related close or far, but I'll stick by Paizo whatever their choices.

Thank you for all the good work, and excellent adventures guys.

I never had really thought of this before but I believe you've hit the nail on the head. Looking back over the editions, my players talk about those old adventures to this day. 2e was largely forgettable due to the fact that there were few stand-out adventures. When people talk about 3e, you frequently hear people talking about Shackled City, Age of Worms, the Freeport trilogy, Rappan Athuk, etc.

While 3e is my favorite rules set of D&D, it's not what enticed me to switch to d20-based games. It was the third-party publishers. I'd still be playing other systems if not for Mongoose's Conan, Green Ronin's Thieves' World & Freeport. Pathfinder is rapidly becoming my poster child for blending adventures & settings. WotC's biggest impact on my gaming? - Switching from GURPS to d20 Modern.

I still own a lot of WotC books and use them regularly. But based on how the 4e announcement/rollout has been handled thus far, I suspect I'm in the "ok if we fire him" camp. So Paizo, Green Ronin, Mongoose, and others will likely recieve my gaming dollars for the forseeable future while WotC may lose them all together.

 

[Maggan]

Now the TRUE design flaw of 3.X ... you want to know it ?

It's an empty rules system with nothing to remember it by !

WhaddI meanby this ? People do not remember 1.0 because of the rules. They remember it because they were scared shitless in I6 : Ravenloft or because they slew Lolth in Queen of the Demonweb pits.

WOTC has kept publishing various rules supplements over the 3.X life, but the adventures were here only at the very end. Who has played them ? Did anybody ?

For me 3e will be remembered as the edition when the rules started to make sense. For my players, it will be my home-brewed Dungeon of Doom, which in our little nick of the woods has more nostalgia attached to it than the Tomb of Horrors. And it's pure 3rd edition.

Also, WotC's strategy with d20 was to create a playing field where other people could make great adventures. Seems to me they were at least partly successful since we have adventures such as Shackled City, Age of Worms, Rappan Athuk, World's Largest Dungeon and a bunch more.

And I'm gearing up for WotC:s own Red Hand of Doom, which I believe will be remembered as a classic 3rd edition adventure in due time.

YMMV, of course.

/M

 

[DaveMage]

The whole "firing your current customer base" does have precedent, IIRC.

One of the miniature companies (Games Workshop?) essentially did this a while back. They came out with an entire new mini line that was not compatible with the old line. Apparently, this strategy *was* successful for them.

I may not have all the details correct, but Ryan Dancey posted about this in a thread here on EN World a while back. (Quite a fascinating read.)

From a business standpoint, it seems shocking that a company would do that, but loyalty to the customer sometimes takes a backseat to profit.

 

[Gothic_Demon]

Also 1,000,000 people send WotC $10.00 a month to play MMOD&D, for one year. Think about it. Thats a lot of $.

Whilst I agree with other posters that this value is too high, think about this for a second:

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.

Because of this I really doubt that WotC is trying to 'fire' anyone, but the idea of getting rid of those gamers who won't use the DDI and replacing them with those who will, even 1-1, is something they'll see as quite a high priority.

 

[an_idol_mind]

At the present time, it looks like I won't be switching to 4e. That being the case, the above would represent a 'best case' outcome for me. That it even represents a possible outcome is good news indeed.

While I haven't made a decision on whether or not I'll buy into 4th edition, nor do I think that Paizo dropping away from being fully compatible with D&D would be good for either WotC or Paizo, I'd enjoy seeing a 3.75-style game, too. I'd much rather see a tune-up to the rules rather than a reinvention.

 

[mmu1]

I'm a bit worried about Paizo if this statement is Erik's. If he truly doesn't understand the difference between playtesting a game and having a set of rules they can give to 3rd party publishers I have to be concerned about Paizo's playtesting of their modules.

I do find that hard to believe that he doesn't understand the difference. Maybe he was feeling a bit petulant at the time he wrote it.

I think you're missing the point.

The game is done, or close to it. It has to be - publishing schedules being what they are - and Erik probably knows it.

So the fact that WotC is making it a priority to conduct a PR campaign they're calling a "playtest" rather than providing any of the 3rd party publishers with information would worry me as well, if I was in Mona's shoes.

The alternative - that this "playtest" is the real thing, and the game actually needs it - would be really disturbing, with a May release date looming. It'd mean that the game is getting rushed out the door, and that never turns out well.

 

[D.Shaffer]

If 4.0, on the other hand, is robust enough to emulate the kind of play we're all used to I'd much rather go with the "sure thing" and publish Pathfinder in a way that fully supports 4.0. I honestly trust and expect that 4.0 will allow us to do that, so my default assumption, to be frank, is that we'll convert whole hog to 4.0 at some point or another.

But I haven't seen the rules and I haven't seen the new OGL, and until I do I've got to keep our options open.

Is it me, or do people seem to be missing this particular bit of Erik's post? Airing your worries and actually expecting them to happen are two seperate things.

 

[Doug McCrae]

One of the miniature companies (Games Workshop?) essentially did this a while back. They came out with an entire new mini line that was not compatible with the old line. Apparently, this strategy *was* successful for them.

Games Workshop has a huge turnover in their customer base as very few keep playing Warhammer/W40K outwith their teens. So they've essentially 'fired' all their customers many times except it's more like the customers quit and they recruited a lot of new ones.