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

[Raven Crowking]

I have no problem with the Warforged if they do it right.

Every edition of the game has included elements that impose base assumptions upon the game, unless the players & DM do the work of changing them.

It would be better, IMHO, if they made elves into fey in 4.0 than if they kept them humanoids. If you're going to let in non-humanoid PCs, then go the whole nine yards.

RC

 

[Kae'Yoss]

If I would give out the rules to publishers, I would first require a contract saying they won't publish until the three core books are out.

That'd be fine by me. But they should give out the rules or stop pretending.

 

[shocklee]

So far. Of course, this is the first edition where the OGL has allowed another company to simply reprint the rules once the new edition hits, thus preventing the books from going out of print.

It will be difficult for any modern game to go out of print given the availability of electronic version of the rules. What Delericho mentioned has already happened with Hackmaster. I don't see WOTC pulling all of its PDFs of 3.5 material off the market just to force people to the new edition.

I think the better observation is that we are returning back to the earlier days where the market was fragmented. I think that the move to 4th edition is in some ways legitimizing the other competing D20/OGL rulesets, and could be a marketing opportunity for some of those companies. I think that companies, like Paizo, may be forced to provide stats for multiple systems. (Maybe printing the main adventure for 4th edition, but also providing stats for 3.5, True 20, etc. either as embedded text or in an appendix.)

 

[wingsandsword]

They're saying you can't possibly recreate all the character options of 3e (the version of D&D that really opened the character option floodgates) with the rules available in brand new, we-haven't-got-any-suppliments-yet 4e. They're saying that you probably won't be able to convert your characters accurately, so your best bet will be a rough reinterpretation, or else a whole new campaign. My memories of 2e are admittedly indistinct, but I suspect 3e characters are far more varied, mechanically.

Do you remember what the 3e Conversion Booklet looked like? It was a short booklet showing how to convert core 2e characters to core 3e characters, and introduced changes in terminology and explained how to convert 2e multiclass/dualclass characters to 3e characters (a formula I still remember off the top of my head).

I wouldn't ask for the dawn of 4e to include a conversion guide on how to convert a half-illithid kalashtar totemist/soulknife with a Vow of Poverty into 4e, but I would consider it a good thing to at least get an acknowledgment that 3e characters that are generally core could be turned faithfully and accurately into 4e characters (except gnomes, and druids, and anything else from 3e core that's being omitted).

 

[JVisgaitis]

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.

Games Workshop still does this. When I went to England back when I was working on Lustria, we were sitting in Bugman's Bar at their Studio in Nottingham. We were talking about their player base and how the see their customers. GW's entire philosophy is to replace their current set of gamers every 4 to 5 years.

I know they have changed from this somewhat in recent years as their prices became too high and their market share started to dwindle. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people who have been playing GW games for years, but their main target (if I recall correctly) is 9 to 15 year old males.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people who have been playing GW games for years, but their main target (if I recall correctly) is 9 to 15 year old males.

I find that really hard to believe. I'd put their target market at 18+.

They may not want to admit that, or maybe that's what they think they'd like to target, but presumably they've actually looked around the floor at any one of dozens of tournaments they run every year. Not a lot of 9 to 15 year olds in attendance.

Their support structure doesn't cater to 9 to 15 year olds, at all.

On the other hand, maybe that's a UK/US split.

I wonder, in fact, how autonomous GW-US is these days. I would guess "largely."

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Assuming of course his objection isn't simply on religious grounds, in which case he need say no more; but then I am sure you wouldn't mock someone's religion in an open forum.

Ah but what about those who share the religion and not the conclusion...

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Ah but what about those who share the religion and not the conclusion...

I dunno. What about it?

 

[Glyfair]

Games Workshop still does this. When I went to England back when I was working on Lustria, we were sitting in Bugman's Bar at their Studio in Nottingham. We were talking about their player base and how the see their customers. GW's entire philosophy is to replace their current set of gamers every 4 to 5 years.

I know they have changed from this somewhat in recent years as their prices became too high and their market share started to dwindle. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people who have been playing GW games for years, but their main target (if I recall correctly) is 9 to 15 year old males.

While I've never been a fan of GW, an interview with the head of the US operations on ICV2 was interesting. It's never been a secret that GW feels that getting new players introduced to the "GW Experience" has been the key part of their plan. That's been the focus of their corporate stores for a while. Unfortunately, getting new players these days has been a steeper hill to climb.

It's also no secret that GW has had a rocky road with those independent stores that carry their product. They had very strict demands about what must be carried, how much of the store it occupies and how it is displayed. They had such a strong, fanatical player base that they could say "our way or the highway." In the worst case situations their strict demands forced a retailer to invest significant amounts in a GW display, and then GW opened a store in the same town (in one case I heard it was almost across the street).

It seems that strategy is backfiring in the current climate of the hobby industry. At least in the US, GW wants to start working with the independent retailers because they serve the existing player base. They consolidated their regional offices into one US office, implying that some of the rocky relationships were some of the regional offices not following the company's customer service mandate.

I believe GW sees the market is dwindling and changing, and that they need to keep the old players because the supply of new gamers is harder to attract.

BTW, here is the link to the first part of the interview (which links to the rest).

 

[Glyfair]

I find that really hard to believe. I'd put their target market at 18+.

They may not want to admit that, or maybe that's what they think they'd like to target, but presumably they've actually looked around the floor at any one of dozens of tournaments they run every year. Not a lot of 9 to 15 year olds in attendance.

Their support structure doesn't cater to 9 to 15 year olds, at all.

On the other hand, maybe that's a UK/US split.

I wonder, in fact, how autonomous GW-US is these days. I would guess "largely."

From the article I quoted above:

The reason for that is the goal of our own Games Workshop retail stores is recruitment. They are really there to draw people in. The reason 50 percent of the store is gaming space is because they can run introductory games. What we find is these stores generate a lot of interest in an area, they recruit a lot of gamers into the hobby, they sell an awful lot of core games. But then after a while, these people actually want something else, they want something more. The average age in our own retail stores is actually quite low. Once they get to a certain point or a certain ceiling, then the Games Workshop store doesn't offer them all the stuff they want, because they want a club, they want to play bigger games or they want to run campaigns. They also want a wider variety of choice as well, because once you're into playing miniatures games, you want to see a wider choice of miniature games. That's where they feed into the independents around them.