4th Edition Anger Spills onto the Table

[Monkey Boy]

I game with 3 groups. One of the gamers owns a FLGS and has told me since 4E was announced stock has simply not moved. Rather than order 3 of each new release he has dropped back to 1. He is not happy about 4E and claims WOTC have shot themselves in the foot.

The Hardcore gamers with 10+ books - feel dissapointed. We have all these books, some of us are on pretty low incomes, only now they are worthless. I know we can keep playing 3.5 but what if 4E really is great, we need to start over.

The social/casual gamers with < 3 books - really don't mind. The only info they get on 4E comes from us hardcore gamers surfing the net for the latest gossip. They feel sorry for us but 4E really doesn't effect them. They are not invested in the rule set, rather enjoying the story aspect more, so new rules won't effect the casual gamer either way. They dind't notice grapple was broke in the first place.

So no actual hate but a general feeling of dissapointment. We are all still gaming though.

 

[Gargoyle]

When I switched from 1e to 2e, I had one player who was very angry about it. But in the end he kept playing, and enjoyed it, though he always wanted to go back to 1e. I had to tell him at one point though, "hey, you don't have to play...I want you to try it...but you've got to control your temper a bit" and he was mature enough to do so.

 

[FadedC]

I know a couple of people who are upset about the end of Living Greyhawk, but other then that everyone I talk to is at least cautiously optimistic. We've been playing 3e since day 1, and are looking forward to a change.

 

[Gwathlas]

A few weeks ago a new guy joined our group and played at one of our tables on Sunday. He wasn't in the table I ran, but the players at his table said he was a little strange but overall a fun player and nice addition to the group.

Last week he asked if he could DM a game at our Wednesday night sessions. As luck would have it, our Wednesday night Shackled City DM had a table of 8 players and wanted to trim his group down while a few other players were looking for a Wednesday game. A new table was born, and last night he ran the first session of Pathfinder.

It was his last session, unfortunately.

OK, I wish I had more drama to give you, but he said he's being deployed to Iraq. And though a little quirky, he was a very enthusiastic DM and demonstrated a decent level of rules knowledge.

Now on to the topic of the thread.

After the session was over, the guy went into a full on rant about 4th edition. He seemed to hate Wizards of the Coast with a passion. Then he went on to say things like "Wizards of the Co$t" was plagurizing his work. I had done a little research on this guy and found out that he made the same claim about some book he's working on.

Anyway, I was shocked at how vehemently against 4th edition this guy is. We have one grognard in our group who's the biggest "say no to 4e" guy, but even he's open minded enough to try a few sessions when it comes out. This new guy though went on and on about how horrible WotC is and how they killed Dragon and Dungeon. He also went off on "robots" in D&D, despite the fact that he heavily favors psionics, anime and wuxia influences in his games. (Personally, I think warforged are less sci-fi.)

Is anyone else already seeing the hate spill over from the world of message board rants into face to face games? It's over seven months away from launch, and I was really surprised to see this. We have about 16 people who regularly attend our games, and this was the first time someone was so angry about 4th edition and Wizards.

No hate just won't spend my money on wotc or hasbro. Anyone who is displeased about they way they are treating the game and FR should let their wallets do their talking by keeping them closed to wotc and hasbro.

 

[EATherrian]

This is pretty much the consensus amongst my group. I'm completely not enthused with what I hear about 4E and I have probably the best opinion in my group.

No one in my group is very excited about 4E. There's a lot of grumbling about money grubbin' hasbro. So far, we haven't come to blows over it or anything.
I guess we'll see what happens come May.

 

[catsclaw227]

In our group, everyones pretty positive about 4th edition, but it's just a sideline topic. At the table I usually make a few off-hand comments about what are the latest significant 4th edition news (since only I and one player follow the news), I get back a few of "Sounds cool", "That's alright" and "That's a good idea" and then we get on with stuff.

Ditto here. I consider myself an enthused grognard. I find a lot of the things about 4e more akin to my old school sensibilities, and yet still fantastical and heroic.

The Hardcore gamers with 10+ books ...<snip>...

if Hardcore gamers are ones with 10+ books, I must be chronic. Certifiably Clinical.

 

[WayneLigon]

Then he went on to say things like "Wizards of the Co$t" was plagurizing his work.

That's one of those insta-Godwininig moments. The instant someone says that, you can reliably flip a mental switch and drop them in the 'crazy person' file in your mind and start humming showtunes to yourself to drown them out.

 

[psionotic]

I know a couple of people who are upset about the end of Living Greyhawk, but other then that everyone I talk to is at least cautiously optimistic. We've been playing 3e since day 1, and are looking forward to a change.

Of the 3ish gaming groups I move among and around, the end of LG is the only 4e issue that's causing any upset or anger, and mostly among the two people who are the hard-core types that play every available mod, and travel to other regions to play theirs, as well.

As for the edition itself, we're probably running 50% excited, 50% ambivalent. But all of our DMs are changing over, and so all of our players will, too.

 

[Mark Hope]

Our group is a real mixed bag of attitudes. One player is in full-on frothing WotC-hate mode. Another still hasn't quite made the shift from 2e and so seems a bit unsure. I am in the "happy with 3e, don't feel the need for 4e" camp and am satisfied to be left behind and become a grognard. Another sounds interested in 4e and will probably check it out (he says his other group are quite excited about it). Another guy is keen to try 4e and freely admits to liking The New Shiny. And another guy is a die-hard Traveller and Call of Cthulhu fan and so is taking great pleasure in our various delights and despairs - for him, a meagre 4th edition is nothing to get worked up about, lol.

I spoke to the owner of my flgs the other day, and he seemed a bit put off by the whole thing. His sales of 3e have crashed (and for some reason, his nWoD stuff isn't shifting at all either - not sure if that's even relevant, though). He seemed to feel that WotC were relying at least in part on the flgs to sell 4e to customers who may not be convinced that they need it at all - specifically those customers who don't browse the internet and may be completely oblivious to WotC's marketing of the game (which I happen to believe is still the majority of gamers.)

My old group back in Holland seem similarly split between those who have a raging hate-on for WotC, those who are ambivalent and those who want to see The New Shiny. I am guessing that we will natter about it fairly heavily this Xmas when I make my yearly pilgrimage back there.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

My own player group has an interesting split; 3 dedicated gamers (we collect dice and books, chat about it during the week, homebrew systems and worlds and rules add-ons), 2 casual players (know enough of the rules to play, don't even think about it during the week), and 1 dedicated fantasy/sci-fi buff who loves gaming, but is also a 5th year bio-chem/microbiology student and doesn't have a lot of time for thinking about it outside of the game.

Of the four more-or-less dedicated players I'm the only one who regularly reads internet forums about gaming, goes out of his way to look at new systems, and could actually crudely overview the major gaming theories out there. This makes me the prime source of 4e information for the group (since I probably refresh the 4e forum about 10 times an hour for roughly 12 hours a day), and I take care to pass it all on when I can. We're all various levels of excited about it, from "They're not giving enough info for me to bother following it, but it all sounds cool" to my bouncing around in my chair at just about everything I read.

The casual players simply don't care, save for being interested in more cool stuff to do and an easier rules set to do it with. Their interest in grognard-cruft is nil, and being cognizant of the realities of managing a corporation in a capitalist economy they don't begrudge WotC selling another edition as long as it's not made out of polonium or $200 a book or collectable ("Special Gold Foil Cover With Druid?! Awesome, I needed that one!").

I find only on the internet do I encounter people actually angry at the company for releasing new product, though I have a feeling this relates to the industry having a lot of consumers who feel a kinship with the publishers and designers that actually exists only as far as market realities will allow, and are frequently hurt by the inability to identify the difference between "my hobby" and "their livelihood".