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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 3925543" data-attributes="member: 1713">Your position is still pure subjectivity in a shroud of extreme vagueness. Killing things and taking their stuff may as well be the essence of D&D, but it is not very helpful when we try to design a game based on it. It is just a truism, a statement without substance. It is the how of killing and taking that counts; the way characters are made and things accomplished; the entire recipe for playing a game of D&D, which includes rules, an implied setting and a lot of "how to" which may or may not even be expressed in a rulebook in a straightforward manner. By your definition, you could be playing Palladium Fantasy, Castles & Crusades, AD&D 2nd edition, Basic D&D or Conan d20, since all of these are well suited for games where the protagonists operate as a mobile abbatoir. Furthermore, I suggest that some of these are better focused on killing and looting than 4e appears to be - what use, for example, are massive character customisation options in a dungeon?"Good for the hobby" is also misleading. Why are you certain that what WotC does is "good for the hobby", if by this we mean the best game to recruit new players? Can we be positive that the company is good at maximising long-term profits, and that its designers have the wisdom to pursue this good instead of narrow concerns of selling supplements to dedicated people... again The last D&D edition that was successful in direct recruitment was the 1980s Mentzer basic set. Wouldn't a strategy based on a simple basic game accompanied by a somewhat more complex system for the hardcore fans work better than what we are seeing? Yet we rarely see people express a wish for WotC to turn D&D into that! This doesn't even scratch the question of what makes a brand beyond a name and a few superficial elements; needless to say, I'd be very surprised to see McDonalds or Coca-Cola alter the recipes that made their products popular. Only brands in an identity crisis do that, and four times out of five, they fail.</blockquote>

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