Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?

[BluSponge]

I suspect that this is what Mike Mearls is doing now with his series of articles - putting out feelers in the ether, sampling opinions, and taking baby steps with the community. If there's too much fragmentation and he can't find common ground, then maybe they'll splinter into a 4E and 5E direction in parallel.

I agree with you on the first point. Not so much on the second. Rather than splinter, I think Mearls and R&D will simply go in a different direction and chalk up the blog entries to experimentation and conjecture. Nothing I've seen from WotC in the past decade suggests that have any interest in pursuing a parallel product line with DnD.

Tom

 

[CuRoi]

No, the community is fractured as others have pointed out. 4e maybe attracted new players but lost some old ones and then Paizo showed up and picked up the stragglers. You essentially have a 4+ way division here. A new "edition" would simply split things even more.

Though I don't interpret Mike Mearl's musings as much as a new edition but as a new approach to this community division. Cull a base system from the various rule sets, center it on things they all have in common (the attributes for instance), then create plug and play "modules" (terrible choose of words BTW).

You want the 4e style Powers module, great - you prefer the 3e Spells/Feats module, ok. You want just the basic classes and attributes, that works too. The ever popular 3e Grappling module? Sure thing. To me, that's not a new edition, it's just a re-marketing of old content (or hosue rule stuff) which is re-designed in such a way as to integrate with each other.

I've toyed with the idea of creating a new edition for my own enjoyment and even as a simple hobbyist my ideas have seen some contempt hurled their way - before people even understand what the rules entail. If WotC creates a new edition or "evolves" DnD down any new path, they are sure to be subjected to blind, abject hatred whether the new edition is a good game or not.

However, that may be what needs to happen to take RPGs into the future. Maybe everything needs to be modular / pick and choose and sold piecemeal on a website. Maybe dinosaurs like myself that like the smell and feel of books and like to see people's faces (and have them in dice throwing range...) NEED to be weeded out of the hobby for it to once again be "successful". Who says pleasing everyone is what they are even after?

Locally, I can't find many people playing DnD at the shops. 4e games surface every now and then and fade away. My FLGS has been running a Pathfinder night, but they don't want to allow people to run anything else - they can't seem to keep consistent players for 4e and obviously there is no money in 3e. I'll stomach it because Pathfinder is -close- to what I normally play, but I still don't care much for it. (Too clsoe to the same thing and I am not one of thsoe people that demanded every class get some new ability each level or it was "broken"...I'm constantly finding people can't keep up with half the crap their characters can do.)

As noted, with all the edition debacles, I'm either rmaking my own system to run which is similar to DnD and creates the experience I want from it, or I am seriously considering dialing back to 2e or earlier. Sure, I know, there are other RPGs out there but regardless the company decisions I am a solid fan of DnD in one form or another.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I think your numbers are distorted here. At present the rulebooks are:
- Core rules
- Advanced Players Guide
- Ultimate Magic
- Ultimate Combat

I believe if you count the monster books, Paizo is averaging a mechanical supplement about once every 4 months. At that rate, I believe it will take them something like 15 years to reach the saturation point of WotC's 3.5 mechanical supplements.

Which means that circa 2024, Paizo would theoretically "need" to do a 3.5-style reboot. That's so far in the future it's basically irrelevant in terms of business planning. Their business plan is very, very sustainable. The nature of gaming itself is likely to change before their business plan exhausts itself.

(This doesn't mean that the company won't have to change course and adapt to the times. But it will mean that they won't be doing it to themselves.)

 

[prosfilaes]

I believe if you count the monster books, Paizo is averaging a mechanical supplement about once every 4 months. At that rate, I believe it will take them something like 15 years to reach the saturation point of WotC's 3.5 mechanical supplements.

I don't know that I believe that. They're already up to Bestiary 3, and WotC was only up to <s>4</s> 3 monster manuals (counting the Fiend Folio) before 3.5. Paizo is also printing larger books; the Complete Arcane was 192 pages, and Advanced Player's Guide is 336, 75% more. So the APG, Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic is about equal to the Complete Warrior, Adventurer, Arcane, Divine and Scoundrel. It feels like they're already approaching the point where WotC's books started getting, er, esoteric.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Of the various splintered parts of the fanbase, I can see WotC making a version that appeals to multiple splinters, but not some members of each splinter. And even if they made the best game ever, gave it away for free, and hired a good DM to come to your house and run it for you, some people would complain that the jerk DM didn't contribute any snacks. And I'm not even including the people ticked off at WotC personally, in that assessment.

For example, I can see a modular version that appealed strongly to any two of the 4E, 3E, or Basic/1E crowd. But not all three. The trade offs you'd have to make to appeal to both the 3E and 4E players are not going to leave enough design room to appeal to the earlier group. And so on for any of the two.

I also have my doubts about big corporations and roleplaying rules. Like the problems with licensed properties, I think the corporate mindset puts a ceiling on the excellence possible--one which marketing, productive values, strong editing and playtesting, etc. must compensate for. That is, a committee never made any great art. If you want to make an artistic product by committee, then all those other strengths must be pushed to their limits, for the overall thing to really hit.

 

[Echohawk]

I don't know that I believe that. They're already up to Bestiary 3, and WotC was only up to 4 monster manuals (counting the Fiend Folio) before 3.5.

No, Monster Manual III was a 3.5 release, so WotC only released three monster books for 3.0: Monster Manual, Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio. If we're only counting monster books, Paizo will have exceeded WotC's monster page count once Bestiary 3 is released.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That is, a committee never made any great art.

There are a lot of great movies out there, and almost all of them were created by the artistic decisions of dozens or even hundreds of people. (Some of them might be small, like the choices a key grip makes, but they're still choices and thus design by committee.)

3E was designed by committee, and while it has its problems (hello, life after level 15), most people hold it to be, overall, a pretty solid design.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No, Monster Manual III was a 3.5 release, so WotC only released three monster books for 3.0: Monster Manual, Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio. If we're only counting monster books, Paizo will have exceeded WotC's monster page count once Bestiary 3 is released.

Don't most of their Monsters Revisited books include new monsters, too, or are those reprinted in the Bestiaries?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Put them in separate books of optional rules, somehow indicating that one is 3E flavored-rules, and one is 4E-flavored rules. It's not impossible to do -- a lot of the stuff that ended up in 4E got trial runs in 3E supplements later on.

I really don't see that working on a mechanical level, considering 3Ed (and previous editions) had things like alignment with actual mechanical effects, whereas 4Ed's alignment is simply words on a page for guidance; AEDU system vs Vancian magic and characters without magic at all, and so forth.

...Unless you're talking about releasing books of fluff with dual stats like the Tri-Stat/HERO books of a few years ago.

But that's not really a unified edition, that's dual-statted, system neutral books.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I really don't see that working on a mechanical level, considering 3Ed (and previous editions) had things like alignment with actual mechanical effects, whereas 4Ed's alignment is simply words on a page for guidance; AEDU system vs Vancian magic and characters without magic at all, and so forth.

Look at some of the OSR rulebooks for what a UD&D core book might look like: Characters basically get to whack each other with weapons and there's not a lot more detail beyond that. Magic could be left out entirely, and available in a supplement book, possibly one that had several systems balanced against one another. (A real, and near-essential, Tome of Magic, in other words.)

The 3E-flavor book (and again, I'd link it to a setting and a monster book) would include classes like the paladin that relies on alignment and monsters that use the alignment system. So, if you wanted alignment and how it all plays out, you'd pick up the UD&D Forgotten Realms books and adventures.

...Unless you're talking about releasing books of fluff with dual stats like the Tri-Stat/HERO books of a few years ago.

But that's not really a unified edition, that's dual-statted, system neutral books.

I'd keep the "settings" separate -- the only modules that would feature the Delve format, for instance, would be the UD&D Nentir Vale ones.

There could be universal adventures that didn't feature paladins or Great Wheel outsiders or delve-style encounters that could work with all systems. Depending on your point of view, that's either more compelling or less than the current system.