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

[Echohawk]

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.

Well, it's possible to reach any conclusion if you just make up facts

What are you counting as 3.5 "mechanical supplements"? The core rulebooks, plus the Complete books and Expanded Psionics Handbook? Does the Races of series count? What about Draconomicon and Libris Mortis? Frostburn? Heroes of Battle? I'm not sure it is fair to count all of those without also counting a lot of the Pathfinder Companion/Chronicles series.

By my count, excluding only adventures, WotC released 6652 pages of material during the first two years of 3.5, while Paizo released 3832 pages of material during the first two years of Pathfinder. That means Pathfinder has a release rate which is about 58% that of 3.5. Since 3.5 had a 57 month lifespan, extrapolating that gives Pathfinder until November 2016 to reach the same saturation point. That's still some time away, but a lot sooner than 2024...

 

[Beginning of the End]

Well, it's possible to reach any conclusion if you just make up facts

What are you counting as 3.5 "mechanical supplements"? The core rulebooks, plus the Complete books and Expanded Psionics Handbook? Does the Races of series count? What about Draconomicon and Libris Mortis? Frostburn? Heroes of Battle? I'm not sure it is fair to count all of those without also counting a lot of the Pathfinder Companion/Chronicles series.

I think the distinction is pretty clear to anyone who isn't being silly about it.

If you don't buy that there's a meaningful distinction between mechanical and non-mechanical supplements, OK. But claiming that anyone talking about such a distinction is just "making up facts" is, frankly, getting pretty close to a baseless and needless personal attack.

 

[Echohawk]

I think the distinction is pretty clear to anyone who isn't being silly about it.

If you don't buy that there's a meaningful distinction between mechanical and non-mechanical supplements, OK. But claiming that anyone talking about such a distinction is just "making up facts" is, frankly, getting pretty close to a baseless and needless personal attack.

My apologies -- I really didn't mean that to come across as a personal attack. But I do not think the distinction is clear at all. I just spent more than an hour looking through all of the 3.5 and Pathfinder releases to try to provide some actual figures, and I could not easily divide either pile of books into "mechanical" and "non-mechanical" supplements.

I was honestly not being facetious in asking where you draw the line. I'm genuinely curious to know.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Build it and the will come ... to complain.

"If [WoTC] started to walk on water, [some people] would complain that [they] can't swim." - JtKL

 

[KidSnide]

Personally, I think a good VTT that come integrated with WotC's multi-edition IP could be a real killer app.

I use Fantasy Grounds 2, not because I'm particularly found of the software (although it's not bad), but mostly because I'm running a War of the Burning Sky game and it's already been loaded into FG2.

If WotC created a VTT that could support multiple editions and was loaded with its classic modules (and ideally, would allow people to upload their edition conversions of the same), I think a lot of people would sign up for that.

-KS

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.)

1) OSR? IDK that abbrv./acronym.

2) Magic not in the base version of a FRPG? Especially the best known FRPG in the world? The one non-gamers think is synonymous with the hobby? You've lost me already.

3) What kind of magic? AEDU loses you the Vancians, Vancian costs you the AEDUphes. Plus, if you go AEDU, the AEDUphiles will want that stuff for the non-magic wielding classes.

There could be universal adventures that didn't feature paladins or Great Wheel outsiders or delve-style encounters that could work with all systems.

So when someone wants to play a Paladin in one of these so-called "universal" adventures, are you going to include guidance for when Sir Praiseworthy Killalot "Detects Evil" or will he simply be gimped or banned?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

1) OSR? IDK that abbrv./acronym.

Old School Renaissance. It's the retroclones and retro not-quite-clones like C&C. They've been doing stripped-down D&D for several years now, in an attempt to recreate older versions of the game.

So when someone wants to play a Paladin in one of these so-called "universal" adventures, are you going to include guidance for when Sir Praiseworthy Killalot "Detects Evil" or will he simply be gimped or banned?

You could take the radical step of writing "Evil" on every relevant stat-block.

Your concerns about how they'd handle the various power types are real issues -- and honestly, if Mearls hadn't alluded to it, it wouldn't have been something I would have thought they'd try. How they handle the Human Evil Detector is really no big deal at all.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

6) The players who want earlier editions of the game made available and/or supported.

There is a subset of players who refuse to play 4E or any game WotC produces because they are upset that WotC does not make earlier editions available. So in that regard, they are like group 1 in that it's anger towards the company and not the game itself that is the roadblock. However, unlike group 1... WotC can make reparations to this group by finally actually making earlier edition material available. If that was to happen... then I think some of these players would 'cross the picket line' as it were, and take a look at the new edition since they've now been placated. However, I do think this group is very small, because it stands to reason that these players want earlier edition material released because they want to play these earlier editions, and not any new game WotC would release.

Just wanted to revisit this part (or why and how I semi-pseudo-sorta disagree) - older edition adventures are much, much easier to convert to newer editions than converting, say, a Pathfinder adventure to 4e.

And enough people have done so that I think that adventures and setting materials are likely to draw across editions. (I ran Bone Hill, Village of Hommlet, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and Keep on the Borderlands with 3.X.)

So, not quite the same thing.

The Auld Grump

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Old School Renaissance. It's the retroclones and retro not-quite-clones like C&C. They've been doing stripped-down D&D for several years now, in an attempt to recreate older versions of the game.

Hmmm...take this for what it's worth, but not a one of those has even gotten me past looking at them. And the only one that did THAT was Hackmaster.

You could take the radical step of writing "Evil" on every relevant stat-block.

Too much work for me to make use of a supposedly "universal" product- with it's intended ruleset- to get me to buy it.

Your concerns about how they'd handle the various power types are real issues -- and honestly, if Mearls hadn't alluded to it, it wouldn't have been something I would have thought they'd try. How they handle the Human Evil Detector is really no big deal at all.

It seems a big deal to some.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hmmm...take this for what it's worth, but not a one of those has even gotten me past looking at them. And the only one that did THAT was Hackmaster.

Completely irrelevant. The point is that these rulesets are out there and are being tested already. WotC can swoop in, grab what works, and build off there.

Too much work for me to make use of a supposedly "universal" product- with it's intended ruleset- to get me to buy it.

I was unclear: In a universal adventure, WotC could go ahead and write "evil" on all the stat blocks. If they didn't want to afford four whole characters, they could just write "E."

I'm not advocating any of this, by the way, so your vehemence is misplaced. If you aren't interested in it, great. I don't know that I give a crap about it, either. I'm just saying that, contrary to people saying it's UNPOSSIBLE to do, it actually seems pretty easy, for the most part -- you can squint and see the core ruleset inside True20 or C&C or several of the retroclones, for instance -- with the hardest part bolting on a 4E ruleset to a more stripped down core, if I understood where Mearls is going with his columns.