Cynicism of an AD&D refugee

[jensun]

White Wolf product lines must give you fits, then.

Hey, you have to remember. TSR in its 1e days produced all of those hardbooks for love, never for something as dirty as profit.

*my kingdom for a roley eyes smiley*

 

[Aus_Snow]

It isn't very easy to improvise a new class

How not?

Now, there's no question that fencers, fighter-mages, lightly armored fighters and the like benefitted a lot from the 3.5 splatbooks. But even with just core, they're viable. Perhaps not ideal, but in their own niche, as good as anything else. Not so with 4e.

Viable how?

 

[justanobody]

It was simply an effort to produce what they believed to be a good game over a longer product cycle than the previous edition. Supplemental material sells better if its considered core. Core books are more likely to be purchased by everyone in a group rather than just those interested in particular info from a specialized splat. Thats the reason WOTC produces so few adventures. One person in niche market group buying a product is not a good revenue model.

As a bonus, the slew of core books weighing down the 4E crowd will make the idea of most everything being on cards in 5E welcome news.

Game design goes hand in hand with planned obsolescence.

The problem is that planned obsolescence has been realized to be flawed as people are smarter than they were in the 50' and don't want to waste money on something that won't last. Now everything is made to last longer without having to buy spare parts for it.

IE: those missing form it initially.

So while WotC wants to lengthen the lifespan of 4th by making more things to buy, it also losses interest as by the time something finally comes out that someone may want, the risk is that they will have moved on to other things and left 4th edition behind.

If you want to make add-ons, they always come after the core, not before.

Look at the campaign books. How do you explain that new core classes or races exist and no update to a setting book for a few years?

Forgotten Realms at the forefront of the RPGA now will take a big hit if people have no ability to play a new class or race that start later on after PHBII. Unless Eberron will replace LFR with Living Eberron after PHBII that will include any new races/classes brought out after that.

Make the core first, then bring on the add-ons/supplements. Sure this won't guarantee the company to make more money, but neither will the way they thought up to make PHBII, DMGII, etc.

The product lifecycle is up to WotC to make things people will want to buy, not tell them when they can buy what they consider a complete game.

When people get tired of buying, then the lifecycle is over, so making the best material rather than holding things back is the best thing to do.

Sure those classes are coming, but should someone have to spend $40 on a book for a single class?

Supplemental material disguised as core, only turns people off about something.

Are they always going to keep all core material in print? In 2011 will they be selling a "core set" that includes PHBI-IV, DMG I-IV, MMI-IV?

$480 to play D&D? How much does the PS4/X-Box 720 cost?

Or are the new PHBs going to replace the older ones buy just adding errata and pages for the new classes/races to them.

This has been discussed to death, so I will leave it as is. The "everything is core" is a design flaw from marketing, R&D, etc.

Sales in the splat PHBs/etc will be lower and lower with each year.

 

[rounser]

I'm beginning to think the worst thing WotC ever did was give away 3.X for free in the form of the SRD. By doing so, the created an expectation that the D&D rules should be mostly free, fairly complete, and all further/future supplements were only "splat" that served to clutter the game with rules the DM must work tirelessly to squelch.

So instead, it's been replaced by incomplete core rules with stuff to squelch and clutter, right in the core three books. That's so much better than keeping dragonborn, eladrin and warlords in splats.

 

[Obryn]

That expectation did not originate with 3E or the OGL. 4E is the first edition of the game that was not intended to be "fairly complete" in 3 books: the DMG, PHB, and MM. (I'm talking about the AD&D-2E-3E-4E line here, obviously.)

I think there are a few definitions of "complete"-ness that get conflated when someone's talking about 4e.

The core book set is very complete in that you could run a campaign for several years without exhausting all the options. You don't need any books beyond the first three to run a fulfilling campaign, as long as you don't enter into it with any preconceived notions about races, classes, or monsters that must be included.

It is incomplete in that it doesn't include everything from previous editions' core books.

-O

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The problem is that planned obsolescence has been realized to be flawed as people are smarter than they were in the 50' and don't want to waste money on something that won't last. Now everything is made to last longer without having to buy spare parts for it.

But is a game defined by how long you can use its core products, or by how much supplemental products you can get. A Complete Warrior or Martial Power is not a spare part. It's a new thing.

I think a game system is more akin to an Operating System. You don't expect an OS to have everything out of the box and to have no new applications to come out. You want to get new games or new programs for it and use them. If someone told you there wouldn't be coming out much, you would actually say that this is probably not a good OS to use.

We are currently running four 4E campaigns, and I think they would be playable just using the Core Rules till 30th level. Before that, we haven't tried out everything. That's a long "bang for my buck". But i am also looking forward to the supplements, because I get even more things, some I might just find more inspiring or allowing me to explore character options I haven't thought of before or always wanted to try out before.

I remember some people saying that they had enough supplements for 3E to probably last them a life time. If that's true, then 3E fans should be pretty content, because there is enough stuff that they don't even have to remotely care about the fact that there is no longer any 3E support. (Except of course, there is - Pathfinder and other OGL products still exist) But it seems some 3E fans do care - do they expect to live longer then the others? Or play that much more?

I think there is nothing wrong in planning an edition to be easily extensible. There might be something wrong in holding stuff back, though - at least if it was already finished on release date. And I think that's not how it is for most things (Frost Giants and Gnomes, perhaps; Druids and Barbarians - I think not). The extra time a later release gives the designers will affect the quality of the products.

If I look at 3E, I see a few classes that might have benefited from a longer development cycle - Monks and Bards were always very weak classes, and barely seemed to work. Rangers were criticized a lot and probably had the most number of variants for all classes (Spell-Less Rangers, Rangers without or with different weapon styles and so on). I don't think it would have bad for the game if these classes had been published a year later in a separate book.
Similar - the multiclassing rules in 3E were interesting - but unfortunately, they tried to have a unified system from the get go, and it worked badly for multiclassed spellcasters. Only by later creating Mystic Theurge like classes they found a at least somewhat workable fix. It wouldn't have hurt if the had the multiclassing rules built in a more "open-ended" way, like they effectively did in 4E - the core concepts like multiclass feats and paragon multiclassing are set, but the multiclass feats are inherently suitable for expansion. This is a great design choice to sell more books later, but also a great choice to ensure that you can expand and improve on the multiclassing rules later.

 

[pawsplay]

White Wolf product lines must give you fits, then.

You mean there's more than one book in each series? I had no idea.

 

[pawsplay]

The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression they want to make money.

Actually that's the second worse thing. The worse thing is them trying to make a profit.

The worst thing they can do is give the impression they don't care how they make money. I have never noticed a significant anger toward simply making a profit, in fact, I have often seen fans applauding good sales and stating their intention to financially support a line they enjoy.

 

[justanobody]

But is a game defined by how long you can use its core products, or by how much supplemental products you can get. A Complete Warrior or Martial Power is not a spare part. It's a new thing.

I can get pink fuzzy dice for my car too if I want them, but I don't need to get them from Ford. Accessories are not necessities. I can get the optional veggie basket for my fridge instead of the drawer, but those are just options.

You don't need to buy a new fridge every year, or car. Likewise you don't need to buy a new game every year.

A game is defined on who you are. The company wants the products to sell in whatever way they can get them to so they don't drop the product line (see D&D podcast #28). While the consumer wants the product they have to buy less often and maintain less.

New "core" books each year is upkeep and maintenance that the customer doesn't have to need.

Just claiming PHBII as core just means that the first 3 books are not a complete game.

How many board games do you buy that require more to be bought later?

If you want continued money from the consumer you have to either get more consumers for your product, or give existing ones things they will want to buy. Not trick them into thinking they will need an optional part for any reason because you neglected to put it in the box.

DIY bookshelf complete with instructions. (Screws sold separately.)

That is what it boils down to.

Add on to it PO, and that is what people get when they have to spend more all the time is PO'd.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression they want to make money.

Actually that's the second worse thing. The worse thing is them trying to make a profit.

I'd amend this.

The worst thing any RPG publisher can do is give the impression that they want to make a profit by deliberately limiting your game.

"Give us money or don't have fun!" is a bad impression to give. And yet some have definitely gotten that impression.

I mean, it's a slightly misleading impression, because there's still a wealth of options, it's just that they're power options and build options, not as many race or class options.