D&D 4E D&D 4E Presentation videos

[Olaf the Stout]

Wow, I was thinking it was lower than I expected.

That's almost worth it just for Dungeon and Dragon each month. Cover price was $15.98 just for the two magazines each month.

Plus you get the DM electronic tools. Plus you get access to the tabletop. Plus you get the character creator.

BTW, the D&D Insider info on the ENWorld front page confirms $9.95. I think that is a great deal.

I'm not so sure that the $9.95/month for the D&D Insider includes Dungeon and Dragon in that price. If it does I think it is pretty good value for money, as long as you can still access the Dungeon and Dragon adventures/articles once your subscription has expired.

The other tools are useful, but not something that I would be willing to pay $9.95 a month for.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Glyfair]

I'm not so sure that the $9.95/month for the D&D Insider includes Dungeon and Dragon in that price.

It's all lumped together as features of the "D&D Insider" on the fact sheet, and the price is given after the long list of features. It is certainly being sold that way now.

If it does I think it is pretty good value for money, as long as you can still access the Dungeon and Dragon adventures/articles once your subscription has expired.

If nothing else, you can alway print out the articles you are likely to want to use. Depending on your printer that might be more expensive. I think with a good printer you'll break even on buying the magazine issues (with the loss of production quality).

 

[Agamon]

LOL! About 80% of the people I play with don't mind plunking down a one-time payment for a PHB, but $10 a month?? I'd have to start playing D&D online with strangers...

I'm the furthest thing from a technophobe, but I don't like this DI thing, and I'll just stick with my low tech 3.5E (that I play with a laptop).

 

[Uder]

$70-80 a month for our whole group to keep up with D&D? No. Give me back my dead-tree subscription so we can pass issues around during the pizza break and laugh at the cartoons and talk about the articles.

And what was that bit about "In 1st edition, you can fight one troll, in 2nd you can fight one and a half (and so on)"? Huh? It seems to me that running mobs has been harder and harder with each new edition, not the other way around.

This is spin, although not as bad as some of the stuff we got from TSR when the Player's Option came out ("It speeds up and simplifies your games by adding fifty new rules!" was the gist of one Dragon article... which included about a half-dozen pages of tables to prove the point).

Ah well. There are apparently people at WotC that care about making a fun game, and there are also apparently people that could give a (ahem), and those people are always going to push push push to make the game involve more books, more minis, more peripheral expenses of all sorts. They can have the crumbs off WoWs cookie. Hope they like the taste.



Oh...and here's the obligatory, "Well, there's always C&C."

 

[Maggan]

My immediate reactions:

1. Geeez, those voices almost killed the entire thing for me! "Oh no, a troll" ... GAAAH!

2. D&D DI = I'm signing up. We're already putting together a gaming table based on a 26 inch flat screen display, so adding two computers and a smaller display for the DM will be easy enough. That should be very cool when we're done, in six months or so.

3. D&D New Rulebooks = Not terribly exicted, I see them as support for the DI. The DI will be the hub of our D&D gaming, if it lives up to the promise of the video.

/M

 

[the Jester]

Wow, I was thinking it was lower than I expected.

That's almost worth it just for Dungeon and Dragon each month. Cover price was $15.98 just for the two magazines each month.

Plus you get the DM electronic tools. Plus you get access to the tabletop. Plus you get the character creator.

BTW, the D&D Insider info on the ENWorld front page confirms $9.95. I think that is a great deal.

HELL YEAH.

Let me just say, I thought nothing would get me to go along with WotC's "digital initiative", but I was wrong.

 

[wedgeski]

Seems interesting so far, and $9.95 is peanuts, especially if exchange rates stay the way they are.

Make no mistake that the DI *is* a marketing ploy to tie D&D players into a subscription model. Folks in this thread alone have put their finger on several secondary benefits for WotC, especially the fact that it may take a big dent out of the second-hand market and reduce the ability for players to share material around the table (unless only the DM needs to have bought a book for all players in his game to use the material... but that's doubtful given that you'll be able to run a game for just about anyone).

Still so many questions to answer but I've got that feeling in my gut that things are going to be okay. Even the slim pickings that have been released about the new design changes sound very cool (e.g. weapon specializations opening up separate powers for Fighters).

 

[WhatGravitas]

1) The voices and the presentation was... funny.
2) Much marketing speak, but I still feel excited 'bout it!
3) DI is surely interesting. Perhaps not suited to me... but dollar is low, I'm living on Euros and Pounds, so it's a lot cheaper for me... perhaps I'll give it a try.
4) The covers: They rub me in the wrong way. The artwork is great, but the design is a bit... cludgy. They want to evoke old-school with that massive-block-header... it looks awkwards. They should've went the route of Arcana Evolved/Heroes of Horror/Magic of Faerûn OR the style of Draconomicon.

Still, the net sum of the impression is POSITIVE!

Cheers, LT.

 

[frankthedm]

1. Geeez, those voices almost killed the entire thing for me! "Oh no, a troll" ... GAAAH!

T$R audio was infinitly worse.

 

[jasin]

WAR covers rule.

However, the whole second part, focusing on the digital initiative... I don't know. These look like neat tools, but they might be investing too much effort into doing the exact opposite of what Ryan Dancey suggested in his blog: trying to compete with World of Warcraft on its home turf.