TerraDave
5ever, or until 2024
A version of D&D designed and marketed as a pen and paper game, but its really meant as a stepping stone to online play. To make this happen, certain rules are streamlined and standardized, but new options are added to make the most of the computer-based interface. Electronic demos and initiatives are announced. The e-enhanced version of the game are touted, but it turns out that this is not just a nice add-on, but really the main goal.
Sound familiar….take 4e. The 3d VTT, the character creator, Gleemax, the very obvious concerns about WoW, standardized yet exception based design---with lots of potential exceptions.
But I am actually going back to 1999. Why did 3e streamline some things, but have all this fiddly complexity at the margins? Why did the first wave of PHBs have that CD? What were the Master Tools really about? It was all meant to feed a WotC D&D MMORG.
For 4e, it was just basically fail (I remember seeing an early public demo of the VTT, it crashed and crashed and crashed). For 3e, when Hasbro bought the company, and Pokemon peaked, D&D video game rights were licensed out. This is why Peter Adkinson quit. Oh, and instead of Master Tools, we got E-Tools.
I guess its hard to have a truly original idea. But its easy to fail in the same way.
(For sources, my best ones are buried on the way back machine, but I will find them, some day. Meanwhile you can check Peter Adkison’s entry on Wikipedia, and there is this: Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition )
Sound familiar….take 4e. The 3d VTT, the character creator, Gleemax, the very obvious concerns about WoW, standardized yet exception based design---with lots of potential exceptions.
But I am actually going back to 1999. Why did 3e streamline some things, but have all this fiddly complexity at the margins? Why did the first wave of PHBs have that CD? What were the Master Tools really about? It was all meant to feed a WotC D&D MMORG.
For 4e, it was just basically fail (I remember seeing an early public demo of the VTT, it crashed and crashed and crashed). For 3e, when Hasbro bought the company, and Pokemon peaked, D&D video game rights were licensed out. This is why Peter Adkinson quit. Oh, and instead of Master Tools, we got E-Tools.
I guess its hard to have a truly original idea. But its easy to fail in the same way.
(For sources, my best ones are buried on the way back machine, but I will find them, some day. Meanwhile you can check Peter Adkison’s entry on Wikipedia, and there is this: Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition )