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Message: <blockquote data-quote="1Mac" data-source="post: 3705737" data-attributes="member: 48998">Long time lurker, rare poster, but given these turbulent times, I am moved to speak! I ask for patience as you read this idyll of mine, for I make a lot of old points to lend context to my argument.I think most reasonable people will agree that Wizards of the Coast (and their corporate masters Hasbro) are a business, and that businesses need to make money. A smaller outfit could conceivably operate on charity and goodwill, but for the scale that WotC is operating on, such a model would be inconceivable. Furthermore, that scale is ultimately good for the hobby; if WotC went under, the pool of players would decline dramatically, as would the successes of 3rd party publishers. The hobby would flounder either until it died or until some other corporate juggernaut thought that it could make money on DnD and take over.This is one important motivation behind the revision cycle. Gamers, as has been pointed out many times before, rarely buy the same product twice, so large publishers need to come out with diverse supplements that customers are willing to continue buying. This is not entirely a bad thing: gamers will not buy products they are disinterested in, so WotC has an incentive to make reasonably useful or compelling products. There are two problems with this, however. One, I have found, is that many of WotC's products may have a pretty strong hook to them but are also padded with a lot of filler. Any time I see a product advertising "new feats, spells, monsters and prestige classes," I become a little wary. The incentive for WotC is obvious, because filler is easy to produce, but it is not desirable. The second is that eventually the seam runs out. You have explored every possible area in the game that you can imagine, and you can no longer create any more supplements. This is where revisions are helpful.Now again, revisions are not bad things by themselves, if there are genuine grievances with the current rules. Everything I have read indicates that the shift from 2nd to 3rd edition was a great simplification, and I for one expect 4th edition to be a similar improvement. The problem this time is that for many players the investment in the the previous edition, with all of its supplements, is very dear. It is true that they do not have to make the transition, but if many players, including most new players, switch to the new edition, then it is also true that the old edition is much less valuable.Still, this was the status quo. The only way for WotC to survive was to continue publishing product after product, first as supplements, then as new editions. Players went along with it, in part because they got some good rules along the way and in part because it was the only way to keep up with the hobby. It is a dissatisfying picture, one that, I would imagine, WotC and its customers rue alike. I imagine that WotC behaved in this way not because they are Nastian robber barons, but because they previously could not envision another business model to keep an enterprise at their scale afloat.It is with this in mind, I there propose, that we consider the digital initiative and 4e in general. Imagine, harkening back to the glum scenario above, that all those supplements that WotC relied on did not have to exist as books, but could instead be assimilated piecemeal. Even better, imagine that they would never be outdated, because they would always be updated and refreshed. This would not only get rid of filler in supplements, it would also forestall, if not completely obviate, the need for complete revisions, as the rules would gradually be updated over time. Imagine if WotC could find a way to make this arrangement profitable. We would be free of ponderous, cluttered supplements, we would be spared the new edition crises, and WotC could still make enough money to support the hobby in its current mode, if not expand it with a greater player base.This of course is what Digital Initiative promises to be. It is not something that is required for the basic DnD experience, any more than supplements are necessary to the average player who only owns the PHB. This would be suicide for WotC, as it would reduce the pool of players, something that is necessary both for the well-being of WotC and the hobby as a whole. It is rather a cunning and effective replacement for supplement glut. The fellow who spent hundreds of dollars in supplements each year will now only pay $9.95 a month, getting all the great material he wants, none of the chaff, and a host of very useful gaming utilities to boot. The typical player is content with the PHB. WotC makes money. Everyone is happy, and the hobby prospers.Note that I am slightly less rosy than the above suggests, and we can get into the particulars in later posts. But if all goes well, this is how Digital Initiative will free us from the revision cycle.</blockquote>

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