Eric Noah's Info

[Sammael]

I had not heard of a price change with the minis. What will the new price be?

$15 ($14.99 or whatever) per booster, beginning with Unhallowed (although I fully expect them to retro-apply the change to Blood War as well, as they once did with Archfiends).

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Yay! 4E is coming and I can get all the 3.5 books I want CHEAP! Yay!

 

[LostSoul]

I'm pretty excited about the whole thing.

Anyone else feel that way?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

But if D&D evolves into a game you don't like, you're going to have lots of people playing something you don't want to play.

Sure. I think reasonable people can differ as to what 4e is likely to evolve into.

I personally doubt that it is going to be so radically divergent from 3e as to be unrecognizable (let alone OGC incompatible).

It would be a pretty radical strategy to make the game unrecognizalbe and unappealing to the existing fan base-- which is also why I think that 4e will either be Open, or de facto Open simply because it would be almost impossible to move away from something that is clearly derivative of OGC.

I don't think Hasbro has any interest or necessity to foul the waters for 3rd party publishers, even if they don't necessarily have any interest in making 4e as open and accessible as 3e was.

Anyhow-- back on point-- even if 4e did diverge radically from the game I love and want to see succeed, it would still be Dungeons and Dragons, and thus a 'gateway drug' into a game more to my liking.

 

[helium3]

Whatever the reason (and I know you are right about at least one of the listed problems), it shows an overall lower level of quality control, and a decline in the miniatures' line quality. There didn't use to be problems of that magnitude with previous sets.

It's certainly an interesting problem.

I'm pretty confident that whatever WOTC/Hasbro does, the end result will be fun to play. They'd be pretty stupid to make a game that most people dislike.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

What's interesting to note, however, is the difference in attitudes this time around. When this was Eric Noah's 3E rumor site and he fed us tantalizing 3E tidbits, the scene was abuzz with excitement.

Well, no one was particularly in love with 2nd edition. I, for one, didn't really realize how much I needed 3rd edition until I got it, and could see it. 4th edition doesn't have the same kind of appeal to me right now, although who knows? Like I said, I didn't see how much I would like 3E until I tried it.

Phil Reed makes a couple of great points regarding licensing, and regarding minis - minis can't be turned into free PDF's on the net.

We'll just have to see how it goes.

On the subject of selling/licensing D&D the RPG - my question is who could afford to do it, and do it justice? I'd venture a guess that all the non-WotC RPG companies all put together couldn't buy it. Who could? Peter Adkison, where are you?

 

[DaveMage]

Five pages in two and a half hours.

When E.F. Hutton, er, Eric Noah talks, people listen.

 

[DaveMage]

I had not heard of a price change with the minis. What will the new price be?

$14.95 starting with Unhallowed in March '07.

 

[Sammael]

I'm pretty confident that whatever WOTC/Hasbro does, the end result will be fun to play. They'd be pretty stupid to make a game that most people dislike.

*shrug*

They managed to pretty much break the Epic (500 pt) DDM format by undercosting the Aspects of Bahamut and Tiamat in War of the Dragon Queen. Most people who don't build their Epic warband around one of these two minis are screwed in tournament play. Plus, the set contained only one or two minis that are actually of any use in 200 pt games. I don't think any set's been this bad for Skirmish since... Deathknell?

 

[Shemeska]

War in the middle east, global warming, peak oil looming, and even more mini influence in 4th edition? Yay apocalypse! Whee!


But on a less jaded note, if half of those 4e rumors are true, it's not 4th ed DnD, they'll be pushing Advanced DDM. Count me out, and count me cheering for a sale of the RPG division if they make a decision that boneheaded and actually run with it.