Eric Noah's Info

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MojoGM said:
I'm with you on all counts except #3. Pre-painted plastic minis are the best thing to ever happen to my game. I have neither the time nor inclination to paint minis, so this has allowed me to stop using dice or counters on my grid.

Yeah, those are the same reasons I never used minis in my games. I like the plastic ones...except for the collectible aspect. I don't want to have to start a whole new hobby just to supplement another hobby. I want to be able to buy what I need in my game directly.
 

Scribble said:
Collectible trading card "feats" (or manuevers)

Spell cards, magic item cards...

Monster stats come with the monsters, so as you buy monsters you get more stats, instead of books.


If this happens, we are alll doomed.

"Whoa! Check it out! I got the Power Attack card! I just wish i had Fireball for my mage!"

I quit magic because I never had the cards I needed.
 


It is very fitting that you Eric get to kick things off. We (at least I) realise that it's just a rumor and all and any ideas R&D might have will change shape during the course of development, so nothing is for certain. But I do know one thing; if MM is working on a new edition this is where he'll come for input and ideas.
 

/me wonders if 4e will simply do away with the Monster Manual completely, relying on the minis (and the cards that come with them) to serve that purpose.
 

pogre said:
You know, this did start out as a 3E rumor site right ;)
Hehehe. Touche. :)

Still, I stand by my point that it wasn't anything more than 3rd hand info that requires plenty of salt to swallow and is therefore pretty useless.

Ah, the hell with it, I may as well just let the 4E fervor wash over me and carry me away! :D
 

Enkhidu said:
/me wonders if 4e will simply do away with the Monster Manual completely, relying on the minis (and the cards that come with them) to serve that purpose.

Yeah, but they'll do both. -Cards first though. :o
 

Well I was not surprised at all by anything in the post.

WOTC and many other companies have found that plastic crack, paper crack, and other Collectible items = $$$$

So why would anyone be surprised to see a 4th edition that includes more emphasis on miniatures, and maybe even a card component to add even further to the costs of playing.

If miniatures and Magic are the only thing that is making money (I have heard this quite a few times before from many different sources and it goes back as far as when I was a demo person for WOTC) why not migrate the CCG/miniatures business model to RPG's.

Collectible cards with feats, spells, magic items, ...etc. not available in any book format.

If I break the rules up into smaller components and add more fluff people have to buy more items to play. Perhaps a smaller book for each core class, one for each race, one for combat, one for equipment, one for magic, ...etc

And I have seen posts by several past WOTC employees that a new version = an instant cash infusion because everyone needs new core rulebooks.

Hasbro is all about making money, and a business model where the game has reached a point where only the GM is buying stuff does not equate to as much in sales as several others that I can think of.

Personally I have gone through enough editions that it would not matter what 4e looked like I probably would not purchase anything.

But if done right Hasbro could turn 4e into an accountants (and stockholders) dream and a players nightmare as they made it almost imposible to play without spending a ton of cash, and by adding a collectible component like cards would cause people to keep spending.

But we as gamers (myself included) have shown that we are willing to purchase boxes of Magic cards, cases of heroclix, cases of D&D miniatures, ...etc. Personally I have stopped all such purchases, but if you read the threads about miniature purchases on this board you routinely hear people saying they have purchased multiple cases of product. Hasbro knows this, and if they want to try and increase profits it is a compulsion that they could try to exploit in the RPG market.

So with all that said I firmly believe that 4e is on the way.

What it looks like will be anyones guess, but I would not be surprised if it was designed to grab even more of our hard earned money away from us and transfer it to Hasbro's bottom line.

The only bright spot for me is that they won't get any of mine.

Now before anyone blasts away, I DO NOT HAVE ANY INSIDER INFORMATION.

This is entirely opinion and speculation.

I just know the mentality of the people who are in charge and trying to make things look good for the stockholders. To many of them RPG's are a product line, and every product line is expected to add to the profitability of the company. If it is not performing to expectations then the product is either altered, dropped, or sold off to get a short term balance sheet boost.
 

EricNoah said:
Oh definitely someone I trust and someone who would be in the position to know.

But really -- nothing all that surprising was said. I think we all knew that 4e had to be underway now or soon, and that minis were the wave of the future. I hadn't really considered the possibility of selling smaller "packages" of info, so that was a little surprising, as was the notion that Hasbro or WotC might be interested in letting go of RPGs entirely.

Um, so you are basing this off rumors and speculation from someone "who would be in the position to know."??? Wouldn't it have been a bit more "newsworthy" if you checked into it a bit more? So, who is working on it, no, really. Sure, I can come up with names, but names i can come up with are busy on other projects, those names just don't pan out. Things I have heard from "people in the know" indicate it is NOT presently being worked on. This doesn't mean someone couldn't have started in the past few weeks or might start tomorrow.

Based on the planned product release schedule I have serious doubts that 4e is on its way "soon." Is it on the way someday, sure. WotC knows that something like that is going to require more than a few people, it is also going to require extensive playtesting (or better). Any playtesters you know suddenly shut up and start playing games secretively? Knowing they can't effectively keep something like that secret, and that "substantiated rumors" could effectively kill their planned releases for a year and a half means they either have to develop it in complete secrecy (likely without sufficient playtesting) or find a way to hype it without killing their own 3.5 releases.

As for the other suppositions, really, I think that the "delve" format clearly suggests moving to a more mini-centric style book. Pretty easy guess that 4e is going to use minis. Frankly, 3.5 is written as being very "mini-centric" but you can easily blow off using minis. If 4e is an RPG it'll be the same. Otherwise it it'll be a wargame/mini-game and won't change 3.5 sales.

Could your rumors be true? Certainly, but without a timeline they seem more like shots in the dark and should be considered "speculation" not "news." I think it is a real disservice to call these speculations "news."

I am not trying to slam you or anything, really, the tone of the written words here doesn't sound good. I just think that adding fuel to more wonderful 4e rumors without real back-up by calling this "news" simply isn't the way to go.
 

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