Essentials: Its not 4.5, its BECMI 2.0!

[xechnao]

There will always be sales of the PHB1, however small in number they might be, so long as it is still made available and 4E is still the current edition. Yes, you can basically not need to buy it if you sign up for DDI, but not everybody wants to only rely on DDI. Some of us actually like having physical books.

Wotc will do reprints with erata incorporated if they figure out that there is enough demand. It seems though is that there are more PHB1s than the market wants allready. I find it very difficult that Essentials will rise the demand of PHB1s to the level of having Wotc to do any re printing. Wotc will simply market new books that both new and old customers (customers that have allready bought PHB1 for example) will buy.

 

[Mercurius]

Errr... You're wrong. BECMI (D&D) predated AD&D....

AD&D was printed between 1977 and 1979.

Red Box came out in 1981 as well as Expert. The CMI parts of BECMI didn't come out until 1983-1985.

The D&D that AD&D advanced wasn't Basic D&D, it was just a proto-D&D that was an add-on to the wargame Chainmail. AD&D wasn't built off of BECMI, it was simply a more advanced version of this proto-D&D. It wasn't until after AD&D was in development that the B part of BECMI was developed by a different team. Expert then appeared well after AD&D was already out there.

Red Box (the Basic D&D that formed the first part of BECMI) was not a reprint of the original D&D, it was its own seperate divergent offshoot, in the same way that AD&D was. The difference is that while AD&D went for complexity, Red Box went for simplicity.

Ironically, Rules Cylcopedia D&D is in some ways more complex than AD&D 2nd edition...

Err...

1974: Original Dungeons & Dragons (supplements follow which drastically change the game, especially Supplement I: Greyhawk)

1977: Dungeons & Dragons Basic - Holmes edition - an introduction to original D&D, written by someone only familiar with oD&D. Gary Gygax threw a few AD&D concepts in (he was working on AD&D at the time). Uses a few concepts from Supplement I, but is based mainly on the original 3-booklet set.

1977-1979: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is released, based on oD&D with substantial additions from the supplements, The Strategic Review and The Dragon. Does some important changes (like AC now starts at 10, not 9).

1981: Dungeons & Dragons Basic - Moldvay edition (not the Red Box). Complete rewriting of D&D Basic, putting down the form it would follow for the next 20 years. Also released an Expert set (Cook).

1983: Dungeons & Dragons Basic - Mentzer edition (Red Box). Re-editing of the Moldvay edition with a choose-your-own adventure and splitting of material into players and DM books. Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal sets would follow.

1989: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition.

1990: Dungeons & Dragons Rules Compendium - putting all the rules from the BECM set into one book. A complete rewrite of the Immortal set was released as "Wrath of the Immortals".

Cheers!

I'm not sure why you are "ERRing" DracoSuave, Merric, because he has it essentially right (except for the 81/83 snafu) and what you wrote does not contradict it substantially.

"Original D&D" (or OD&D) was the precursor to both BECMI and AD&D. In 1977 D&D began to split into two "streams," if you will, with the first Basic set and the AD&D Monster Manual, although I am pretty sure that the AD&D line was meant to be compatible with D&D. The "splitting" wasn't instant but gradual; I am not sure exactly when AD&D and D&D became two distinct lines, but I would guess that the 1981 Moldvay box marked the point in which D&D formalized as a distinctly different game.

In that sense it could be said that AD&D pre-dated BECMI, not the other way around. This is essentially, ahem, no different than what we are seeing with 4E and Essentials. So the comparison has some merit:

Essentials : 4E :: BECMI : AD&D

However, with a bit caveat: We don't know how different Essentials will be from 4E; what we do know is that it will probably be substantially less different and more of a cleaned up, erratacized version.

 

[Insight]

I played the "Red Box" game day yesterday and I have to say that it didn't feel ANY different than playing 4E, just with slightly different classes. The rules were the SAME. The character classes (minus the Fighter) were virtually the SAME. I really don't understand the fuss people are making about Essentials. It IS the same game, people. Play it and you'll see.

 

[MerricB]

I played the "Red Box" game day yesterday and I have to say that it didn't feel ANY different than playing 4E, just with slightly different classes. The rules were the SAME. The character classes (minus the Fighter) were virtually the SAME. I really don't understand the fuss people are making about Essentials. It IS the same game, people. Play it and you'll see.

It's because it gives all the anti-4E people a chance to run around saying "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" again. Then too, we distrust change.

I must say, I was tremendously entertained by the Game Day adventure. By its end, our fighter was on -14 hit points and had spent all his healing surges!

A lot of the things worried about on these boards don't really concern the average player of D&D.

Cheers!

 

[Remathilis]

For all the "sky is falling" rhetoric, this really does have a golden lining for WotC.

* They get to stealth-implement some fixes to the Core without the fundamental re-write of a .5 edition.
* They create a new subgame that benefits players three ways. An essential's player can stick with essentials only (or with new material that's essentials compatible) or upgrade/expand to 4e Classic, while a current 4e player can mix in new essentials options to taste or ignore it (Its only 6-11 products, counting tiles and dice). Either way, WotC isn't losing sales from the other camp (most essentials only players wouldn't even play classic or vice-versa) and some cross sales will help both lines.
* It allows new players and lapsed players to join in, hopefully recovering a few people lost to PF and the Retro-Clone crowd. If nothing else, it gives people a big kick to see WotC embracing the iconic imagery of the game.
* It makes Mearls as giddy as a schoolgirl to be talking "Red Box" D&D again!

 

[Remathilis]

Wotc will do reprints with errata incorporated if they figure out that there is enough demand. It seems though is that there are more PHB1s than the market wants already. I find it very difficult that Essentials will rise the demand of PHB1s to the level of having Wotc to do any re printing. Wotc will simply market new books that both new and old customers (customers that have already bought PHB1 for example) will buy.

WotC is smart. They don't want another "Noooo! You're making me re-buy my books again!" moment like they had in 3.5. So they will let people continue to use their old PHBs until they fall apart, then be faced with a new choice: go Essentials or hunt down another copy of the (outdated) PHB1.

WotC probably didn't see enough money in a wholesale Errata reprinting of PHB and Co: the backlash would've been negative except for a small few who have been calling for it since the first round of errata came anyway. This way, you can choose to buy paper copies if you want (Essentials) or stick with the current DDi updates for Errata (or ignore it utterly). But no one is going to accuse WotC of making them re-buy the books.

 

[xechnao]

What Essentials does:


-some players of 4e classic (as you call it) get frustrated with the changes.
-some players that had invested money and time for 4e classic feel betrayed regarding the value of their investment


-wotc has a way to start a new round to (re)selling crunch that it had reached levels of high bloat
-wotc finds a way to market to 4e-non likers. more people get in touch with the current iteration of D&D. D&D expands or at least not shrinks as if without this
-wotc improves and fixes the game to mass market standards. even more people get in touch with the current iteration of D&D. D&D expands even more

 

[xechnao]

WotC is smart. They don't want another "Noooo! You're making me re-buy my books again!" moment like they had in 3.5. So they will let people continue to use their old PHBs until they fall apart, then be faced with a new choice: go Essentials or hunt down another copy of the (outdated) PHB1.

WotC probably didn't see enough money in a wholesale Errata reprinting of PHB and Co: the backlash would've been negative except for a small few who have been calling for it since the first round of errata came anyway. This way, you can choose to buy paper copies if you want (Essentials) or stick with the current DDi updates for Errata (or ignore it utterly). But no one is going to accuse WotC of making them re-buy the books.

Exactly.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Exactly.

No, i don´t think it is about not making enough money... it is more about paying a lot more than they will get back...

I wouldbuy a new print... but there is no way, wotc can market them if they have too many outdated books in their storages... they really should have made their last printrun a lot smaller...

 

[xechnao]

No, i don´t think it is about not making enough money... it is more about paying a lot more than they will get back...

I wouldbuy a new print... but there is no way, wotc can market them if they have too many outdated books in their storages... they really should have made their last printrun a lot smaller...

Exactly.


All these are the reasons for what Wotc did. We have been through this in many forums and threads but the current marketing maneuver of whether Essentials is a new edition or not has polarized fans to the effect of making discussions...bizarre.