Going Retro

[OpsKT]

For me it was more about the fact that the math wasn't consistent for all the different things you did. You subtract with THAC0, add with damage, roll under d100 for thief skills, roll over d20 for saving throws, gain % bonuses to XP based on Prime Scores, and your AC goes down as it gets better. None of those is hard or individually problematic, but taken all together I think you can see where the system is inelegant and somewhat confusing.

For me I always referred to AD&D as, "mathematically schizophrenic."

 

[Mark CMG]

I'd like to go on record saying that I am glad that WotC never tried to cannibalize the retro market with new products or do reprints of old classics as a way to make a buck. I wish they would make the PDFs of the originals available again, but that ship seems to have sailed. I also think that D&D and the RPG market benefitted greatly by utilization of the OGL and the time since they dropped using it seems to bear that out.

WotC should keep moving forward with their design plans taking from the old games that which worked and pleased the most people while incorporating new design ideas that they think will blend well with the best of what has come before. If they plan to make an entirely new game, I'd rather they call is something new but it's seems unreasonable to ask them to sit on the brand name and not capitalize on it.

Design-wise, WotC is doing the best they can with the talent they hire or keep on board and I think that's all anyone can expect from them. And, what they turn out is very good by any measure or standard even if it is very different from what has come before or doesn't feel like an RPG or D&D in some quarters. As far as D&D is concerned, their design processes are currently informed mostly by what their talent believes the market thinks RPGs should be and the market will determine if they have hit the bullseye.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Has he recently released hard numbers? Based on figures posted here and there, I'd be shocked if they've sold 5000 copies. (And that's including the massively discounted $1.35 PDFs they were selling a couple weeks ago.) I'd probably have a stroke if they've sold more than 10,000.

For WotC and Hasbro, these numbers are, in fact, ridiculously minuscule. And at least an order of magnitude smaller than their existing sales.

The last I saw, Zak was saying that he'd made good money on Vornheim. Which is almost certainly true. But good money for Zak is not good money for WotC.

He said that, based on emails with big name designers -- heavily implied to be WotC creators that we'd all know the name of -- that he has made much more money, personally, off of Vornheim than any of them made off of WotC products.

Unless you're a Hasbro shareholder, I don't know that anyone should be terribly concerned about how much Hasbro makes. The creators we like and want to support should have venues where they can create passion products that will pay well enough for them to make more passion products.

A Ptolus or a Vornheim or a Dungeon Crawl Classics (any iteration of that franchise) is worth a lot more to me, both as a person and as a consumer of gaming material, than a Book of Complete Splatfeatspellmonsters.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If WoTC was to reprint 1st edition Ad&d core books i would buy them. No need to create a retro clone when you have the original.

I would buy them, just for reference purposes. If I actually intended to play 1E, I'd use OSRIC, which is organized and cleaned up. More likely, though, I'd play C&C and use 1E material, since the rule systems are actually more unified and coherent and benefit from decades of innovations in gaming systems.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For me it was more about the fact that the math wasn't consistent for all the different things you did. You subtract with THAC0, add with damage, roll under d100 for thief skills, roll over d20 for saving throws, gain % bonuses to XP based on Prime Scores, and your AC goes down as it gets better. None of those is hard or individually problematic, but taken all together I think you can see where the system is inelegant and somewhat confusing.

I remember reading about 3E in the early days of ENWorld and my friends and I were "wait, higher will always be better? The same types of rolls will be used consistently? BRILLIANT!"

It seems like a little thing now, but it really does make play flow faster, IME.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh, and WotC? If you have the rights to all the artwork for the old core book covers, I'd surely buy a poster of the DMG cover featuring the DM opening up a pair of vault doors. (I don't know what edition DMG that was -- it wasn't a version of the book that I owned.) So sexy.

 

[juboke]

For me it was more about the fact that the math wasn't consistent for all the different things you did. You subtract with THAC0, add with damage, roll under d100 for thief skills, roll over d20 for saving throws, gain % bonuses to XP based on Prime Scores, and your AC goes down as it gets better. None of those is hard or individually problematic, but taken all together I think you can see where the system is inelegant and somewhat confusing.

I tend to agree that unified mechanics are much better than non-unified.

But I also enjoy systems which allowed actions to feel different than each other. Making a % thief roll, or rolling d10 for initiative is a substantially different experience than always rolling d20 + modifiers.

 

[howandwhy99]

I like D&D's "to hit" mechanic as it hides well behind the screen. Players don't need to understand how it works, they can pick up during play. After a few instances during the game they pretty much pick up that rolling higher on a d20 means the PC is more likely to hit. Rolling lower means they are less likely to hit. Modifiers to the roll can also be learned this way as they remain behind the screen, but consistent. How do I know my sword is magical? I can either use magic to detect it or recognize that I hit those goblins more often. Usually I need a 12, not I only need an 11. I wonder why? Plus I can suss out AC benefits like how that shield will make them harder to hit or how their leader is wearing chain mail. Put all these modifiers back in front of the screen and now I as a player have to track all of this stuff.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Oh, and WotC? If you have the rights to all the artwork for the old core book covers, I'd surely buy a poster of the DMG cover featuring the DM opening up a pair of vault doors. (I don't know what edition DMG that was -- it wasn't a version of the book that I owned.) So sexy.

1E DMG 8th printing 1983. Cover by Jeff Easley.

 

[Zak S]

Has he recently released hard numbers? Based on figures posted here and there, I'd be shocked if they've sold 5000 copies.

Yeah, we did not sell 5000 copies. Yet.

The last I saw, Zak was saying that he'd made good money on Vornheim. Which is almost certainly true. But good money for Zak is not good money for WotC.

Here's how it broke down:
I made as much or more than most any WOTC freelancer would've (and I asked around). As did James, the publisher.
This was because only 2 of us were taking pieces out of the pie.
The average WOTC product has about 2 million people that need to get paid.

The interesting questions for this debate (to which I have no answer) are:

1)How many of the people working on a 64-page WOTC product (do they make 64-page products?) are genuinely necessary and how many are just there to add extra photoshop blur? 5? 12?

and

2)If WOTC made something just like Vornheim but: in color, in the WOTC universe, with the WOTC name on it, and with WOTC mechanics (and therefore probably more pages) then how many more copies than Vornheim would that sell just by virtue of having all that built-in value? I'm guessing a fair bit.