Goodman Games solicits input

[Starfox]

4E was doing super well for him, right? Then why are we even having this conversation? Has so much changed in just 4 months?

Maybe he just wants to do the things he likes to do and have as many people as possible enjoy his work. Pride of work translates very neatly to money in the bank here, but that does not mean pride is not a good motivation.

Is it lack of creativity or pure laziness?

A big part of it is that casual gamers often have a very limited time to do preparations. If you can tear 5 hours free for gaming every month, you want to be at the gaming table those five hours, not prepping things.

 

[Remathilis]

What's a publisher to do?

Go where the money's at.

The first question I'd ask is which systems, exactly, is he intending to support? He mentions 4e, Pathfinder, C&C, Fantasycraft, the retros, etc. Which does he actually want to support, because a module built for 4e's game-style doesn't mesh with C&C (or S&W, or BFRPG, or OSRIC, etc). Also, how big of a following DOES FantasyCraft or Dragon Age have? Is it big enough to factor into your calculus?

Next, your going to have design for some native system. Which is it? Every game has different parameters and design philosophies, so which are you going to take into account. For example, lets say you want to have an encounter with the city guard. How you gonna handle it? In 4e, it might be a skill challenge (with successes failures, DCs and level). In 3e, its a diplomacy roll (Just set a DC). In C&C is a attribute check (just set a level). In OSRIC, its simply a charisma check (with no modification except the PCs score). It'd be maddening (if not pointless) to try to come up with ALL of those contingencies.

Another Example? Make a pit trap. Simple, 10' drop with spikes. What are its stats? Well, in 4e it has an attack modifier to hit the PCs reflex defense, while in 3e its has a reflex save DC, but in S&W its a saving throw vs dragon breath, etc. How bout an encounter? Well, 5 orcs vs a 1st level party is a fine encounter in 4e (where every fight is assumed to be 5 vs. 5 or equivalent) but in Pathfinder that's a CR 4 "Epic" encounter! And that doesn't begin to touch available resources, NPC stats, "world info" (aka the races and classes of the PCs and NPCs) treasure distribution, etc.

The alternative to make modules so generic as to be pointless. I buy a module, I expect it (and I'm spoiled) to have monsters, treasure, stats, and everything ready. While I rarely run "out the box" I don't want some assembly required. If a DCC is reduced to "A city guard has info, if the PCs convince him to talk..." or "The hall has a 10 foot pit trap" or "This room contains several orcs, ready to fight." Its a waste. Its a map and some flavor text. Its not a module, its an adventure suggestion.

My personal (and biased) opinion would be spin off DCCs into two lines, one for 4e, one for "d20" with an eye toward conversion to additional systems. Most Retro people are accustomed to going at it alone, so perhaps a PDF of "stats" by room would be all that you need to take a 3e module and bring it to retros. However, I think 4e's design philosophy is too radical to consider in the equation; if you want to support 4e then make it its own thing. Its not as difficult to take a 3e-based module and run it in OSRIC or LL (mostly by ignoring large swaths of system-junk) than it is to make a module for LL run in 3e or ANYTHING compatible with 4e. (Ask Necromancer Games how easy it is to convert 3e stuff to 4e...)

That's the opinion of a long-time Goodman fan whose saddened he's not bought anything GG since 4e...

 

[darjr]

I own several 4e DCC's and a few 3e and an AD&D one. I really like them and will buy more. I'd prefer 4e and would not have issues using stats for other systems in a 4e adventure.

What I'd really love is 'living' support for them. So I could show up at cons or other events with purchased adventure in hand and run it for players with characters that they could run again at my table or others. Having something like that for several different systems would be fantastic.

 

[aboyd]

IMO, DCC was a really great line but when it abandoned 3e and shifted to 4e it lost me - 1e/2e/3e/Pathfinder/Hackmaster are all easy to work with but 4e really just doesn't work for me (YMMV). I'll just pick up the old DCC 1e/3e ones that I'm missing.

Wow. I'm just really surprised at how many people in this thread are posting pretty much the same thing I would post. I've really felt like I've been going it alone for the past couple of years. It's nice to see everybody.

::waves::

Next, your going to have design for some native system. Which is it? Every game has different parameters and design philosophies, so which are you going to take into account. For example, lets say you want to have an encounter with the city guard. How you gonna handle it? In 4e, it might be a skill challenge (with successes failures, DCs and level). In 3e, its a diplomacy roll (Just set a DC). In C&C is a attribute check (just set a level). In OSRIC, its simply a charisma check (with no modification except the PCs score). It'd be maddening (if not pointless) to try to come up with ALL of those contingencies.

I dunno. We have at least 2 examples in this thread of publishers doing this already, and it doesn't seem like it broke anybody's brains. Joseph seems to want to do this, and frankly since it isn't even innovating, all he's really doing is copying -- hopefully with improvements.

For example, one of the things I've read in this thread is that people are concerned with the "difficulty" of having to have an adventure book open and then refer to a separate stat book as well. To me, that's not a big deal. I don't mean to diminish anyone's concerns -- there are some people for whom 2 booklets is a deal-breaker, and there's no changing their minds. That's fine. But I suspect that if the design was really good, there might be a lot of people on the fence who would shrug and say, "What the heck, I'll try it."

So consider this. The module is systemless, but comes bundled with one of the stat books. That way, the 4th edition gang that can't stand anything less will be satisfied. Then, since the other stat books are available for PDF download, page count really isn't an issue. So maybe they do a room per page, or an encounter per page. Thus, I print out the 3 sheets I need for the night, place them right next to the adventure module, and I'm off and running. With all the space of a full page, GG might be able to even chart out some extras, such as a combat timeline or something showing a few quick "what if" scenarios ("If your party asks for listen checks..." or "If your party breaks down the door" and so on).

And that's just one idea that gives me warm fuzzies. If it doesn't give you a warm fuzzy, consider that there might be an idea out there that makes the system more viable for you. Who knows what Goodman will come up with? So at this point, I don't have enough data to be pessimistic. I'm actually kinda curious.

I will say that I agree with the other poster who said that the new 4th edition module covers are weak compared to the 3.5 edition modules, though. Part of "old school feel" is actually having old school art.

Good luck, Joseph!

 

[Dice4Hire]

I play 3.x and 4E and I just do not see how a single module can accomodate both games, unless it is about 1st to about 8th level. After that, spells take off in power too much.

 

[JoeGKushner]

How did that patronage one with the dwarves go? Were both parties happy with it? How extensive were the revisions? Anyone know? I think it was Open Design, same gentlemen who do Kobold Quarterly?

 

[Badapple]

I used to work in the videogame industry a couple years ago and I'd routinely see games being developed that were simultaneously developed on xbox/gamecube/ps2/and pc. The theory was it was the same basic code, lets port it to as many systems as possible to maximize sales. The problem was there were tons of tradeoffs that would happen over the development cycle in order for the game to be compatable with all systems. The game would have crappier graphics than it could have had otherwise (to accomodate ps2), less content than normal (to accomodate the gamecube's little discs that held less data), and the game was always a mess on the pc, since the user interface was designed for game controllers not a mouse. In short the game might be ok, but it would have been a ton better if it was just exclusively designed for one system. But it wouldn't have made as much money, so I could see the reasoning behind it.

It makes me sad to see this happening to D&D modules as well. Some sore of weird generic hybrid module with downloadable stats for 4e, PF, and d20? Ugh.... there would be too many tradeoffs.

I don't really see how an adventure module could be written for both 3e and 4e and still be good. There's too much difference between the systems. If a module came out that was "generic" with downloadable stats, I'd pass on it. It might make more money, so I'd understand if that was the ultimate decision, but I think quality would suffer.

 

[S'mon]

. Its not as difficult to take a 3e-based module and run it in OSRIC or LL (mostly by ignoring large swaths of system-junk) than it is to make a module for LL run in 3e or ANYTHING compatible with 4e. (Ask Necromancer Games how easy it is to convert 3e stuff to 4e...)

I disagree with this since I have just finished a 21 session 3.5 game using scenarios written for LL/BX/BECMI D&D (3) or Castles & Crusades* (2) and converting on the fly, and it worked great, better than running adventures written for 3e I'd say.

I'm currently running a 4e campaign using a converted 3.5e adventure (Vault of Larin Karr) and that is proving a bit tougher, mostly because 1e-3e treasure often has no immediate counterpart in 4e. Also I started at 1st level instead of 3e-VOLK's recommended 4th level and that has caused a bit of trouble as many of the 3e monsters are 9th-10th level in 4e. Still, no major problems.

*DCCs: Palace of Shadows, and the C&C version of The Slithering Overlord, run with 3e PCs in the 3rd-6th level range. They were pretty good fun, but felt unfinished compared to the TSR modules I'd run in the same campaign - B7 Rahasia and B5 Horror on the Hill. I finished off with X5 Temple of Death.

 

[Jhaelen]

I don't really see how an adventure module could be written for both 3e and 4e and still be good. There's too much difference between the systems. If a module came out that was "generic" with downloadable stats, I'd pass on it. It might make more money, so I'd understand if that was the ultimate decision, but I think quality would suffer.

Great analogy with the video games. I agree.

If the adventure layout follows the delve format of WotC's late 3e and 4e, I can see how it might be (relatively) easy to separate the generic adventure parts from the mechanics parts, but I don't think you can just plug in any system without losing what makes the module interesting in the first place.

In fact that's one thing I disliked about many of the free WotC adventures:
You could often easily replace every monster (and sometimes even the encounter areas) with something else without it having any detrimental effect on the adventure. The reason was that they didn't have much in the way of a story and the encounters weren't tailored to any theme.
But that's something I can do with minimal effort myself. It's not much different than using a random map and encounter generator.

 

[joela]

Joseph Goodman soliciting input on the DCC line:

Goodman Games • View topic - Supporting multiple systems within the DCC's

I'd be interested, especially like the systemless with download appropriate stats option. Fan favorite Nicolas Logue of Sinister Adventures already plans something similar for his lineup:

The Razor Coast

<snikt>

Purchase a print edition of this Dark Vista and get PDFs configured for multiple game systems for free. Purchase a PDF and get addtional PDFs compatible with other game systems for free as well.