D&D 4E I miss 4E

[MrMyth]

But MrMyth, we've had a whole series of posts since then and you are still reacting to what I said in one small sentence in my initial post. It is like you ignored the rest of the first post and everything I have said since. What's up with that?

I'm... not sure what you want me to say. You initially made a statement I disagreed with. Hence, I offered my disagreement. We then got into a back and forth on that point, and over the validity of it and whether it had been the claim you made in the first place.

At this point, once it became clear you were no longer making that extreme a statement, I've said that my concerns were with the initial statement, and that I don't have those issues with what you've since explained your position to be. If you really feel I'm still unfairly responding to your posts (which certainly isn't my intent)... we might be better off taking this to private messages rather than continuing to derail the thread further.

Look, I admit that the above statement is not entirely true, but nor is it entirely false. But let me use an analogy to give you a better sense of why I'm not so pleased with the release schedule during the seven months in question.

Again, to go back one last time to square one - I understand absolutely that you aren't pleased with the release schedule, and why. You feel there isn't as much content as usual, and that the content that exists isn't what you normally are a big purchaser of anyway. My objection was, from the start, against the claim that we weren't really seeing any new content.

We've got two books with new content in it. Possibly a third depending on how the Monster Vault turns out. Saying that the content isn't there is, yes, a false statement. I mean... it's the risk of hyperbole, in the end. If you go ahead and post an exaggeration of the situation, I don't think it reasonable to feel upset that someone wants to point out the inaccuracy of the exaggeration.

The new content is, yes, significantly less than the 6 or 7 books we might normally see, including a good mix of both player content and DM content, mechanical options as well as flavor and setting details. I have no objection to you being disappointed by that. I don't even disagree that other approaches could have been taken which might have been able to keep more existing customers happy without disrupting the Essentials release. Those positions are perfectly understandable ones to have.

Incomprehensible? No, I don't think so either. Reasonable? I suppose. How I would have done it? No, not really. How would I have done it? Well, without thinking about it too much I would have made the Red Box a true starter set with a few playable levels and not just a "learn how to play D&D" product that is worthless after one play through.

...

Again, this is just me thinking as I write this. I like the idea of a variety of formats but I don't like the idea of hardcovers disappearing altogether or everything becoming digest books. Hopefully that won't happen.

Yeah, this is the peril of running a game company - everyone has a better plan for how they should do it. I mean, I look at your ideas, and there are definitely ones I agree with (I would have liked a more robust Red Box), and they could have had a more efficient release of Essentials content. At the same time, I think some of the ideas would have undercut their goal here - the Heroes books are a brilliant approach compared to a PHB4, because it gives a much cheaper intro point for a new player who just wants to play a fighter.

But in the end, I think WotC has access to a lot more planning and research than we really do. And so some of their decisions might be the wrong ones, yes. Others might be ones we dislike, but were made for the sake of the bottom-line - such as not producing a robust Red Box that can replace most of the game for only $20.

I dunno. I think it's fair to say they could have done things differently, and offer ideas on how they could go about it. But I think there were reasons for the approaches they've taken, and that there it is/was a viable approach to have the line focused on Essentials for the duration of its release.

I certainly agree with your last statement - I certainly don't want to see hardcovers completely replaced by digests. But I think it's too soon to really worry about that. Once the Essentials period is over, we'll get to see how much the line is impacted by it. I'm sure there will be some influence there, but it seems very premature to worry that their previous production habits will vanish entirely.

 

[Mercurius]

MrMyth, what I was "upset" about (so to speak) was that you focused on a single sentence in my first post and seemed to ignore everything else in that post and after that, and were in a sense cornering me into a position that I didn't feel all that strongly about (thus my emphasis on "mainly" rather than "simply" or "only" in terms of the lack of new material). But I am satisfied with where we've come to in this discussion and glad to move on! I think we share some agreement, although with a bit of disagreement in there that we can both live with.

As for the second part of your post, it really remains to be seen, doesn't it? Re: hardcovers, whether the Heroes books will be successful or not, and just where WotC is going with this. It is fun to speculate, though!

As for running a big game company, I can only imagine. Game geeks seem to be a particularly opinionated lot, with everyone being an "armchair game designer." And any time you try something new, for everyone that you please there will certainly be a ton of people that aren't pleased.

Which brings me to a final point. My initial statement of being hyperbolic was meant to communicate that my views on this aren't that solid, and I'm not really all that upset, my disappointment actually being pretty mild (if nothing else it allows me to flesh out other areas of my RPG collection).

There are some things I don't like about Essentials, but other things I do like. At the very least it will be very interesting to see where WotC goes with this, because nothing is set in stone, and I think predicting where D&D will be in two years is a lot less certain than it might have been predicting where D&D would be in 2005 just after 3.5 came out in 2003. 3.5 was relatively stable from 2003 to 2007, with a slew of hardcovers coming out until they started peetering out with the announcement of 4E. It seems that with Essentials WotC is less creating a new sub-edition cycle as they are stepping sideways and taking a new route with 4E, or at least experimenting with different formats and approaches. In two years we could be looking at the imminent announcement of 5E, or we could be looking at a very different 4E that is based firmly on D&D Insider, or we could look at an Essentials-based 4E in which we look back in nostalgia at the extinct "hardcover" species.

Who knows, really, but it should be interesting!

 

[MrMyth]

MrMyth, what I was "upset" about (so to speak) was that you focused on a single sentence in my first post and seemed to ignore everything else in that post and after that, and were in a sense cornering me into a position that I didn't feel all that strongly about (thus my emphasis on "mainly" rather than "simply" or "only" in terms of the lack of new material). But I am satisfied with where we've come to in this discussion and glad to move on! I think we share some agreement, although with a bit of disagreement in there that we can both live with.

Yeah, absolutely! I didn't mean to try and push you into a corner - I focused on that one sentence because that was the part I disagreed with, in the end, and that's why I kept coming back to it! Moving on from here is perfectly fine by me.

As for the second part of your post, it really remains to be seen, doesn't it? Re: hardcovers, whether the Heroes books will be successful or not, and just where WotC is going with this. It is fun to speculate, though!

...

In two years we could be looking at the imminent announcement of 5E, or we could be looking at a very different 4E that is based firmly on D&D Insider, or we could look at an Essentials-based 4E in which we look back in nostalgia at the extinct "hardcover" species.

I think you are right that it is hard to say anything for sure. I would find it very unlikely to be seeing 5R within two years, but I do expect to see the D&D line continue to evolve and reinvent itself. To experiment, if nothing else.

Honestly, I've been very pleased to see WotC continue to do so. Even though I was a fan more of the previous line (of hardbacks, power books, etc) than some of their recent experiments (the Essentials books and all-digest format, the small race-books and location-supplements)... I think it is a fantastic thing that WotC is willing to try new things.

I don't think it is a sign that the game is failing as some have theorized. One can only produce so many power books before they become redundant. I think it is a drive to test out different approaches and see which are most successful - hopefully leading to an eventual combination of many styles, providing diverse options for everyone to appreciate.

But yes - we'll just have to wait and see! I do like the look of the line-up in the coming year, post-Essentials. Even if some of the content is different than what we've seen before, I think we will be seeing some very interesting approaches, and hopefully following this period of innovation with some stuff that gets a bit back to basics.

For now, though, nothing to do but sit back and wait to see what comes.

And, of course, speculate about it in furious debates on the interwebs, in the time-honored tradition of gamers everywhere.