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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5847252" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, not really. I haven't invoked any fact I can't back up at all. When I have an opinion I don't claim it is backed up by non-existent facts. Go read all the interviews with WotC people, Ryan's columns on this site, etc. Those are the only places I've drawn facts from. Anything else has been either anecdote or opinion and not claimed to be anything else. The customer base for D&D has been slowly shrinking and aging since the peak of 1e in the early 80's. Again, you can verify all of this. It isn't a problem with 3.5 or any other specific edition of D&D. It is a problem with the whole business model and can't be solved by any pumping out of new books. All that can do is create a relatively short-term bump in sales to existing customers. Of course SOME new people trickle in over the years, but inarguably the overall trend has been slow decline since around 1983.Nobody can say ahead of time with certainty what is the 'right' thing to do. They did what they did because they had business needs that weren't being met with the existing product strategy. Again, assuming WotC isn't a total ship of fools and Hasbro doesn't hand out development money on any old whim, the fact that they did something proves that they believed something needed to be done.And this proves what? Again, this really has nothing to do with any other game. It has to do with the future of the game and the business need to escape from the existing edition cycle, which is destructive and contrary to those business needs (again go read Ryan's columns, don't take it from me). I don't know diddly about LibraryThing, so I can't even speculate what that means. Which supplement is selling right now on Amazon is again pretty meaningless because what WotC is looking at isn't sales to existing customers. What they are looking at is how in the long-term to get out of the edition treadmill and the dead tree publishing model. If Paizo wants to stick with that model and make sales, bully for them, but where will they be in 10 years if they don't try to do basically what WotC is doing now? This is like saying "hey, look at all those people abandoning the Titanic, they're all cold down there in the water, we're so much cleverer sitting up here on the deck listening to the band play." Yeah, right...Again, what the current player base wanted wasn't, at least entirely, germane to WotC's thinking. If you want NEW customers, a requirement in the long run, you have to think about what those people would want too. Again, we can argue all day if after the dust settles whether or not WotC succeeded in moving in the right direction to expand the market or if it is even possible, but at least they tried. Its easy to throw stones at them after the fact, it is a LOT harder to be them and look forward and take chances. You're assuming my preferences. This isn't about preferences. It is about reality. It also isn't about 3e because 3e came out in 2000 and the only valid question for WotC would be what they would need to do to GROW the game instead of just selling into an ever shrinking market. What you or I prefer is not even relevant. WotC made choices to make a game that clearly is aimed at being compatible with modern 21st Century market conditions. You can argue it is just some preference of mine, but I don't make their decisions, or more than barely influence them like any customer. If this is all just about which one of us likes what, well your dislike is just as much your preference as my like is. That doesn't change anything.Again, you can read Ryan's stuff. He'd probably tell you something like PTA is more likely in tune with the current RPG market than either 3e, 4e, or even PF (and Paizo just released a cut down version of PF in their BB product I'd note). I'll also note that I've stated my preferences for a more svelte game as well. It will be interesting to see where 5e goes on that point. In any case there are likely to be differing opinions in different dev shops on what the next game should look like. My arguments for a game based around 4e mechanics really have little to do with the size of the game. They do however take consideration of the fundamentally simpler mechanics of 4e vs 3.x. Check the wordcount on the 4e PHB vs the PF core rulebook. I think you'll find that 4e is actually a good bit lighter weight than PF is.</blockquote>

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