NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5320320" data-attributes="member: 59082">Yes, good point. My Forgotten Realms grey box set will always be useful, while the "Complete Spoonwielder" has limited utility. But my point is even it is not invalidated as a useful product. Again, I don't really agree with this and have always found this to be a questionable response. OK, on one level it does "ask" people to ante up and drop some cash on a new edition, but if they don't they still have plenty of material to draw from to continue playing their edition of choice.The one caveat, as I agreed with earlier, is the living campaign idea. But that's about it, and even that is surmountable if enough fans join together and create their own living campaign.I am still left wondering exactly what Wizards' market share is of tabletop roleplaying games. We know it is a vast majority, but is it 70% or 90% or 97%? I don't know. I would guess somewhere in the 80-90% range. Now while I hear your point and I know you are not saying anything against the fine folks at Paizo, Goodman, etc, there is something that you may be overlooking. Even if Wizards owns 80% or more of the tabletop RPG market, and 90%+ of the D&D market, that other 10-20% "matters" in that (among other reasons) they influence the designers at Wizards of the Coast.You know that term "writer's writer" or "musician's musician"? They are the artists that might not be all that popular but are read or listened to by other artists, and other hardcore fans, and thus have an impact on the field that surpasses their sales figures. It is these folks that usually innovate the field in some way, which trickles down into a more popular medium. I am not saying this is the case with RPGs, but it certainly could be. I mean, you really see this with the design of 3E, which was spear-headed by one of the "Indie Heroes," Jonathan Tweet. During the latter days of 2E AD&D was, in terms of game mechanics, a clunky anachronism. THAC0? Really? We all feel n0stalgic about it now, but at the time it was awkward and "so 1980s" game design. The 90s were extremely innovative in terms of game systems and AD&D was both the most popular game around and also one of the most archaic. It was those innovations of the late 80s and 90s that occured in small Indie games like Ars Magica that trickled down to AD&D, if 15 years later.So yeah, I do hear your point but in another way, Paizo et al do matter, and not just to their fans (which is not an insignificant number).I apologize if I offended and I appreciate your relatively mild response. I still don't see what's the big problem. A minor hassle to convert? Sure. A big hassle? I don't see it, especially if you are willing and able to wing it on the spot. It has a lot to do with individual DM style. Some DMs play by the letter of the law, point by point, and everything that is rolled behind the screen and written on paper is in stone. If that's your approach I can see how what I'm saying wouldn't work for you. A "3rd level cleric" in AD&D is not the same as in 4E; a attack by a dozen BECMI kobolds is a different matter than an attack by a dozen 3.5E kobolds. But is it really? I would say, no, not really. It just takes a little bit of number crunching, page turning, and ad hoc DMing. In the same way that when a creature has 42 HP left and a player scores a natural 20 and does 40 HP of damage, why not make it 42 HP and not tell he players, giving them the satisfaction of a dramatic final blow?If you have Monster Builder converting monsters to 4E is easy. Running White Plume Mountain and you get to the manticore? Just type in "manticore" and adjust the level to make it a suitable challenge for the party--it really just takes a few seconds.Or am I missing something?</blockquote>

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