Issues with news for today (Friday 21-Sep-2007)

[jolt]

Is it that important that you start playing 4E the very day it comes out?

Well, I suppose not the very second the new PHB comes out no. But when I have all 3 new core books, I'd like to be able to use them right away yes. Considering the level of change coming, I don't want to have to put my campaign on hold while I try to adjust everything. That's not appealing at all

The truth is, we're spoilt. We have so much more information than we need at this stage, and a hundred times more than we'd had when, say, 2E was being developed.

Of course I'm spoiled, I'm an American and I want instant gratification...NOW!

I confess I didn't pay much attention to 2E development. My gaming world was Greyhawk until it was completely abandoned (that's when I started creating my own world) and by then 2E was already out.

Hang in there until January. They ship their preview books at that point. Those won't tell us every bit of fiddly rules, but it'll be a massive infodump at that point.

That's true, and I do look forward to them though I think the current price listed for those preview books is a bit high for the content being offered in them (as we know it to be so far anyway).

Honestly, at this point of the game, we're doing a lot better than we were than when 3E was announced.

Really? It seems the opposite to me. Being able to read the playtester reports form the actual playtetsers was a huge boon and Skip's early conversion booklet was a major help. The info we're getting now seems almost...evasive in nature. That's how it comes across to me anyway. I freely admit however, that time may be confusing my recollection of the 3E development process. I'm not as young as I used to be. Or at least I think I'm not; it's so hard to keep things straight nowadays.

jolt

 

[Riley]

Is it that important that you start playing 4E the very day it comes out?

Actually, I'd like to start playing 4e D&D right now. I'm between campaigns, and I'd rather start a new campaign with the 4e playtest rules than start with 3.5e and convert over in the spring.

 

[Glyfair]

Being able to read the playtester reports form the actual playtetsers was a huge boon and Skip's early conversion booklet was a major help.

Playtester reports didn't start appearing until October. The coversion book didn't appear until the month the PHB was released.

 

[Jer]

The info we're getting now seems almost...evasive in nature. That's how it comes across to me anyway. I freely admit however, that time may be confusing my recollection of the 3E development process. I'm not as young as I used to be. Or at least I think I'm not; it's so hard to keep things straight nowadays.

One thing that I remember from the 3e cycle is that the information generally came out in one big monthly chunk - once a month we'd get a two page "countdown to 3e" article in Dragon and that was, IIRC, where most of our information about the new edition came from. Also, most of the information we got was mechanical in nature, again IIRC, which was a big deal because the system moved from being AD&D to being d20 - little bits of information like "classes have a unified XP table" or "attributes have a single bonus table" or "no distinction between thief skills and nonweapon proficiencies" or "only 3 saving throws" or "AC goes up instead of down now" were big, big bits of news that people chawed on and contemplated for days on end (partly because they were big changes, and partly because we only got our info about once a month or so).

Now we're getting a constant trickle of information, the changes aren't nearly as big, and, on top of everything else, there are actual products out there that the Wizards guys can say "go look at this - we're doing something like that". So when they say that Star Wars Saga or Book of Nine Swords or Monster Manual V are all versions of the 4e rules at previous iterations of the dev cycle, we're getting more information than we think. It's just that it's old news because we've already looked at it and know what's in it and you can only speculate about how much will change for the actual 4e release for so long before the thread degenerates into a rant about how awful the changes will be

 

[dmccoy1693]

I will say this about the quantity and quality of news that is being given out now as opposed to before: WotC has definitely made serious changes in their approach in letting us "in" on their projects and future plans. They definitely learned from their "oops" they made with cancelling Dungeon and Dragon earlier this year with no prior warning. Whether they are overcompensating and sharing to much information at this stage is up for debate, but they are doing better, customer relations wise, then before.

 

[tomBitonti]

Eventually, yes, what you're talking about are issues of Dragon, Dungeon, etc., whch won't be free. For now the Insider area is free, although Dragon/Dungeon haven't launched yet.

Wanted to say, I was not meaning to be critical of the news provided here on EnWorld.

That aside, what makes me uneasy is that this preview information is in the Insider area. Already, that means that I have to log in to read it. Later, I may have to pay for it. I understand paying for game content, but not for what seems to me to be external product information.

 

[Morrus]

Wanted to say, I was not meaning to be critical of the news provided here on EnWorld.

That aside, what makes me uneasy is that this preview information is in the Insider area. Already, that means that I have to log in to read it. Later, I may have to pay for it. I understand paying for game content, but not for what seems to me to be external product information.

Sure, I can understand that. Did you buy the Dragon magazines with the 3rd Edition previews?

 

[Drkfathr1]

I have a feeling that once the DDI goes to a paid subscription that they'll divide content on the site. The previews and some of the design editorials would likely be free, or at least small snippets of them would be, while the paid area would have much more info. At least that's what I would expect based on other sites.

 

[No Name]

Supposedly, there will be no sorcerers, monks, bards and maybe not even druids. So if you play one of those classes you're kind of screwed.

This is my #1 concern.

If all of the group wants to convert, maybe half of them will be able to. Those who can't will have to wait six months to a year before options will be available. Not because they play obscure classes from little used splat books (like incarnum stuff), but the vanilla core classes that we've been playing for years (bard, monk, etc.)

I guess we can just toss the campaign in the garbage and start fresh, or just wait until the options we need are available. Waiting won't be easy, especially if the changes in 4.0 are good ones. I don't like the idea of just throwing away the campaign either.

Just give me the same core classes, even if druid, monk and bard are cleric, fighter and rogue talent trees, respectively.

 

[Zaruthustran]

And I have to cry foul. How hard will it be to convert a character that uses just the three current core books?

You mean, how hard will it be to convert a 3E fighter into a 4E fighter?

Well, it depends on what you mean by convert. I imagine that not every single feat from 3E PHB will be duplicated in 4E, or even if it is duplicated, have the exact same pre-reqs. Also, just be looking at Saga, there could be changes to fundamentals such as AC. In these situations, where not everything is 1:1, what counts as "conversion"?

When you get into character levels, well, we've heard that the PHB will be from levels 1 to 30. So if you've got a 12th level 3E character, what level does he "convert" to in 4E? I'm guessing that it depends on the class, really--the players and DMs would have to look at each character's capabilities and peg them, case by case, to something appropriate in 4E.

I just don't think a formulaic conversion would really work for this new edition. Much better to just look at the new rules, look at your old character, and rebuild that character using the new rules.

So if you've got a strong dwarven glaive fighter in 3E, you take the 4E rules and build a strong dwarven glaive fighter. Don't worry about some formula, and instead just embrace the new system and recreate your guy.

It's a new edition, after all--don't you want to try out some of the new options?

-z