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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5842332" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, first the RP was an example of what happens when a game option isn't that popular. It simply gets no more (or trivially little) support and becomes even MORE unpopular because who's going to play the option that gets no support. Also, non-Essentials classes aren't supported in most organized play, at least officially. You aren't supposed to use them in Encounters for instance. This is however a bit different situation, since the pre-E classes WERE the main line of support. There's a very great difference between SERIAL support and PARALLEL support. When options appear serially and are each well supported for a while and then WotC goes on to something else the old thing doesn't become less supported or less playable.This is totally different from "OK, here's your 40 Vancian AD&D style open-ended spells" and that's all you ever get because 4e-style AEDU power wizards were more popular (which actually probably means that they were just better supported on day one and so people played them more). This process is virtually inevitable. It is just basic business reality. WotC WILL face a choice. They will have to choose between putting out material that supports ALL the options and thus making each product more expensive, or simply choosing one and supporting it exclusively or mostly, at which point it becomes effectively THE main option. Support will inevitably narrow more and more as certain options simply get more support for whatever reasons (choice or happenstance, whatever). Those trends are self-reinforcing and pretty soon you only have one set that are really meaningfully supported. Trust me, it will happen. It will particularly happen with magic systems as they're the most extensive and resource intensive parts of the system to support. [MENTION=6675228]Hassassin[/MENTION] It really depends. Many 3.x fans will tell you that having the NPCs made to the same specs as the PCs is a 'must have'. Thus they will want NPCs made using their preferred options. 4e people generally aren't too fond of that notion. As for adventures, well, if you're running low level adventures, yeah, then there's a certain point where its an orc and who cares. The thing is you can't simply assume that higher level PCs won't have options that obviate or bypass things, or that other assumptions like resource management and pacing match up with the options you're using. You're also going to have a sort of 'lowest common denominator' thing going on. For instance in 1e modules never use or assume psionics because it is optional. In fact higher level modules that have a fair number of monsters that have optional psionics are almost unplayable if you use the 1e psionics rules with them. This is a small example.Don't get me wrong, I think some limited numbers of optional rules are feasible. I think you can make 'core' systems that support 'modules' that let you play in different genre (BRP is used in a lot of different Chaosium games, or of course the classic case, GURPS). I just do not believe you can effectively maintain a whole set of parallel options that cover the same ground and are intended to be used together with the same material, especially if you are going to try to actually balance them against each other.It just isn't going to work. The best they will end up being able to do is create several marginally supported options in the core PHB and some nominal degree of support for each one beyond that for a while. Then they'll just have to hope or assume that the less popular options are picked up by 3PPs and that people will be happy with that while they focus on the one most popular option that will in their minds maybe give them a hope of being #1 RPG again. So, some of us will be playing D&D, and some of us will be playing 3PP semi-D&D, at which point one has to ask if we might not just go try out Savage Worlds or something... lol.</blockquote>

Verification