Malibu Stacey has a new hat!

[Dannyalcatraz]

To those of you who feel WotC "lied" about 4Ed, I must say what my Civil Procedures 1 professor loved to say..."So what?"

WotC is a for-profit business, and from a business perspective, the eventual release of 4Ed was a fact of life once 3.XEd came into its own as a successful product, especially since it wasn't/isn't/will never be perfect.

Of course they said otherwise- you can't tell people you're working on Product B which will replace Product A if you still want them to buy Product A. If they stop buying Product A, your business gets crippled from lack of income, and Product B either gets rushed to market or never gets released.

Rest assured, if 4Ed is a success, 5Ed is coming.

 

[mhensley]

Perhaps, like Lisa, I should see what Malibu Stacey's original creator is doing, and check out C&C? :\ (

Do you realize that there have been 4 distinct versions of C&C published in the last 3-4 years? Just saying... :\

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Malibu Stacy has a new hat, wardrobe, house and car.

New wardrobe? Ha! Malibu Stacy is becoming a MAN, baby! Dontcha wanta upgrade to Malibu Steve?

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Do you realize that there have been 4 distinct versions of C&C published in the last 3-4 years? Just saying... :\

That's a little misleading, IMO. There've been multiple printings of the core books (currently the Players Handbook and Monsters and Treasure), but changes there are layout or errata-type stuff.

The other "versions" are limited edition or condensed sets that are wholly derived from or highly compatible with the main rules. The Condensed version is a subset of the rules. The Collectors box is a limited run (1000 units) "tribute" to OD&D.

 

[haakon1]

I think it will be different enough that no one will consider it just a repackaging of the same old product. I think the reason that it will be different enough is so you can't covert material between settings and have to buy all new stuff.

Nod. So Malibu Stacey has a new operating system?

And it won't run any of your old versions of Office or any other applications -- and 3rd parties may or may not be allowed to make new versions of old apps for it, we're not sure what's going on with the licensing for that. But hey, if you're going to be old school and whiney about it, you can still run your old programs on the old OS. And you can even convert documents created in the old OS to the new one, using a handy-dandy online free converter program, which only takes about 30 minutes per page of your manual labor to use. Great!

 

[haakon1]

I know for me this is a minor issue that does irritate me. One point of an RPG is the social aspect of sitting around a table with a holf dozen other people interacting in person. Thats a key component of RPG's IMO and stripping that away to make it a "computer game" is the wrong way to go.

Now that I know, I'm glad 4e will be at least partially book-based.

Aspects of playing it on a computer that I don't like:
-- "Products of Your Imagination" replaced with computer graphics.
-- Battlemat and figurines VERSUS an emersive RPG where characters, not builds, are living in a world, not a game board. Are they trying to discourage "literary", "historical", or theatrical approaches to the game? I describe heraldry, sounds, smells, weather etc. to my players to build mood and because I like doing that. Is the default "tone" for 4e battlemat wars in the generic dungeon?
-- Loses play anywhere aspects. You mean you can't play it while on deployment in Afghanistan or in prison or on a train or in a middle school library, but only where you have good internet connections and VOIP headsets going?
-- Can we still roll our own dice? Can DM's still fudge dice rolls and ignore rules, or is it a darn computer game?
-- Can we still do anything we can think of that the DM think is reasonable, or are characters only allowed to do what the menu says they can do?

Still it's nice to have the option of online play, for long-distance reasons.

 

[vongarr]

For me, they're taking out the old, worn Malibu Stacey and replacing her with a younger, hotter Stacey. Now, it remains to be seen if Stacey has some substance under those clothes.

I am in a profession where I move around a lot. So is everyone else I work with. So for me, it's a good thing. Even if that wasn't the case, I love the internet, so I would feel similar to what I do now. There are a whole lot of people out there who want to play D&D, but don't due to a lack of group. I know there are ways to play online without the DI, but this (should) be easier to use. You're also going to get a full digital copy of your book along with your hardcopy. That's pretty damn cool. And (unless I am mistaken) you will get Dungeon and Dragon magazine for 10 bucks a month. Sure, it's not in paper...But unless they ruin the quality, which they have to reason to do, it should be similar.

Ultimately, Wizards is doing things to bring in more money and have the hobby grow. That is not a bad thing. And as far as I can tell, many of the designers are smart men who can write well. I have little fear of them ruining things.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

My interest Thursday, And Friday was peaked, then I found new info on Sat. "SWSE is a Significant Preview of 4e" or something like that.

Yeah Saga might work for Star Wars but I was turned off of it by the time they previewed the skills. If D&D goes even close to Saga im out with the excpetion of Faerun books.

I think they should have worked on revising 3.5e and left it at that. And I think since they arent doing that, some 3rd party should, if the 3.5 srd or olg even exists after this.

 

[haakon1]

As someone who is rather apathetic about 4E (I don't hate it, but I'm not looking forward to it, either), TPTB saying "Don't bother converting; start a new 4E campaign!" really rubs me the wrong way.

Ah, you hit it on the head!

It's not about the money, but the brain space and time for new rules, and pain of converting my existing campaigns (3 of them, all very slow moving) to a new edition.

I think the division over 4e happiness or unhappiness comes down to:

Happy -- People who play every week, have a jones on for new rules all the time, love "builds", play WoW, and attended GenCon. For one thing, these people are 'in the know enough' and dedicted enough that they watched all the videos and read all the WOTC stuff. (Disclaimer: This ain't me, fo' sure. I watched one of the videos while my wife yelled at me to do something, so I'm operating on video-watching and reading this site, not complete knowledge of what 4e is or is not. So, no harm meant by assuming we had to play on computers and would no longer have books. I guess that's 4.5 edition or something.)

Sad -- People who don't have time to learn new rules, are too poor for new books, don't play very often (so they want to convert their existing slow campaigns), people without internet access (prison, military, poor, etc.), FLGS (on their way to losing a good product line), and people who are inclined to oppose change (probably me).

My biggest worries:
-- Learning new rules. No time for that.
-- Makes all my cool adventure modules obsolete.
-- Converting characters
-- Pressure to run it online, when I'd rather go live at the gaming table, or very slow over email.
-- A player in my group who really can't afford the $10 subscription. Hey, one player has 300 employees in his "small business", another is janitor at a school that's not well funded. Life is like that sometimes.
-- Casual players in my other game. Who wants to pay $120 a year for a game you play 2-3 times a year. Versus playing a "crippleware" offline version? The right answer for them may very well be not to play. :\

 

[Turanil]

I strongly suspect they are aiming this new edition at the 12-14 year old customer base. And I remember what it was playing DnD at that age of uber-munchkinery... I have found the post below extremely funny, and probably describing very well what 4e is going to be...

I liked the Dragonball Z reference. That's right on the nose.

It's as if they think the target audience are all anime-fans, who naturally want characters who perform "nearly magical" displays of "powers" with perfectly ordinary objects like swords, and who no doubt announce their moves aloud in combat, too…

4ker: I leap forward and hover in mid-air, with my hair on fire and lightning shooting out of my ass, and I howl in this really cool, booming, echoing voice, "RAAAIN OF BLOOOOOOWS! Blows! Blows!" and then I attack!

4ager: Whoa, dude!

DM: Coolness factor 18 bypasses AC dude, automatic hit! Awesome! Roll the dice for destruction points, dude!

4ker: I do… [clatter] …139 points of piercing damage to everything in range, plus… [clatter] …864 points of seismic damage!

4ager: Awesome, dude!

DM: That rawx! The orc army blows apart in a massive expolosion of bodies and chunks of bloody meat, flying out in slow motion in all directions and leaving trails of smoke and blood through the air!

4ker & 4ager [in unison]: AWESOME!

DM: And in the center of the screen, there's a molten, burning crater 120 feet wide erupting like a volcano, shooting up a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke that rolls out across the sky, blotting out the sun!

4ker: Whoa, AWESOME, dude!

All [in unison]: 4-E Double-D RAAAWWWX! Woooooo!

4ker: And then I pose really cool with my fists apart, panting real heavy and glaring up at the sky and –

4ager: Dude, with smoke curling off your sword blade!

4ker: Yeah! With smoke curling off my sword blade! And it's glowing red hot dude, and I roar at the sky with this really cool snarl on my face while thunder cracks in the background, "I'm attacking the DAAARKNESS! Darkness! Darkness!"

EDIT: And the following info only gives more credence to the above mockery:

Yep, according to one of the R&D guys GenCon blog on the WOTC site, wizards will be casting 25th level spells in 4E. That was his "little secret" he was allowed to tell at GenCon.

The more I read about 4e, the more I am disgusted. 4e is really becoming not D&D but Dragon-Ball-Z...