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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 4292455" data-attributes="member: 8863">I don't agree with Wiker about marketing.  4e is by all accounts a big success.  I would never consider a single poll from this site to be the barometer of gamer attitudes everywhere.  So WotC obviously did something right there.  The continuing problems with DDI/Gleemax/whatever are another story however.... That's what kind of bothers me the most, a lot of the background assumptions changing.  It's possible that 4e really isn't a problem, that I could still run more or less the same campaign, but I'd have to assume at least some of us homebrewers out there try to shape our settings so they make sense with the rules.  A radical rules change culd be disruptive to a homebrew setting a group has worked on for years.  The fact that WotC felt they needed to blow up the Realms is a bit telling, though it could also be said that the Realms had gotten pretty stale as well.It's his second point that I agree with the most, that WotC seems to be pretty much marketing a whole new system, rather than just hammering down the "proud nails" (or whatever that term is they were using in those design articles a few years ago).  I agree, more or less.  You might be right.  Some of this suprises me; I thought the RPGA was dying out, but then I've never really been concerned about tournaments either.But a lot of it smacks of how tournament play influences or at least used to influence the development of M:tG.  I know I'll probably get called down for because I'm taking the "WotC is turning D&D into a TCG!" angle, but I see similarities.  Just as DCI seemed to influence the development of M:tG about 10 years ago (I haven't been involved with TCG for about 10 years, so I don't know what may have changed), if you're right, RPGA is influencing D&D's development in similar overall ways.  That is, change things that tourney players don't like, because that's where all the money is. I suppose I could make snarky comments about PHB II and the like being the game's equivalent of booster packs.  I don't think that's entirely the case, but it does add a sort of "collectiblity" aspect to the game that I don't like.   I don't like it probably most of all because it adds or has the potential to add a competitive element to playing D&D, which was never part of the game in the past.  This competitive element is what obsesses over stuff like "weak builds", "game balance", and the like.  DMs in normal home games can fudge things around so it's not a problem.  Tournament play functions in a completely different manner.Some of it does make sense though.  RPGs aren't really a big business at all, even D&D.  You can't make money just selling sourcebooks and settings.  TSR tried that and failed, and WotC knows the mistakes they made.  There's only so much money they can make selling the core books.  Past that, the optional sourcebooks only have so much margin, and there's always that group of players that don't want to add anything. Using the RPGA and DDI to make money without having to crank out sourcebooks that might not make a big profit or new editions too quickly probably is sound.</blockquote>

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