D&D 4E Monte Cook on 4E

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I bought 1 non WotC product. Iron Heroes. It read like a rough draft, with vast numbers of WTF!! utterly broken mechanics.

WotC may have some design issues, but if a top level 3rd party product was as flat out unedited as IH, then 3rd party products are not for me. (seriously, had *anyone* but Mearls read it before publishing? Had he gone back and done basic sanity checks??)

Try Paizo -- if you read Dungeon or Dragon, you've already sampled their work -- Goodman Games or Necromancer Games. Or, frankly, other stuff by Malhavoc.

 

[kennew142]

And thus they miss out on some amazing books.. A lot of which inspired 4E (Iron Hero's anyone?) yes there is a lot of bad d20 products, but there are just as many amazing ones.

I agree totally. There is some awesome 3e stuff out there, including most of the Malhavoc Press stuff, the Freeport line, Arcanis, etc....

Nevertheless, I believe that very few D&D players bother to look at non-WOTC materials. I've had this problem for years trying to grow Living Arcanis in the Tucson area. Once I got players to give it a try, they were hooked on the superb storylines and incredibly deep world. Many players simply refused to try anything that wasn't official D&D.

This problem was exacerbated once D&D 3.5 came out. We lost more than half our player base during the transition period when the campaign was still using D&D 3.0 rules. I use this campaign as an example due to my years of experience with it. Understanding the difficulties of getting product out when even the SRD hasn't become available, I believe that third party product lines are going to suffer very badly if they don't convert fairly quickly to D&D 4e.

There is a very vocal group on the internet that decries the new edition. Leaving aside for the moment whether their complaints are valid, I can't help but feel that the vast majority of D&D players will convert quickly and will eschew the older edition. Every month, we ran 6-8 tables of Living Arcanis at our game days. This was in addition to the slots zero. After D&D 3.5 came out, we dropped down to 2-3 with no slots zero. Once the campaign did convert we rose to about 4 tables with slots zero again. The campaign that outplayed LG 3:2 at our game days and local convention fell into a distant second.

I don't want to see this happen to excellent lines. Freeport is now edition proof, so I don't think they'll have a problem. I'm not so sure about other lines.

 

[Gundark]

I suspect that WotC has done their research. I know that a lot of people assume that economic need = new edition. While I believe that economics plays a role I think that there has to be need too. I honestly think that there was a demand for a new edition, enough of a demand for the designers to announce 4e. I myself was done with 3e and was shopping around for suitible replacements.

I'm not expecting 4e to be the success that 3e was right out of the gates, however I think that 4e will be around longer than 3e, and thus in the long stretch we'll see more people playing 4e.

 

[WayneLigon]

I bought 1 non WotC product. Iron Heroes. It read like a rough draft, with vast numbers of WTF!! utterly broken mechanics.

Such as...?

 

[KingCrab]

Try Paizo -- if you read Dungeon or Dragon, you've already sampled their work -- Goodman Games or Necromancer Games. Or, frankly, other stuff by Malhavoc.

I'll vouch for Paizo too. Not everything is perfect, but they did release some pretty fun adventures.

 

[Gundark]

4E has a bit of an uphill climb, but the numbers of people playing 3.5 are much less than those that were playing 3.0. There has been attrition. Some may come back to try 4E. The focus for 4E should be to attract new roleplayers. This is where 4E will succeed or fail.

I think we'll see a lot of people coming to 4e. sure maybe not right away but alot of the "no way" people will come over. Either they'll see the system in it's wholeness and like it, or there will be cool book/setting x that'll be 4e, or someone in their gaming group will pick up the books and the sleeper effect will take over.

Case in point... my group was horribly anti-3.5. "we'll never switch from 3.0" or "I just bought the 3.0 books", or something. I was the one who bought the 3.5 books and brought them to the table for the group to look. Guess which edition that we're playing now?

 

[drothgery]

4E has a bit of an uphill climb, but the numbers of people playing 3.5 are much less than those that were playing 3.0.

Err... cite.

 

[Greg K]

And thus they miss out on some amazing books.. A lot of which inspired 4E (Iron Hero's anyone?) yes there is a lot of bad d20 products, but there are just as many amazing ones.

Despite not being a fan of Iron Heroes, I still have to agree with you about people missing amazing books. Then again, I am usually pushing several third party products and recently turned two people on to Green Ronin and a few other companies.

 

[Greg K]

I bought 1 non WotC product. Iron Heroes. It read like a rough draft, with vast numbers of WTF!! utterly broken mechanics.

WotC may have some design issues, but if a top level 3rd party product was as flat out unedited as IH, then 3rd party products are not for me. (seriously, had *anyone* but Mearls read it before publishing? Had he gone back and done basic sanity checks??)

Well I personally would never recommend Iron Heroes as I didn't like the classes, the use of tokens, or the umbella skills . Then, there is the magic system which I never bothered to look at, but heard from IH fans how it was not finished.

Now, if I were going to introduce someone to third party products, I would begin with products from Green Ronin (especially the Advanced Bestiary and anything by Steve Kenson) or, if d20M, RPGObjects (especially anything by Charles Rice) and GR's Psychic's Handbook (by Steve Kenson). Then, I would introduce them to specific products from various companies including several of Mearl's works for AEG, Fantasy Flight Games, and Mongoose as well as his Book of Iron Might for Malhavoc

 

[GameOgre]

When 3.0 came out and it was such a drasticaly new game MANY people said the same thing about not going and hope it fails and people wouldnt support it.

None of it came true.

I think 4E will be the same way. Years from now the few who dont move to it will not be missed by the main game base"yes they will be ever shrinking but happy with there 3.5 just the same or maybe they will do like I did and take a long break from rpg's all together and try something else for a while.

If you were to look around and find the most Rabid 4E hater that would be me back when 3.0 came out. Now im no longer invested in a game and wanting to get back into the hobby so im looking forward to 4E.

I do understand where the 3.5 guys are coming from and realize its painfull. Maybe its just some strange new rite of passage for the modern gamer.