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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Robert Ranting" data-source="post: 3940419" data-attributes="member: 28906">I think that Monte has a point about it being a hard sell.  Whether it will be more of a hard sell than 2E, I can't say, but the fact that many people are happy with 3.5, and that the SRD can live on through the web and the contents of our harddrives means that those who are happy to stick with the old can do so.  It is necessary for WotC as a company to continually produce products that sell in order to keep the brand vital, but it is in no way necessary for the fans to buy said supplements to keep their individual games vital.  So long as some group, somewhere, thinks that the game is fun and wants to play, they can keep playing it until doomsday.  So why should they switch?  That is the question that WotC has to answer, and in order to do so, they need to deliver a product that is worthwhile, and they need to market it as broadly as possible, to fans both new and old.As for the tangential topic about 3rd party publishers..."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??)"For what it is worth, I'm pretty sure that Mike Mearls was hired by WotC before Iron Heroes was entirely finished.  They probably had to do a rush job on the line to get it published before his exclusive contract for WotC kicked in.  I don't have a citation for this, but the timing was about right, since Mearls left Malhavoc and started working for WotC before the third IH supplement hit the printers, IIRC.As for unbalanced mechanics in IH, that doesn't reflect nearly as much on third party products as a whole as it does on Mike Mearls' specific design philosophies.  I guess what I am getting at is that, IH, being wholely the responsibility and brainchild of Mike Mearls is probably the best indicator we have of the quality he is capable of.  His joining the WotC team does not suddenly make him blessed with greater insight and skill than he had before.It seems somewhat hypocritical to point at Mearls' work as an example of how bad 3rd party products are while praising the virtues of WotC, which he is now part of. The same mind and hands that crafted Iron Heroes are now hard at work on the Monster Manual 1 and the first four or so adventures of a new edition of D&D.I realize that I am a minority, but it is my feeling that the name of the designers, and artists who contributed to the book is much more of an indication of quality than any brand name will ever be. If you hand the same adventure "concept" to Bruce Cordell, Nick Logue,  and Monte Cook, you will come up with very different adventures, each based on that author's own biases and sense of mechanical balance.  An editor can only do so much to iron out the kinks in a manuscript, short of tossing it out entirely and getting someone else to write it.  That said, if the things you don't like about Iron Heroes are things you don't like about Mike Mearls' game design work, then no team of WotC editors will make you like what he produces.Robert "Not A Fan of Mearls' Work Either" Ranting</blockquote>

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