MtG: Essentials.

[DireWereTeddy]

I'm just not seeing the connection. Maybe it'll make more sense to me when my Red Box this week.

I think, like Magic, 4e creates a very small subset of "core" rules. (Small enough that they can pretty much be summed up in the red box.)

On top of these core rules, they layer other rules, that modify the game to do whatever it needs to do. This creates the "experience." (Like the cards create the feel of the Magic Game.)

But that's not anything new and I'm not understanding the connection to Magic specifically. It's modular game design. You use the source books you want in your game and ignore the rest. I'm pretty certain 2e did this. I know it worked in 3e because my group and I did it. And it's not just table top gaming. Video games do this when they release expansion packs. You can play the original or you can play with the expansion. Guild Wars even took it a step further. They have three different 'campaigns' all of which are stand alone. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War did this also. Most of the expansions were stand alone, but they also limited what you had available.

I think ultimately, I'm just not seeing the connection between the Red Box and Magic specifically. If anything, the contents makes me think of skirmish level table top wargaming more than anything. Not that I'm saying any of these similarities is a bad thing. I just think you're reading more into it than is actually there.

I also think you're assuming that the Magic crowd is younger in average age than the D&D crowd. I don't know if that is true. It certainly doesn't seem to be true in the area I live, but that may not be indicative of larger trends and patterns.

B) The idea that CCC and RPG markets can somehow pollinate each other is as old as TSR doing Spellfire and Wotc buying D&D. It hasn´t happened yet, and i don´t see why it should happen now.[/IMG]

I'm curious as to why you assume there's no cross-pollination at all. I play Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Warhammer (both Fantasy and 40,000). I started Magic first, then Warhammer, and then D&D. I don't think any of the games themselves support or provide an inclination to any other form of table-top gaming, but I do think that someone who enjoys one has the potential to enjoy the other. And it would be bad business for WotC not to try marketing to a potential customer base.

 

[BryonD]

Early on in the existence of MTG Richard Garfield wrote an article about how the existence of MTG was strongly influenced by Cosmic Encounters.

First Aside: I have no doubt that if anyone other than Garfield had written this there would have been immediate howls of outrage that any comparison whatsoever be offered between MTG and any other prior game.

Richard's point was that Cosmic Encounters is the exceptions based design core idea and MTG just takes that to 11. In CE your race is the exception. In MTG every spell card is an exception.

Obviously, RPGs are highly exception based. But the exceptions tend to be far greater in number and more abstract. Also, they tend to be a note on a sheet of paper referencing a rule in a book, rather than a physical card with the rule written on it.

It isn't anything new to point out that 4E fits the "deck" mold better than most RPGs.

Second Aside: That is NOT a claim that 4e = MTG.

Red Box doesn't bring power cards and decks into 4e, or RPGs for that matter. But it does bring "starter decks" into it.