Not Reading Ryan Dancy

[Falstaff]

Honestly, I don't see how you can adjudicate the 1e combat rules correctly without miniatures and a battle mat too. I'm not saying you can't adjudicate 1e combats without minis (I almost never use minis when playing 1e or B/X D&D) but doing without requires adjudications outside the rules just as much as 3e would IMO. 1e spells, light sources, weapons, etc. all have ranges that must be adjudicated/fudged if you're not using minis and a ruler. 1e facing rules for AC are almost impossible to fully implement for combats involving more than 3-4 individuals if you're not using some type of counter to track positions. If you're not tracking those things in some concrete manner the DM is either ignoring parts of the rules or making on-the-fly adjudications based on his best estimate of where PCs and opponents are during the round.

IMO going without minis in 3e isn't any different. The rules you are adjudicating/skipping/fudging are different, but the amount of stuff you have to hand-wave is virtually the same. I think the reason the use of minis in 3e is more common isn't because they're required more by the rules, but because the rules make the implementation of minis and a battlemat easier and lots of people just prefer to use minis when the rules make it easy for them to do so.

Okay.

 

[dcas]

1e spells, light sources, weapons, etc. all have ranges that must be adjudicated/fudged if you're not using minis and a ruler.

Generally I use saving throws to determine whether or not someone is in the range of a particular spell.

I think using minis for abstract combat is a bit strange -- since in actual melee combat the combatants would be moving all over the place rather than staying in one particular square. As far as other rules are concerned, such as attacking from behind, I would generally rule that a PC could face all of his attackers unless there are (a) too many of them or (b) one or more of them has skills (Move Silently, etc.) that would allow him to approach unnoticed.

Not necessary at all to ignore rules. Yes, some on-the-fly adjudication is probably necessary, but IMHO preferable to using miniatures.

 

[Banshee16]

I am of two minds about "4th Edition".

First, I think that WotC may, at some point, create a product called "4th Edition", but that product will look just like 3rd Edition with a series of clear rules improvements & tweaks; essentially, a 3.5 on steroids. To me, that's a "marketing release".

Second, I think WotC may actually try to make "Dungeons & Dragons" mean "a miniatures game with roleplaying", and I could see them creating a whole new way of presenting D&D in a miniatures-centric way that would be worth calling the line "4th Edition". To me, that's a "new design release".

I think there's a good chance, probably 50/50, that we'll see a 3.75 kind of release in 2007 or 2008. A new set of core books, revised, but basically the same game we already have. I think that product will not be called "4th Edition", nor will it be marketed as 4th Edition. There are powerful forces inside WotC that believe (not without quite a bit of market research and product experience to back them up) that gamers will buy a "revision" to a games' core rules every 3-4 years and that not inducing those purchases is just leaving money on the table.

What I'd like to see is a "4th Edition" which hybridizes MMORPG play and tabletop play, with an RPGA moderation facility, that uses on-line tools to create characters and scenarios, and focuses on bringing the best elements of the tabletop and the digital environments together under the most powerful brand in fantasy adventure gaming. If you ever see a notice that WotC has hired me back to run RPGs, that's the direction I'll be looking to move.

Ryan

Collated and organized rules? Maybe. And I'm not going to question their market research, as I have only annecdotal evidence to compare against.....but I don't *agree* with the assessment that gamer will buy outright new editions every 3-4 years. There are so many supplemental books etc. that making wholesale edition changes will (I think) fragment their customer base.

Probably many of us here are EN World are atypical customers....both from the fact that we're all sitting on a message board talking about the game, but also from the perspective that many of us have probably purchased many books over the years. If they started doing edition changes every 3-4 years, I'd probably fall behind and stop bothering to buy, and I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. This is not a hobby of buying trading or gaming cards. At an average price of $30-40, gaming books are expensive....once you have 40, 50, 60 books, that's a significant expense. I won't use the term "investment" because the books rarely gain value. I know I could probably sell my Dark Sun collection for $100 or $200...but it cost far more than that to get it in the first place....hence it's not an investment.

The problem isn't the core rules....so much as it is everything *depending* on the core rules....the complete books, the equipment guide, the various monster manuals, the adventures, the races series, the "nomicon series", etc. Changing from 3E to 4E would invalidate that material. Sure, it can be converted, but that's a lot of work. There's plenty of 2E stuff which still hasn't been converted. So given that I've probably got 40-50 rulebooks based on 3/3.5, there's really not much incentive to buy a 4.0 MM/PHB/DMG, whereas I'd probably continue to purchase 3.5 supplements.

Many of us don't use the minis, so incorporating them further into the rules might not be the wisest move. Or maybe, I'm the exception rather than the rule. I know in my group that most of us have purchased minis, but we get maybe 5% use out of our minis. Everyone's purchased some, but there's one guy that plays the minis game on alternate nights, so he keeps collecting. He has so many that most of never get a chance to use our own, so 5 of the 6 people in the group have stopped buying any more, and only one guy is purchasing them at this point. I don't think I've even opened my minis container in 2-3 months.

Those are just my thoughts.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

Not necessary at all to ignore rules. Yes, some on-the-fly adjudication is probably necessary, but IMHO preferable to using miniatures.

I generally find that using miniatures pulls me out of the game.

Banshee

 

[Storm Raven]

Maybe.

I DM a First Edition campaign now. We never use - or ever feel the need to use - miniatures or battle mats. Even when I was younger and my older brother and his pals played AD&D, they never used miniatures.

That is almost entirely irrelevant. The fact remains that AD&D 1e as written, very clearly shows its wargaming roots. To play the game, as written, almost requires miniatures, or at least some way of measuring distances and showing positions and so on. I know many people who did not do that, but they glossed over, ignored, or fudged a lot of the AD&D 1e rules to play the game that way.

I don't think the same can be said for the 3rd edition of D&D. From my understanding you MUST use minis if you want to play correctly. Sure, I'm certain there are groups of players out there that play 3rd edition and don't use minis, but I can't see how they adjudicate the combat rules correctly.

They do it the same way one adjudicates AD&D 1e combat without miniatures: they ignore or fudge a lot of things that the rules specify. There is nothing wrong with doing this (no matter what edition you are suing), but the simple fact remains that the most "wargamey" versions of D&D are the ones that have been the most commercially successful. And WotC (or anyone else who might happen to own the rights to D&D in the future) is interested in making commercially successful products.

 

[Ourph]

Generally I use saving throws to determine whether or not someone is in the range of a particular spell.

I'm not sure how that would work. Do you mean you would have a combatant roll a saving throw to determine whether he was within the 6" + 1"/level range of an M-U's Message spell? If so, that 1) seems like a wierd way to handle it; and 2) just validates my point that in order to do without minis the DM is probably going outside the normal rules to adjudicate most situations involving distance/movement/facing/etc.

As far as other rules are concerned, such as attacking from behind, I would generally rule that a PC could face all of his attackers unless there are (a) too many of them or (b) one or more of them has skills (Move Silently, etc.) that would allow him to approach unnoticed.

That's fine, but if the defender is using a shield you need to know which attacks are falling on his shield side, his off-shield side, etc. in order to match a specific attack roll with the right AC. When I'm running 1e I can't keep track of that for more than 1 or 2 people at a time, so if I'm not using minis, I usually just pick and it's not necessarily consistent with whatever I picked two rounds ago, so I'm hand waving it. I'm just pointing out that running 3e combat without minis requires the same type of handwaving, so technically neither DM would be running the combat's "right" (as Falstaff put it).

Not necessary at all to ignore rules. Yes, some on-the-fly adjudication is probably necessary, but IMHO preferable to using miniatures.

To use the same example from above. If a 1st level M-U character is 20" away from is Fighter companion in round 1, moves 12" in round 2 and you on-the-fly adjudicate that he's close enough to case Message in round 3, you're ignoring the rules (for spell range and/or movement because he's 8" away casting a spell with a range of 7"). I have no problem with this. I do it all the time when playing without minis. I'm just pointing out that playing without minis in 3e doesn't require you do to anything materially different than what people do all the time when playing other systems.

If playing "right" means tracking distances, movement and position exactly for every creature involved in a combat then playing the game "right" without using minis and a ruler/battlemat is just as hard for 1e as it is for 3e.

 

[thedungeondelver]

That is almost entirely irrelevant. The fact remains that AD&D 1e as written, very clearly shows its wargaming roots. To play the game, as written, almost requires miniatures, or at least some way of measuring distances and showing positions and so on. I know many people who did not do that, but they glossed over, ignored, or fudged a lot of the AD&D 1e rules to play the game that way.

Y'know this is the one thing that current edition(s) of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS do that I actually don't mind, and find a bit of a puzzler that many of my fellow prior-edition adherents are up in arms about. That is, the minis angle. I love miniatures, I always have. I find them indespensible for playing D&D of nearly any stripe - whether placing them in meticulously constructed underground fortresses, built using every last chip of my massive Dwarven Forge collection or I just grabbed a battlemat, marker and whatever minis happened to be on the painting table at the moment, I likes me some minis. I'm not crazy about "D&D minis" - the actual, physical minis themselves but that's because I'm a snob. I prefer metal, hand-painted (by me!).

Assuming basic stats could be agreed upon by both parties, I'd play some D&D MINIATURES using my extensive Reaper collection...but that's another story.

(no matter what edition you are suing)

Especially if you're Pat Pulling! zing!

 

[RyanD]

I don't *agree* with the assessment that gamer will buy outright new editions every 3-4 years.

There were roughly 4 years between 3.0 and 3.5. Say what you want about 3.5 (and god knows, a lot has been said) it was very successful commercially. How much of the 3.0 player network upgraded to 3.5? My guess is 60% or more initially, and probably as much as 80% in the present.

A ".5" style "revision" (especially if it contained a Monster Manual with 75% new monsters, and a spell section in the PHB with 75% new spells) would likely be very successful. I could see adding a big section to the DMG on how to design monsters and/or gods too. If that line is announced in Spring of '07 for release in spring of '08, it would be right on the ".5" timeline. And I suspect it would be just as commercially successful as 3.5 was.

Ryan

 

[JVisgaitis]

And I suspect it would be just as commercially successful as 3.5 was.

Ryan, this is something that I always wondered, and you are probably the only person who could answer this. Before we commited to doing Denizens of Avadnu for 3.5, we had 1,200 preorders through Alliance. After 3.5 was released and we upgraded our product, those preorders were cut in half. Did that have anything to do with the announcement of 3.5 or was that just bad luck on our part or the state of the industry at the time? Do you think 3.5 was as successful for third party companies as it was for Wizards?

 

[RyanD]

Did that have anything to do with the announcement of 3.5 or was that just bad luck on our part or the state of the industry at the time? Do you think 3.5 was as successful for third party companies as it was for Wizards?

I do not think the cut in your orders was a 3.5 effect. I think that 3.5 happened to coincide with the <pop> of the D20 bubble, as retailers realized that they couldn't just order 1 of any thing "D20" and expect it to sell. Once that bubble popped, I think a lot of retailers canceled >all< their D20 preorders, then switched to selectively ordering stuff on a case by case basis especially once it shipped and they could gauge reaction on the web.

Because those two things happened at roughly the same time (and it could be argued that WotC's revelations about 3.5 at Winter Fantasy was a trigger of the D20 bubble being popped), I think it will be impossible to ever tell how much of the pain experienced by D20 publishers came from stores getting savvy to the glut on the market, customers deciding to stop binging on D20 products, people confused/upset with the changes in the game and how extensive they proved to be, and the resulting economic effects which probably took down some good games and good companies by association.

I'm virtually certain that the only company to really benefit from 3.5 was Wizards of the Coast. That doesn't mean they were the only company that >could< have benefited, only that they >were< the only company that benefited. I think the D20 publishers, en masse, just didn't understand the scope of the changes that were coming, and did not react quickly enough to them to keep riding the wave. I suspect a lot of people who are doing D20 design looked at 3.5 and thought "well, that's not much more than a tune up" -- the perception within the industry was significantly different than the perception of the customers, who perceived the 3.5 changes as so significant that they elected to assume that 3.0 material was no longer easily usable.

And frankly, we really had pretty much hit a point of saturation. Within the core "high fantasy" genre, all the real meat was off the bone, and publishers were getting increasingly desperate to find something worth publishing a book about. Most of the D20 glut wasn't worth upgrading to 3.5 anyway.

So I think you just had a big ball of confusion, and its just not fair to point a finger at any one thing and say "that's the cause of the problem".

Ryan