One major thing I sure miss...

[MrMyth]

Yeah, I think WizarDru is correct about the important differences between then and now.

Personally, I'm very excited for the Adventurer's Vault, Martial Power, and the Manual of the Planes - I find myself constantly checking the WotC site for new previews, when I generally didn't notice new 3rd Edition books until they were actually on the shelves in the gaming store. (And I say that as someone that played 3rd Edition fervently, and picked up the majority of those books when I saw them - but I didn't really anticipate them.)

 

[SteveC]

That is a very good point by WizarDru concerning the staggered launch of the books in 3X days. The thing is, when 3.0 came out, I was down at my FLGS every month to pick something up, because the products interested me, but also because of the buzz that this very web site had created, along with Dragon magazine, which I started picking up again from right before the launch of 3E and kept up for about a year.

This time? Not so much. I'm only speaking personally, but I detect a distinct lack of the same level of interest. In looking at the Adventurer's Vault, for example, they're aren't any threads about it on the first three pages of ENWorld at the moment, at least when I did a quick scan.

The rest of the books just aren't that exciting to me...Adventurers Vault would be if I didn't already have the MIC for 3X...it seems so odd to release it so close to launch when it was also one of the last releases for 3X.

Manual of the Planes will join all of the other planes books from TSR/WotC that I haven't bought. Again, I wonder "what were they thinking?"

What I would be interested in seeing is books that expand the role of the wizard and cleric back to levels close to what they were in the previous core editions. I can't be alone in that thought, so I wonder at the delay in releasing Arcane and Divine Power.

Maybe some to the new books will come out with a "wow!" factor (I hope so!) but I haven't seen anything that wows me yet.

--Steve

 

[Ander00]

I waited until 3.5 before I even bought my own third edition core rulebooks, and my "collection" now spans 6 books. In contrast, there are already several 4E supplements coming up that I am considering to buy (despite monetary troubles, which I did not have back then).


cheers

 

[doctorhook]

Wait, we must not be discussing the same 4E D&D, because the one I've been playing has people bouncing off the walls over every scrap of info about future mechanics. Adventurer's Vault, Martial Power, Manual of the Planes, Draconomicon I, PH2, Eberron have got all kinds of people excited about things like new paragon paths, epic destinies, builds, races, feats, powers, power sources, and items of every shape, size, and stripe.

Which one were you talking about?

 

[wedgeski]

Adventurer's, Martial Power, and Manual of the Planes are all high on my "can't wait for" list. The adventures I will buy only if they break away from the incessant dungeon crawling of the Heroic Tier offerings (there are many elements of those adventures that I think are excellent, but the lack of variety is a sticking point for me). Dungeon and Dragon are both delivering, giving me something to look forward to practically every week.

If I miss anything it's the ENW buzz that made the 3.5 era so unmissable, but that seems to be a confluence of many factors, not simply any dislike people may or may not have for 4E. It's a shift in the boards, not, I believe, if my own experience is anything to go by, a shift in the game as a whole.

 

[mhensley]

The release of 4th edition has really invigorated the excitement over RPGs - RPGs other than D&D. I see all kinds of folks taking this opportunity to expore other systems. People are playing all kinds of other things now. The release of 4th edition has probably been the best thing to happen to (non-D&D) RPGs in a long, long time.

LOL

The other rpg companies should thank WotC for firing half their customers.

 

[Harlekin]

about 3E's release that we don't have today:

All the excitement and clamor over new product and new companies, and old products revisited. Whether 3rd party or WOTC proper. With 4E, of course 3rd party product is fairly non existant, and there's very little excitement created by the announcement of WOTC products in the pipeline(e.g.) The Manual of the Planes. There's a little discussion sure- but nothing like the 3.0 release era.

I used to log on to ENWorld back in 2000/2001 and every single day there were new products being announced I was really excited about.

There is NOT ONE product I am excited about in the pipeline for 4E. Not a single one. I want Ari's APG, and will buy it, but I'm not overly excited about it/chomping at the bit for it (no offense intended Ari). No adventures, no supplements, no settings. No magazines. Nothing.

Makes me sad (as sad as I can get over a silly game anyway)

I think this is mostly an effect of the ongoing edition war on this site. It is hard to generate excitement with so much negativity. Furthermore, several threads gushing about a new rules idea were moved from the general forum to the 4th edition rules forum. Thus you may not see them.

If you look at say rpg.net, where the overall hostility is contained to a few threads and all D&D posts are in one forum, you'll see some more enthusiasm for new releases.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't know - you look at the supplements, but I look at the DDI articles - every single one of them gets its own thread, and most are discussed for several pages. Crunchy previews are often given two threads - one in D&D 4 Rules, and one on General RPG Discussion.

So far, we haven't had any real "crunch" book - the FR "DMG" is mostly fluff. But the FR "PHB", the Adventurers Vault, the Martial Sourcebook, Manual of the Planes, they will all come out very soon.

3rd-party support is pretty low at the moment - those that have announced GSL products can't put them out before October, and I suppose many of them will need longer since they probably did also start later, with no access to the core rules. IIRC, even the APG will not be released October.

4E has barely been released. Give it some more time.

 

[Garnfellow]

The first few splatbooks for any new edition of any system are almost always devoted to updating older material to the new edition; things that were too cool to be jettisoned outright but maybe not so cool or important that they had to be included in the new core.

While most veterans would argue that you have to do it this way -- we need to have official 4e gnomes, barbarians, frost giants, etc. as soon as possible! -- the consequence is that the first round of splatbooks (again, for any new system) tend to be a little lackluster. This is by their very nature, as they are often just rehashing second tier material.

Take a look at the first couple years of 3e WotC releases. I think Manual of the Planes was the only real home run in the bunch. The rest were fairly staid. (Compare/contrast the prosaic MMII with any of the later monster books, for example.)

What made 3e different, though, was that the OGL gave so many third parties the ability to produce their own material. Because they didn't have access to old WotC IP, in general the 3PP stuff had to be new content. And because there were so many 3PPs in the mix, the good publishers needed to quickly diversify their offerings.

This led to a bonanza for consumers. The first couple of years of 3e were filled with an unprecedented quantity and variety of new material. As JeffB said, every time you went to ENWorld in those days it seemed a new product was being announced. The boom very quickly provided enough d20 material to appeal to anyone of any taste. It was just a crazy, exciting time.

The GSL has severely curtailed the amount of 3PPs willing to jump into the ring, and of those few publishers who have gone 4e, many of them are starting out with re-hashes of older material. The 4e product I'm most interested in is . . . Earthdawn.

It's just very different circumstances now.

 

[The_Gneech]

LOL

The other rpg companies should thank WotC for firing half their customers.

My Call of Cthulhu budget has certainly ballooned in the past year!

-The Gneech