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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="justanobody" data-source="post: 4577651" data-attributes="member: 70778">I stopped reading here and have nothing to comment on the part prior to this.To the first thing, you are right. They don't want those 64 pages again, because they already own them. How often do you buy a new Monopoly board? Only when it wears out. These things like the 64-pages are re-uasble.It is something in the gaming industry called replayability. The best game makers understand this and have gone great strides to make sure their games have replayability and that people will keep focusing on the line/series/etc that goes with their product. This is why the Final Fantasy, WarCraft, Sims, Sim City, etc games have done so well. They found what people liked and stuck to it and made sure there was replayability.This brings to your last thing in the quote. Well since you have a stable foundation for the game and it has replayability, then where do you get money? Do you keep screwing with the "core" and your games foundation so that you risk fans and consumers (Final Fantasy X-2), or do you keep with what works and just keep going forward with that even if it still contains those same 64-pages? Seems you can add to those 64-pages, but when you remove a majority of them, then your foundation has crumbled and things fall apart. You might get lucky once as make changes that alter things completely, but still garner more fans and consumers (WarCraft=>StarCraft, SimCity=>Sims).So where does the company money come from if not making a new game? Expansion packs! Ruins of Kunark, Shadows or Luclin, whatever this weeks Oblivion upgrade or WoW, or Warhammer MMO upgrade is.So don't expand the core, and dont go poking it with a jack-hammer either else you might find yourself losing footing and end up in a pile of rubble.So make the expansion material that gives new life to those first 64-pages and people will keep playing them and buying them for as long as they are good. When the expansions sour, then you have a problem.You also have to know when to stop, like before making the Star Wars prequels. Because no matter how much you want to add to try to make it better or refine some core, you will reach a saturation point where there is nothing left people will want.This brings back to the middle section of the quoted portion. D&D did manage to avoid a fast death by being put through a slow painful one. AD&D 2nd edition removed no options, but left out all the rulings like some circuit court judge was lording over you ready to sentence you the second you are found guilty of screwing up. Yes it had those things in the way of rules lawyers. The became even more prevalent because 3rd edition set out to rebuild the core mechanic, and anyone could play without fear of negative numbers and THAC0. Not to mention there were so many rules and "options" that it required rules lawyers to play. I will also give you 4th refined 3rd in that now these rules lawyers that were born strongly from 3rd edition have become a neccisity for 4th as that is all there is and the imagination of the system is left for the combat simulation game that the core is. Which isn't that where Gary moved away from to begin with and one of the reasons AD&D 1st edition was created to get a bit more away from the miniature wargames that THE creators of D&D were a bit tired of? But it has been 30 years so it must be "retro" to go back to D&D being a miniature wargame. The only reason the options are more manageable in 4th is because of how few and boring they are because the become so repetitive you don't even have to think just do the same routine of powers/actions/etc per encounter.As for what firesnakearies was saying, form what I can tell, is that the game has changed so much it just doesn't look like the same and why did it happen in a PnP game unlike the changes for say Final Fantasy where 8-bit graphics and 64k memory gave way to now 3rd gen consoles that have more power than mainframe computers at the time of the first of the series could handle or ever dream to become.So in the interest of the topic of this thread....The only things I really se for RPGs out there these days are rip-offs of D&D in some form using the OGL, or GSL. I haven't really seen a new game that would spark my interest that isn't somehow founded on the core of D&D and what WotC allows of its IP to use.I say looking backwards with the retro and return to combat intensive gaming of 4th may be the right thing, but not the way 4th tries to do it.Look at older games if they can be found and give them a try. I don't think there is much life left in wholly new game system as everything has been tried and probably failed due to the OGL and 3rd in the big D&D-reskinned bubble that popped. It will take someone fighting against, the companies with large marketing departments and little to no sense; to try something new and get it out there to the right people and start like D&D did.Ignore the existing games.Grow and publish small.Let word of mouth handle the rest.When that game comes along to knock D&D off its ivory tower, then I will be watching for it as well and after the dust settles from the RPG war in its death throes, I will be there waiting to pick up that new game if it comes out within my lifetime.But like you firesnakearies, I am stuck with D&D for now, and no one wants to even go back to things like Rifts and I never even got a chance to try Shadowrun.So I wish you luck on your search for that new game that sets the world on fire, and please inform me when you find it so I can look in its direction.</blockquote>

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