D&D 4E Paizo and 4e - Vive le Revolution!

[JVisgaitis]

It's going to have to be 4e or bust for me.

I think that's going to be the stance of the majority of people. As much as I admire Paizo, Green Ronin, Paradigm, and Necromancer, there is no way I'll invest in a 3.75 edition. I make it a point to not buy anything now. The only 3.5 product I am buying now is Pathfinder because its so bad ass.

One of the lost chances that I see, is that they all talked about doing this 3.75 edition some time ago. If it came out a year ago, I would say it had a very good chance of catching on. Trying to release that now in the shadows of a 4e release? Wow. That's just scary stuff. When you try to cater to a subset of a subset, your inevitably going to fail.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Ideal situation....

Um, for who? If that situation would ever occur your looking at the RPG market apocalypse. I hope you like Wow if this is what your hoping for...

 

[JVisgaitis]

If 2e changed to little, then 4e seems like it is changing to much. But even more to the point, neither system seems to have been developed with my game in mind, and both seem more about reducing my options and defining how I should play than giving more more options and tools to work with so I can choose how to play.

You realize that no commercial product will ever cater to the game that you want? Your a rules tinkerer, which is fine. I just hope you understand that you'll probably never see your ideal system away from your own gaming table.

 

[carmachu]

While no individual d20 company was capable of unseating WotC, the sum total of alternate materials out there must have hurt them to some degree. After all, they stopped supporting the SRD immediately after UA.

Correct. WotC, for all their products, arent known for their adventures....outside say something like Red Hand of Doom and say Expidition to Castle Greyhawk to a lesser extent.

WotC's adventures, to put lightly, suck.

But the third party ones do not. When you think of Necro, you think R. A. or City of Brass. Pazio, awesome dungeon mags, adventure paths. Goodman games...their 1st ed feeling ones. Monte has Ptolus and others under his belt.

In short....most of the third party items have very memerable games and products. WotC? Not so much. What do you think of when you think WotC? There isnt anything really signature outside of the core game.


I dont know if its intentional, or unintentional that Wotc has delayed the stuff for pazio and others. If its unintentional, its only doing themselves a disservice with the release looming. If its intentional.....ugh.

 

[psionotic]

I dont know if its intentional, or unintentional that Wotc has delayed the stuff for pazio and others. If its unintentional, its only doing themselves a disservice with the release looming. If its intentional.....ugh.

I don't believe that they are intentionally screwing the 3rd party developers. I think it is their intention, in fact to have healthy third party support. We know that they are all probably overloaded with work over there, and that's the most likely reason things have gone out.

However, it is very disconcerting that we haven't had any public announcement from WotC on when they will be getting materials out to other companies, especially after Necromancer, Paizo, Green Ronin, and Paradigm (among others) have all commented here with their concerns that they can't support 4e out of the gate without immediate action.

The lack of good third party support, even the smallest possibility that we will have a market segmentation, should scare the pants off of everyone. I would really love to see Scott or someone comment publicly, in this thread or at wizards.com, to let us know what their support plans actually are, and when we'll see some headway on implementing them.

 

[Xaaon]

While I do think there will remain a small market for 3.5 stuff, I think Paizo is too large a company to serve it profitably. I strongly suspect Paizo's best interests are in converting to 4.0, and I think the whole community is better served playing one game rather than a bunch of them. Ideally, 4.0 will be that game and people will be happy.

Paizo is not an official licensee anymore. We can't publish Greyhawk, we can't publish the Great Wheel, and we can't carry the banner for all of the sacred cows WotC is killing.

What we CAN do is use the new rules to create exciting material in the SPIRIT of the game we love and have loved most of our lives. We're looking forward to a chance to do that, and we expect that the new rules will allow us to.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing, LLC

"You make me sad, good sir knight."

It's going to be like D&D civil war! 3.5 vs. 4.0...who are the blues who are the greys will be decided in the next year...

all but one of my gaming group is staying with 3.5, the other is a WoW playing power gamer, so he might like the new rules.

 

[Xaaon]

Is it better to go 3.75? I'm not so sure. Supposing they do a 3.75, what do you stick in it? What and how much do you change? How do you know you're not doing another version of 4.0? I don't know maybe they have the 3.75 changes in mind aready and all that is left is the playtesting.

Another problem which you touched on is how long do you support it? Do you switch to 4e after awhile.

Another problem with a 3.75 is how much of the market would you get? A lot of the 3.5 grognards are saying something along the effect of "I have enough 3.5 stuff to last to 5e". If they aren't gonna go 4e what makes you think they'll go 3.75 (admittedly this would depend on how compatible 3.5 and 3.75 are)? Then you got the ones that'll be like "thanks but we're waiting for 4e". I think Morrus' claim about the sharp decline in sales since the 4e announcement is pretty telling.

Another problem is are people gonna like the changes you make? What if 3.75 hate springs up? "What they change rule x !?!?! That's it I'm not buying it!!"

To me it makes more sense to keep going 3.5 until you can switch to 4e

I would do a 3.75, what I don't like about 4E is the lack of backwards compatibility and the MMORPG feel they are inferring.

 

[carmachu]

Yes. But I didn't say that you couldn't have a successful company with that lineup. I said, and I stand by it, that you don't topple the dominant brand with that kind of lineup.

/M

You dont have to topple the dominant brand, to hurt them. To use another anology:

Games workshop.

Besides its own boneheaded decisions, they face competition. No single company can compete on their level. But they dont have to. If PP takes a small bit, then rackham takes one, then flames of war....and so on, its death by a thousand cuts.(not that they die, nor get toppled, but it can put a hurt on their bottom line....)

 

[Maggan]

You dont have to topple the dominant brand, to hurt them.

Of course not.

I have a sneaky suspicion that this thread is under the "moving of the goal-posts" curse.

The OP talked about the revolution. A revolution is not "hurting" the dominating brand. It's toppling it, replacing it, out-doing it.

Aint gonna happen even if Paizo release 3.75. That's all I'm saying.

/M

 

[carmachu]

It's apparent that WotC can't get them their material because, as it looks like, WotC hasn't ironed out the system. Clearly when they've got their first drafts ready for printing, they can help out the 3rd party guys (assuming they're gunna).

Doesnt that worry you a bit? Not so much for the the 3rd party products, becuase they set a hard release date and seem to be rushing it out the door....or at least thats how it appears....