Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4499223" data-attributes="member: 2067">That's a debatable proposition.Let's refine it a bit, get more specific.What matters for 4e D&D is making sure that people have as much fun playing D&D as possible. I think we can both pretty much agree on that.In a magically perfect world, the stuff in the core rules contains exactly everything you want from a basic D&D game, and nothing superfluous. Nothing you will never use, and everything you do use directly explained and implemented in a way that you can understand and make good use of.But life ain't perfect, so everyone, to a certain extent, has to make do with rules they'll never use and things that confuse them and a need to make rules for things that their games go into that the rules don't cover.I think we can both also accept that as a universal.Now, this is a problem for D&D, because everything they put out is inherently flawed to some extent no matter how hard they try, no matter what they do, they cannot, will not, ever, ever, ever, please everyone. 3e's answer to this problem was "We won't tell you how to have fun, that's up to you." In a nutshell, the strategy was to toss a bunch of rules at you that you may or may not need, not expecting everyone to get or use everything, but expecting the DM to weed out what they liked from what they didn't. For the people who REALLY LIKED in-depth character backgrounds, there was the PHB2. For people who thought mindflayers were the shizzle, there was Lords of Madness. For people who didn't, there were other things. They wouldn't please everyone with every product, but there would be enough mass appeals to justify the weird stuff. Sort of how a big record company or movie studio works. You throw out the summer blockbuster that everyone is going to go see, this pays for the little indie drama that is more niche, but gives you street cred as daring and edgy and willing to take risks (even if they're not very big risks, given the amount you raked in with the most recent superhero movie). 4e's answer to this problem has been pretty comparable to <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExecutiveMeddling" target="_blank">this</a>. In a nutshell, the idea so far is to figure out what "most people want," and deliver that, because "that's what works." This is sort of how network TV seasons have been done historically. You have models for what people like, and you give people what they want, and they love you for it, and then you give them more of what they want, so you make a lot of money on everything.The big flaw in that 4e approach, from where I'm sitting, is the same problem that network TV is having recently: Cable, baby. Things that are edgier and crazier and more different and more risky that, when they pay off, catch you entirely by surprise because you had NO FREAKIN' IDEA THAT WAS POSSIBLE. We don't have our "Cable D&D" yet, but I think it'd be the strongest way to actually compete with WotC (some sort of publisher's co-op that muscles a variety of products into new markets would be golden -- sell them online or through e-publishing to double down). The big flaw in the 3e approach is a lot of wasted wordcount and some big flops of products. So "what matters" is how WotC addresses the eternal problem of the books they put out not being useful for everyone in the world all at once. Do they put out their assured hits and then risk some failures with the weird stuff? Or do they design for the base to the exclusion of everything else and give us the D&D version of Everybody Loves Raymond (that's not a dig, really -- ELR is hilarious!).  Well, WotC has dynamite market research. I'm sure they can tell what most of their audience says they want.The real question about what WotC does here is this: Do they deliver ONLY what the audience tells them they want? Do they give us year after year of new sitcoms?Personally, I wouldn't be that surprised if we have some sort of 4e craft system down the road that is more detailed than DM fiat that I will love much, much more. We don't right now, but we've got at least 5 years, and until we have a 4e that I can love, I've got Pathfinder or 3e or T20 or FFZ. All of which have a more robust crafting system than DM fiat, even if "most people" never use it.</blockquote>

Verification