NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6557529" data-attributes="member: 42582">Besides licences, core books provide a steady stream of income.Producing supplements to generate income is economically irrational if that income is not enough to justify the cost of production.From the point of view of gameplay, Essentials was not a new edition. It was a repackaging of the action resolution rules, an editing/errata-ing of the monster books, a re-release of the GMing advice, and a collection of new classes built along slightly different lines but compatible with what had gone before (much like the psionic classes of PHB3).From the point of view of marketing and commercial ambition, Essentials was a new edition: an attempt, as was stated by WotC at the time, to establish an "evergreen" product line with a clear "on ramp". Contrary to some posts earlier upthread, all 10 Essentials products were released - two Heroes books, the RC, MV and DM Kit, 3 packes of Dungeon Tiles, a dice set, and the Red Box. But they didn't do the desired job - the on ramp didn't work.I think it's interesting to see how similar the 5e strategy is to the Essentials strategy - a Starter Set designed to feed into evergreen core books. The game itself is also noticeably similar - 5e PCs are very similar, in build and resulting asymmetric balance, to Essentials PCs.But there are also differences. First, a two-year hiatus has cleared shelves of 4e products, meaning that the "on ramp" is not obscured by the existence of other products, PHBs 1 to 3, etc, clogging the shelves and confusing the market.Second, the starter set and the PHB use the same rules. (The Essentials Red Box used different rules for some PCs, compared to the Heroes books.)Third, while the PC build rules are quite similar to Essentials (though presented in a more traditional D&D style and layout than Essentials use of the 4e style), the action resolution mechanics are closer to a stripped-down 3E combined with a cleaned-up AD&D.5e is like Essentials done properly, without being weighed down by its connections (both mechanically, and marketing-wise) to 4e.</blockquote>

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