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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6995075" data-attributes="member: 58197">4E was an example of a pattern I've seen in a number of gaming properties (not just RPGs; video game franchises do it too). I call it "excursion and return."The game designer, whether out of hubris or need to juice sales, decides that with this release they're going to totally overhaul the game and redesign everything from scratch. Much hype ensues. When the game is released, however, a lot of players feel betrayed, and justifiably so; the whole point of buying Game X of a franchise is that you liked Game X-1 and want a polished, improved version of it. The new game might be a perfectly good game, but it's not what you laid down money for. Plus, you are now facing the possibility that you will never get that polished, improved version of Game X-1, if the company continues down this new road.Some players embrace Game X. The rest revolt. Sometimes this kills the franchise dead. When it doesn't, however, the designers usually learn their lesson. When Game X+1 comes out, it follows in the pattern of Game X-1, and Game X is mostly pushed aside. However, the excursion isn't a total loss. Because Game X was such a massive redesign, it gave the designers a chance to try all kinds of crazy experiments; the most successful of those experiments get quietly incorporated into Game X+1. As a result, Game X+1 can end up substantially better than what came before it.Of course, the players who did embrace Game X are left out in the cold. Sadly, there is seldom much that can be done about that. I kind of hope that Wizards eventually sees fit to put the 4E rules under OGL so that somebody can keep it going for the people who really dug it... but they probably won't. It's one thing to license your current ruleset in hopes of growing a 3PP community around it, quite another to deliberately encourage competition for the core product.</blockquote>

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