Slaying the greatest sacred cow: E-D&D

[Thornir Alekeg]

Don't touch my sacred cow.

I really don't care if the books are print format or electronic, what I really want is consistency. I don't want "patches" or updates released frequently. I might be OK with an annual update, but I don't want to have to worry about the "fix of the week." My concern is that an all electronic format would allow exactly that.

Ideally I want a game that was playtested sufficiently to know it works right (or at least isn't truly broken) from the beginning.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Well, yes and no. You have to be careful when you toss around words like "better" - as what constitutes better is a bit subjective. It may have a faster bitrate, but very poor market penetration and coverage, or be expensive compared to the incomes of the people in question.

Stipulated that there is tremendous variety in quality, cost, and access. Many areas are worse off than us, but I was responding to a fairly blanket statement. Most areas that are in any way significantly worse than the U.S. are manifestly NOT a market for D&D books, and most places outside the U.S. that are a reasonably likely market have better infrastructure and infinitely better choice of service providers.

Our infrastructure is dirt slow and poorly managed, so while there is a spectrum, we are at best in the middle of it.

Of course, all of that is aside the main point, which I suppose continues to deal with the difference between a paper toolkit for making games and a digital toolkit.

That's not a problem. It's the main feature. Electronic "book" aren't going to replace collectors' libraries. Where would the satisfaction be in taking a new player into the game room, pointing at a shelf of CDs and saying, "How's that for a collection?"

Ah, see, there's almost certainly a divergence of opinion on that one

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that a lot of people run screaming at that point. It stops being a fun game and becomes a commitment. Furthermore, I'm looking at spending another decade moving frequently, this time over a much larger potential area. Large collections of books are starting to become a bigger, fatter PITA for me than they ever were... and they've always been a mixed blessing at best.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Don't touch my sacred cow.

I really don't care if the books are print format or electronic, what I really want is consistency. I don't want "patches" or updates released frequently. I might be OK with an annual update, but I don't want to have to worry about the "fix of the week." My concern is that an all electronic format would allow exactly that.

Ideally I want a game that was playtested sufficiently to know it works right (or at least isn't truly broken) from the beginning.

I know I stated a pretty relaxed position up thread but version control and consistency would be necessary to some degree or the Living campaigns would become a total and complete nightmare to manage.

In the issue of releasing a game that is not broken to begin with, yeah for what value of broken?
In my opinion 4e is not broken in any reall fashion except maybe skill challanges. I do not really accept that rituals are broken though they have issues but I think that the problem is that 30+ years of training has taught us that spell utilities solve certain problems and we have to untrain this as DMs to allow for rituals. I also think that there is nothing is broken is one houserules that for rituals minutes == rounds in my campaign.

There are issues with the economy of D&D but there has always been issues with the economy of D&D (and most other RPGs that attempt to balance stuff via cost). The money skill notion is a very good one.

There are a couple of major things that would make 4e friendlier to rule tinkerers and that need to be inplace before any 5e could be comtemplated. Namely a way to house rule powers, feats and class builds in the Character Builder and a way to link a database of local house rules into the Compendium to selectively override parts of the compendium.
The latter would allow an electronic Unearted Arcana style alternate rules sets to be deployed by individual DMs.

In the context of 5e, in my opinion withing the next 10 years tops all books will appear in electronic format (they may also still come out in paper). I think that the display issues will be solved and so will the cost and the readers will be multifunction devices that will fit in your pocket.
When these devices appear most people will use them more or less exclusivly and paper books will be bought by old fogies and collectors.
D&D 5e will appear in that kind of world and will have to compete in that kind of marketplace. So the issues raised about version control, rules stability, custimising and so fort will have to be solved before that edition appears.

 

[N0Man]

I don't think there's really been much that has been game-breaking added to the errata. I think that you're elevating the importance of the errata too much.

In my opinion, it's just simply not that big of a deal if someone doesn't even get erratas at all. The people who care about erratas are people who are more hardcore in their gaming, and those participating in organized play. Those very same types are more likely going to have access to the errata, and want to make use of it.

Casual players may not care about the errata, and they can probably be fine without it.

However, I've found this really device that allows me to make minor corrections to my book, without having to be online. It's a small piece of wood with graphite in the center. ;-)

Print-outs of Erratas and penciled in corrections are fine for me. I hardly ever actually reference an errata in midgame.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

However, I've found this really device that allows me to make minor corrections to my book, without having to be online. It's a small piece of wood with graphite in the center. ;-)

Cool! The fabled Wand of Errata!

 

[Keldryn]

I never want to see D&D change into an entirely electronic format.

Part of it is the tradition/nostalgia angle: I like my shelves full of D&D hardcovers. I like taking my books camping or on a road trip and being able to play a quick game (okay, haven't done that in years, but still...). I want to grab a D&D book and read a few pages while sitting on the can.

Reading a book always feels different to me than reading off a computer screen. I hate reading long passages of text off of computer screens. I like to relax on the couch with my books. There is something psychologically different about reading a book and experiencing the physical aspect of holding it and turning the pages than looking up something on the computer. Books have a unique smell too.

Another part of it is practical: I'm a software engineer, and I spend 7-8 hours a day working on the computer (not like the frequent 12-16 hour days that I had to put in as a video game designer, but still long enough). I suffer from repetitive strain injuries in my arms and back from excessive computer use and eye strain from looking at the screen all day. I've started spending less time playing video/computer games in my free time so that I can spend more time with social, non-electronic gaming.

I want a hobby where I don't have to spend more time on the computer than I already do. I can't stand being "plugged in" all of the time, and part of the appeal of D&D is escaping the real world.

Suddenly, it's a lot harder to escape the real world when I'm looking up rules on my computer during the game, when I'm doing most of my adventure prep work on the computer, if I'm using a computer program to manage complex combat encounters in-game, when players are busy reading and responding to text messages during the game, and when players insist on building their characters exclusively with the CB program because writing with pencil on a character sheet is "too much work." I've had players wanting to just use a laptop computer at the table, with their character loaded up in the character-building program, instead of using a paper character sheet at all (which of course inevitably means that they'll be surfing the web and checking e-mail instead of paying attention).

I've been a big computer geek for 25+ years, but I have very strong feelings about keeping all of these electronic "conveniences" out of my game. Obviously, a lot of people are comfortable with them being part of the game, but I prefer keeping the electronic aspects entirely confined to specific parts of out-of-game prep work involving the creation of: player handouts, dungeon tiles/cardstock terrain, counters, blank character sheets/adventure logs, maps. And a lot of that is simply because I can't draw to save my life, and my handwriting is extremely messy.

If the D&D rules are ever only available in electronic format, then I'll simply be left behind, content with my archaic physical books.

Errata is a bit of a different issue. With the advent of widespread Internet access (and the fact that a huge section of the D&D audience is pretty tech-savvy), it is very trivial for WOTC to publish regular (and extensive) rules updates.

Older editions of (A)D&D were full of errors too, and contained a great number of poorly-explained rules that were in dire need of clarification. Dragon Magazine published the most important errata and clarifications, although it didn't reach nearly the same size audience as today. But they did manage to keep the updates to mostly just the essential bits. I really don't need to see a 3-line entry in a huge file of updates that basically tells me that there should be a "the" in the description of a power. They're more or less publishing the entire list of corrections/revisions that will be made to the next print run of the books, and that's way more than we need. The comparisions to updates for WoW and other MMORPGs is apt, and that's precisely where D&D should not go. Ever.

If a rule is truly broken and has a significant negative effect on play or needs clarification because a large number of players don't understand it, then by all means publish an update. If an Epic-level monster was printed with an attack that does 3d8+6 damage, but the designers intended it to be 3d8+7, then just leave it alone. The cognitive friction of having to learn, remember, and incorporate revisions needs to be weighed against how much impact it actually has on the game.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

depends how cheap e-book-readers will be in 10 years or so and if it works with full colour.

You know, a laptop is too much, a netbook is too small. a flexible e-book would be an ideal solution, but right now "unaffordable" and still improvable.

 

[Leatherhead]

As long as we are going for pipe dreams, I would rather they got it right the first time and didn't push out updates at all.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've been thinking that things like this could mean the "final edition" of D&D: the point at which the edition treadmill is jettisoned for a longer-term strategy.

• E-Books. Your entire D&D library in a Kindle-like device. Wizards sells it to you, and you update it by plugging it into your computer and downloading the most recent updates for the books you've bought. Also can include wireless networking for doing things like sending "secret notes" to individual PC's. Think of the D&D thing like an iPod more than a library.
• Print on Demand. You assemble the books you want to print out from a library of rules that WotC maintains. Subscribe to the service, then you print out exactly the book you need.
• E-Paper. A flexible piece of paper you hold in your hand whose content is delivered via the internet and shown using the "paper" as a display.
• "Sixth Sense" Technology. A wearable/mountable projector that is connected to the internet, that uses whatever surfaces you have available as your "touchscreen."

I think Print On Demand is probably the most feasable idea, though I'm kind of enamored of e-paper as well. E-Books might be problematic for a lot of reasons, and SSTech is still pretty early along (but it's open source, so it would be pretty easy to shepherd it to something awesome for a dedicated team).

What all of these share is that whatever you read the rules off of is updated continuously, but you don't have to be "at a computer" to use them. Computing is becoming ubiquitous, so it would be bizarre for D&D not to use this in the future.

The side benefit of all this is that it also supports alternate rule systems very well. Imagine a community like Digg for D&D, where we might get official updates, and people also post their rules and house rules, you can "like" the rules you think are great, and integrate them into your own game, perhaps assembling a Print On Demand hardcover that exists just for your home game. There'd be no need for "4e or Pathfinder" style choices. Wizards could let you do whatever rules you want to do, because they'd control the network.

If WotC controlled the network, they could collect their monthly fees, upgrade the network, come up with new ways to share and distribute rules, etc. One of D&D's strongest assets is the community. Combine supporting the community with an easy way to let players pick the rules they want in their home games, and you might have something that makes D&D mean RPG like Google means internet search.

 

[Derulbaskul]

(snip)I do not want to be too critical, but all this stuff about internet-only stuff is not possible for large segments of the world population. Granted most of WOTC's customers are in that segment that has access to the Internet. (snip)

This point is also rather irrelevant because a country with limited internet access is also a country that lacks the purchasing power to develop a D&D player base because of the financial inability to purchase the books.

The ability to purchase D&D books, a luxury item, basically places you within the top 5% to 10% of the world's wealthiest and you are practically guaranteed to have internet access.