Some interesting news about 4th edition

[Johnnie Freedom!]

I call BS on it, and yes, I also looked to see if it was somehow April 1st. Yes, it's not a "4e Rumor", it's a troll.

This was my initial reaction, but then I remember something I heard at GenCon from a buddy of mine who works for a third-party OGL/d20 publisher (can't say more than that--sworn up and down to secrecy). He's connected to several guys at WotC, and while their lips are pretty tightly sealed, he told me that they were quietly laying out a blueprint for 4e. I didn't believe it at first, but he said something else that stuck in my head: it's going to build on the success of Magic: the Gathering.

Reading the OP makes me think there MUST be something to it.

Color me intrigued.

 

[WilliamAndersen]

I believe that Wizards once expressed a belief that cards was the future mechanic of RPGs, replacing the dice.

Personally, I can not really believe that Wizards (who has a great market dominating product in Magic for cards, and a great market dominating product in D&D for those that prefer dice) would want to alienate either by integrating the two. Let those that prefer cards play Magic, and those that prefer dice to play D&D.

I do not see the logic to integration, myself.

William

 

[jdrakeh]

I believe that Wizards once expressed a belief that cards was the future mechanic of RPGs, replacing the dice.

Ah, yes Everway - while a good game in its own right, it turned into a giant blackhole for WotC finances because cards were not, in fact, the future mechanic of RPGs. I'd liek to think that WotC learned something from this. I still suspect that the 'I have a friend who knows a guy who knows guys who know stuff' rumor is just that, though - a rumor.

 

[wingsandsword]

Ah, yes Everway - while a good game in its own right, it turned into a giant blackhole for WotC finances because cards were not, in fact, the future mechanic of RPGs.

Everway, not to mention SAGA, showed that card-based RPG's just weren't working, two dismal failures (and SAGA had Dragonlance and Marvel behind it in licensing as well as the marketing weight of TSR, so it wasn't exactly a no-name, but there are unsold SAGA boxes sitting in the used shelf of my FLGS to this day). Torg I think also experimented with cards in addition to a conventional RPG, but that didn't exactly catch on either.

It's been tried, and failed. When they've taken a property and made it into a collectable property, like the D&D & SW minis, or the Mechwarrior minis, they create it as a separate line (WizKids still produces Classic Battletech, it's just not one of their major products).

I still suspect that the 'I have a friend who knows a guy who knows guys who know stuff' rumor is just that, though - a rumor.

Like with any information you ever hear, consider the source.

A post on an internet message board (by a poster that's pretty unknown, and knowing him from another board you even say it seems out-of-character) that posts a highly controversial/questionable fact, with truth asserted as being a "friend of a friend" type story, where the original source would have to place himself in considerable jeopardy to reveal the information, you have to treat the information as extremely unreliable.

 

[Dirigible]

What balony.

We already know that WotC has fired all of its designers and that 4e will be written by the same people (I use the term loosely) that did FATAL.

It's true! it came to me in a vision after I melted down some tabs of LSD and mixed it with vodka!

edit: I didn't drink the resulting mixture, of course. That would be reckless. Besides, my hands were shaking too much from the crystal meth and paint thinner I'd already taken.

 

[Shemeska]

Market share would drop like a stone into a bottomless well with a majority of their audience dropping any new edition that had an integrated and required collectable element. In my opinion. Any attempt to do this would be a financial suicide on the order of a second coming of Dragon Dice.

I'd stop buying WotC material if that rumor held true, period.

MtG is fine as a game on its own. MtG isn't DnD, and MtG players can happily play their game while DnD players happily play their game. Similarly the miniatures game isn't DnD, and they can sit and play their minis game while I can play DnD. Seperate product lines and everyone is happy with the game of their choice; life is good.

The existance of one doesn't muddy the waters of the other, but any true attempt to introduce the randomized element of one into the other wouldn't be DnD, it'd be some freakish abomination stitched together from the dismembered body parts of the worst aspects of other games, given life by dubious game design and perhaps the electricity from a broken coffee pot in Redmond WA. It will demand your money and walk around stiffly and maybe moan and smell funny, leaching away your ability to play an RPG rather than a CCG, and eventually you and your friends will have to chase it into a burning windmill that was once converted into a FLGS, or perhaps exile it into the arctic.

Or something like that.

And yeah, the OP was full of it.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Well, it's been fun, guys. Guess it's time to head back to Shadowrun...

 

[Knightfall]

If the eventual 4E incorporates Magic: the Gathering into its ruleset, I'll just stick with 3.5, thank you.

Me too.

Having Magic cards as part of 4e would just "bite". WotC would be "dumb" to even consider such a thing. They would alienate an entire generation of gamers in one fell swoop.

Yuck.

However, I'm going to put this, hmm, "reliable source rumor" with the rest of the 4e nonsense that keeps coming up. I will believe it when WotC actually announces something. Everything is simply hearsay and conjecture.

KF72

 

[Angel Tarragon]

What a load of cowpie.

 

[No Name]

You're close. They're not integrating with M:TG.

Yu-Gi-Oh! + 3.5 = 4.0

My shoe told me so. (The left shoe, so there's no doubt about the truth of it)