Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7024272" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right. WotC CREATED Paizo, gave them a product to base their success on, a list of customers to market to and recognition by those customers, etc. It was ROCK STUPID BUSINESS PRACTICE that allowed Paizo to do what it did.The other half was simply execrable market timing and market sense. 3.5 wasn't at the point where the market was ready to move on. WotC wanted to move on because WotC had exhausted its main revenue potential from 3.5, but they forgot that you have to bring the market along with you, you can't just ram new product down its throat. Then they were so ham-fisted that they rammed it sidewise to boot. 4e released in say 2014 as the 40th Anniversary edition of D&D, would have probably been MUCH easier to swallow, particularly accompanied by some less witless marketing and with a good bit of extra time to go through a whole additional round of polishing to make the presentation smoother. With good initial adventures, there's no reason to believe such a product launch couldn't have been just as successful as 5e's was. I really disagree strongly with the notion that there is anything inherently 'un-D&D like' about 4e or that makes it any less suitable as a D&D product offering than other editions have been. I've run 4e very extensively and had great success with it. Ordinary people who like to play D&D are perfectly happy with 4e, and DMs LOVE running it for the most part. As to the notion that it is some huge break with previous editions, give it up. This is just not really supportable. OD&D through 2e certainly represent a 'family' of games that have more in common with each other than they do with 3.x (d20 D&D), or 4e (which is really a flavor of d20 system). However , the differences aren't that big, and 4e isn't significantly more different from 2e than 3e is, nor is 5e significantly more similar to 2e mechanically. 3e-5e represents a 'WotC version' of the game, D&D, but with SOME differences, that's all. And really how big and significant are those differences? The only aspect where 4e diverges somewhat more than 3.5 is in terms of some of the mechanics of spell-casting for the 'wizard' class and the 'cleric' class. Even there the gist of what you can do is largely the same and every variation introduced in 4e was long since foreshadowed and implemented in a similar form in 3.5. All that is really left to say is different are saving throws, which isn't exactly the beating heart of the game, and even that is different more in terms of who rolls the die than in actual mechanics (with 4e's duration controlling saves being an entirely new mechanic). 4e shifts the emphasis of the game and conceptual organization of play in terms of story and action, which IS significant, but it does it WITHOUT abandoning most of the infrastructure of the game. Its more a remodeling where various parts of the structure take on new significance and new functions but still retain most of their old form.</blockquote>

Verification