Stifling Innovation

[Mallus]

The fact that they have put 4E versions of many 3.5 splatbooks lends credence to this view.

The fact that 4e and it's support materials represent an awful lot of design work and a radical rethinking of the game's core system forecloses on that view. Like it or not, the system is full of new material. It's not like WotC is selling you stuff you've already purchased (unlike say, Pathfinder... I kid... I kid... mostly).

Radical change to increase the "bottom line", whether real or perceived is going to make loyal fans of the game angry.

Loyal fans can be an irritable and hard to please lot. Take my word on this, I live in Philadelphia .

The interesting thing about the new WHFR is they seem to be going after a new market segment. People should be happy about this experiment. Aren't gamers always complaing about the need to attract new players?

 

[Obryn]

Yeah, criticizing a gaming company for releasing products because they want to make money is kind of an alien thought to me.

-O

 

[Mallus]

Yeah, criticizing a gaming company for releasing products because they want to make money is kind of an alien thought to me.

Don't be silly, game makers should be like monks in search of Zen perfection with their game systems. They shouldn't pursue something as base and worldly as profits.

"We'll release the game when it has achieved enlightenment".

 

[Brother MacLaren]

WotC's use of "edition" in the case of D&D is extremely eccentric. This WHFRP move emulates that practice, which I think has wisely not been widely adopted.

WotC has an extremely valuable brand, and brand loyalty is a very powerful thing. If the exact same ruleset were released under a different brand, it would not sell 1/10 as many as 4E. Most groups probably wouldn't even have a discussion about switching if it were "That Mike Mearls guy released a new fantasy RPG with some independent publisher."

That's not to disparage the inherent quality of 4E. Brand loyalty is simply an extremely powerful thing in marketing. Soda, beer, fast food, people usually aren't going to go out and compare every possible alternative, or even any alternatives at all. They'll stick with a name brand that they like. Now, normally companies with these overwhelmingly powerful brand names are conservative with them (the New Coke disaster an exception), but most of the major brand names have serious competition to which their consumers might switch if they tinkered too much with the Big Mac or the Bud Light recipes. D&D has no serious competition. And unlike the other name brands, it's selling a network good, where the more of something is sold the more valuable it becomes. That makes the #1 position self-reinforcing to a point.

The D&D brand is like Windows. Windows is also dominant with little real competition, it is a network good (so people buy it in part because it is the most commonly used), and Microsoft can do whatever it wants to the code, adding or taking away features, fixing bugs and creating new ones, while being pretty sure it's going to sell a whole lot of product.

 

[Ariosto]

The gadgetry may be pretty darned spiffy. Maybe some people would like to buy it and the classic WHFRP game -- but they won't have that option (except to find the classic in the used-books market). The folks who prefer the long-established WHFRP are likewise out of luck ... and the publisher is out of luck in that it cannot sell what it has not got.

Who is really in luck? People who did not like WHFRP in the first place! The bet, I guess, is that there are a lot of those -- and that "How do you like now?" will grab them.

Of course, that's based on the outdated notion that this is in fact a game business we're talking about! As if Lucas were in the movie business, eh? Games, toys ... the real product is just the imagery slapped on, that somehow vaguely refers back to a time when there was an actual work of art behind the "property".

If people really don't give a flying fig about the game, or even about the bloody, dirty, humanly vulnerable futility that made a name for the setting ... then this is like buying a Happy Meal just for the toy. Is it really worth a hundred-dollar price tag?

 

[coyote6]

The gadgetry may be pretty darned spiffy. Maybe some people would like to buy it and the classic WHFRP game -- but they won't have that option (except to find the classic in the used-books market).

Or buy the PDFs (assuming FFG leaves them up on DTRPG/RPGNow, of course).

I'm hoping a new edition will mean a price cut for 2e PDFs, which I will then happily purchase.

 

[Ariosto]

Excellent point about the PDFs! Those are pure gravy now: near-zero investment for the publisher.

 

[Cadfan]

D&D 4e has ability scores that go from -1 upwards.

But for legacy reasons we disguise these ability scores behind a screen that makes them appear to go from 8 upwards, even though that entails the awkwardness of making your REAL ability score be the number on your sheet divided by 2, minus 5, rounded down.

And we hid that 8+ in a system that makes them look vaguely like they go from 3 to 18, even though they don't. Even though they haven't for ages.

I'd say that at least some innovation was squashed.

 

[ST]

And we hid that 8+ in a system that makes them look vaguely like they go from 3 to 18, even though they don't. Even though they haven't for ages.

I get what you're saying, but there's at least one way in which those "fake" scores get used -- feat prerequisites. Granted, it wouldn't have been much of a difference to say "+2 Str required" instead of "13 Str required", but it is mechanically different.

Personally? I'd totally be cool with just using the bonuses instead of the raw score for everything.

 

[Dire Bare]

I’ve been reading the initial responses to the recently announced WHFRP 3, many of the them negative as it seems the game mechanics have been radically overhauled (I’m unsure myself about it). Of course we don’t really know that much about the game yet, let alone read the rules or played it. This is very reminiscent to the response to D&D 4e where again there were major changes to the rules. It seems us gamers can be a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to our favourite games.
The questions I have is will these strong negative reactions to innovation by major game companies stifle creativity and innovation in the long run, or should the trying of new ideas be limited to indy games/companies or to brand new games with no pre-existing baggage and expectations, to avoid upsetting people?

Oh, I think this goes beyond role-playing games! This is the reason why so many big-budget Hollywood movies get "focus-grouped" to death and end up sucking. The studios have a very legitimate fear that if they innovate too much, either with an existing property or a brand new one, they'll upset too many folks. Of course, they're also worried that if they don't innovate enough, they'll get a similar reaction. The truly great movies that get released often are a result of a confident, powerful, and somewhat brave producer pushing the movie through and keeping it tight to his/her initial vision.

It's also true with RPGs. When WotC was faced with the idea of releasing a new edition, they had to find the "right" balance between too little innovation (a 3.6 edition, if you will) and too much innovation (so that the game is unrecognizable. Whether they succeeded or not is obviously subjective, but conservative personality gamers by and large don't like the large changes made to D&D . . . . . and now to Warhammer Fantasy!

I personally love innovation, even with existing properties. I love 4e, and I'm getting lost in the new Pathfinder RPG right now (and I think I'll enjoy this too!). I've never played WFRP, but I've also never been attracted to the game until NOW! This new edition from FFG has me intrigued, and if I get a good bonus this year, I just might check it out! I've never been tempted with earlier editions of this game.