The Truth About 4th Edition: an interview

[jasin]

The Escapist : The Truth About 4th Edition: Part One of Our Exclusive Interview with Wizards of the Coast

Just one interesting bit:

Interviewer: It seems like a lot of the design decisions in 4th where you moved away from 3rd Edition or Classic seem more similar to World of Warcraft or similar computer games. Was that a very purposeful, strategic choice because of, as you said, people coming in with certain assumptions from entertainment they've already consumed?

Andy Collins: Some of it was that and some of it was simply a measure of - as professional game designers, we look at all games for lessons.

 

[Dandu]

What new, fresh, and exciting news.

 

[Toben the Many]

Well, in that interview, Wizards is much more explicit about taking deliberate cues from video games. They even talk about how they were trying to appeal to an audience that they felt like had an increasingly short attention span.

I found the article fairly informative, but I didn't post it here because I didn't want to continue to stir the Edition Wars pot. But since it's all posted here and everything....

I personally didn't buy the argument that D&D needed to be simpler to appeal to a shorter attention span. After all, in 2001, 3rd Edition was highly successful, despite its complexity. Has that much changed in 9 years?

Also, OD&D is much simpler than all of the other editions after it. I think it's more of a case that 3rd Edition D&D, as a ruleset, had become very complex and suffered from serious rules bloat. I could see 4th Edition as a reaction to that.

 

[Obryn]

After all, in 2001, 3rd Edition was highly successful, despite its complexity. Has that much changed in 9 years?

Yes.

WoW has changed the landscape for RPGs as much as M:tG did, if not more.

-O

 

[Toben the Many]

Yes.

WoW has changed the landscape for RPGs as much as M:tG did, if not more.

-O

That is very different from saying that people don't have an attention span any more, and that a game needs to cater to that sort of audience.

But I did buy their arguments that new players nowadays come to the table with a different set of expectations and experiences.

 

[ppaladin123]

There already was a very long, contentious thread about this article that the the moderators locked. I'm guessing they don't want to see this topic reopened.

 

[jasin]

What new, fresh, and exciting news.

Are you saying that you've already seen one of the big name designers like Andy Collins saying that they made 4E more similar to WoW or similar computer games as a purposeful, strategic choice?

I haven't, so it was new to me.

 

[jasin]

There already was a very long, contentious thread about this article that the the moderators locked. I'm guessing they don't want to see this topic reopened.

If so, I apologize for reopening it. I hadn't seen the original thread.

Do you have a link to it handy?

Edit: Never mind, found it.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yes, please see existing thread on this subject thanks.

Cheers