I would like to add (yet another <rolls eyes at self>) comment:
I am a professional in the industry. My wife and I have visited hundreds of gaming stores, travelled to tons of conventions, paid attention to all of the successes and failures in the industry for the last 20 years. We have a very progressive game store. I interact with every aspect of the gaming industry on daily basis.
Sure, this is not going to kill D&D. But it does step on a specific type of DM that D&D does not want to lose. RPGs are becoming inbreed by groups natural inclination to play amongst friends. This is causing younger and younger players to be locked out and drawn to games like WOW, and fewer and fewer strangers to be brought into groups.
One of the best things good DMs can do is go into a game store or a convention, convince a bunch of non-D&D players to play a session, and then blow those players socks off. So far, this has been an uphill battle. WOTC needs a way to sanction DMs and reward them for finding and creating new players in game stores. That is the solution.
Feats like GWA are an attempt to put cool sounding fluff in front of the new player who picks up D&D for the first time. I get that. Problem is, it also does it at the expense of the DM who D&D can not afford to loose. At the heart, this is what this debate is about.
I am not discussing these matters with people in my store. I do not want to influence buying decisions or cause drama there. That is not the place for it. The point of this poll and these discussions is to find a win/win solution for a problem WOTC might not be aware of or a sacrifice they may think they are willing to make.
When you change a key part of a game, you risk losing its loyal fan base. Hobby games are already niche, they do not pull in mainstream, and cannot lose their core customers. Whenever a successful hobby game has done a 180 on its players, the game has shot itself in the foot.
A few examples:
White Wolf did this with the setting of their world of darkness. Right now the rules are the best they have been, but most customers hate the new setting or more accurately, miss the original setting (and the reason they played the game as WOD is setting driven). Monte Cook speaks about mastery of the game, this occurs in different levels. With WOD it was the familiarity with the Fluff. White Wolf I am sure blames the drop in WOD sales to D&D 3.0 and 3.5, but that is only a small part of the issue. Most fans are frustrated that the good storylines of the original World of Darkness were chucked with the bad ones.
Recently, Rackham did something similiar by alienting their customers. Their customers loved their beautiful miniatures more than any other part of the Confrontation game. When Rackham announced not only they were changing the game's rules, but also dropping the metal minis and going to prepainted plastic ones, they angered their customers and lost a huge market share, now the company is filing the equalivent of a chapter 11 in France.
Games Workshop continues to skate this edge with Warhammer 40,000. The universe is amazing, deep and very original. But, many of the hardcore players I have known over the years are frustrated with the last two rule sets as they do not reflect even psuedo-realistic fire fight tactics. The game has rule issues that occured when they streamlined the system at 3rd edition and those issues are still not addressed. Warhammer 40,000 would have a much larger customer base today if they had corrected this aspect of the game.
Even World of Warcraft (yes I know, 10 million players .. worldwide that is) did this to a lesser extent. It used to be EVERY gamer played. Now only a small percentage do. I know they have gained a huge following, but much of that is over seas. Alot of the first players fell away from frustration with a) not being able to raid to continue to see end game b) losing PVP to instanced battlegrounds c) the lack of the fun, flowing feel the game had in its first year being lost to speedbumps placed. My point, even Warcraft lost customers by going against the feel of a Blizzard game that WOW had at first. They have yet to recapture that or get PVP really working. With Warhammer Online coming, Blizzard may lose 3-4 million subscribers if they can't fix those areas of their game properily.
My point, when you change the heart of the game away from the key reasons your customers play it, you are going to lose customers. You need to make sure you really understand that.
D&D can afford to lose alignment, it can lose vacian spell casting, it can lose hit points and armor class even, as long as it feels like D&D adventuring and the typcial four classes. Part of D&D though, is the ability for it to become the framework for your own worlds if you desire it too. People have put years of hard work into their campaign settings. Removing obstacles for that to occur is good, finding ways to enocourge and support that is even better. Those become long term customers who stick with your product because it still offers them what they love about the game.
We feel D&D is risking losing something very key at its heart. It is going to tell us how to flavor our worlds. It is going to force that on us. This is something the Anti-GWA camp doesn't want.
