Will the Magic System be shown the door?

Wulf Ratbane said:
They're not losing money to the MMO. They're trying to capture money from the MMO.

And even then, it's not like it's a zero sum game. It's possible to play MMOs and tabletop both. (Grow the pie, man, grow the pie.)



And an elitist, apparently. It never ceases to amaze me how protective we nerds can be over our little niche hobby. It's gonna be so terrible when any old jock, skater, or video gamer can hobnob at the RPG table with the rest of us. Gaming should be hard, you know. Keep out the riff-raff.

And the chicks.

Right with you on this one Wulf. For instance, everyone's heard of the EVE tabletop game coming soon from White Wolf, right?

Ever wonder why? The makers of EVE BOUGHT White Wolf not too long ago. If the guys making the video games want to launch a tabletop RPG game, why should RPGers be opposed to trying to recruit new gamers from the MMO crowd?

In other news, Renaissance Entertainment Productions has a new memorandum of understanding with Blizzard Entertainment (makers of WoW) for cross-promotions between World of Warcraft and the largest producer of Renaissance Faires in the US. Apparently, they think the people involved in each might have some interests in common.

Like you said man, grow the pie.
 

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Wulf Ratbane said:
It's gonna be so terrible when any old jock, skater, or video gamer can hobnob at the RPG table with the rest of us. Gaming should be hard, you know. Keep out the riff-raff.

Well, there is a caveatL: The game still has to be fun in order to play it... if the changes that make it fun for others don't make it fun for the existing core of players, it does no one any good except its vendors, and then only briefly before the capture market returns to what it was playing in the first place. I'm all for easy, what I'm not for is changes that make it something I don't want to play.
 

YourSwordIsMine said:
They are losing money to the MMO.

Do you have evidence to back that up? Wulf already covered the other points I would make, so I'll just highlight this one. Do you have a shred of data - a market survey, industry-wide sales data, any kind of hard data that shows or at least strongly implies a direct correlation - to back up the claim that the niche hobby of MMOs that grew out of the niche hobby of MUDs is negatively impacting the niche hobby of tabletop roleplaying games?

Tabletop roleplayers complained that Magic the Gathering was killing RPGs; Ryan Dancey's research indicated that 2e AD&D (and RPGs in general) went into a major sales slump... BEFORE Magic the Gathering was actually released. If anything, according to Mr. Dancey's numbers, Magic probably helped prolong the lifespan of FLGSes during the leanest years of RPG sales, indirectly HELPING the RPG industry.

Since RPGs made a (financial) recovery in the late-90s/early-00s despite Magic's continual popularity (and the Pokemon CCG exploding onto the scene at the same time), tabletop RPGers wishing to predict doom and gloom for the industry seem to have fixated on MMORPGs, instead. This time they may be right, but I'm not about to trust that's the case on purely antecdotal evidence, especially considering how much smaller the MMORPG-playing community is than the CCG-playing one.
 

Henry said:
Well, there is a caveat: The game still has to be fun in order to play it... if the changes that make it fun for others don't make it fun for the existing core of players, it does no one any good except its vendors, and then only briefly before the capture market returns to what it was playing in the first place.

Your caveat hinges on the prevision that the captured market is going to lose interest. Why would you assume that? In my 30 years experience, nothing has captured and held my interest as strongly or enduringly as D&D (not even Star Wars!), and the particular ruleset I happened to be playing at any time had very little to do with that.

EDIT: That's why I remarked earlier about the "roots" of the game. As far as I am concerned, the root of the game is "Killing bad guys and taking their stuff." I am pretty confident that I am on the same page with WOTC on that one. I think they'll continue to evolve the rules to deliver on that implicit promise in the most efficient, fun, and widely acceptable way possible. That's what I expect from WOTC.

But sure, players are going to come and go. Still, as long as the sum total continues to grow, that's progress.

I'm all for easy, what I'm not for is changes that make it something I don't want to play.

You don't really think that the designers at WoTC are going to make a game that you won't want to play?

Do you?

Come on. You know them. You may even have gamed with them. Have a little faith.

Cheer up, fella.
 
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GreatLemur said:
See, I would dig the hell out of that. My ideal future for D&D magic would be a long list of effects and modifiers rather than spells (that is, Energy Blast would be an effect, with potential modifiers like Energy Type, Damage, Range, Area of Effect, etc.) with selection of about three or four different systems (like prepared Vancian, spontaneous Vancian, at-will, spell points, casting checks, etc.) that can all use this same set of effects. Then individual DMs could decide which components are used in which magic types in their own worlds.


So in other words, you want to play CHAMPIONS. Or some bastardization of TALISLANTA.

Thanks, I'll stick with a "diseased old cow" called D&D.
 

MoogleEmpMog said:
EDIT: If the system IS replaced, I suspect a per-encounter model rather than a spell point model will step into the gap.
I could easily seeing the base arcane class being close to the warlock. Maybe with the Binder's 3 round delay on all or some 'invocations' so a caster cannot spam battlefield control spells. Thus the caster has to chose a diferent 'spell' each round but still has them for the next combat.
 

frankthedm said:
I could easily seeing the base arcane class being close to the warlock. Maybe with the Binder's 3 round delay on all or some 'invocations' so a caster cannot spam battlefield control spells. Thus the caster has to chose a diferent 'spell' each round but still has them for the next combat.


What a mouthful! I guess the days of "I cast Magic Missile" are soon to be gone, eh? :D
 

Mark CMG said:
What a mouthful! I guess the days of "I cast Magic Missile" are soon to be gone, eh? :D

No, but the days of "I cast Magic Missile!" followed by, "Well, I'm headed to the crapper-- gimme a shout when we get a chance to rest..." might be gone.
 

Wulf Ratbane said:
Your caveat hinges on the prevision that the captured market is going to lose interest. Why would you assume that? In my 30 years experience, nothing has captured and held my interest as strongly or enduringly as D&D (not even Star Wars!), and the particular ruleset I happened to be playing at any time had very little to do with that.

Maybe. I hope that's still true, and doesn't have to do with one or more sacred cows left by the roadside.

You don't really think that the designers at WoTC are going to make a game that you won't want to play?

Do you?

If people keep winding up getting back their hardest-hitting powers and all their resources every minute, and it becomes the default assumption of play, then yes, they will have done that very thing. I have this vision of Feng Shui characters recovering all their resources at the end of each scene, and having no reason to rest, recover, conserve, or even think about what they're doing, except hit a problem with their biggest hammer. Great for the sole goal of kicking butt, but for any other roleplaying need out there it tends to drown it out. Hopefully there'll be a happy medium, but it's possible there won't.
 

Mark CMG said:
What a mouthful! I guess the days of "I cast Magic Missile" are soon to be gone, eh? :D
WHy? That could be the arcane's base Attack invocation.

Now if the system is built assuming the caster will always have MM at the ready, force damage might get a few more things resitant to it.
 

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