Would Paizo Make a Better Steward for Our Hobby?

[Bluenose]

Umm, 4ed? Like it or hate it, it is an innovation. DDI? Again, first of its kind for the hobby. Next? Lots and lots of innovation there.

What more do you want?

I don't think there's very much innovative in the mechanics of 4e, unless you consider "New to D&D" the same as innovative. In many ways, the mechanical changes seemed like an attempt to get back to results similar to those of earlier D&D, where 2e and (much more so) 3e had moved towards the "Magic is Better" paradigm. Now, some of the setting elements they use do seem pretty innovative. As for DDi, if the apparent original intention had been carried through, then I think it would have set a new standard in terms of integration of computer tools in play. That would in my opinion have been a very good innovation, though since it fell apart in the implementation I'm less inclined to be generous to it.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think there's very much innovative in the mechanics of 4e, unless you consider "New to D&D" the same as innovative.

That's certainly the only basis by which I could judge 3E as innovative.

Now, some of the setting elements they use do seem pretty innovative.

I agree with that (see my post above yours), but I'm not sure if for the same reason. What did you have in mind?

 

[Ahnehnois]

and a third (but the merits of which are highly contstable!) is using the PC build rules to build all NPCs and monsters.

Well, that's one that came in stages. One of the major 3.0 to 3.5 shifts was precisely in this area; changing monster feats and skills from formulas to HD-based advancement like a PC. It is a rather large thing, and it does set 3e aside from many rpgs.

Huh? Your mind is boggled by the fact that someone might find 4e a game worth playing? Then I think you need to get out more!

An odd statement given that my only known source of people who play 4e (or playtest 5e) is my desktop computer.

I think 4e is more innovative than 3E - it is a version of D&D that, in terms of its mechanics, is basically contemporary with other games being published in 2008, rather than playing catch-up to 1985 like 3E was.

I think, again to reference the above, that game design is not iterative advancement, and newer is not better.

Certainly, when I'm looking for a game that simulates better while maintaining a baseline of simplicity and intuitiveness and gamist satisfaction, I'm not interested in being shown that it doesn't need to simulate at all.

I think it's biggest mechanical innovation is showing that crunchy tactical combat mechanics - which traditionally were a staple of heavily process-sim games like RQ, RM, etc - can be used to a quite different, non-simulationist end.

Whereas I'd say that a lot of the big problems with 3e revolve around its focus on having a lot of combat mechanics, while not simulating as much as it could under the page count.

But I think the biggest innovation in 4e is actually not mechanical at all - it's at the level of story. 4e shows how decades of D&D lore can be consolidated and repurposed to support a non-simulationist game, in the form of a conflict-riven setting in which the PCs (and thereby the players) are inherenlty engaged.

Well, those are two things I do my darndest not to care about when conceiving a story: D&D lore, and the PCs.

 

[DMZ2112]

At this point I don't think any current company is an ideal Steward of D&D. They're all too small and too narrowly focused on their favored edition to represent the breadth and width of all editions of D&D, it's retro-clones and the fans.

No game company in the history of games has ever lived up to this standard you have set. Are you proposing a return to the zine-based rules-trading wargamer communities of the 1960s?

An odd statement given that my only known source of people who play 4e (or playtest 5e) is my desktop computer.

Okay, first of all, this thread is not about one's preference for any particular flavor of D&D -- the OP specifically stated that the question he was asking was intended to be edition-neutral. So we should all dial down the rhetoric.

That said, the one thing that I am completely unable to reconcile in my brain about the quick onset of D&D5 is that since D&D Encounters hit its stride last year or so, my FLGS is packed to the rafters every week with D&D4 players of all ages, genders, and races (I am not among them). I have /never/ seen such diversity at a D&D gathering short of GenCon, where the sample size is several orders of magnitude larger.

It /must/ be an isolated phenomenon, because if my local experience is any judge, abandoning D&D4 is a /critical/ error on WotC's part. The owner of the shop and I tried to run a table of the last Encounters season using D&D5, as recommended -- not a single taker outside my usual (tiny) playtest group.

Does ignoring the D&D4 community in favor of courting Pathfinder players make WotC a good steward? Would it make them a good steward if they buckled down and supported the D&D4 community to the exclusion of Pathfinder players?

The transition between editions of a game is always rough, but did the transition from D&D4 to D&D5 have to be as jarring as it has been? The content of the games aside, I can't feel like the transition was handled in a very "steward-like" fashion.

This is obviously an unfair criterion -- Paizo hasn't yet had to steward a major revision of their ruleset, while WotC has suffered through two very contentious transitions. D&D3.5 to Pathfinder was floated on a powerful wave of consumer rage. Without a D&D4 analogue to rally against, I doubt the transition to Pathfinder 2.0 will be as smooth.

Well, those are two things I do my darndest not to care about when conceiving a story: D&D lore, and the PCs.

BE CAREFUL! You're going to give Pemerton an aneurysm!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That said, the one thing that I am completely unable to reconcile in my brain about the quick onset of D&D5 is that since D&D Encounters hit its stride last year or so, my FLGS is packed to the rafters every week with D&D4 players of all ages, genders, and races (I am not among them). I have /never/ seen such diversity at a D&D gathering short of GenCon, where the sample size is several orders of magnitude larger.

It /must/ be an isolated phenomenon, because if my local experience is any judge, abandoning D&D4 is a /critical/ error on WotC's part. The owner of the shop and I tried to run a table of the last Encounters season using D&D5, as recommended -- not a single taker outside my usual (tiny) playtest group.

Edition fandom is not universal nor uniformly distributed. At 4Ed's launch, I could go around my stomping grounds in D/FW and find stores in which the product launch was being met with dread and others in which it was eagerly anticipated. The same is probably happening today with 4Ed & 5Ed. I'll be honest with you, I haven't even seen anyone playing 5th in stores, and my own main group wasn't interested in the playtest at all. (After our only 4Ed campaign sputtered out and died, we're going to back to 3.5Ed.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

2xPost

 

[Cybit]

I definitely can't agree with this. They've done many innovative things with the Pathfinder game and brand:

1. The subscription model for each of their product lines.
2. Limiting core books to three per year, but having adventure and setting material on a monthly basis.
3. The Pathfinder adventure card game.
4. The token boxes for each of the Bestiaries and NPC Codex.
5. A randomized miniature structure where buying a full box gets you a full set.
6. NPC and Item cards.
7. The magnetic initiative tracker.
8. The manner in which they fully support each adventure path with maps, cards, setting, and player content.

All of these are innovations, and if not unique individually, certainly they've never been combined in this manner.

Now, if by innovation, you're looking for electronic tools, then sure. But by being OGL, Pathfinder is a default option in most third party tools, so there isn't much incentive.

#5 was done by WotC with the original miniatures lines for D&D IIRC - they moved away from it at some point though.

If Paizo made electronic tools to the level of character builder / adventure tools; they would have a much better chance of getting newer players IMO. Younger players are just much more likely to engage with electronic tools (since almost everything else they play with has it to some extent) than they are w/ physical tools initially.

 

[Halivar]

If Paizo made electronic tools to the level of character builder / adventure tools; they would have a much better chance of getting newer players IMO.

I would just pimp PCGen in the core books. They've already done all the work, and probably better than Paizo could buy from outsourcing. Certainly better than WotC could.

 

[pemerton]

Well, those are two things I do my darndest not to care about when conceiving a story: D&D lore, and the PCs.

BE CAREFUL! You're going to give Pemerton an aneurysm!

My mind isn't boggled by the fact that not everyone plays the game the same way as me, or even plays the same game as me!

But one person's playing preferences doesn't really address the issue of what counts as an innovation, which is what I was discussing in my post.

if my local experience is any judge, abandoning D&D4 is a /critical/ error on WotC's part.

I'm not a business person, and I'm certainly not a RPG business person. But I think many posts (not yours) seem to impute mistaken reasons to WotC.

For example, it is common to see posts about 4e having "failed", or being a mistake. But I would be very surprised if WotC has not made a profit on 4e, given that it seems to have generated sufficient revenue to keep the D&D branch of the company afloat through the whole D&Dnext development cycle. It seems to me that the only sense in which 4e has "failed" is that it has not met WotC's profit targets. There's no reason I've ever seen to think that retaining publication of 3.5 (or3.75) would have met those targets either.

If 4e is not meeting its targets, then the presence or absence of big 4e groups in local stores is a secondary issue - they need to publish something that will sell even more books, and thereby support sales of other merchandise. (Perhaps D&Dnext is not going to be that thing, but that's a different matter - you can't say they're not trying!)

What I think those 4e groups are relevant too is how long they will keep DDI online: because it's likely that at present DDI is meeting profit margins of subscription income relative to upkeep cost. (But obviously we won't see new content added.)

 

[Zardnaar]

My mind isn't boggled by the fact that not everyone plays the game the same way as me, or even plays the same game as me!

But one person's playing preferences doesn't really address the issue of what counts as an innovation, which is what I was discussing in my post.

I'm not a business person, and I'm certainly not a RPG business person. But I think many posts (not yours) seem to impute mistaken reasons to WotC.

For example, it is common to see posts about 4e having "failed", or being a mistake. But I would be very surprised if WotC has not made a profit on 4e, given that it seems to have generated sufficient revenue to keep the D&D branch of the company afloat through the whole D&Dnext development cycle. It seems to me that the only sense in which 4e has "failed" is that it has not met WotC's profit targets. There's no reason I've ever seen to think that retaining publication of 3.5 (or3.75) would have met those targets either.

If 4e is not meeting its targets, then the presence or absence of big 4e groups in local stores is a secondary issue - they need to publish something that will sell even more books, and thereby support sales of other merchandise. (Perhaps D&Dnext is not going to be that thing, but that's a different matter - you can't say they're not trying!)

What I think those 4e groups are relevant too is how long they will keep DDI online: because it's likely that at present DDI is meeting profit margins of subscription income relative to upkeep cost. (But obviously we won't see new content added.)

Estimates for DDI are around 6 million per year so that is enough to pay the wages for the D&DN development team I assume. Problem is it is the only 4E income left and there are stories of 4E books selling less than 1000 copies. 6 million is a lot but Dancey is on record as saying D&D is a 25-30 million per year business and there is a big difference between 25 million and 6 million. If revenue= players 4E lost over 70% of the 3.5 market and paizo picked up 40% or so by 2012 and at current growth rates will hit 66-80% by 2014 when D&DN launches.