Would Paizo Make a Better Steward for Our Hobby?

[DMZ2112]

[begin John Wayne]That's a might big assumption there partner. [/end John Wayne]

Perhaps, but your post does not tell me it was incorrect. I painted your wagon well enough (see what I did there).

Powergaming is desiring a powerful character over all other facets.

I know optimizers who might disagree with you.

It sounds to me like you're one of those kinds of DMs and players who wants others to suffer for their choices, to force them to master the game or GTFO. Frankly, that strikes me a disgusting attitude.

No, but I can see why you might think that. There is a third option. I am the kind of dungeon master who, when running D&D4 (or D&D3.5, for that matter), hands his players the PHB1 and says, "This is it. There is no D&D outside of this book. Use this book. Just this one. All that other stuff? What other stuff? This book is D&D. D&D is this book. Don't make me stab you in the eye."

There is no difference between the SRD and the tool, aside from the fact that tool is more user-friendly.

I don't really agree, but I see your point. It's more the combination of D&D4's design and the character creator that I find distasteful, rather than the character creator in and of itself. But, to bring this post back into line with the thread topic, I do not necessarily think that an online character generation tool is good stewardship. I would genuinely rather see those development funds allocated elsewhere.

Frankly, it sounds like you simply want to make life difficult for people.

Oh, absolutely! Just not at the table.

And please don't retort with "no choice is ever bad", because yes, some are. Anyone who has ever played 3.X knows this. Denying it will not help your case.

That's certainly not my case. Systems mastery and powergaming ruined D&D3.5 for me, and it is only by the narrowest of margins that I still find Pathfinder playable. But I continue to refute the idea that making everyone a master of an unnecessarily complex ruleset is the way to overcome systems mastery as a barrier to rewarding roleplay. The preferable strategy is to reduce complexity across the board.

 

[pemerton]

They did shut it down when 4E went out of print in effect.

Now I'm puzzled. Are you saying that WotC drove down D&D revenues by 80% by publishing 4e materials, or are you saying that they drove down those revenues by ceasing to publish 4e material and working instead on D&Dnext?

 

[Zardnaar]

Now I'm puzzled. Are you saying that WotC drove down D&D revenues by 80% by publishing 4e materials, or are you saying that they drove down those revenues by ceasing to publish 4e material and working instead on D&Dnext?

Assuming Dancey's figures are accurate WoTC lost 70-80% of their revenue once 4E went out of print. Why it went out of print and what went wrong between 2008-2012 you can decide for yourself but with the rise of Pathfinder and OSR clones I have a good idea of what to blame. 4E PHB indicated it was going to be 10 years long, its production cycle was cut in half by 2010, same year Mearl's is on record as saying they drove off their own customers, and D&DN is announced around 3.5 years into 4Es run. Something went wrong. Going from 25-30 million a year down to 6 million via DDI is a big hit regardless of how you try and spin it.

Paizo has been number 1 since late 2010/early 2011 depending on who you want to believe. Paizos revenue went public (4.4 mill 2009, 11.2 2012) and with the 30%+ growth rate it means PF became number 1 on about 8-9 million in sails. Compare that with Dancey's figures.

 

[pemerton]

Going from 25-30 million a year down to 6 million via DDI is a big hit regardless of how you try and spin it. .

What proportion of that $25-$30 million was non-RPG related revenue eg books and boardgames? That's still there.

 

[Zardnaar]

What proportion of that $25-$30 million was non-RPG related revenue eg books and boardgames? That's still there.

IDK could be a bit more but when Dancey was positng that I'm not sure if D&D was allowed to count tie in products like novels and board games as part of D&D's overall revenue. If that figure does include things like that though D&D has lost even a larger % of players to Paizo though who only recently added things like that to their lineup. We do not know the exact figures and profit/margins etc but as I said in terms of the RPG D&D has never gone out of print for 2 years in effect even during the TSR collapse.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Originally Posted by Dannyalcatraz
Personally, 3.X is my favorite form of D&D, and I am of the opinion that no choice is bad as long as it models the way you want your PC to work.

But, even within that, there are numerous choices that are still bad based on that criteria. Lots of choices don't actually model the way you want your PC to work because they wind up being trap choices.

By definition, if you make a choice that doesn't actually model the way you want your PC to work, it fails to satisfy that clause of my statement. What you call "trap choices" make no sense in that context.

 

[pemerton]

By definition, if you make a choice that doesn't actually model the way you want your PC to work, it fails to satisfy that clause of my statement. What you call "trap choices" make no sense in that context.

In the context of "modelling your PC", I think a trap choice would be (say) a feat called Toughness that doesn't, in actual play, have the mechanical result of making your PC tough.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the context of "modelling your PC", I think a trap choice would be (say) a feat called Toughness that doesn't, in actual play, have the mechanical result of making your PC tough.

It makes him 3 HP tougher than a PC without it, which is a measurable mechanical difference. Assuming average HP, it means even a spellcaster will be able to survive at least one more dagger strike than before. (I almost took that one for a Sorcerer who wore armor and had a Toad familiar, but other aspects of the PC were more important.)

It is also a prereq for certain feats in PHB2, one of which allows for minor magical healing. In 3.X, the ability to heal ones HP damage quickly and without the aid of another or a device could arguably be considered "Tough".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

2(post)

 

[Bluenose]

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?

There's a number of areas where I find the setting of 4e rather more original than previous versions. The one that always strikes me as most interesting (and least talked about) is the differentiation between battle magics - the spells that are used in combat - and ritual magics - that are cast outside combat. That is something with large implications for world-building and story-creation, and also something that I rarely see in RPGs. There are some examples, of course, but in my experience most games have either ritual magic or quick magic without having both. That it's also something available to anyone who learns a particular feat is a part of that too, it being something that I don't think I've ever seen anywhere. While there are obvious mechanical implications, the whole Ritual Magic aspect is one of the largest changes for setting implications, and very innovative.

Now this I will disagree with. One of the biggest innovations in 4e is breaking the initiative paradigm. That's not only new to D&D, but, new to a lot of RPG's. Yes, I know you had AOO's in 3e. Sure. But, that was reactive, not pro-active. You, the player, could not take an action outside of your turn in initiative.

4e radically changed that. Now, every class can take actions outside of their turn in initiative, and, not only that, but can grant other people actions outside of their initiative as well.

It's a very big shift in play. Players have to pay attention all the time, because, at any point in time, you can possibly be called on to act. Previously, you could largely walk away from the table when it wasn't your turn, and, so long as you came back before the DM's turn, you would not miss anything.

A very good point, one that I hadn't really thought about as innovative. Though as a regular Traveller player (and wargamer) I was already familiar with interrupts through concepts like Overwatch and Suppressive Fire. Still, the scope and extent seems quite a lot larger in 4e, and closer to reality in many ways.

3e's big innovation was tying everything to the PC generation rules. Everything in 3e is made just like a PC. For D&D, at least, and a lot of RPG's as well, this was pretty new. The idea of creating a balanced framework for making virtually anything you wanted in the game, either as a PC or an NPC, was pretty unique to 3e. Gave DM's all sorts of tools that, previously, were largely only seen in point buy games.

Runequest worked like that since the 1970s. It never even occurred to me that making NPCs the same way as PCs was particularly original, or that providing a framework for doing that was unusual.