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The irony is that Next got me interested in D&D again - to the extent that I wrote my own hack of B/X (details in the retroclones thread) and would now much rather play that than the half-assed reworking of 3.5 that is Next to date.
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May 31, 2013 18:51
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I'm saying that Next's probable success will rest entirely on how well it is marketed to older players (pre 4E players) and to new players. For older players, the kind of statements they have been making work well. Probably because they set out to figure out what ambiguous statements about the feel of D&D to make from the beginning - someone still playing 2E, and to a lesser extent still playing 3E or 3.5E, does not care about a more polished rules system. They want, as this thread has said so many times, the D&D they played when they were 12. Rules don't matter for that. Branding and look-and-feel matter for that. As long as there are 6 attributes, classes, dragons, dungeons, beholders, you roll a d20 to hit and you roll smaller dice for damage, it looks and feels like a D&D. It might not be a good or sophisticated game, but its a D&D in no small part because those are all D&D things. Plus it will say D&D on the box (branding). How would a D&D Next Encounters program look like? As Essentials was Mearls baby, and D&D Encounters technically required Essentials classes, you will have one pregenerated character of each of the classes in the PHB. They will have a mix of races. They will not be optimized. But they will come on a nice looking index card! They'll include a dry or wet erase fold-up map given out at the start of the season, and a booklet with some maps, NPCs, and statistics. They'll have a 1-2 hour time limit per session. You'll run the given adventure for 1 or 1.5 or 2 hours, and then stop and pick up next week. I think they'll just give out general time guides, but no, it won't look like 4E Encounters. As for general organized play - I don't see how it would be any different from Living Blackmoor or Living Greyhawk or Pathfinder Society. There will be an adventure with a set of outcomes. You'll get a certificate for completing the adventure, and you'll check a box off for your specific outcome. It will get reported. Voila, organized play. Again tournament and organized play existed in the 2E era, so I suspect it would look an awful lot like play in that era.
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May 31, 2013 20:47
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3e is not an "old" system. It only stopped being supported five years ago officially, has continued to be supported by Pathfinder, etc. This "it will depend on how well they market it!" argument depends on: -Marketing to people who are still playing 3E in some form, which at this point is a much better system. They already have a product. You have to market more than "This will be the same as ever! It'll feel like D&D!" for a year and change. -Marketing to people who no longer play D&D (this is a really bad idea!). If you think that marketing to people with low or zero interest level is good marketing, then you probably get your rocks off banging your head into a wall. Marketing is about tapping markets. Meanwhile they are specifically ignoring anyone who plays and enjoys 4E, which is anti-marketing, and their marketing is largely "This will be classical D&D!," which means really nothing to anyone in the youth market. So, their marketing is wrong-headed on virtually every possible level. And the game sucks and doesn't compete with anything they've released in the last thirteen years. Name Change fucked around with this message at 23:01 on May 31, 2013 |
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May 31, 2013 22:36
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Laphroaig posted:I'm saying that Next's probable success will rest entirely on how well it is marketed to older players (pre 4E players) and to new players. For older players, the kind of statements they have been making work well. Probably because they set out to figure out what ambiguous statements about the feel of D&D to make from the beginning - someone still playing 2E, and to a lesser extent still playing 3E or 3.5E, does not care about a more polished rules system. Someone still playing 2E in the year 2013 is not going to play D&D Next.
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May 31, 2013 22:42
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:3e is not an "old" system. It only stopped being supported five years ago officially, has continued to be supported by Pathfinder, etc. I've said it elsewhere, but if 4e was the brand's attempt to become a major mainstream core property for Hasbro, Next is D&D's acceptance that it won't be. 4e marketed to a younger market, while Next goes for the much safer male 25-35 year old market by recalling marketing successes of years past. They design towards "feel" rather than usability because they are marketing to said market of lapsed D&D customers who remember what D&D "feels" like. Basically, D&D is a legacy brand and Next is happy as poo poo with that situation.
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May 31, 2013 23:03
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fatherdog posted:Someone still playing 2E in the year 2013 is not going to play D&D Next. This. They have already house-ruled it to perfection, only play with the same group they've known since high school, and stopped paying attention to everything else years ago. If Mearls were in technology, he'd have seen the touch-screen revolution and doubled down on slide out keyboards to appeal to Blackberry grogs. I can't imagine it doing very well in comparison to 3 or even 4.
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May 31, 2013 23:58
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Magic that just works is totally doable without needing any restriction on castings per day. Since your spells don't have the failure chance that other actions have, you need to build in downsides to the spells themselves. Check out this version of "Charm Person" with a twist: When you are trying to convince somebody of something, you may cast "See it my way." They will do exactly that - they will see and credit all the arguments and reasons for your request just as strongly as you do. They will also know all the facts of your life that led you to your reasons and none may be withheld. This will usually be enough to convince anyone to do things your way, but it is possible that they have information you do not. If that's the case, so sympathetic will they feel to you that they will feel a strong compulsion to explain their reasons to you.
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May 31, 2013 23:59
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Oh btw, I got How to Cook Everything and The Gourmet Cookbook on the advice of this thread. I'll be making something awesome from one of them this weekend.
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Jun 1, 2013 00:01
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fatherdog posted:Someone still playing 2E in the year 2013 is not going to play D&D Next. This. I said a year ago that I do not understand who the audience is. It's not 4e fans - they are deliberately pissing us off. Pathfinder fans are not a free audience. Every single PF fan is happier with PF than with Wizards of the Coast. And Paizo aren't stupid enough to let Next's launch go unanswered. Which means at launch Next needs to be better than PF in ways that Pathfinder fans care about. If that's the target audience, Paizo is almost certain to win. And even 3.5 fans haven't given WotC significant money in five years. Thirteen for 2e fans. They are out of the habit of opening pocketbooks and actually spending any money. Why are they going to change now?
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Jun 1, 2013 00:14
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neonchameleon posted:This. I said a year ago that I do not understand who the audience is.
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Jun 1, 2013 00:30
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neonchameleon posted:This. I said a year ago that I do not understand who the audience is. You should; it's ENWorld. Mearls has been cozying up with Morrus since even before 5e was announced.
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Jun 1, 2013 01:09
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neonchameleon posted:And even 3.5 fans haven't given WotC significant money in five years. Thirteen for 2e fans. They are out of the habit of opening pocketbooks and actually spending any money. Why are they going to change now? Who knows, it might work!
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Jun 1, 2013 01:11
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ProfessorCirno posted:You should; it's ENWorld. Mearls has been cozying up with Morrus since even before 5e was announced. fatherdog posted:I'm pretty sure Mearls' thought process begins and ends with "The guys that post on ENworld are gonna think this is SO COOL."
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Jun 1, 2013 01:39
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Laphroaig posted:And when it comes to new players, what is going to matter most is store events, promotions, organized play etc. I don't think people are going to stop playing Pathfinder to play D&D Next, which is why I only think it is going to be moderately successful. Paizo would have to suffer some kind of shocking mass exodus of brand loyalty which is just not going to happen. Yep you are pretty much dead-on. It's already started: http://www.wizards.com/ContentResources/Wizards/Sales/Solicitations/2013_04_08_DDGDDracolich_Solicitation_en_US.pdf A thing I found amazing about the GenCon schedule for this year is the metric fuckton of Pathfinder Society games. Paizo has a huge space this year and a ton of PFS games going on at the 'D&D Convention'. At some level that has to annoy the WOTC folks. That's basically their game, it could be their success. But LFR is basically dead and 4e doesn't have much presence at all, just some fan-run games and a tournament for system-mastery types. WOTC is putting everything into Next events, lots of them.
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Jun 1, 2013 02:35
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:3e is not an "old" system. It only stopped being supported five years ago officially, has continued to be supported by Pathfinder, etc. Older gamers, not old system. Someone who was 15 when they played 3E is what, 28-29 today? OneThousandMonkeys posted:Meanwhile they are specifically ignoring anyone who plays and enjoys 4E, which is anti-marketing, and their marketing is largely "This will be classical D&D!," which means really nothing to anyone in the youth market. I don't like D&D Next. But I stopped caring about it after I read the first playtest, and realized it was in no way the game system for me. However, the marketing for it has not even really started. They will put it out at GenCon. Their goal is to appeal to the large Pathfinder playerbase, and to an extent the 2E/OSR crowd. But either way, its obvious they are investing no effort into the rules system. The rules system is not their concern beyond a basic book. Tabletop RPG gamers do not care about rules or systems elegance. They buy GURPS and RIFTS and Exalted and White Wolf products. They play Pathfinder. From the 1980s until today they've had a steady diet of absolutely TERRIBLE systems with a few bright spots. Yet Steve Jackson Games and Palladium and Wizards are still in business - not GOOD business, but they make a profit. White Wolf would probably still be in business too, selling product, if Dancy hadn't killed it off. Basically being an RPG company, and a successful one, has everything to do with good business practices, marketing, and brand loyalty. D&D Next is trying to recapture brand loyalty by ignoring its current player base, but you could argue that they did this in D&D 4E: enough to create Pathfinder. The stars are not right for a 4E pathfinder. There is no company there to pick up the slack, and no OGL fuckup for that company to exploit. What will the 4E fans do? A lot of them are just going to stop playing D&D once the online compendium and character builder stop working. There will be a few diehards but not many. My group loved 4e but we're done with it. Those who want to play, well, there are two D&D games in town for organized play, product support, etc: Pathfinder and D&D Next. My guess is they'll stick with Wizards of the Coast. There is no current challenger to D&D's market dominance. That is why Mearls can put out poo poo and move D&D Next towards a legacy brand. The OGL was a gigantic fuckup, and D&D is going to be a legacy brand because they gave the brand away. It killed D20, and we are seeing the poison in action, it just took longer. But even then, gamers still buy Palladium products; the game will continue with moderate success, but its never going to reach the heights it once knew, and in many ways its because of the OGL. And we've known this since D&D Next was announced. They've done absolutely everything they said they would do. Cirno is dead on with the ENWorld statement, but its a moot point in many ways - D&D Next will not be a good game but its not a huge surprise. Its kinda why this became the Chicken cheese thread as well, so it wouldn't get too boring. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jun 1, 2013 |
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Jun 1, 2013 02:44
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How important is organsied play, really? I've always had the impression that for every person gaming in a store, there are 20+ who play at home and never ever get around to playing with anyone other than their friends. poo poo, I'm in that group now and have been for more than 13 years. The group I play with buys a lot of gaming stuff, and sometimes talks about going to a con or an organised-play session, but it never ends up happening. I did a few in-store games and cons in the 90s and they were (with a couple of brief exceptions) loving terrible - run by idiots or assholes and played by people who didn't have the 2 friends required to run a game at home because they're just that loving abrasive.
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Jun 1, 2013 03:08
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Laphroaig posted:However, the marketing for it has not even really started. They will put it out at GenCon. Their goal is to appeal to the large Pathfinder playerbase, and to an extent the 2E/OSR crowd. I'm still completely unsure of how they intend to market this game to the current players of Pathfinder. People have been playing pathfinder for upwards of four years now, hell if they originated from 3rd edition D&D they've been playing something extremely similar for more than double that time. I can certainly see them, at the very least giving it an attempt but beyond that merely shrugging and returning to Pathfinder, especially considering Pathfinder is hardly lacking in content or support, not to mention the familiarity inherent to the game itself at this point. It seems ridiculous for wizards to not attempt to appeal to the fan base they built with 4th edition, especially with things such as the compendium and character builder already implemented. It's just so absolutely baffling to me that they think they'll be able to win over enough old players, even with the reprints and marketing that will come that this will be worth it.
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Jun 1, 2013 03:21
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AlphaDog posted:How important is organsied play, really? Consider first that organized play is the basis of the M:TG business model, and the M:TG business model is now driving game hobby shops. From big shops to small, this is how they make enough money to have a sales floor with all that other crap nobody buys, and there is an organized M:TG play event at every Seattle shop I know of 5-6 nights a week, heading towards 6-7 for release events. Wizards and Paizo both do organized play, and some form of organized play has been at the very least A Thing You Could Do in D&D for many years. 4E is designed around an organized play philosophy that mirrors M:TG's general structure as much as it can. Your character sheet is a deck when push comes to shove and 4E is a deck-building game, which alone makes it far more innovative and intelligent than Next. The game also curiously mirrors M:TG's now-famous Timmy/Johnny/Spike theory. 4E is so mired in game mechanics and combat that it tries to achieve absolutely everything mechanically, leading at its furthest extreme on the skill challenge system, and then basically ignores anything too abstract to be solved by a simple mechanic. There are fortune cards in case you want more cards on top of the ones already in your hand. Anyway, I have had negative experiences in organized play, but they are far more outweighed by the positive. Organized play is a good way to meet people and form real groups to play campaigns other than Encounters and Lair Assault, which in my experience are generally bad. Organized play also personally illustrated for me why 4E was awesome, because I could build any character in ten minutes and teach the system to a newbie within that night. You can actually learn 4E to a playable level without being a huge goddamned dork, which is revolutionary for D&D. I am sure in every small town there are several gaming groups hidden away. In my experience, these groups are comically insular if you go looking for them and full of people you wouldn't play with if you had a choice. They are almost by definition a small market and probably very hard to market to. Play in the big city is actually far more difficult if you are an at-home player.
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Jun 1, 2013 03:43
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Anyway, I have had negative experiences in organized play, but they are far more outweighed by the positive. Organized play is a good way to meet people and form real groups to play campaigns other than Encounters and Lair Assault, which in my experience are generally bad. Organized play also personally illustrated for me why 4E was awesome, because I could build any character in ten minutes and teach the system to a newbie within that night. You can actually learn 4E to a playable level without being a huge goddamned dork, which is revolutionary for D&D. My experience with public vs private games is the opposite to yours - the public ones were usually full of assholes and weirdos, and the private ones (that you get invited to because you're a friend of someone who plays in them) have been generally pretty great. We'll never know about the bolded part, because there can't be figures for how many private games there are going on. Anecdotally, most people I've gamed with have never played in a public game.
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Jun 1, 2013 05:43
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:You can actually learn 4E to a playable level without being a huge goddamned dork, which is revolutionary for D&D. Like... a video game? I keed, I keed.
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Jun 1, 2013 05:44
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The general issue I have with the claim of "Well WotC cares about marketing because players will buy bad games" is that players will also buy good games with good marketing. This isn't some zero sum thing where you can only have good marketing or a good game! I think that quite simply a lot of the design in Next has been exceptionally lazy and to some degree the marketing is there to cover that up.
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Jun 1, 2013 06:25
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Laphroaig posted:The stars are not right for a 4E pathfinder. There is no company there to pick up the slack, and no OGL fuckup for that company to exploit. What will the 4E fans do? A lot of them are just going to stop playing D&D once the online compendium and character builder stop working. There will be a few diehards but not many. My group loved 4e but we're done with it. Some people already scape the whole online compendium and run it on their PCs because WotC site is slow. Same with the character builder, people still use the old legacy program with fan-made updates. When 4e dies, it will be played by far more people than you imagine. People still play 2e after all, with no official support, WotC organized games or online tools. ProfessorCirno posted:The general issue I have with the claim of "Well WotC cares about marketing because players will buy bad games" is that players will also buy good games with good marketing. This isn't some zero sum thing where you can only have good marketing or a good game! Alienating your current playerbase and trying to attract people who moved on long ago is not a good marketing either. So they're making a worse system AND are bad at marketing it already when they could've done a good job at both.
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Jun 1, 2013 09:56
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ProfessorCirno posted:I think that quite simply a lot of the design in Next has been exceptionally lazy and to some degree the marketing is there to cover that up. Yeah, this is ultimately what actually makes me frustrated with the Next team. RPG math and probability aren't that loving hard, yet there isn't even the barest effort spent to look over the systems and see if they work, and instead it's just slapped together so it "looks" okay. And considering 4e's relative forethought in its systems, it's an active effort to be this lazy, with an almost religious pursuit of blind nostalgia. It really is designed solely for Mearls and his direct friends and nobody else.
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Jun 1, 2013 11:08
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dwarf74 posted:This is the #1 reason for the reprints - to get fans of older editions back into the habit of buying stuff from WotC again. Hmm... possibly there's a second reason behind it. So people who want to come back with fresh eyes have a chance to remind themselves how clunky and awkward the older systems (rather than the games they half remember after they'd had the bugs kicked out of them) were. I mean give Next its due, it doesn't have anything like THAC0, NWPs, Thief skills, a weapon vs AC table, or the rest of the stuff people ignored in there. Instead it's closer, I think, to the way 1e and 2e were normally played. And ENWorld simply isn't that big. It's about the same size as RPG.net, and I believe, smaller than either the WotC or Paizo boards. (Of course RPG.net normally likes either decently designed or inspiring games).
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Jun 1, 2013 13:26
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Laphroaig posted:Older gamers, not old system. Someone who was 15 when they played 3E is what, 28-29 today? I'm this exact person and I think Next looks like a big pile of poo poo. I'll probably give it a go at some point if they put out a freebie adventure just to see what my beloved hobby has become.
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Jun 1, 2013 14:34
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While there might not be a 4e Pathfinder in the sense that we'll see 4e verbatim reprinted by another company, there is hope. 13th Age is basically the spiritual successor to 4e. It's a lot looser and probably doesn't appeal to all 4e fans. But the fact that it exists suggests you might see similar products on the horizon as well.
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Jun 1, 2013 15:20
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I wonder if WotC will eventually re-launch 4e to win back those disenfranchised gamers who were actual customers.
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Jun 1, 2013 16:07
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moths posted:I wonder if WotC will eventually re-launch 4e to win back those disenfranchised gamers who were actual customers. It all depends on how Next and the movie does but no, I really don't see that. Hasbro is uninvolved enough and the DnD brand so low profitability from core product sales that I can't fathom they'll even invest the money again into the brand should both the film and Next fail. If either one succeeds it says "keep making Next" or "Keep making movies, gently caress the books" Although genuinely I would love to see a 6e playtest packet that is nothing but statistical modeling charts to help compare classes.
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Jun 1, 2013 16:28
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Cpl Clegg posted:"We're done with it so it must be the same for everyone else."
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Jun 1, 2013 17:11
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Splicer posted:I expect (hope) that once there is 100% for certain no more 4E material coming out ever some That is exactly the sort of giant sperg project I would get involved in, except that I expect the whole idea quickly veers into  territory if you start releasing an offline character builder with later updates in it.(Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like what you'd be doing is saying "here is the pirated content, in this program that I am giving away so that you can play the game for free".
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Jun 1, 2013 17:38
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akasnowmaaan posted:Oh btw, I got How to Cook Everything and The Gourmet Cookbook on the advice of this thread. My copy's in a box right now, but I can tell you that towards the back of The Gourmet, there's an absolutely baller recipe for scallion-cheddar drop biscuits. I actually make it a lot for gaming sessions because it takes like a half an hour total, and, seriously, scallion and cheddar biscuits.
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Jun 1, 2013 17:58
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moths posted:I wonder if WotC will eventually re-launch 4e to win back those disenfranchised gamers who were actual customers. Probably. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, and in ten years or so 4e will seem super dated to whoever is playing the next big thing. I suspect that the "actual customers" were fewer in number than they had hoped; trimming sail on PDF sales and the radical departure from the 4e mindset for Next makes me really think someone in WOTC became convinced that 4e sales were poison. I realize this is entirely speculation and have no real desire to unearth the dumbass argument that follows from it but that makes the most sense of anything to me. That said, I made some amazing loving steak sandwiches today. Cut crusty rolls almost in half (so they have the butterfly hinge) and toast the in the skillet with butter. Then went a whole, large onion and more butter and salt on low heat until that poo poo got carmelized, throwing a fuckload of garlic in at the end. Meanwhile I had been cutting some lovely round steak into long strips and then hammering the poo poo out of them until I had some very long flat cutlet type deals, which I tossed in oil, salt, pepper, and more finely grated garlic. They sat in that while the onions finished. I put the rolls on a cookie sheet, topped them with the onions, covered that with mozz and provolone cheese and then stuck that under the broiler while I flash fried the meat strips on high heat. Once the beef got some color and the cheese melted down into the onions I threw a little mayo on there to grease the works, topped it with the beef, folded it over, and goddamn that was the best sandwich I have had in years.
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Jun 1, 2013 19:14
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Winson_Paine posted:Probably. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, and in ten years or so 4e will seem super dated to whoever is playing the next big thing. I suspect that the "actual customers" were fewer in number than they had hoped; trimming sail on PDF sales and the radical departure from the 4e mindset for Next makes me really think someone in WOTC became convinced that 4e sales were poison. I realize this is entirely speculation and have no real desire to unearth the dumbass argument that follows from it but that makes the most sense of anything to me. Sales might have been relatively weak compared to expectations but the insider subscriptions were a known source of very, very healthy profit revenue. What is weird about Next isn't that they're courting a new audience per se, its that they've seemingly built a marketing strategy and target that abandons the most profitable thing to happen to the line in decades. Every tweet Mearls puts out at this point that doesn't say what digital tools and support I can expect from Next is another failure of a tweet.
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Jun 1, 2013 19:16
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The thing with Next is that it's hard to imagine why anyone would need digital tools, because the system is pretty straightforward even with them trying to bolt ever more of 3.x onto it. You don't need a character builder, for example; it's not B/X speed, but you can still put together a character in 10-15 minutes on paper. And the monsters don't have 4e's colossal stat blocks, so an online bestiary isn't needed either. Kind of makes me wonder if they're planning to make these mythical modules subscriber-only ("Want the Warlord? Join DDI!") or they're going to do something like make one of the official settings an online exclusive. Because based on their past performance they're not going to come up with anything radical and groundbreaking.
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Jun 1, 2013 19:46
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Winson_Paine posted:That said, I made some amazing loving steak sandwiches today. Made something almost exactly like this, only as a Banh Mi style vietnamese sub, with spicy marinated pork and spicy mayo. Also broiling steak turns out surprisingly good, I was expecting it to be dry or not well cooked, but it comes out soooo tender and tasty if you do it right, though that was for a whole steak and not sandwich style pieces. I'm intrigued by the cheap-steak-bashing method, may have to try that for sandwiches at some point soon. edit: I found 4E combat speed to be crap, 3E melee characters to be crap. Surely there is a middle ground that Next will rahdfhdfhdahaha. I should be looking at other rpg systems like Warhammer Fantasy and Dungeon World shouldn't I?
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Jun 1, 2013 19:58
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Payndz posted:The thing with Next is that it's hard to imagine why anyone would need digital tools, because the system is pretty straightforward even with them trying to bolt ever more of 3.x onto it. You don't need a character builder, for example; it's not B/X speed, but you can still put together a character in 10-15 minutes on paper. And the monsters don't have 4e's colossal stat blocks, so an online bestiary isn't needed either. If they were planning to make the expansions all a subscription you'd think you'd be hearing about that by now since that's a rather interesting value-proposition. One that I'm sure their fanbase will vehemently denounce as not being true DnD and preventing them from playing the game and whatever else. victrix posted:I found 4E combat speed to be crap, 3E melee characters to be crap. Surely there is a middle ground that Next will rahdfhdfhdahaha. I should be looking at other rpg systems like Warhammer Fantasy and Dungeon World shouldn't I? Sorry but what you want isn't DnD. We here at WotC don't want you or your iterative improvements and modern design nonsense.
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Jun 1, 2013 20:15
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Barudak posted:To be honest, you're basicaly the target market of Next. Its basically souped up 2e with a lot of the changes made by 3e bolted on. For most people in the thread, we played through 3, 3.5, and 4 and to see it basically slide back to 3rd Edition: 2nd Edition is really unappealing. That is also before we discuss the math which has had seemingly no work put into it especially on the monster side. I didn't start playing again for any of those reasons. The main reason I started up again was because me and my cousins started playing Descent: Journeys into the dark Second Edition, and it made me nostalgic for D&D. I found out that they're running a D&D encounters game at my local gaming store, so I went down and joined. Turned out it was the D&D Next Playtest, but I would have joined even if it was a 4th edition game. Maybe 4th edition is better. My DM prefers this edition though. I can't form an educated opinion because I never played 4e so I don't really know what the major differences are.
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Jun 1, 2013 21:10
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Winson_Paine posted:Probably. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, and in ten years or so 4e will seem super dated to whoever is playing the next big thing. I suspect that the "actual customers" were fewer in number than they had hoped; trimming sail on PDF sales and the radical departure from the 4e mindset for Next makes me really think someone in WOTC became convinced that 4e sales were poison. I realize this is entirely speculation and have no real desire to unearth the dumbass argument that follows from it but that makes the most sense of anything to me. Nostalgia is in D&D's favor, so I'm not sure if it's such a good idea for WoC to be coming out with all these different versions every few years. That's what killed TSR. If they want to capitalize on nostalgia all they have to do is reprint the old books. But old school gamers, who are now mostly adults with jobs and families, don't have as much time as they used to. They don't want to learn a whole new rule set just to play the current D&D system. If you want different choices, you have pathfinder, dungeon quest, and a slew of other rpg systems. If D&D already has a good system that works and is easy for everyone to pick up, then why change it? You don't have to re-invent the wheel every time someone comes up with an improvement. Gianthogweed fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jun 1, 2013 |
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Jun 1, 2013 21:24
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Mendrian posted:While there might not be a 4e Pathfinder in the sense that we'll see 4e verbatim reprinted by another company, there is hope. 13th Age is basically the spiritual successor to 4e. It's a lot looser and probably doesn't appeal to all 4e fans. But the fact that it exists suggests you might see similar products on the horizon as well. It's kind of funny because 13th Age actually would have been a really good intended model for next. Mechanically it's more like 2e / 3e than 4e, but it has a ton of interesting quality of life upgrades that would have made it a nice "sequel" to 3rd. In fact, I'd wager that the original 5e design would have probably looked like it - If Numenara is an example of what Monte Cook would've liked to do in 5e, well, 13th Age and Numenara share more design philosophy than either of them and Next.
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Jun 1, 2013 22:02
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Gianthogweed posted:If D&D already has a good system that works and is easy for everyone to pick up, then why change it? Because somebody new is in charge and they have a vision. Like, as much as people around here will praise 4E that's probably more-or-less how 4E got made in the first place, I doubt it was the result of exhaustive research and thousands of man-hours worth of design and testing in the WotC Gamestorium so they could forge the perfect game, the person/people who were in charge had a vision for what they wanted D&D to be and so they got to make the D&D they wanted. If someone else had been in charge we would have seen a very different sort of game, maybe an iteration of 3.X like Pathfinder or maybe something that tried reaching back to 2E. Instead we got a game like 4E. Now someone else is in charge with a mandate from up on high to "just do whatever you think will work" and so they're going to make the game they have a vision for. That's really about as far as it needs to go in terms of "but why are they doing this"...I will wager one hundred of the earth dollars that the reason they're going from 4E to Next has nothing to do with any sort of sales figure trends or formal marketing data, it's because this is the game that the guy in charge thinks is cool. D&D, RPGs in general really, are low stakes enough and off in their own little microcosm enough that this is basically always the answer to "but why did they make the game this way/why did they put out a new edition/why did they etc."
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Jun 1, 2013 22:10
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