Galdor the Great's page

Nah, I don't really care if people like or dislike WotC. Has zero bearing on my day to day life. Just pointing out to Diffan that maybe some people at WotC think maybe they overstepped by changing D&D too much from its roots. The labels are all the same (monster names, the stats, some spell names, etc), but the feel of the game, whether you like it or not, is markedly different from earlier iterations, and a decent number of people felt is "wasn't D&D" enough to move on and take their dollars elsewhere.

I don't have a negative or positive opinion of 4e, I tried it, it's ok and can be fun sometimes, but I prefer Pathfinder (well, a heavily houseruled version, anyway) and 1e for my D&D style gaming. But a lot of gamers really dislike it. And, frankly, if 4e were as rousing a success as the fans claim it is, 5e (D&DNext or whatever they're calling it) wouldn't be in production right now. WotC is making a business choice, and they're reaching out to the customers they lost. And, unless they are completely incompetent, that must me more people than stayed or are new to the game all together.

Putting all mechanics and sacred cows aside, it's obvious WotC sees 4e as a mistake, a failed experiment that did a nice job of creating a huge schism in...

See this, really, is the whole point. It strikes me the entire argument over whether Vancian is a retrograde step is irrelevant (not to your enjoyment, but to the development of 5e), and folks who are suggesting this really aren't understanding the driver behind the entire machine that has gotten underway at Wizards. Vancian could be the worst, most misbegotten thing in the history of roleplaying, and 4e could have been brought down from the Mount by Moses. Doesn't matter at WOTC. At Will powers, per encounter, whatever - great system, and not in any way germaine to the discussion. For Wizards, 4e was a commercial failure and they have stated repeatedly that they intend to 'unite' the fanbase, bring back players into the D&D fold and unify the systems. For all that, read 'we want our customers back.' So, the first thing the dev team will have sat down with wasn't 'how can we improve on 4e and make it a better system', it was 'We know where our customers went, so how do we go about getting them back?'

Beautiful, fair, elegant rules? You think Hasbro gives a stuff about that? When it's released, if all the reviewers say 'wow, this sucks', yet the game generates $50 million dollars revenue, there'll be smiles all round. If the two things coincide, then there'll be backslapping going on at Wizards, but the only one that's necessary is the second.

Sigh... here we go again.

I don't play 4th edition. This is my choice. However I don't disparage anyone who plays that system. No-one here has the right to tell anyone what system they should play or how they should have fun. If it works for you then awesome, knock yourself out.

It all comes down to this. 4th ed is a good thing, even if you hate it. Just like World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Mutants and Masterminds, Dark Heresy and Warhammer are all good things. Put simply the more games that are out there the more the gaming sector grows and that can only be a good thing.

If a 4th Ed. player comes onto the Paizo site and buys a flip mat then they are directly contributing to the success of Pathfinder. Conversely, when I buy a D&D minatures pack I am directly supporting WotC. Both businesses grow and by extension reach out to new players and new GM's.

Without the huge amount of support that WotC gives the gaming community, roleplaying in general would suffer. WotC's sponsorship of events like Gen Con promotes and develops gaming in general. I for one support that fully.

Whining that you don't like 4th ed is old; very, very old. Just remember that without D&D roleplaying in general would suffer. You may not like the game in it's current incarnation but whining about it just makes the board look elitist, petty, negative and childish. Not a good advert for Pathfinder players frankly. Pack it in. Seriously.

We want more games to play not less. More games equals more players equals more cool stuff for us to buy. Long live 4th Ed I say, because it brings more people and more money into gaming and that helps everybody, Paizo included.

To answer the OP I usually call it Pathfinder but occasionally I'll slip back into calling it D&D. Old grognard habits die hard.

After all this talk of gays, I wanted to bring up one point...
As Christians, we are to live and let live. We are not God's agents of retribution or punishment, we are supposed to be examples of his grace and goodness.
Whatever God thinks of homosexuals is between Him and the individual, and we have nothing to do with it, plain and simple. It is not our job to make a gay person's life a living hell through legislation.