Monte Leaves, Playtesting Begins


4th Edition

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Grand Lodge

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Diffan wrote:

Taken from Memorax's link:

Monte Cook wrote:
During the design of 3.0, one of the things that we realized was a huge strength of D&D is a concept we called "mastery." Mastery, in this context, is the idea that an avid fan of the game is going to really delve into the rules to understand how they work. We actually designed 3.0 with mastery in mind. For example, we created subsystems that worked like other systems, so that if you knew how one worked, you'd find the other one easier to understand. But I digress.
And there you have a very definitive reason why a LOT of people shrug their shoulders about his departure. From my own experience, system mastery, or more precisely the added gains of system mastery is a horrid step in the design process. Now he just stats that it's beneficial to people for the uses of going from one sub-sytem to another, yet it's much more than that as he stated in anothe article about feats that weren't very good (for example, Toughness). Frankly there are some people who, for whatever reason, can't put THAT much time into a system. And because of that, they get hosed because they don't know that X, Y, and Z combo does 1,000 damage on a Charge attack or that Such-and-Such spell can be used continuously throught a character's career, or that in combination with obscure item from BLah-Supplement makes a Dwarven Fighter immune to all acid damage and gives him DR 10/—.

Frankly, I've never understood this attitude that new or casual participants in a hobby should be just as effective as experienced and/or serious participants. In fact, this is the only hobby where I've seen this theory proposed.

If our hobby were, for example, basketball:

Player 1 has a basketball hoop and backboard in his driveway at home, and spends 2 hours a day shooting hoops or, if it's raining, watching recordings of NBA games while playing with a basketball inside. He plays street ball in the park on Wednesday nights and is part of a league that plays every Saturday and his team practice every Thursday night.

Player 2 is a member of the same league, but he only shows up for the practices during the week and for league games. Other than that he doesn't touch a ball. Whether it's because he's not as dedicated, or has other priorities (family, work, a long commute) he just doesn't get in as much quality time.

By the theory that "Mastery is bad" player 2 should be just as skilled at the game as player 1. We all know that's bunk, but here we have a theory that states that in our hobby it should work differently.

Whatever your pursuit in life, the more time and energy you dedicate to it, the more skilled and effective you will be.

Liberty's Edge

golem101 wrote:

I don't mind the "partial" release (only a handful of classes and races, probably a handful of spells/skills/feats/etc.) as a first release. At all.

But having pregens only, with no infos on how to build characters and how to level up - thusly no infos on what to expect on future levels, but only having to wait until the next playtest release - well, no. Too little, too much lacking.

I actually much prefer the sound of this more directed playtesting, it seems to be asking us to focus on specific parts of the game to test first of all - i.e. they aren't asking us to playtest character creation, whether certain feats can be combined to break the system, or whether there are too many or too few feats etc.

Rather they seem to be looking to get us to play the characters through every level so that the features they put in will actually get tested.

I never participated in the PF playtests purely because it was so wide open.

Dark Archive

That is exactly why I'm disheartened. The "snapshots approach" does not sound (to me) efficient, enticing, comprehensive, trustful of the playtesters ability to actually toy with the game.
In case you're wondering I'm quite vocal in my anti-optimizer/min-maxer attitude.

Another thing that makes me wonder, it's the timeline involved. Pregens for ten levels. Does that mean ten releases? Less with some levels grouped in themed bunches? One release every week? Two weeks?
That is even before having a glimpse of the complete game - in its beta stage! - with customization options... options that are at the core of an RPG... ehrm. Does not sound so good.

Less interested before, very much less enthusiast right now.
I think I'll take a look at 5e when it's done, and won't bother anymore with the previews in the meanwhile.


houstonderek wrote:

I think people forget that D&D isn't nearly in the public eye like it was in the '80s. Most people don't give a crap about D&D. The tabletop RPG hobby is niche now, not a huge fad like it was. A healthy D&D isn't nearly as important to the hobby as it was thirty years ago.

If Hasbro shelves the brand it isn't going to hurt the hobby much.

I agree with houstonderek here.

D&D crash will hurt the collective gamer community's ego and nostalgia, but not the market or the hobby

On the contrary, the vacuum left by D&D can allow for many indie/small market games to really take off, and the hobby could see a multitude of new games.

'findel


Memorax wrote:
Probably is not made up. I have something similar though non-D&D. The younger generation come to the a store to buy books and complain that 300+ pages book is "too big" to read. Or get angry when their is no coles notes for every book. So your not the only person worried about the education system.

Complaining about how easy the next generation has it and how their new toys will put an end to thinking goes back to at least Socrates complaining about kids getting to write everything down in a book and not memorize it.

Liberty's Edge

BigNorseWolf wrote:


Complaining about how easy the next generation has it and how their new toys will put an end to thinking goes back to at least Socrates complaining about kids getting to write everything down in a book and not memorize it.

That's the thing though they don't think they have it any easier and complain about it. For me unless it was textbook size a book was never too big. Having someone complain that it's hard work reading something smaller than that while also complaining they can;t get access to a simplified form is complining for the sake of it.

Laurefindel wrote:

On the contrary, the vacuum left by D&D can allow for many indie/small market games to really take off, and the hobby could see a multitude of new games.

I would agree except how many of these smaller companies have the same resources say as Wotc, or White Wolf. The market presence. The ability to advertise/ Not many if any. That assumes that the smaller companies games are successful and profitable enough for them to grow. There is also a time factor invilved. The smaller companies would need time to grow into a bigger company. It's like people assume once Wotc/D&D is gone that magically and with no margin or error that their replacements will somehow be successful. A optmistic and somewhat naive view imo.


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Golem 101 wrote:

I don't mind the "partial" release (only a handful of classes and races, probably a handful of spells/skills/feats/etc.) as a first release. At all.

But having pregens only, with no infos on how to build characters and how to level up - thusly no infos on what to expect on future levels, but only having to wait until the next playtest release - well, no. Too little, too much lacking.

That means that the playtesters will work on single "screenshots" of the game, with no perspective or greater picture available until at least very far into the playtest, and with only a partial and fragmented idea of what the game will be. Too much lab-rat feeling.

Open playtests seen by Paizo and Green Ronin showed some more... respect, lacking for a more proper word, for the gamers involved, and for their opinions.

I want to stress that this is only regarding the attitude and not regarding the game (obviously I haven't seen anything real), but it's yet another little brick of enthusiasm/interest that disintegrates even before dealing with the hard data.

Based on my reading of the column, I think the reason for the pregens is that they want to test the core rules only with this first round. They aren't showing disrespect. They're just trying to limit the types of responses they're going to get to one section of the rules at a time.

Given the eagerness everyone is showing over the playtest, they'll get swamped with way too much feedback if they allow a review of everything at once. That's how feedback gets ignored--because there's just too much to read.

It seems like a very sensible approach. Especially since the way they're having us playtest it is the same way they did; going back to the most basic core rules and working forward through everything one step at a time.

Liberty's Edge

Jerry Wright 307 wrote:


Based on my reading of the column, I think the reason for the pregens is that they want to test the core rules only with this first round. They aren't showing disrespect. They're just trying to limit the types of responses they're going to get to one section of the rules at a time.

Given the eagerness everyone is showing over the playtest, they'll get swamped with way too much feedback if they allow a review of everything at once. That's how feedback gets ignored--because there's just too much to read.

It seems like a very sensible approach. Especially since the way they're having us playtest it is the same way they did; going back to the most basic core rules and working forward through everything one step at a time.

Agreed and seconded. Taking the slower approach like they seem to want to do for now is smart on their part. Too much feedback and it does get ignored. Too little and people complain yur playtest is a sham. Still like most companies doing something like this they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.


memorax wrote:
Laurefindel wrote:

On the contrary, the vacuum left by D&D can allow for many indie/small market games to really take off, and the hobby could see a multitude of new games.

I would agree except how many of these smaller companies have the same resources say as Wotc, or White Wolf. The market presence. The ability to advertise/ Not many if any. That assumes that the smaller companies games are successful and profitable enough for them to grow. There is also a time factor invilved. The smaller companies would need time to grow into a bigger company. It's like people assume once Wotc/D&D is gone that magically and with no margin or error that their replacements will somehow be successful. A optmistic and somewhat naive view imo.

Hence the use of can and could. Many of these companies already benefited from the vacuum left by the termination of 3.5; Paizo being the most prominent example IMO.

Some people keep playing the game they like, but others prefer continuous support for their game. If the D&D brand falls, it will inevitably create a vacuum for "supported games" and since I believe that the RPG community will not diminish even if D&D bellies-up, others will step-in for the market that D&D use to take. Big players will no-doubt take part of this market, but smaller players will have a chance to rise.

Saying that they will all rise equally and without risks or investments is naive and optimistic, but the chance that a few smaller games (altogether) replace the major D&D game exists nonetheless. I am not talking about a RPG renaissance or a return to the early 90s' with unrealistic marketing models, but a new opportunity.

Grand Lodge

One of the biggest benefits of the OGL and 3E was that it brought back a lot of players that had spun off into other game systems, thus re-uniting the player base. For an inherently social game (like any RPG), the bigger the pool of players, the better the hobby does overall. One of the stated goals of the OGL and 3E was to re-unify the player base and get a lot of lapsed players (such as myself) back into D&D as opposed to one of the other game systems out there.

If the D&D brand fails, then which will unite the players? On the other hand, the fragmentation caused by the 4E launch has largely wiped away the gains in this direction made by 3E and the OGL, so it's not such a big deal anymore. This, in my opinion, is one of the great failures of 4E -- more than any mechanics issues. The launch of 4E took a largely unified 3E player base and broke it up into very polarized camps.

It doesn't matter whether you're a 3E/PF or 4E fan, this segmentation of the market hurt everyone as play opportunities decreased for everyone.


Relative to the 4E=New Coke comparison, from what I recall, for a while after they reintroduced Coca Cola Classic, Coke had two versions on the shelf at once and for a while it left them with more shelf space and therefore a bigger presence in the grocery stores. I can see with these reprints and 4E books to be followed by Next, that it might do WotC some good in that there are more choices on the shelf that all send money home to them. An idea like this could also leverage existing older materials that make use of just the new D&D core. So, when Next is released, they could have a bunch of products that take advantage of various options and the full game and then also have a D&D Classics series of module reimaginings that just use the simple core: say Keep on the Borderlands, Village of Hommlet and Isle of Dread for example.

As to Monte leaving, to me it's a little disappointing but if folks think that him leaving means all that he contributed to the game and produced in the last X months is now gone they aren't thinking it through. Many times on a project people come in and then leave for various reasons, take a new assignment, move to a new position. It's just not practical or logical in most cases to try to remove or undo what they've contributed to the product.

I like their plan so far for the playtest. I think keeping it specific and structured will yield better results for them as they fine tune what they have. Too many variables in the mix and you can't tell as easily what change produced what result.

L


Back in the day, TSR had four different versions of the game on the shelves at the same time (OE, BECMI, 1E and 2E). They went bankrupt shortly afterward. Most of that can be blamed on Lorraine Williams, but some of it might well be the same sort of divided fan base WotC is facing now.

Back then, the defections were to other systems. These days, the defections are to other versions of the game WotC is producing.

Liberty's Edge

Laurefindel wrote:


Hence the use of can and could. Many of these companies already benefited from the vacuum left by the termination of 3.5; Paizo being the most prominent example IMO.

I would not use Paizo as an example in this case because they were in the right place at the right time and benefitting from a fanbase that was tired of new editions. Not to mention making it backwards compaitable snd releasing an older edition of a game with few changes. If Paizo does a new edition those set of cirucmstances will not be thre and the new edition might be all new and different.

Laurefindel wrote:


Some people keep playing the game they like, but others prefer continuous support for their game. If the D&D brand falls, it will inevitably create a vacuum for "supported games" and since I believe that the RPG community will not diminish even if D&D bellies-up, others will step-in for the market that D&D use to take. Big players will no-doubt take part of this market, but smaller players will have a chance to rise.

The thing is your not takng into account gamer favortism imo. I know gmaers who will not touch Pathfinder and play on 3.5. No matter how simialr and compitable the games are. Spoke to another fellow gamer who hates NWOD and will only play old World of Darkness. Myself with or without D&D I play other games. Yet from what I have seen being in the hobby for a very long time gamers play what they like and hate playing something new. They become comfortable in what rpgs they now. The yonger generation less of course. The older gamers imo tend to remain with games they like to play. Not to say I do not want to see the smaller companies tkae over. It's just that they have a few strikes against them imo.

Laurefindel wrote:


Saying that they will all rise equally and without risks or investments is naive and optimistic, but the chance that a few smaller games (altogether) replace the major D&D game exists nonetheless. I am not talking about a RPG renaissance or a return to the early 90s' with urealistic marketing models, but a new opportunity.

As I said I would like to see the smaller companies become bigger and better yet they face many challenges. They need a decent amount of money and publish a product that makes a profit. Would have to get used to non-Kikcstarter type of way of functioning. If your taking D&D place gamers want their books yesterday. kickstarters work fine for the little guy the company with enough money imo not so much. Distributors not carrying or stocking their product. Your pretty much guanrantted to see them carry the rpgs from the big guys. The lesser indie stuff not so much. A resistance from the LGS to carry indie stuff that may or may not sell. With the way the lgs are hurting carrying something that may or may not sell is a risky to say the least. Gamer favoritism. Wll the D&D fanbase be willing to switch over to savage Worlds or a lesser known fantas replacement. No one can say for sure.

It can happen and should happen yet if the small companies do ever replace D&D expect the industry to be in flux for a few years and hope everything goes well for them. I rather the devil I know then the devil I don't

Apologize for the spelling errrors. Trying to finish this before my break ends.


Thorkull wrote:
Diffan wrote:
Stuff about System Mastery and how it's not very good as a design philosophy for Gaming products.

Frankly, I've never understood this attitude that new or casual participants in a hobby should be just as effective as experienced and/or serious participants. In fact, this is the only hobby where I've seen this theory proposed.

If our hobby were, for example, basketball:

Player 1 has a basketball hoop and backboard in his driveway at home, and spends 2 hours a day shooting hoops or, if it's raining, watching recordings of NBA games while playing with a basketball inside. He plays street ball in the park on Wednesday nights and is part of a league that plays every Saturday and his team practice every Thursday night.

Player 2 is a member of the same league, but he only shows up for the practices during the week and for league games. Other than that he doesn't touch a ball. Whether it's because he's not as dedicated, or has other priorities (family, work, a long commute) he just doesn't get in as much quality time.

By the theory that "Mastery is bad" player 2 should be just as skilled at the game as player 1. We all know that's bunk, but here we have a theory that states that in our hobby it should work differently.

Whatever your pursuit in life, the more time and energy you dedicate to it, the more skilled and effective you will be.

By that same token, one might assume that Player 1, who works diligently at the game, would get extreamly angry when his team still loses because his fellow teammates can't keep up or don't perform to his standards. He starts telling them what to do or tips on shooting or plays to run yet his teammates just don't care that much about a hobby to put that sort of effort in. They say he's being aggressive, selfish, and has far too much invested for something as minimal as a hobby. Tempers flare and the team breaks up, forcing Player 1 to find a new group.

That scenario has happend lots of times in D&D where char_optimizers watch their companions make bad decsions, cast spells that don't work for the situations, move about the battlefield that blocks someone's charge, or attacks the wrong guy OR have generally weak characters who don't pull enough of what they consider their own weight. How is that any good for 1. the other people at the table? 2. the DM who now has to make things challenging for Char_Optimizer yet not kill everyone else in the process? or 3. the Char_Optimizer himself who feels all his diligent time is wasted? Really, all System Mastery did (and when the rules enforce it) is create competition between the players and the DM.

But like I said before, system mastery is still prevalent in the game and always will be. But how far a distance does that mastery create between awesome characters and poor characters is the question. In 3E, that gap was so large, you could fly Tiamat holding a Terrasque while he held onto two city skyscrapers in each hand and still have some room left over for a Deity or two to squeeze in. In 4E, the gap was much, much smaller. 4E taught us that one person doesn't have to end the encounter in 1 attack or spell, that team work does a LOT better job of solving problems and getting people to work cooperatively than each person making a characte for what they preceive they'll do (by themselves) in combat. If anything System Mastery in 4E helps a character do something great that he already does pretty well.


Removed a few posts. Lets try not to insult other users please.


MicMan wrote:


But now it seems to me that trying to please everyone will be the downfall of 5e, as the 4e fans will see "too much oldschool deadweight" and the 3e/PF fans still say that "this is not D&D".

Seems like a loose/loose scenario.

That's been my belief for how things will play out since day one of hearing about 5e tbh. I just don't see how they're going to reconcile both camps, and suspect they'll end up pleasing no-one (well except for a dwindling handful of folks who'd buy literally anything put out by wotc and call it gold).

But hey, we'll see, maybe they'll pull off a miracle...


Thorkull wrote:

One of the biggest benefits of the OGL and 3E was that it brought back a lot of players that had spun off into other game systems, thus re-uniting the player base. For an inherently social game (like any RPG), the bigger the pool of players, the better the hobby does overall. One of the stated goals of the OGL and 3E was to re-unify the player base and get a lot of lapsed players (such as myself) back into D&D as opposed to one of the other game systems out there.

If the D&D brand fails, then which will unite the players? On the other hand, the fragmentation caused by the 4E launch has largely wiped away the gains in this direction made by 3E and the OGL, so it's not such a big deal anymore. This, in my opinion, is one of the great failures of 4E -- more than any mechanics issues. The launch of 4E took a largely unified 3E player base and broke it up into very polarized camps.

It doesn't matter whether you're a 3E/PF or 4E fan, this segmentation of the market hurt everyone as play opportunities decreased for everyone.

A little bit perhaps, but not a great deal in my own personal experience. There are more games than just D&D and PF out there, and the two groups I game with are just as interested in playing many of those as PF.

Groups have never been 'united' in my part of the world (the home counties), with player groups scattered rather like points of light in a sea of night, usually unaware of quite local and close other groups.

The idea that D&D is some kind of universal system we all play is extremely out of date. It was dated before 4e came out, it's positively antique these days.


Laurefindel wrote:
houstonderek wrote:

I think people forget that D&D isn't nearly in the public eye like it was in the '80s. Most people don't give a crap about D&D. The tabletop RPG hobby is niche now, not a huge fad like it was. A healthy D&D isn't nearly as important to the hobby as it was thirty years ago.

If Hasbro shelves the brand it isn't going to hurt the hobby much.

I agree with houstonderek here.

D&D crash will hurt the collective gamer community's ego and nostalgia, but not the market or the hobby

On the contrary, the vacuum left by D&D can allow for many indie/small market games to really take off, and the hobby could see a multitude of new games.

'findel

I tend to agree, though I suspect games store owners (a thin herd these days due to other means of buying books) rely on D&D sales quite a bit.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32

Rockheimr wrote:


I tend to agree, though I suspect games store owners (a thin herd these days due to other means of buying books) rely on D&D sales quite a bit.

Some do, some don't. My FLGS stocks one copy of a 4e book. And it's been there for 8+ months. The owner stocks a ton of Pathfinder. He says 4e doesn't sell and Pathfinder does. Oddly, used copies of 3.x stuff sells, as well. On the other hand, I have been in game stores that stock a ton of 4e but no Pathfinder with the same claim in reverse. So much depends on a red wheelbarrow, after all.


My only objection to the playtest process so far is purely a selfish one: I want to port a scenario I wrote for Pathfinder for use with D&D Next by mid-July, and it's meant for 8th level players. I'll have to downscale the power level considerably to make it work if I only have one to three levels' worth of content with which to reconstruct it.

I also hope the core mechanics are reasonably robust, because I have aquatic sections in it. [EDIT: Oh, and mounts, too.] O_o

However, just because something is hard does not mean it's not worth doing. From time to time. =]

Liberty's Edge

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Rockheimr wrote:
Laurefindel wrote:
houstonderek wrote:

I think people forget that D&D isn't nearly in the public eye like it was in the '80s. Most people don't give a crap about D&D. The tabletop RPG hobby is niche now, not a huge fad like it was. A healthy D&D isn't nearly as important to the hobby as it was thirty years ago.

If Hasbro shelves the brand it isn't going to hurt the hobby much.

I agree with houstonderek here.

D&D crash will hurt the collective gamer community's ego and nostalgia, but not the market or the hobby

On the contrary, the vacuum left by D&D can allow for many indie/small market games to really take off, and the hobby could see a multitude of new games.

'findel

I tend to agree, though I suspect games store owners (a thin herd these days due to other means of buying books) rely on D&D sales quite a bit.

Brick and Mortar retail is pretty much a dying outlet for a lot of different products, movies and books being the big two right now. On line vendors can charge less, having less overhead, and in these economic times, every penny saved counts.

Edit: music stores are a dying breed as well.

Grand Lodge

The whole brick & mortar thing is really kind of off-topic, but my $.02 is that they'll have to offer services above and beyond those of the online retailers to survive.

Primarily I see offering a venue for players of all stripes to come and play the games -- organized play for RPGs, tournaments for miniatures and card games.

One of our local stores is about 80% play space / 20% retail space and they're packed every Saturday. Even if only a few players buy merchandise, that's a good deal for them.


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Thorkull wrote:

One of the biggest benefits of the OGL and 3E was that it brought back a lot of players that had spun off into other game systems, thus re-uniting the player base. For an inherently social game (like any RPG), the bigger the pool of players, the better the hobby does overall. One of the stated goals of the OGL and 3E was to re-unify the player base and get a lot of lapsed players (such as myself) back into D&D as opposed to one of the other game systems out there.

If the D&D brand fails, then which will unite the players? On the other hand, the fragmentation caused by the 4E launch has largely wiped away the gains in this direction made by 3E and the OGL, so it's not such a big deal anymore. This, in my opinion, is one of the great failures of 4E -- more than any mechanics issues. The launch of 4E took a largely unified 3E player base and broke it up into very polarized camps.

It doesn't matter whether you're a 3E/PF or 4E fan, this segmentation of the market hurt everyone as play opportunities decreased for everyone.

BINGO!

With all this talk of branding and legacy and the general health of the hobby I think that the little rules guy in each of us forgets this oh so salient post.

RPG's are one of the most niche markets in existence. Seriously this is like the Asian vintage tea market. All new editions and by extension the inevitable divisions they create do is further segment this market. I like the mechanics of RPGs, I'm weird like that. So I'll take a look at a new ruleset. I won't participate in a playtest, because the people I play with could care less.
The issue with 4e or 5e or whatever Is that it takes us back to 1997. That's not a good thing. "Old School" flavor is a marketing catchphrase. IF, and I say if, WotC can magically create a game that appeals to every audience in the RPG market simultaneously they will put themselves out of Buisness. The RPG Buisness anyway.
The money in RPGs for Hasbro is in rulesets, new rulesets or rather new rulebooks. It's a good plan, there are a lot of people that will buy a new rulebook just to read it. And then more splat books to supplement it. But the money is in that CORE RULEBOOK. That is what the D&D brand has become, and endless stream of new complex rules tidely packed in $20 to $40 hardbacks. I don't know if it's good for the hobby or not.

The OGL is a thing of genius. I'm serious when I say that. It basically is a safeguard against the entire RPG market crashing in a ball of flames. Any company can use it to some degree to print their own stuff. Paizo did it, and expanded it.

I have a confession, I've quit buying the rulebooks for PFRPG, the rules are available for free online, all of them. My players buy the hardbacks so they are at my table during a game and it's not hard to borrow one once the newness has worn off.
Now I still buy between $30 and $60 (sometimes much more) worth of product from Paizo a month. But it's fluff mostly. Fluff doesn't need ERRATA or a 40 page FAQ, fluff stays useful for years if not forever. I should buy less, I have kids and bills and this hobby is expensive.
This is the hurdle of 5e. The OGL and PFSRD are free, FREE!, that is an almost insurmountable obstacle. When I get a new convert, a new player, a casual observer, they look at the books and the price of investment and they shake their heads. But for the first time in my 25+ years of tabletop gaming I can send them to a website to read it all for free. That grows player base. You cannot convince me otherwise.

WotC failed to support the SRD. That was a mistake that Paizo exploited. It was a mistake that Necromancer exploited. It was a mistake that they will repeat in all likelihood because it's not in their Buisness Model.

D&D is not really a brand anymore, it's a genre. A trademarked name to be sure but I don't see it as all that valuable. Regardless of the system played, the publisher or heck even the people playing it, every casual observer will say "Oh it's D&D". To be certain, I can get a skeptic to play Pathfinder more easily than D&D, even though it's the same thing.

D&D, the brand, is one of the most spectacularly mismanaged products still in production. It has a history like a Ben Stiller farce disaster film. The companies in control have sued their customer base, fired their best people, locked out the game's creators, LIED to their customers in press releases, hired people with NO prior knowledge of RPGs to manage the "brand", rushed products out the door so fast that glaring quality control issues were evident after a cursory inspection and the IP itself has changed hands numerous times. That the thing even still exists is a miracle.

Monte Cook leaving is hardly any more controversial than the preceding paragraph. I read once that TSR blocked Gygax from entering the building. If it's a true story, nothing else is as silly. I like Monte's work usually, but rules for the sake of new rules is silly. I like Mike Mearles work usually but I could care less who writes the new rules. If they are good, cool. If not, no biggie, the OGL guarantees me a future in gaming.


Thorkull wrote:

The whole brick & mortar thing is really kind of off-topic, but my $.02 is that they'll have to offer services above and beyond those of the online retailers to survive.

Primarily I see offering a venue for players of all stripes to come and play the games -- organized play for RPGs, tournaments for miniatures and card games.

One of our local stores is about 80% play space / 20% retail space and they're packed every Saturday. Even if only a few players buy merchandise, that's a good deal for them.

See, I'm quoting you again.

Hobby Store support is important. Game Stores are a labour of love, there's no money in it. Game Stores are where new Role Players are built. WotC is actually pretty good at this or rather they were. This is also the future for them I suspect. One of the debacles in the 4e conversion is the number of game store owners that got burned. All 3 of the store owners I'm friendly with got singed a little with 3.5 backstock on the conversion. The murky nature of the transition was off-putting to say the least. Not enough to sever ties, because you gotta have Magic. But PFRPG got a little buff with transparency.


pming wrote:
No offence to their skill, but I just don't get that "old school" vibe comming from them.

Ummmmm, Bruce "I wrote a ton of stuff for TSR in 1995" Cordell isn't Old School?

Admittedly, Rob Schwalb is more of a 3.5/4E guy, but you really had a trifecta of designers representing the spectrum from 2E to 4E. The only way you could have gotten any 1E was to pull Zeb Cook out of video game land or brought on Ed Greenwood (and I can see Mr. Greenwood being subversive about it. ;) ) and neither of those would have been cheap.

-Ben.


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zagnabbit wrote:
Hobby Store support is important. Game Stores are a labour of love, there's no money in it. Game Stores are where new Role Players are built.

With respect, this is a belief that those who have decent game stores have. While I mean no disrespect to game stores and I'm sure they "build" lots of new players, it's only one avenue.

I've been gaming for over 20 years. I've introduced somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 players to RPGs over the years (with the number growing as I recruit my kids' friends into the new generation), and have never had the luxury of a gamestore that was worth a damn be within an hour's drive of where I lived, let alone one that held game sessions.

Hobby Store support has a role, absolutely. Is it essential in the 21st century? That's very situational. If you've got a good store, support it, but GMs are what build gamers by introducing them & recruiting them to the game. Game stores are optional to that effort.

Sidenote: In much the same way, D&D no longer is necessary to be the "gateway game" anymore. The PF Beginner Box does a really good job of fulfilling that role, as evidenced by my kids thinking that it's "awesome".

Liberty's Edge

This thread has really gone of topic but thats okay makes am ore interesting discussion.
As for gaming stores im a loyal customer to one in my area. That being said if rpg XYZ cost 60$ at the store and 45$ on Amazon.com well Im buying from amazon. I want to uspport the brick and mortar stores as much as I can I also want to make sure to get a product cheaper and also help out my wallet. So game stores are not the only outlet for gamig. You have the internet with Amazon and the free SRD and unfortunately you also have piracy. On top of this the gmaing sotres cannot compete with internet pricing. The one I go to has a large selection of rpgs as well as card games, board games, novels a used section. A weekend gaming afternoon and regular magic tournaments.
With a knowledgeable staff. Nothing makes me want to stop shopping at your store when your clueless about the products you carry.

Without all that they would have gone under long ago. I had two others in my area that were strictly gmaing with some magic in the side and they went under. Game stores unforunately are a dying breed.

Liberty's Edge

zagnabbit wrote:


One of the debacles in the 4e conversion is the number of game store owners that got burned. All 3 of the store owners I'm friendly with got singed a little with 3.5 backstock on the conversion. The murky nature of the transition was off-putting to say the least. Not enough to sever ties, because you gotta have Magic. But PFRPG got a little buff with ransparency.

on the other hand too many jumped on the D20 bandwagon to make a fast buck bought too much 3.5 material without even knowing for sure if they could move all of it. Im not saying Wotc is blameless yet some game store owners imo got too greedy. Rather then blame themselves took the easy way out and blmaed someone else.


BPorter wrote:
With respect, this is a belief that those who have decent game stores have. While I mean no disrespect to game stores and I'm sure they "build" lots of new players, it's only one avenue.

Forewarning: I'm not going to go dig up quotes, but:

This is also a belief that WotC staff and Paizo staff share, based on past statements. The FLGS is an important sector to build the market.

BPorter wrote:
Sidenote: In much the same way, D&D no longer is necessary to be the "gateway game" anymore. The PF Beginner Box does a really good job of fulfilling that role, as evidenced by my kids thinking that it's "awesome".

Sure, but, where's that Beginner Box sold that is going to introduce it to people without the benefit of a mentor-gamer?

This is part of why the hobby channel is so important, especially with the shelf space of places like Borders disappearing.

I don't believe that we've seen the Beginner Box on the shelf of retailers like Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, etc quite yet.

This is why some believe in the importance of D&D as a published RPG. Given how niche the hobby is, if the flagship title dries up, it gives the perception that the entire hobby has dried up, which doesn't bode well for new recruits, especially if the hobby channel is non-existent.


memorax wrote:
zagnabbit wrote:


One of the debacles in the 4e conversion is the number of game store owners that got burned. All 3 of the store owners I'm friendly with got singed a little with 3.5 backstock on the conversion. The murky nature of the transition was off-putting to say the least. Not enough to sever ties, because you gotta have Magic. But PFRPG got a little buff with transparency.
on the other hand too many jumped on the D20 bandwagon to make a fast buck bought too much 3.5 material without even knowing for sure if they could move all of it. Im not saying Wotc is blameless yet some game store owners imo got too greedy. Rather then blame themselves took the easy way out and blamed someone else.

You cannot really blame the FLGS, for trying to make a profit, after all...

memorax wrote:
When someone accuses of Wotc of wanting only profit well every other company non-rpg or rpg including this one want to make a profit. Almost like wanting to make a profit is a bad thing or shocked that it happens.

Maybe they should have guessed 3.5 was nearing the end of a cycle.

FLGS's should be supported if they are F(riendly), they might cost more. But if you are having a good time, then the excess cost is fine. After-all sometimes you can stay in with friends and have a drink, at others going out for drinks (even if it costs 3-4 times as much) is fun.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

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Steve Geddes wrote:

There has been some speculation that Barnes & noble's listing of the 3.5 core books with errata in September is, in fact, them screwing up and per announcing the launch date for D&D next.

There's a greyhawkgrognard thread linked 5 posts above yours. I think that's the main "source".

Here's a data point for you: in order for us to get Ultimate Equipment out for Gen Con this August, we had to ship it to the printer last week.

I don't believe for a moment that anything other than playtest releases is in the cards for this year.

I can't speak for Wizards, of course, but if Paizo were trying to achieve the objectives that Wizards has announced for their new edition, given the amount of progress that Mike Mearls' columns have indicated, I'd say that even making a Gen Con 2013 release would just *barely* be possible at this point, and then only if the playtest shows that they're on the right track.


Beginner boxes are what snagged me in; what 83'?

The first 10 game stores I went in didn't want me there, I mean I was 10 and unsupervised. My mom thought the guys who worked in these stores were weird and wouldn't leave me there.
Then I found "the store", comics and RPGs with a bunch of graduate students for employees, the owner was a loafer that needed a place to house his comic collection and somewhere to watch his little brothers after school. I spent 5 years there. I learned 10 plus game systems, and learned how to do useful stuff like sweep out the backroom and read Latin.
Now I trained more players at school in those days, but I doubt they still play. The kids from Fandom Zone, some of them still play ( these are 40 year olds ). They play still because the game store games were more than just fart jokes and funny voices with "I hit the Orc with my ax" thrown in. They were real games run by people who knew what they were doing.
I've been to some crappy stores over the years, stores run and staffed by lazy, misogynistic troglodytes who've not seen the sun in years and can't speak to a woman without an insult slipping out. It is an unfortunate side effect of such a niche hobby. Ice been to tire and muffler shops run by troglodytes too.
I've seen what Living Greyhawk can do to a store and it's player base. I've seen what a good DM can do to the other DMs that hang out in a store. It's almost magical. Now all of this can take place in home/library/school games, but that's hard to pull off.
And let's be honest, for every bad game store there are 5 bad GMs who will sour more players to RPGs than any lazy game store clerk.
Organized Play groups are good for the game, and the most likely place to find real OP action is in a game store. My biggest complaint about RPGs, all of them, are that I don't have time for OP anymore. I have a hard time scheduling friendly games with other grownups over beers and pizza. Making midday weekend games when you have kids is nigh impossible. Hopefully I'll get my kids to play in 4 or 5 years but I'm now in that "just out of college" phase. If it weren't for a FLGS I'd have never come back to gaming, and if it weren't for the OGL I'd have quit again when a whole new set of books was required to play.

Liberty's Edge

DSXMachina wrote:


You cannot really blame the FLGS, for trying to make a profit, after all...

im not faulting the gmae stores for wanting to make a profit. Just that while a new edition of D&D made it harder to move the older editon books many imo ordered too many 3.5 and 3PP. Even before the news of 4E was revealed. I could understand say if it was some of the better 3.5 publishrs like Green Ronin and Goodman Games yet they ordered anything with a D20 logo on it. Even some of the imo crappy D20 publishers. So I still standby my post of Wotc sharing the blame as well as stor owners ordering too much

DSXMachina wrote:


Maybe they should have guessed 3.5 was nearing the end of a cycle.

Imo its something that should have been take into account as we had already seen the 3.0 to 3.5. switch. If they released a new edition quickly stands to reason they would do it again.

DSXMachina wrote:


FLGS's should be supported if they are F(riendly), they might cost more. But if you are having a good time, then the excess cost is fine. After-all sometimes you can stay in with friends and have a drink, at others going out for drinks (even if it costs 3-4 times as much) is fun.

I do support my FLGs yet when it comes to Warhammer 3E stuff its just cheaper to buy online. You save too much ion the price to not buy at least occassionaly online. Still I hope they all dont fade away so soon.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:

There has been some speculation that Barnes & noble's listing of the 3.5 core books with errata in September is, in fact, them screwing up and per announcing the launch date for D&D next.

There's a greyhawkgrognard thread linked 5 posts above yours. I think that's the main "source".

Here's a data point for you: in order for us to get Ultimate Equipment out for Gen Con this August, we had to ship it to the printer last week.

I don't believe for a moment that anything other than playtest releases is in the cards for this year.

I can't speak for Wizards, of course, but if Paizo were trying to achieve the objectives that Wizards has announced for their new edition, given the amount of progress that Mike Mearls' columns have indicated, I'd say that even making a Gen Con 2013 release would just *barely* be possible at this point, and that only if the playtest shows that they're on the right track.

Cheers - I appreciate the insight, even if it's not specific to WoTC but rather based on Paizo processes. Random speculation is fun but doesnt hold a candle to comments from someone who actually knows what they're talking about. :)

.
Ultimately, I think WoTC would be mad if they tried to "appear" like they were running an open playtest without actually running one. A presumed launch at GenCon 2012 based on a Barnes and Noble erroneous listing seemed a little too conspiracy-theory for me.

I had figured August 2013 would be the launch date, but based on this comment, maybe it will be the big January/February convention they run in 2014 (if not Gen Con 2014).

I dont know how many 4E products you sell and whether it is large enough to mean anything, but would you be willing to comment (vaguely - I know you dont give actual numbers on this stuff) on whether orders for the "post-Next announcement" D&D releases have been significantly down on previous offerings? I could imagine a protracted drop in revenue over the next 18-24 months would really test their resolve.


memorax wrote:
zagnabbit wrote:


One of the debacles in the 4e conversion is the number of game store owners that got burned. All 3 of the store owners I'm friendly with got singed a little with 3.5 backstock on the conversion. The murky nature of the transition was off-putting to say the least. Not enough to sever ties, because you gotta have Magic. But PFRPG got a little buff with ransparency.
on the other hand too many jumped on the D20 bandwagon to make a fast buck bought too much 3.5 material without even knowing for sure if they could move all of it. Im not saying Wotc is blameless yet some game store owners imo got too greedy. Rather then blame themselves took the easy way out and blmaed someone else.

Nope.

Wizards was aggressively pushing 3.5 books up until the week before the 4e announcement. A busy store, will move quite a few books in a week. Say the purchaser orders 3 copies of obviously good sellers, 4 or 5 copies of the CORE books and maybe 1 copy of the off or new thing (Savage Species, Heroes of Battle). Then when you reorder, you just fill in the slots for about 4 months.
Right before the release notice, the statement from the company was that there would be no new version before the summer of 2011. I'm pretty sure I had a hardback PFRPG book by then. In the 4 months before the release notice there were a bunch of splats released, slightly more than usual. The good and methodical owners ordered them. Once the announcement came down, people stopped buying rulebooks. Stock started to gather dust.
I remember this clearly, because I used to have lunch with a FLGS owner on Tue or Wed, my short day and his order day (store was closed but he came up for paperwork and the order). He commented on the all the new books hitting and I joked about cleaning the warehouse, next week the shoe had dropped and I was helping unpack a huge box of 3.5 material. That's crappy, considering this was a WotC "Gold Store".
You're screwed in the FLGS Buisness model, if you do well moving GW material they may open up a GW shop in your neighborhood, WotC blisters you with order minimums if you want the gold, silver, bronze status that provides tourney support (which drives a huge amount of your Buisness), yet they oversaturate games like Dreamblade, screw with DDM formats and push out a ton of new product within 60 days of the announcement for 4e which is 2 YEARS early. 3PP want you to carry them, but there are so many that it's hard to decide which and how much. Worst of all, your clientele is notoriously cheap.
WotC burned game stores with 4e. And they did it not to long after some silliness with WOD that I didn't pay any attention too, and right after the bottom fell out of Dreamblade.


4e is still selling last I checked, twenty days ago.
This I think is a testament to the group that likes it, they really like it.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Steve Geddes wrote:
I dont know how many 4E products you sell and whether it is large enough to mean anything, but would you be willing to comment (vaguely - I know you dont give actual numbers on this stuff) on whether orders for the "post-Next announcement" D&D releases have been significantly down on previous offerings? I could imagine a protracted drop in revenue over the next 18-24 months would really test their resolve.

It would be inappropriate to comment on that, but I will point out that there really haven't *been* all that many 4E releases lately.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:
I dont know how many 4E products you sell and whether it is large enough to mean anything, but would you be willing to comment (vaguely - I know you dont give actual numbers on this stuff) on whether orders for the "post-Next announcement" D&D releases have been significantly down on previous offerings? I could imagine a protracted drop in revenue over the next 18-24 months would really test their resolve.
It would be inappropriate to comment on that, but I will point out that there really haven't *been* all that many 4E releases lately.

Yeah, the last year or so has really been pretty quiet. Maybe their resolve is already being tested..

(Sorry for the question, in fact - it didnt sound inappropriate when I asked it. But when you answered it it sure did. :/)


zagnabbit wrote:

4e is still selling last I checked, twenty days ago.

This I think is a testament to the group that likes it, they really like it.

Can I ask where you checked? Was that with Game Stores?

.
I personally think their offerings over the last year have taken a real lift in quality. I'm much more pleased with the current crop of releases than the "XYZ Power" books which dominated the early years. My only RPG discussion tends to happen on Paizo.com, so it's not surprising that I have a somewhat skewed perception of "what people think about WoTC".

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Vic Wertz wrote:
...I will point out that there really haven't *been* all that many 4E releases lately.

By my count, since the January 9 announcement, excluding non-edition-specific products such as novels, maps, and board games, they've released three products: Spiral of Tharizdun Fortune Cards in January, the Heroes of the Elemental Chaos Player Option book in February, and the Halls of Undermountain adventure this month. Coming up, they've got the Dungeon Survival Handbook in May, Menzoberranzan in August, and Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms in October... and it's not clear to me that the last one is edition-specific. (If they've said otherwise, let me know!)

It's possible they might have something to add for November or December, but it seems kind of unlikely to me that the schedule would suddenly get dense at the end of the year, so I wouldn't think there'd be more than one (if that)... so we're talking four to six 4E books, plus a set of cards, for the 2012 calendar year.

Liberty's Edge

What is this "Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms" you speak of?

*Rushes to Google*

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Jeremiziah wrote:

What is this "Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms" you speak of?

*Rushes to Google*

As far as I know, what little info there is can be found in this listing in Wizards' product catalog.

I predict that one will have the best sales of everything I listed!

Liberty's Edge

Ed Greenwood Ah, yes, the versatility of old El...folks, this forthcoming sourcebook has a few stats scattered here and there (in first draft, at least), but is all-editions, or "editions-free." It's lore, not rules or builds or templates or tables or modifiers...lore. Stuff about the Realms USEFUL TO YOUR GAME.

From Ed's Facebook!

Liberty's Edge

All that having been said, either there was a cataclysm and there are two continents and all that jazz...

...or there won't have been.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Jeremiziah wrote:

Ed Greenwood Ah, yes, the versatility of old El...folks, this forthcoming sourcebook has a few stats scattered here and there (in first draft, at least), but is all-editions, or "editions-free." It's lore, not rules or builds or templates or tables or modifiers...lore. Stuff about the Realms USEFUL TO YOUR GAME.

From Ed's Facebook!

Excellent. Thanks!

Liberty's Edge

No problem, Vic! How often is it I get to give you a bit of information? LOL

Since I'm taking the thread completely off the rails at this point (though I wasn't the one that cast Invoke Ed Greenwood), I have to tell the tale of Ed talking game design last year at Paizocon...

We had just finished his game (Mousehole, it was called), and I remember sitting there with a huge grin on my face...Ed (not D&D, not a specific ruleset, and not a mentor, but Ed himself) had been the person responsible for getting me into gaming, through the grey box. I mean, this was a lifelong dream that had just came true for, to meet the guy who dreamed up all this amazing stuff, and what's more, to have him DM a game! Indescribably cool. Anyway, he goes (and I'm paraphrasing), "See that? See how that worked? The six of us, we just told a story together, and how many times did anyone roll dice? Three times? THAT's what gaming is about! It's not about rules or builds or handbooks, it's about sharing a story, having fun! I urge you not to forget what it's like when you ignore rules as often as you use them."

Those were NOT his precise words, but they are close, and the intent of what he said is definitely there. He had advertised the game as a 2e game but, in truth, it was most frequently a case of "Roll a die, above 10 you succeed, below it you might not succeed as our mutual enjoyment dictates". I can tell you for sure that Ed could never work for Hasbro in any capacity, and probably not for anyone. To see him try would be equal parts hilarious and sad.

Liberty's Edge

I just hope it's pre-Spellplague Realms. I have no use for the book otherwise.


houstonderek wrote:
I just hope it's pre-Spellplague Realms. I have no use for the book otherwise.

I'm quite certain it'll have a HOST of stuff no one has ever seen and I'm of the opinion to think that a good portion might be pre-Spellplague or even "era neutral". If one looks at his Eye on the Realms articles, you really could just take out the words Spellplague or the time of 1479 DR and replace it with Time of Troubles, Return of Shade, or even the Crown Wars and add in the date of that times and it'll still work. So if it's useful information that can be used regardless of edition or era, then that'll be great.


Steve Geddes wrote:
zagnabbit wrote:

4e is still selling last I checked, twenty days ago.

This I think is a testament to the group that likes it, they really like it.

Can I ask where you checked? Was that with Game Stores?

.
I personally think their offerings over the last year have taken a real lift in quality. I'm much more pleased with the current crop of releases than the "XYZ Power" books which dominated the early years. My only RPG discussion tends to happen on Paizo.com, so it's not surprising that I have a somewhat skewed perception of "what people think about WoTC".

I checked with the FLGS while hunting down a map pack.

I usually ask the Books a Million manager about RPG sales, she used to date one of my players. Her store has started stocking a lot of Pathfinder so she has comparative sales between the different stuff, albeit in a very casual could care less sort of way.
Then there is a comic store with a pretty good RPG selection down in Wilmington. Haven't talked to them in a while.
My local comic shop stocks gaming stuff, but sells very little. He's not a font of information, but it's not like I spend a bunch of money with him.


I'm kinda excited about a Greenwood, fluffy, Realmsbook.

And Jeremizah, I'm totally jealous that's awesome.

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