I say we bring back Lupercalia and chuck Valentines Day in the trash.
I mean c'mon! Goat sacrifices, dressing in raw goatskins and dancing, whipping the bystanders with rawhide thongs, what's not to like? Those Romans knew how to celebrate a holiday!
I never realized how many great, zany, spectacularly weird gaming freaks are out there. Since I tumbled across all the messageboard madness while finding info on the magazine cancellations and 4e I've been hooked. Nice to know there are people who don't just think outside the box, they actually summon strange things into the box!
If they decided not to scrap the entire cosmology. That announcement really put a sour taste in my mouth. I was originally excited about the online aspect of it (since a lot of my gaming buddies are in hard-to-reach places like Iraq) but since the initial announcement I have gone from cautious optimism to sad disbelief. I am not making any rash promises that I wont try 4E, but I am sure that now I will wait until someone else buys the core books and plays it with me so I can at least try it for free.
I thought I would add in my two coppers as a neutral voice with some experience with the MMORPG scene. I have played RPG's, mostly D&D, since 1979. I have seen it evolve from the 1st Edition right to the present point. While I love the game, I have not always been able to play it due to a lack of available gamers in my area. Plus, since I spent most of the Nineties in the Army and most of this decade rearing spawn I haven't been able to stay near the few gamers I DO love to play with. One of the features of 4e that really caught my attention initially was the DDI. The thought of being able to play virutal D&D with some of my battle buddies who are scattered all over the globe at this point really appealed to me. Currently we only game together in WoW. Since the turn of the millenium we have drifted through various MMORPGs, not because we thought the games were better than D&D (they are certainly not IMHO), but because the MMORPG format allowed us to still game together. I have also met several great people online who I would love to play at a table with, but who live in distant places. If Wizards does pull off a method to be able to have a true virtual D&D game, I would be all for it. However, I do feel that by making it a pay-as-you-go style of play they will be choking the goose before it lays the golden egg. IMHO most of the MMORPG players will not be coming to tabletop RPG gameplay, virtual or otherwise. They are from a different entertainment background, the vidoegamers. Although there is a lot of cross-interest, your average MMOPRGer is not going to abandon his favorite game and come to D&D anymore than an average D&D fan is going to run to Scrabble because Hasbro has an online tournament. Once again I am going to be cautiously optimistic until I see the actual DDI in effect and I see what it actually costs. I AM the perfect demographic for them, but if they do price it too high, it will (unfortunately) be back to WoW for the majority of my gaming fix. PS: Happy 2008 everyone! :)
I am glad to see this thread. All this heated anti-pro 4e debate is just jamming up the gears. To me it is like trying to disect a new movie eight months before it arrives in cinemas from a few scanty press releases.
Lord Snorkus is actually my Boston Terrier's AKC name (actually the full name is Lord Snorkus of Goblinwood). I don't know why I decided to post under the name, but it always seemed to be a good name for a comic-relief type villian, one always trying to come up with a dastardly plan that falls just short of success.
I would say that IF WotC is not making it easy for Paizo to be able to make the transition to 4e, then by all means keep the rules framework in place we have now (with some 3.75-ish tweaks).
I agree with Waltero. It is difficult for me to get a game together. Many of the people I would love to play with again are thousands of miles away from me, and due to circumstances beyond my control I am unable to travel to visit much. I am hopeful that a robust online play support system giving people the feel of a tabletop game will revitalize my gaming experience. |