War Ape's page

I know I'm not the only one on here who looked at the 4E Deluxe books and wondered why they have to be leather-bound. VEGAN HOLLA IF YA HEAR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm a vegan too! That means there are at least two of us here.

The leather-bound books are not a problem for me, simply because I've so far avoided buying any 4E books, leather-bound or otherwise. :)

Wizards probably kept Tharizdun as a god because they were keen to respect the history and tradition of the D&D universe. Hold on... :)

No. I daren't even joke about pre-ordering the 4E books or my players will hurt me! :)

I'm buying the beta and the final.

My initial feelings towards 4E? Resignation and disappointment, followed by burnout. Finally, there was a feeling of liberation when I realised that I didn't have to buy into 4E (and that lots of my friends felt the same)!

1. Peripheral and outlandish races in the Player’s Handbook. Wizards seem to be chasing an imaginary (?) gaming zeitgeist at the expense of the history and tradition of D&D.
2. The determination to make the classes balanced in the damage they can dish out. Some classes get nerfed while others are beefed up with at-will powers. They all seem – effectively – much the same now.
3. Making the magazines only available online. Even if this somehow gains traction in spite of all the bad publicity and negative reaction, I can’t see this achieving more than being the death knell for Dungeon and Dragon.
4. Superheroic low-level characters. I like D&D to be tough, challenging and dangerous. In my all-time favourite adventures, character death always seemed just a hearbeat away. Deadly dungeons will become armchair rides!
5. Exception-based rules design. 3E: let’s create a balanced system for creating and advancing monsters! Hurrah! 4E: let’s throw that out the window! Bleh.
6. Measuring movement in squares. It’s like D&D has regressed to the level of a wargame!
7. Forcing 4E assumptions and rules on established settings. I’m not a fan of the Forgotten Realms, but even I have to feel for its fans. It’s like Wizards have taken a hammer and chisel to the world! I fear for the other old settings…
8. Arbitrary changes to the cosmology. Why, Wizards, why?! It just seems like you are determined to alienate your existing customers.
9. Zero compatibility with 3E. Is 4E the evolution of D&D or an entirely new game? Whatever, the inability to convert 3E books was one of the deciding factors for me not to change over.
10. Names like starweave and feyleather armour. My Little Pony has better naming conventions that this.

I never thought I'd say it, but I'd rather have no new Greyhawk book than one done using 4E rules and assumptions. Wouldn't there have to be some Oerth-shattering event (again) to explain all the changes? If 4E Forgotten Realms is a barometer of how changes are made, then please, Wizards, just don't bother. :(

With the changes to alignment and the planes, Planescape would be horribly gutted too.

Following this release pattern, Paizo will have a much more supported campaign setting for Pathfinder than anything brought out by Wizards, which I find interesting.

It would be a dream come true if Paizo continued to support 3.5. Being a pessimist I have the feeling that 4E will be where the money is and Paizo will (unless the GSL is incredibly restrictive) have to make the switch...

But, yeah, I grew up playing GW games. Here in the UK, the majority of gamers get into the miniatures hobby through GW. A lot of people also get burned out with GW after a few years and move onto other games - anyone who's spent time on the miniatures boards will know that GW's nickname is the 'Evil Empire'. Common gripes include GW's escalating prices, the marketing and the unending cycle of new editions and army lists.

GW has no real competitor, just as D&D has no real competitor. There are obvious parallels. Perhaps lots of people will become sick of Wizards too, and there will be a steady stream of new customers. Could Paizo provide a home for these people and still make money? I don't know.

The gargoyle and ettin are both decent figures. The old gargoyle in the Dragoneye set stunk!

Someone (I forget who) theorised in a post that the terms of the GSL might not allow dual-statted third-party books. Who knows what restrictions might be in place. Of course, even if this turned out to be true, fans would surely create conversions, either to or from 4E, depending on which way Paizo jump.

I am surprised that the Paizo boards are seen as bad. I've frequented several unmoderated boards in my time and Paizo's is incredibly tame in comparison! (However, I am an anti-4E sort of guy, so I'm probably not as sensitive to certain issues as others.)

In contrast, I've given up on the Wizards 4E boards. They're all about blind cheerleading for 4E and jumping on anyone who voices dissent.

I think that deciding not to buy any Paizo products because of a message board is cutting off your nose to spite your face. I love the stuff that Paizo makes and, these days, most of my gaming budget goes on their books.

I would also like to thank Gary Gygax. Thank you for D&D and for the World of Greyhawk. Your creations have given me many, many hours of enjoyment and allowed me to make dozens of friends over the years. Cheers, Gary!

The Xanesha mini is fantastic! It totally captures the artwork. I was flicking through Pathfinder 2 a few nights ago and wondering how Ironbriar and the Skinsaw Man could be translated into metal.

Unfortunately, I don't think my freehand is good enough to match that detailed paint job on Seoni. :(

That's an interesting and well-balanced review of a 4E session. It doesn't make me want to play 4E but it does make me want to see 3.75! I wonder if any publisher will pick up the guantlet and create D&D 3.75?

This is a good site for spoilers:

http://www.ddmspoilers.com/ddr_stats2-0.php

The Eye of Flame Beholder looks pretty stupid. For some reason it makes me think of Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons. :) I don't like the new-style Green Dragon and the Immolith is, er, a not terribly convincing piece. I quite like the Fen Hydra.

I didn't like the 3E interpretations of several classic monsters like the manticore, basilisk or medusa, so maybe 4E versions will be more to my liking.

However, I suspect that lots of 4E creatures will be so radically different looking that they will be useless to me. For this reason my days of buying lots of booster packs are over.

1) Do you plan to convert to the new edition of D&D?

No.

2) If Paizo converts its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products?

I'd still buy Paizo's system-neutral things like flipmats etc.

3) If Paizo does not convert its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products?

If Paizo decided to stick with 3.5, I'd keep on loyally buying Paizo books.

I voted for Pathfinder.

UA is a good book, but in the name of all that is good and decent please do not let Eberron win! :)

SOme groups moved to the new edition immediately, some ignored it for a while, some adopted it - I suspect 4E will either:

1) Be a shooting star. Sell out quickly, make a mint the first year, then "die", or
2) Be a "snowball" like 3.5 and 2E were - though I doubt Hasbro would be happy with that - slowly taking over a majority of (but not all) 3.x games as time progresses.

That's interesting. I wonder what Hasbro would do if the new edition doesn't do as well as hoped? A lot of the folks at the extreme end of the pro-4E camp (say, on ENWorld) seem to think that the 'snowball' effect will happen. It's the theory that: 1) gamers like buying stuff; 2) the anti-4E people are angry now; 3) this anger will disappear when regular product starts appearing; 4) mostly everyone will be playing 4E by 2010; 5) older editions will only be played by dinosaurs. I quite resent this idea. I'm not such a hopeless consumer that I have to buy stuff just for the sake of it! :)

CEBrown wrote:

Scrapping the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon in advance of 4E was probably not the greatest move in the history of marketing either...

I wonder - I suspect several WotC staffers would agree, but the decision was made at the Corporate (Hasbro) level...

I expect this is so, but it's sadly not the kind of thing that will be made public knowledge...

I wasn't at GenCon UK so I'm not familiar with what happened. That having been said, I think we all expected some skepticism and worry at first. Though there have certainly been some adamant and zealous naysayers, though, there's also been a lot of positive response. My coworkers tell me that the parallels with the 3rd Edition launch are extremely strong.

Well...to me the parallels are not strong. I was at the UK launch of 3E and the majority of people there were very positive and curious about the new system. This is in stark contrast to the reception to 4E!

I appreciate that Wizards is a business and needs to make money, but I've talked to a lot of gamers who neither need nor want a new edition. I have the feeling that 4E will create a major split in the fanbase - more than previous editions.

Scrapping the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon in advance of 4E was probably not the greatest move in the history of marketing either...

Of course, I'm sure a lot of other publishers are happy about it. I just dropped another $400 on gaming materials at Paizo.com yesterday and not a penny of it went to a WotC item. Which is strange, because it used to be that every dollar I spent on other games meant at least $100 for WotC.

I'm with you on this one! I've been so burned out with Wizards since the announcement that I've lost all enthusiasm for buying their books. When I make my monthly visit to the RPG shop, the only D&D things I buy are Paizo ones.

I am not going to convert to 4E. My players have informed me that they'll kill me if I even look at a 4E book. :) If the people I know are any indication, then 4E will see the biggest split in the fanbase of D&D ever.

Some things that might have made me consider converting: not killing off the print versions of Dungeon/Dragon; releasing a conversion document; coming up with a cosmology that wasn't such a massive split from what has gone before; etc., etc.

I'd definitely buy a Greyhawk 4E hardback, though, but only if it was written by the Paizo people and only if it still resembled the Greyhawk of old (i.e. no fricking changes to the planes or races).

Did you expect the negative response to the announcement of 4E?

(A buddy of mine attended GenCon UK and told me that the crowd at the 4E seminar were the most hostile he had ever seen at an RPG convention!)

Samuel Weiss wrote:

Why is there an assumption that everyone who is a critic wants the game to fail?

That's a good summary of my feelings. I may be a critic of the game (maybe, just maybe), but I don't want the game to fail. I do hope that 4E is so popular that it draws in a whole new crowd of gamers, increases literacy, spurs the collective imagination of the next generation to go into science, environmental, and math related fields, stimulates the global economy, and ultimatlely saves the world. That doesn't mean that I have to be happy with all the changes to 4E though.

I don't have any heartfelt wish for 4E to fail but neither will I be crying if it completely bombs! I'm sure someone else will take up the baton of D&D if Wizards fails.

There have been a couple of good (free!) articles, but I've been underwhelmed by the digital version of Dragon. Based on the trial period, I think it will be a hard sell for Wizards!

Is it the case that Wizards want contributors to submit articles for free?

War Ape wrote:

Also, he sounds a little defensive when talking about people wanting the game to fail.

Wouldn't you if you were in his shoes?

I don't know, but I doubt that the many people who have issues with 4E have, as he says, an ideological reason for it to fail!

No.

My reasons:

• my players would lynch me if I bought it
• we still enjoy 3.5 and haven't tried out enough of the race and class options
• I have a mammoth collection of 3.5 adventures, many of which I still want to run
• there is no conversion document - as there was for the changeover from 2E
• the cancellation of the print Dragon and Dungeon has left me with a bad taste in my mouth with regards WotC
• I've enjoyed the materials written by the Paizo team much, much more than anything written by the WotC staffers - I think that Paizo is now the spiritual home of D&D and I don't trust WotC to respect the traditions of the game
• the rationale offered for the need for a new edition is not convincing
• I don't like the changes to the D&D cosmology, alignment, etc. and applying them to existing campaign worlds will be exremely problematic.

I think that sums it up for me. As far as I'm concerned, 4E will be just another RPG system. I don't have a burning need a new system!

After getting past that horrible and ungainly metaphor about the baby/plastic surgery, I don't find his argument about 2E very convincing. Also, he sounds a little defensive when talking about people wanting the game to fail.

And he doesn't like Greyhawk! Dude, D&D is Greyhawk. We're doomed! :)