I had a moment of panic hearing of 4th edition's release--then I realized that when my current GH campaign wraps up, my seven member gaming group still has two full Lvl 1-20 campaigns pending--Age of Worms and Ptolus, which will both be run using 3.5 by DMs other than me!......so I have plenty of time to digest 4th edtion and make an informed decision for my next full length campaign. My 3.5 books won't be obsolete for at least another 3 years!!!
Whew....!!!!
Maybe 4.5 will even come out before we give up 3.5....
I had a moment of panic hearing of 4th edition's release--then I realized that when my current GH campaign wraps up, my seven member gaming group still has two full Lvl 1-20 campaigns pending--Age of Worms and Ptolus, which will both be run using 3.5 by DMs other than me!......so I have plenty of time to digest 4th edtion and make an informed decision for my next full length campaign. My 3.5 books won't be obsolete for at least another 3 years!!!
Whew....!!!!
Maybe 4.5 will even come out before we give up 3.5....
Please fill me in on your excursions into Ptolus. I'm in a Ptolus game right now and we're floundering a bit, it's a little too free for my fellow players- maybe you'll have better luck.
We're not starting Ptolus until my GH campaign ends. My GH campaign is within 4 or 5 gaming sessions of being over, I think. There will be a campaign log here at Paizo, of course. I'm not DMing it, though.
I'm in a similar situation. I have at least 3 years worth of material to play/run through before it would be worth switching to 4th edition (even if I like 4th edition, which I'm not sure I will). Hopefully by then they will have a Greyhawk sourcebook out, but I'm not holding my breath.
Edit - Although I can always use my 3rd edition Greyhawk books until they do.
I´m currently DMing a 3.5 campaign I devised myself. Afterwards, I could still play through Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide, all on GH. Besides, I have plenty of GH material of various editions I could use. So, I sure don´t need 4e anytime soon, and honestly, could play for decades without touching it. Still, I will follow the development closely and see what 4e is all about, and probably buy the books as well(though I might wait for the german translations, planned for fall 2008), as I´m a fan of RPG rules as well as stories.
Stefan
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I´m currently DMing a 3.5 campaign I devised myself. Afterwards, I could still play through Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide, all on GH. Besides, I have plenty of GH material of various editions I could use. So, I sure don´t need 4e anytime soon, and honestly, could play for decades without touching it. Still, I will follow the development closely and see what 4e is all about, and probably buy the books as well(though I might wait for the german translations, planned for fall 2008), as I´m a fan of RPG rules as well as stories.
Stefan
Yes, Stefan, I just read the news at "Feder & Schwert" about the german translation.
I just keep wondering: How are they to provide the online content?
Or will they just concentrate on the rule book translation and afterwards players are sent to Gleemax/ DndInsider?
In my experience F&S is even by now not up to WotC standards when it comes to providing errata, web enhancements etc.
Greetings,
Günther
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In my experience F&S is even by now not up to WotC standards when it comes to providing errata, web enhancements etc.
That is not quite correct. You're right with respect to web enhancements, but as far as errata are concerned, F&S takes the advantage and works them in their books. So most of the german translations contain less errors than the english original.
My only gripe with F&S is that it takes them so long to publish things I'd rather have now than later. For example Eberron: Up to now, there is a german translation of the ECS and the Sharn-Sourcebook. And given that 4E is coming, I'm not to sure about them to publish other 3.5 sourcebooks (they have announced the PGtE to be published this year though)
So while I'd be inclined to wait for the german PHB,MM and DMG so as to support the german-speaking market, i don't like to have my books in two languages. I may give 'em a try with 4E though.
That is not quite correct. You're right with respect to web enhancements, but as far as errata are concerned, F&S takes the advantage and works them in their books. So most of the German translations contain less errors than the English original.
While it's certainly true, that they have less original errors compared to the english versions (because they work in the errata's from the english versions), they often put in NEW errors and very bad translations that warp the meaning of the rules so that they sometimes are very different from the original intention of the english version.
E.g. the german translation of scry makes it seem that nobody can scry a person that was the target of a resisted scry for 24h, when in fact it's just the caster of the resisted scry that can't try again.
Just one of the many errors my group has come across - because I use the English version and they have the German one.
Yeah, Translation Troubles... At least its not as bad as back in FSV times. German 1st Ed DMG, anyone? But even with 2e, the differences between English and German books and texts from the 2.5 edition (the black books after ca. 1996) are more than trivial.
But the question of digital content translation is an interesting one. German players may feel left out if they only have access to the original digital content - and not everybody in Germany has a credit card. (I only have one now for a few weeks, as I changed my bank recently.) And the translations of the books would be pointless if everybody in germany understood enough english that they could use the digital content easily. I also prefer german books, but even back at 1st Ed/Basic D&D times I gave up on translations at some point.
Stefan
My group got together for the first time yesterday since "The Announcement". We pretty much figure we have about 10 years worth of 3.5 gaming we can do before we have to switch. That gives us plenty of time to digest 4E (and 4.5E, 5E, 5.25E, and so on....)
LOL... we do to, but one of the other players and I (the other DM in our happy little gaming group) will probably roll over to 4e as soon as it comes out, and either convert 3.5 campaigns or just write our own. Guess we will have to wait and see how hard it will be to convert. If they streamlined the DMing process as much as they claim their should be plenty of time to convert...
My group is currently interested about the fourth edition of D&D. I am the most veteran player (and the usual DM) and have been playing since around the time 3.5 Ed. came out, so as we haven't really had the exposure to many different iterations of D&D, we're curious to see how Wizards plans on improving the game we've gotten used to over the past four or so years. The only irksome thing about 4E is the thought of all the money we've all invested in 3.5 suddenly becoming wasted on obsolete books.
However, I'm currently running the Savage Tide AP, and we haven't finished the first adventure yet. This, along with a Red Hand of Doom game another in our group is DMing, the Pathfinder APs, and the Eyes of the Lich Queen Eberron super-adventure that I've been longing to run ever since I heard that they were making it, will most likely provide us a long while of 3.5 gaming to get used to the 4th edition and gather 4E adventures to run (or make our own if necessary).
(though I might wait for the german translations, planned for fall 2008)
After a "broken" 3rd edition translation, a quite good, but far from complete 3.5 translation now a new D&D translation in just a few years in germany ... let's see how this will do good for an already dwindling rpg market here in germany ... I WOULD be pissed off, if I would buy german D&D products.
I had a moment of panic hearing of 4th edition's release--then I realized that when my current GH campaign wraps up, my seven member gaming group still has two full Lvl 1-20 campaigns pending--Age of Worms and Ptolus, which will both be run using 3.5 by DMs other than me!......so I have plenty of time to digest 4th edtion and make an informed decision for my next full length campaign. My 3.5 books won't be obsolete for at least another 3 years!!!
Whew....!!!!
Maybe 4.5 will even come out before we give up 3.5....
If you invest in the Wilderlands box, you can add 2 or 3 years to this :) - and a big hint: The Drow War (3.5, Level 1-30) campaign from mongoose is EXTREMELY good and takes a long time to play through. I guess 5.0 is on the screen when I finished all my 3.5 campaigns :)
(though I might wait for the german translations, planned for fall 2008)After a "broken" 3rd edition translation, a quite good, but far from complete 3.5 translation now a new D&D translation in just a few years in germany ... let's see how this will do good for an already dwindling rpg market here in germany ... I WOULD be pissed off, if I would buy german D&D products.
The german RPG market was never that big to begin with, I think. But it seems to me also that the market has been shrinking over the last few years. I know a games shop that closed a few years ago that was strong on RPG products. Nowadays, RPGs are an afterthought to most games (or comic) shops, and no more than one shop having RPGs on ~ 300.000 Inhabitants seem to be feasible. A city like Braunschweig with 250.000 Inhabitants has not even an official WotC partner listed (but I know a comic shop there selling RPGs).
Translations are always problematic. As the market is smaller that the US market, you cannot sell as many copies. For the main rules, this may work, but for products with much lower sales numbers in the original language, such as adventures and sourcebooks, get translated much later if at all. And sometimes the translations suffer from quality problems as well.
Stefan