This is yet another 4E post. I couldn't help but notice we have several celebrity lurkers on these boards. That is, WotC staff from all over the company. So, I thought that since their boards won't host anything like this, I would try it out.
THE RULES:
1.)BE CIVIL! We all know how angry you are...really. You may express this anger or friendly concern, however, NO insults or foul language please.
2.)In the interests of diversity, this is not limited to 4E questions.
3.)R-E-S-P-E-C-T we are all cool, after all, we all play D&D, so lets keep that in mind.
Question #1
As stated many many times in the video and Game design posts, you state your reasons for "improving" D&D. Can you please explain why improving our game meant discontinuing several game worlds, and nuking the one you decided to keep to the point of making us wonder why you even kept the name in the first place?
What game worlds were discontinued? Not being contrary here, just was unaware of any.
I'd add a question but as pretty much anything I'd ask would be about some aspect of the rules, I know it wouldn't get answered anyway.
Cool idea for a thread, hopefully it gets some interesting results!
Why now?
Do I look fat in these jeans?
Richard.
Richard.
Erik Mona day is over, you can change your avatar back now.
Dear WotC, where the f&&~ did I put my keys?
Is Richard the cool kids way of calling someone a P-E-N-I-S?
Are you aware of how your work is perceived by the gaming community?
How far in development were the rules last August?
Bonus question: Between Sebastian and Heathansson, how long will this thread continue? Not that I'm complaining, mind you it sort of has that fascinating train wreck quality without all the unpleasant tragedy and painful death...
Okay, I'll be good.
Why bother?
What game worlds were discontinued? Not being contrary here, just was unaware of any.
I'd add a question but as pretty much anything I'd ask would be about some aspect of the rules, I know it wouldn't get answered anyway.
Cool idea for a thread, hopefully it gets some interesting results!
Last I had heard, Greyhawk and Eberron were not going to be supported under 4E. I am not an industry insider, so please correct me anyone if I am wrong. Add the pulling of Dragonlances licensing, and the questionable future of some of the cool 3rd party stuff like kingdoms of Kalamar due to the secrecy surrounding the 4E OGL.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Last I had heard, Greyhawk and Eberron were not going to be supported under 4E. I am not an industry insider, so please correct me anyone if I am wrong. Add the pulling of Dragonlances licensing, and the questionable future of some of the cool 3rd party stuff like kingdoms of Kalamar due to the secrecy surrounding the 4E OGL.
Well, technically, Greyhawk wasn't really supported in 3e.
Eberron will be supported in 4e.
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Last I had heard, Greyhawk and Eberron were not going to be supported under 4E. I am not an industry insider, so please correct me anyone if I am wrong. Add the pulling of Dragonlances licensing, and the questionable future of some of the cool 3rd party stuff like kingdoms of Kalamar due to the secrecy surrounding the 4E OGL.
Well, technically, Greyhawk wasn't really supported in 3e.
Eberron will be supported in 4e.
Of course it will be. That trainwreck is Keith Baker's baby. They wouldn't mess with it. Where else would they put ninjas, pirates, dinosaurs and robots?
Of course it will be. That trainwreck is Keith Baker's baby. They wouldn't mess with it. Where else would they put ninjas, pirates, dinosaurs and robots?Last I had heard, Greyhawk and Eberron were not going to be supported under 4E. I am not an industry insider, so please correct me anyone if I am wrong. Add the pulling of Dragonlances licensing, and the questionable future of some of the cool 3rd party stuff like kingdoms of Kalamar due to the secrecy surrounding the 4E OGL.
Well, technically, Greyhawk wasn't really supported in 3e.
Eberron will be supported in 4e.
ROFLMAO! nailed it in one!
Which level of the 9 hells is your marketing department from?
You're suggesting the cosmology changes in 4e are being made for the sake of accuracy, not flavor, then?
Why did you eliminate the current fanbase by destroying things they liked, in the hope that they would like things more when you restructured them?
On your comments about the Profession skill being used in games, just who in the Nine Hells are you to tell me what's fun and what isn't?
What kind of research did you do to determine what changes were necessary for 4E? What were the results?
Bonus question:
Many of the articles featuring previews contain comments in the vein of 'Dying stinks, so here's how we changed things' or 'Negative hp is no fun, here's what to do now'. A portion of existing gamers agree on any given point. Some do not. Given that you wish to encourage a new generation of gamers to come to the table, consisting of people who are unfamiliar with these types of changes, why are these changes being made?
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Serious questions:
If the online "Dragon" and "Dungeon" prove to be abominable failures, will you bring the real ones back as magazines?
Will Greyhawk ever be supported without nuking the setting as you did with Forgotten Realms?
Not-so-serious questions:
Who is to blame for Shelly Mazzanoble?
Will you finally give the zombie its rightful place at the top of the undead pyramid?
Can you create a template called "Aberzombie", as a sort of advanced version?
When will the world wise-up and elect a D&D player as President?
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Since most of my players play the same characters for very long periods of time I have two related questions.
1. Does unlimited gameplay (31st+ level) have even a snowball chances in &@!! of appearing in 4E or will 30th level be a permanent hard cap in 4E?
2. If the above answer is "0" or some derivative, will there be rules for slowing advancement/adjusting treasure so that players can really develop their characters without becoming overly wealthy?
excellent! a much better crunch to fluff ratio than I had anticipated. Keep em coming! After all, what can it hurt?
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Since the thread has stopped being silly, I'll add a serious question.
The 3.E DMG had notes on variations in game plays and how to incorporate them. 4E is taking out some things that define Dungeons and Dragons for me. Will the 4E DMG have comments and notes for adding Vancian Magic, the nine alignments and even spell schools back into the game?
When did you stop beating your wife?
Pretty much, yeah. Assuming that the OP actually wants to have a civil discussion and ask some questions, I'll be happy to answer the parts that I can. However, some of the questions already are extremely hostile and designed to produce answers that validate the poster's views. Please forgive me if I don't address those, as I'd honestly not know how to answer them.
As stated many many times in the video and Game design posts, you state your reasons for "improving" D&D. Can you please explain why improving our game meant discontinuing several game worlds, and nuking the one you decided to keep to the point of making us wonder why you even kept the name in the first place?
First of all, Eberron isn't going anywhere as far as I can tell, and it's getting support from a variety of sources. Regarding the "nuking" of the Realms, while a lot of people have been vocally upset, a lot of people have been just as excited about the Realms. I don't work on FR as a designer, but I know those guys are making changes they feel confident will retain the spirit of the Realms while making it more accessible to D&D players of all stripes. If you disagree with those changes, that is of course your prerogative--not everyone is going to like everything. However, the designers clearly believe that they are producing a Realms that can be enjoyed by old and new fans alike, and I think they'd want you to see the final product before declaring the Realms "destroyed."
Why now?
Kind of an open-ended question, but one that's been answered before. In fact, I believe it's been answered multiple times by Bill Slavicsek:
Why 4th Edition and why now? Because the time was right. My R&D team has been watching the play environment since the release of the 3.5 rules, listening to what you, the players, have been telling us. Two years ago, I assembled a team of designers, led by Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt, to review all the data we’ve been collecting and see if we could make the d20 Game System (the engine that powers the D&D game) better, more intuitive, and more fun. When I saw the first expressions of that effort, I knew we could make D&D better, stronger, faster, more fun. We could rebuild it. We could take the d20 Game System we all know and love and rocket it to the next level.
So, like Bill is saying: the tech of game design never stops. When those new ideas reach a critical mass and you think it's time to implement them in a fully-integrated way, the time becomes right.
Are you aware of how your work is perceived by the gaming community?
Given that we're on message boards every day, in gaming stores, constantly conducting research into the opinions of existing and lapsed players, and attending conventions year-round...yes. Assuming you're not just saying, "Are you aware that I think you suck," or something, I know many designers pay close attention to the reception of their work. And, like it or not, sales numbers also tell us a lot about what people like and what they don't, so we've always got that bit of hard data to rely on.
I know that just after a new product I worked on comes out I'm constantly scanning the message boards and reviews for any conversation about it, because I'm always jazzed to hear what people think. In fact, the most disappointing thing is when no one is even talking about it, because it's like the work vanishes into the void. Even if someone doesn't like something, it at least lets me know what areas I need to improve and what kinds of things people would have liked to have seen instead.
How far in development were the rules last August?
I'm not sure exactly how to answer this one, to be honest. It'd been through playtesting and was in development, but it's such a fluid process I couldn't really get more specific. If you have a more specific way of phrasing the question, though, I'll be more than happy to take a crack at it.
"What parts of a role-playing game do you consider 'fun', and should a gaming session try to maximize 'fun'?"
I absolutlely believe that a gaming session should try and maximize the fun. Now, fun means different things to a lot of people, so I think it's important to keep that in mind. Personally, I think fun revolves around having a good time with my friends, getting to participate in an interesting story, getting to participate in multiple scenes of that story, having a character that tangibly contributes to achieving the party's goals, overcoming challenges as a team and making sure that other people at the table are doing the same. To define the fun parts by defining what I don't consider fun, I don't care for exclusionary elements that completely remove a player from the gaming environment for long stretches of time. It's one thing to have a split party and different scenes going on, but it's quite another to tell one player that he just doesn't get to participate for the next hour or two.
That's just my opinion, though. Fun means different things to different people, and the best games make it possible for people to have fun in different ways while sharing a core experience.
Why would you bother answering any question on this thread given the non-constructive way the questions are being asked?
Because I'm stubborn and don't believe a few people with bad attitudes represent the whole of a forum.
What kind of research did you do to determine what changes were necessary for 4E? What were the results?
Bonus question:
Many of the articles featuring previews contain comments in the vein of 'Dying stinks, so here's how we changed things' or 'Negative hp is no fun, here's what to do now'. A portion of existing gamers agree on any given point. Some do not. Given that you wish to encourage a new generation of gamers to come to the table, consisting of people who are unfamiliar with these types of changes, why are these changes being made?
So, I've only been at Wizards for a year now (on Tuesday it'll be 1 year, in fact) but I can take a stab at this by stating my experiences with my own game. We spend a lot of time observing how people play the game. This comes from many sources: conventions, RPGA play, feedback from the internet, feedback from Customer Service, more formal market research, etc. Over time, you notice trends in these experiences, and you do your best to make sense of them. Personal experience comes into play as well, as most everyone here is running/playing in games 3-4 times a week.
As for why changes are being made, the simple answer is because the change produces some tangible benefit for players or Gamemasters enjoying the game. No change is ever going to be universally better for everyone, and no one is implying that. However, I think it's fooling yourself to say that any edition of any game is perfect, and sometimes changes need to be made to improve the game. Moreover, some changes have far-reaching impact into other parts of the game. While it may seem odd to change, say, the death and dying rules as its own system, those changes are informed by, and in turn influence, other aspects of the game. Very few systems exist in isolation, so sometimes you have to make far-reaching changes to achieve an overall play experience.
Since most of my players play the same characters for very long periods of time I have two related questions.
1. Does unlimited gameplay (31st+ level) have even a snowball chances in &@!! of appearing in 4E or will 30th level be a permanent hard cap in 4E?
2. If the above answer is "0" or some derivative, will there be rules for slowing advancement/adjusting treasure so that players can really develop their characters without becoming overly wealthy?
Keeping in mind this is subject to change:
1) It's probably a cap as far as official support goes; however, given the construction of the 4E rules it probably wouldn't be hard to keep things going past that. The point of going to 30 is to support epic play in the first place right out of the gate, preventing the need to a separate add-on expanding the levels upward. Like I say, though, you can probably keep going after 30...but the vast majority of D&D games will never make it that far, so anything 30+ probably won't see a lot of official support. That said, you can keep playing at 30th-level all you want...you'd just stop advancing.
2) You can certainly slow down advancement the same way you always could: by reducing XP awarded. As for treasure, you just distribute treasure at the same levels you normally would. Also, as Mearls mentioned on another thread on ENWorld, it's pretty easy to strip magic items out of 4E, because it's really only assumed you have a very few enhancement bonuses, and you'll know exactly where those belong. So, theoretically, you could run a game without magic items with just a couple of numeric tweaks, preventing the whole "vast wealth" problem, methinks.
Everything released so far about 4E suggests it is intended for a cinematic action/adventure (some claim "video game" but really, those are a simulation of cinematic action/adventure themselves) game, somewhat in line with "wu-xia" cinema or anime films.
Frankly, I think the claims of wuxia and anime influence are mistaken. This probably comes from the statement that Bo9S was an infleunce on 4E. This is true in the way that the mechanics shook out, but certainly not true in the end result. Now, cinematic, I think, is a good way to think of it, because a lot of the more advanced powers (particularly the martial powers) would be pretty amazing stunts. If you can handle the kind of stuff Legolas and Gimli were doing in Lord of the Rings, you're likely going to be fine with all of the martial aspects of 4E. Even the Legolas stuff is pretty much limited to paragon and epic levels.
That having been said, the noncombat encounter system in 4E is designed to cater to the kinds of challenges you'd find in a less cinematic setting. I mean, you won't roll a Diplomacy check to do a backflip and recite the Gettysburg Address to succeed, so it leans a bit more toward the "down to earth" side of the game. I hope people will like those rules and use them to create some exciting social encounters. One of my favorite adventures in the Shackled City campaign was Dave Noonan's Test of the Smoking Eye, which included a mixture of fun combat and interesting noncombat challenges. Dave also wrote the noncombat encounter rules for 4E, so I hope that gives you some of the confidence I have in the system.
The 3.E DMG had notes on variations in game plays and how to incorporate them. 4E is taking out some things that define Dungeons and Dragons for me. Will the 4E DMG have comments and notes for adding Vancian Magic, the nine alignments and even spell schools back into the game?
I actually don't know the answer to this question. I will say that I personally think such rules would be interesting in an Unearthed Arcana type product. Now, some of those would be easier than others; the nine alignments, for example, I think would be easy to put back in (after all, alignment's not GONE, just changed). Spell schools aren't technically out, just their representation is changed; for example, I still know when a spell is a charm effect, or an illusion, or a necromancy effect.
Looks like that's all for now, but I'll pop back in (and see if I can direct SRM this way too) from time to time.
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Hey cool, Rodney answered. In that case, and despite the fact he seemingly ignored my earlier questions, I've got a few more:
-If succubi are being reimagined as devils, what will become of the Demon Queen of Succubi formerly known as Malcanthet?
-If gnomes are being reimagined, what will happen to gnome character's in various novels, such as the Drizzt stories?
-Will there be stats for the Shade in 4E?
-What... is your name?
-What... is your quest?
-What... is your favorite color?
-What... is the capital of Assyria?
-What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
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Frankly, I think the claims of wuxia and anime influence are mistaken. This probably comes from the statement that Bo9S was an infleunce on 4E. This is true in the way that the mechanics shook out, but certainly not true in the end result. Now, cinematic, I think, is a good way to think of it, because a lot of the more advanced powers (particularly the martial powers) would be pretty amazing stunts. If you can handle the kind of stuff Legolas and Gimli were doing in Lord of the Rings, you're likely going to be fine with all of the martial aspects of 4E. Even the Legolas stuff is pretty much limited to paragon and epic levels.
Hmmm... I've been trying to keep an open mind on 4E but I admit the anime/wuxia style of combat was one of the potential dealbreakers for me. If martial combat doesn't end up looking a DragonBall Z episode, that'd make me very happy.
At which reading level will the 4e rules be published?
8th grade? 6th grade? 10th grade?
Does WotC believe the video game generation will be able to hand all the complex ideas of the Dungeon & Dragon’s world, or are you going to get rid of all that imaginary stuff too, and add lots of pictures?
(Oops, that is more than one question. I won’t check back to read any answers for atonement.)
Frankly, I think the claims of wuxia and anime influence are mistaken. This probably comes from the statement that Bo9S was an infleunce on 4E.Hmmm... I've been trying to keep an open mind on 4E but I admit the anime/wuxia style of combat was one of the potential dealbreakers for me. If martial combat doesn't end up looking a DragonBall Z episode, that'd make me very happy.
As near as I can tell at this point, I belevie the way it's set up is that there would be the option of DBZ type combat . . . but in no way would it be required to be that way.
Rodney, thanks for your candid answers. I appreciate that, and insider insights are always enlightening. I was not asking in my first question 'Are you aware that I think you suck?' but rather as you surmised 'Do you know how the gaming community is responding to your new changes?' Again, thanks.
just a quick note as my boss is getting suspicious of all of the clacking coming from my megacube. Rodney, Thank you for coming! I had hoped some of you guys would come, and now Christmas has finally arrived!
I apologize for the pissy tone of the OP, my schizo wife was on the phone with me while I was trying to slack off AND look busy at the same time.
I will respond later this evening, and let me say I am REALLY excited that someone up in Renton actually cares enough to risk a rabid flaming. Ignore the nasties, they are...just that. Later.
Rodney,
I really appreciate you stopping by to answer our questions. So without further ado ...
1. Could you explain what the purpose of each combat role is in more depth ?
2. What is the class design process like in 4e ?
3. What other role playing games do the folks at Wizards play? What about board games?
4. We all know that Mike Mearls and Rich Baker must be stopped. Are you doing your part to vanquish these fiends?
Why now?Kind of an open-ended question, but one that's been answered before. In fact, I believe it's been answered multiple times by Bill Slavicsek:
Why 4th Edition and why now? Because the time was right. My R&D team has been watching the play environment since the release of the 3.5 rules, listening to what you, the players, have been telling us. Two years ago, I assembled a team of designers, led by Rob Heinsoo,Andy Collins, and James Wyatt, to review all the data we’ve been collecting and see if we could make the d20 Game System (the engine that powers the D&D game) better, more intuitive, and more fun. When I saw the first expressions of that effort, I knew we could make D&D better, stronger, faster, more fun. We could rebuild it. We could take the d20 Game System we all know and love and rocket it to the next level.So, like Bill is saying: the tech of game design never stops. When those new ideas reach a critical mass and you think it's time to implement them in a fully-integrated way, the time becomes right.
Thanks, Rodney, for taking the time to answer my question. I wasn't actually expecting an answer, so I'm pleasantly surprised.
I had not read that quote from Bill Slavicsek, and was never quite sure as to why 4e was coming out now. I'd probably follow up with a lot of niggling little questions, if we were standing face to face, but there's a lot of other people here interested in your answers, so I'll say "Thank you" and leave it at that.
Greg
Can I get some free miniatures?