James / Gary:
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Meh...who need crappy pirated PDFs when you receive the real deal via mail order before the official release date ;)
So far, I'm not that impressed. I was hoping that WoTC would pull a rabbit out of their hat, but they seem to have missed the ball (I love mixing my metaphors!)
Although I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I don't think that 4e is going to be the game for me. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad - simply that it doesn't appeal to my personal taste.
I wish those who like it the best of luck, while I start to think about migrating my 3.5 campaign across to the Pathfinder RPG....
Meh...who need crappy pirated PDFs when you receive the real deal via mail order before the official release date ;)
So far, I'm not that impressed. I was hoping that WoTC would pull a rabbit out of their hat, but they seem to have missed the ball (I love mixing my metaphors!)
Although I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I don't think that 4e is going to be the game for me. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad - simply that it doesn't appeal to my personal taste.
I wish those who like it the best of luck, while I start to think about migrating my 3.5 campaign across to the Pathfinder RPG....
would you mind giving your feed back and input on it.
Its not in my tastes either way to much reliance on minis it seems. But still want to hear others take of it.
...
Spoilered for Off Topic:
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From what I've heard, 4e seems to be too combat orientated for my tastes. But I guess I'll have to see when someone in our gaming group gets his copy of Shadowfell!
Cheers! :D
I've only had a few hours to flick through the 4e rulebooks so far, but one of the disappointments for me is that the monsters seem to be described almost purely in terms of their combat capabilities - there's almost no sense of their place in a broader context. This seems a huge backwards step to me.
A similar thing can be said for the various powers available to their different classes - things like spells, prayers, etc are described primarily in terms of their combat effects. Possible non-combat applications of these abilities are pretty much ignored. There is still some descriptive text outlining what each ability does, but that's pretty much it.
The combat system does look like it will be faster and more fluid though.
Hmmm. If this is true I wonder what illegal downloads will do to sales?
You think it could hurt wizards? Ha! I'm gonna find those pdfs and download them a million times (and delete them again, of course - don't want that stuff if it's for free). In fact, it'll just download to dev/null! ;P
Seriously: This isn't the first RPG book you can virtually steel on the net, and it won't be the last, either. wizards hasn't gone bankrupt yet.
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I haven't gotten very far, but I'm sure my players will like the new point buy system. Also I think if I ever play a cleric in 4th editon it will be devoted to the Raven Queen.
Actually, most of the descriptions of the deities are nice, although it seems a bit jarring to have some familiar gods from Greyhawk mixed in with a bunch of newcomers.
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I thought D&D was a combat system :P
Cheers! :D
Combat is obviously important to D&D, but it doesn't have to be the sole focus of the game.
For example, I'm currently running a game of political intrigue set in the Underdark that has almost no combat at all - the characters are ambitious drow from a minor noble house who are trying to work their way up the social hierarchy. In this campaign, resorting to brute force is rarely an option for the PCs - subtlety is far more important than raw firepower. The only way to win credibility in drow society is to eliminate your political rivals with style and panache...
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I thought D&D was a combat system :P
Cheers! :DCombat is obviously important to D&D, but it doesn't have to be the sole focus of the game.
Agreed. So far everything I've read is combat oriented. The opinion I'm getting is role-playing and storytelling is boring, BRING ON THE FIGHTING! Which is ok, but I like telling a story. Wouldn't be impossible to throw in more roleplaying scenarios though. So though not highly impressed.
Now back to reading...
*Edit. Also the way to calculate your BAB I found odd.
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Combat is obviously important to D&D, but it doesn't have to be the sole focus of the game.For example, I'm currently running a game of political intrigue set in the Underdark that has almost no combat at all - the characters are ambitious drow from a minor noble house who are trying to work their way up the social hierarchy. In this campaign, resorting to brute force is rarely an option for the PCs - subtlety is far more important than raw firepower. The only way to win credibility in drow society is to eliminate your political rivals with style and panache...
I see nothing in 4e that would hinder such a campaign and nothing in 3.5 that would help. What do you see as the gap in 4e that prevents you from running it in that system, and what in 3e makes it possible?
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Agreed. So far everything I've read is combat oriented. The opinion I'm getting is role-playing and storytelling is boring, BRING ON THE FIGHTING! Which is ok, but I like telling a story. So far not highly impressed.
Compare the 4e PHB to the 3e PHB. Both are mostly about combat. I would need to count pages but it seems that 4e has a much larger "how to roleplay" section.
So what in the 3.5 PHB gives you the sense that role playing is more important than combat.
Agreed. So far everything I've read is combat oriented.
If you need the book for the role playing part then what part does your imagination play in all this?
Compare the 4e PHB to the 3e PHB. Both are mostly about combat. I would need to count pages but it seems that 4e has a much larger "how to roleplay" section.
So what in the 3.5 PHB gives you the sense that role playing is more important than combat.
About roleplaying, i always found odd that there were more useful insight about immersion and atmosphere in the Dungeon Master Guide than in the Player's Handbook. Even if these advices are meant for a DM to run his game they can be interesting for players too.
While many DMs flip the pages of their DMG for rules and tables, i actually enjoyed reading the fluff chapters. I even recommended them to my players.Now, to get back to the eventual copies of the books over the web, it is not a DC35 Knowledge/Arcane check that many things can be fished in some places.
But as a reminder, this is piracy.
Not only it is illegal, but it is not respectful to refer to it (or worse encourage it) on a messageboard like here (or WotC's for the matter).
Consider this is like going to a retail store and steal a book from the shelves.
Out of respect for Paizo's authors work and dedication, we shouldn't bring these topics here.
Over on Wizards gangs of people are showing up touting " I have the books! Ask me questions!!!" But i think alot of them really just have pirated pdf's. All seem to blame it on some shipping snafu, and i just don't believe it.
I think it is in poor taste and of questionable ethics to leak this information. I have heard alot of negative about WOTC business practices/ ethics and i think it is funny how people go out of their way to emulate what they supposedly despise so much.
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I think this leak of 4e will kill the RP industry. In a recent interview, Luke Crane (of Burning Wheel fame) ststed that every time a new D&D edition is released, the hobby in general booms for a while. Now these books are apparently available for free, bye-bye RPGs... (or am I being pessimistic?).
Do we have an official Wizards/Hasbro reaction?
(I hope the copies are tracible)
Cheers! :D
Looking through the PHB I was pleased to see a good bit of detail paid to how to flesh out your character, ala the PHB II. Suggestions on thinking about how you relate to the world and the personality of your character have certainly helped me over the years. I don't think the original 3.0 PHB had anything like that ... I'd have to go check my copies of 3.5 to see.
Cheers! :)
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Over on Wizards gangs of people are showing up touting " I have the books! Ask me questions!!!" But i think alot of them really just have pirated pdf's. All seem to blame it on some shipping snafu, and i just don't believe it.
I think it is in poor taste and of questionable ethics to leak this information. I have heard alot of negative about WOTC business practices/ ethics and i think it is funny how people go out of their way to emulate what they supposedly despise so much.
I felt bad downloading the pdfs so I ran over to my local book store last night - and there it was. The books are out early in many places.
Oh, and I will be buying all three from my FLGS - just picked up an extra PHB.
What most of you guys have missed is that WOC/ hasbro are not hoping to make their cash on Raw book Sales.
their plan is to have us pay monthly fees for online services for Added content and for rule upgrades.
So to be frank I don't think this leak hurts them the way that every one thinks it does.
This thread should be deleted. Stealing has no place in this fine community.
Well said.
Compare the 4e PHB to the 3e PHB. Both are mostly about combat. I would need to count pages but it seems that 4e has a much larger "how to roleplay" section.
So what in the 3.5 PHB gives you the sense that role playing is more important than combat.About roleplaying, i always found odd that there were more useful insight about immersion and atmosphere in the Dungeon Master Guide than in the Player's Handbook. Even if these advices are meant for a DM to run his game they can be interesting for players too.
While many DMs flip the pages of their DMG for rules and tables, i actually enjoyed reading the fluff chapters. I even recommended them to my players.Now, to get back to the eventual copies of the books over the web, it is not a DC35 Knowledge/Arcane check that many things can be fished in some places.
But as a reminder, this is piracy.
Not only it is illegal, but it is not respectful to refer to it (or worse encourage it) on a messageboard like here (or WotC's for the matter).
Consider this is like going to a retail store and steal a book from the shelves.
Out of respect for Paizo's authors work and dedication, we shouldn't bring these topics here.
Seconded- let's just put this to bed folks.
Let's wait the couple of days and then everyone can discuss the new Rules Set.
You think that's something! I found D&D 6E online! Suckers!
I think the leaked PDFs are going to HELP 4e. There are a lot of people who said they'd never buy this game but they're going to download PDFs of it and, IMO, they're going to like it enough to at least buy SOMETHING.
Not me. I'm not going to get them. Not even for free. It would make no sense, since I decided not to buy anything from wizards again.
Maybe they'll buy supplements and use their knowledge of 4th edition to convert it to 3.5 or PRPG
Not feasible, as it would be too much work. "Hm.. I'll buy this book, ignore the 4e rules crap and use the fluff. Let's see 'Succubi and other devils...' Devils? Great, scrap that chapter. What's next? 'Lamia are the most powerful of swarmform creatures and...' Come again? Swarm? Lamias are half-women half animal abominations, not scrab-swarms. What were they smoking?" *puts book back on shelf and gets Pathfinder, complete with Real Genuine Lamias (TM)*
It seems they don't even want us scavange the stuff. They want complete assimilation and conversion. That's why things are different now.
It's a matter of making the rule books a commodity for this audience and then getting them to buy the add-ons, so to speak.
They could have had that with a SRD. Or go ahead and give the rules out officially for free, maybe just the PDF versions (book versions still cost money). That's how Paizo does it at least with the beta (better than nothing), and True 20 was available for free at least for some time. (I know because I got that PDF, and I also remember that I definetly didn't virtually steal it)
People who were going to buy the books are going to buy them whether or not they download a PDF of the rules. This will probably just make them buy these books sooner.
On that one we're in complete agreement. Or at least mostly complete (should something like that exist). I think that it depends on the company and how they behave. I can only speak from personal experience, but I always like it when a music album, movie or computer game comes with some nifty extras (and without a ridiculous price tag). I have often bought those even though I could probably get them illegally without any problems.
It's not true with everyone, of course, but I think that a lot of people totally ignore the availability of free versions of stuff in their decision making - either they get something even though they could have gotten it for free, or they don't get it whether they could get a free version or not.
Of those who get the illegal free copy but not the "official version", I think many wouldn't have gotten the official version either way. They download it, but won't use it all that much, and if the leaked version wasn't around, they'd just ignore the thing completely.
And I also agree that some will be moved to buy after getting an illegal version.
The funny thing about digital downloads is that they've actually helped every industry that's become a victim of them but people are too short-sighted to see the implications.
Some companies are already on the trail here. Microsoft, for example, officially condemns "software piracy", but inofficially doesn't mind it as long as it is private persons doing it for their own use. The reason is simple: Jack the soon-to-be office slave gets a pirated version of windows and office. Microsoft doesn't get paid for that, but later, when Jack is employed, and his boss is deciding on operating systems and office software packages, he'll see that Jack - and a lot of other "software pirates" seem to know their way around MS products, but if you put them in front of Linux with free office or something, they seem lost. So for the sake of productivity, the boss gets Microsoftware for everyone - and Microsoft is one step closer to total market domination. Of course, if you use them illegally as a company, or worse yet, sell illegal copies, they won't be lenient with you (and the chances of someone looking for you go way up, since these cases carry much higher fines, and the investigators specialising in software theft work on provisions - Jack's small fry for them, but Jack's Boss...)
Microsoft, for example, is also pursuing other methods of getting their products into the hands of future deciders. For example, there's the software alliance (or something like that), which I'm member of thanks to my schoo. It cost me 30 tacken and granted me access to a lot of development software, like Visual Studio, MS Access and other stuff.
Also, their newest Visual Studios come in several versions - the "smallest" of them (Express Editions) free of charge and even usable comercially.
The thing is that you have to give people incentives to buy your stuff. Bait them with free stuff up front. Be generally nice. Offer value for your price.
They just see it as stealing and don't think through the whole process. The RIAA goes after file sharing because they don't want to admit that the bulk of what they produce is 12 tracks of trash and 1 good song and that's why people aren't buying it. They'd rather get that 1 good song and skip the filler tracks.
Exactly. That's the case with alot of the mainstream trash: The latest flash-in-the-pan "singer" has one song they play all day long in all the radio stations, and does a whole CD. People, hypnotised by the radio, want that song. They then find that the rest of the CD either sounds a lot like that one song, or is mediocre at best (or both). Those guys will think twice before buying the next CD of that artist, even if the next radio song is better than the first.
Ah, I just like listening to bands where you can be sure to get a solid album full of good stuff, where you might have "that one song that's not so good" instead of "that one song that you actually can hear more than once".
I think this leak of 4e will kill the RP industry.
No chance. As I (and several others) said above: Leaked copies don't have that much of an impact, and often, the impact is even positive.
Roleplayers as a whole are a traditional bunch. Although many of us like PDFs and all that (I love them, and totally love to use my laptop to help me run my games), they just can't replace a proper book. one you can pass around, one where you can quickly switch between page 115 and 218. One you can read in bed, or on the Throne, or outside.
And if you want to print those books, you're out of money again, and often you don't win that much over just buying the book.
This isn't the first RPG that is available as a pirated version. Won't be the last one. And it will definetly not kill RPGs.
If RPGs should die, then it will have other reasons.
(The only thing I can think of is a lot of people using the leaked versions to preview the rules, finding that they're utter crap, and cancelling their orders - without the leak, many of those would find out about the craptitude only when it was too late and their money already in wizards pockets. If that happens, I'll laugh at wizards)
You think that's something! I found D&D 6E online! Suckers!
You too? I didn't think adding Jedi as a DnD class would work but wow I want to play one now!
Cheers! :P
I have a book that I bought at a store. Is there some reason I can't talk about it?
Yes -- you'll make the rest of us jealous :P
Crosswiredmind - What book chain was carrying the books this early?
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You think that's something! I found D&D 6E online! Suckers!
D&D 6th: the Logueified version. Only for Adult readers. Contains disconcrting text an images an may induces madness.
And here come the first Spoiler:
The 6th edition Aligment System:
E, ME, RBP, SCFCB, EALAMAAH
E = eeeevil
ME = more eeeevil
RB = really bad person
SCFCB = steals candy from children bad
EALAMAAH = Evil as Logue and mad as a Hare
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I have a book that I bought at a store. Is there some reason I can't talk about it?Yes -- you'll make the rest of us jealous :P
Fair enough. I'll try to keep it to a minimum, and post about it only in clearly marked 4e rules discussions - oh, wait ... that's the whole board :(
Sorry - I guess this is going to be difficult.
Hopefully after all the 4th edition hubbub has died down, the Paizo boards will return to the cameraderie and civility that attracted me to this website 3 years ago. I never went to messageboards or chatrooms or participated in any kind of online discussions until I discovered all the friendly gamers and friendly game company staff over here.
I have a book that I bought at a store. Is there some reason I can't talk about it?Seconded- let's just put this to bed folks.
Let's wait the couple of days and then everyone can discuss the new Rules Set.
Then you lucked out, Crosswiredmind- it'll be at least a week before the first copies reach us here.
I'm not saying there should be a moritorium on talking about 4th ed- in that regard I stand corrected.That said, doing so on a thread about pirated PDFs of 4th Ed. on the Paizo Boards casts the whole thing in a bad light.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it strikes me that folks talking about their spiffy new 4th ed. books on a thread about stealing said books might cause some more bad blood and encourage more piracy.
I may be splitting hairs, but I don't think it's fair putting the Paizo guys in this situation.
Out of respect to Paizo, I'd just suggest we take the discussion of 4th ed. to another thread.
I have a book that I bought at a store. Is there some reason I can't talk about it?
Did you sign an NDA? No? Then you'd break no law. You can talk about it all you want.
See, I have an odd dilema,
If I DL the PDFs out there, I'd feel obligated to buy the books. But I don't want to buy the books, because I won't be playing 4th, for reasons that have nothing to do with the system.
**DaveMage puts ethics hat on.**
Do not download the books. Wait until they are in the stores and peruse them there.
Alternatively, do what I'm going to do and that's wait a little while and buy them on ebay for $1.00. :)
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I've seen them. The books ARE pretty. The interesting thing is the new way 4e uses feats. You don't buy skills anymore. From the PHB:
When you create your character, you should determine
your base skill check bonus for each skill you
know. Your base skill check bonus for a skill includes
the following:
> One-half your level
> Your ability score modifier (each skill is based on one
of your ability scores)
> A +5 bonus if you're trained in the skill
Sounds similar to Pathfinder Alpha 1 doesn't it?