I have investigated the 4E resources, and they honestly don’t interest me. Would someone like to flame me for my opinion? My preference? Will you feel superior, self-satisfied, etc. if you tell me how “nostalgic”, wrong, etc. that you consider me to be? Do you think I really care?

Maybe Hasbro, WoTC, independent game designers would have appreciated my $$$. I have spent thousands of dollars over the past years. I even bought $100 of 3.5E PDFs last month. But I anticipate paying zero dollars for D&D resources in the near and foreseeable future.

I’m sure many snarky, smarmy souls will just say: “Your loss, you stuck-in-a-rut relic of a bygone era.” Again, a non-issue.

I play what I enjoy. Even though I update my software systems with the very latest stable releases, and sometimes betas, that doesn’t mean I always crave the latest, greatest changes to my gaming system of choice.

Software games often have upgrades, and those can be even better. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is one, in my opinion. Fallout 3 is a tremendous example. But there are numerous follow-on titles that I never got into. The 2nd Deus Ex didn’t pull me in like the fantastically replayable 1st game.

Why talk about software games? Because apparently the new and aging hip players want a D&D game system reminiscent of software games. All members of my gaming group play World of Warcraft online frequently. I played for a few months but burned out on the grind.

A software game appeals to the reward response–numerous articles exist detailing that phenomenon and the perfecting thereof. And it is a system with rules…much simpler rules than many paper and pencil games.

People can feel good about grinding for years (literally) to get multiple high-level characters who can go places and thrash boss monsters. And do it in a group setting. But there are very finite limits to “role-playing” and doing whatever you’d like in a fantasy realm.

As a type of strategy and resource mgmt, software games can excel. But do they challenge the mind for creative approaches to situations, challenges, problems? They can’t. Too complex. I know. I’ve written software systems my whole life.

But the flexible paper and pencil version is significantly and unquestionably slower. And to make it more than just a battle of wills between the DM and players, devolving into a “I shot you first” “No, I shot YOU first!” debacle there are numerous rules that the human mind—more than a software algorithm—can effect.

As has been said many times in many places: The complexity is a double-edged sword. It makes the game infinitely replayable, but working through the complexity can bog down the game resulting in frustration and boredom in the face of a barely- or un-playable session.

But I like the flavor of 3.5E, standing as it does upon the foundations of the venerable previous editions.

And I’m completely uninterested in trying to convert and/or buy upgrades to my hundreds of print and GIGABYTES of digital resources.

Perhaps the “new” edition could have been swappable like any of the other optional rules. Hex facing. Spell point systems, etc. I read the alternate paths and swapping of abilities for classes in Dragon. Some were interesting. They were optional. Take it or leave it. The changes were incremental, clearly spelled out, fully compatible, and absolutely optional.

If speed of play (simpler mechanics) was the driving motive—then provide improved grappling approaches, etc., which could be swapped in incrementally. The “upgrade” path would be clear. There’s a reason why M$ is providing an XP shell in Windows 7. Cutting off millions of legacy apps in Vista back-fired. Counter-arguments would include the assertion that M$ OS versions are slow to release and buggy because of backwards compatibility. Who is right?

In any event, I agree with speeding up play, but not with sacrificing the original flavor of D&D. There were expansions that could cater to the need to attract new players “not raised on Tolkien”. Of course, the blockbuster movie came out, right?

So I will endeavor to develop tools which could keep the complexity of 3.5E but increase the playing speed to something within sight of software games. Plenty of tools currently exist in the market…virtual tabletops, etc. And yes WoTC was making a 3D one, but lately it’s not been touted on the site.

I spent months creating custom content for Neverwinter Nights using their included toolset and ran a small persistent online world. Great fun. But there were limits. I had fun making the Holy Hand-grenade of Antioch, the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd and all manner of artifacts. Also, scalable monsters. It kept the flavor of D&D and the play was as fast as ever, as expected. [of course the monsters never stood still for a fireball or meteor swarm, unless you came in invisibly!]

So that is what I wanted to say: The new direction doesn’t interest me. I’m uninterested in forking over $100’s or $1000’s more for another game system. I’d rather solve the problem of helping players deal with the problem of rapidly processing complex rules.

And good luck and happy adventuring to all of the 4E community, and whatever the future brings to the D&D system!

Vision9000

“3.75 would have performed as well at 3.0″ (the point you addressed) is a completely different sentence from “A backwards compatible 4.0 would have performed as well as this 4.0″ a point no one has addressed, and a point that is more important.

2) I think I agree most strongly with Cyril Flament’s comment “My only regret: that the new game keeps the name of the ‘classic’ product instead of a new name”

4.0 is barely recogniseable as DnD. It is not an evolution of the previous products, it is a new product. This is where you get a lot of nostalgic critics, and you are not addressing their concerns. You are merely restating your opinions, and ignoring what they mean.

That represents “the death of DnD” to many players. Why would a game with only token relations to the game systems of the last 30 years, be considered DnD to fans? The game is over for those players because that is gone.

It’s not about the sticker on the front of the book insisting this is what DnD is now. Even if the books sell, so what?

Would you be making the same arguments if Hasbro scrapped it’s RPGs completely, started producing romance novels and put a DnD sticker on the front? No.

“But look, DnD sales are up 7%, so your argument that DnD is dead is rubbish”. You miss the point entirely that they’re making. You’re not even arguing against it, you’re just missing the point.

3) “My only critics are nostalgics who would have been disappointed with anything!”

Way to dismiss all your opponents without needing to contribute a single valid point. I bought all the 4.0 books because I was excited about the new system. I was really looking forward to it.

I was disappointed. I continue to read (now without buying them) the books that come out in my local store to see if they’re anything I’d appreciate, hoping that something will come along to entice me, and so far, nothing. (Eladrin are cool though).

It irritates me no end when I’m then told I wouldn’t have liked anything. It’s a cheap shot… from a commenter who probably eats babies.

I enjoyed reading your response, thank you. I would like to follow up on your post below…

First off, you and others keep mentioning that Hasbro discontinued or otherwise hobbled my “favorite game”. This is most certainly not the case. I don’t play 4E and I never said one negative or positive thing about it or its predecessor, 3.x, as a game in my post. I’m not sure why you assume that my comment was some kind of pro-3.x and anti 4E crusade. It was not. Yes, I play 3.5 and not 4.0 but I did not extoll or villify either game in my comments. So lets take that topic out of the discussion.

What I did comment on was the business plan that Hasbro followed for 4E and the damage it wrought to its existing 3.x customer base to generate what appears to be a slightly better then marginal sales bump. I argue they could have achieved this bump, improved their game, and NOT alienated a portion of their existing base by releasing a backwards compatible version instead of a wholesale and incompatible rewrite.

Even Mr. Goodman mentions that adjusting to the 4E model was a challenge to him (I mention this before as well). In fact, to my knowledge, the vast majority of d20 providers either complained vigorously about or completely rejected 4e upon its initial release to the point where many of them went and developed their own game systems in lieu of 4e support. I fail to understand how this is a satisfactory way to support your business partners. In addition a substantial percentage of the consumer base (ie players) did not follow the 4e trail and instead went in other directions with their gaming interests. I doubt anyone that will be buying the Paizo game you mention is new to the hobby. I’m sure 95% of them are 3.x players.

This to me is the crux of the problem with the 4e business strategy (not the game). Would Toyota make the 2010 Camry use all new parts that are incompatible with the previous model so that all their suppliers have to destroy the current inventory of alternators and solenoids while at the same time make it no longer fit in your garage? All this to increase sales say 10%? I don’t think they would. This to me is what Hasbro has done with D&D.

Yes the 2010 model of the Camry can be redesigned but a substantial portion of the underlying drivetrain is identical to the previous models and any mechanical changes are done in concert with their parts manufacturers and after market suppliers not in direct opposition to them. Toyota does not want to “challenge” its business partners to keep up with their changes.

I understand Hasbro would like to get more intellectual property into the game by doing things like removing Gnomes and Half-Orcs (in the core books anyway) and replacing them with Dragonborn and Warforged. Yes this makes the game potentially more profitable since Hasbro can put copyrights around Dragonborn and Warforged, but these types of things could still have been achieved without the rules rewrite and dismantling of the d20 partnerships. I believe.

We can only rejoice that the 4E sales numbers are not catastrophic, and that WOTC still exists.

One key to making money is innovation in answer to market desires/wishes (and making it known). 3rd Edition was innovative on many levels (rules, d20 licence, marketing). 4th edition is also innovative (rules, digital tools). Innovative does not necesseraly mean better. Here, it means different. The two editions aim at two different markets. In play (and in reading, preparing, DMing), they feel like two different products of a same product line, like “Classic D&D”, and “Standard D&D”. Or even two different RPG games.

I suppose that supporting the two products was analysed as not profitable enough. We now have “Pathfinder D&D” and “WOTC D&D”, two different games for two different markets and fans. And two different business models. Each one will have their own lives, with their own upgrades and innovations. Is it not good for RPG ?

My only regret : that the new game keeps the name of the “classic” product instead of a new name. It kept me confused for several weeks.

How do we fix magical item creation in 4e? I like that the system is silent on the RP stuff enough to let me just mess around with stuff, inserting flavor and stuff from my favorite fantasy novels willy-nilly since the mechanics don’t have to model the stuff.

But I really do wish there were ways to, say, make artificers put pieces of their souls in the items they create – I’ve always had a hard-on for the mechanomancers in Unknown Armies, but that aspect of the artificer is missing in 4e (and was perfectly modeled in 3e by the XP costs for crafting, though that was problematic).

I feel like there’s only so much adding stuff in without system support before it gets kinda lame. I’m not quite asking for Social Combat a la Burning Wheel or Exalted, but some options for a neat subsystem presented by, well, anyone to make that stuff more than just crap my players and I add in the game randomly.

No, the real reason for my lack of traps is that I suck at traps, and haven’t run enough of them in my 4e campaign to be comfortable coming up with an original trap. I’m still at the stage where I’m so excited about all the cool monsters that it almost physically pains me to leave even one monster out.

Once I run a few traps and get a feel for how they work in play I’ll probably write one up.

Many of the people who disrespect 4e have never played the game, or tried it for a few weeks and decided it was terrible (which for some people I know was more about an inexperienced GM and the group’s social dynamic than the new mechanics or rules). It took me a couple of months to get over my dislike of the game because I knew it was rooted in an irrational resistence to change (one of the most common of human failings). Once I got over this failing I realized that 4e was no worse than 3.5 and in several key ways was a whole lot better. In fact, the only things that annoy me know is the absence of craft and profession skills and the niggling problems with skill challenges (though these are gradually being fixed).

In regards to your question of “if the sales of 4E have been ‘good’ or ‘pretty good’ or ‘very well’ but not near the peak of 3E then wouldn’t Hasbro have been just as well served to release a 3.75 to achieve ‘pretty good’ sales…” You are completely ignoring the fact that 3.5 didn’t perform as well as 3.0 did. If 3.5 couldn’t perform at 3E levels, what makes you think 3.75 would?

In my personal experience, 3E renewed my interest in D&D as a player. 4E has done this once, AND it has also made me want to DM more than I ever have since my first time cracking open my first D&D book back in the 80’s. I might also add that many of the criticisms and hyperbole trumpeted from from some of the critics is often completely contrary to my experience.

Because of some nasty internet forums, I sometimes forget that our hobby consists of above-average thinkers and gamers as opposed to biased-fanboys whose nostalgia cloud their oftentimes hate-filled comments, with no basis in expertise nor experience.

Good times!

I’m sorry WoTC discontinued your favorite game, Tom. I still haven’t recovered from the cancellation of Planescape during the move from 2e to 3e, and sincerely hope Dark Sun is the next announced campaign setting from WoTC.

Onto your questions. Per Goodman, the height of 3e’s sales were anomalous and also ten years removed from the present. Per other industry veterans interviews, the release of 3.5 provided a short-term spike, but didn’t create a second boom or even sustain the spike – which is natural, since rules tweaks aren’t really going to generate the kind of excitement a new edition would.

There’s no guarantee or even reason to believe that a WoTC-produced 3.75 would be selling as well as a new edition – and lots of reason to believe that the new edition is doing better than people online want to believe.

So to answer your questions: No, it likely wouldn’t have been good to announce a 3.75 and thus not alienate core fans, especially considering how well sales are now going; though the sales might not be at the 3e peak of 2000-2001, those numbers are anomalous. The 4e books’ presence on best-sellers’ lists and the amount of Internet buzz for the new edition – both good and bad – is pretty incredible, and the kind of PR that money can’t buy.

And yes, it probably was wise for Hasbro to dismantle its d20 partner base and fracture its consumer base considering that even with a fractured base the company is doing very well in a troubled economy. Believing otherwise seems to me to be wishful thinking and destructive to the hobby – since (supposedly, at least) when D&D does well all RPGs do well.

And this sort of thing actually does happen in other businesses all the time. Here’s a non-obvious example: professional wrestling.

Professional wrestling is a very successful and sustainable product right now even though there is no Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin or The Rock on the horizon – and even when there was, there was nothing guaranteeing these performers would continue to perform at peak levels for sustained periods of time (history proved they couldn’t, incidentally).

Merchandise sales, PPV buyrates and TV ratings aren’t anywhere near those peak levels – but no one can look at WWE’s quarterly reports and conclude that they’re not profitable because they’re not performing at anomalous peak levels. When the company switched its presentation from a racier, raunchier style to something more family-friendly they lost a lot of casual fans, but that’s OK – the great isn’t the enemy of the good, and the hard-core fans left combined with new fans have proven a good base to build from while waiting for the next big thing to happen.

You can’t plan a business model around boom years – and sometimes you have to take a short-term hit for long-term success. Perhaps you think Hasbro and WoTC could have gotten another ten years out of product support for an edition already boasting a decade of great supplementary material, Tom – but I think you’re pretty close to the only person who does think that.

I love reading scholarship about marketing and sales, and based on what I know about this stuff I don’t really see a compelling reason why the market needs D&D 3.75 produced by WoTC – or even that there was a long-term demand for that. Many fans would, justifiably, have asked why they couldn’t continue playing 3e or 3.5 – after all, they asked the same question when 3e transitioned to 3.5e, and they were probably right to ask that question.

But I can see a need for Pathfinder RPG (which amounts to 3.75), largely because you have a new company supporting a new iteration of the old standard.

Now, I’d be happier if PFRPG had tried to fix many of the complaints about 3e that people on RPG.net have made – i.e., full casters making the rest of the party useless – but I recognize that this isn’t a bug to many players, it’s a feature. So it’s smart for them to produce something there’s a need for.

And it’s OK that they didn’t try to fix this or even perceive it as a problem – it means I wont’ be running a PFRPG game, but my group prefers 4e anyway. I prefer to DM it, too, because the ease of DMing allows me to edit and help develop content for KQ. This is better for everyone involved, so Paizo doesn’t have to market their game to people like me.

As an aside, allow me to say this. I value KQ’s customers and subscribers, and would never want to hurt their feelings by changing our format and system support.

But though I don’t speak for Wolfgang, I can say that if Kevin Siembieda offered to turn KQ into The Glitterboy Gazetteer to be the monthly front line in the coming fictional PR Blitz heralding Rifts 2e – thereby making Wolfgang and the rest of the staff millionaires in the process – I’d say screw it and cash in.

I personally wouldn’t be too concerned about alienating every single subscriber we currently have. I’d hope all of our subscribers are adult enough to be happy that RIFTS is going to make me, Wolfgang and Scott millionaires.

So yeah, Tom, your questions don’t really make a lot of business sense, nor are your implied answers terribly compelling. Unless, that is, you believe WoTC and Hasbro have a moral obligation not to hurt your feelings – and everyone knows that isn’t a sustainable business model, or even the way the free market works when creating competition is at work.

But that’s just my opinion.

Mr Goodman repeatedly says that 4E sales (his as well as all in general) have been good but one should not compare 4E sales to the “anomaly” of the 3E sales height in 2000-2002. Well my question is, if the sales of 4E have been “good” or “pretty good” or “very well” but not near the peak of 3E then wouldn’t Hasbro have been just as well served to release a “3.75″ to achieve “pretty good” sales with that and at the same time NOT ALIENATE almost its entire 3E TPP support and a large percentage of its existing 3E and long time players? Was it wise for Hasbro to dismantle it’s organically grown d20 partner base AND fracture it’s core consumer base for “pretty good but nowhere near 3E peak” sales?

Mr Goodman himself says converting his product line and company focus to 4E was a challenge and a bit of a trial by fire, yet he was forced to do this so Hasbro can get “pretty good” sales out of it’s new edition? I can’t imagine this kind of arrangement being acceptable in other businesses. I’m surprised Mr. Goodman would support it in his own.

It’s entirely appropriate to cite relevant expertise when making assertions, and I do think it’s pretty safe to say that Goodman has expertise that many (most) of the blogosphere/message boardosphere doesn’t have. I’d go further and suggest most of the people online criticizing his post had insufficient expertise to even do that with any credibility. It’s both factual and necessary to state “I’m Joseph Goodman and I know more than you” when there are tons of people online writing without expertise – and those who do have the expertise to write typically, like Goodman, chose not to do so.

Blogging has, perhaps, obscured the fact that writing opinion pieces and critiques isn’t particularly easy – and that careful study and expertise (usually by beat reporting for 5 or more years) is required to write opinions on a given topic in a major newspaper. Though one can question the quality of the opinions newspapers produce – I do all the time – there’s no doubt that most of the quality people writing about a topic are at least qualified to be horribly wrong.

Though no one likes being reminded that it takes a certain amount of expertise to critique another expert, I’m quite certain Goodman was a great deal more diplomatic in that post than I would have been. In fact, Goodman was a great deal more diplomatic than I have been when others have made incorrect and inexpert statements about art (my area of specialization is philosophy of art and aesthetics) or the craft of writing in my presence.

Here is Clarke Petersen’s post:

http://necromancergames.yuku.com/topic/10808

One more thing (and this is where I strongly disagree with Dale). The starting classes for 4e were indeed very similar, but the true beauty of 4e is that with each new expansion, the differences between the classes escalates exponentially. Indeed, I’m actually facing the opposite problem. There are so many options for my characters that I’m being spoilt for choice and my 4e bard is completely different from my 4e warden, both mechancially and flavor-wise.

Regarding Aberzanzorax’s post … can you tell us what Clarke Petersen post you meant? Can you provide a link? I’d love to read it.

Thanks!