new WoD > everything


Especially like, the sourcebook Asylum. DAMN. So much information and explanation. It's awesome. Haven't looked at changeling yet, but Vampires definitely are cooler than the old edition. (But Setites, where are my beautiful Setites. )

I don't see why people whine about online content, either. Wizards isn't shoving a gun into their mouths and forcing them to buy the online content; they can just happily get the book and play on a real tabletop, with real dice, just like they always have. Online content is another opetion, not the only option.

I put on my robe and wizard hat.

And when I'm not doing that, I'm playing D&D 3.5, because I can't see having spent all that money on 3.5 compatible material only to have the privilege of spending more money to invalidate it.

Although, I've been about Witch Hunter since October.

Verithrax, they are forcing you to use the online content, in a manner of speaking. At a sneak peak event in November, they had a new players handbook, online content and hard copy on display, flipping through it, you quickly realize that about half the feats are only available online, and a few classes and races, online only. The guy we were talking to from WOTC says the DM has even more online content.

I am not talking about there digital table top, its great, of course OpenRPG offers the same thing for free, without flashy graphics of course.

But even if you use the online tabletop, you will run into more money grubbing techniques. The game rules and available classes and WOTC tabletop are not completely set by the DM. You have to have the book, and paid for the 'registration' just to be able to use the content online. This means no more third party sources for DnD, which is likely a good thing as few seemed to have much attention paid to not power gaming. You can't just borrow the DMs copy, or another players copy, of a source, you have to own one yourself. Which is bull, but the more tried and true method of a long term group sharing the costs of a group library is not a good buisness model to WOTC who instead of saying four people pitching in to buy one book, want to see four people buy four books, pay online registration fees, and online subscriptions.

They are trying to make an expensive hobby cost more.

Actually, it just sounds to me like what they've done is replaced "free" Web Content as well as Dragon and Dungeon and are presenting them in a subscription mode. I think the key is to replace what you used to get in the magazines (such as new official rules, etc), with an Internet subscription.

http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e (Scroll down to D&D Insider).

I don't see how this is a problem. The PHB, the DMG, and MM will all be core--this will either give you advanced looks at what is coming or will be web-only content.

I could understand being upset about certain things--the fact that what we've come to expect as "core" is being replaced with an Annual PHB/DMG/MM "sequels" and some cool stuff being left out--conjuration spells, enchantment spells, certain races and classes, etc. But the DI seems more like just a replacement for the magazines. You will still be able to play D&D with just the "first" PHB/DMG/MM.

3rd Party content will still be created--they've said they still support the OGL and will allow third-party companies to make D&D-compatible products.

Right now, my biggest concern with the 4e project is that they are messing with the legacy of background that was D&D. D&D is a series of expected Archetypes (not "cliches"), and I worry that they are messing with those too much. Why all the changes to the planes of existence, monsters, etc--it's just going to get hardcore upset and not likely attract new people. Stuff like "reducing the number of 'confusing' gods", etc.

Also, D&D is the key thing in the late 20th century that has inspired countless other fantasy--including IRE games, WoW, White Wolf, whole forms of Japanese anime, etc.--it's like WoTC is embarrassed about the archetypes now. The advertising engages in a little bit of "ageism", making fun of their past and the legacy of it instead of respecting it.

We'll see what happens...

I understand their argument about it just being an online magazine replacement to Dragon. (Which they harpooned leading up to this, destroying one of the longest running legacies in DnD, and nearly destroying Paizo in the process) However, it comes across as corporate bull. Here is the RPGA behind the scenes information we've received, in chronological order.

January, 2007 Our yearly budget from running WotC sanctioned events, and going to conventions is cut by half, forcing us to focus on our yearly Vegas meet, and San Diego Comic Con. Wizards drags along employees of WotC and has them represent RPGA at the cons we can no longer afford to goto.

March 2007, our player-volunteer leadership is striped, and a paid WotC idiot (qualification for idiot will come around May.) in charge. We groan and mumble, but it is there organization legally, so they can do that.

April 2007, fearless leader decides we should host a game day each day at San Diego Comic Con. We always did that anyways, but we let him think it is his idea. (During this process, we learn he has never even read the DnD rulebooks, and is a fresh college graduate who didn't even know there was a Comic Con San Diego... one of his quotes, "Wow... this is pretty big? Is this like... that computer... thing, you know... in LA?")

May 2007, We open up sign ups for the game day at Comic Con. Fearless leader tells us we can not set a cap of applicants. He then sets a cap of GMs we can have at the event, and only allows Senior GMs. Furthermore, he decides that Marshals, no matter how dire the situation will not GM.

June 2007, Crap hits the fans, as last minute Fearless Leader decides we have to allow walk ups into the game day also, which we would've made room normally had we been able to cap advanced sign ups. Average game day group size is 30-1. White Wolf takes pity on us, and gives us, DnDers, free stuff... when White Wolf takes pity and gives free stuff to DnD people, you know it is bad.

August 2007, Wizards decides player leadership caused the problem at Comic Con, and disbands regional volunteer leadership. Fearless leader appoints college buddies to run Western RPGA.

October 2007, RPGA rebels, Vegas fails miserably. This was the first event I was able to make being at sea and all. Very upset that it failed, but understand why so many RPGA people decided not to show. Later that month, Wizards announces that RPGA will no longer be a fan run organization.

December 2007, RPGA has a massive letter campaign where we all resign, most of us sending back the free stuff we had earned through our work.



You wont find any of that posted on the news boards, or public discussion boards. Mainly because the first few times someone mentioned any of this, WotC sued so fast that the attorneys got whiplash. I, however, did not sign the NDA in March, so I am ok... until WotC finds another way to sue me.



We turn around and look at 4e, and see wizards pulling the same crap. They've taken out every last person from the DnD project that came over from TSR, and have put new WotC staffers aboard, and forced a couple of the old TSR guys to promote it. As their contracts end, they bail. (Notice, Monte Cook is no longer solely published by wizards.)

Wizards has lost is trustworthiness, and sadly people are either going 'well its a big company, what can I do' or 'Bah, you are stupid.'

Never in the history of D&D has anyone been forced to play the officially-supported gods (And I still don't buy that there'll even be less gods to go around). Obviously hardcore fans can keep on using their old pantheons like nothing happened. And they haven't killed any classes (Maybe, just maybe, they killed a race) that I know of. And so far I rather like what they're doing to the classes - Paladins now actually fit their archetypes much better than they ever did, when they were just a haphazard mishmash of warrior and cleric abilities that was best at neither. And keep in mind that for Fourth they're killing a lot of the importance of feats and shifting their use towards class powers, so if anything the classes will become even better defined.

And you're just being uptight. WoTC and hobby gaming in general has a history of laughing at itself, and I have the Unhinged cards, the John Kovalic cartoons and the Munchkin's Guide to Role-Playing to prove it.

And Callia is obviously biased, given the drama-storm she just described.

You were wrong about the gnome, at least for 2008. It sounds like they only want to keep the gods that fit the player archetypes. I think people might have a reason to complain if a campaign like the Forgotten Realms loses 75% of the gods in the hope to make it easier to play. If that's the main reason you chance the world, it might not be fitting.



I'm more concerned with the fan base's loyalty. If things change too much they could end up with a New Coke fiasco--changing things when there was no demand for it. Traveller has had this problem. I think Crylia was right in one thing--there was a culture change in the game when Wizards bought TSR--as time has passed a lot of the old guard left, so there may not be a sense of traditionalism anymore. Maybe I'm worried a bit too much.

The reason I was upset about "cliche's" is that too many fantasy fans like to snark on the cliche's and want to create the "truly unique" game. People here always say "Lusternia should be unique" but sometimes when we discussed having the bard and rogue archetypes some people were like "let's not". (Ironically, Rauros used to say "no ninjas", but the Magnagora Monks are probably the closest thing to that as you can get). Somebody once said their are only 7 plots in the world.

(And to be frank, I am a bit sick of the sacrasm, snark, and cynicism in general today. Too many people like to snark on things, it leads to nobody taking anything seriously or with any reverence. A friend of mine said "when everybody you know is cynical it sucks", because people need the optimism. I'm so sick of shows like "I Love the " or people making the listings in Entertainment Weekly being "cute" with snark when talking about what's on in the week. Stop trying to be clever, damnit! The generation that comes after X I hope rebels against this attitude).

QUOTE

As an aside, I have nothing against those sorts of games in general. The Halo series, for example, is a vastly entertaining way of killing time, along with countless aliens. I just wish Wizards would stop pretending it's a role-playing game.

To be honest Amarysse, like Cuber said, D&D did come from Wargaming roots. What 3e did is actually legitimize Hack & Slash--it was always part of the game, but there seemed to be a culture saying you shouldn't ever "min/max" or think of stats or powergame. 3e took away the guilt--and to be fair all the games inspired by D&D, the computer RPGs like Wizardry and Ultima took the H&S part of it and legitimized it.

Role-playing is very important but I think there's a happy medium between the H&S of a WOW type environment, and the Thespianism of White Wolf style games.

QUOTE

I understand their argument about it just being an online magazine replacement to Dragon. (Which they harpooned leading up to this, destroying one of the longest running legacies in DnD, and nearly destroying Paizo in the process) However, it comes across as corporate bull. Here is the RPGA behind the scenes information we've received, in chronological order.

I agree about Dragon and Dungeon. Those magazines have a long legacy. To be honest, Wizards seems to make mistakes and change their minds a lot. They said to Necromancer Games "here's a list of all the creatures that we don't intend to detail in 3rd Edition", so NG could create the Tome of Horrors, then changed their minds. They sold off GenCon, then regretted it and setup Winter Fantasy. They sold the magazines to Paizo then decided to cancel the license.

I'm just not sure how the way Wizards treated the RPGA affects how they develop the games...one does not equal the other.

Marketing a hack-and-slash game as "epic adventure" and "immersive roleplaying" is stretching it a bit far, in my opinion. It (D&D) may have simply cycled back around to its genre of origin, but like so many MUDs these days, I'm more or less convinced it should just be labelled "Roleplaying Accepted" at this point. It's becoming something I no longer recognize as an RPG, or as the game I grew up playing, and I don't intend to support Wizards in any further ventures. It's a tiny thing, really, when you consider how monumentally huge the company's become, but they're essentially on-par with Wal-Mart in my mind, as far as corporate greed and the sacrifice of quality for quantity is concerned. My measly contributions, or lack thereof, will certainly not make or break them, but I can't in good conscience support them or their products.

My complaint wasn't about the "legitimacy" of H & S games, or any other type, but the annoyance at seeing them labelled in a way that I believe is incorrect.



I actually think it says quite a lot about their perception of their customer base, and the players, which is more important to me than their development process.

It bothers me that people have started hating post-modernism in fiction because it's everywhere. I think there's room for idealism in media that are clever and original and make use of metafiction and post-modernism. People who complain about that "attitude" are just old fogeys who've failed to keep up with cultural change and express their feeling of bewilderment into anger. Just like people did during every period of history. The perpetual irony of it is, of course, that for everything Phred enjoys, there was someone older than him who didn't get it and hoped generations after him would rebel against it.

Rulebooks don't create roleplay in any fashion. Rulebooks exist to delineate character abilities and semi-random factors of success and failure. There are no-RP DIKU MUDs out there, there are RPI DIKU MUDs out there. If you can't find RP opportunities just because there's a rulebook sitting there telling you what you succeed or fail to do, then you're bad at it. Sorry.

But there's plenty of information they can put in books to make things easier and deeper in that regard. Rulebooks can carry a lot of setting information, too.

Third edition validated the "kick down the door" playing style because they didn't want to tell us how to play the game anymore. It didn't kill roleplay-intensive games (As evidenced at least by the numerous feats that are worthless in a combat-heavy game - Silver Palm, anyone?) . I fail to see anything wrong with recognising that D&D is a versatile game. And the bulk of what is being talked about on the website now is about combat simply because the bulk of the rules are about combat, and even in those games that achieve a balance between roleplay and swordplay, combat is an important part of the game, a source of visceral fun, and what tends to take up the most time in a game that's not very dialog-heavy, but the new "quest" mechanic looks interesting, if only so GMs have a guideline when giving XP rewards for advancing the story. D&D has always been very much about taking the GM by the hand and giving him lots of tools to do things. Compare that to the White Wolf games, which are very much about getting the GM out of the way so the players can do their thing.

That must be it. That's my problem... I'm horrid at roleplaying because I don't have a book telling me how to do it. Thank you for your insight. Now, if only I could figure out how to properly apply that to Lusternia, I wouldn't have to listen to so many people complaining that I'm "bad at" RP.

/sarcasm.

Setting is the DM's job, or the job of a module. The rulebook, like Veri said, is there to facilitate DMing. Why would you want to tie the rulebook to a setting? What WotC did was playtest things until they came out with something they believed to be balanced (you can argue that it was or wasn't--I think 3e bards are horrible and I've never seen a good implementation of psionics in D&D), and then they packaged the numbers up with pretty pictures so you don't have to go to the trouble of finding balance by yourself.

Amarysse, don't lsiten to Verithrax, sometimes he manages to make good points, but he is normally hiding behind a shield of sarcasm, and veiled insults in arguments, probably because he enjoys arguments and likes to play devils advocate even when he thinks he is wrong and runs out of ways to defend a failing position, or he simply is to lazy to counter valid points.



What I mentioned about RPGA was an indication of how WotC views its fan base. They literally think the only reason 3rd was not the 'Mightest kick ass RPG ever, that dethroned all others' is because the playerbase is stupid. During the run up to Eberron release, a WotC representative once said something along the line of, "Perhaps if our books included instructions on moving out of basements, we'd sell more books... or at least moms would buy fewer." If you even manage to spend some time around WotC Employees, you will get to hear remarks like this over and over.

It is, I am sure, the main reason every employee from TSR is now gone.

The way they handled the RPGA tells us they think their players are the joke. When Phred was talking about them making jokes of their own genre, I do not think they are making jokes... sometimes I honestly believe that is how they think of us, the players.

From what I have seen of 4th, this mentality is reflected in the pages of this new version. The reason this upsets me, after all I have already abandoned them, is that DnD is the gateway into tabletop gaming. Almost every VtM, or even nWoD, Heros, GURPS, and etc... playerbase has a significant percentage of players who started with DnD and moved on to other games, some even continue to play DnD.

I fear this gateway is going to crumble down, and harm the entire community (wont kill it, but I think it will harm it.) and this is the sad part. Wizards, in its greed wants to exploit a new resource that doesn't exist, at least yet. They want to take the mindless grind of things like WoW, wrap it up in books, and sell them. They've learned how with MtG, they know the value of small reward, lots of effort, with an occasional big reward, inspires people to keep playing, to keep buying. 4th edition is them, bringing the model of WoW, and combining it with their experience with MtG and using it to gain money off of a sub-culture it despises.

Its not the end of the world, there will always be other games, but an icon in the gaming world is being destroyed from the ground up, and a new tin shack is being dropped in its place, and it doesn't even have a window.

D&D as a gateway product is pretty hit-and-miss anyway. It doesn't do an absolutely great job of showcasing all facets of the hobby, and it's easily very daunting for new players.

And I haven't been sarcastic the whole thread, I don't think. But of course, all I speak is lies and falsehood for I am Legion, etc.

You're making an assumption just because I identify myself as older than the average person (being 38), that it's about ageism or the generation gap. Technically, I count as "generation X", because that's what they called us in 1994 when I was in my 20s, and Generation X was all about the "irony and apathy". I'm certainly not bewildered--you're reminding me of that rapper on the Boondocks a few weeks back, who made a song about Grandad called "Your just mad 'cause ya ass is old". No, maybe there's a reason for the criticism.

It's quite possible that what you call post-modernism has become so over-saturated in the culture and media that people are starting to rebel against it. Post-modernism has it's place, but it requires other things to counterblance. If it's over-exposed people may get rid of it. There was a pretty good article about Walden Media and how they were formed because one of the founders was sick of the stuff he was created and wanted to aim good non-ironic stories for kids. Not every cultural movement sticks, when the 60's movement happened, we didn't all end up in communes, for instance--disco brought on the disco sucks movement when it was everywhere--and I have a feeling the pendulum will swing the other way. I'm hoping a rebellion happens not because of my age, but because the trend is overexposed.




I don't think it's "setting" people are concerned about--in fact, people are concerned that there is too much setting (or what they call "fluff" in the new rules. Rather, my concern is that there probably should be some stuff about Role-Playing. D&D is the de-facto introduction to the RPG (or at least the table-top RPG since Final Fantasy and other CRPGs are more prevalent nowadays.) I guess if I see a good introduction to the role-playing elements that people like Amarysse want to see I'll feel hopeful. D&D suffers a bit in the introduction department nowadays since they got rid of the "Basic D&D" line. The best introduction to the game IMO was the 3rd Edition D&D Basic Set (the one written by Frank Mentzer).



Well, to be fair, this was prevalent even with 2nd Edition--Lorraine Williams, president of TSR after Gygax left--thought gamers were not her social equal. Those attitudes still existed. So the "good old days" weren't that good.



I think if they do things wrong they could hurt themselves. I don't see anything in the creators that indicate this attitude, I think Wyatt, Collins, Noonan, and others involved really care about creating a good game, I don't like to question the creator's motive. I do think the two main errors are the following:

Changing things for the sake of changing things--rebooting a lot of the common expectations doesn't seem to be in high demand. When 3e was being introduced, I saw a respect for the past and people like Peter A. were working hard to bridge the gap between the disaffected older players, the current audience, and those on the fence. And it was also a reaction to the fact that TSR almost went bankrupt and the future was VERY uncertain. I don't see that in 4e thinking. I see some good things coming out of this--giving the fighter powers increases player interest in other characters. But I also see things being changed just because a certain creator thinks it's cooler.

The other problem is long-term thinking. Some games are better and think long term. It took GURPS about 20 years to go from 3e to 4e, and even still the game still feels very similar and is more streamlined without a lot of radical changes. By creating a new edition every decade you end up with a large group of alienated players. So we will now have three major player groups, the 1e/2e players, the 3e players and the 4e players--rather than a common generation of players who could easily adapt to the changes. Some people say that game design is a science and compare early RPGs to alchemy instead of chemistry--I disagree, AD&D 1st Edition is still a valid game--it may not be as "sexy" as the modern version of D&D, but that doesn't make it fun for their players, or make it a game nobody new can learn.

Overall, I am cautiously optimistic, akin to Cuber. I just hope they're not making any horrible miscalculations.

Just remember that the people who sell DnD to you look at you in the following way:

Cloistered individuals with a lot of disposable income, who themselves buy our products because they are too entrenched living other people's fantasies.


Everyone I know who still does table top RPG, does it "open source" style.

One of my old gaming buddies decided that sense 4th is coming out later this/next year that he would give away all of his 3.0 and 3.5 library as 'This crappy system is no longer needed, I told you they would fix it and put something better out!'

So I just inherited about 2000 dollars in books, so I guess 4th Ed aint all bad...