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PA Comic: Wednesday, Jan 11, 2012 - The Way Forward
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This is true, but with 4th edition, a major consideration is that character creation is downright abysmal without the software tools. Once those tools stop being supported? I'd wager 4th edition stops getting played.
I think you severely underestimate PnP RPG players.
This isn't what most of us who are critical of DDI are saying at all.
I have a similar opinion to Pony, and I have been very enthusiastic about the current edition of D&D. Their Dungeon and Dragon "Magazine" content was initially quite good, but recently it has become lower quality... and less actual content. The character builder (the good one) was scrapped in favor of something far inferior. Instead of finding a way to make digital versions of their books work like so many other companies, they scrapped that idea too.
So no, I'm not upset that I have to pay for D&D stuff, or that I cannot pirate it. I am simply disappointed that the quality of their game has dropped, and that some good ideas never happened. I am no longer able to purchase the materials I was enjoying, and there is simply nothing to look forward to now. That is quite different being miffed that I can't steal something.
The current online character builder is clunky in comparision to the one that WoTC had already developed and then stopped supporting. I wouldn't be such a critic of their current set of tools if they hadn't already done better.
I can't. But I find it odd when some of the products I was paying for are either eliminated or significantly drop in quality... and that exciting new products that I would gladly buy and use are never developed.
...which was supposed to have happened in 2008. Now that the edition for which it was being developed is closing, it is finally in a beta version. Can you see that WoTC might have screwed that one up just a bit?
I'd like to point out that Pathfinder is more popular with the crowd of folk who no longer are going into their local brick and mortar gaming shop to buy books and are instead either purchasing books/PDFs online or are just plain pirating shit
erego Amazon sales are going to be slightly higher than what you see at the local shops
...
no one?
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buying 3.5 doesn't make you a de facto fan of Pathfinder. My brother and I spent literally hundreds of dollars on 3rd edition and 3.5 books and we both hated Pathfinder and had no interest in playing it and switched over to 4e when it came out.
Why's that?
I won't disagree that there's a lot PnP RPGs can do to digitize better. 4th Edition D&D had a great start to that but they've bungled it fairly hard.
Care to elaborate on what happened?
Yeah, I don't know that I could handle character creation without the software. It's just be too much of a hassle.
Because even if there were only one version and none of this fragmentation existed, and the investment of money and time weren't a big enough entry barrier, instead I also have to try to figure out what version/edition I think I would like best, whether or not that's a version I could find other people to play with, how likely it is that my investment will be rendered worthless when/if that version is rendered obsolete, etc. It's very discouraging to potential newbies.
Well, this time be a go-getter and pick up the new version immediately after it's released. I picked up some supplies last January, had my fun with them, and now I'm going to pick up whatever new madness they release to be 'on the cutting edge'.
I completely understand what you're saying, though. The way I see it: if I take my previous approach, I'll have most time with it before it becomes "obsolete."
If 4E is unpopular, I always thought it was because they tried to make it feel too much like a video game or board game. I have a source to go to for those types of games. That's why my gaming group switched to pathfinder.
Edition warfare, beyond simple needless nerd dick-waving that is common in many things (see, Star Wars vs. Star Trek), is basically a function of seeing the new (or old) editions as a threat to your ability to play the game you want with other people and share your experiences with people who like the things you like
If I really dig 4e but everyone around me hates it and plays Pathfinder, I'm going to find that a little annoying
At AusPAX in January 2011, Fishman helped noob players make upwards of a dozen characters in the space of two days. With a smile on his face the whole time.
The man is a golden god.
I decided I wanted to have a crack at D&D, he asked if I wanted to make a character.
"Nope, I'll just use one of the pre-mades you brought with you." Yes, he had already rolled up about 20 premade characters for new players to experiment with.
Please note the sentence 3 up from this one.
"If you don't know who Kendra is, I'm officially not speaking to you."
People pirate their stuff because people are cheap, D&D is possibly the most inexpensive hobby in the universe.
My mother and one of my sisters have really 'gotten into' scrapbooking recently.
My Dad was all, "How expensive can it be? It's just paper?"
Thousands of dollars later, he is not a happy man.
"If you don't know who Kendra is, I'm officially not speaking to you."
It seems like "Edition Warfare" has always depended on how radically a new edition departs from the previous edition. I believe that the edition warfare between 3rd and 4th was such a problem because of the drastic changes that 4th edition introduced. If people grow fond of a system's rules, it's harder for them to accept huge changes than it is to accept small tweaks or "improvements" to a system.
I guess it really depends on the amount a person wants to invest in the hobby, I have my core books and I'm happy with those. You can buy every book if you want, but I don't find I need that many extra rules. Now Video Games, good lord... While I guess I could just buy one video game and play it forever, it doesn't really work the way D&D does.
Also, people really have a lot of trouble making characters in 4E? It takes me tops 20 minutes for a level 1 character. Like, after playing stuff like Shadowrun or even Mutants & Masterminds, I don't know how anyone could see 4E D&D char gen as laborious.
Librarian, I think the split from 3rd to 4th was much worse than the one from 2nd to 3rd. While there are those who refused to come over from 2nd edition, a whole new game wasn't developed to fill the hole left by Second Edition. Plus Third Edition was very much like Second Edition, just more streamlined. Fourth Edition was a huge departure from third, it was like a whole different game, and I think that's why so many people were upset.
I think the difference here is that 3rd edition grew the D&D community much more than 2nd had. WOTC learned well from White Wolf and made non-combat skills much more important than they had been. The OGL was also a massive deal in that it sprung up an entire cottage industry that, in no small way, also created content for their game. Paizo and even White Wolf were making D&D 3rd edition content.
Moving away from that kind of momentum is tough, but I think that 4th edition is really as much a response to the changing wants of gamers as 3rd edition was. 4th is very streamlined and in many ways reminds me of 2nd. 2nd had a huge focus on combat as well but the key difference is that 2nd ed. was a lot more punishing in many ways than 4th is. 2nd ed. also favored, at lower levels, much more inventive combat solutions than 4th edition does. Both systems, however, really lack a developed skill system such as the one present in 3rd edition.
Personally speaking, my favorite version of WOTC's d20 system is Star Wars Saga Edition. It has the perfect mix of 4th's class power system and 3rd's skill system. Of course, it too was railed against because it wasn't the d6 Star Wars system.
If you find the D&Di tools in their current incarnation to be superior to the old versions, get down with your bad self. The only thing I even remotely appreciate over the old versions is the ability to store my character sheets online...which I could have done via any number of cloud services before, so nevermind.
Silverlight was not a successful technology choice for WotC. It's telling that Ryan Spain intimated on a recent Limited Resources that the new version of Magic Online began development as a browser based client in silverlight, and experiences with the technology led them to scrap the whole project and reboot. I recognize why they didn't want to use Flash but if that's the boat you've gotten yourself into then your choice for an app like this is really to just package the entire thing for download. Piracy sucks, but there are designs to mitigate it (without oppressive DRM). I don't really understand why they took the nuke it from orbit approach and moved everything into the browser.
I would disagree, I argue that third edition was more about streamlining a lot of the clunky rules of second edition to make them run smoother. Sure the rogue no longer used percentages for his/her skills, but most of those skills were the same. Base Attack Bonus was basically Thac0 but much easier to understand. Skills were sort of a combination of Secondary Skills from 2nd and several class abilities (ranger and rogue stealth, tracking, ect) more streamlined for ease of play. The new saving throws were just the old ones more streamlined and made for smoother play.
Fourth edition, on the other hand, is a huge departure from third edition where the focus was shifted more to combat and the battle mat. The rules support a much more board game style of play and are much less compatible with other rule systems or styles.
When I converted from second to third edition, it took me almost no effort to convert my characters from second edition to third edition. Going from third to fourth it was much harder.
Sure, converting into 4th is a pain because of the class power system (which, to be clear, I love about the system. So much easier to make characters do what I want them to do!), but is conversion that important? A level 7 Elf Ranger, to be blunt, isn't dramatically different in its build between 3rd and 4th. What's going to change is the number of feats, the class powers (which you were building in 3rd ed. too, they were just jumbled up in the Feats of most books), and you're going to have less skills. Your Ranger, however, will still be either a 2 weapon fighter guy or a ranged bow guy. That didn't change.
I see where the argument that 4th ed. is more board game like is coming from, but is that a bad thing? Most gamers are playing board games like Descent now because people don't want to spend 10-20 minutes looking through books to find the action they want to perform. That D&D4E streamlined their combat to mirror that is similar to what 3rd Edition did in introducing a true skill system in the wake of the White Wolf Revolution in the mid '90s.
Using a battle mat for 3rd edition was an option, not a requirement. Sure they had the conversion, but they didn't have powers that required you to have a battle mat out. Try playing 4th edition without one. (I have and it doesn't work.)
Fourth edition is a huge departure from 3rd.
It is a bad thing for people who want to play D&D in a style they are used to. My point is, that's why the switch from 3rd to 4th was much more rocky than the switch from 2nd to 3rd. If you don't believe me, just look at Pathfinder's existence as proof.
That being said, I think the faces are supposed to make you uncomfortable. I mean, did you even read the things they are saying? 5e? What's that shit all about!?
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I know that so much of the rules is rightfully in the hands of the player but released faqs and erratas and experimental rules changes can be downright fun. Also the company and games stores are basically only going to run the events for the newest edition. My local store sells Pathfinder and has a Pathfinder group that meets weekly but all the advertised events are 4E
and also those guys were a rough bunch who were peeved that I even call pathfinder 'DnD'
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Like buying one or two books? Maybe a little more for the DM?
Satans..... hints..... I'm a mo bro!
But others only buy the main 3 books and are good to go (so, less than $100).
Funny story:
When my wife and I decided to get renters insurance, we called up our local agent and he dutifully took down values until we got to our book collections.
When we claimed we wanted to ensure at least $15, 000 for books, the phone went dead silent, then he requested a home visit.
Once he was at our apartment, he looked at our shelves, flipped over the backs of my RPG collections, and insured us for $20,000.