Pathfinder has gone down a very different route than recent editions of D&D. They put out one or two core books a year and the rest of their products are adventures/setting books.
D&D 4e has more or less put out all of the rule/class/race/monster books anyone could want in 4 years and they've decided that adventures/setting books aren't profitable. Unless the new system is incredibly well received and/or they totally revise their business model, the only way to make the game profitable again in 4-5 years is to get players to buy those core books again by changing the system.
I think that is going to be something that WotC has to address if they want fresh players or the ones they lost with 4th Ed. As easy as they tried to make GMing, they lost out on a huge opportunity to create their own on-going series. I have seen it time and again in the RPG world. Any company that fails to take up the creation of stories gets stagnant. It's not just the new classes/rules/races you have to keep supplying. You have to engage your audience in an active, on-going story of some sort.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
Paizo also has great Digital Distribution. Aside from the entire rule-set being free online. I can get a .pdf of any of their books and adventure paths on the cheap (comparatively).
Kingmaker is probably one of the best Adventure Paths I've ever played.
Yes. If there's one thing I think that Wizards truly screwed up on it's digital distribution and pdfs. They really need to address that moving forward... preferably now.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
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dresdenphileWatch out for snakes!Registered Userregular
I'm cautiously optimistic, but whatever they do, I hope they don't go back to the "Everyone has a different BAB progression" and "Roll a Fort/Will/Reflex" systems of 3.X. Those always annoyed me more than they probably should have.
I find the glut of options available in D&D overwhelming. Without something like the character maker software, I wouldn't even know where to start as far as making a character for 4e. There's something comforting about a limited number of options. I like the period right after the first books come out where everyone is playing with the same material.
I'm cautiously optimistic, but whatever they do, I hope they don't go back to the "Everyone has a different BAB progression" and "Roll a Fort/Will/Reflex" systems of 3.X. Those always annoyed me more than they probably should have.
...why is this your major gripe?
It makes sense from a design perspective and doesn't actually complicate the game all that much.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I find the glut of options available in D&D overwhelming. Without something like the character maker software, I wouldn't even know where to start as far as making a character for 4e. There's something comforting about a limited number of options. I like the period right after the first books come out where everyone is playing with the same material.
I run my Pathfinder books with the core material and that is it. I might, maybe, grab the second or third monster manual at some point, but there is no need to stock up on splat books.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
I find the glut of options available in D&D overwhelming. Without something like the character maker software, I wouldn't even know where to start as far as making a character for 4e. There's something comforting about a limited number of options. I like the period right after the first books come out where everyone is playing with the same material.
That's not exactly new though, is it? After a few years the range of options for 3.X characters was similarly ludicrous and there were far more redundant options. Even with the SRD available online and properly hyperlinked, making a new character was still kind of crazy.
I'm cautiously optimistic, but whatever they do, I hope they don't go back to the "Everyone has a different BAB progression" and "Roll a Fort/Will/Reflex" systems of 3.X. Those always annoyed me more than they probably should have.
...why is this your major gripe?
It makes sense from a design perspective and doesn't actually complicate the game all that much.
I think it part of it was because the few times I played D&D, I was the one person who wasn't 100% clear on character creation rules, and so I rushed through it so we could play.
The other part was probably because I had come into D&D 3.5 from White Wolf/Aberrant, where starting characters were fairly similar and the complexity of calculations amounted to "add these number of dots to these number of dots and roll dice equal to that total."
Like I said, it's not necessary a rational reason to dislike 3.X, but it's my reason, dammit!
Edit: Yeah, I'm not even sure where to start making a 4E character without the CB. I could do it when I had just the PHB to work with, but my brain threw all that out once the CB was halfway operational and more material was released.
I'm really liking OD&D right now, and I think it may steal my heart away from 3.5 and 4e, in spite of the fact that your options in character creation are much more limited and that your character does not start off at level 1 having awesome powers. There is a way in which, I think, less can be more, and the trend since AD&D seems to have been to offer more choice, more options, more accuracy, more certainty, and more wow-factor by expanding and tinkering with the mechanics. If there is a way that they can strip the D&D mechanics down to a bare-bones that leaves as much as possible up to the interaction between thoughtful player imagination and well-intentioned DM guidance, AND THEN gives you sensisble and useful options to scale up the role of mechanics to (for lack of a better word) mechanically determine how elements of the game world work, then they would be well on their way to creating what it sounds like they want to do. That kind of sounds ridiculously hard, but perhaps it is worth trying.
I'm really having trouble believing you can describe OD&D's initiative system as anything good. Whenever people make statements like the above I find they aren't running the old version of D&D, they're running their personalized and heavily edited version.
I find the glut of options available in D&D overwhelming. Without something like the character maker software, I wouldn't even know where to start as far as making a character for 4e. There's something comforting about a limited number of options. I like the period right after the first books come out where everyone is playing with the same material.
That's not exactly new though, is it? After a few years the range of options for 3.X characters was similarly ludicrous and there were far more redundant options. Even with the SRD available online and properly hyperlinked, making a new character was still kind of crazy.
No, absolutely. It's bound to happen with any game that has regular releases. I just kind of enjoy the simplicity of those early months.
I'm really having trouble believing you can describe OD&D's initiative system as anything good. Whenever people make statements like the above I find they aren't running the old version of D&D, they're running their personalized and heavily edited version.
I think Lords and Labyrinths probably covers anything you could want out of an old-school system now, anyway.
4E was the first system I used where I felt like the combat was interesting. The only problems I've had with 4E have to do with their pricing scheme for the character creator. If they follow the same business model of trying to charge me monthly for the tools to play the game then I'll fight converting.
Paizo also has great Digital Distribution. Aside from the entire rule-set being free online. I can get a .pdf of any of their books and adventure paths on the cheap (comparatively).
Kingmaker is probably one of the best Adventure Paths I've ever played.
Yes. If there's one thing I think that Wizards truly screwed up on it's digital distribution and pdfs. They really need to address that moving forward... preferably now.
This is honestly one of the reasons I never kept up with 4e. I got the core set of books for ~$50 I think when they first released. I picked up the core guide for Pathfinder (which essentially is the player's and DM guide in one) for $10 for the PDF. We have a few copies of the hardcover book around the table, but for many of us, the PDF is enough to do our character sheets at home, and the physical book is for quick lookups and questions about a certain ability. It makes the game much more accessible for the players, imo.
If Wizards offered PDFs that were updated with errata as it was released, I might switch back, but I'm not spending money on books with no digital copy. It just isn't convenient enough for me. The ideal is offering the PDFs free with a physical book purchase. But I don't see that happening.
I don't want a monthly subscription, but I do want digital products. Wizards really needs to work on getting the online tools out of BETA and into actual use. How hard is it to get an online version of GameTable working with all the D&D maps pre-loaded? We don't need flashy immediately, but we want functional. If flashy can come later, that's awesome, but give us something.
I wonder how widely shared the following sentiment is:
Okay, WotC/Hasbro, you have one more chance with me. I'm being worn down into thin cynicism by the seemingly constant reboots. I will give D5D (Dungeon5 & Dragon5?) my last shred of sympathy. I will buy it, I will try it, but if you "Reboot it" in fewer than 10 years, ta ta forever.
Why?
What is wrong with releasing a new edition in 5 years?
I don't mind trying new games. I have played many different games over the years, and really enjoyed many of them. (Especially in college, 97-2k, when it was the major component of my social life.) What has irked me about DnD (and it might be an issue that goes back almost as far as the franchise) is when they reboot, they abandon all support for previous systems. A deep, meaningful campaign might run 4-24+ years! I want to be able to build a library that stays relevant. At this rate, I might as well go disposable/electronic with my products, all the good my old books are doing me besides slowly decomposing alongside my memories.
The digital realm of DND is never going to happen. Either the 3.0 or 3.5 books came with a Character Generator CD Demo that was supposed to herald a brave-new-world of Digital Character Generation.
What we got was DM Tools.
For Pathfinder I actually splurged the cash and bought Hero Lab and the Pathfinder RuleSet + the Adv. Players guide.
The digital realm of DND is never going to happen. Either the 3.0 or 3.5 books came with a Character Generator CD Demo that was supposed to herald a brave-new-world of Digital Character Generation.
What we got was DM Tools.
For Pathfinder I actually splurged the cash and bought Hero Lab and the Pathfinder RuleSet + the Adv. Players guide.
Huh. I did not know that existed. While I can get almost any of the functionality for "other" games out of freeware stuff....having it all in one place is tempting.
Do you guys think there's a way to compromise between people who think that if you don't have a spell called "Create Normal Fires" you can't use magic to make campfires and the people who realize that you don't need the "Funny Voices" feat to talk in a funny voice or is that just a lost cause forever?
I am absolutely terrified of returning to a time where you shouldn't even bother showing up to the table if you aren't a wizard because you're just not going to be doing anything.
Yeah, I'm worried about this. As well as the idea of Wizards listening to anyone in the OSR (or Frank Trollman) about anything.
Wizards (the class) were only the be all end all (in 3.5) if you only owned the core rulebook. I know that is a sorry excuse, but if you are in an experienced group, I don't even think its possible for a wizard to retain the kind of damage an optimized fighter can do. The things I have seen barbarians do... *shudder*
I'm using OSU-gt (Gametable) right now to create grid maps from pngs. If I get lazy I may just draw lines, but this works well. I'd love to see a Wizards backed one pre-loaded with all the map packs they've released and maps for all the campaigns.
I've looked at Hero Labs many times, but $30 for character creation I just couldn't justify when auto-calculating spreadsheets or form-fill PDFs did just fine. Especially when I'd be paying $10 for the additional books in PDF form, then another $10 to get them added to Hero Labs. It's a really nice program though, if you have enough use for it.
I used MapTools and PCGen for my character generating for a long time. But HeroLab is actually supported by Paizo. So that was the biggest selling point. It's the official character generator.
I used MapTools and PCGen for my character generating for a long time. But HeroLab is actually supported by Paizo. So that was the biggest selling point. It's the official character generator.
Until I get home, I can't really look up the specifics they released, but I can say I'm highly interested and will definetly be playtesting (while running my damn Pathfinder game on the side). I maintain hope that perhaps they will renew their digital initiative, though I don't really need much to be happy. Honestly, just recognition that a large amount of players will be playing via a forum or IRC format would be sufficient. Give me digital books with useful and useable search and indexing. Basically, give me tools designed for the 21st century, don't just force some PDFs and a shitty database down my throat.
Oh, but please at least give me PDFs. For fuck's sake, Wizards.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Until I get home, I can't really look up the specifics they released, but I can say I'm highly interested and will definetly be playtesting (while running my damn Pathfinder game on the side). I maintain hope that perhaps they will renew their digital initiative, though I don't really need much to be happy. Honestly, just recognition that a large amount of players will be playing via a forum or IRC format would be sufficient. Give me digital books with useful and useable search and indexing. Basically, give me tools designed for the 21st century, don't just force some PDFs and a shitty database down my throat.
Oh, but please at least give me PDFs. For fuck's sake, Wizards.
Not giving you PDFs just encourages piracy because some gamer who purchases the books will inevitably turn a copy into a PDF and upload it to the web.
I'm kind of stunned by people who think that char gen in 4e is too complicated without the program, considering how bare bones and simple it is. I think people are underestimating their own abilities to actually read a book and understand the system.
Do you think there's any possibility that they are really making a 4.5 and not 5e? This way 4e remains relevant, but they can try and develop something that gains some people back from Pathfinder and they can begin again and maybe do some digital stuff.
Maybe even an official mobile app? Yeah, getting my hopes up a bit too much.
I find the glut of options available in D&D overwhelming. Without something like the character maker software, I wouldn't even know where to start as far as making a character for 4e. There's something comforting about a limited number of options. I like the period right after the first books come out where everyone is playing with the same material.
That's not exactly new though, is it? After a few years the range of options for 3.X characters was similarly ludicrous and there were far more redundant options. Even with the SRD available online and properly hyperlinked, making a new character was still kind of crazy.
No, absolutely. It's bound to happen with any game that has regular releases. I just kind of enjoy the simplicity of those early months.
I'm the same way but I think a big part of the problem is no WotC product ever feels complete. I found the first 4e phb to be really limited in it's options and phb 2 and 3 didn't add any of the missing things in 1. They just added more base classes with limited options and gear. None of the 4e books felt complete to me, every book needed a supplement and when the supplement finally came along it also added more new mechanics that were half finished.
I like that the pathfinder core rulebook, it has several pages of gear and weapons and a huge section full of spells. It feels like they spent time working on the core rules and them spent a bunch of time finishing off the product. It seems like WotC has ADHD, they start something neat, get the core of it down, then jump onto something else.
4e was the first edition that I put a decent investment into and I've been pretty disappointed with all of it. Just about every product seemed to lack something obvious in favor of more new mechanics. The tile sets were the best example. All they had to do was print a bunch of 2x2 tiles for various environments. Put a wall on one side of some, wall on 2 sides of some and then have some that are just ground/floor space. Do this with several different environments and add in some 1x1 tiles for things like treasure chests, doors, etc. that can sit on top. Ta-da, an awesome product that allows players to be creative making their own detailed rooms and areas. Isn't the point of D&D? To be creative?
Instead they make a tile set composed of all kinds of different sized tiles with random pieces of a map on them. One 2x2 tile has the inside of a house on 1 square and grass on the remaining 3. What a useful tile, you can use it has the corner of a house surrounded by grass or ... uhmmm... I guess that's it. The majority of the tiles are like this. I was only able to arrange the tiles from one of the sets in ONE pattern that made any kind of sense. Why not just print maps?
The miniatures were just as bad. You would have to spent thousands of dollars on boxes of miniatures just to get enough monsters of one type to actually use them in an encounter. I bought 5 boxes and the best set that I had was 2 evil human guys in armor on horse back with a crossbow and 1 on foot with a sword and shield. About half of the miniatures were random weird ass things that we never used (brain in a jar, arcane portal, robot dog). If they just made creature and character sets for D&D instead of trying to make some kind of new collectable card game it would have been an AWESOME supplement.
My impression of WotC is that they are ruled by corporate overlords that care more about $ signs than anything else so as hard as they try, they are forced to always compromise the game for sales opportunities. Books with new classes sell better than books full of gear so damn near every supplement has to have a new class with new random ass mechanics.
Bah, this already too long (and probably incoherent).
tl;dr: Wizards makes good core rule systems, hate everything else they put out.
I'm kind of stunned by people who think that char gen in 4e is too complicated without the program, considering how bare bones and simple it is. I think people are underestimating their own abilities to actually read a book and understand the system.
It's not too complicated, but there's no reason not to have modern means of navigating these things. I have no doubt there are some people who think having 3+ large books splayed open in front of their monitor and filling out a character sheet is the height of the gaming experience, but I am not a Luddite.
I'm kind of stunned by people who think that char gen in 4e is too complicated without the program, considering how bare bones and simple it is. I think people are underestimating their own abilities to actually read a book and understand the system.
It's not too complicated, but there's no reason not to have modern means of navigating these things. I have no doubt there are some people who think having 3+ large books splayed open in front of their monitor and filling out a character sheet is the height of the gaming experience, but I am not a Luddite.
Why do you need a monitor at all? Why do you need 3 books splayed open? Why are you trying to pick a fight with me over some inane point I'm not even making?
I'm kind of stunned by people who think that char gen in 4e is too complicated without the program, considering how bare bones and simple it is. I think people are underestimating their own abilities to actually read a book and understand the system.
Eh. Power/Feat Swaps at higher level get kinda confusing. The computer makes it stupid simple so I can focus on the fun part of making choices rather than figuring out how things work. Given today's technology there is no fucking reason for me to do being math when I have a computer to do it for me. Not on my leisure time.
Keep in mind, I like math. Now take your average person who finds anything above multiplication to be voodoo.
I'm really interested to see what they roll out for 5e. I cut my teeth on 3.5, and learned 4e last year to DM a game, and just recently a new friend I met has taken me all the way back to learn Original/Basic D&D for a game he's DMing. Having learned and worked at least a little with these different systems, it is really surprising how their construction thows light on the strenths and pitfalls of each other.
I'm really liking OD&D right now, and I think it may steal my heart away from 3.5 and 4e, in spite of the fact that your options in character creation are much more limited and that your character does not start off at level 1 having awesome powers. There is a way in which, I think, less can be more, and the trend since AD&D seems to have been to offer more choice, more options, more accuracy, more certainty, and more wow-factor by expanding and tinkering with the mechanics. If there is a way that they can strip the D&D mechanics down to a bare-bones that leaves as much as possible up to the interaction between thoughtful player imagination and well-intentioned DM guidance, AND THEN gives you sensisble and useful options to scale up the role of mechanics to (for lack of a better word) mechanically determine how elements of the game world work, then they would be well on their way to creating what it sounds like they want to do. That kind of sounds ridiculously hard, but perhaps it is worth trying.
You've done well there. Good post.
I figure I could take a bear.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
My only problem with the character builder is that, due to inaccuracy, it cannot (and should not) be viewed/used as a rules source, yet that's exactly what people end up doing with it. They build a character using only the CB, and never referencing the actual rules texts, and as a result end up not really understanding how the character works.
This is a flaw in the CB, mind you, not the player. Although I prefer to do it by hand (if only because I have specific method I use for documentation), I'd have no problems with using a rules-source level character builder. As long as you know that what it says it what's actually true.
I really don't understand how people can say they preferred pathfinder to fourth edition. I swear that in terms of combat game was objectively worse than 4th. The only arguments I ever hear are "oh it's soulless I can't describe my attacks anymore" as a DM in pathfinder all that ever amounted to was my players being like "oh man this guys AC us way to high if I say my rogue summersolts into him can you give me a 2+?" fighters coolest move was "cleave" wizards dominated enemies were all boring and lower level combat sucked. People who actually think pathfinder is better than 4th Ed will be be pleased by anything 5th edition has to offer because they live in a dreamworld
Pathfinder has gone down a very different route than recent editions of D&D. They put out one or two core books a year and the rest of their products are adventures/setting books.
D&D 4e has more or less put out all of the rule/class/race/monster books anyone could want in 4 years and they've decided that adventures/setting books aren't profitable. Unless the new system is incredibly well received and/or they totally revise their business model, the only way to make the game profitable again in 4-5 years is to get players to buy those core books again by changing the system.
I think that is going to be something that WotC has to address if they want fresh players or the ones they lost with 4th Ed. As easy as they tried to make GMing, they lost out on a huge opportunity to create their own on-going series. I have seen it time and again in the RPG world. Any company that fails to take up the creation of stories gets stagnant. It's not just the new classes/rules/races you have to keep supplying. You have to engage your audience in an active, on-going story of some sort.
Now this I can agree on. Piazo has great adventure support and they just seem to have great production values and customer support which is so important. Their digital support is also fantastic. Non of these things have to do with game design maybe wizards should focus on some of those aspects instead of launching into another edition...
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I don't really have much I can add to this discussion, as I haven't bought a D&D book since 3rd edition. My poison has always been Shadowrun, which is still running strong on 7 years with 4th ed (although many are calling for a new version of that).
Honest truth, releases coming too frequently always worries me. For instance, L5R getting a 4th edition so soon after the 3rd really, REALLY scares me.. Or it did until I heard it included so many fixes over third (such as actual horses!).
But at the end of the day, D&D is an engine in my mind, not a full game. And like any engine, you need to either keep coming out with expansion modules or updates to keep selling product.
This thread is a perfect example of why asking teh internetz to help design D&D is problematic: everyone has a different idea about what D&D is or should be.
My personal wish-list for 5e:
1. 4e style skills, attack and damage tracking (Dresden, rolling vs Reflex or whatever is balls, you are totally right)
2. Equity of powers like 4e. Fighters must do more than attack for me to want to play one.
3. Less reliance on minis, and thus on grid maps. I miss 3e arena of the mind play.
4. Virtual table top, character creator, monster creator, PDFs ON RELEASE. I can make my own pen and paper character, I'm not stupid, but I want to play games with gamers all over the country and 4e promised me that and then let me down slow.
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I think that is going to be something that WotC has to address if they want fresh players or the ones they lost with 4th Ed. As easy as they tried to make GMing, they lost out on a huge opportunity to create their own on-going series. I have seen it time and again in the RPG world. Any company that fails to take up the creation of stories gets stagnant. It's not just the new classes/rules/races you have to keep supplying. You have to engage your audience in an active, on-going story of some sort.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Yes. If there's one thing I think that Wizards truly screwed up on it's digital distribution and pdfs. They really need to address that moving forward... preferably now.
...why is this your major gripe?
It makes sense from a design perspective and doesn't actually complicate the game all that much.
I run my Pathfinder books with the core material and that is it. I might, maybe, grab the second or third monster manual at some point, but there is no need to stock up on splat books.
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The other part was probably because I had come into D&D 3.5 from White Wolf/Aberrant, where starting characters were fairly similar and the complexity of calculations amounted to "add these number of dots to these number of dots and roll dice equal to that total."
Like I said, it's not necessary a rational reason to dislike 3.X, but it's my reason, dammit!
Edit: Yeah, I'm not even sure where to start making a 4E character without the CB. I could do it when I had just the PHB to work with, but my brain threw all that out once the CB was halfway operational and more material was released.
I'm really having trouble believing you can describe OD&D's initiative system as anything good. Whenever people make statements like the above I find they aren't running the old version of D&D, they're running their personalized and heavily edited version.
No, absolutely. It's bound to happen with any game that has regular releases. I just kind of enjoy the simplicity of those early months.
I think Lords and Labyrinths probably covers anything you could want out of an old-school system now, anyway.
This is honestly one of the reasons I never kept up with 4e. I got the core set of books for ~$50 I think when they first released. I picked up the core guide for Pathfinder (which essentially is the player's and DM guide in one) for $10 for the PDF. We have a few copies of the hardcover book around the table, but for many of us, the PDF is enough to do our character sheets at home, and the physical book is for quick lookups and questions about a certain ability. It makes the game much more accessible for the players, imo.
If Wizards offered PDFs that were updated with errata as it was released, I might switch back, but I'm not spending money on books with no digital copy. It just isn't convenient enough for me. The ideal is offering the PDFs free with a physical book purchase. But I don't see that happening.
I don't want a monthly subscription, but I do want digital products. Wizards really needs to work on getting the online tools out of BETA and into actual use. How hard is it to get an online version of GameTable working with all the D&D maps pre-loaded? We don't need flashy immediately, but we want functional. If flashy can come later, that's awesome, but give us something.
I don't mind trying new games. I have played many different games over the years, and really enjoyed many of them. (Especially in college, 97-2k, when it was the major component of my social life.) What has irked me about DnD (and it might be an issue that goes back almost as far as the franchise) is when they reboot, they abandon all support for previous systems. A deep, meaningful campaign might run 4-24+ years! I want to be able to build a library that stays relevant. At this rate, I might as well go disposable/electronic with my products, all the good my old books are doing me besides slowly decomposing alongside my memories.
... or were you being facetious?
What we got was DM Tools.
For Pathfinder I actually splurged the cash and bought Hero Lab and the Pathfinder RuleSet + the Adv. Players guide.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
How long are you willing to wait and are a few hundred megabytes an unreasonable size for a character sheet?
Huh. I did not know that existed. While I can get almost any of the functionality for "other" games out of freeware stuff....having it all in one place is tempting.
Yeah, I'm worried about this. As well as the idea of Wizards listening to anyone in the OSR (or Frank Trollman) about anything.
I've looked at Hero Labs many times, but $30 for character creation I just couldn't justify when auto-calculating spreadsheets or form-fill PDFs did just fine. Especially when I'd be paying $10 for the additional books in PDF form, then another $10 to get them added to Hero Labs. It's a really nice program though, if you have enough use for it.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
That is really awesome.
Oh, but please at least give me PDFs. For fuck's sake, Wizards.
Not giving you PDFs just encourages piracy because some gamer who purchases the books will inevitably turn a copy into a PDF and upload it to the web.
Maybe even an official mobile app? Yeah, getting my hopes up a bit too much.
I'm the same way but I think a big part of the problem is no WotC product ever feels complete. I found the first 4e phb to be really limited in it's options and phb 2 and 3 didn't add any of the missing things in 1. They just added more base classes with limited options and gear. None of the 4e books felt complete to me, every book needed a supplement and when the supplement finally came along it also added more new mechanics that were half finished.
I like that the pathfinder core rulebook, it has several pages of gear and weapons and a huge section full of spells. It feels like they spent time working on the core rules and them spent a bunch of time finishing off the product. It seems like WotC has ADHD, they start something neat, get the core of it down, then jump onto something else.
4e was the first edition that I put a decent investment into and I've been pretty disappointed with all of it. Just about every product seemed to lack something obvious in favor of more new mechanics. The tile sets were the best example. All they had to do was print a bunch of 2x2 tiles for various environments. Put a wall on one side of some, wall on 2 sides of some and then have some that are just ground/floor space. Do this with several different environments and add in some 1x1 tiles for things like treasure chests, doors, etc. that can sit on top. Ta-da, an awesome product that allows players to be creative making their own detailed rooms and areas. Isn't the point of D&D? To be creative?
Instead they make a tile set composed of all kinds of different sized tiles with random pieces of a map on them. One 2x2 tile has the inside of a house on 1 square and grass on the remaining 3. What a useful tile, you can use it has the corner of a house surrounded by grass or ... uhmmm... I guess that's it. The majority of the tiles are like this. I was only able to arrange the tiles from one of the sets in ONE pattern that made any kind of sense. Why not just print maps?
The miniatures were just as bad. You would have to spent thousands of dollars on boxes of miniatures just to get enough monsters of one type to actually use them in an encounter. I bought 5 boxes and the best set that I had was 2 evil human guys in armor on horse back with a crossbow and 1 on foot with a sword and shield. About half of the miniatures were random weird ass things that we never used (brain in a jar, arcane portal, robot dog). If they just made creature and character sets for D&D instead of trying to make some kind of new collectable card game it would have been an AWESOME supplement.
My impression of WotC is that they are ruled by corporate overlords that care more about $ signs than anything else so as hard as they try, they are forced to always compromise the game for sales opportunities. Books with new classes sell better than books full of gear so damn near every supplement has to have a new class with new random ass mechanics.
Bah, this already too long (and probably incoherent).
tl;dr: Wizards makes good core rule systems, hate everything else they put out.
It's not too complicated, but there's no reason not to have modern means of navigating these things. I have no doubt there are some people who think having 3+ large books splayed open in front of their monitor and filling out a character sheet is the height of the gaming experience, but I am not a Luddite.
Why do you need a monitor at all? Why do you need 3 books splayed open? Why are you trying to pick a fight with me over some inane point I'm not even making?
Isn't this the case for basically every company everywhere. Every successful one, anyway.
Eh. Power/Feat Swaps at higher level get kinda confusing. The computer makes it stupid simple so I can focus on the fun part of making choices rather than figuring out how things work. Given today's technology there is no fucking reason for me to do being math when I have a computer to do it for me. Not on my leisure time.
Keep in mind, I like math. Now take your average person who finds anything above multiplication to be voodoo.
Maybe it's different for others, but I find that the options I want are spread amongst multiple books. I at the least have to check and compare.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Hope this gets totp.
e~ F.
You've done well there. Good post.
To be clear.
We're comparing this to a company who's best selling product is, production values aside, roughly 80% reprinted rules of another company's free game.
This is a flaw in the CB, mind you, not the player. Although I prefer to do it by hand (if only because I have specific method I use for documentation), I'd have no problems with using a rules-source level character builder. As long as you know that what it says it what's actually true.
[/work induced rage rant]
Now this I can agree on. Piazo has great adventure support and they just seem to have great production values and customer support which is so important. Their digital support is also fantastic. Non of these things have to do with game design maybe wizards should focus on some of those aspects instead of launching into another edition...
Honest truth, releases coming too frequently always worries me. For instance, L5R getting a 4th edition so soon after the 3rd really, REALLY scares me.. Or it did until I heard it included so many fixes over third (such as actual horses!).
But at the end of the day, D&D is an engine in my mind, not a full game. And like any engine, you need to either keep coming out with expansion modules or updates to keep selling product.
My personal wish-list for 5e:
1. 4e style skills, attack and damage tracking (Dresden, rolling vs Reflex or whatever is balls, you are totally right)
2. Equity of powers like 4e. Fighters must do more than attack for me to want to play one.
3. Less reliance on minis, and thus on grid maps. I miss 3e arena of the mind play.
4. Virtual table top, character creator, monster creator, PDFs ON RELEASE. I can make my own pen and paper character, I'm not stupid, but I want to play games with gamers all over the country and 4e promised me that and then let me down slow.
Zithra Melitch in Star Wars: An Empire's End
Jellica in In the Shadow of Zeus