BurnShrike: 4th Ed was an abomination.

I'm still happy with 3.5/Pathfinder

4th edition was badly presented. I think it might have had a shot but...the management of WOTC handled it in the worst possible of ways. about the only thing they didn't do was drag Gygax's corpse up on stage and rape it in front of the living greyhawk people. Although by that point everyone was already deep into the nerd rage that it wouldn't have mattered much.

pathfinder swooped in and scooped up a ton of market share. Whats more - paizo has busted their balls to keep their customers happy and its resulted in a very loyal following. And having a bunch of fanatical fanboys spending money on your stuff isn't a bad thing to have in a down economy. sure...they're weird and well..fanboys. But they're loyal and they buy stuff.

But Dungeons & Dragons has slumped, buffeted by forces external and internal. The company does not release sales figures, but analysts and gaming experts agree that sales of the game, and all tabletop role-playing ones, have been dwindling for years

um...actually, that's a lie. pazio has done fairly well over the past 5 years, as has fantasy flight games. sites like downloadrpg.com have done well too, and indie games are actually surviving off digital sales of their legacy catalogues.

WOTC isn't doing well because they've been mismanaged. sounds cliche but its' true - the guy running the show over there is a total f*cking moron.

BurnShrike: Exactly! Table-top gaming is alive and well. I agree that they've been mismanaged. Among other things, I think it was a mistake to model 4th Ed off video games. If I wanted to play WoW, I would play WoW (FYI: I don't want to play WoW). You can't out-compete a computer game with dice and pencils. Table-top gaming is a separate area and should be drawing followers because it's different, not despite it.

A good example of the mismanagement - what WOTC did with dragon magazine (and dungeon as well). WTF man...those mags were actually OUT OF THE HOLE and making money for the first time in a decade and they killed them both.

Paizo came along (they'd been publishing Dungeon magazine by that point) and kept the contact list of all the writers who submitted articles and hired the best of the bunch as developers. Meanwhile, WOTC fired half their developers and spent the next two years reissuing old content under the 4th edition brand. to the surprise of absolutely no one, 4th edition didn't do very well.

now, one thing that WOTC did do right is that they tried to support local game stores with their new version of 'living forgotten realms'. they fired up D&D encounters, gave product support to local stores, and generally did what they could to bring gamers into the fold. that said...I think it was too little too late. Paizo developed the adventure path and gave people free digital copies of maps to go with their dead tree copies they got in the mail.

At this point, I honestly don't know if WOTC can pull it back from the brink. they've alienated so many players that another edition of the game might not be received very well no matter HOW good a ruleset they come up with.

not to mention the fact that its going to be DAMN hard to come up with something better than Pathfinder.

BurnShrike: It really seemed like their business model for that was just "let's reprint all the same old stuff under the new rules! People will love it!" Except, people don't love spending $40 on a book that contains all the same stuff they have in a book at home..

I *still* can't figure out WOTC's business model. their president said he'd NEVER allow legacy products to be legally sold as PDF files ever again no matter what. he also swore that there would never be an online store for any WOTC product ever. Paizo and others just grabbed hold of that market and ain't letting go for nothing man. it's a huge money maker for 'em.

BurnShrike: Weaver95: I *still* can't figure out WOTC's business model. their president said he'd NEVER allow legacy products to be legally sold as PDF files ever again no matter what. he also swore that there would never be an online store for any WOTC product ever. Paizo and others just grabbed hold of that market and ain't letting go for nothing man. it's a huge money maker for 'em.

WAT!

He actually said that? That's just asinine. I don't understand why so many businesses cling to the old ways of doing things, fail to innovate, and thus die from it.

I'm just glad that there are other people out there who are on the ball to pick up the slack. Paizo rocks.

he was a luggage salesman with an MBA. the guy had no experience with gamers, the gamer market or what the f*ck he was dealing with...plus he ignored the advice of his staff. It took a LOT of mistakes for him to run WOTC into the ground, but he managed it in something like 7 years.

germ78: FTFA: And Dungeons & Dragons' designers are also planning to undertake an exceedingly rare effort for the gaming industry over the next few months: asking hundreds of thousands of fans to tell them how exactly they should reboot the franchise.

Bring back second edition (AD&D) rules. That is all.

Some of the simplification was good. AC being positive and removing THAC0 was a good thing. Makes it easier to approach.

And the saving throw simplifications are great. Used to be you were hit by something and you needed a slide rule to determine if it was 1d6 or 2d6 or instant death and half the time you fluffed it anyway because each class was super weak vs something.

But I do like the rules where the only character that had spells were magic users. 4E feels like every class just has different kinds of spells. Like a barbarian and his rage strike is just a close up fireball.

Then again, house rules are the primary rules so I'm always coming up with suff for my players that's old school. One time I actually had them face a party with 2nd Edition skills like double attacks and the old magic missile.

BurnShrike: Never underestimate the power of an idiot with an MBA.

i'm sure WOTC will survive...i'm just not sure how much damage they're going to take along the way is all.

They need to bring back Ravenloft and Planescape as supported genres. And more world-level support for Greyhawk.

vygramul: They need to bring back Ravenloft and Planescape as supported genres. And more world-level support for Greyhawk.

they won't tho. I'm not even sure they HAVE a plan anymore, other than to focus on Forgotten Realms.

BurnShrike: vygramul: They need to bring back Ravenloft and Planescape as supported genres. And more world-level support for Greyhawk.

I never really got in to Greyhawk much. It's better than Forgotten Realms though.

Ravenloft never really appealed to me much either. I'm not big on the horror genre.

Planescape was really cool though. And Darksun was just plain awesome.

I wasn't big on the Horror genre, but it turned out my brother, who has zero appreciation for horror movies, got enamoured with it. After playing in a couple of modules, I discovered that because it's not a big genre, it was a buyer's market for quality gaming. Some of the best modules I've ever run or gone through were Ravenloft ones. (Feast of Goblins was epic.)

Never got into the Darksun thing much, though I did buy some of the basic stuff.

Finally, at the risk of slandering the fine folks at TSR, the Planescape stuff looked AWFULLY FAMILIAR to the members of ADND-L.

ADND-L wat?

these days i'm less about WOTC products and more about Paizo and their adventure paths. the current one is basically oriental adventures and not really my thing...but its still a quality product. So far I haven't seen a bad adventure path yet and my personal favorite has been Kingmaker (players start from lvl 1 and BUILD A KINGDOM of their own. awesome!).

other games:

Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch/Black Crusade - fantasy flight games attempt to make 40k into a tabletop role playing game and lemme tell yaz, it's really well done. easy rules to understand, well defined roles make it a little rigid at times but it's by far the best techn-gothic space horror game on the market. personal favorite: Rogue Trader. that game is amazing. get it and play it, your gaming group will love you long time.

Eclipse Phase. Transhumanist roleplaying game. weird, yes? but oh so awesome! 10 years after the fall of humanity and the more things change the more they stay the same. So what's an immortal post human to do with itself? save the solar system of course! conspiracy theory to lovecraftian horror with a transhuman twist and cherry on top, worth a look if you like scifi games that are occasionally close to hard science and only occasionally sci fantasy.

oh - and since its 2012 shadowrun 4th edition deserves special mention. Catyst games gave shadowrun an overhaul and IMHO did a very good job with it. points based character creation system that's easy to follow, plus a combat system that's easy to run makes for a game of corporate intrigue that's fun to play and weirdly retro for anyone who's familiar enough with 1st edition and the 2012 kick off to the Awakening.

hoy chummer!

I would love to see an updated Birthright setting. Updated for 3.5, not 4. I haven't looked at Pathfinder much, but I keep hearing good things.

I only use second edition (modified by me) rules. Played for the first time in 1981. Never had any use for the editions after. Well, the 3rd edition's MM and monster supplements were certainly pretty.

I allowed all races to crossbreed, not just humans and elves. My wife played a half-gnome at one point, causing me to name her character The Human-Gnome Project.

Exception Collection: I would love to see an updated Birthright setting. Updated for 3.5, not 4. I haven't looked at Pathfinder much, but I keep hearing good things.

paizo's kingmaker adventure path did a good job of kingdom building and expansion. you could build a pretty decent birthright hack using pathfinder rules as a base, then kingmaker as your expanded rules.

Updating games is like trying to mod chess: it just doesn't work.

There is no chess variant that is better than actual chess, and the best ones are the ones that retain the most of the original rules. "Byzantine Chess" with the circular board, for example, is much better than some of the crap they have out like "Chess Zombies from Cybertron the Collectible Card Game for Kids" or whatever that just makes it unplayable.

And the single best mod for chess? A simple die that picks which piece you must move. That's all. Still not as good as the real deal, but not bad.

4th ed was actually done rather well I thought. I liked the "powers" aspect of the game...gave the characters more options in battle than just "roll to hit" The classes were very well balanced. Over all the combat went much faster.

Wizard of the Coast had a rather good cost effective way of doing 4th ed. Just a few books for the basic, and then three books for each "world" they released. Unlike all previous editions, where you needed a shiatload of books to buy.

As many pointed out: Digital are what is allowing the Indies to survive. And from the beginning, they said RPG only have a shelf life of 5 to 6 years at most. Normally people give up RPG when they leave college. Since it was released in 2008, it only has about a year or so left.

The main problem is not with WOTC-its's the fact it was bought by Hasboro and now managed by a corporation. Thus once again, it needs a continuing and sustained profit.

Weaver95: these days i'm less about WOTC products and more about Paizo and their adventure paths. the current one is basically oriental adventures and not really my thing...but its still a quality product. So far I haven't seen a bad adventure path yet and my personal favorite has been Kingmaker (players start from lvl 1 and BUILD A KINGDOM of their own. awesome!).

other games:

Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch/Black Crusade - fantasy flight games attempt to make 40k into a tabletop role playing game and lemme tell yaz, it's really well done. easy rules to understand, well defined roles make it a little rigid at times but it's by far the best techn-gothic space horror game on the market. personal favorite: Rogue Trader. that game is amazing. get it and play it, your gaming group will love you long time.

Eclipse Phase. Transhumanist roleplaying game. weird, yes? but oh so awesome! 10 years after the fall of humanity and the more things change the more they stay the same. So what's an immortal post human to do with itself? save the solar system of course! conspiracy theory to lovecraftian horror with a transhuman twist and cherry on top, worth a look if you like scifi games that are occasionally close to hard science and only occasionally sci fantasy.

I just started playing Monte Cook's World of Darkness and I love it. The apocalyptic setting of old Werewolf combined with the weirdness of Changeling and the d20 system to make everything simpler. It's a wonderful thing

/Luca Fontana, level 12 Rahu who fights against the rage

doglover: ADND-L wat?

Back in the good old days before the web there were mailing lists, and ADND-L was essentially the primary D&D mailing list.

Weaver95: paizo's kingmaker adventure path did a good job of kingdom building and expansion. you could build a pretty decent birthright hack using pathfinder rules as a base, then kingmaker as your expanded rules.

If I was gonna hack it together, I'd use Birthright.net (new window) as my starting point. I just prefer to have official documents etc where possible.

doglover: Updating games is like trying to mod chess: it just doesn't work.

There is no chess variant that is better than actual chess, and the best ones are the ones that retain the most of the original rules. "Byzantine Chess" with the circular board, for example, is much better than some of the crap they have out like "Chess Zombies from Cybertron the Collectible Card Game for Kids" or whatever that just makes it unplayable.

And the single best mod for chess? A simple die that picks which piece you must move. That's all. Still not as good as the real deal, but not bad.


Chess and Xiangqi are both variants of Chaturanga. Not really against your point, just saying that some changes bring unique challenges or remove them and I suppose it's up to the individual to decide which are beneficial for a more exciting game. Personally I prefer Xiangqi over European style chess.

vygramul: doglover: ADND-L wat?

Back in the good old days before the web there were mailing lists, and ADND-L was essentially the primary D&D mailing list.

They just took it?

dopeydwarf: doglover: Updating games is like trying to mod chess: it just doesn't work.

There is no chess variant that is better than actual chess, and the best ones are the ones that retain the most of the original rules. "Byzantine Chess" with the circular board, for example, is much better than some of the crap they have out like "Chess Zombies from Cybertron the Collectible Card Game for Kids" or whatever that just makes it unplayable.

And the single best mod for chess? A simple die that picks which piece you must move. That's all. Still not as good as the real deal, but not bad.


Chess and Xiangqi are both variants of Chaturanga. Not really against your point, just saying that some changes bring unique challenges or remove them and I suppose it's up to the individual to decide which are beneficial for a more exciting game. Personally I prefer Xiangqi over European style chess.

And d&d is just taking coin tosses to a new level of complexity over a random story telling exercise. The rule books and monster manuals and stuff is all just gilding the lily. Often at great expense, but that's what it is, mostly.

I think 4E works okay as a combat system, if it is a little redundant at times. But D&D was never about the combat system alone. There's hundreds of those. D&D was about the storytelling experience. It was the first game I'm aware of to bring that in formally. As long as you're telling a collective story, everyone should be happy regardless of the system you've got. And once a customer buys ONE system, they're unlikely to drop another few hundred on new merch when what they've got already works.

What they should do is just offer ALL the old stuff as PDFs. Sure they'll lose a lot a lot of money to torrents, but they'll make more by offering what the people want for sale than they do right now when people just download it anyway because they can't buy it if they wanted to.

doglover: vygramul: doglover: ADND-L wat?

Back in the good old days before the web there were mailing lists, and ADND-L was essentially the primary D&D mailing list.

They just took it?

I doubt I could support such a claim. However, some time not too long before Planescape was invented, ADND-L discussed how it would be cool to have some way of linking all the various D&D worlds and so on. To make a long story short, we all concurred that perhaps the right answer was a city of some kind, one which would either move from plane to plane, or have portals to various planes and worlds. There was a lot of discussion of the matter, and soon we were collectively designing the city, with people proposing characteristics and so on. We figured it was large enough that people would be relatively free to set up whatever "quarters" they want.

This process had been going on for over a year, if memory serves, when Planescape was announced.

Perhaps it is coincidence. But there were several aspects that were quite... reminiscent... of ideas discussed.

On the one hand, I don't think the denizens of ADND-L would have wanted any more than a thank-you in the credits were a product created based on our ideas. On the other hand, there are assholes in the world, and I can imagine a few people being stubborn jerks on the matter and demand some cut - probably with higher expectations than reality would have supported.

I can't really blame them had TSR had they, indeed, been so inspired. But it still stings to have had such a sequence of events give the understandable perception to have ones intellectual property stolen.

I'm on the Pathfinder bandwagon too. It's clean and lends itself well to storytelling. It's fun. It's not giving money to WOTC, which is actually important to me. What more can you want?

AD&D manuals from 1979 & 1980 or be cast into the depths of Tarterus. Nothing else will suffice.

/still has my old Player's Manual with the big red statue and the ruby eyes on the cover
//once stole one of those eyes
///never did get around to raping a goddess

vygramul: I can't really blame them had TSR had they, indeed, been so inspired. But it still stings to have had such a sequence of events give the understandable perception to have ones intellectual property stolen.

You might need a seat son, I'mma drop a bomb on ya.

Y'see Planescape came out in 1994.
Your idea was birthed in, let's call it 1992 just to be fair. Hell, even 1990.

Now, Robert Asprin was writing the Myth Adventures and the first book was published in 1978. More than a decade before you guys said "Y'know what would be cool." the bazaar on Deva was the hub of the multiverse.

Only it wasn't because Amber was first published eight years earlier in 1970.

And so on and so forth until we get back to Skeggi the Flatulant, bearded berserker of the borderlands who recorded on his privy wall that his dick was as tall as Yggdrasill. And so we see that no idea is really ours. I mean I invented the telephone once while looking at a high school physics book. It's obvious once you know how the circuitry works.

There is really no reason and no excuse for playing current-era D&D anymore. Pathfinder pretty much has what real D&D fans want. Those looking for a rules-lite system can embrace Savage Worlds. Honestly the only reason to continue playing D&D is name recognition.

Weaver95: 4th edition was badly presented.

Here's my impression from Gencon 2008: "Here's D&D 4. We're so sorry."

Still not as bad as what happened to poor Shadowrun. Christ, what a clusterfark that game turned into.

doglover: vygramul: I can't really blame them had TSR had they, indeed, been so inspired. But it still stings to have had such a sequence of events give the understandable perception to have ones intellectual property stolen.

You might need a seat son, I'mma drop a bomb on ya.

Y'see Planescape came out in 1994.
Your idea was birthed in, let's call it 1992 just to be fair. Hell, even 1990.

Now, Robert Asprin was writing the Myth Adventures and the first book was published in 1978. More than a decade before you guys said "Y'know what would be cool." the bazaar on Deva was the hub of the multiverse.

Only it wasn't because Amber was first published eight years earlier in 1970.

And so on and so forth until we get back to Skeggi the Flatulant, bearded berserker of the borderlands who recorded on his privy wall that his dick was as tall as Yggdrasill. And so we see that no idea is really ours. I mean I invented the telephone once while looking at a high school physics book. It's obvious once you know how the circuitry works.

I understand that the idea of a multiverse hub was not new in 1990. That's not the point. It's some of the details that matter. And, of course, the timing.

But you are free to reserve the right to be dubious. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I no longer have copies of the emails nor a perfect memory of the events of 20 years ago. I am more than willing to concede I have neither proved my assertion nor is it unreasonable for you to disbelieve that TSR was in any way influenced by our discussions.

But do me the courtesy of considering the possibility that my judgment was not based on some superficial considerations.

dahmers love zombie: My wife played a half-gnome at one point, causing me to name her character The Human-Gnome Project.

aargh. critical hit!

GreenAdder: There is really no reason and no excuse for playing current-era D&D anymore. Pathfinder pretty much has what real D&D fans want. Those looking for a rules-lite system can embrace Savage Worlds. Honestly the only reason to continue playing D&D is name recognition.

essentially correct. a LOT Of people jumped ship to Paizo and I don't see them moving back to WOTC any time soon. i'm not saying its impossible mind you, but WOTC would have to really kick their game up a notch to have a shot at pulling fans back into the fold.

Okay, Wizards, you listening? I'm your target market. I'm in my early 30s and I've wanted to play D&D since I was about 14 years old. I love sword-and-sorcery crap, I love storytelling, roleplaying, and I don't like MMOs. Being easily the geekiest of my friends, I've never had the chance to play a tabletop pen-and-paper game. Once or twice, I've met with some local groups once or twice and gone through the character creation process, only to never have the chance to play again because of scheduling conflicts and the fact that I have a life. The gamer geeks I do know have moved on to Rifts or WoW or whatever else.

Here's what I want.

I want a detailed, complex set of rules that can be modified for nearly every contingency, allowing a good DM to prepare for nearly every contingency. The books that make up core gameplay should be released as concurrently as possible.

I want a high-quality set of official mobile and PC/mac apps. Character sheets, manuals, dice, probability calculators, etc. The design should be simple but not simplistic, and have a unique visual style.

I want two well-executed systems to encourage likeminded players to group together. First- I want an official WOTC "Create your party" matchup message board allowing people in their local areas to note their play style and the sort of group they're looking for, to assist players in finding one another for games in the real world.
Second- I want an online tabletop/chatroom that provides a nearly indistinguishable experience from live play in some dude's basement. Some of us live in remote areas. Some of us don't know anyone else who wants to play D&D, but we sure as hell would enjoy getting together online once a week or so and playing via an official chatroom. I'm not talking about Gemstone or something resembling a MUD- I'm talking about a regular-ass game of D&D, where the players happen to be in different houses. This can't be hard to accomplish. People have been using chatrooms for about two decades now.

I understand that there are probably things LIKE this that exist, but the fact that it's 2012 and I can't find dorks on the Internet with whom to pretend we're wizards is pretty farking inexcusable.

Just accept the fact that D&D isn't WoW, embrace it, and then give us some actual opportunities to play. You've got a niche product- so you've got a lot of people you're not gonna reach unless you make it convenient and interesting. I just wanna get on my computer, go to your dumbass website, find 5 other people who are also bored, and have some fun creating a story while getting drunk on my own couch. Online community tabletop, character/campaign creation apps, and a decent set of rules (I imagine 3.5 will do just fine), please. How the hell have you not done this yet?

Sincerely,
A guy who's been trying to give you my money for 15 years

vygramul: But you are free to reserve the right to be dubious. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I no longer have copies of the emails nor a perfect memory of the events of 20 years ago. I am more than willing to concede I have neither proved my assertion nor is it unreasonable for you to disbelieve that TSR was in any way influenced by our discussions.

Oh I believe it's possible.

I'm actually quite interested in the events.TSR was D&D as far as I'm concerned. You can still play it, but you can't buy it. And if you didn't notice Gygax took every idea he could get for free. I mean imagine trying to pitch D&D in ancient Greece. "What? Fight a minotaur horde? There was only one Minotaur and Theseus killed him. Go back to temple now and learn you some gods."

If you guys did cook up Planescape, good on ye.

I liked 2nd. I was excited about 3rd, and got some enjoyment out of it. However, it didn't turn out quite like I thought it would. I was excited about 3.5, and it did do some things I liked. But it didn't fix any of my SERIOUS core concerns about 3rd. I never paid so much as a passing glance to 4th, though I did like some of the consolidated skills. It just sounded like a paper MMO, though.

BurnShrike: Ravenloft never really appealed to me much either. I'm not big on the horror genre.

Ravenloft as it stands barely qualifies as horror. But, like any setting, it can be cool with the right people.

I was an early 90s player. So ad&d 2nd edition for me. Though I dabble in first, as some of my fav classic games were built on it(Original Pool of Radiance, Secret of the Siver Blades, Gateway to the Savage Frontier).

And FYI for you nerds: the arrangement of the outerplanes in d&d was detailed in the first edition ad&d books in the veeery back.

That puts that idea in d&d to about 1978 or so.

Not that I give a fark about your stupid planescape argument =p