*fap*fap*fap*

It belongs in a museum!

I found the Copper Key and passed the first gate!

Spad31: I found the Copper Key and passed the first gate!

Damnit, that's where my head went, too.

Does it have the prototype for the first one-sided die?

I'd have to say that the state of things in the world of WoTC these days isn't sounding very good. Monte Cook quit (or was fired, depending on who you believe) while designing 5th edition D&D. WoTC isn't doing so hot in the RPG market, with Paizo being the acknowledged leader in that market segment.

got me what WoTC is doing anymore. they keep bleeding out talented game designers and it'll be over for 'em.

Weaver95: I'd have to say that the state of things in the world of WoTC these days isn't sounding very good. Monte Cook quit (or was fired, depending on who you believe) while designing 5th edition D&D. WoTC isn't doing so hot in the RPG market, with Paizo being the acknowledged leader in that market segment.

got me what WoTC is doing anymore. they keep bleeding out talented game designers and it'll be over for 'em.

D&D was given cancer the moment TSR was bought by WoTC, and that cancer got worse the moment WoTC was bought by Hasbro.

The idea that Hasbro owns D&D is abhorrent.

ZeroCorpse: Weaver95: I'd have to say that the state of things in the world of WoTC these days isn't sounding very good. Monte Cook quit (or was fired, depending on who you believe) while designing 5th edition D&D. WoTC isn't doing so hot in the RPG market, with Paizo being the acknowledged leader in that market segment.

got me what WoTC is doing anymore. they keep bleeding out talented game designers and it'll be over for 'em.

D&D was given cancer the moment TSR was bought by WoTC, and that cancer got worse the moment WoTC was bought by Hasbro.

The idea that Hasbro owns D&D is abhorrent.

Didn't know that. Didn't want to know that, either.

Not that I've played in the past decade, but that still sucks.

buckler: When I was 13, I was dragged along on a hideously boring family vacation to West Virginia because my mom wanted to see the little coal-mining town she grew up in (at 13, any vacation out of range is hideously boring), but at one point we stopped in another little nowhere place, and I stepped into the town's little bookstore. I was amazed to see a 1st-edition D&D boxed set with the three paperbound books, in factory condition. It was $5.00. I did not have $5.00. Now I wish I had.

/not a very CSB
//fortunately, not long either

I have the players manual form that set. It was an antique curiosity in my playing days in the late 80's.

ZeroCorpse: The idea that Hasbro owns D&D is abhorrent.

I was willing to give 'em the benefit of the doubt. But since WoTC has been under new management its just been disaster after disaster after disaster. 4th edition does not do well with legacy players (full disclosure - that's me and my group), the company has refused to adapt to online sales and seems reluctant to listen to input from players (paizo does a much better job of that) and now they seem to be having issues with their key game developers.

to be fair, WoTC has started to support local game stores with their 'D&D encounters' efforts. And the players who get involved in that game do seem to enjoy themselves quite a bit. But it seems a bit late in the day for all that effort. Paizo has a better product, more accessible webstore and a stable full of really good writers. plus, Paizo isn't hostile to third party developers creating projects that work with their game (I believe they get final say on go/no go plus a percentage of the take...which is fairly reasonable. And you get to host PDF files on their servers).

I dunno man. WoTC could pull it back from the brink. I think it'll depend on what happens with D&D 5th edition.

Poorlytoldjoke: Does Palladium still exist? I remember playing those games (Palladium, Rifts, Beyond the supernatural, and their superhero game, and TNMT) like, 20 or so years ago. I also remember Gurps being the retarded stepchild of both.

yup - palladium is still around. And I gotta hand it to Kevin Sembieda - he works his own booth at GenCon. every year, he's there with regular hours all convention long.

I don't always like his game system...but gotdamn, he is there right down in the mud with his sales staff. I gotta respect the guy just for that fact alone.

I'd be interesting in seeing what Arneson's notes had to say about the original Blackmoor stuff (if anything).

Disposable Rob: Flappyhead:

4th Edition does not do well for anyone who isn't also an MMO player/addict. My group was split down the middle with the WoW and FF11 players loving it and the rest of us hating it.

I honestly had no problem with 4th ed catering to the MMO types, but seeing Pathfinder outsell D&D means that it might have been a bad choice. Paizo also has excellent digital distribution. I find myself buying many books digitally and then buying them in hardcover if they're something I'll use regularly.

For whatever reason, WoTC decided to shift their target demographic away from older players and tried to appeal to the 12 year old hyper caffeinated market share. Paizo scooped up all the older players, kept on some of the better writers that WoTC fired and hasn't skipped a beat since that day.

plain and simple - WoTC dropped the ball. Paizo picked it up and has carried it forward ever since. Paizo had even made Dragon and Dungeon magazines PROFITABLE once again, and WoTC killed them both. WTF man...you know how hard that was to do!?

Disposable Rob: Flappyhead:

4th Edition does not do well for anyone who isn't also an MMO player/addict. My group was split down the middle with the WoW and FF11 players loving it and the rest of us hating it.

I honestly had no problem with 4th ed catering to the MMO types, but seeing Pathfinder outsell D&D means that it might have been a bad choice. Paizo also has excellent digital distribution. I find myself buying many books digitally and then buying them in hardcover if they're something I'll use regularly.

If they gonna do it, they should go all the way...take that moribund D&D online product and do something truly in the Spirit of D&D with it. Make it a basic engine and let "dungeon masters" for a small fee, create their own custom instances on their servers and let them take parties they register through them (and for a small fee let others purchase completed dungeons like apps (or like modules back in the day)

My old RPG is scattered to the winds but if we could all log in from home and do a "game Night" like back in the day, I think we would.

Magorn: okay we need to define terms: are you talking about this 3 book set:
[sob.apotheon.org image 444x585]
[4.bp.blogspot.com image 500x633]
[index.rpg.net image 444x585]

or this one:
[www.waynesbooks.net image 640x784]

cause I still think the latter may have been my favorite version of D&D I played as a kid (And yes i had the expansion books) and I've been looking for decently priced copy just for nostalgia purposes

though this one was cool too and was the first one I owned:


[3.bp.blogspot.com image 247x320]
a birthday gift from my cool older brother who was playing the white box at the time

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I had all that stuff.

Magorn: Twist-42: redsquid: buckler: When I was 13, I was dragged along on a hideously boring family vacation to West Virginia because my mom wanted to see the little coal-mining town she grew up in (at 13, any vacation out of range is hideously boring), but at one point we stopped in another little nowhere place, and I stepped into the town's little bookstore. I was amazed to see a 1st-edition D&D boxed set with the three paperbound books, in factory condition. It was $5.00. I did not have $5.00. Now I wish I had.

/not a very CSB
//fortunately, not long either

I have the players manual form that set. It was an antique curiosity in my playing days in the late 80's.

I found it somewhere for like $25. A friend later found the optional "Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes" book that went with it.

Yay me! supergeek :p

okay we need to define terms: are you talking about this 3 book set:
[sob.apotheon.org image 444x585]
[4.bp.blogspot.com image 500x633]
[index.rpg.net image 444x585]

or this one:
[www.waynesbooks.net image 640x784]

cause I still think the latter may have been my favorite version of D&D I played as a kid (And yes i had the expansion books) and I've been looking for decently priced copy just for nostalgia purposes

though this one was cool too and was the first one I owned:


[3.bp.blogspot.com image 247x320]
a birthday gift from my cool older brother who was playing the white box at the time

Yeah the beige soft cover books with the stitched binding.

The tabletop RPG industry is on a downswing, partially because of the glut of Open Game License crap that everyone and their brother published after 3rd Edition came out. OGL was a great idea, just something that was way too exploitable by idiots with access to desktop publishing.

Still a few companies hanging in there these days:

Paizo (Pathfinder)
Fantasy Flight Games (Warhammer, Warhammer 40K)
Green Ronin (Mutants and Masterminds, DC Adventures, Game of Thrones, Dragon Age)
White Wolf (Scion, Exalted, World of Darkness)
Steve Jackson (GURPS)
Catalyst Games (Shadowrun, Battletech)

RoyFokker'sGhost: The tabletop RPG industry is on a downswing, partially because of the glut of Open Game License crap that everyone and their brother published after 3rd Edition came out. OGL was a great idea, just something that was way too exploitable by idiots with access to desktop publishing.

Still a few companies hanging in there these days:

Paizo (Pathfinder)
Fantasy Flight Games (Warhammer, Warhammer 40K)
Green Ronin (Mutants and Masterminds, DC Adventures, Game of Thrones, Dragon Age)
White Wolf (Scion, Exalted, World of Darkness)
Steve Jackson (GURPS)
Catalyst Games (Shadowrun, Battletech)

hey, don't be dissin' the OGL. paizo and white wolf wouldn't have survived without it. sure, a lot of crap flooded into the market, but out of that flood came a couple/few good ideas.

I wish eberron had survived...it seemed to be going good places and then got run over by 4th edition. d20 modern never got a chance to become anything good (hello gamma world and/or star frontiers remakes!) and was murdered in its crib before we found out what it could do.

brap: Magorn: okay we need to define terms: are you talking about this 3 book set:
[sob.apotheon.org image 444x585]
[4.bp.blogspot.com image 500x633]
[index.rpg.net image 444x585]

or this one:
[www.waynesbooks.net image 640x784]

cause I still think the latter may have been my favorite version of D&D I played as a kid (And yes i had the expansion books) and I've been looking for decently priced copy just for nostalgia purposes

though this one was cool too and was the first one I owned:


[3.bp.blogspot.com image 247x320]
a birthday gift from my cool older brother who was playing the white box at the time

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I had all that stuff.

Where did all the images go?

Yuri Futanari: Magorn: If they gonna do it, they should go all the way...take that moribund D&D online product and do something truly in the Spirit of D&D with it. Make it a basic engine and let "dungeon masters" for a small fee, create their own custom instances on their servers and let them take parties they register through them (and for a small fee let others purchase completed dungeons like apps (or like modules back in the day)


The original Neverwinter Nights had that if I recall. Create the module/campaign, host the server, log in as DM and then control things in real time as your party went through the adventure. Neverwinter Online is advertising something similar in that it's an MMO with the creation tools for you to add your own adventures, but I doubt there will be real-time DMing like the original.

The remake Neverwinter Nights was actually pretty fun when you got with a good server/group that ran a persistent world along with scheduled sessions. I played in a few games that were very like playing a tabletop game of D&D.

It all comes down to who's running the game, I think.

mat catastrophe: Weaver95: ZeroCorpse: The idea that Hasbro owns D&D is abhorrent.

...

I dunno man. WoTC could pull it back from the brink. I think it'll depend on what happens with D&D 5th edition.

Supposedly, they're looking for beta test players right now. No idea how that's supposed to work.

/was looking the other day for something on the D&D site.
//remember when they were posting classic modules? are they still doing that?

yeah, I heard they were looking for beta testers. no idea how that'll work tho. I think the reason WoTC thwacked online sales of their legacy 1st edition stuff was because first thing they did with 4th edition was reprint damn near every classic module under 4th edition rules. In some cases they even reused the maps and artwork from the original module(s)...the only thing different was the rules. ok, plus they took out the spelling mistakes.

*sigh*

At any rate, the feeling I got from 4th edition was that it was a game designed for spastic 12 year olds, done as cheaply as possible and designed for short term play and not long term development. I just didn't like the rules.

dragonchild: It's failing because it's trying to sate stockholder expectations, which is impossible with RPG products. Paizo puts the product first, which is why they've done better.

well...I also suspect (but cannot prove) that the management team in charge of WoTC these days is/has created a classic corporate hostile working environment. Monte Cook is, by all accounts, a consumate professional. it must have taken a LOT for WoTC to piss him off enough to quit before seeing a project through to the end.

the killer for the corporate types is that you can't really outsource creative development. either you've got an in house team that's damn good...or you don't. And creative people can be very difficult for bean counters to deal with...esp if the bean counters in question feel threatened or intimidated by the artistic types. plug 'n play MBA leadership with no understanding of the gamer market doesn't help matters any either.

it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Weaver95: I'd have to say that the state of things in the world of WoTC these days isn't sounding very good. Monte Cook quit (or was fired, depending on who you believe) while designing 5th edition D&D. WoTC isn't doing so hot in the RPG market, with Paizo being the acknowledged leader in that market segment.

got me what WoTC is doing anymore. they keep bleeding out talented game designers and it'll be over for 'em.

Well, I think Magic: The Gathering is still doing pretty well?
/Doesn't play, but has some very close friends who are judges.

narkor: The only RPG companies that are going to survive are the really small ones (Catalyst, who does Shadowrun/BattleTech has 2 full time employees). Pathfinder is great, but the audience is the people who were playing D&D at high school/uni in the 70's and 80's, not the ones playing RPGs in the 20-teens. The issue that Wizards identified with D&D was that while it was keeping old players, but it isn't attracting new ones. Without a steady churn of new players buying up a stack of product, the game is on life support. Pathfinder is new enough that it's getting the churn of players switching from 3.5 - but Pathfinder *is* going to encounter problems when their player base numbers level off and most of the current player base has the 7 or so books that they need for the game and don't need to go out and purchase any more. No steady income = no RPG company.

um...you might want to rethink that view...because a lot of what you said is wrong.

Weaver95: ZeroCorpse: The idea that Hasbro owns D&D is abhorrent.

I was willing to give 'em the benefit of the doubt. But since WoTC has been under new management its just been disaster after disaster after disaster. 4th edition does not do well with legacy players (full disclosure - that's me and my group), the company has refused to adapt to online sales and seems reluctant to listen to input from players (paizo does a much better job of that) and now they seem to be having issues with their key game developers.

to be fair, WoTC has started to support local game stores with their 'D&D encounters' efforts. And the players who get involved in that game do seem to enjoy themselves quite a bit. But it seems a bit late in the day for all that effort. Paizo has a better product, more accessible webstore and a stable full of really good writers. plus, Paizo isn't hostile to third party developers creating projects that work with their game (I believe they get final say on go/no go plus a percentage of the take...which is fairly reasonable. And you get to host PDF files on their servers).

I dunno man. WoTC could pull it back from the brink. I think it'll depend on what happens with D&D 5th edition.

I gave up on WOTC when they turned LIVING GREYHAWK into the D&D Book
Of The Month club. They completely turned their backs on the original idea of
interlinked locally run campaigns, and almost all of the players from my old
LG area are now very active in Paizo's equivalent shared campaign.

DjangoStonereaver: I I gave up on WOTC when they turned LIVING GREYHAWK into the D&D Book
Of The Month club. They completely turned their backs on the original idea of
interlinked locally run campaigns, and almost all of the players from my old
LG area are now very active in Paizo's equivalent shared campaign.

yeah, if I had the time I'd start up a local chapter here in Harrisburg. hell, if I had the time I'd see about starting up a warmachine league.