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tomjscott wrote:

Eric, from the East Rift region of LFR wrote customer service to ask about the Gen Con issue. Here is is question and the customer service response as of May 2nd.

Customer (Eric Brittain) 05/02/2008 09:18 AM
When and where will the new Living Forgotten Realms campaign premier?

I had heard it was GenCon 2008, but so far no LFR events have been posted.

Please let me know.

Thanks,

Eric W. Brittain
RPGA#501427

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RPGA Number: 501427


Response (Support Agent) 05/02/2008 04:39 PM
Eric,

That is correct, Living Forgotten Realms will be launching at Gen Con Indy 2008.

Check out the Living Forgotten Realms page on the D&D website at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=rp … /20070905a for further information about the new campaign.

<>

Organized Play Support
Wizards of the Coast

I love that we're trusting the word of a "support agent" as gospel.
Support agent = call center or lowest rung in the corporate totem pole (apparently though, just above game staff for a world-wide organization).
But hey, I'm sure WotC's support agents are well informed with Hasbro's legal proceedings.

The_Jester wrote:

I love that we're trusting the word of a "support agent" as gospel.
Support agent = call center or lowest rung in the corporate totem pole (apparently though, just above game staff for a world-wide organization).
But hey, I'm sure WotC's support agents are well informed with Hasbro's legal proceedings.

Are you serious? The only thing I've see so far that says that Wizards may not be at Gencon is a couple of letters that supposedly came from CS. Posted by some guy on some site. Both complete matches including typos.

Believe the I knew this guy, who had this friend, who knew this girl string if you wish. I'm chalking this one up to another net rumor out of control until there is something posted or announced by someone official. Until then reading all this speculation and rumor is a waste of time.

The_Jester wrote:

Well, all the companies planning on doing 4e books won't be able to at GenCon. And Wizards won't be there. So it might be 4e lite.
So players looking around for a game might *gasp* try a different game. They might get sold on the competitor's products. They might be wow-ed by Piazo and Pathfinder and getting to keep their 3e original books. They might stumble onto GURPS or Storyteller or the Cortex system and fall in love.

Okay, so I was outta town for a while, so just now responding to this.

Why wouldn't other companies get the chance to sell their 4e books and/or products? 4e will have been out for over 2 months at that point, and I highly doubt that retailers would be prohibited from selling products for 4e.

That being said, I will agree that it does give other companies an opening. As you mentioned, GenCon has just become much more important to Pathfinder as a result of the (at the very least) delay in submitting RPGA events. Of course, players who want to do Pathfinder will only get to keep their books for one more year since Pathfinder will be converting to its own ruleset in 2009.

The point that I was trying to make though, and perhaps I didn't express it very well, is that the vast majority of D&D players, and RPG'ers in general, will be unaffected by GenCon since they do not go. It is only a small percentage of players that actually go (probably less than 1%) -- and yes this is a pure guess on my part. Some of those attendees will quite possibly become hooked on a different game. Some of them won't. Some of them will swear off 4th Ed. Some of them won't. In the end, though, I firmly believe that 4th Ed will live or die by the quality of its content, and not by its presence (or lack thereof) at GenCon.

On a side note, if the RPGA is unable to attend GenCon due to the pending litigation, it could actually result in a long term win for the consumers. As you have mentioned, other games might get a boost as a result. This would then mean more competition for WotC and competition generally is a good thing for the consumer.