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Oct 10, 2012 -- 3:37AM, Xguild wrote:

  Just that.  I have no intention of playing or buying any of the early editions.  I want Amazon to let me sort out the 4e material for me.  If they gave me a mixed bag of all D&D material to wade thru, I would not waste my time doing so.  Access to all this stuff I don't want is no virtue and can be a major vice.

I see so what your saying is that the mere existance of other editions of books, will cause you not to play 4th edition and that these books should be removed from Amazon?     

He said "sort out", not "throw out".

Which means, he wants to be able to ask Amazon for a list of 4E D&D books, and get a list that is ONLY 4E D&D books. No 3E included.

Presumably he would extend this to the person who actually wants 3E books - that person should get a list that includes no 4E books.

This becomes a real difficulty in physical bookstores, where you get clerks who think that D&D and World of Darkness are the same thing...

If anyone has plans to throw away 1e, 2e, or 3e material please consult me first, I'll gladly take them off your hands and I'll pay the postage.

I love 4e, it's the edition I currently play the most and I'm extremely sad it's being killed off too soon, but I'm a huge fan of all D&D and I'm very pumped about being able to get the old books again in mint condition. Unfortunately when I moved away to do a graduate degree I had nowhere to store my D&D stuff and sold off all of my old books. Now I've got money and space I'm happy I get another chance to buy them again.

With regards to my initial post, it wasn't a slam against 5e, it was simply an observation that design goals on release have a habit of morphing throughout the life span of an edition. Comparing the evolution of 4e to 5e will be an interesting thing to watch.

Oct 9, 2012 -- 7:01AM, Mr.Durriken wrote:

I'm your 40 yo (well nearly) RPG player.  And I love 4e.  It is by far the most fun I've had with and RPG, and I played a lot when I was young.  I am total disenchanted with DDN.  Sure I had great fun playing OD&D, 1e and 2e from the late 70's until the mid 90's.  But I also had fun with Gamma World, Star Wars, Ninja Turtles, some super heroes game (don't remember which), GURPS, Paranoia, BattleTech/MechWarrior, Aftermath, StarFrontiers, Traveller and probably a few others (but I never play 3e/3.5e/pathfinder and have no desire to).  I quit playing in the mid 90's after college.  17 years and 4 kids later, my 2 older kids asked about the boxes (an old pink box basic edition (dice and crayon included) and MERPS box set my wife found at a thrift store).  I picked up some Essentials products when they were released and we started going to Encounter at one of our FLGS and have been having a great time with it.

4e isn't a perfect game but it has so much more balance and team focus than any other RPG I've ever played.  Now, if you had 4e with skills disassociated from abilities and with bounded accuracy (maybe the only good ideas in DDN), you might have something approaching the best game ever.  And yes I am aware that you could houserule that fairly easily in 4e, or you could use inherent bonus to get something similar to bounded accuracy, kinda.  I just have not committed myself to the math of it all.  But overall it is just simple math, which is one of the beautiful things about 4e - it is rooted in the math and not just abitrary numbers.  There are no real traps because of it.  Some power and feat bloat, but no outright traps.

I tried to be excited about DDN, signed up for the playtests, dowloaded the packets, already have the original B2 Keep on the Boarderlands that has the caves of choas from my old pink box.  By the time the second packet was release, I never managed to even read more than a couple of pages.  Now there's a third... I don't think I'll even bother.

I'm esentially your 40yo tabletop RPG player.  I have great memories of all-nighters with OD&D and 1E, but I don't need or want another retro clone.  I want a modern mathmetically balanced RPG that lets everyone have fun at all levels of play.  I wish they would just take some of their better ideas and make a new improved 4.5e.  Or maybe I'm check out 13th Age.  For now, I hope 4e gets as much time as possible.

So I guess you shouldn't assume that even older gamers are getting what they want.  I'm certainly not.  Its the 4e fans that aren't getting what they really want.  And there are many older 4E fans around who are just as unhappy as you.

As a little aside, my humble opinion, the real mistakes were made by the 3e developers.  The creation of the OGL was the problem.  It gave anyone the right to freely steal just about anything that was ever D&D and sell it without royalties.  It was great for game developers and indie publishers (and maybe the industry as a whole) but was a real mistake for the biggest strongest brand in the industry.  4e was a reaction to that - since anybody could now make a clone of any edition, they needed something new, modern, distinct that would attract a new generation of gamers.  And the fact that it was done with very little public interaction and with no OGL says a whole lot.  But there was a backlash to all that that they never expected.  They made a half hearted attempt to mend that with Essentials.  It wasn't a bad thing, but didn't fix anything with anybody and turned off many current players.  Now they want to recapture that big market of (retro) clone players.  I just don't see them getting anywhere near the market penetration they want.  Many 4e players will still be pissed. Many clone players will never jump on board.  Some jobs will eventually be lost.  But I will bet you my left...foot that WotC will never release another new OGL product.  Maybe a few more reprints but they won't develop new OGL products.

TjD

You've pretty much summed up exactly the way I feel.  I'm also a 40 year old gamer with a similar experience to you and similar opinions on 4e, 3e, OGL and Next.  Therefore, you win Best Post Evar award and are my new Short Duration Personal Savior for at least the next 24 hours.