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8 months ago ::
Oct 07, 2012 - 6:44PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Oct 25, 2009
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Anyone who was around for the launch of 4e might remember this article. Spellcasters getting critical hits? Fixed defenses instead of rolled saves? It kinda brings back the old tingle, the promise of something new and something exciting. I find it interesting to go back and read the old 4e launch articles and compare the design goals of the developers with the final product of 4e and see how it all worked out in the end. This is all the more interesting as we are seeing up close and personal the birth of the next edition. I wonder how different 5e will look and feel in 5 years compared to what we are seeing now?
Want to know more about the history of D&D, especially how to play older editions of the game? Check out Crazy Monkey's "Tour through the editions":
http://community.wizards.com/crazymonkey/go/forum/view/133793/225799/Asylum_Play-by-Post
The current edition is BECMI, the most popular form of Basic D&D and the adventure is the classic Red Box quest to kill Bargle the evil magic user. Check it out, learn about the games roots, and enjoy the story as it unfolds.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 07, 2012 - 6:50PM
#2
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I don't know. I'm dreading 5e. While I was against 4e when it came out, I've come around and accepted that it's a superior system. 5e feels to me like a step back into the dark ages.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 07, 2012 - 8:01PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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Yeah, it's a huge diference of the developers back then knowing what they wanted to do and how to accomplish it compared to the current one...
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 5:09AM
#4
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It's interesting. 4e was a step towards a coherent system that was decided on my the developers. It was really exciting, and what got me back into the game after getting absolutely sick of it from the problems that arose in 3.5e.
On the other hand, 4e also was developed in secret, and pretty much ignored all the advice it sought from the fan community beta-testers. DDN is being developed with the purpose of making a game that all the fans will enjoy. I don't know about the feasibility of it, but there are certainly things that are really exciting me as well. But it's different. I don't think DDN will REPLACE 4e for me, but almost become like a concurrent system; like two games I play at different times for different reasons.
A great man once said "If WotC put out boxes full of free money there'd still be people complaining about how it's folded." – Boraxe
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 6:21AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Apr 22, 2001
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4e in a lot of way was a revolutionary system, in that it managed to capture classic D&D, but in a well organized and streamlined fashion. The only real problem 4th edition had was that it was rejected by a considerable chunk of the community and to the detrimine of the D&D license it created yet another "Edition generation" of players who will neither look back or forward without forever comparing their beloved edition.
I think Wizards however has gotten very smart about the management of the D&D license as evident by some of the rather suprising moves given and uncharacteristic approach to the license. It apperantly took a few years of suffering for them to connect what the problems where.
Since Wizards took over the D&D franchise they have done nothing but heartlessly looked forward, treating its past like it was something to be forgotten like some kind of shameful history. They created 3rd edition and completetly abandoned any support of 2nd edition, than when 4th edition was released they did the same thing to 3rd edition. Each time cutting ties with its past like it was a disease and the cause of all their suffering curable only through a new edition. They paid for these mistakes dearly and in a sense continue to pay for them today. They effectively cut ties with the fan base on which this franchise was built, than created a new fan base in 3rd edition and promptly abandoned them spawning its primary competitor one that is arguably winning (Paizo). Now with 5th edition on the horizon they are facing the prospect of doing it again if they are not careful and I think their recent actions have shown that they are weary of abandoning their 4th edition player base and consious of trying to reconnect with 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition D&D fans.
Their design approach to NEXT is quite smart, find out who is interested, what they are interested in and what they want to see in the next edition of the game BEFORE the books go to the printers.
I think their repriting of 1st edition was ingenius as well and as much as I appriciate the tribute to Gygax, truth is that had they done this years ago the divide in the community might not be so harsh, and it would have made a far nicer tribute to Gygax to hand him the books and thank him for role-playing instead of laying it on his grave. I mean its understandable that they are not going to create new content for 1st edition now, but to reprint those books for the fans is basically saying "hey we love you guys too". It gives them credibility and since that release my opinion of WOTC has changed dramatically. Now with 3rd edition reprints and 2nd edition reprint announcement highly likely (already announced for May 2013 on Amazon, though no official word from Wizards yet) they are on track for kind of reuniting the community.
I personally don't see any reason why all these editions can't all coexist and be supported by Wizard. We always talk economics but a 2nd edition player that doesn't like 4th edition isn't going to buy the books, so you have a choice, make something they will buy, or don't sell them anything. The idea that you can "recapture" the old audiances with new books in a noble one and applaude the effort in NEXT, but I personally think its a pipe dream. You want to reconnect with your 1st edition audiance, repriting Temple of Elemental Evil with new art, added storylines and nice miniatures and put it in a box set. You want to reconnect with 3rd edition fans? Give us a new setting for 3rd edition right after the reprint. My point is that their is money to be made on every edition of D&D and to limit yourself to creating 1 edtion for 1/4th of your audiance is foolish. These reprints no doubt sold like hot cakes (given how much trouble I had finding a copy) and frankly if they started reprinting more of these classic books I would be doing running back tackles on 13 year old kids at the comic book store to get them.
The fans are here, they have always been here and their is no reason for them to be part of a divided squabling community. Support them all and the edition wars become irrelevant and the future becomes one where the D&D community goes back to playing games rather than arguing how Wizards ruined one edition over the other.
So personally I'm supporting Wizards in their moves in 5th edition. Its bold and I like the attitude, but of all the things they have done while developing 5th edition it was the reprints and the nod to the past that had be feverishly looking for my credit card with a grateful smile on my face. Give the fans what they want! Its the right attitude.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 6:51AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Dec 22, 2010
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Give the fans what they want! Its the right attitude.
And when the fans want diametrically opposite things and the compromise suits neither? This is looking to be the way of it.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 6:57AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Apr 22, 2001
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Give the fans what they want! Its the right attitude.
And when the fans want diametrically opposite things and the compromise suits neither? This is looking to be the way of it.
Well like I said, I'm of the belief that 5th edition as a "lets try to satisfy everyone" game is ultimatly doomed to fail. D&D players have their favorites and their appetites are hard to change. We have 20+ years of evidence to prove that. I think they are far better off supporting all the editions that already exist rather than trying to find a compromising edition. Though i applaud the effort, you never know, maybe they pull it off.
Imagine a WOTC release calender that includes 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition adventures and books.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 9:51AM
#8
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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Worst of all, even when they try to satisfy everyone, wish is impossible because all edition players want diferent things that contradict each other, so far they have only tried to satisfy older edition players, over the last 6 months, WotC seems to have discarded their entire userbase and trying to lure them with older edition nostalgia....and failing to realize this....most of their current userbase (4e players), started with 4e, they started with this because they are younger, it's easier to understand, online tools, familiar concepts and it was actually a well designed games (i was exposed to older editions of D&D in many ways, i avoid them for 15 years of my life, because i thought they were terrible, plain terrible, even the videogames, having the D&D brand on videogames was like a stigma for me to avoid).
Also, a huge chunk of 4e players are also very young, in my group of players, i am the oldest...and i am 26. It's a very diferent mentality of getting into RPGs, it's a very diferent method of doing things, hell we don't even play on a table, we use virtual tabletop softwares and skype...because they are from USA and Canada and from diferent states, i have played with people from france, germany, brazil...yet, wotc seem to focus most of their design into the 40 years old american tabletop player.
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8 months ago ::
Oct 08, 2012 - 7:34PM
#9
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Date Joined:
May 16, 2009
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WOTC should just pick a demographic and stick with it - the D&D fanbase is fractured anyway, so trying to appease everyone is the surest way to be mediocre to everyone. I think it would be best to go after the younger generations, as that would allow WOTC more leeway in designing a solid game.
"The word Live is Evil spelt backwards."
"Flaws are what make our perfections shine so brightly"
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8 months ago ::
Oct 09, 2012 - 7:01AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2011
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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
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