Community

Dec 26, 2012 -- 4:59PM, KColette wrote:

Dec 26, 2012 -- 1:00PM, hunterian7 wrote:

No- sadly 4th is dead.

I am so sick and tired of hearing that phrase. The system is not 'dead' simply because the company isn't putting out any new material. It's only dead if it's no longer played.

Here is what makes a system "dead" to me.  A new player shows up to the games shop because they heard about our meetup group.  They ask a few questions, get interested in our game, and eventually make the decision to engage in the wonderful hobby of tabletop rpgs.  

And then they ask where they can purchase their own books.  If I can point to a spot in the games store that sells the books we are using, that system is still alive.  If I can direct them to a book store, or point them to amazon.com, and they can get their new books there, the system is still alive. 

If they have to resort to buying used books... If they have to pay 3x the retail value on ebay... If they have to settle for pirated copies of pdfs...

The system is dead.  Dead doesn't mean unplayable.  But it does mean that it is more difficult for me to introduce new people to the game.  For instance, Star Wars Saga Edition is a dead game.  It is a wonderful system, and the books published for it are so comprehensive that many people regard it as the best example of a "complete" game system.  However, a local gm is thinking about running a star wars game soon, and he's planning on using the fantasy flight beta rules.  Because our local game store has those in stock.   

Dec 26, 2012 -- 9:08PM, Megatony73 wrote:

And as many others have pointed out, with Hasbro now owning DnD...what are the chances that they want new editions every 5-7 years??  Then what?  Are we supposed to buy $400+ worth of core rule books every 5-7 years?  Seriously!  How many times can they expect me to buy a Forgotten Realms campaign guide for 5e, 6e and onward?  Sigh...what a mess! 

The sad part is that Mearls and Co are claiming that D&D Next will be around to stay for a very, very long time. They have little credibility when making this statement-especially since not only did they kill 4th edition, they are no longer producing 4th edition material even when D&D Next isn't due until August of 2014.

Add insult to injury- Mearls and Co seem more interested in releasing stuff for every edition but 4th! Reprints of 1E, 3.5, soon 2E, etc...

 Why can't they release a deluxe 4th edition Player's Handbook 2, Monster Manual 2 and Dungeon Master's Guide 2 with all the errata included (we already have deluxe versions of the first core 3 books)? Throw us a bone here!

Dec 26, 2012 -- 9:08PM, Megatony73 wrote:

And as many others have pointed out, with Hasbro now owning DnD...what are the chances that they want new editions every 5-7 years??  Then what?  Are we supposed to buy $400+ worth of core rule books every 5-7 years?  Seriously!  How many times can they expect me to buy a Forgotten Realms campaign guide for 5e, 6e and onward?  Sigh...what a mess!

Well, the $$$ part of it isn't that bad actually. Spending $500 on D&D sourcebooks every 5 years is less than $10 a month. As far as hobbies go, that's rather on the cheap side.

The second issue is what's more serious "expect me to buy a Forgotten Realms campaign guide for 5e, 6e and onward". If these guides are too similiar it's not a matter that it isn't that expensive to buy them all, it's a matter of why buy them all when there is nohting substantially different between them.

Dec 27, 2012 -- 4:25AM, hunterian7 wrote:

The sad part is that Mearls and Co are claiming that D&D Next will be around to stay for a very, very long time. They have little credibility when making this statement

They have little credibility because they are ultimatively not the ones to decide that issue. They have to do a new edition when they are told to do so and if they won't they can leave and someone else will do the new edition. Easy as that.

And as product managers they are expected to do nothing to hurt the sales of their product line. Even if they would already know that Next is only scheduled for 4 years, they would be contractually obliged not to tell us since this would hurt sales of Next

As far as 4e support after the release of Next goes, the best we can realistically expect is them to continue the keep the character builder and compendium online as they are at this point in time without anymore doing updates or new stuff added.

Dec 27, 2012 -- 10:01AM, Ron4RPG wrote:

Thanks for the replies...


    I did not even think of losing character builder, that is a major factor in me paying the subscription to D&D insider, the horror!!!  We switched from rolemaster/harp  to 4th ed because my kids now play and rolemaster/harp character creation is too  hard for them..the character builder fit in nicely.."here kids point and click for your character creation"

So what i am getting from these replies is that I need to scoop up all the online material I can because around a year from now or less , the 4th edition well is going to dry up....
 
Thanks

Ron

Certainly once DDN is released there isn't likely to be ANY more active support for 4e, Dungeon and Dragon will dump all support for it. Whether or not the 4e tools will remain is unknown. At this point I kind of doubt it. WotC has shown such utter disinterest in fans of 4e that it is becoming hard to imagine they will think it is even worth the minimal effort, or that they won't take the opportunity to try to just blot out the existence of 4e.

I think that's basically the plan at this point is to bury 4e like it never existed at all. They know every edition brings fragmentation, so what's the option? KILL IT HARD. Pretend it never existed, burn down all support for it, ever reference to it, ditch every bit of remaining inventory, and resist any attempt to keep it alive. Releasing a 1e or a 3e reprint OTOH doesn't matter, whoever is still playing those editions is still playing them LONG after they stopped being supported. Tossing out a few reprints isn't going to change that landscape. 4e reprints or etc? Forget it, the people buying a 1e reprint will probably buy DDN, people buying 4e products are doing so EXACTLY because they don't want to buy a DDN product. It is 100% cannibalization.

I mean, Mearls once stated he thought that 4e support would continue in DDI, but that was before we got a DDN that utterly ignores what 4e fans wanted and quit releasing new 4e material a year early.