Complete Mike Mearls D&D 4th Edition Essentials Interview

Kilo24

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veloper said:
christofsch said:
In the economics of the roleplaying games, i see one unique point, which was mentionted at the end of the Interview by Mike, when he said that people still play starcraft.
The question is, how much money got blizzard of them after there purchase of starcraft?

Once someone/a group has found the perfect rpg for their tastes, they play it forever, because the creation of new material and houserules is so easy.
For the players that is great, for the industry not so good.
My gamemaster has found Shadowrun 2/3 and Earthdawn as best for his taste. Both systems are out of print, but the limiting factor of our fun, is finding time for sessions, not running out of material.
So, we have a business, where making you customers happy and not making them happy is bad for your longterm success.
So changing stuff is necessary for succes, once you have grown to a certain point. Because the people, who where perfectly happy with your old game, dont need a new one.
Great first post.

This is all there is to it. The fans of the old, can and should stick to the old. The new is for players unsatisfied with the old.
With the specific example of Starcraft, I'm pretty sure they still make a moderate amount of money from it. There's advertisements on Battle.net (at least pre-Battle.net 2.0) and there's the brand loyalty associated with Blizzard's games and more specifically Starcraft 2 (and its 3 separate parts.) I'm pretty sure that, while it's no World of Warcraft, they're still making a profit from it - especially since the development costs are long-gone.

The point's more valid for tabletop games, partially because of the expectations of the medium, partially because there's fewer things to flat-out upgrade like graphics.

But there are still a number of things that can be applied to improve a game system. Eliminating needless complexity is a big one of them (THAC0 from 2nd edition, saving throws versus attack rolls from 3rd/3.5 edition.) There's also tweaking balance and adding in a few more interesting abilities - Pathfinder and 3.5 both were editions focused around this idea, and they did a pretty good job. There are also shifts in gaming philosophy, newer ideas for more elegant mechanics that couldn't be done before because no-one had thought of them. These all contribute to the value of a new edition, which is precisely where the designers make their money.

4th edition had a number of improvements on the system, but it also screwed with the focus to a degree that previous editions had not. There are few rules for what characters can do outside of combat (aside from skill challenges, which are still not hard-and-fast determinants of a character's abilities.) Some decisions could be described as baffling and unnecessary (removing half of the alignment system.) Everything was focused around combat moreso than previous editions - the out-of-combat abilities of rituals were carefully designed to deny any abuse, but that also limited creativity (and put a constant price tag on making your wizard feel like a wizard.) Combat was much-improved from the already excellent 3.5 combat and positioning mechanics, but it became harder to tweak the feel of the game without upsetting the balance of the different classes and in many cases swapped out out-of-combat mechanical clarity for the in-combat clarity. Oozes can go prone, undead can be sneak attacked, web spells can't be burned away, which simplify the rules but now there's a wider gulf to explain exactly what happened.

There's also the change in tone from earlier editions. 4e exudes a sense of "everyone wants to be an adventurer and slaughter monsters all day," borne out by the class/race/power descriptions, alignment system, lack of out-of-combat rules, and pretty much everything cosmetic about the whole design. It encourages roleplaying to be a colorful aside to the combat and does little to explain the increased gap between the logic of the game-world and the real-world. As an example, I still remember the 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide trying to explain how vast amounts of wealth could be just lying around in treasure hoards for adventurers to pick up, and looking at medieval history for inspiration in how to actually store wealth. 3rd edition dropped that and similar rationalizations from the actual books and put price tags on and a marketplace for magic items as a commodity. 4th edition went even further than that and just suffused the game with a MMO-style economy of eternally escalating item prices and bonuses, ignoring that any 21st level character could feed a kingdom for 20 years instead of upgrading their +4 Belt Buckle of Shininess to a +5. The whole setting is working from a self-referential viewpoint on fantasy, not one connected with reality. It's taken wizards and monsters running around as granted from the previous editions, now it's turning what was originally ripped from Lord of the Rings into chainmail bikinis, Gandalf zapping orcs with his once-an-encounter lightning bolts, and saving the world into a day job for the adventuring parties of the world.

Can a creative DM overcome that? Absolutely. But they're doing it without much aid from the books and have to work against a lot of the mechanics that balance the game to do so. And the image of the game is rather tied into that whole naive conception of adventuring and saving the world.

Me, I like 4th edition because I'm not that fond of Dungeon and Dragons's settings, even from 2nd edition and on (with the exception of Planescape, though I do prefer Planescape: Torment's more personal/subjective take on it rather than the pen-and-paper version's.) 4e turns what was good combat into excellent combat that rewards tactical thinking and encourages teamwork in ways that most other RPGs don't. A lot of them fall to the problem of specialization in activities: you send in the rogue to disarm traps because he's got the spot checks, the bard to talk with people because he has the high plus to diplomacy, the barbarian to kill things, the priest to heal, and so on. That problem is that most characters who specialize are just flat-out better than anyone else at a given activity, so a 4-man team becomes 4 one-man teams who do only what they're good at, and don't interact with eachother. 4th edition solved that: all characters have diverse but not absolutely necessary capacities within combat and have nothing distinguishing about them outside of combat.

The Red Box seems to be a combination of more options and some of the 3rd edition attempts at increasing the fanbase scope through "dumbing it down" and branding to me. There's more D&D-flavored rules and options from what I read, but what would really interest me - a maturation of the setting through actually examining the setting - just isn't there. Just another supplement, I suppose.
 

Fabio Pagliara

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thank you very much for the full interview, very very interesting

I love both 4th ed and the new essential twist

maybe because I am a old D&D fan since 1984 (should have been earlier by here in Italy D&D was hard to find for a young boy)
 

Rorshach13

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I have to wonder-- is Alex Macris' resentment of 4th Edition D&D more of an editorially directed mandate (the Escapist bias against 4th Edition D&D and it's fans has been noted in other places- even by Zak S of I hit it with My Axe). Or rather is it just reflective of the creeping disengagement that the Escapist has with today's roleplaying fans?
 

Archon

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KCL said:
Then do the research. You're a journalist, after all.

You could start with how 4th Edition saw larger print runs than 3rd Edition and still sold through them faster than 3rd Edition. Or you could look at how 4th Edition placed better and lasted longer on bestseller lists than 3rd Edition. Or you could factor in D&D Insider and how it's allowed WotC to cut out the middle men and increase profits without selling more books. Or you could note that 4th Edition managed all this and more despite debuting in the middle of the Great Recession.

Or you could just be a typical uninformed interweb writer.
Let's assume that neither of us is uninformed but instead we've consulted different sources. I'll share my sources, and you share yours.

Best-seller lists are not reliable because what is required to get on a bestseller list is dependent on the list and the genre/category, and is relative to the number of other books being bought. It isn't the equivalent of saying "it's a platinum record". It's very hand wavy, and susceptible to manipulation and shifting sentiment. For a good overview, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestseller

With regard to 4th edition seeing larger print runs than 3rd edition and selling through them faster, that is not my understanding of the facts. Everything I have read has indicated that D&D's two peak years for sales were 1982 (Moldvay Basic and AD&D) and 2001 (D&D 3rd Edition). Joseph Goodman, a highly respected industry figure, circulated some details on this point.

You can find Goodman's analysis here: http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showthread.php?t=61346

At the time he thought it was fine that 4E was not doing as well as 3E's launch had; but it's worth noting that Goodman has since reduced his support for 4E since the publication of that original document as well.

Ryan Dancey has also provided interesting details on his analysis of 4E's sales. He addresses the ways that "sell outs" can be manipulated very specifically.
You can find Ryan's comments here:
http://rpgpundit.xanga.com/698172157/item/?page=1&jump=1481948581&leftcmt=1#1481948581

Can you link me to the specific sales numbers you mentioned above, or other data? This is a point on which I'd like to be wrong. As I said, I don't *want* to see D&D fail, I'm *worried* that D&D will fail. I certainly don't think D&D's real competition is the prior edition, it's other outlets for nerd entertainment, like videogames and MMOs.
 

Archon

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Rorshach13 said:
I have to wonder-- is Alex Macris' resentment of 4th Edition D&D more of an editorially directed mandate (the Escapist bias against 4th Edition D&D and it's fans has been noted in other places- even by Zak S of I hit it with My Axe). Or rather is it just reflective of the creeping disengagement that the Escapist has with today's roleplaying fans?
Hi Rorshach! There's no editorial mandate at the Escapist that's opposed to 4th edition. If it were, we wouldn't have done a whole issue inspired by the release of the 4th edition Red Box! Our games editor, Greg Tito, was a Wizards playtester for 4E, and wrote 2 supplements for 4E for Goodman Games, actually, and is working on a lunchtime campaign for the office.

We also actually offered to have the Axe crew play 4th edition for the second season of the show and Wizards declined because they were concerned that the show's content was too adult given the age range that Hasbro needs to embrace. In short, Wizards was happier with us not playing 4th, but still talking about D&D. Which actually makes sense when you think about it.

I personally don't have resentment of 4th edition D&D - why would I? 4E didn't erase the other editions. I simply didn't *like* the game as it was released. I can tell you why, but you have no particular reason to care, do you? There are plenty of games that I love and plenty of games that I dont't. As a gamer, I use the edition I like; I don't feel that I have to upgrade. I liked the 2nd edition of Cyberpunk 2020 more than the 1st edition or the 3rd edition. I liked the 4th edition of Stormbringer more than the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 5th. I liked the 1st edition of WFRP more than the 2nd or 3rd.
 

Archon

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JaredXE said:
Ouch, that RPG.Net thread is full of vitriol. They REALLY don't like you.
I thought so too at first. But if you read the full thread, that's how they talk to everybody about everything. So then I felt better, but less special.
 

Badger Kyre

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Archon said:
KCL said:
Then do the research. You're a journalist, after all...
...response
BOOSH!

... NEVER be rude without supporting evidence.

Generally, it's considered bad form to personally insult someone and not include your home address and choice of local dojo.
 

Badger Kyre

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AzraelSteel said:
Badger Kyre said:
I am curious - and this is in no way an insult, slight , or whatever - this is a question of taste and preference , not "a right way" argument...
So may I ask what kind of caharcters you made in 4th that wouldn't have worked as well in previous editions?
I can't remember where the source was (want to say on the Escapist) that the difference between 3.5 and 4e is a difference between high fantasy and low fantasy. That each game, by its nature, attracts certain individuals to play. And I can say without a doubt that I am a high fantasy person when it comes to books or movies or whatnot.
Well; I said it earlier in this thread, no doubt others see it that way as well ( though to be fair, Camaztotz was right, that's been creeping into D&D at *least* since the Lorraine Williams take-over of TSR and it's "diversification" into a younger market/demographic.
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p1.html

Anyway, AZrael points up exactly what I was saying - 4th works better for him because he likes the kind of "high-fantasy" characters where fire-breathing Dragonborn and teleporting Eldar aren't out of place ( as an example ) even in a low-level campaign.

* In lower-fantasy games, such characters would be absolutely out of place and jarring - which is the problem with the "dissociated mechanics". Part of the issue here is that this is the first core system that is THAT geared to "high fantasy" play ( Mr Macris pointed out in his column previously how the rules system CAN determine some of the flavor of the campaign).

Myself, I liked superheroes in my superheroes game ( champions, and V&V - and we had planescape in our V&V campaign, and my Champions DM's setting was ALWAYS the Amber universe- imagine finding out that one of the "supers" you know is just a scion of Amber- now THAT's high fantasy)
...and my fantasy games where definitely "low fantasy" with a touch of Lovecraft and more likely to be based on history than comics...
I - this is my preference - just didn't like my chocolate in my peanut butter, so to speak.

I think the mode and taste at the core of the arguments and vitriol, I am always disturbed when people argue over their preference with the fanaticism of defending the sacred.
 

Badger Kyre

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Archon said:
We also actually offered to have the Axe crew play 4th edition for the second season of the show and Wizards declined because they were concerned that the show's content was too adult given the age range that Hasbro needs to embrace. In short, Wizards was happier with us not playing 4th, but still talking about D&D. Which actually makes sense when you think about it.
HASBRO... you said it.

I mentioned this article earlier :http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p1.html - which may be one of the most comprehensive histories I've seen of D&D in one place -

and i just wanted to point out, as with the Lorraine Williams era, when TSR "cleaned up" D&D to remove devils, nudity, most of the horror references, in order to present a sanitized version to a new, younger demographic ( it was originally primarily for wargamers & college kids, it began to be marketed for the pre- and adolescent "comic book" demographic - most o fthis was done after Gygax lost any control of the company)...
they in the eyes of the old fans, "watered down" what the game had been, making it less grim pulp and more happy cartoony -
and most older gamers i knew were split between loyalty to TSR and D&D, or moving to new games - which most in fact did.
Honestly, D&D was never mechanically a good game, and the loyalty of many of the players was lost by the "spiritual" watering-down of the game, and many of those people fled to more "adult" games when most of TSR's products no longer appealed to them in tone.

Now, instead of Lorraine, we have Hasbro, and alot of the same "you're watering down the spiritual essence of this thing sacred to me" feeling is right at the core of this.

We see this with movie sequels, and with musicians once they "make it" and have to listen to the company they know work for. Book and comic movie-versions...

People used to HAMMER mr Terry Brooks for the work of plagiarism that was "Sword of Shannarah", unaware that he had been REQUIRED to basically re-write LOTR because the suits were sure that was the only fantasy book anyone would read. ( his later novels are much more "his" ).

SO : I maintain that while most of the vitriol comes from emotional attachemnt to one of another preference of "how this should be" ( and I'm guilty, get me started on Drow if you want a show)...
The real issue isn't the flavor of one edition or other, or whether or not "this is even still an RPG" ( we ALWAYS had alot of "hack and slash" gamers in every game I've played - MOST new players start that way, honestly)

I think the issue reamins
. As I said, I don't *want* to see D&D fail, I'm *worried* that D&D will fail. I certainly don't think D&D's real competition is the prior edition, it's other outlets for nerd entertainment, like videogames and MMOs.
 

Benoist

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KCL said:
Or you could just be a typical uninformed interweb writer.
Or you could yourself be the uninformed lambda guy of the intarwebz who thinks he knows everything because he really, really likes the taste of the Kool Aid. But hey, don't take my word for it.
 

Benoist

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Though the Red Box really is not an old school, vintage gaming product, and it really is 4E through and through, I think the accurate comparison isn't with the old red box, Mentzer Basic D&D, but rather with Holmes, the blue book/box of 1977, D&D.

Holmes D&D was intended as an introduction to the AD&D game before it actually came out. It provided its users with a few character levels, a basic understanding of the game, with basic advice and materials for them to create their own adventure content, with the assumption that they would upgrade to AD&D at some point.

The New Red Box provides you with a few levels, gets you into the game as quickly as possible, giving you a basic understanding of how things work, and how to make up your own stuff with it, all the while with the basic assumption that you will upgrade to the Essentials line of products at some point.

The New Red Box really is Holmes D&D's heir. Not Mentzer's.

That's a compliment in my mind.
 

Archon

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Benoist, I think your assessment that the new Red Box is Holme's is spot on. I'm kicking myself that I didn't make that realization when I was doing the interview, because the evidence is RIGHT THERE. Great analysis, man!
 

KCL

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Archon said:
Let's assume that neither of us is uninformed but instead we've consulted different sources. I'll share my sources, and you share yours.
We haven't consulted different sources at all. I'm familiar with all of your links. In fact I considered directing you toward Goodman's analysis in my original reply. You really ought to read it again if you think it supports your claim that 4th Edition isn't doing as well as 3rd Edition. Goodman's evidence is entirely anecdotal, woefully incomplete, and most importantly, it only takes into account 3rd Edition's peak, not its volume of sales from 2000 to 2008. "Is 4E doing as well as D&D sales in the times of 1974-1981? 1983 through 2000? And approximately 2002 through 2008? Yes." And note that 3.5 was released in 2003.

For all the things Goodman missed, see below.

Archon said:
Best-seller lists are not reliable because what is required to get on a bestseller list is dependent on the list and the genre/category, and is relative to the number of other books being bought. It isn't the equivalent of saying "it's a platinum record". It's very hand wavy, and susceptible to manipulation and shifting sentiment. For a good overview, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestseller
Let's be clear here: bestseller lists aren't evidence that 4th Edition is selling better than 3rd Edition, but Joseph Goodman's anecdotal claims are evidence that 4th Edition isn't selling better than 3rd Edition? Even though those claims are limited to a dying distribution channel? Even though those claims say that in fact 4th Edition is selling just as well as or better than 3.5?

Seriously?

Regardless of how you want to spin it, there are only two facts here. 1) 4th Edition outsold all previous editions for which sales records exist. 2) WotC doesn't release its records. It didn't release them for 3rd Edition and it isn't releasing them for 4th Edition. This lack of evidence in no way means that 4th Edition is lagging behind 3rd Edition. To suggest that it does is a formal logical fallacy called "denying the antecedent."

In other words: data is limited, but what data we have suggests that 4th Edition has outdone its predecessor.

Archon said:
With regard to 4th edition seeing larger print runs than 3rd edition and selling through them faster, that is not my understanding of the facts.
It's a fact.

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html

Archon said:
Everything I have read has indicated that D&D's two peak years for sales were 1982 (Moldvay Basic and AD&D) and 2001 (D&D 3rd Edition). Joseph Goodman, a highly respected industry figure, circulated some details on this point.

You can find Goodman's analysis here: http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showthread.php?t=61346
I'm intimately familiar with Goodman's post--the one where he says "4E is doing well, very well," then goes on to describe his experience with smaller hobby shops, not even counting the fact that the majority of D&D's sales are through major chain stores and online retailers. The difference in penetration for, say, Amazon.com between 2000 and 2008 is staggering. And then there's the DDI.

You're exaggerating the status of both Goodman and Dancey, by the way. They aren't authorities, so even if this were one of those rare times when appealing to authority was a valid tactic, they wouldn't--and won't--get you very far.

Archon said:
At the time he thought it was fine that 4E was not doing as well as 3E's launch had; but it's worth noting that Goodman has since reduced his support for 4E since the publication of that original document as well.
Third-party support is indicative of exactly nothing. WotC has largely pushed these companies out, and they've done it intentionally. Scott Rouse and Linae Foster, the two people who were pushing to open up the GSL and revive third-party support, no longer work at WotC.

Archon said:
Ryan Dancey has also provided interesting details on his analysis of 4E's sales. He addresses the ways that "sell outs" can be manipulated very specifically.
You can find Ryan's comments here:
http://rpgpundit.xanga.com/698172157/item/?page=1&jump=1481948581&leftcmt=1#1481948581
Ryan Dancey has been an irrelevant alarmist since WotC downsized him. His entire argument is that tabletop games will die out because they can't compete with video games. He's been saying this for years, and for years he's been wrong.

In case you weren't aware, Dancey is now (and was when he made those comments) the Chief Marketing Officer at CCP, which is a video game company that merged with White Wolf, another major tabletop RPG company, in 2006. If you can't spot the conflict of interest in his half-assed prognostications then I don't know what to tell you.

Archon said:
Can you link me to the specific sales numbers you mentioned above, or other data? This is a point on which I'd like to be wrong. As I said, I don't *want* to see D&D fail, I'm *worried* that D&D will fail. I certainly don't think D&D's real competition is the prior edition, it's other outlets for nerd entertainment, like videogames and MMOs.
And here's when the core books first turned up on a bestseller list:

http://mearls.livejournal.com/151518.html

But I think you're being disingenuous when you say you want to be wrong. Your evidence has been so carefully selected, misread and unvetted that I have a hard time believing you. But then, I don't play any edition of D&D, so it's much easier for me to see all of this for what it really is.
 

Archon

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Nah, no disingenuity.

I recognize Dancey for what he is, and am aware of his conflict of interest (and I dislike what he's done to White Wolf's tabletop presence). But the fact that he HAS moved White Wolf away from doing as much tabletop says he actually believes what he is saying. And, frankly, he's a smart business person, so he's certainly an authority in my mind, as is Goodman.

Goodman's views are not anecdotal - they are based on actually getting the sales documents from a ton of TSR cases as well as from his own sales in the 4E arena. And from what I understand, Goodman no longer thinks 4E is something he should support. What you are saying about lack of support for the GSL certainly would explain that, but that contrasts with what anyone at Wizards has said when I've directly asked them.

In any event, thanks for the ICV link. It's encouraging to read. Here's to a future with lots of tabletop gaming.

EDIT: I'd like to add that my own views here could certainly be skewed by my position in the industry, i.e. we primarily cover videogames. Many times the interaction I have with tabletop game designers eventually leads to them expressing worries about the future of RPGs and frustration that videogames are taking away from tabletop.
 

camazotz

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Badger Kyre said:
And by the way:
camazotz said:
I'm a 29 year vet of D&D as well, and I very much dislike manga in my games; Tieflings, dragonborn and eladrin (in the guise of high elves) have been in the game for a lot longer than manga has been popular, and I honestly don't see parallels with these races. 4th would not do manag themes well at all, in my opinion. It seems like Exalted was tailor made for such, anyway.
Dragonborn? "Dragonborn were originally introduced in the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 supplement book Races of the Dragon, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2008. " -wiki

Tiefling? From Planescape, arguably the most 'super' setting of TSR.

Eladrin ( yes, high elves to distinguish from Wood Elves - a Tolkien dichotomy of Hobbit and LOTR, I beleiev ) - with their "bamf" are pretty fucking "manga" super IMO.

The Drow as a player race, and hell, unearthed arcana overall, is when I started noticing this trend, myself - of course the monk was in AD&D, and that's straight out of Kung Fu movies - so
Camazotz's point is still valid - at leats at higher levels when D&d got "super" anyway - my personal taste was always to lower level games anyway ( why i preferred Runequest)...

However, having these kinds of "super powers" as first-level pc's is more the gist of what i meant, and it's certainly a "manga"-like sensibility ( head space ) - and I think that is fairly specific to 4th edition ( or, exaggerated in ). The race choice is simply an indication or symptom of that shift in sensibility/ taste. Giant manga weapons for everyone, of course, was in 3rd's art style too.

Of course, one could always play 4th and not use the races of the "core" setting; which let's be honest, most of us "grognards" always did.
I'd also like to point out that most of the "grognards" are from a period when most gamers had probably suited up in armor and pounded on each other, and were history and monty python buffs. 'Gamer' is a much more broad demographic now.

ALso, may I point out, most people I knew, started with d&d - it was the default - and usually moved on to "better" games - I think that's generally pretty true amongst gamers.
Dragonborn are a concept: the draconic/reptillian character, brought forth in 4E in a particular incarnation. The idea of something scaly as a playable race actually goes back to Spelljammer when lizard men got stadded as a player race (although curiously Spelljammer didn't do much with it afterwards). I've heard dragonborn got specifically introduced in 3.5, but must have missed that book; I was only aware of the half dragons in 3.5, and previously in the Council of Wyrms books iirc for 2nd edition.

Drow have been a playable race since 1st edition with the release of Arcana Unearthed, and are a very old meme.

Perhaps my general dislike of most manga, as well of my perceptions of it, have led me to see it very differently than people who are more generally familiar with it; although I am inclined to agree that many of the stunts and power elements in 4E have more than a passing nod to the influence of computer gaming in the genre, I rarely see anything in D&D that involves gender confusion, giant robots (warforged strike me as decidedly western, btw), magical sorcerer cat girls (closest I ever saw to this was in the D&D Miniatures handbook for 3E which had catmen as a race), etc. etc. so if there is manga out there that looks and feels like D&D (any edition) I haven't seen it. The fact that I couldn't even stand the first ten minutes of an effort to watch Record of Lodoss War might explain some of this....!

Addendum: on Eladrin, I have found this concept of an elf who can slide in and out of his home reality to be a cool idea, and is more like a High Concept reinterpretation of the cletic legends of sidhee, who were themselves enigmatic beings, dwelling in deep woods with haunted castles that seemed to move in and out of the haunted realms of the faerie. The eladrin simply put a stamp on that and make the concept much more interesting....as well as playable!....than has been attempted (risked) in prior editions.

Second Addendum: As far as 4E's super powers go...I just don't know what to say. They seem no more powerful....indeed often less so!....than the upper levels of 3rd edition. 4E definitely cut out the "pathetically weak" slog of 1st-3rd level from 3.5, though, rebalancing and making such levels more competent (although still ironically pretty weak, relatively speaking). I really do prefer 4th's mechanical approach to character abilities, as it removed ridiculous loads of paperwork, especially at higher levels; most of my 3rd edition campaigns died by level 14 or so, due to the sheer weight of the rules and myriad variables that one had to account for constantly. It has been considerably less so with 4E.
 

camazotz

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Badger Kyre said:
camazotz said:
I'm a 29 year vet of D&D as well, and I very much dislike manga in my games; Tieflings, dragonborn and eladrin (in the guise of high elves) have been in the game for a lot longer than manga has been popular, and I honestly don't see parallels with these races. 4th would not do manag themes well at all, in my opinion. It seems like Exalted was tailor made for such, anyway.

As to the article: interesting rebuttal, but I think it's an unfortunate response/rise to the ridiculous level of flame bait going on over at rpg.net; as a gamer myself who believes games are best played, not debated and picked apart endlessly, I find little controversy here, other than in how sad this aging hobby can look at times as it seems to try and tear itself apart; for some reason paper and pencil rpgs aren't handling generational transitions/aging demographic issues very well, it seems.

But still, good rebuttal, I suppose!
Well, I think the manga/ kung fu/ superhero stuff all takes up the same "head space", so to speak - MovieBob did an article on that, using hogwarts/ x-men et al as his example.

I think thematically, even if you disagree with my "manga" / final fantasy term, the point is still valid - the older "pulp" fantasy tended to be more about the "hero" - less super -
whereas the "newer" fantasy tends to have more of a "superhero" ( what i call manga- ish ) feel-
and I don't totally disagree with you - alot of that shift i saw, myself, when TSR started purposefully marketing towards the "comic book" demographic ( and you're right, that is before manga had made it's way into western fantasy).

ALOT of the underlying argument to me SEEMS to come down to that difference in taste - people who like the grim "realistic" fantasy ( MArtin or Cook would be modern examples of this sensibilty) as opposed to people who like more of the "superhero" high fantasy ( Salvatore is a good example of that )

I think this point remains valid even if you disagree with my terms.

ANd i want to be clear that although I MYSELf have my preferences, I don't say "my way" is the right/ true/ perfect way - 'tis a matter of taste and flavor.
I think alot of the debate is, unintentionally, people defending their preference on this.

Relatedly is the "dissociated mechanic" issue, which to me mirrors this - some people want an RPG to be, more or less their interaction with a fantasy world that, until RPG's, one could only spectate in instead of participate in...

I'd like to think that, relatedly, this comes back to what you said - a good part of why rpg's as we knew them may be "threatened" - the ability to interact is no longer a "new" concept/ monopoly.

Certanly a recurring theme in Mr Mearns discussion is the accessibility of interacting, that other mediums prove to be easier, or at least more accessible, than the traditional RPG with all it's complexity and "volume".

Edit/ Post script - i personally don't like 4th very much - matter of taste - and i definitely feel it is geared towards "super" characters.
I also think 3rd was BETTER as a tactical wargame, Temple of Ellie Evil being a fine example - certainly the characters had more tactical OPTIONS with feats than are offered in the powers choices in 4th.
The only thing I personally liked about 4th, mechanically, was that FINALLY your combat skill makes you harder to hit ( which we have always had as a house rule).
Interesting, seems I am not the only one that started D&D in '81.
Moldvay/ Erol Otus cover basic set FTW.
We tell the Hobgoblins: " Gary sent us".
I definitely agree that a fair amount of the controversy boils down to the mileage we are all getting out of a given system; I burned out --badly-- on 3rd edition in 2006-2007 so much so I returned to 2nd edition/OSRIC and ran that until 4th edition was released. I much prefer 4E for the exact same reasons you don't like it; I feel that 3rd was a cumbersome rule system overlaid with redundant system cleverly hidden behind what looked like a unifying mechanic. For me, the system got in the way of a good time more often than not. 4E has proven to be a refreshing change of pace, and reinvigorated my interest in D&D in a fashion I have not enjoyed since my college years with 2nd edition.

As a side, I run Runequest II (the newest edition from Mongoose) and quite enjoy it, preferring Runequest as my default system for more cerebral, realistic games; I totally agree with anyone who suggests it that 4th edition D&D is much better at running a certain style of more cinematic game, and there are other systems that do the job of a less combat-centric style of RPG much better than it; Runequest is my go-to system for that. I am also exploring Legends of Anglerre which recently came out, and is a marvelous work; it may also serve much the same purpose. But when I want to run a game of epic adventure with Big Damn Heroes against The Evil Overlord or some Cosmic Menace, D&D 4th edition is proving to be a great set of rules for the job.
 

KCL

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Archon said:
I recognize Dancey for what he is, and am aware of his conflict of interest (and I dislike what he's done to White Wolf's tabletop presence). But the fact that he HAS moved White Wolf away from doing as much tabletop says he actually believes what he is saying. And, frankly, he's a smart business person, so he's certainly an authority in my mind
Are you aware of his history with GAMA [http://ogrecave.com/2004/07/30/board-breaking-at-gama-karate-not-involved/] as well? Dancey isn't a very principled person. So when he claims that scarcity equates to, of all things, poor sales, you really can't take him at his word. He's been spreading this kind of FUD for the better part of a decade now. If you aren't already active at ENWorld, you might find it interesting to dig up some of the old threads that Dancey's comments have spawned.

Anyway, Dancey is the CMO, so he isn't responsible for White Wolf's direction as a company. It's just his job to promote that direction, which he's done by, among other things, trumpeting it on blogs and forums as the one true way forward for all RPGs. That's the conflict.

Archon said:
as is Goodman.
To a certain extent. He certainly isn't loathed like Dancey. Quite the opposite, actually.

Archon said:
Goodman's views are not anecdotal - they are based on actually getting the sales documents from a ton of TSR cases as well as from his own sales in the 4E arena.
They're mostly anecdotal. For example, the FLGS isn't "the lifeblood of the industry" anymore. It's just the lifeblood of Goodman Games, because very few people know what Goodman Games is and sales are more likely in a browsing environment with salesperson feedback. D&D's mind share is many orders of magnitude larger, though. The FLGS is a very small part of D&D.

At the same time, while Goodman claims to have "read it all" when it comes to TSR's financial records from suits they were involved in, he has no special insight into WotC-era sales. He only knows how well his own products have sold in the limited channels he has to peddle them. That's the definition of anecdotal.

And, just to reiterate: the success of third-party companies tells us nothing one way or the other about D&D, especially since 4th Edition, for better or for worse, has gone out of its way to phase these companies out. A hundred different third-party companies folded during 3rd Edition, but 3rd Edition was still a resounding success.

Archon said:
And from what I understand, Goodman no longer thinks 4E is something he should support. What you are saying about lack of support for the GSL certainly would explain that, but that contrasts with what anyone at Wizards has said when I've directly asked them.
And that may very well be true, but it only means that he hasn't been successful with 4th Edition--it doesn't mean that 4th Edition itself isn't successful. I don't know who you've spoken to at WotC, but I'd imagine that the creative staff still very much support the ideals behind the OGL. Mearls, for example, made his name doing OGL (and possibly d20 STL) work. In fact he's responsible for one of only two d20 games that I, personally, like (Iron Heroes--the other is Mutants & Masterminds). The business end (so to speak) of WotC, though, seems to have a very different take on open gaming.

But as long as the Character Builder remains closed, the actual licensing terms are irrelevant. Third-party products won't sell without CB integration due to the popularity of the DDI. Even if 4th Edition had been released under the OGL, third-party support would still have died out. People just don't want material that isn't included in the online tools.

Archon said:
EDIT: I'd like to add that my own views here could certainly be skewed by my position in the industry, i.e. we primarily cover videogames. Many times the interaction I have with tabletop game designers eventually leads to them expressing worries about the future of RPGs and frustration that videogames are taking away from tabletop. But if you told anyone here at The Escapist that I genuinely wanted D&D or rpgs to die, well, you'd be laughed out of the room. I'm afraid you'll have to think me sloppy instead!
I wouldn't have said you wanted D&D to die, but as someone who follows industry news closely and has seen these claims pop up on other sites before, I find it disconcerting when readily available data is overlooked. And, as a freelance writer myself, and actually also as a sometimes logic and argumentation instructor, I take journalistic ethics pretty seriously.

I wasn't comparing you to Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass or anything. But I'm quite fond of The Escapist and was really disappointed by the slant. It makes me wonder how much I can trust other articles on subjects I'm not as knowledgeable about. I wasn't trying to be snide in my original reply though--it was more a case of cursing at your favorite football team after a fumble. You do it out of love!
 

Archon

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KCL said:
Are you aware of his history with GAMA [http://ogrecave.com/2004/07/30/board-breaking-at-gama-karate-not-involved/] as well? Dancey isn't a very principled person. So when he claims that scarcity equates to, of all things, poor sales, you really can't take him at his word. He's been spreading this kind of FUD for the better part of a decade now. If you aren't already active at ENWorld, you might find it interesting to dig up some of the old threads that Dancey's comments have spawned.
I actually *wasn't* aware of that GAMA incident. That's really disreputable. My only interaction with Dancey was about 10 years ago, when I questioned Wizard's motives with regard to the OGL and he told me off. (You can actually still find that thread on Google). I'm not particularly active at ENWorld, as I mostly devote myself to the Escapist community, but I'm certainly curious now.

Anyway, Dancey is the CMO, so he isn't responsible for White Wolf's direction as a company. It's just his job to promote that direction, which he's done by, among other things, trumpeting it on blogs and forums as the one true way forward for all RPGs. That's the conflict.
I had a sense that he was influential in steering them in that direction, but that may simply be because he is good at self-promotion. Thanks for clarifying.

They're mostly anecdotal. For example, the FLGS isn't "the lifeblood of the industry" anymore. It's just the lifeblood of Goodman Games, because very few people know what Goodman Games is and sales are more likely in a browsing environment with salesperson feedback. D&D's mind share is many orders of magnitude larger, though. The FLGS is a very small part of D&D.

At the same time, while Goodman claims to have "read it all" when it comes to TSR's financial records from suits they were involved in, he has no special insight into WotC-era sales. He only knows how well his own products have sold in the limited channels he has to peddle them. That's the definition of anecdotal.
Fair enough. I have heard nothing but good things about Goodman, so I'm glad you don't have anything negative to share. So, to be clear, your understanding of the situation is that overall Wizards is doing better with 4E than they were doing with 3.5E, although not as good as they were doing with the 2001 3E surge?

And, just to reiterate: the success of third-party companies tells us nothing one way or the other about D&D, especially since 4th Edition, for better or for worse, has gone out of its way to phase these companies out. A hundred different third-party companies folded during 3rd Edition, but 3rd Edition was still a resounding success.
Right. The decision of whether to support third parties is a different discussion. I already went on record as saying that I think the survival of RPGs is generally going to be linked to the fate of D&D. I haven't yet decided whether I think the OGL or GSL model is better for that.

And that may very well be true, but it only means that he hasn't been successful with 4th Edition--it doesn't mean that 4th Edition itself isn't successful. I don't know who you've spoken to at WotC, but I'd imagine that the creative staff still very much support the ideals behind the OGL. Mearls, for example, made his name doing OGL (and possibly d20 STL) work. In fact he's responsible for one of only two d20 games that I, personally, like (Iron Heroes--the other is Mutants & Masterminds). The business end (so to speak) of WotC, though, seems to have a very different take on open gaming.
Everyone I've spoken to has been on the creative side, yes. And you have great taste in RPGs, sir! I own Iron Heroes and am good friends with the folks at Green Ronin. We had a long-running M&M campaign here at The Escapist.

But as long as the Character Builder remains closed, the actual licensing terms are irrelevant. Third-party products won't sell without CB integration due to the popularity of the DDI. Even if 4th Edition had been released under the OGL, third-party support would still have died out. People just don't want material that isn't included in the online tools.
Right. I actually asked about that in my interview. It's definitely a deal breaker for a lot of folks. It seems like WOTC could create an open API for integration to the Character Builder if WOTC wanted to....

I wouldn't have said you wanted D&D to die, but as someone who follows industry news closely and has seen these claims pop up on other sites before, I find it disconcerting when readily available data is overlooked.
I actually can't say that I think that article you linked is readily available! I am pretty good at Google and I couldn't find it. There's so much "white noise" with regard to D&D/4E that finding anything is hard if you don't know exactly what to look for. So, anyway, I want you to know that the absence wasn't anything other than me failing a Search check.

And, as a freelance writer myself, and actually also as a sometimes logic and argumentation instructor, I take journalistic ethics pretty seriously. I wasn't comparing you to Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass or anything. But I'm quite fond of The Escapist and was really disappointed by the slant. It makes me wonder how much I can trust other articles on subjects I'm not as knowledgeable about. I wasn't trying to be snide in my original reply though--it was more a case of cursing at your favorite football team after a fumble. You do it out of love!
I totally understand. I get riled up about the things I'm passionate about too. As far as a fumble, well, the reality of it is that we publish a lot of content here at The Escapist. We are rare in that we actually even HAVE a full-time fact checker for our content (to my knowledge, no other gaming website does). But even so, sometimes things will slip through the cracks. Frankly, if I were Wizards I'd be making more noise about the success of 4E, because that message is not getting out there. Next time I interview Wizards, I'm going to steer the questions about how they're exploiting success, etc., and see where that leads.

I really appreciate your thoughtful response - thank you.
 

Norm Morrison IV

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Kilo24 said:
veloper said:
christofsch said:
In the economics of the roleplaying games, i see one unique point, which was mentionted at the end of the Interview by Mike, when he said that people still play starcraft.
The question is, how much money got blizzard of them after there purchase of starcraft?

Once someone/a group has found the perfect rpg for their tastes, they play it forever, because the creation of new material and houserules is so easy.
For the players that is great, for the industry not so good.
My gamemaster has found Shadowrun 2/3 and Earthdawn as best for his taste. Both systems are out of print, but the limiting factor of our fun, is finding time for sessions, not running out of material.
So, we have a business, where making you customers happy and not making them happy is bad for your longterm success.
So changing stuff is necessary for succes, once you have grown to a certain point. Because the people, who where perfectly happy with your old game, dont need a new one.
Great first post.

This is all there is to it. The fans of the old, can and should stick to the old. The new is for players unsatisfied with the old.
With the specific example of Starcraft, I'm pretty sure they still make a moderate amount of money from it. There's advertisements on Battle.net (at least pre-Battle.net 2.0) and there's the brand loyalty associated with Blizzard's games and more specifically Starcraft 2 (and its 3 separate parts.) I'm pretty sure that, while it's no World of Warcraft, they're still making a profit from it - especially since the development costs are long-gone.

The point's more valid for tabletop games, partially because of the expectations of the medium, partially because there's fewer things to flat-out upgrade like graphics.

But there are still a number of things that can be applied to improve a game system. Eliminating needless complexity is a big one of them (THAC0 from 2nd edition, saving throws versus attack rolls from 3rd/3.5 edition.) There's also tweaking balance and adding in a few more interesting abilities - Pathfinder and 3.5 both were editions focused around this idea, and they did a pretty good job. There are also shifts in gaming philosophy, newer ideas for more elegant mechanics that couldn't be done before because no-one had thought of them. These all contribute to the value of a new edition, which is precisely where the designers make their money.

4th edition had a number of improvements on the system, but it also screwed with the focus to a degree that previous editions had not. There are few rules for what characters can do outside of combat (aside from skill challenges, which are still not hard-and-fast determinants of a character's abilities.) Some decisions could be described as baffling and unnecessary (removing half of the alignment system.) Everything was focused around combat moreso than previous editions - the out-of-combat abilities of rituals were carefully designed to deny any abuse, but that also limited creativity (and put a constant price tag on making your wizard feel like a wizard.) Combat was much-improved from the already excellent 3.5 combat and positioning mechanics, but it became harder to tweak the feel of the game without upsetting the balance of the different classes and in many cases swapped out out-of-combat mechanical clarity for the in-combat clarity. Oozes can go prone, undead can be sneak attacked, web spells can't be burned away, which simplify the rules but now there's a wider gulf to explain exactly what happened.

There's also the change in tone from earlier editions. 4e exudes a sense of "everyone wants to be an adventurer and slaughter monsters all day," borne out by the class/race/power descriptions, alignment system, lack of out-of-combat rules, and pretty much everything cosmetic about the whole design. It encourages roleplaying to be a colorful aside to the combat and does little to explain the increased gap between the logic of the game-world and the real-world. As an example, I still remember the 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide trying to explain how vast amounts of wealth could be just lying around in treasure hoards for adventurers to pick up, and looking at medieval history for inspiration in how to actually store wealth. 3rd edition dropped that and similar rationalizations from the actual books and put price tags on and a marketplace for magic items as a commodity. 4th edition went even further than that and just suffused the game with a MMO-style economy of eternally escalating item prices and bonuses, ignoring that any 21st level character could feed a kingdom for 20 years instead of upgrading their +4 Belt Buckle of Shininess to a +5. The whole setting is working from a self-referential viewpoint on fantasy, not one connected with reality. It's taken wizards and monsters running around as granted from the previous editions, now it's turning what was originally ripped from Lord of the Rings into chainmail bikinis, Gandalf zapping orcs with his once-an-encounter lightning bolts, and saving the world into a day job for the adventuring parties of the world.

Can a creative DM overcome that? Absolutely. But they're doing it without much aid from the books and have to work against a lot of the mechanics that balance the game to do so. And the image of the game is rather tied into that whole naive conception of adventuring and saving the world.

Me, I like 4th edition because I'm not that fond of Dungeon and Dragons's settings, even from 2nd edition and on (with the exception of Planescape, though I do prefer Planescape: Torment's more personal/subjective take on it rather than the pen-and-paper version's.) 4e turns what was good combat into excellent combat that rewards tactical thinking and encourages teamwork in ways that most other RPGs don't. A lot of them fall to the problem of specialization in activities: you send in the rogue to disarm traps because he's got the spot checks, the bard to talk with people because he has the high plus to diplomacy, the barbarian to kill things, the priest to heal, and so on. That problem is that most characters who specialize are just flat-out better than anyone else at a given activity, so a 4-man team becomes 4 one-man teams who do only what they're good at, and don't interact with eachother. 4th edition solved that: all characters have diverse but not absolutely necessary capacities within combat and have nothing distinguishing about them outside of combat.

The Red Box seems to be a combination of more options and some of the 3rd edition attempts at increasing the fanbase scope through "dumbing it down" and branding to me. There's more D&D-flavored rules and options from what I read, but what would really interest me - a maturation of the setting through actually examining the setting - just isn't there. Just another supplement, I suppose.
Just wanted to give some kudos here. Understanding what type of games a ruleset is suited to create seems to be too big picture for a lot of folk (much of the present company excepted), and it is really critical, in my book, as to who will play and enjoy a game.
A good GM can do a lot, but a ruleset that works with the type of game he wants to play creates a much better overall experience for everyone.


BTW, Ben, totally on target on the Holmes recognition vibe. Props to you, brother.
 

Archon

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Regarding 4E v. old school, when I read Essentials I realized that what 4e calls an "encounter" is not fundamentally different than what classic D&D called a "turn": An arbitrary time period of 10 minutes, which was used to measure all chunks of activity. In Classic D&D, battles were fought in 10 second "rounds", but all battles, even if shorter than 60 rounds, still took 1 turn because you were assumed to take a short rest afterwards to clean your weapons and catch your breath.

For example, in Classic D&D, the Ring of Invisibility can be used once per turn. In practice, this is *exactly* the same as saying it can be used once per encounter. You start the battle invisible, when you attack and reveal yourself you appear, and then you can't turn invisible again until the next turn, which will coincidentally also be the next encounter.

Mike Mearls ruined turns!