The Truth About 4th Edition: Part Two of Our Exclusive Interview with Wizards of the Coast

[Slycne]

Ah yes the dreaded 4th editions... Weird thing Shadowrun 4th edition, Black Eye 4th Edition... both are a step down from previous too. It is as if the publishers all had a big meeting in 2005 or so, where they decided to all release weird stuff the next time.

Ah well. It's not that you HAVE to change.

Yea, but Shadowrun's 4th edition was in hardcover which factored into our decision to play it way more than it should. The amount of 2nd and 3rd edition Shadowrun books we went through because they were softcover over the years was insane. My 4th edition hardcover is still in tip top shape!

Yeah, I finally gave up trying to keep my 3rd edition Shadowrun book together, I hole punched the whole book and put it in a binder.

You guys are smoking crack, I used to have a hard-bound Shadowrun 2nd Ed book, lasted me five years.

EDIT: I bought it in 1993 so maybe you guys just weren't born yet.

3rd Edition actually did have an extremely limited run of hard covers, but otherwise they were all soft covers. I only ever played in 3rd before trying out other systems, it was simply what was out at the time I bought it. And yes I was born well before '93.

 

[the December King]

Back in the nineties, I once was a paper-and-pencil, dice-rolling, book-buying, ciggarette-smoking, pepsi-chugging role-playing-game master. Rifts, StarWars(the WestEnd game, not that crap WOTC puts out, feats, ha!),Shadowrun 2nd Edition, Paranoia, even AD&D 2nd Edition. I gotta say, now that I have my own computer, or could have a job to get my own computer, all those piles of paper and dice, each flippin' book costing twenty to thirty dollars, all that was garbage.

After a while, all we did was get together to role-play ostensibly but when we got to whoever's house it was, we just sat around and drank beers and liquor. I look back at the time now, and wonder, maybe we should have gotten off our asses and went for a walk, or did something that didn't make us so fat. We could have been out having sex, by golly!

Nowadays, expecting to get four to six antagonist thirteen-year-olds to spend five hours in a room together is a little naive, to my view. Paper RPGs have a niche, I suppose, but one that shrinks every day. Barring the collapse of electricity, it's just smarter to save your money and buy a PC or even a console, if you like having fun with friends. Imagining the action and gameplay while depending on dice to determine your progress with a, perhaps shitty, gamemaster is just obsolete.

I don't know, odubya23. It might be obsolete, but I have yet to have an experience that matches some of our second ed, third ed and pathfinder games (Except for going out and having sex, you're right about that). Not every game, mind- but that can be true of all venues.

Oh, I suppose I'm not 13, though- not in the ripe target market. Hmmm...

Nonetheless, I will continue to play.

As to fourth edition, the nail in it's coffin for our group of players was the absence of an official conversion method. We have been playing out complex arcs and character development for a long, long time, and although we all found the system quite fun, we also felt like we were leaving behind a world that we weren't done with. We tried both for a while... but as time passed our preference was made manifest.

 

[Alex_P]

Nowadays, expecting to get four to six antagonist thirteen-year-olds to spend five hours in a room together is a little naive, to my view. Paper RPGs have a niche, I suppose, but one that shrinks every day. Barring the collapse of electricity, it's just smarter to save your money and buy a PC or even a console, if you like having fun with friends. Imagining the action and gameplay while depending on dice to determine your progress with a, perhaps shitty, gamemaster is just obsolete.

There's stuff one can do to address that:
- Cut down the number of hours required to play a meaningful session. Cut down the number of session requires to play a meaningful campaign.
- Don't base "progress" around an endless series of die rolls.
- Don't make everything depend on the gamemaster so much.

Make RPGs more like "euro-games" than complicated 15-hour-marathon-session board games that take 50 turns and 1,000 highly-swingy die rolls to complete.

Now, that may actually shrink the niche further rather than growing it, but, goddammit, I think you'll get a better game.

-- Alex

 

[Fenixius]

I tried, but Wizards has a very high Dexterity, they dodged all my attacks.

Bah! Rogues, the lot of them! Keep trying 'till you crit! They always hit, right?!

I do appreciate this collaboration between Escapist and Wizards of the Coast, though. More to come, right? ^^

 

[samsonguy920]

I am not surprised they cut out the OGL, i am sure some marketers at Hasbro are wishing it never existed so pathfinder wasn't stealing market share (hasbro ((i think its hasbro)) owns WOTC)

As long as Wizards keeps their wheels turning, Hasbro will keep Wizards going. Everything I have seen so far has led me to believe that Hasbro has kept their hands off of D&D, except to help facilitate a lot of new distribution and exposure.

From what I've learned, they have kept their hands off the roleplay aspect of it, that is an area Hasbro wasn't set up to handle and it was profitable, so they are not touching it. They mostly interfere in the board game side of WOTC, and I wouldn't guess are responsible for some of the new modifications to Magic that are basically saving the game. They are being a rather good parent company so far

Don't jinx it!
I used to play Magic a lot but when friends moved away and then I had to move I have been out of touch of what has been going on with expansions and such. But it is nice to know it is still going strong.

 

[magnuslion]

So, the new Red Box and the Essentials are basically going to be the Basic Box, with half-assed rules set and only enough info for a couple levels....for $20. But if you want to move beyond that, then spend more for the remaining levels and purchase the core books.

Hmmm.

Oh yeah, nice legal evasion with not fully answering about the OGL. Those two must have a couple levels in rogue.

*facepalm* And I am now more of a nerd than I was 10 minutes ago.

true. but you are very, very right, they dont want to admit that they lost money because of the ogl. everytime someone published a successfull book, the shareholders porbably got pissed off because the were not getting a piece of it.

Back in the nineties, I once was a paper-and-pencil, dice-rolling, book-buying, ciggarette-smoking, pepsi-chugging role-playing-game master. Rifts, StarWars(the WestEnd game, not that crap WOTC puts out, feats, ha!),Shadowrun 2nd Edition, Paranoia, even AD&D 2nd Edition. I gotta say, now that I have my own computer, or could have a job to get my own computer, all those piles of paper and dice, each flippin' book costing twenty to thirty dollars, all that was garbage.

After a while, all we did was get together to role-play ostensibly but when we got to whoever's house it was, we just sat around and drank beers and liquor. I look back at the time now, and wonder, maybe we should have gotten off our asses and went for a walk, or did something that didn't make us so fat. We could have been out having sex, by golly!

Nowadays, expecting to get four to six antagonist thirteen-year-olds to spend five hours in a room together is a little naive, to my view. Paper RPGs have a niche, I suppose, but one that shrinks every day. Barring the collapse of electricity, it's just smarter to save your money and buy a PC or even a console, if you like having fun with friends. Imagining the action and gameplay while depending on dice to determine your progress with a, perhaps shitty, gamemaster is just obsolete.

well it sounds to me like you had a lousy gamemaster. and if all you did was get together and drink, you could have done that without rpgs.

 

[Alex_P]

well it sounds to me like you had a lousy gamemaster. and if all you did was get together and drink, you could have done that without rpgs.

Sure, blame the GM for everything. God forbid any roleplayer ever actually takes some goddamn responsibility for making his own fun.

-- Alex

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I don't really care one way or another about 4th edition. Just because there is enough gameplay in the core 3rd/3.5 edition books to last a lifetime.

I'm too old now, I can't put in the 20 hours a week it takes to be a good DM (and the 150+ hours it takes to create a campaign) not counting the 6 hours a week of gameplay. And it is just getting harder and harder to get 4-6 people's schedules to synch up because of work and family commitments.

At some point I'm going to try to set up an online DnD game, where everyone is sitting at their comps with webcams and talking on skype or teamspeak.

 

[Eldan]

You could do it like I did, and invest an hour per week to be an okay GM instead of a good one

At least I got better at improvising.

And I'll give 4E a chance as soon as I see a way to convert my favourite character: illusionist/enchanter without any combat magic. Combat is for people too stupid to avoid it.

 

[Fenixius]

Sure, blame the GM for everything. God forbid any roleplayer ever actually takes some goddamn responsibility for making his own fun.

-- Alex

While I agree; the GM is far too important in the current DnD/PnP RPG setup, I think you'll find that a lot of roleplayers -are- making their own fun by chatting and drinking and hanging out.

That is indeed a valid form of fun. It's just a pity that some people choose it at the expense of others peoples' roleplaying fun, and their GM's effort in preparing.

 

[JeffersonTwilight]

Look out Atreyu! It's The Nothing! As in hey we have already saturated the market for this product and we need to release a new version so that they have to buy it again. Or as in my case not, if i wanted to play wow on the table top i would play the damn card game. Game play needs to be new and fresh my ass the kids just need to take their adderal and they can concentrate just fine. Personally i prefer Shadowrun 4th ed because now i don't have to have over 40 dice to make my attack and social intercourse rolls.

 

[Razzelmire]

Didn't like the interview. You missed some very important questions such as:

"Why did you piss off so many of your loyal fans by destroying the mythology built around D&D for over 30 years?"

"Why did you continue to piss them off by altering every aspect of D&D so that it no longer resembled anything like any of its predecessors except in some terminology?"

"Why can't you understand that the MMO generation doesn't give a crap about WoW-on-Paper when they have tons of actual PC games to play. Did you realize too late your largest customer base were the old schoolers?"

"Will 3E return if 4E continues to fail?"

 

[Alex_P]

"Why did you piss off so many of your loyal fans by destroying the mythology built around D&D for over 30 years?"

I'll give you this one. It's a fair question. I think it was alluded to and dodged. Would've been nice to see a bit more of a push here.
(Although, honestly, you fans of 3rd Edition and AD&D really don't understand how much of the mythology was already "destroyed".)

"Why did you continue to piss them off by altering every aspect of D&D so that it no longer resembled anything like any of its predecessors except in some terminology?"

Oh, yeah, why didn't you relentlessly hound Andy Collins with cry-baby whining, Escapist staff?

"Why can't you understand that the MMO generation doesn't give a crap about WoW-on-Paper when they have tons of actual PC games to play. Did you realize too late your largest customer base were the old schoolers?"

That's not a question. It's hardly even a rhetorical question.
And it's a misguided rhetorical question, since the main customer base of 3rd Edition definitely didn't consist of "old-schoolers".

"Will 3E return if 4E continues to fail?"

No, obviously. Do you need to ask?

-- Alex

 

[mxyzplk]

I think re-doing the boxed sets are a good idea. I also think that their desire to get "those kids nowadays" into D&D by streamlining 4e was a good idea poorly executed. From an outsider's point of view, 4e isn't that much less complex than any other version; it's still hundreds of pages worth of picky little stuff. It's certainly not "let's get the twitch monkeys into the action fast!!!" It also doesn't make its value proposition clear. "Hey, we're kinda like a pen and paper WoW" begs the question of "Why am I not just playing WoW?" I would think that e.g. the role-playing aspect would be a distinguisher, but in 4e they really focused on the rules may more than other aspects.

Maybe the boxed sets (if they think carefully about the real user stories/use cases) will be a better way to introduce younger gamers and cross-pollinate with other genre/CRPG fans.

 

[angelfromanotherpin]

4th Edition did not capture even half of the third edition base. At any convention, 3.x edition games outnumber 4th edition games. It has failed super hard.

That is why 4th edition is being surreptitiously dropped. New books have stopped being solicited, and new releases have stopped being announced in favor of the 'Essentials' line. They will pretend that the Essentials line is 4e, but the rulebooks are being pared down so far that it literally cannot be the same game.

 

[Alex_P]

4th Edition did not capture even half of the third edition base. At any convention, 3.x edition games outnumber 4th edition games. It has failed super hard.

Be wary of drawing conclusions from conventions. They don't reflect the overall demographics of the hobby too well. This is self-evident just from the average age of the attendees.

-- Alex