Café de Nuit

I know that most people here will have already heard this by the time I have posted it.

However, 4th Edition has been announced at Gen Con. What does that mean for Ravenloft fans? Well, it has also been announced that 4th Edition will not be OGL. 3rd party publishers will have to buy the rights to publish what they want using the 4th Edition rules.

That doesn't change too much since, Arthaus had to buy the rights to use Ravenloft material any way. But we'll definately see less 3rd party material out there.

No I had not heard this. any websites reporting this news?

There's a doomsday counter type thing on the official dnd website. And the boards have almost degenerated into mass hysteria. By the time the counter hits 0 im predicting riots.

The counter page is titled 4DVENTURE and has a graphic of a number of dice all displaying the number 4. There are less than 12 hours remaining on the clock, looks like we will get the "official" announcement this afternoon.

Oh well ain't that a peach.

Maybe they'll give everyone the 4th edition rules for free!

Why am I not holding my breath?

Well, I suppose it makes sense, WotC has rather been scraping the barrel for the last things to publish, therefore: 4th Edition.

Okay an addena to what I reported before. Some members of the press found out that there will be an OGL for 4th Edition. As far as what we know so far you can look at the front page of ENWorld.

http://www.enworld.org/

Until I actually SEE the GenCon announcement I'll stick to the opinion that WotC is just yanking chains. Keep in mind GenCon is the "hottest 4 days in gaming".

Keep in mind the "source" on that ENworld link was some schlub who happened to have "inside knowledge" because :

Yesterday i have seen here the news regarding 4E but it appears that you are in a bit of a time lag - Thanks to silverstars (israel publisher), we here at israel got all the beans already

Plus its being posted by a dude with 18 posts at ENWorld.

In the meantime WotC has pretty much shut their website down for 24 hours, good luck getting errata now. And I need a character sheet. Bugger.

Rucht Lilavivat wrote:Okay an addena to what I reported before. Some members of the press found out that there will be an OGL for 4th Edition.

Makes sense. Wizards certainly wouldn't want its new edition to have to compete with the freebie incarnation of the previous one, so updating the SRD lets them keep the OGL as a promotional tool rather than a rival.

Assuming this is for real, I'm curious as to what they'll have re-engineered this time around. The 1E/2E changeover was mostly a roleplay-over-rollplay adjustment, and the 2E/3E transition was primarily about standardizing the rules under the Almighty 20-Sider. 4E will clearly be heavy on the online tools, but what else will be different?

Also, how much will they have pumped up dragons' stats this time?

They'd be insane not to make it OGL. Whatever improvements they make, 3e is entirely functional as is and is OGL, so many, many people are just going to stick with it, regardless. Very few people would bother with 4e if there's a perfectly good, "free" alternative.

The OGL was a bad idea for published books. Wizards thought that everyone would pick up the slack and release the stuff they wouldn't; ie generic adventures and that publishers would stay away from campaign settings and the like. Oops.

I can see them wanting to cut down on the 3rd party books taking their market share but keeping some form of OGL for online writers.

I am sticking with 3.5 and not buying 4th. I guess they don't have enough money and needed a new scheme to make more?

new edition = new books and more moolah for WotC.

GOTTA BUY THEM ALL!!! It's like "D&D the Gathering" collector game!

3.5E, I CHOOSE YOU!!! *Hurls 3.5E books at people*