5e announced!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Is Wizards willing to ''lose face'' and join some kind of PF hybrid / compromise bandwagon?

Hooboy... you just gave me a scary thought.... There's one way WotC can bring back the PF fans to WotC.... they could buy Paizo. Hasbro's pockets are deep enough.


Anyway, your assessment of things is spot on, I think, regarding the "perfect storm" of 3e and the demise of 2e. If anyone hasn't read these articles, I highly recommend them:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... f-D-D-Past
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... -D-Present
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... ons-Future

[Jonathan Winters]

Thanks for the articles (I skimed through them, have to read them again).

I would not be too worried about Paizo being bought off, IMHO, I don't get the feeling Erik Mona and the rest have any plans of selling the company at the moment.

And the first impression I'm getting reading this is how Mike Mearls almost keeps apologizing for 4E and / or how some things were done... Hum...

Patrick

[MichaelTumey]

While it may be true that any business who is offered a profitable buy-out by another company would consider it. You have to remember Lisa Stevens and her significant other Vic Wertz got a buyout from Hasbro, of multi-millions of dollars (based on their WotC shares ownership and involvement with Pokemon). So this was the capital used to create Paizo in the first place. While investments were made in creating Pathfinder and their AP line, the money and the owners of the company are all inhouse (they aren't a publicly traded company). There is no stockholder base, which might deem a buy-out offer despite the company heads view on it - is not the case for Paizo.

I don't think Paizo would sell, as they are currently in a strong financial situation, as well as the heads of the company are also the owners of the company - all reasons for Hasbro buying out Paizo a very unlikely situation. I don't think Lisa would sell.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Thanks for the reassurance there. I actually know very little about the founding of Paizo, but I just think of them as the David here and WotC as the Goliath.

[ewancummins]

Is Wizards willing to ''lose face'' and join some kind of PF hybrid / compromise bandwagon?

Hooboy... you just gave me a scary thought.... There's one way WotC can bring back the PF fans to WotC.... they could buy Paizo. Hasbro's pockets are deep enough.


Anyway, your assessment of things is spot on, I think, regarding the "perfect storm" of 3e and the demise of 2e. If anyone hasn't read these articles, I highly recommend them:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... f-D-D-Past
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... -D-Present
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... ons-Future

'Demise' is a bit dramatic, I think. It's not as if people who like 2E quit playing it.

Wizards has been trying to recreate the runaway sales they had with the 3.0 core books. The main reason for releasing new editions is to sell new rulebooks. Rulebook sales are where they make most of their money on D&D, and always have been.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

'Demise' is a bit dramatic, I think. It's not as if people who like 2E quit playing it.

Agreed. Consider "demise" retracted and replaced with "cancellation."

[ewancummins]

'Demise' is a bit dramatic, I think. It's not as if people who like 2E quit playing it.

Agreed. Consider "demise" retracted and replaced with "cancellation."

I sympathize with the guys at WotC/Hasbro. They have their work cut out for them. It's going to be difficult to design and market 5E so that it can regain fans of previous editions, retain 4E fans, and gain all new customers.

[HuManBing]

Yeah, and on top of that, the tabletop rpg market is contracting, not expanding.

One thing that I think they might focus on is the in-person, face-to-face dynamic of tabletop rpgs. If they just go for a ruleset and a generic adventure setting, they're really not doing anything different from online games or computer rpgs. Something that gets into the mechanics of fun game design and tabletop play, perhaps analyzing the various types of players and genres and challenges, could give that gaming genre an experience different from a computer rpg.

There's a great pdf out there called Robin's Laws of Game Mastering. I'll try to link to an online purchase site later.

http://www.sjgames.com/robinslaws/ here we go. Crap formatting, cell phone is being stupid. Balls.

[Bluebomber4evr]

I think the best thing for Hasbro to do is make a new edition based on 4E. That would help them retain a lot of customers who like the changes made in 4E, or who started the hobby with it.

Sorry, but I think basing it off of 4th edition is the worst thing they could do. It's pretty evident it was a colossal failure,

Careful... "colossal failure" is getting a bit close to 4e bashing for my taste, and a bit of an exaggeration, IMHO. While the numbers I've seen do show PF outselling 4e, 4e is a close 2nd, so it's doing well. Just not as well as they'd like, obviously.

No, bashing it would be if I said something like, "4e is stupid!" Using the word "colossal" was, I admit, an exaggeration, but not much of one. I stand by it being a failure, though, for reasons I explained in the Book of Vile Darkness thread.

They could maybe have a 4th edition-based "basic" game, and then have an "advanced" game that works like 3.X (I think I said this either earlier in this thread or another one, not sure). It worked well enough in the 80s.

As I think has been touched on in this thread, that didn't work well in the 80's. There's a reason TSR went bankrupt and got bought by WotC, and most people blame fragmenting the player base with different ruleset, and different settings. Putting out too many books that sold small numbers, rather than a few that sold big number. I agree that this might be a good thing for the players, but it will be bad business in the long run, I think.

You're oversimplifying things. The D&D/AD&D dichotomy was started by Gygax in 1979, primarily due to an ongoing lawsuit with Arneson over royalties. But the games were different enough that one could serve as a gateway to the other (that's what I did) and both sold well enough in the 80s. TSR didn't start having money problems until Brian Blume started embezzling money while Gygax was in Hollywood working on the D&D cartoon. Not long after that, the business was sold to Lorraine Williams, who forced Gygax out in 86. TSR went bankrupt in 1997, not because there was a D&D/AD&D division (the original D&D game had been discontinued by that point) but by the fact that Lorraine Williams had no idea how to run a business. A big part of that is that they lost a lot of customers after AD&D 2nd ed. was released in 89 (because they didn't want to pay Gygax 2.5% royalties for 1e), but that could have been overcome had Williams possessed one iota of business sense. The competing products thing was an issue, but had less to do with D&D vs. AD&D and had more to do with all of the very many campaign settings being published, some of which were apparently vanity projects, they also produced way more units than they ever sold (there was a whole warehouse full of stacks of stuff going back to 1st ed. days when WotC took over), and so on. It was way more complex than "two versions of the game."

[DeepShadow of FoS]

No, bashing it would be if I said something like, "4e is stupid!" Using the word "colossal" was, I admit, an exaggeration, but not much of one. I stand by it being a failure, though, for reasons I explained in the Book of Vile Darkness thread.

I think the point here is that there are people on this forum who like 4E, and some who even prefer it. Keep that in mind when saying things like this. Perhaps you should emphasize that you are talking about 4E sales figures rather than 4E gameplay when you call it a failure.

As I said before, I think there are several things that are worth keeping from 4E. Rituals, for example, as different from spells. I like the idea that a fighter who has taken cross-class training in knowledge (arcana) might have a ritual book containing how to identify magical items, even if he has to walk himself through it step-by-step. He obviously can't cast spells in combat, but with no threats around and time to read, he can manage the less elaborate rituals.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Careful... "colossal failure" is getting a bit close to 4e bashing for my taste,

No, bashing it would be if I said something like, "4e is stupid!"[/quote]Agreed. I didn't say it was bashing, but that it was approaching it. I'm just asking everyone to choose their words carefully and keep in mind that a) we're all friends here who share a love of the game*, and b) people who like a different version of the game may be sensitive to what we call that version, and c) a welcoming environment is more than not calling things stupid.

*by which I lump all RPG's together as the same basic "game".

Anyway, that wasn't an official censure (or censor) (or censer or sensor), just a little "Careful, now..." pre-emptive warning.

You're oversimplifying things.

Deliberately so. The details you present are all true, but I'm not sure how relevant. As HuManBing mentioned, the market is shrinking, and the D&D market (or "world's oldest RPG" market) has already been fragmented between PF and 4e. Barring a miracle, 5e will fragment it further, even if "Basic 5e" is 3.0 based and "Advance 5e" is 4e based, many will stick with "real 3e (or PF)" and "real 4e". They'll be in a similar situation to the setting fragmentation of the 90's, not the D&D/AD&D split of the early 80's, when they were splitting up a huge pie into two slices. Now the pie is smaller, and a bunch of people have taken their slices already. So yeah, I guess I was wrong to say it "didn't work" in the 80's. It worked fine in the 80's, but not into the 90's, and they probably saw that when they unified things in 3e and 4e by dropping AD&D. (or earlier when they stopped updating OD&D after the Rules Cyclopedia in '91)

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Careful... "colossal failure" is getting a bit close to 4e bashing for my taste,

No, bashing it would be if I said something like, "4e is stupid!"

Agreed. I didn't say it was bashing, but that it was approaching it. I'm just asking everyone to choose their words carefully and keep in mind that a) we're all friends here who share a love of the game*, and b) people who like a different version of the game may be sensitive to what we call that version, and c) a welcoming environment is more than not calling things stupid.

*by which I lump all RPG's together as the same basic "game".

Anyway, that wasn't an official censure (or censor) (or censer or sensor), just a little "Careful, now..." pre-emptive warning.

You're oversimplifying things.

Deliberately so. The details you present are all true, but I'm not sure how relevant. As HuManBing mentioned, the market is shrinking, and the D&D market (or "world's oldest RPG" market) has already been fragmented between PF and 4e. Barring a miracle, 5e will fragment it further, even if "Basic 5e" is 3.0 based and "Advance 5e" is 4e based, many will stick with "real 3e (or PF)" and "real 4e". They'll be in a similar situation to the setting fragmentation of the 90's, not the D&D/AD&D split of the early 80's, when they were splitting up a huge pie into two slices. Now the pie is smaller, and a bunch of people have taken their slices already. So yeah, I guess I was wrong to say it "didn't work" in the 80's. It worked fine in the 80's, but not into the 90's, and they probably saw that when they unified things in 3e and 4e by dropping AD&D. (or earlier when they stopped updating OD&D after the Rules Cyclopedia in '91)

[Lost Heretic]

TSR/WotC have really brought this fragmentation issue upon themselves. Same thing with Games Workshop's 8th Edition Warhammer.

Now, Battletech has used the same core system for 25 years, and there's no fragmentation there...

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

TSR/WotC have really brought this fragmentation issue upon themselves. Same thing with Games Workshop's 8th Edition Warhammer.

Now, Battletech has used the same core system for 25 years, and there's no fragmentation there...

To play Devil's advocate, though; which is the biggest selling RPG in the world and which is the biggest selling wargaming brand in the world?

[Joël of the FoS]

I'm pretty sure he's joking.
Anyways, I think Joel is a fan of AD&D 1E.

*lol*, it's been a decade since I opened 1e or 2e books (that are not RL, of course).

No, I'm a « 3.5 / leaning to PF » player now. Main reason is that the latest incarnation of RL is in 3.5

Curious about 5e, as many are here.

But the point of my gaming focus is Ravenloft, not the game system as there are good aspect in all of them. I also like the 4e rituals idea.

If I may ask, since you must be one of those that use pathfinder: Since you owned 3.5 edition books, why you re-bought them in pathfinder form and didn't just use the SRD of pathfinder?
Simple curiosity here. I've check pathfinder, it has things I like and our group uses and I use them straight out of their SRD.

Same reason as Ron. If you like a system, say it so to the company making it, so you can expect more.

And whatever techological format is available, a book is still a great technology

Joël