The End of 4e D&D.

[ggroy]

[老子]

You're prophetic in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Looking at that thread is absolute hilarious. "Hasbro's stock is in the tank" Hasbro's stock has rebounded since then. "Wizard's traffic is dropping off". Wizard's traffic is holding steady and actually up a bit since then. Of course you will be right eventually, since everything must come to an end. But let's remember what "the end" means: the end of 4e means no more 4e product. Some new marketing scheme is hardly the end of anything. And in nine more months when there is another thread with this title I'll remind you of this one. Until then.

[Username17]

You're prophetic in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Looking at that thread is absolute hilarious. "Hasbro's stock is in the tank" Hasbro's stock has rebounded since then. "Wizard's traffic is dropping off". Wizard's traffic is holding steady and actually up a bit since then. Of course you will be right eventually, since everything must come to an end. But let's remember what "the end" means: the end of 4e means no more 4e product. Some new marketing scheme is hardly the end of anything. And in nine more months when there is another thread with this title I'll remind you of this one. Until then.

What part of "Within 1 month of that thread getting published, they decided to not solicit Arcane Power 2" do you not understand?

-Username17

[ggroy]

[ggroy]

[Manxome]

Seriously, it's -2 to-hit for one enemy for one turn. It saves your team from 10% of the average per-round output of one dude. It's just not even worth the kind of accounting you have to do to use it.

Math nit-pick: it saves your team from 10% of one dude's average output on a hit (unless you're off the RNG), which is more than average output unless he was hitting on a natural 1. For example, if he was previously hitting 50% of the time, reducing him to 40% accuracy saves your team from 20% of his average per-round output. If he was hitting 20% of the time, you've cut his output in half.

If the game happened to be built around enemies that miss a lot but do a ton of damage when they hit, turning a hit into a miss on 10% of rounds could totally be worth keeping track of.

[Username17]

Seriously, it's -2 to-hit for one enemy for one turn. It saves your team from 10% of the average per-round output of one dude. It's just not even worth the kind of accounting you have to do to use it.

Math nit-pick: it saves your team from 10% of one dude's average output on a hit (unless you're off the RNG), which is more than average output unless he was hitting on a natural 1. For example, if he was previously hitting 50% of the time, reducing him to 40% accuracy saves your team from 20% of his average per-round output. If he was hitting 20% of the time, you've cut his output in half.

If the game happened to be built around enemies that miss a lot but do a ton of damage when they hit, turning a hit into a miss on 10% of rounds could totally be worth keeping track of.

Good point. I should have said "damage potential" or something.

Here's the problem: when a 1st level Paladin acts, he does 3 things:

• Invokes a Divine Challenge
• Moves
• Attacks with Bolstering or Enfeebling Strike

That's not an impractically large decision tree. Indeed, it's not much of a decision tree at all. You can pretty much play the paladin with a program on your graphing calculator:

• Are you within melee range? If not, move to melee range.
• Are there enemies within range who can be Marked who are not marked yet? If so, mark one.
• Do you have Temporary Hit Points right now? If yes, use Enfeebling Strike, if not, use Bolstering Strike.

That's... not super interesting. You can get a little creative with Marking in tight combats - but in most situations the enemy you should mark is obvious - it's whoever does the most damage per hit, because the important part of the mark is a 10% chance per round of stopping incoming damage unless they target you.

The problem is that if you use enfeebling strike, then on other peoples' turns you have to keep track of:

• a -2 to-hit to the opponent you hit that lasts until the end of your next turn.
• A conditional -2 to-hit to the target you marked that lasts until you mark a different target or you end a turn without being adjacent to them or attacking them or challenging a target.
• A triggered 7 points of damage if the target makes an attack that does not include you. Something which is totally ambiguous as to whether it triggers on "two attacks, one on each of two targets" powers.

Your enemies turn is actually more complicated because of your actions than your own turn was!

Any prediction can be made to be almost true or tautological, by being sufficiently vague.

Absolutely. It's just that the linked thread was a floating question of what people thought would make WotC cut their losses on 4e and start a new edition. And people here looked at financial information (such as was available), quantified buzz, and user interest, and quote mined some industry talking heads and reanalyzed quoted figures - and came to the conclusion that WotC would be rationally expected to cut their losses already (at that point) based on the information available. And sure enough: there weren't any new orders for 4e books from that point on. We know that, because Martial Power 2 and PHB 3 had already been announced and those are the last new books.

And yes, 4rries are going to be claiming that Essential D&D is just a new marketing direction for the same edition. But I think most people can see rather easily that a marketing decision to completely rewrite the rulebook so that it fits in 30 pages instead of 315 constitutes a "new edition."

-Username17

[shadzar]

And yes, 4rries are going to be claiming that Essential D&D is just a new marketing direction for the same edition. But I think most people can see rather easily that a marketing decision to completely rewrite the rulebook so that it fits in 30 pages instead of 315 constitutes a "new edition."

-Username17

That is what it was when Basic originally came out and each new edition as things went along. The only real non-editions were UA for 1st, and 2nd Revised. They were a lot closer to their editions than 3.5 was.

I think they are hoping to end the cost of books all together, and to just go full digital. The rate they are doing WotC is hurting itself in book sales, and a with HASBRO's complaint about 3rd costing so much per book that they take up sales of other books that sell better, and Magic dominating what few game stores remain that refuse to carry D&D, or try to play kep up with the latest edition, there will be few places left to sell books other than online anyways. B&N/Borders crap and everyone v Amazon....

The books will come from the Espresso Book Machine as POD at point of sale linked and purchased form a wholly operated by WotC online model.

This cannot be done with how 4th edition currently is, so a new edition supporting this sales model is all it can be.

How close it is to 4th is anyone's guess, but 4th is circling the drain or they would not be trying for all the crap LW did with tie-ins here and there to get the name out there.

This sort of product model was mentioned on ENWorld, with an all digital format, and it holds many problems that will take years to catch on, and lots of money to maintain. Just look at the fact DDi without 4th will be shut down like a bad MMO and you have nothing to use from it. Also look at the PDfs and what hapeend there with a simple HDD error and inability to recover those high-priced files that oyu paid for.

5th will probably take the path of Gamma World, and become more board game something that HASBRO understands.

I hope it will be as was mentioned in the other thread and the re-release of Hero Quest or something like that. At least it would be closer to D&D than anything WotC has put out so far....

[Windjammer]

there will be few places left to sell books other than online anyways. B&N/Borders crap and everyone v Amazon....

True that, but it's an old problem. Take Seattle itself. WotC didn't exactly close up their retail shops yesterday, and they've been fighting for store presence in their own town ever since. Heck, the new WotC the "Wednesday Night" program is so strongly oriented towards "you can only play this in stores" that no one can ignore that WotC' need to get store presence is more desperate than ever. That said...

The books will come from the Espresso Book Machine as POD at point of sale linked and purchased form a wholly operated by WotC online model.

I wish it was true that the Essentials line coincided with a new model of how to release and distribute content. But it isn't. It's as if someone high up said "You wanna do a PHB 4 when our prospective sales of PHB 3 are hitting bottom level? Scrap that. Scrap another money sinker. No more new core books. We're going to sell what we have... again. Let's start with that first run of core books which didn't even sell when we put them in a Holiday Bundle last month. Cut those books into smaller parcels, wrap them in a paper box. I'm sure people will buy them this time."

I really don't agree with Frank that Essentials is a new edition, a 4.5. Sorry, but I don't see WotC having the money or ambition to put any thought into overhauling their corrent design. What's more, there's the Ryan Dancey key claim to D&D book marketing, which is: every follow-up to your PHB 1 is a money sinker solely designed to drive sales to the PHB 1. Really, the Essentials Line is designed to drive people to the PHB 1, one way (buy remaining stock of PHB 1, of which WotC got plenty) or another (buy an approximation of PHB 1, i.e. Essentials Box + Heroes books, designing which costs WotC no new R&D effort).

[ggroy]

[ggroy]

[RandomCasualty2]

The problem is that if you use enfeebling strike, then on other peoples' turns you have to keep track of:

• a -2 to-hit to the opponent you hit that lasts until the end of your next turn.
• A conditional -2 to-hit to the target you marked that lasts until you mark a different target or you end a turn without being adjacent to them or attacking them or challenging a target.
• A triggered 7 points of damage if the target makes an attack that does not include you. Something which is totally ambiguous as to whether it triggers on "two attacks, one on each of two targets" powers.

Your enemies turn is actually more complicated because of your actions than your own turn was!

This was probably the worst part about 4E. It was just a series of weird ass conditionals that were supposed to happen automatically, which meant that you were going to forget a lot and have to go back and say "Oh, he should have had a -2 there"

It would have made more sense if they made the abilities active, such as "you can spend a free action to give someone this penalty." That way, at the very least it encourages PCs to keep up with the game and if they snooze, they lose.

As it is now, it's just a nightmare for a DM to handle. 4E certainly made DM preparation way easier (a good thing), but the actual process of running a combat in 4E is damn brutal. You have so many states to keep track of, constantly shifting marks and an array of small conditional penalties. For an edition that's supposed to be simple, it's amazingly convoluted.

[Zinegata]

Wait, what? They're gonna make the new edition more boardgame-like?

That's not gonna work.

They already *have* a D&D boardgame line. It's called Heroscape. I haven't played the D&D version yet, but the Heroscape system is extremely good at what it does - which is to give players a visually pleasing, easy-to-learn combat system with lots of dice rolling.

So why turn the RPG line into ANOTHER boardgame variant?

Moreover, hasn't WoTC ever heard of FFG's Descent? Short rule book? Campaigns supported? Pretty miniatures for monsters and players instead of damn tokens?

Is FFG kicking WoTC's ass that had on the profitability front that they've begun foresaking their RPG lines in favor of boardgame lines? (even though they killed off Avalon Hill a long time ago?)

Seems more like a plan born out of desperation than a reasonable plan of action.

[ggroy]

[Zinegata]

I know Dancey. I find it hard to believe that his word alone was enough to convince FFG to drop out of RPGs when he was one of the biggest proponent of OGL back then. Might be truer to say that FFG didn't want to get into the RPG quagmire until it saw an opportunity to truly differentiate themselves - notice their recent acquisition of the Black Library lines including the WFRPG and Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy.

Also I wouldn't read too much into what he said about White Wolf. All he's saying is that White Wolf wasn't that big anymore when they bought it, so don't expect them to restart stuff like the boardgames and CCGs.

[ggroy]

[ggroy]

[FatR]

Might explain why White Wolf cannot invent shit since nWoD's beginning and blatantly parasitises on its own old books. The question is what caused their downfall. I'm really tempted to say "nWoD", but I'm not sure how they were doing by the end of oWoD.

[ggroy]

[Username17]

White Wolf had largely collapsed when CCP purchased it. It was taken over with the idea that CCP would eventually make a Vampire MMO. That's still vaporware as far as I know. But I wouldn't read too much into that, White Wolf was purchased as a failing company in order to take over their valuable Intellectual Property. That kind of stuff happens all the time, and doesn't really have any stake in whether RPGs overall can be profitable or not.

Last year, Catalyst cleared 1.2 million dollars in sales - which is ass-wipe money. But it's enough to keep them in business because they don't have a huge staff. D&D appears to be doing about 10 times that, which isn't good for a company their size, but it would totally be totally worth doing if you were some group of writers and game designers.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[ggroy]

[Username17]

Last year, Catalyst cleared 1.2 million dollars in sales - which is ass-wipe money. But it's enough to keep them in business because they don't have a huge staff.

A McDonalds franchise in a popular part of town with a lot of foot trafic, easily makes around a million dollars (or more) in sales per year.

A McDonalds franchise has a larger staff than an RPG company. Seriously. Also has greater materials costs.

Wonder how much of White Wolf's d20 "Sword & Sorcery" division was propping it up during the d20 glut era.

I'm guessing... a lot. White Wolf does not publish sales figures. But they do have a thing on their puff pieces about themselves about how they had so many million in total book sales. Not per year, total. I used to collect those from quarter to quarter and track how the company was doing that way (since by the time they go from "more than five million in total sales!" to "more than six million in total sales!" it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that about a million book sold in the interim).

They took a hit when 3e hit the shelves, and in the post-d20 era their sales have trickled to almost nothing (comparatively).

Same can probably be said about movie and music companies which have huge back catalogs of recordings and films which they own the copyrights to.

And Comic companies. Don't forget that Watchmen was originally written to keep the imprints of a bunch of Charleston Comics characters that DC had ended up with the rights to alive. The Question, Captain Atom, Judo Master, etc. The story Moore wrote was so... final for the characters involved, that they changed the serial numbers and released a different and much more minor series to keep their trademarks to those specific characters.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[Data Vampire]

Well back on the original topic just for a bit. February and Beyond has some info on what the essentials line supposedly is. It is near the end of the 2010 product overview and the Rules Compendium is actually part of that line.