Well, Mike Mearls got promoted. Any hope for 5e?

[Psychic Robot]

listen you stupid nerds what does it matter whether star wars was billed as star wars or "episode IV"

NEWSFLASH IT DOESN'T

fuck

[fectin]

That is factually untrue.

We'll see.

See what? Whether at least one grognard bad-mouths 5E, or whether at least one grognard doesn't bad-mouth 5E?

I think Frank was taking exception to being labeled a grognard.

[Chamomile]

Given grognard is slang, can you really hammer down enough of a definition of the word to prove that you are or are not one as a matter of fact?

[fectin]

French, from members of the old guard (origin of that phrase too) from pre revolution. They were famous after the revolution for constantly praising the ancien regim and constantly drinking grog.

Frank has not exactly praised any edition, so it's a poor description of him.

[Fucks]

That is factually untrue.

We'll see.

See what? Whether at least one grognard bad-mouths 5E, or whether at least one grognard doesn't bad-mouth 5E?

Yes.

[Draco_Argentum]

MIllenium Edition is named after a year. XP is letters without meaning. How are those conventions the same?

Two capital letters.

[sabs]

French, from members of the old guard (origin of that phrase too) from pre revolution. They were famous after the revolution for constantly praising the ancien regim and constantly drinking grog.

Frank has not exactly praised any edition, so it's a poor description of him.

Actually Originally a Grognard is a Veteran Soldier, specifically from grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, IE: Napoleon.

It's come to mean and old complaining soldier, which I think of as redundant, as Soldiers are supposed to complain. Become is comes from "Grogner" which is to complain.

[fectin]

You're right though, I had the timing wrong. The old guard was Napoleon's, not Louis 16's, and stayed loyal after he left (check out the "old guard" entry on wiki)

Cant find my source for the "grog" part, but it's probably false anyway.

[hogarth]

Cant find my source for the "grog" part, but it's probably false anyway.

Grogner is a French word for "to grumble/grunt/growl".

[shadzar]

shut up shadzar

dont really talk while i type, so that is moot.

[shadzar]

Same with AD&D. Though amusingly enough the people who loved 1, were mostly meh on 2, and the people who loved 2, were pretty much 3E ruined my game.

Again, this assumes that people actually want AD&D to come back rather than just leaving it like it is.

The people that DID want a repackaging of 2 got it with 3rd.. and they cannot go back to 3rd due to the OGL/SRD and overall bloat, they would have nothing to sell.

going back to AD&D wouldnt really attract people from that playerbase IF it was changed and an AD&D3 came about, because they have pretty much lost faith in WotC to be competent to make D&D otherwise they would have followed 3rd or 4th.

i prefer the gameplay in 1st, but hate the books layout, so play 2nd most as its easier for ANYONE to read the books. so 3rd did move to far away form that while 2nd you could cheat in the 1st edition stuff for the people without it being in the books as they were so compatible.

also the mountain of people playing 1st edition clones all this time have them in there various versions as well as 1st edition itself, so going with that wont really work.

AD&D can only be done and used and accepted IF reprinted as-is.

the confusion people still have about the "advanced" term and refuse to learn what its parts mean, just wouldnt lead to a NEW game or revised game holding that name unless people are educated about the history of the game and at least the parts where advanced came about

1- to get away from dave arneson as having a part as big as he did.
(moot now really since both the masters have parted)
2- it gave more advanced guidelines and options.

what i know of people who enjoyed AD&D, they wouldnt take to AD&D3, except for the oens that played D&D 3rd edition and 3.5 as they felt it already WAS AD&D3.

3e basically dominated the RPG industry simply because it was so much better than all the alternatives.

of those alternatives, AD&D was no longer offered to compete with 3e to find out which was liked better, it was forced out, same as 3rd was forced out and discontinued right when 4th came out. So you really have only the non-D&D games to compare it with in terms of sales as all forms of other D&D were no longer available on the market.

[Zinegata]

Grognard technically refers to veteran wargamers. And when I say "wargames", I mean chits and hexes wargames. None of this Warhammer 40K crap.

We even have a site:

http://grognard.com/

People who played Chainmail still qualify under this label, but once you young rascals split off into this "RPG" thing you should have adopted an entirely new moniker .

[K]

3e basically dominated the RPG industry simply because it was so much better than all the alternatives.

of those alternatives, AD&D was no longer offered to compete with 3e to find out which was liked better, it was forced out, same as 3rd was forced out and discontinued right when 4th came out. So you really have only the non-D&D games to compare it with in terms of sales as all forms of other D&D were no longer available on the market.

Several people in the 3e-era tried to make 2e-clones or even D20 variants with 2e flavor.

They failed.

When 4e came out, a 3e-clone became a competitor. See the difference?

[Stubbazubba]

of those alternatives, AD&D was no longer offered to compete with 3e to find out which was liked better, it was forced out, same as 3rd was forced out and discontinued right when 4th came out. So you really have only the non-D&D games to compare it with in terms of sales as all forms of other D&D were no longer available on the market.

Except 3.5 continues to be more popular than 4e, especially if you count PF. 4e did not force 3.5 out, because it was generally inferior. 3e did force AD&D out of the market, because it was generally superior. Even then, no one was forced to stop playing AD&D, they chose to. A TTRPG need not be supported in order to compete for players.

[CapnTthePirateG]

New Mearls article!

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20110802

You shouldn't be able to customize your class because it's part of the feel of the character, but skills & feats are good.

Considering what Mearls did when he got his hands on skills and feats, I'm not seeing customization coming out of this process anytime soon.

[hogarth]

New Mearls article!

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20110802

"Wouldn't it be awesome if you had somewhat incompatible products for Basic D&D, Advanced D&D and Dark Sun D&D?"

Congratulations! In his infinite wisdom, Mike Mearls has just invented TSR, circa 1991!

[souran]

While it pains me to say this,

Shaddzar has a point.

He is not making it effectively, and he doesn't know what is at the heart of his point but he does have one.

Basically, the edition wars WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED without the Open SRD. Pathfinder would not exist, and even the games worst grognards would have eventually shelled out cash and bought a small or reasonable number of 4E books.

Hell, if the 4E oepn game terms had been more favorable to third parties or WOTC had not decided to leave piazo with no products and no viable way to make money as a company they could have probably made a total shit edition of D&D and everybody would have still played it.

The simple fact is that when 3E came out there was no company making a 2E clone that was allowed to SAY that they were backwards compatible with 2E. There was no 2E clone that could take the 2E spell lists whole sale and reprint them by just removing the copywrited names used for some of the spells.

When 3E cam out the idea of 3rd party support for an RPG was in its infancy. Nobody made "parts" for some other comapanies game.


Further, D&D 3.5 should have been a lesson for WOTC, and maybe it was. The changes from 3.0 to 3.5 were as large or larger than changes to editions of gurps or between shadowrun 1e and 2e or a lot of other games.

The release of that "update" was a small scale version of the 3.5->4.0 shift.

Lots of people were pissed off, lots of people didn't bother with the changes, some 3rd party companies didn't bother to start printing their stuff so that it was "3.5 compatible" until a whole year after 3.5 was released. If 3.5 had been any more incompatible with 3.0 than it was it would have created an edition war just as viscous as the one we got.

Basically everybody found out that WOTC did not really control the market created by their OWN products. Open D20 system pretty much doesn't even need to be "published" by rpg companies to be kept going.

As Frank is fond of pointing out, 4E isn't being beaten by Pathfinder, its being beaten by 3X D&D. This board has made it clear that pathfinder is not an improvment. If 4E had been an update in the style of pathfinder it would have been a huge failure.

The point is: At this juncture I am not sure you COULD publish a "New Edition" that could lure the 3.xs back into the fold. It would have to be enough like 3.x to attract them that lots of them will wonder why they don't just keep playing 3.x.

The road ahead for the 3.x lovers is 100 little piazzo like companies. There is nothng that Piazzo has done that couldn't be done by Green Ronnin or another publisher. Take the D20 SRD, add your own house rules that make the game just slightly not compatible with released or other 3rd party materials and call it your own game. Every company that has ever published a 3.X thing ever could do this.

Pathfinder has not captured "most" of the 3.x crowd. 4E has not captured most of the 3.x crowd. Honestly, both games have above average player bases for table top rpgs.

What neither of them have is the market dominance the 3.x had. However, that market dominance didn't actually make WOTC/Hasbro any money because the game system was basically given away for free. The open system meant LOTS of people never bothered to own a even a phb.

However, that was also the very thing that gave 3.x such a huge playerbase.

So I guess the end result is that it doesn't really matter what you call the "next edition" of D&D all you will get is another edition war and the thing that will be way more important than the rules content will be the third party liscensing.

[hogarth]

I agree with most of that, but...

When 3E cam out the idea of 3rd party support for an RPG was in its infancy. Nobody made "parts" for some other comapanies game.

Say what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judges_Guild

EDIT: I don't agree with shadzar's implication that 2E would have beaten 3E in a fair fight, though.

[Josh_Kablack]

When 3E cam out the idea of 3rd party support for an RPG was in its infancy. Nobody made "parts" for some other comapanies game.

That's not exactly true.

The idea of an open game license to make clear guidelines 3rd parties could abide by without fear of legal action was in its infancy - having it's roots in Stallman's 1985 GNU manifesto.

But prior editions saw a whole lot of 3rd party options and content for D&D - it was all just labeled stuff like "for all role-playing systems" ( Amazon Listing using that wording on a 1981 product. ) and generally earlier game companies didn't have the knowledge or finances to sue each other.

[hogarth]

But prior editions saw a whole lot of 3rd party options and content for D&D - it was all just labeled stuff like "for all role-playing systems" ( Amazon Listing using that wording on a 1981 product. ) and generally earlier game companies didn't have the knowledge or finances to sue each other.

Grimtooth's Traps is a terrible example. It had no rules text in it whatsoever.

Prior editions had a fair amount of licensed third-party content (as noted in the link above, that's basically all Judge's Guild did), just not "open" licensed third-party content.

[souran]

Hogarth,

First a company that existed for less than 10 years and

Judge's Guild was granted a license to produce AD&D and D&D materials, which had to be reviewed for continuity within the game systems.[1]

Is note even remotely like the "open source" gaming explosion. In essence that is what 4E's 3rd party situation is like.

and Josh:

But prior editions saw a whole lot of 3rd party options and content for D&D - it was all just labeled stuff like "for all role-playing systems" ( Amazon Listing using that wording on a 1981 product. ) and generally earlier game companies didn't have the knowledge or finances to sue each other.

A lot is very relative of course. There was nothing even close to the number of 3rd party products for 1E-AD&D 2E that there were for 3E. What products there were not not easily available even at dedicated hobby stores.

The simple truth is that you didn't publish a D&D campaign, you published a D&D like GAME set in your world of choice or you sold your D&D houserules as a whole new game similar to palladium.

I also don't agree that 2E "beats" 3E if 2E gets a lot of third party support, however I do think that you get a much longer and nastier eddition war if you had third parties that started selling their own version of the 2E players handbook 9 months after the 3E phb came out.

The OGL has a lot more to do with 4E sales than anything in its rules. The OGL is what allows 3.x to compete against the company that "owned" the core materials for it.

[Josh_Kablack]

Basically, the edition wars WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED without the Open SRD. Pathfinder would not exist, and even the games worst grognards would have eventually shelled out cash and bought a small or reasonable number of 4E books.

Whenever I play a Tome game using the 3.5 SRD and fan-content I am using open-source content made freely available by the authors. (the same would happen if I played Pathfinder)

Whenever I play 4e, at least one (if not all of the) player at the table will be violating current US copyright law via pirated pdfs or sharing of chargen tools beyond that permitted by their ELU.

I'm not sure that criminalizing a notable portion of your fanbase helps market share.

[hogarth]

Hogarth,

First a company that existed for less than 10 years and

Judge's Guild was granted a license to produce AD&D and D&D materials, which had to be reviewed for continuity within the game systems.[1]

Is note even remotely like the "open source" gaming explosion. In essence that is what 4E's 3rd party situation is like.

I didn't say it was. I'm just pointing out that your comment about third party support is wrong, unless you squeeze the word "open" in there somewhere.

[souran]

[Whenever I play a Tome game using the 3.5 SRD and fan-content I am using open-source content made freely available by the authors. (the same would happen if I played Pathfinder)

Whenever I play 4e, at least one (if not all of the) player at the table will be violating current US copyright law via pirated pdfs or sharing of chargen tools beyond that permitted by their ELU.

I'm not sure that criminalizing a notable portion of your fanbase helps market share.

There are a few different things here.

1: I honestly think that once you have an OGL you cannot go back. 4E needed to be at least as open as 3E to compete. The problem is that you are never going to sell the OGL/SRD/3.X d20 experiment to a corprate parent again. Seriously, Hasbro has to look at every single dollar made by third parties who didn't buy a liscense from them as dollars lost.

2: The itunes model shows that if you set the cost correctly and don't make to many barriers to entry or use you can sell stuff to even people who would normally pirate stuff.

Its not that you want to criminalize your customer base, but when you play a Tome game with the SRD you are not actually a WOTC/Hasbro customer ANYWAY. However, you benefit from al lthe R&D and promotion money they spent to make hte game popular.

Basically, 4E needed a better third party system than what it has, it needed to include people that were well known like Piazzo and green ronnin and whoever else was on good terms with WOTC. However, that was never going to fly at corporate.

[Ravengm]

Whenever I play a Tome game using the 3.5 SRD and fan-content I am using open-source content made freely available by the authors. (the same would happen if I played Pathfinder)

Whenever I play 4e, at least one (if not all of the) player at the table will be violating current US copyright law via pirated pdfs or sharing of chargen tools beyond that permitted by their ELU.

I'm not sure that criminalizing a notable portion of your fanbase helps market share.

It's the same problem with video games nowadays. DRM and such is everywhere, and it's all but killed off PC gaming in the mainstream. Companies are so devoted to protecting their investments that they forget the end user.

The Character Builder turning online-only is a great example of this in regards to 4e.