WoTC could never design a game

[tussock]

http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_155

Companies could continue to produce books compatible with 3rd Edition, or with OGL games like Arcana Evolved, Spycraft, or Mutants and Masterminds. And even if Wizards took away the d20 license and didn't update the SRD, if 4th Edition still used hit points, Armor Class, six ability scores 3-18, and so on, it would be easy enough to create material under the existing OGL pretty compatible with 4th Edition. Arguably, to make the game airtight-closed, Wizards would have to change it so radically that it wouldn't even be D&D anymore.

I'm picking 5e's going to have an open licence, eh. I suspect that will allow people to fix most of the problems that Monte deliberately puts into it.

I wonder if they consider the 4e players to be like the 2nd edition players in '98-99, so few in number that they're not even worth chasing. All this marketing and polling is just trying to get a buzz going in the much larger "I've heard of that" community (which isn't working for them, but never mind) to repeat what happened in y2k and make the market explode. Try and find a hook like they did with easier mechanics and cheap healing in 3e.

But how do they drag in Pathfinder players without getting Paizo on board? That's the missing step for me. Paizo recently noted they're missing production deadlines, slipping product, so they're probably in on 5e and working hard on a conversion, would be my guess.

They'll want all the bloggers, all the websites talking about how 5e can work for "my favourite D&D", even works better than the old one. Hope it catches fire through the open playtest.

Actual mechanics won't matter, as Monte says, if they get the feel right people will come over, even the 4rries only really like the easy-bake monsters and lack of PC power, and no one plays high level 3e or Pathfinder anyway, so they won't even test that. Quick combats with lots of dice to distract everyone. That'll work.

[ModelCitizen]

Secondly, I want to direct you to a spiel by Monte Cook about how such design was actually something they wanted. So while I agree with the final argument, I don't think it was as accidental as you make it sound.

Wow, that blog is almost offensive. Its an abdication of any responsibility to provide solid physical/metaphysical rules for a game. And then a nice 'Go Fuck Yourself' for not playing it as 'well' as Monte can play it.

Man, that thing is old. It gets linked at least once a month on every gaming forum except apparently this one. Anyway my canned response is that he's just retroactively covering his ass. Monte also wrote this back in the day:

Want to be a sorcerer?

• Choose halfling (+1 AC and +1 attack for size and +2 Dexterity easily makes up for the –2 Strength penalty).
• Put your best ability score in Dexterity, your second best in Charisma.
• Multiclassing? In general, don’t. But you might consider taking a level of monk for the AC and evasion.

If 2003 Monte thought sorcerers should dip monk and set their dex > charisma, I'm pretty sure 2001 Monte didn't know Toughness was a bad feat.

[Username17]

Paizo recently noted they're missing production deadlines, slipping product, so they're probably in on 5e and working hard on a conversion, would be my guess.

My guess is that since Paizo's entire business strategy was to take the SRD and rewrite it with some random house rules they found on the internet into it and then have it typeset with awesome art (much of which is from their archives of running a couple related magazines for years), that their project cycles were based on unrealistic expectations. Turns out that if you're asking people to make original content that is consistent with a game system that no one really knows because it was a half-assed collection of random, non-interacting house rules, that it takes a lot longer than just plagiarizing someone else's work and throwing it out there without any real playtesting.

-Username17

[shadzar]

I wonder if they consider the 4e players to be like the 2nd edition players in '98-99, so few in number that they're not even worth chasing. All this marketing and polling is just trying to get a buzz going in the much larger "I've heard of that" community (which isn't working for them, but never mind) to repeat what happened in y2k and make the market explode. Try and find a hook like they did with easier mechanics and cheap healing in 3e.

Internet is more than just AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe that fed the 90s. 2nd edition players mostly kept to themselves around 95 when POs came out and 2.5 replaced 2nd.

you cant get Y2K again, because the internet has D&D everywhere in everything unlike its initial 26 years.

pathfinder people wont switch.. they didnt want 4th they wanted 3rd...but as the name suggest Pathfinder isnt D&D, like 3rd isnt D&D.. each edition has gotten so far away.. they new "all editions in one" edition wont be D&D.

the problem with Monte's "feel" is he never knew what D&D should be, he just got over excited by the name and never gave it real thought. He wants to be a Kieth Baker, and make his eBerron.


I say to all these people, makers and players.. if you dont like what was before.. then why change it? why are you so stuck on the name that you NEED to play D&D?

Pathfinder players found it wasnt the name they wanted, but the playstyle. so hopefully they wont return to get in the way. someone is making the game they want.

and is it funny that with 3rd, Monte made something that changed it

so radically that it wouldn't even be D&D anymore.

[Aryxbez]

So if you're saying that they made good games by accident, of just randomly throwing stuff together. Then, isn't that kinda what they're doing with 5th edition, just throwing together bunch of "modules" to some brief ruleset, so in turn, right combination might actually turn to make a somewhat good game? (thus, guess then have the term "module taxes" coming to existence.

Also shadzar, most people don't know what they want with fantasy, why have people flocking to terrible RPG's like Pathfinder, Dragon Age, One Ring, and worshipping Skyrim as an RPG (it's nice sword & sorcery, just rather underwhelming as a whole). Hell, I'm sure your desires for D&D as the "one true way" bit, is probably inconsistent unto itself.

[shadzar]

Also shadzar, most people don't know what they want with fantasy, why have people flocking to terrible RPG's like Pathfinder, Dragon Age, One Ring, and worshipping Skyrim as an RPG (it's nice sword & sorcery, just rather underwhelming as a whole).

a lot of people, and probably the majority as the numbers that play now.. dont CARE what they have in fantasy.. they just want to play. that is how VtM became so popular.. OOH look a goth game.

so why should D&D try to be anything to people that dont care.

i think it was a Burger King commercial long ago that said, when they came out with the "your way" slogan... that people that dont care what they want in fast food can go anywhere, but Burger King wants to make what people want to eat from their selection of choices not just take whatever someone in the companies management decides you should get.

those people that play 6 RPGs shold even be considered in D&D's audience, because they probably play beer and pretzels games and dont care what rules they play with as they are less discerning gamers.

let them play pathfinder, rimjob and whatever else taking as many arro3ws to the knee that they want. they aren't tabletop gamers anyway if they choose video games.

SWOTR players want the story presented in that game, Final Fantasy players want the story in that game...all in the end linear and familiar.. while table top gamers want the option to do it their way.

this is where Bill Suckadick screwed up with 4th thinking to try to get video gamers into tabletop...and it didnt work. 4th failed. just do like Games Workshop when they say D&D isnt competition.

Games Workshop makes mostly Miniature wargames, not tabletop RPGs.

D&D is a tabletop RPG, not a video game...so different audiences.

another reason why WotC cant make a game, because they dont know their audience.

the audience isnt people that want to sit alone at home and play with other people online with a CRPG like WoW, or some other video game that is a fantasy adventure like Final Fantasy. The audience is people who want to make up their own stories, have other people around them and things like that FROM tabletop play.

the only reason MtG still works is because its quick, 2 player, and they can shit out cards quicker that Montezuma's Revenge, all the while overpricing the random card factor and ripping people off on something they have to replace in a year or two as by then the older sets are outmoded.

[hogarth]

(shrugs) In the end, the main measure of good game design is sales. No amount of marketing and inertia can save a product that actually visibly sucks, or is clearly inferior to available competitors, much less revive it. In some cases sales require decisions that are eventually detrimental to a (estimated as relatively small) subset of games, such as trying to keep the iconic image of the nonmagical fighter, even though this makes fighters suck at high levels.

Actual mechanics won't matter, as Monte says, if they get the feel right people will come over, even the 4rries only really like the easy-bake monsters and lack of PC power, and no one plays high level 3e or Pathfinder anyway, so they won't even test that.

I'm joining this conversation late, but I agree with the gist of what FatR and tussock said.

The goal with 3E was to create a game that felt similar to D&D (not to create a game that's totally elegant and balanced) and they mostly succeeded. Note: the genre is not "action heroes" or "fantasy novels" -- the genre of D&D is "D&D"!

The goal with 4E was to sacrifice some of that D&D-ness to make a "better" game, and it was mostly a failure, so that's why they're paying so much lip service now to "5E will be just like every edition of D&D ever, honest Injun!"

[Dean]

See I think that's bullshit. I think the "feel" of a game comes distant second to its actual functionality because that functionality is what causes what a game feels like IMO. If your urban horror game has everyone have access to flight and invincibility as early level abilities then it doesn't matter how awesome your art or game concept is because the game actually isn't played the way you want it to "feel". So it will end up "feeling" like whatever it's actual mechanics make you "feel" is happening in the world that the mechanics create.

[tussock]

But most people simply don't maximise their output to the limits of the mechanics, they just play how the text tells them to. Including the game designers.


A clear example I've seen is in Blood Bowl development. The official 3rd edition rules had fouls that were amazingly powerful, but no one used because fouling was rude. It took years for someone who did use them to get word to the designers, and they didn't believe him until he played a few games in their league and wiped out all their nice experienced teams by fouling. Then they spent years more trying to fix them, which hardly anyone cared about because it was still rude.

D&D's like that too. Players don't scry-buff-teleport their way through life, monsters don't sunder, enemy spellcasters don't blaspheme or disjoin, and no one chain-summons an army of Efreet. Or they do it once and then everyone agrees not to do that again. Most DMs run monsters at the Fighter, give the Monk something important to run around and pick up, fudge the monster's attacks and saves to keep things "balanced".

Vast numbers of 3e players never heard of the Wand of Cure Light Wounds.