Dark Sun returns

[Avoraciopoctules]

I find myself tempted to try writing a Defiler class on the new D&D wiki and seeing how it compares with what WotC produces.

[Titanium Dragon]

People have proposed two fixes:

Then "people" are stupid, because neither is the correct solution.

4e is a commercial success. That has nothing to do with it being good. Likewise, Twilight is a commercial success. By your reasoning, Twilight is good. Are you telling me that Twilight has any redeeming qualities whatsoever? (Let me answer that for you: no, it does not. And 4e's ability to generate revenue doesn't prove that it's a well-designed game.)

Yes, Twilight does have some redeeming qualities. You don't get that many fangirls if you don't.

This does not mean what is most popular is necessarily the best, but things which are popular usually have SOME element which makes them so. The Dark Knight isn't the greatest movie of all time, nor was Titanic, but they had elements in them which made them popular and made people enjoy watching them.

It's really more about what people are looking for. We have a slanted view of RPGs because unlike most gamers we played 3.5 above 5th level. Most 3.5 games started at 1st level, and probably broke up or ended before they even made it to 4th. They probably didn't have any kind of engaging overarching plot and were a series of one shot dungeon crawls with a little plot reason to be in there like "rescue the princess" or "kill the goblin king." And there wasn't scry/teleport ambushes, there wasn't locate object used to triangulate the position of treasure, and people didn't walk around with a wand of wraith strike.

This is wrong, actually. Very few people played it at upper levels, though, partially due to time and partially due to it being godawful.

If you want to pull out "someone somewhere likes it" as proof it has some redeeming quality (which is in itself silly since someone, somewhere likes say, self mutilation).

That's not a very good example, actually, because there's a rational reason why people enjoy it - it feels good to them and/or gives them a feeling of control.

I actually doubt that 4e is that much of a success. The available evidence points that it has failed to repeat the success of 3e and probably failed by a pretty big margin. We'll see whether this is true in a year or two.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Its initial print run sold out prior to the release of the edition, and it was larger than 3.5s initial print run.

Its a commercial success. Irrational statements like this is why a lot of people don't take the people who hate 4th edition seriously.

On the other hand, you seem to be requiring that every deviation from the rails of the adventure must be created, whole-cloth, on the spot. Is this the case? If so, why?

Because, simply put, most people don't have level appropriate stuff lying around, let alone something which fits in logically.

Moreover, it should be possible to make up encounters on the spot, and constructing monsters should be fast.

Now, maybe the reason this doesn't seem like such an issue for me is that I tend to construct rough ecologies for my campaigns. For example, Chimera occupy this cliff area here, and not that forest area over there. If the party is sacking a gnoll village, they're going to encounter a lot of gnolls. Maybe some jackals or hyenas. Hell, they might encounter only gnolls, jackals, and hyenas. This way, it's pretty easy to repurpose a creature for an unexpected role or encounter. Gnoll Bard --> Gnoll Merchant; Human Wizard --> Human Librarian. The scenario where, all of a sudden, I need an Ethereal Filcher with levels in a Psionic class simply won't happen.

What about when they teleport halfway across the planet?

Incidentally, this is part of the reason why teleportation circles are such a good idea - you prevent players from randomly going somewhere that you have briefly mentioned but not fleshed out yet.

I hate sex with children and I think its wrong. But a lot of people do find redeeming qualities about it.

*This is not a valid argument, ever*

How many people first have sex before they're 18 years old?

I can't stand by while someone is justifying shit like Twilight. It was NOT a good movie and is SHIT for a book series. That is it. Most people have not ever even played an rpg so they haven't experienced it themselves. Ignorance of something does not == people not liking it. I SAW Twatlight and know from experience that it is shit. My judgment on it was pure because honestly before a friend of mine dragged me to the fucking movie to see the shit I hadn't even heard of it before. Upon seeing it, it becomes obvious that it is pure and utter garbage. Just like 99% of reality shows on TV, just like republicans (who hold massive popularity amongst their constituents even though they are provably garbage) just like anything else that targets people who don't have brains. 4e has its bad parts and good parts Twilight is shit and is about as defensible as right wing politics.

A product's purpose is to make money. Ergo, a product which makes more money is therefore a "better" product than a product which makes less but is targeted at the same market.

Twilight is, therefore, a good product. It is not necessarily a high quality product, but that is really irrelevant from the standpoint of the makers; their goal is to make money, not to make the greatest product ever. Such is almost always the case.

Moreover, and this is very important, things which are highly successful are not successful for no reason. There is something about them which makes them dominate. Take Harry Potter, for instance. It is utter crap. It is poorly written and highly unoriginal, but has made Rowling a world famous (and very wealthy) author. Why?

First, it is very accessible and digestible. Why is this helpful? Because a lot of people are not very good at reading. While this hampers its ability to be meaningful, this enhances its ability for lots of people to read it. Secondly, it got a lot of media attention, and managed to take advantage of the usual moral panic over children and reading. By getting lots of parents to buy these books for their children, who they never feel are reading often enough, they managed to reach a wide audience. Thirdly, it drew on some fairly deep archetypes, often accidentally and clumsily, but it took advantage of them nonetheless. Fourth, it took things which were popular and stole them. And fifth, it came out at the right time.

This does not make Harry Potter the highest quality children's book; it isn't, there are numerous better ones. Nor is it the best value. However, it was the best product, because it sold the best, and that is the purpose of a product.

There are lessons to be learned from this sort of thing.

The reason companies do market research is to try and determine some of this stuff. How can we most effectively reach our target market? What do these people want, both in terms of superficial qualities and deeper qualities? These are important questions that you must answer if you want to make a good product, as no matter how high quality your product is, it will fail if too few people want it, or will settle for a much cheaper product, or similar.

Now, all that aside, let's consider 4th edition's value as a game. What is the purpose of a game? It is to entertain people. How do you determine how good a game is?

I'd say there are really four factors I consider:

1) The quality of entertainment I derive from playing the game.
2) The number of hours of enjoyment I derive from playing the game.
3) The number of unfun hours which are mixed in with the hours of enjoyment.
4) The price of the game.

In general, I say I "got my money's worth" when 4/2 >= 1. That is to say, when the number of hours I played the game for equal its dollar value. If it greatly exceeds that, then I feel like I got a very good deal.

HOWEVER, the other two factors play an important role. If a game is very high quality, then I'm willing for it to be shorter. However, if a game has lots of unfun stuff I have to do in order to get to the fun stuff, it has to be either a lot more fun or a lot longer for me to consider it enjoyable. Final Fantasy games, and many other RPGs, fall victim to this. And if there is enough of #3, no matter WHAT the other factors, I won't play the game or will quit playing it.

Now, for me, when I compare 4th edition to 3.x:

1) I consider the quality to be a fair bit higher.
2) Number of hours is the same.
3) This is really where 4th edition wins, and by miles. There is a lot of unfun crap you have to do in order to play 3.x, especially if you're the DM. Moreover, the amount of stuff you have to look up likewise adds this in even if you're playing. The amount of time I have to sit around while someone takes three or four turns is really obnoxious. And when something is set up and then is solved anticlimatically, which is very common at mid-high levels in 3.x, it sucks. And from the DM point of view, I invest more time in planning encounters than I spend actually playing them. All of this is unfun time. In 4th edition, the only real unfun time is when you are stunned repeatedly (and don't get a save) and when you are dead (as even when you're dying and know you won't be healed back to your feet, the chance of that 20 keeps you involved).
4) 3.x is cheaper now.

#3 is really what makes me not want to play 3.x anymore. The lower quality hurts, but the amount of time I waste is really what makes 3.x garbage in my eyes, and really outweighs all the rest of it. I really would rather not play an RPG than play 3.x at this point, because #3 weighs on me so heavily while playing it (including preparing for it).

Different people weight these things differently than I do.

Now, some people claim that 4th edition has low quality.

But I have to question what is low quality about it, when these people cling so desperately to 3.x. 3.x has garbage skills which are very nearly worthless; 4th edition got rid of/merged them, so characters are more capable and don't have to sacrifice their backstory for mechanical advantage. 3.x has far more time wasted on the unfun parts of game preparation and looking stuff up in the middle of the game. 3.x's rules are more difficult to read and look up due to inferior formatting. 3.x's combat almost always gives too many or too few options, and very seldom the right amount, which makes the game either boring for everyone else while they decide what to do (or look up what something does), or boring for you because you aren't really doing much interaction. 3.x has far greater chances of going off the rails, and therefore putting the DM in the bad situation where he has to make shit up on the fly. 3.x has much more anticlimatic encounters, where some important villain fails a save and the fight becomes a joke. There's lots of ways in which 3.x is inferior, and I can't think of one in which it is superior. One could argue it is low quality in an absolute sense relative to other games, but I don't feel that I've ever played a higher quality RPG - though I wouldn't argue that I've never played a higher quality game, because I definitely have.

It is true that it was easier for people who had social issues to make themselves feel more important by lording their uberpowerful character over the rest of the table but, frankly, I don't want to play with those people, and neither do most people.

But even the quality argument aside, the sheer amount of wasted time in 3.x is enough to put me off it.

[Kaelik]

Oh, okay. That's an exaggeration, though -- consider one chararacter with 0 endurance, and another with 4. With no "crits", both have an upper limit of four days without water, but the one with 0 endurance will likely lose many more surges on day 3, and potentially die before making it to his final day. He'll lose those surges on day 3, after having spent surges on combat and whatever else, and he'll start day 4 without them, making him more fragile on both days.

No, it's not an exaggeration. Both people live exactly the same amount of time, they guy who loses 3 surges is not appreciably better off than the guy who loses all six and takes 7 damage. And they both die the next day.

That is the maximum possible variation. Neither one can survive combat, and neither one lives a longer day.

Furthermore, it doesn't bother me that a character can only last x days without water, where x is determined by his endurance. That sounds reasonable to me..

Once again, no one fucking cares that people die without water. That's the expected state of affairs and totally fine.

The part that's not fine is where you make over 50 rolls to determine a minor power difference on one day out of 4-5.

That's beyond dumb.

That's like making a rule that you roll damage 100 times and take the average. You might as well just take average. Rolls that exist for basically no reason are fucking retarded.

[souran]

Titanium Dragon,

You are welcome at my gamming table anytime!

However, for how well that was put, I think you may have wasted your time because you are about to be the target of a wall of flames.

[souran]

That's like making a rule that you roll damage 100 times and take the average. You might as well just take average. Rolls that exist for basically no reason are fucking retarded.

Your whole arguement falls in on itself.

The point of the starvation rules is not to make players roll dice until they die.

Its to determine where they are at the next time you have combat. The point was never to have players make hundreds of rolls. It was to have them make 4 or 5 rolls (and thus lose 4-5 healing surges) before SOMETHING happens. They encounter something!

If your gamemaster does just make you roll and roll because traveling through the desert is tough and just wants to see you die then that is a problem with the big chair, not the rules.

If you wonder off in the desert because you have decided that yoru character is going to wander through a wasteland without enough food then maybe you make all the rolls you are talking about. However, that would be a player choice. Again, if it is not relevant to the adventure most dms will probably say "why are you wondering into the desert aimlessly? You are really doing that? Ok you die of starvation." Here the problem is not with the rules but in your own chair.

The starvation/suffocation rules are really easier to undertand than all this.

If you are starving between the last piece of story action and the next one you come to you roll a dice for each day of starving. IF you fail you lose a healing surge. If you pass you don't. If you don't have enough healing surges you begin that event down 1/4 of your hp or more.

Its both easy, effects a resource people care about, and has a meaningful effect on gameplay without being stupidly complicated.

[MGuy]

Well this is the third person that misunderstood my point on the twilight comment. Allow me to clean it up and resubmit my point. The twilight about comment was to say first that

1. Twilight was just a commercial success and that it lacked real quality as a story and as a book. Anyone who says otherwise clearly hasn't read a high quality book before.

2. Twilight's success and RPG's lack of popularity isn't something that can be compared side by side. Twilight was/is highly commercialized and most of the people who criticize it have experienced it for themselves. On the other hand most people have never played an rpg before.

3. Saying Twilight is a good quality product based upon commercial success is tantamount to saying that right wing politics is good based on their numbers despite the quality of both of them being provably bad.

None of this is opinion other than the fact that I personally went to see Twilight and thought it was shit because it lacked in quality. That was what I was saying minus the Twihate.

As for 4e and 3e I don't hate 4e. I don't even think its a bad system. I think certain aspects of it are bad. Skill Challenges being on the list but not at the top of my personal list of negative points about 4e. However I thought the essence of this whole back and forth was over Skill Challenges. If that is the case I think it has basically been proven with numbers that skill challenges don't work RAW. If this is a comparison of the two products (3e and 4e) then that is another matter that I did not know we were addressing.

[Psychic Robot]

Souran, please don't act like we're all rabidly anti-4e. I am quite capable of discussing the positive aspects of 4e, just as I am open to harsh criticism of 3e. If Titanium Dragon were right, I would undoubtedly agree with him, albeit grudgingly. However, he refuses to debate honestly, and he boldly asserts his opinions as objective facts. He acts as though 4e is a shining example of good game design while pretending 3e was some sort of villainous bogeyman.

That is intolerable.

[Spaghetti Western]

Are you doing this on purpose?

None of this is opinion other than the fact that I personally went to see Twilight and thought it was shit because it lacked in quality. That was what I was saying minus the Twihate.
.

Holy fuck do you not even know what a fact is?

# Knowledge or information based on real occurrences:
#

1. Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed: Genetic engineering is now a fact. That Chaucer was a real person is an undisputed fact.

Not one god damned statement of yours is a fact! This is beyond fucking ridiculous, you cannot be this dense.

commercial success is a degree of opinion, quality is a degree of opinion. Neither of those things is fact. A farewell is to Arms being a book of quality is not a fact but a fucking widely accepted opinion! How the fuck do you not know the difference.

holy shit even "right wing" is a matter of opinion and changes considerably depending on what area and time period you are talking about. And certainly what is a good or bad political outcome is a matter of opinion.

"None of this is opinion other than the fact that I personally went to see Twilight and thought it was shit because it lacked in quality"

Jesus Shit - the only actual fact is that A) you did go see the movie and B) had thoughts about it which of course you think is an opinion.

Just stop posting about this shit please and stick discussing what do and don't like.

[Spaghetti Western]

I mean what the fuck, do you go around saying "In my opinion I went to the movies last night"

ok I'm done. Please continue making facts up and discovering opinions.

[Username17]

Its initial print run sold out prior to the release of the edition, and it was larger than 3.5s initial print run.

That statement is meaningless.

First off, it's not even accurate. Here's the actual statement:

A WotC spokesperson has informed ICv2 that Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has already gone back to press more than a week before its scheduled street date next Friday, June 6th. Sell-in of 4th Edition has “far exceeded expectations” and even though the initial print run for 4th Edition was 50% higher than the order for the previous D&D 3.5 Edition, WotC has now realized that it is necessary to go back to press to meet anticipated reorder demand.

I mean yes, 4e got more preorders than 3.5 did. Partially because 4e gave out preorder bennies and 3.5 did not. Also people pretty much knew what was in the 3.5 books and 4e was new and exciting. But it's all smoke and mirrors. The number of preorders and the size of a particular print run are all wholly irrelevant to the overall sales. I mean, Pathfinder sold out their initial print run for all the meaning that has.

The AD&D Monster Manual went through fifteen printings, with the original printing being only 50,000 units. And that was back in the days when you had to arrange your print runs months in advance. Today books are sent to the printers by e-mail a week or less before they come out the other side and print numbers are pretty much arbitrary. Having to send in a new print run doesn't mean you're selling like hotcakes - it means that you've decided to have a second print run as a marketing ploy.

The meaningful number is how many total units they've sold. And yeah, WotC does not release that information. But there is Information Available.

So all the core books together sold less than a million collectively. I'm guessing a lot less than a million, but it's clear from court records that the combined total of Adventurer's Vault and Monster Manuals and PHB2s and everything else they put the core book stamp on when added together adds up to "hundreds of thousands of books" and not "millions of books." And that's really not that great when we consider that The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting puled in over 175000 units back in 1992. Certainly it isn't good when you consider that WotC's own studies claim that there are over six million D&D players.

To put things in perspective: White Wolf is basically admittedly running down the drain. And yet, we do know that in the first three years after the release of nWoD that they sold one and half million Books. Against that, "hundreds of thousands of core books" is fucking pathetic.

Commercial success would be hundreds of thousands to a million Player's Handbooks. Fuck, Dragon Magazine itself pulled in 125,000 subscriptions in 1992! Actual player's handbooks should be selling 5-10 times that. The fact that they demonstrably are not is a catastrophe.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Souran, please don't act like we're all rabidly anti-4e. I am quite capable of discussing the positive aspects of 4e, just as I am open to harsh criticism of 3e. If Titanium Dragon were right, I would undoubtedly agree with him, albeit grudgingly. However, he refuses to debate honestly, and he boldly asserts his opinions as objective facts. He acts as though 4e is a shining example of good game design while pretending 3e was some sort of villainous bogeyman.

That is intolerable.

I don't see TD posting anything really dishonest. Most of his posts seem to have a different opinion, but I don't see them as being deliberately misleading.

I mean, I don't agree with his claim that 4E Final Fantasy-style grind fests are somehow higher quality than 3.5 bloodbaths. But I can understand how someone might hold that opinion.

Now about the only thing I don't know is if his claim that 4E sold better than 3E is actually accurate. And you'd really have to compare it to 3.0, not 3.5 since 3.5 was only a minor revision and thus would not sell more than an actual edition.

EDIT: After reading the stuff that Frank posted while I was posting this, perhaps his figures are way off.

[Spaghetti Western]

deleted wrong thread

[Pinniped]

No, it's not an exaggeration. Both people live exactly the same amount of time, they guy who loses 3 surges is not appreciably better off than the guy who loses all six and takes 7 damage. And they both die the next day.

That is the maximum possible variation. Neither one can survive combat, and neither one lives a longer day.

Three healing surges is pretty significant! That's at least 75% of your HP, more if used through powers with healing bonuses. Neither character can deal with as much combat as someone who isn't suffering from dehydration (I'd expect the guy who lost 3 out of 6 to be able to deal with about half as many, for obvious reasons) but one of those two characters has access to three standard heals, while the other is totally reliant on non-surge healing, and that's pretty critical.

Your odds are also way off. The guy with 4 endurance has a 25% chance of not losing even a single surge, while the other guy has similar odds of losing no more than 5. That's huge! The former has nearly even odds of losing at most one surge, while the latter is as likely as not to fail more than 10 or 11 times in a row. I think you're underestimating both the value of a surge and the difference between hitting 16+ and hitting a natural 20.

I don't want to leap to conclusions, but it sounds like you're assuming the DM will give them a normal day's worth of combat no matter what. Characters who are near-dead from thirst should obviously be trying to avoid combat, and any good DM would give them avenues to do this.

[Titanium Dragon]

1. Twilight was just a commercial success and that it lacked real quality as a story and as a book. Anyone who says otherwise clearly hasn't read a high quality book before.

I agree with this statement... mostly. To some degree, the quality of the story is actually irrelevant in books like Twilight, simply because their purpose is to be "comfort food", so to speak. Basically, it "tastes good", so to speak, even if it isn't high quality.

2. Twilight's success and RPG's lack of popularity isn't something that can be compared side by side. Twilight was/is highly commercialized and most of the people who criticize it have experienced it for themselves. On the other hand most people have never played an rpg before.

I'm not sure this is an entirely valid argument. A large segment of the population has probably read very few good books, and a lot of people are not particularly literate. As such, they may be unable to distinguish between good and bad writing.

3. Saying Twilight is a good quality product based upon commercial success is tantamount to saying that right wing politics is good based on their numbers despite the quality of both of them being provably bad.

I'm not saying it is a high quality product; I'm saying it is a "good" product. There is a difference. A good product is something which sells well, whereas a high quality product is a product with high quality (that is to say, more durable, lasts longer, requires fewer repairs, ect.).

And there is actually a difference. Right wing politics are very successful in terms of convincing people to vote for them (historically), but are very bad at producing empirical results - that is to say, the product of their policies is poor. Their executed policy is poor because executed policy is measured in terms of success or failure - fundamentally, does it make things better, the same, or worse.

Also, their political tactics have the negative side effect of causing long-term power base decay - because they are by their nature insular and use an "us vs them" mentality, and because their policies have negative consequences, in the long run "them" outnumbers "us", and because everyone else comes to hate them, they end up losing after some success. This happened in the 1980s and happened again in the early 2000s in the US.

So all the core books together sold less than a million collectively. I'm guessing a lot less than a million, but it's clear from court records that the combined total of Adventurer's Vault and Monster Manuals and PHB2s and everything else they put the core book stamp on when added together adds up to "hundreds of thousands of books" and not "millions of books." And that's really not that great when we consider that The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting puled in over 175000 units back in 1992. Certainly it isn't good when you consider that WotC's own studies claim that there are over six million D&D players.

And here is where you fail. Let's read the post of this "actual information".

I have read on other websites that if you multiply by a factor of 6 these numbers somewhat represent US sales. I don't know if that is true. There are some pay for service firms that will provide hard numbers as well. I don't feel the need to pay for those services.

This translates to: This is made up bullshit.

It is an assumption, and it is a HORRIBLE assumption.

This says that total revenue for the publishing industry was $40.32 billion in 2008

Ingram books was, at one point, a very important book distributer; in 2000, they sold about $1.1 billion in books. However, in 2007, they sold only $289 million worth of books, an enormous, enormous drop (according to the Wikipedia article). Meanwhile, book publishers' net revenue in 2008 was $40,320 million ($40.32 billion) in 2008, which was a 1% increase over 2007 (which would put 2007 at $39.92 billion).

Let's divide 39,920 by 289. That gives us 138. That is to say, Ingram is 1/138th the size of the US publishing industry.

So "multiply by 6" is, clearly, utter bullshit.

If we multiply 8,331 by 138, we instead get 1,149,678 units.

And this itself is wrong, because we're comparing net revenue to total sales, which aren't the same thing (net revenue is lower than total sales). And we're assuming that Ingram books does 1/138th of WotC's business, which I have my doubts about. Not to mention the fact that as they are a distributor, not a publisher, they mark up the price of their books from what the publishers sell them to them for, so you're actually looking at this number being even LESS representative.

In other words, Ingram's numbers are utterly worthless.

[Username17]

I never quoted that guy's figures, I used him as a link to the court case where WotC said under oath, that their total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands. As in, more than 100,000, less than 1 million. That is the sales range they gave to the united states legal system.

That number is a small number. I genuinely don't know, don't care, and cannot check how Ingram's distribution sales match up with total WotC book sales. It doesn't really get to the bottom of anything. And you "refuting" it when I hadn't even brought it in as evidence smacks of hystericism.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Its to determine where they are at the next time you have combat. The point was never to have players make hundreds of rolls. It was to have them make 4 or 5 rolls (and thus lose 4-5 healing surges) before SOMETHING happens. They encounter something!

If your gamemaster does just make you roll and roll because traveling through the desert is tough and just wants to see you die then that is a problem with the big chair, not the rules.

I think you are confused.

Let me try to explain this in terms of teh Maths:

A level 1 Wizard with 12 Con goes out into the Wilderness with a Level 1 Dwarven Fighter 1. He's a battlerager. So he starts with a 18 Con maybe.

Wizard surges: 7
Wizard HP: 22
Wizard Endurance: +1

Fighter Surges: 13
Fighter HP: 33
Fighter Endurance: +11

This is the entire possible range of characters. This is the maximum and the minimum.

They enter the great beyond of shittyness without any water.

The first day passes. They are identically affected.
The Second day passes, They are identical.
The Third day passes, they are identical.

The Fourth day occurs. The Wizard rolls 18 failures loses all his surges and 11HP.
The fighter makes his first check.

The fifth day occurs, The Wizard dies, the Fighter loses 3 surges.

The sixth day occurs, Fighter loses his remaining 10 surges and 8HP.

Day seven: Both dead.

This is the absolute maximum differential, and yet there is literally only a single day out of six in which the Fighter and Wizard have different levels of combat readiness.

You have 1 day out of 6 to actually make encounters occur that prove that without water the Wizard is weaker.

It's worse when characters are on the same RNG.

+0 and +4 for example: 3 days of identical, one day of cripple, both dead.

75% of the time they are identical. Why do we need to roll 27 times for the Wizard alone to find out the Wizard dies on the second day? He definitionally dies on the second day he's rolling 1d20+1 against DC 25.

You could just not roll ever and say "characters after X days have no healing surges" where X is (3+End/4)

That would be almost exactly the same. Why are we rolling 27 times to find out the number of HP he loses for the one day that actually occurs?

[Titanium Dragon]

I never quoted that guy's figures, I used him as a link to the court case where WotC said under oath, that their total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands. As in, more than 100,000, less than 1 million. That is the sales range they gave to the united states legal system.

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

[Spaghetti Western]

I never quoted that guy's figures, I used him as a link to the court case where WotC said under oath, that their total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands. As in, more than 100,000, less than 1 million. That is the sales range they gave to the united states legal system.

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

wtf? example please

[Username17]

I never quoted that guy's figures, I used him as a link to the court case where WotC said under oath, that their total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands. As in, more than 100,000, less than 1 million. That is the sales range they gave to the united states legal system.

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

No. Then it would have said "over a million" instead of "hundreds of thousands."

Yes, the game companies usually don't release their figures. But they do make irresponsible boasts. And those boasts are exactingly correct. While technically White Wolf bragging about selling "over eight million" books could include 20 million or a billion, we're totally certain that the number is between 8 million and 8.5 million.

Similarly, if WotC had sold over a million core books, they would have said that. The fact that they did not do so - in court - when they had the opportunity to do so and were trying to impress upon the court the magnitude of their operation and the quantity of money being involved with percentile sales infringement, means that they fucking didn't sell over a million of those core books.

And if they didn't sell a million core books, that's bogus and sad. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition sold over a million core books if you included all the Monsrous Compendiums and such as "core" the way 4e does. And 2nd edition didn't do as well as 3rd edition. If 4e did worse than that, it's doing "poorly" by objective measures.

End.

-Username17

[Emerald]

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

So...why wouldn't they say "more than a million"? Yes, a million is technically 10 hundreds of thousands, but wouldn't they be more inclined to give a higher number to support their point? EDIT: Ninja'd by Frank.

[Zinegata]

I never quoted that guy's figures, I used him as a link to the court case where WotC said under oath, that their total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands. As in, more than 100,000, less than 1 million. That is the sales range they gave to the united states legal system.

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

Nobody says "hundreds of thousands" when they have over a million. It's even questionable if they hit half a million, because if they have over half a million they would have simply said "over half a million" and you'd still have to guess if it's between 500,001 to 999,999 books sold.

And given that 4E was selling at a 50% discount, that's sad.

[RandomCasualty2]

I never quoted that guy's figures, I used him as a link to the court case where WotC said under oath, that their total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands. As in, more than 100,000, less than 1 million. That is the sales range they gave to the united states legal system.

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

Seriously man... come on.

For somebody who wants to come off as smarter than the rest of us idiots, making a statement like that makes you look like a total moron.

[Draco_Argentum]

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

You wish us to believe that WotC went to court over the 4e leak and didn't use the most impressive sounding numbers they could legally get away with?

Thats a seriously fanboi thing to say.

[Titanium Dragon]

Depending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million.

You wish us to believe that WotC went to court over the 4e leak and didn't use the most impressive sounding numbers they could legally get away with?

Thats a seriously fanboi thing to say.

Or... you know, they said that because it did sound bigger. I'm not sure that "hundreds of thousands" doesn't sound like more than "over a million". While if you put them side by side, people will say "over a million" is larger, people don't actually do very well with large numbers. People have some vague concept of what a hundred thousand dollars is; a house costs that. A million dollars, however, is a far more vague notion. So when people say "hundreds of thousands", it sounds bigger to them because they have some sense of scale; "That's lots of houses", they think, whereas a million is more difficult to grasp.

While obviously not dollars, it translates better.

[Korwin]

Or... you know, they said that because it did sound bigger.

Wow, you have an opinion of (your?) the American justice system/judges.