The Gaming Den

Okay, so WotC is firing people left and right. I approve, since this means that 4E is going to go under faster, but it does raise the question of who is going to take over the reigns of the company 2-3 years from now.

The only two people on staff right now that I can see having a place for 5th Edition is James Wyatt and David Noonan... who were 3E writers. So I'm like, fuck it, for the next edition WotC or who ever owns the IP should hire back all of the older writers and try again. I don't mind WotC deciding to keep their lower-tier writing staff (since we need a new generation of people to keep up D&D) but I think it would be a good idea to shoo away all of the current bums at the top of the food chain and replace them with some old bums.

I don't know about Wyatt, but David Noonan is just harmful to the game.

It'll get sold like before. And some young start-up will buy it and revamp it. And hopefully it will be an awesome revamp.

It'd be interesting if Green Ronin bought it. I'd be curious what they do with it, and whether they reinstate the Open License, since they benefited so greatly from it themselves.

It's exactly like the heads rolling episode in 2003 jut before the release of 3.5. Or the nearly identical episode in 2007 just before the release of 4e.

I wouldn't mind the next edition being built around Rob Heinsoo. But basically, we're looking at someone being raised through the ranks due to having been in the corporation for a long time and having been associated in some weird corporate way with some successful product. Fuck, Andy Collins got the job for 3.5 because he had been running Magic tournaments with some success. We'd be lucky if the head honcho of 4.5 is someone we've even heard of. More likely it's going to be someone from left field like Greg Bilsland or Logan Bonner.

-Username17

It was Noonan who codified roles.. I wish D&D was handled by Paizo or Green Ronin..

areola wrote:It was Noonan who codified roles.. I wish D&D was handled by Paizo or Green Ronin..

We know what Paizo D&D would look like, let's just say it's disappointing. Green Ronin is a good choice, I love Mutants and Masterminds but I found their True20 to be a bit lackluster.

What I'd like to see would be something closer to the simplicity of AD&D with an improved understanding of how games should work. Get rid of headaches like THAC0, but let Fighters level up faster and let Fireball do respectable damage.

that's a very good way to describe Paizo D&D, disappointing. Pathfinder had promise, until they went and just made a clusterfuck of the whole ordeal.

Prak_Anima wrote:that's a very good way to describe Paizo D&D, disappointing. Pathfinder had promise, until they went and just made a clusterfuck of the whole ordeal.

I don't think Paizo really could succeed. They were a little company, and they couldn't afford to even listen to playtesting. I mean, they had one guy doing the design work; that never works out.

People forget that 3e was designed when Wizards was flush with cash from Magic and that they had an open playtest with 10,000 players. It was totally a vanity project by the owner, and they spent a lot of cash on it.

Now that Hasbro owns the purse-strings, chances are bad that we'll ever get an edition as good from WotC. These little third-party publishers have even a worse chance.

Hey, I wouldn't underestimate a little company. The original D&D was pretty much the work of just a few people, after all. Put in context (darn near the very first thing anything like it), it was viable enough.

Consider if Frank Trollman sat down for a month and just puked up the best he could do in that timeframe...it'd still have many improvements over 4e, and probably be more coherent than AD&D.

It really takes intelligent people familiar with the game, familiar with what's been done before, and giving a damn enough to get some of it right. WotC never could manage more than 2 out of 3 on that, assuming 'intelligent', generously, is given.

Ok, give D&D to James Maliszewski.

Doom314 wrote:Hey, I wouldn't underestimate a little company. The original D&D was pretty much the work of just a few people, after all. Put in context (darn near the very first thing anything like it), it was viable enough.

It was viable when it had no competition. Any new edition has to compete with previous editions, so just locking a random game designer in a box for a month is not going to win market share.

This is why oWOD is kicking the nuts in on nWOD. The new edition hasn't beaten the old, so the old is getting the fanbase back. Same story with 3e and 4e DnD.

I mean, look at Paizo. They literally have a business model based on about a dozen vertical changes from 3e. They could just be incompetent because core of the rules was still incredibly competitive vs 4e.

3.0 was a total vanity project, but it won back its money more than tenfold. If only people would learn the lesson implicit: Have someone who can do math; listen to playtesting; do actual regression testing; and don't do market testing. It's a game - market testing tells you how good a salesman or how good your bribes are, not how good your game is.

-Crissa

Is D&D the only rpg that totally disregards legacy and redefined gameplay? It feels WOTC just changes D&D for the sake of changing just because they can. Look at what they did with Forgotten Realms. They could easily reboot it to the old greybox if it was too cluttered but no, they had to put another world changing event. In a few years time when 5e comes out, they will do the same thing.

The top guy of D&D is Bill, but recently Mearls just twitted that he is D&D manager now. I know Mearls plays AD&D but designs 4e. Could he really enjoy making new powers/feats like how a CCG game designer does, or does he do it just for the current WOW kids?

New editions make more money than writing a good RPG.

I think maybe they're also going to need some lateral thinking. They tried to think laterally by making 4E seem more like WoW, but instead of going sideways, they really just crashed. I think that some new innovation in gameplay is going to be required before it will pick up again.

The problem with D&D is that it already has a huge pre-existing fan base and a lot of pre-existing notions about it. So it's hard to move "laterally" with it.

One major thing that annoyed me about 4E was that they were basically pretending no other previous edition of the game exists. Whatever similiarity it had with previous editions honestly seemed more like a coincidence that they milked as "moves made to cater to old fans".

The result is WoTC pulling off stuff like republishing the Dark Sun setting with a system that lets people heal themselves with the power of positive thinking.

It's just retarded.

"Healing Surge" => "Adventurer's Recovery"

Flavor change. Oldfag appeased.

Seriously, it's shit like balance issues, removal of game altering powers; making the game non-interactable; that made the game suddenly less interesting.

Being able to recover between fights was a 3.X thing, and honestly, I think it was a good thing. It encouraged the players to keep adventuring.

If the ninja takes 30/40 hp damage from a single trap, you are sure as hell sure he's going to want to be healed to full, again, before he even thinks about touching a trap to get an item that's not quite worth losing his life over.

Players spend a lot more time building characters now, and they seriously hate the whole "Fighter #235" syndrome that 2e could have without a lot of houserules, and bonuses given to players.

Adventurer's Recovery in Dark Sun?

You know, the setting where your adventurers stand a good chance of dying from thirst just by walking?

Really, what are Hitpoints? Do swords cut less deep as you level, or do you become such a touch bastard that you can leave all your organs in canopic jars while you go adventuring. Healing Surges are less dumb if you consider HP to be based partly on your stamina and the healing surge is just the adventurer getting a second wind to keep bobbing and weaving. Healing surges are as written though are lame.

One thing D&D needs to decide if it is going to be a generic fantasy RPG, which 4e kind of is or is it going to be it's own weird beast. I've always considered Vancian casting to be ridiculous, but maybe that can be a plus, if D&D is its own setting then you need to load up on weird shit to set it apart from every other LotR ripoff.

Juton wrote:Really, what are Hitpoints? Do swords cut less deep as you level, or do you become such a touch bastard that you can leave all your organs in canopic jars while you go adventuring. Healing Surges are less dumb if you consider HP to be based partly on your stamina and the healing surge is just the adventurer getting a second wind to keep bobbing and weaving. Healing surges are as written though are lame.

I'm not saying there are ways to make Healing Surges less dumb fluff wise.

I'm saying they're dumb to include in fucking Dark Sun, because it renders a lot of the survival-themed aspect of it moot.

Zinegata wrote: I'm saying they're dumb to include in fucking Dark Sun, because it renders a lot of the survival-themed aspect of it moot.

If Healing Surges were actually integrated into the setting they could be used pretty dramatically.

If they were done in such a way so that certain actions (like living outside of a city/village) sapped your healing surges they could make the game pretty damn scary. Imagine trying to trek across the wastelands looking for the Temple of Lost Lost through cannibal halfling territory when you're armed with the knowledge that the 100 hit points you're starting with is the only 100 hit points you're going to get for the day (as opposed to 300-500 hit points you're supposed to get).

I think the problem is more 4E's commitment towards providing a reset button at the end of fights/workdays, which could be worked around if they, you know, put some fucking thought into the system. And abandoned some of their other stupider design decisions like the idea that fights should be to the death and that people should be healing in every combat and that a typical workday should have three encounters in it. But that's another story.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If they were done in such a way so that certain actions (like living outside of a city/village) sapped your healing surges they could make the game pretty damn scary. Imagine trying to trek across the wastelands looking for the Temple of Lost Lost through cannibal halfling territory when you're armed with the knowledge that the 100 hit points you're starting with is the only 100 hit points you're going to get for the day (as opposed to 300-500 hit points you're supposed to get).

Yeah, if Healing Surges were modified to take into consideration the Dark Sun setting so it's far less effective, it'd be swell.

But as it stands, why didn't they just pick another setting where Healing Surges would be appropriate?

Honestly, the only setting I am willing to run 4E under is 300.

I think they could keep healing surges if they just made dehydration / malnutrition preventable with them, but you'd have to make those rules harsher. You're right though, Dark Sun is supposed to be a harsher setting, the player's resources should be stretched thinner.

Healing surges are just a response to the fact that potions cost the real gold that you spend on non-expendable items.

Both are soft caps on how much adventuring you can do in a day. The difference is that one feels dumb when you do it, and other does not.

The problem is that instead of fixing 3e's stupid magic items pricing system stolen from Diablo, they decided to keep it and try to solve the soft cap/5 min workday problem. That they only created a new problem is pretty par for the course.

I think if DnD ever stops stealing from video games, we'll all be better off. I don't know why people think that video game mechanics work well when you have to play with them on the tabletop.