Face it: the kinds of towns low-level characters are likely to visit/reequip at will NOT respond well to a party of half-dragons, weretigers and Drow necromancers. (For once, can’t people just play a friggin’ elf? And maybe learn the difference between ROLE-playing and ROLL-playing? Monsters are so much more monstrous when you’re not monsters yourself!)

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As far as the financial benefit to WotC goes, you guys all know you can download the ENTIRE collection of 4e material for free as PDFs, right? Five minutes on BitTorrent and you’re done.

I don’t feel guilty about doing this. The Player’s Handbook I downloaded includes the printer crop margins and color swatches, so I’m pretty sure Wizards uploaded it there themselves — nobody on the outside would have had access to the pre-publication version but them. By making the game ubiquitously available, they again dominate the gaming market. You don’t HAVE to buy the books, but they know most of us will anyway because, for whatever reason, we WANT the hard copies.

Personally, I heard a lot of bad reviews about 4e, so I wasn’t spending any money on it until I found out for myself. Once I read the books, I DID buy the $120 core rules boxed set, simply because I find books easier to use at the table than laptops.

I have no real fantastic reason. Is it good for WOTC? well, maybe if us gamers are silly enough to buy every freaking book in their book of the month club, yes. financially it is good. but not only 4e, but star wars saga. gah. 2 books in a month? for two different systems that i play? gah!

gah.

Soul Existence´s last blog post..Scum and Villainy

Like if Microsoft were to start charging money for Windows Update, they’d make a lot of money from people who couldn’t give up Windows, and the frustrated users who give it up would be negligible from the standpoint of financial return.

So, keep WOTC well funded and therefore ensure the future of D&D? Sure, it’s good for that.
Keep the end-user satisfied? Not really, unless he buys the extra books.

That’s just my 2 cents.

Ambrose´s last blog post..Superpower House Rules Issue 2: Invulnerability

I’m also of the opinion that one of a GM’s rights, and obligations to his game, is to limit the options as necessary for the game.

I welcome all of it in print, but I don’t necessarily use all of it. But I’d rather have it and not want to use it than want to use it and not have it.

Scott´s last blog post..Renaissance Mentality

Dead Orcs´s last blog post..Blog Carnival: Round 5 — Coming Full Circle

These kids today and their new fangled gaming systems…

So what did you vote?

I have a love-hate relationship with options. As a player, I would love them because I can tinker alot with them. As a DM, I hate them because it gets harder and harder to keep track and not to mention the endless begging of players to use the latest options.

Looking at the game from a designer’s perspective, having too many options either means that they are either uncreative with their core ruleset to try and do everything or they successfully take it one step further.

I felt this in 3.x and that’s just only with the Wizards’ books.

However for 4E, I somehow feel that having many options is neccesary for the game to run. The core ruleset appears to be too rigid to bend so it would have to rely on other options to expand further in the long run.

In the end, I just can’t decide where to cast my vote.

Questing GM´s last blog post..One Thing One Campaign

In the days of 3e, we had the glorious, wonderful OGL which meant we had loads of books being released every month from numerous publishers. Sure, the quality was variable (especially in the early days), but that improved over time and the D&D “brand” grew to cover many genres and playstyles. Mythic Vistas:Testament gave us biblical role-playing, and Judge Dredd gave us… well, Judge Dredd. We had d20 Everquest, Traveller, and much more.

Now, Wizards is trying to fill a hole of their own making with a pretty punishing release schedule. I don’t envy them, and give ‘em full credit for the releases so far as they’ve all been of a pretty high standard. The plans for 2009 don’t let up the pace either. Ouch.

What we gain is lots of options, but what we lose is the diversity of play. That makes the hobby, for my money, a poorer one overall.

Bring back the OGL, I say! Or at least, fix the GSL and bring more third party publishers back into the fold.

greywulf´s last blog post..Greywulf’s Games of the Year 2008