Actually, WoTC already went down the tubes. They had financial trouble and was bought by Hasbro in 1999.
Folks, let’s avoid having this thread degenerate into a discussion about how much your favorite system sucks. These kinds of discussions typically produce little more than bad feelings without adding anything constructive. I’ve got no beef with people pointing out what they see as flaws in various systems but there’s a good way to do it and a bad way to do it.
I cut my teeth on 1st edition AD&D. It wasn’t until AD&D 2E was released, '88 or '89, that I had my own allowance and could afford the books. Mechanically speaking, I did not see a great deal of difference between 1E and 2E. I thought that Kits were a great idea though some of them were severly out of balance. Bladesinger from The Complete Book of Elves, I’m looking at you. I gave up on AD&D around 1997 because of a variety of reasons but mainly because I disliked character generation so much. I had a real hard time seeing my concept come alive because of the rules and I’m the type of person who is happy to make tweaks so the character will fit the campaign.
In 2000 I came back to D&D with the release of 3E. The $20 price tag was a major selling point as well. Initially I was pretty happy with the game but I started to experience some of the problems that I’ve already outlined in an earlier post in this thread. I was looking forward to 3.5 in 2003 but once I saw the changes I abandoned D&D altogether because the changes they made struck me as completely inconsequential. I don’t mind a new release every 3-4 years but they better improve the game in a significant manner.
I thought 3.0 was a significant improvement over both editions of AD&D. One good thing about AD&D was that I assumed any character with a high Charisma score was pretty good at talking to people whether he was a Bard, Thief, Wizard, or a Fighter. In 3.0 I don’t assume anyone is good at dealing with people unless they’ve got ranks in Diplomacy or some other social skill.
Shadowrun 4E: I bought this game earlier this year and swapped it with a friend. I realized after reading the rules that I just had no interest in running a game that required me to roll that many dice to resolve an action.
Palladium: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: And Other Strangeness, Palladium Heroes, and Rifts hold a special place in my heart, but a lot of their rules seem over complicated and difficult to deal with. Especially Rifts.
Marc
Why should I care whether WotC stays in business or not, if they’re not producing stuff I want? And how is it “good business” for them to make a potential customer think that way? (Not that I am a potential customer of theirs … I gave up on D&D quite some while ago. But the general point stands, I think.)
Actually, from what I understand, it was the exact opposite - WotC was doing SO well with Pokemon (remember how hot THAT little CCG was?) that Hasbro made the proverbial Offer That Could Not Be Refused.
Let’s not forget Magic here. Pokemon was nice, but Magic was the elephant in the room.
And yet they really weren’t. 3.5 knocked out some kinks in 3.0 that made 3.0 a relatively broken system. 3.5 is a solid system; its major problem is it’s so bland. In their effort to make a universally-applicable system, they bleached it down so much that it doesn’t have a heckuva lot of character left. (And yet I still play it and spend a disproportionate amount of my free time building new characters I will never play. Go fig.)
I’m kinda curious to see what 4.0 offers; I don’t know Star Wars Saga, but the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords was also a hint at the direction 4.0 will be going. While I don’t think the Tome of Battle has much place in 3.5, on its own it introduces some very interesting mechanics.
It’s also going to be a while before 3.5 is truly phased out, I think; that is it will be if WotC has any brains. 3.5 was an upgrade to 3.0 and rightfully made it obsolete, but different systems can coexist easily while pulling in that much more money for the company. Gamecube and Gameboy Advance games continue to be published despite the existence of the Wii and DS and still make good money.
I’m sorry, but I think that exactly negates the general point. D&D is a luxury product. It is not a necessity. There’s a very good argument for calling the practices of a baby formula company (for example) immoral, if they’re advertising formula in such a way that babies end up getting sick. But it’s very, very difficult for WOTC to find a way to behave immorally, as long as they’re not plagiarizing other people or luring them into death cults or steam tunnels.
The equation is very simple: if you don’t like the product, don’t buy it.
And since you’re not interested in their product anyway, your opinion of this change in the product is just as material as is my opinion of the new line of Bratz dolls. Why on earth would the doll company give a crap if I think the new doll is ugly? I’m not the target audience.
Why should you care whether WOTC stays in business? There’s really no reason at all that you should care. You don’t like their products, and that’s totally your prerogative.
Seriously? I would love to see a quote for such a rule. I would laugh and laugh at WOTC for putting it forward. Lots of laughter. Please dig it up and share with us!
One way or another, I’m gonna be laughing.
Daniel
Seriously. DMs ‘must’ nothing. My current DM disallowed me from rolling up a Knight because he had issues with the class. DMs have the final word over the game, not WotC.
Even aside from that, there’s no way in hell that even WotC would ignore theme boundaries and ‘force’ DMs to allow, say, Purple Dragon Knights in an Eberron game. I’d be really interested to see this too.
Seriously? That is your arguement? That by issuing a new edition, WotC is behaving in a manner that is unprincipled?
Good Lord, how many immoral game companies are there, then? White Wolf re-issued all their World of Darkness games as 2nd or Revised editions. Then cancelled the entire thing and is now selling a new World of Darkness. And 2nd edition Exalted. Ars Magica – 5th edition, now? Pendragon is around 5th. Shadowrun has multiple editions. Champions and now Hero System are up to the 5th edition, revised. Traveller has had so damn many editions that I’d probably need to use toes to count that high. Any of those morally OK? All avarice, huh?
Although you seem to imply that it is preferable that WotC “goes down the tubes” rather than issue a 4th edition, the fact is that if they’ve made a poor business decision with this, they’ll suffer. I suspect they haven’t, since their success seems to indicate that they know what their customers want. And I suspect they know that some of their potential customers are going to want to continue playing 3.5. Just like some of their potential customers continue to play 3.0, AD&D, and all the way back to Chainmail rules.
I don’t think you should care at all, if you don’t. In fact, I can’t understand why people do care that WotC is following their stated business plan. The world is not coming to an end, no earthshaking revelation has occurred. D&D is issuing a new edition. Nowadays, they do this every few years.
They’re not coming to people’s homes and seizing 3.0 or 3.5 books. They haven’t initiated some fiendish auto-destruct sequence that will cause people’s current games to suddenly implode. They’re just issuing a new edition, and from what they’re saying, they think that new edition will fix problems with 3.5. And there are problems in 3.5 that need fixing, just as with 3.0, AD&D, etc. I suspect 4.0 will have problems, too, and in a few years WotC will be selling 4.5… because that’s what they’ve stated their business plan is. They want to sell hardback books.
I don’t know that this is “good business” for WotC, but it’s been their stated business plan since 3.0 came out, they appear to be doing quite well, and I suspect that you are not their only customer. So it’ll probably be a good move for them, even though you (or I) do not buy any 4.0 books.
In the interest of more productive/interesting discussion, here’s a link to EnWorld’s front page which has summarized what they know of 4.0
Although there’s been a crying need for a good character generator program for D&D, I’m a bit leery that it’ll be online-access only. I might try out D&D Insider for the free period, at least… but monthly subscriptions, ugh.
An apparent continued or increased emphasis on miniatures is also not to my taste.
So I, too, may be sticking with 3.5, 3.0, or AD&D.
Quite the opposite. They are behaving quite principled. It’s just that the principle is callously leaving folks with “obsolete” product. I use the quotes because you and others make some valid points about the books still being usable. And an even better point about the market being the ultimate arbiter of a successful business plan. But ultimately, their corporate attitude towards their customers seems to be predatory. Why should we be happy about that?
And I don’t even know why I care. Like I said earlier, I don’t even have any 3.0 or 3.5 since I never GM. I was thinking getting some, but not anymore. And I won’t be getting any 4.0 either since who knows how long that will be around?
Seriously.
There’s been an AD+D update? :eek: 
Seriously, my group of 28 years is still playing 1st edition. We realise that there have been good ideas since, but we produced a guidebook of our own to fix things and are happy.
I think that’s the key - as long as the DM + the players all know the system and get along with each other, which rules you actually play don’t matter much.
(We take it in turns to DM and have a mixture of hack + slash / problem-solving / roleplaying dungeons.)
Obviously we don’t contribute anything to games companies :o , who do need to keep selling by issuing new editions.
Which is perfectly awesome. At the game days I go to, there’s generally a guy that runs a full-on first-edition one-shot for people. Some folks love it a lot, and I can kinda see the joy of it, even though it’s not my bag. I expect at future game days, there will always be the nostalgic folks running 3.5 games (I’ve never seen anyone running a 2.0 game at any event, incidentally). That’s totally fine.
Daniel
Oh, for pity’s sake. I really should not post before getting my coffee. That was me, natch.
Daniel
Unfortunately, I’m not joking. It’s either in the PHB, DMG, or Savage Species. I’ll take a look-see and find the page and exact quote, but the gist of it was them telling you that even if the God/Gods/Demons/Natural Law/Whatever rules the universe has ordained that, say, DWARVES CANNOT BE WIZARDS, you must let a player break that rule.
I watched the demonstration videos last night about D&D 4.0, and I have mixed feelings.
I love love the fact that they’re introducing officially sanctioned and designed DM tools for mapmaking, character creation, and so forth. That is easily the most tedious part of the game, and any automation in that direction is absolutely essential in my opinion. Creating characters is dull and the rules increasingly complex, and mapmaking? Ho-hum.
In the past twenty years, people have been playing more D&D on computer than in real life, because it’s been harder and harder to find people willing to DM. I’m running a 3.5 campaign now with three people who were absolutely eager to get out from behind the DM screen and into the game again.
On the other hand, I’m hesitant about throwing all my focus into a computerized system, because inexorably you will encounter the hard-coded limits of the machine. What if I want to make a custom race with three arms? What if my map design is slightly larger than the machine can handle? What about battles along the Z axis (for instance, archers shooting down from the castle wall across the moat as a thief climbs up to get them)? What if I want to create my own monster? What if I want to fudge the die rolls?
Some things are better left up to a human being with common sense. I hope they don’t lose sight of that.
WotC has been very consistent about saying that the DM is the final arbiter of what should and should not be allowed in their games, so I’d be curious to see this.
I’ve been checking on the D&D Insider forums for 4.0 (which is free, for the moment). Apparently you can create a character with the rules on, or you can turn the rules off and create that way. That’s a comfort — you could probably make your Glamdring-wielding wizard Gandalf clone simply by disabling the rules temporarily.
I also like what I’m hearing about how Race selection will become a more significant aspect of the character than a few starting bonuses. They’re also reducing the amount of Vancian magic (pre-memorized spells that disappear daily) in the game so wizards don’t suddenly run out of magic and have to take a nap.
They’re also saying good things about multi-classed characters, so that a mage/rogue is no longer a “crappy fighter tied to a crappy wizard.” So far, I haven’t seen enough about the changes to fighters to really grok the difference.
As long as the subscription service is optional and people can still play by candlelight with pen, paper and dice, I think it’ll work out for most people. The online people are griping mostly about the computer/subscription aspect at the moment, as computer people do.
My group recently switched from 2.0 to 3.5. We don’t have all that many 3.5 books. As a result my cleric has gone from having spells from the PHB, UA, TOM, and CCH to just having spells from the PHB and NWN manuals(The DM is shifting things so that we can eventually transfer the campaign to his NWN server).
Is there a site with a good listing of 3.5 cleric spells? I don’t want a site with pirated material but I don’t want a site of fan written material either.
Back To The OP
I liked 2.0 and didn’t really see any problems with it. I like some of the new ideas in 3.0 and 3.5 (some of the prestige classes are very interesting). But hate others (I can now turn only a limited number of times per day).
MGibsonp
I think it depends on the campaign. Our DM once actually did a survey before organizing a campaign, asking us how common magic and magic items should be and all kinds of other questions. In the current campaign, my 8th (almost 9th) level character has +1 shield, chain shirt, and mace. He also has a vampiric sword with many plusses. This was due to fine roleplaying on my part (beautiful flattery of the goddess and detailed descriptions of the agony and death of my foes being sacrifices to her). The character has a long history with Freyja and it fits that he would be given a special gift. He also once offered his own life and fell on the blade. Being a clumsy man, and Freyja wanting him to live, he missed. He still shouts “Scream for Freyja” when attacking with the sword.
Some of the others have plus weapons and shields but the only other magic item of note is a cloak of the bat taken from an evil priest. Great numbers and roleplaying make the characters heroes- not their gear.
Just a list of them, or do you mean “list, with effects and saving throws and areas of effect, with spell school and damage dealt?”