Find me a “loyal fan” of the Forgotten Realms setting who only owns a single Player’s Handbook-- no sourcebooks, no accessories, no miniatures, no tie-in novels or computer games-- and I will concede your point.
I think you’d be about as likely to find a “loyal fan” of Coca-Cola who’s only ever had one Coke.
OK - so now how does WotC get these same loyal fans to buy all those things again?
How did the publishers of the Harry Potter series get fans to buy the same book seven times in a row?
Facetious much, are we?
Hey, I’m not the one who couldn’t imagine why loyal FR fans would ever buy FR products.
Do you actually work for WotC?
I *can * imagine why’d they’d buy them - if WotC updated them to the new system and changed enough of the game world for fans to feel that they’re buying something new, and not a mere upgrade. In other words, give them someting they haven’t seen before instead of same old, same old.
What’s your business plan?
First off: the new book should depart radically from Rowling’s style. I think we’ve milked the original fans for all they’re good for anyway. I’m envisioning a post-apocalyptic London setting, heavy “cyberpunk” influence. Make it clear that the “magic” from the earlier books is actually a combination of VR and cellular nanotechnology. Like in The Matrix? The story starts 10 years after the last book; Harry Potter has been uploaded into a lesbian android body, and is on the run from Nakamura-MagiKorp Zaibatsu. S/he also has a new familiar, a wisecracking genegineered cat-rabbit hybrid named Fyu-Fyu. Everyone else from the old series is dead, insane, or both. There’s also a tie-in CCG that is essential to the story.
Here’s a little cartoon you make like.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unforgotten-realms
I’m not much of a D&D fan. Whenever I played, it felt like I was doing my taxes every round of the #^&* game.
I make computer games, instead. I can ‘DM’ and play at the same time.
This one builds random levels and populates them according to some straight forward rules. Not much depth to it because I only had eight weeks to make it. More of a first-person shooter written for Flash 8. They originally wanted a linear hallway rail-shooter, but I back-ported and simplified a ray caster that I wrote for Flash 9 (Flex SDK).
I’m sorry; you seem to be engaged in some sort of “metaphor” here.
What is your business plan as regards the Forgotten Realms?
I like this Ctrl+Alt+Del comic.
Several things, really. Mark abilities are just weird. They cancel each other (mostly), even when the operating principles have nothing to do with each other. A Wizard can put a minor curse on comeone which gets cancelled when the Fighter concentrates on harassing them which gets cancelled when the Paladin challenges them which gets cancelled when the Roguehinders them. There’s no rational reason why this happens. Ya think the diety’s power just up andleaves out of boredome when the Rogue shows up?
More to the point, A lot of these abilities have distinct descriptions which have no game effect, which bothers me. A Devil might glare at you and hit you with a beam of green light which curses you, but the imagery is just that: imagery. It has no effect on the ability. Apparently you can’t dodge the beam. Can you block it with a lead sheet? Will it work if you blind the devil? What if you darken the entire area? Can the devil hit me through a wall if he knows where I am on the other side? Under the game rules, the ability just works, but without knowing how or why we don’t have a lot to go on.
Actually, though, as far as it goes it’s the Monster Manual which disappoints me most. It’s just… shallow. The monsters have now been reduced almost solely to a stat block.
I’ll never know if it’s true or not, but I know that when I started this thread, people who had seen the preliminary work has much different information than what’s out now.
Actually, If I Were King O’er DnD, I’d do re-releases of old material, with some updates. There’s a market for this, and some older books can sell for many times more their original price. Even if we don’t want to bring in “setting glut”, there’s a lot more room for material than we have now, where Greyhawk has virtually no support, Faerun has some (but vastly less than under TSR), and there’s the bastard stepchild of Eberron which erratically gets releases. They used to have Mystara, Spelljammer, Planescape, Birthright, Al Quadim, Oriental Adventures…
Forgotten real,s alone has many, many books which are hard to find, which offer great amount of setting information. The newer releases, even under 3rd ed, had much less information, with the space being taken up by adventures modules (which, with a few exceptions, were not good) and Prestig Classes. Heck, there are whole nations of which I have virtually no info.
That sounds like a MMORPG mechanic. For instance, in World of Warcraft, there are only so many “slots” for buffs or debuffs (positive or negative spells, abilities, etc.). It’s possible, in a large raid group, to knock a stronger debuff off of a monster by casting a weaker debuff, because they don’t go by stronger to weaker, but by first on first off.
I’m guessing it’s a game balance decision, though. Maybe they discovered in playtesting that multiple marks weakened the monster too much.
Either way, I’m kind of surprised by how little interest I have in checking out 4Ed. What they seem to have done to the Realms doesn’t interest me. The new system doesn’t interest me. Personally, I just wish I could find relatively inexpensive copies of all the 1st and 2nd edition guidebooks, rulebooks, game settings, etc. I could do with sitting down with Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, vintage Realms, every Dragon back issue from #1 to when they went to perfect-bound with 3rd Edition, three or four iterations of PHB, DMG…I really would like to find Monster Manual and MMII, the hardbound books, not the 2nd Edition binders. And I don’t even PLAY anymore…I’d just like this stuff around to READ.
Really? I thought I was just being facetious. Although I guess it also works as an expansion to my earlier Harry Potter remark, which was an analogy.
Well, let’s not give up on yours just yet:
Now, we have an entirely new game system that the setting has to be adapted to. It appears to me that there are two potential groups of customers here: newcomers to the FR setting, and loyal fans of the older FR setting. You propose to give them “something they haven’t seen before.” This will not make any difference to the newcomers, who haven’t seen the old FR setting anyway.
Meanwhile, the loyal fans presumably would prefer something as close as possible to the older FR setting as the new system can accomodate-- because that’s what they’re loyal fans of. Yet you propose to give them “something new,” instead of the setting that they’re already loyal fans of. If they wouldn’t buy new product for the FR setting that they are loyal fans of, why would they buy product for a “new” FR that they aren’t loyal fans of?
Your model appears to operate on the premise that the more loyal a fan is, the less product they will buy. Maybe we are using a different definition of what constitutes a “loyal fan.”
It seems to me that a better way to attract both newcomers and loyal fans to FR would be to give them the setting that the loyal fans want, in a system that neither of them have played before. It’s not very different from your plan, just with a closer eye toward conserving that brand loyalty.
No, you also have a third group - people like me, who are familiar with FR but have no deep emotional connection to it. Even though I’ve never actually played in the Realms, I’ve bought a whole bunch of FR books over the years, and if the new ones are exactly the same only with new stats, I won’t waste my money on them. Frankly, I suspect that even the “loyal” fans will feel like me. They’ll want something new, and those that don’t won’t be buying it anyway (in fact, if they’re so conservative they won’t accept changes in their game world, they’ll probably keep playing 3.5 anyway, making them dead as far as WotC is concerned).
My definition of a loyal fan is someone who’s loyal to WotC and to D&D, and who iscapable of dealing with changes, because all good fantasy worlds change, and the changes are the fun part about them. *Your * definition of a loyal fan seems to be of something trapped in amber.
You really DO work for WotC, don’t you? I was just kidding about that earlier. Any news on the 4E Ravenloft Campaign Guide?
I see you also haven’t figured out the Harry Potter analogy yet.
(Hint: The seven volumes are not in fact identical.)
Somehow… just… somehow… a lot of people kind of came to the same conclusion. I wonder why.
Was it already mentioned in this thread? I’m sorry if I’m redundant, but the thread was started almost 9 months ago and I really can’t remember exactly what was already written.
Hehe. Yeah, but I’ve actualy seen this a lot. Just about everyone noted that DnD4 owed a lot to MMORPG’s, WoW in particular.
Nope, not a WotC employee, just a guy who’s been plaing D&D since 1984 or so, and one of whose chief pleasures is watching the game evolve.
Sorry. I haven’t read the Harry Potter books past the first one - too twee for my tastes. I am, however, a huge fan of the works of George R.R. Martin, from which you may conclude that I have no problem watching major characters die.
It was, but that wasn’t what I was saying. I was just metaphorically banging my head against the wall of ‘I hate my players who are trying to break the game when I can barely DM it.’