Lemme elaborate.
First, no aneurysm. That’s the sort of histrionic, uninformed, and irrational stuff I’ve grown used to dealing with from many folks who hate 4e. Not all: many.
Second, the comment about the moneygrab wasn’t made in response to the OP: it was made in response to someone who called the new edition a money grab. That’s histrionic and irrational, but at least it’s informed: pretty much every business’s product is a money grab, to the extent that this one is.
Daniel
I don’t hate 4e! I simply have not been persuaded to buy 4e. When the game comes out, and everybody else tells me that 4e is brilliant and wonderful and a panacea to all earthly ills, then… well, I still won’t buy 4e, because by that time 5e will be in the works, and so on.
I don’t think anyone here has argued that WotC shouldn’t make money off their product. I think people want to spend money on D&D, but
Crap. Work calls— I continue this thought later.
Bravo, sir, well played - didn’t want that so go unremarked.
What Exit called it a money-grab, which is a really weird term for a product intended to make money. And Starving Artist has suggested that WOTC is trying to insult him and sabotage his gameplay. These are the kinds of criticisms that I don’t think are reasonable; I don’t think there was anything in the OP that I found objectionable, even though I don’t agree with every one of the points.
Daniel
While I generally do my best to disagree with you on everything, the “Dungeon Survival Guide” is a perfect example. It’s a $20 book that, near as I can tell, looks at currently published WotC adventures and says, “For this adventure, if you’re a fighter, you’ll want to be packing a [fill in item or feat here].”
Crap like that should be a giveaway pamphlet.
I know it gets said every time, but I really think that unless WotC fools enough people into giving them a $10-$15 monthly fee they’ve cut their own throats.
-Joe
Continuing on my previous post…
Remember, back in the days of 2nd edition when TSR released the ‘class kits’? I’m not talking about the kit books, I’m talking about the plastic box-type things that contained a little blurb on running a thief, a single thief miniature, a “player’s screen” and a bunch of other silly junk like that?
That’s when I knew TSR was truly f’zucked.
-Joe
I remember the lunchboxes. Actually, I would love to own them now. But at the time I couldn’t see paying for them just on the grounds that they were stupid.
This controversy over business practices manifests itself in a pretty predictable arc. Somebody complains about the company money grubbing, and then someone comes along and points out that businesses are required to make money. That’s true, and it’s also true that you don’t have to pay into a business that you feel is not doing right by you. But let’s not run to the strange conclusion that maximizing profits is the only relevant moral obligation a business has, or that withholding money is the only legitimate protest. There is a moral dimension to the apparent tendency of WotC to use the loyalty of its user base as leverage against them.
I remember the howls of protest over the first announcement of 4th edition, because it was clear that it was already a fairly well developed project by the time it was announced, and that meant that WotC reps had in fact been lying to D&D fans about the fact that they were already working on 4th edition. WotC can’t exactly win here because as soon as they announce 4.0 they kill the 3.5 market. The fans also lose because they’re investing in the meantime in a system which is quickly bound for obsolescence. So, everyone pretty much has to eat that one all around – WotC had to lie and eat the wrath of the fans, hoping they can smooth it out in the long run, and the fans had to eat the betrayal and waste of their own money. Once the announcement was made, they still had 3.5 materials coming out, and I’ll bet the sales for those were troubled, but at least one supplement was a 3.5 rules compendium, which at least has the attraction that it caps off the buyer’s collection. But now they still have to stay afloat, and they have no crunch to sell that’s ready for market, so they’re selling a book that talks about what that crunch would look like when it comes. It is in effect an ad that they’re asking you to pay for, but what else can they do in the meantime?
Because it ain’t getting them any money, and they have no interest in the settings anyway. Sure, they weren’t big sellers solo, but add them up and you have a lot of players. Plus, TSR itself wasn’t making much $$ towards the end, and WotC might have been able to do better.
They COULD have sold off those properties, or even offered them as OGL. Or even split the difference and gotten free fan writers. By offering some support, theyd have had more variety and more defined settings to sell to. And while you say those setting books didn’t make any cash for TSR, I haven’t heard that a lot of WotC later material did either. D20 virtually stopped selling after a while.
OK bud, by this point you’re just willfully refusing to comprehend.
Settings can and should change over time. But look at Forgotten Realms. The problem is that they don’t really do this. They mostly kept everything the exact same, or dropped in a handful of changes in places where few, if any, people played. And then they never supported the changes with any new material.
I don’t particularly have problems with the level of changes in 3.5, which si a totally different issue. What bothers me about it is that it simply wasn’t a finished product, and not one with a serious design behind it. Look, these nitwits were so moronic, they failed to update the damned book from the 3.0 errata.
Moreover, they made a number of changes which are mathematically incorrect. For example, Keen no longer stacking with Improved Crit. In a number of other cases, they limited spells not because it made the game more interesting or more “balanced,” but because people actually used them to do things which were interesting and inventive - and which didn’t fit in with their “kill the monsters, grab the treasure, move to the next room” concept.
Actually, I read that in Reader’s Digest twenty years ago and was just saving it until now.
I think the key to the “money-grab” objection is simply that What Exit? already paid for his D&D core rulebooks. If you don’t like a game supplement or a setting, you can simply not buy it, and continue to buy the ones that appeal to you. But a whole new edition demands another purchase if you wish to use any other new product. If the company kept producing old edition material alongside the new edition, no one would complain of a “money-grab.” But a new edition is like digital TV: you bought the old set on the understanding that the medium was sound, and then the company decides that your service isn’t worth it anymore. The current business model appears to guarantee that longtime players will have support for their investment nullified after an unspecified time. At least when you buy other perishables, you are provided with an expiration date.
However, What Exit? claims to have stood fast by 1st edition all these years, so surely that earns some points for adhering to your “complain by not buying” policy. I don’t see where Starving Artist made any comments against WotC-- was this in other threads?
Perhaps such attitudes are unreasonable, but then: Gaming isn’t reasonable. There is nothing remotely reasonable about meeting with the same group of people every Saturday night for years and staying up til 6:30 AM pretending to be elves. It’s a social ritual, one that can last for years or decades. D&D encourages people to get together, establish friendships and participate in an intricate shared escapist fantasy. So why is it so baffling that people who invest time, emotion and money in this recreation react badly when the game suddenly changes under their feet?
I am in awe of whatever else must be stockpiled inside your head… waiting.
As a member of the gaming industry, I’ve noticed that few fans are aware of what the masses really like. I can’t say what WotC sees, but we pay attention to the rabid fans on the internet and at cons, but they don’t make up the majority of sales. That loyal contingent is good for continually expanding the customer base, but the products they want frequently don’t appeal to folks who aren’t as immersed in the game. Plus everybody has their own favorite pet, many of which are very obscure. I just go where the sales guys find the money at.
WotC licensed several of their old settings – Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and gave “official” status to websites for others such as Dark Sun.
Their goal, in so doing, was to make . Plus, fans would have been able to enjoy new products in those settings. Their plan was to make by selling more core books – PHB, DMG, MMs.
Although WotC has been very tight-lipped about the results, it apparently did not work for them. They do not appear to have made any from licensing out those settings -- or, at least, not enough for them to justify giving away control of their intellectual property.
See, that’s the thing they think is valuable – their intellectual property. It’s the reason why IP is excluded from the SRD – no mention of mind flayers, beholders, etc., and spells and such that reference IP are name-changed (e.g., all the Bigby’s Hand spells are no longer hands of Bigby, since he’s IP).
Even if their IP is idle – as with, say, Birthright – it is still valuable as an asset to WotC. And quite a few of their IP aren’t idle – Dragonlance, for example, makes $ hand over fist for its novellizations. Licensing that out weakens their control over the IP, and threatens that cash flow or asset value. Not worth it.
There’s also the suspicion that by licensing out their old settings, WotC only created competition for the setting books they were trying to sell. That’s something that did in TSR – they kept making new settings (which don’t make as much money, anyway, in comparison to core books), and those setting books competed with each other and further diluted their sales. They fragmented their own market!
Additionally, the licenses just haven’t seen much success. Ravensloft licensed products sort of petered out. Dragonlance soldiered on, but with complaints that it did or did not follow whatever novel canon fans liked or despised. The web stuff like Dark Sun was embroiled in criticisms of their updated rules.
I can’t imagine, were I a WotC staffer, ever wanting to license out old properties – the only result seems to be more fan whinging and complaints, more work and hassle for not so much $, and potential detriment to the IP value which WotC holds.
Daniel, I made a little joke, I do that a lot. My jokes have some truth in them, but “Money Grab” with a line through it should have been intended as the slightly snarky joke it obviously was. I did not rant, I did not bitch about the changes. I have not played often enough for well over a decade to really care. Honestly, the only thing that got me to post to this thread was an Op with the words “Swamp Hobbits” by Terrifel who I always enjoy reading and talking to.
I think I have maybe two second edition books and nothing after. I am reasonable sure, I will never buy another book on D&D unless I find some more 1st Edition books in a used bookstore.
BTW: Money grab is exactly what it is. They are attempting to make a profit and they feel their best business model to continually reinvent itself to encourage larger sales. They don’t need to apologize for it and they should not need a defender. Think of me as like a music aficionado that complains about all the later music formats after vinyl and while you’re at it get off my lawn. 
Jim
Thank you very much for the kind words. I’m glad to hear it, and I apologize for presuming to speak for you earlier. I will definitely try to work the phrase “Swamp Hobbits” into my conversations more often.
Also, when I eventually complete my exciting 1st edition module, Descent into the Depths of the 191st Street Station, I will send you a complimentary copy. I feel that my new race of subterranean chaotic evil rat-worshipping bag ladies has a lot of potential. I’m tentatively calling them the Frau.
Well, they may have thought so, but they were never going to make $$ with that kind of half-hearted approach. I think their mistake was that they didn’t work out a deal with established groups (mostly). Instead, they got a lot of people who really weren’t experienced.
Secondly, they mostly brought out base books, ubt not much supporting material thereafter. RPG’s is a marathon, not a sprint.
Actually, I don’t think it is a valuable asset. I think it’s a fake asset. That is, they valued it at so much moolah, but they have no hope of actually getting that value out of it.
That I doubt, though I’ve heard the argument. It’s an excuse, IMHO, for them putting out poorly developed setting books.
Well, I thought said licensed products were pretty bad, worse than even WotC’s material.
Actually, the current version of the Dungeon Survival Guide, Dungeonscape, was a fairly nice GM’s tool. Some minor utilities, mostly brought over from the 3.0 Arms and Equipment guide, sure, but I rather liked some of the perspective it brought. Dungeons have grown out of fashion in 3e… mostly things seem to involve fighting PCs as NPCs rather than monsters.
I’ve been a player for decades now and the same rants came around when it went to 2.0 and 3.0 and 3.5. The same money grab histrionics and flailing of arms.
3.0 came out in 2000 and 3.5 in 2003. It’s been five years. Do you think that with the millions of games that have happened in those five years that maybe, just maybe been able to suss out improvements in the product?
People are upset that you have to spend $150 every five years on a hobby that gives thousands of hours of fun in that time? That’s insane. How much do you spend on Starbucks every year? Roleplaying is among the cheapest most fulfilling hobbies around. Find me anything except hiking that is as fun and as cheap.
The classes are broken in 3.x. I’m sorry if your favorite character is a combat powerhouse now. It isn’t good game design to have one character oodles better than everyone else, while another is useless most of the time and on his best day is as tough as the cleric. The combat system is lightyears beyond 2.0, but it kept too much of the old stuff to appease the “no-changes, evar!” crowd.
The proposed differences in 4.0 are very exciting to me. As a GM, I want the players to be able to have action movie style heroics and not be mired down in a long useless combat. Do you like resolving fireball damage against 17 mixed enemies on a battlefield? If so, why?
In no order:
Saving throws now being static numbers, will speed combat significantly. This is a good thing.
Fighters being “sticky”, meaning they can deny movement across the battlefield. They can protect an ally so that if an foe ignores the fighter and attacks his charge, the fighter can smack him. That’s good design. It’ incorporates the “Agro” principle of MMORPGs and puts it in an elegant and refined system that doesn’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to. They fighter doesn’t have some silly ability to make others attack him, he just makes it cost something to attack anyone else. That’s beautiful.
The ability for all classes to take a “second wind” that will hea" themselves. That’s awesome. It’s heroic. John McClaine did it, and now you, Thorgar Ironshanks can do the same. Pick yourself up and save the princess, they haven’t defeated you yet!
The view that everyone is supposed to be good in a fight. Everyone has a job. There are different ways to do it.
I love the simplified skill system as used in the new Star Wars game. It lets characters get to the business of adventuring and not obsess over whether so and so is a cross class skill.
Unified Base Attack Bonuses and Saves and Defenses. In the current incarnation, everyone is pretty much the same at first level and the differences get out of whack at higher levels. Every tried to play a 35th level character? It doesn’t work. Now the classes, races, and decisions the player makes crafting the character define the differences. And 15 levels from now they will have the same relative abilities, they’ll just be tougher on an absolute scale. That’s awesome!
Special Abilities are changed to At Will, Per Encounter and Per Day. Simple and elegant.
There are a lot more, but I have to get back to work.
Look, if you hate a role-playing decision they’ve made, fine. But you can change that. No one can tell a GM how to run his world. But as far as a pre-packaged system goes, 4th is looking very promising.
And to the dude playing 1st edition… how the heck did you find a group? 
Another thread that makes me glad I play homebrew now. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably still buy product, 'cos I like the art and stuff (that’s why I own boxes of Planescape stuff, too), but use them for gaming? Not a chance.
kidchameleon, do you think it’s people like me who skew the sales guys’ angle away from the fans?
1e and 3e were radical products. Complete changes. I saw 2e as a complete overhaul of all the tweaks for 1e with gobs of new stuff thrown in (e.g. the Bard) and I’m hoping for the same with 4e with respect to 3e.