"Dungeons & Dragons’ designers are also planning to undertake an exceedingly rare effort for the gaming industry over the next few months: asking hundreds of thousands of fans to tell them how exactly they should reboot the franchise."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html
It's like a horribly screwed-up Alice-in-Wonderland inversion of "Why have us do any more of your imagining for you?"
ReplyDeleteSo should we all send in a copy of our favorite retro-clone and see what happens?
ReplyDeleteHere's my prediction: Hasbro buys Paizo.
ReplyDeleteAlso, "Hostilities about how to best play the game — for example, how a sorcerer casts spells — flare up among the core fan base."
ReplyDeleteI hope some of you smart bloggers explain wtf this means!
Kirk, my guess is that it means an editor cut a couple of technical sentences and inserted a nonsense summary.
ReplyDeleteLOL. The headline might as well read:
ReplyDelete"WotC Plans to Rectify Previous Imitate-MMORPG's Screw-up with New Design-by-Committee Screw-up"
Now is our chance to tell them that we want more interpretive dance in D&D!
ReplyDeleteActually, I think the headline ought to read "Hasbro Suckers Major Newspaper" the sub-head could read "Gets NYT to run press release announcing standard business practices of forming focus groups and survey research as if it were news."
ReplyDelete(note I don't mean this to be anonymous but I'm getting an open ID error with my live journal account)
ReplyDelete*sigh*
4E
"WOTC Sucks because they don't care about the fans and do whatever they want!"
5E proposal
"WOTC sucks because they are asking for input and will design by committee!"
There is a lot of anger from the OSR crowd at WotC, to the point I've seen people say "Boycott them, I'm never buying another thing WotC produces... EVER." And that's fine. But once you say that, that you'll never ever be a customer no matter what, you become irrelevant to the discussion. I mean, they need customers to survive... and if you remove yourself as a customer they need to deal with the folks who might continue to be one. *shrug*
And as for the sorcerer thing... it's not all that much of a nonsense summary. In fact it sounds less stupid a summary than "Arguments over how to climb a wall.", which is what the skill system vs. no skill system enlargements could be summarized as.
@ Joshua: even the Gray Lady has to fill her pages somehow.
ReplyDeleteThey should make the Trolls an offer they can't refuse for C&C. Support it with better art and more robust production resources and development schedules. Easy enough to cross over with Pathfinder, especially with "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" which would be C&C with streamlined skills and domain spells and such bolted on.
Or, you know, just mash up some 3E and 4E rules and get those freighters over to China to load up the containers full of 5E splatbooks. Add a lot of labels with quotes from Monte Cook and whoever proclaiming that this "modern game brings the fun back and fixes all those annoying things you didn't like." QED.
Hmm asking the opinions of the fanbase, a group of disgruntled grognards,and partisan fanboys. Dealing win accompanying that many feel has betrayed or disappointed the in the past. I anticipate more acrimony hyperbole than was generated after the Protestant Reformarion. It should be fun to watch.
ReplyDelete@Justaguy:
ReplyDelete4E
"WOTC Sucks because they don't care about the fans and do whatever they want!"
5E proposal
"WOTC sucks because they are asking for input and will design by committee!"
Just to be clear, I have never said either of these things. I was just pointing out that the faux news article implies that they're looking to remedy one poor business decision by making another. Which I find very amusing. (Of course, Joshua is 100% right, and I think we all know that.) *wheeze*
So please do not improperly paraphrase my admittedly feeble attempt at humor to fit into your exercise in reductio ad absurdum. *sniffle*
Thank you. :D
I say we start planning Sixth Edition now. Maybe it could be released simultaneously, as a sort of Pre-emptoclone...
ReplyDeleteThey waited till it was technically the new year to announce this so they can claim they began planning 5th edition in 2012, not 2011 (and 4E gets to technically last another year in the history books.) Any way you slice it though, it looks like 4E, the supposed best D&D ever and all of that marketing nonsense, was a big failure after all. In short, hey WotC... the "fans" (I prefer "players") were right all along, and 4E is not D&D anymore, it's a new and different game entirely. You really should have realized that. Don't make that mistake again...
ReplyDeleteI like the bit at the end where the story says that players are coming to the table with "iPads full of rules books," when WotC won't legally sell them on PDF...
ReplyDelete