Quote from: Justin Alexander;439817The correct time-stamp for that appears to by 06:45-ish.

Your transcription is also in error. The Rich Baker game is Conquest of Nerath: Wrath of Ashardalon builds on the Castle Ravenloft mechanics, which are clearly based on 4th Edition and almost certainly weren't developed in 2005-2006.

Justin, I honestly don't know which podcast you're referring to. I downloaded the one ggroy linked in the OP, and just checked again (as in, downloaded it again, to make sure). At 06:45 Mearls and company are still talking about the convention games they played at DDXP. Maybe you downloaded a different podcast? (For the record, the file I downloaded runs for overall 2 hours and 23 minutes.)
Could also explain why you think that my transcription about "Wrath" is in error: I just checked again, the quote is there in the podcast. You'd be right to point out, though, the mechanical continuity with the Ravenloft boardgame - but that I attribute to "development", not to "design". And in the quote I gave, Rodney talks about both of these. To wit, the base design is 5-6 years old, and the development is of course the current work they pumped into the product. I think that also addresses Esdagil's response:

QuoteThat's an odd comment about Wrath of Ashardalon, given that it is mostly a reskinning of last year's Castle Ravenloft.

As Justin points out, the base engine for Castle Ravenloft has to do with 4th edition, which started to get developed in 2005. Oh, hold on, that's 5-6 years ago, with Rich Baker taking a lead role next to Dave Noonan. Oh snap. (Nevermind, I don't seriously believe that Wrath was the first 4E design. )

Quote from: Justin Alexander;439817IIRC, WotC shelved quite a few boardgame designs back in that timeframe. And I don't think it had anything to do with quality -- it was yet another corporate strategy decision to abandon boardgame development.

Thanks for pointing that out. The actual provenance of Castle Ravenloft and Wrath, I'd say, is less directly 4e D&D than D&D Miniatures (esp. 2.0). Do you recall if at that time the boardgames were intended to come out at the same time as DDM 1.0, and pushed off the schedule because WotC rather focused on the minis game?
Thing is, right now the opposite seems have happened - WotC getting out of DDM for good (very few sets left), and onto the boardgame market. So WotC then and now would be quite consistent in not trying to provide product for the minis and the boardgame markets at the same time.

Quote from: Windjammer;439715The point ggroy mentions in the OP comes up at 44:40. My transscript of Rodney's penultimate sentence is garbled, so any help in clarifying it is appreciated!

Thanks Windy for transcribing this.

Quote from: Windjammer;439715I lost interest in Mearls' spin by sentence two ("hopefully something that's exciting for you"), which only reconfirms that they don't seem to know what they're doing at the moment. Rodney's response (not transcribed) to Mearls is, in a nutshell, that after 2.5 years of 4th Edition they have run out of key material for (any edition of) D&D. First they had the two Player's Handbooks, then they had Psionics (in the third), but there's not much more you [can produce for a single edition of D&D before you start to produce fringe products]; which is why they are now "pushing the envelope", which they had started with Dark Sun. The idea (and here I add to what Rodney says) is to go for material that can't be called 'core' in any meaningful sense, but to make it interesting enough for people not attracted to fringe material.

I agree.  WotC is very much running out of viable ideas, after "blowing their wad" over 2008 -> mid-late 2010.

Mearls as manager of the D&D design & development group, is in the unenviable unfortunate situation of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to coming up with viable new ideas for future products.  (Nevermind the already existing past 4E stuff with crappy implementations).

Quote from: Windjammer;439715Reminds me that 4E, because of its aggressive schedule in the first two years, got much sooner to the stage of where they could not meaningfully produce new 'core' material. And with 3.5 WotC learnt the lesson that fringe products like Cityscape or Elder Evils are not gonna attract high number of buyers, so WotC is now extra careful with putting out stuff.

Back then, I didn't bother picking up many of those later marginal 3.5E splatbooks, until they started showing up in the bargain bins at local gaming stores.  Prior to that, the only 3.5E splatbooks I bothered to pick up at the time (which I ordered discounted from amazon.com), were the ones some particular players in my 3.5E games wanted to use.

For the most part, the vast majority of marginal 3.5E splatbooks I picked up from bargain bins in 2007, were never used at all in a 3.5E game or even as background reading for other games.  It would have been a waste to buy most of them even at amazon discounted prices.

A 'splatbook' seldom presented itself as critical and necessary, and, dare I say it, a baseline for the game.

When "everything is core", on the other hand that makes it much easier to quickly flood the game.

Quote from: Doom;439910When "everything is core", on the other hand that makes it much easier to quickly flood the game.

Are they still using the "everything is core" slogan these days?

Don't most games blow their load on the "interesting character ideas" within two years? Then they focus on fine-tuning the ideas that work and world-building? I just don't see WotC doing anything all that different from anyone else, at least in this regard.

-=Grim=-

Don't most games blow their load on the "interesting character ideas" within two years? Then they focus on fine-tuning the ideas that work and world-building? I just don't see WotC doing anything all that different from anyone else, at least in this regard.

Or am I missing the gripe here?

-=Grim=-

Quote from: ggroy;439911Are they still using the "everything is core" slogan these days?

In a "we have nothing, so all we have is core" sort of way, I guess they do.

Found an old podcast of Mike Mearls talking about "everything is core" from DDXP 2009's new products announcement seminar.

http://hommlet.com/podcasts/adventure-14-ddxp-2009-product-announcements/

Mearls talks about "everything is core" at around 00:28:40 in the podcast.

(Paraphrased)
- "We're committed to ... if we do a new class, we'll support it."
- "When we say everything is core ... we're going to support everything going forward."
- "Once a character class appears in print, you can expect that books coming forward that deal with that class' power source, are going to cover that class in the same detail as classes like fighters and wizards."


In hindsight, this didn't happen for the Runepriest, Seeker, and Artificer classes, along with the absence of second iterations of power source specific splatbooks (besides martial power 2).  Most likely PHB3 and Psionic Power were already completed back in 2009, before Gencon 2009.

EDIT:  Work on 4E Essentials started in September 2009, according to the WotC July 2010 D&D podcast at around 50 seconds into the podcast.

EDIT2:  The 4E Dark Sun manuscripts were already finished in mid-October 2009 and submitted to the editors, according to the lead developer's blog post.

Quote from: Windjammer;439830Justin, I honestly don't know which podcast you're referring to. I downloaded the one ggroy linked in the OP, and just checked again (as in, downloaded it again, to make sure). At 06:45 Mearls and company are still talking about the convention games they played at DDXP. Maybe you downloaded a different podcast? (For the record, the file I downloaded runs for overall 2 hours and 23 minutes.)

Weird. The file I got was only 45 minutes long. Re-downloading it now, it appears that it's still only 45 minutes long.

In any case, the discrepancy between our versions aside: Rich Baker designed Conquest of Nerath. AFAICT, he had nothing to do with Wrath of Ashardalon. I'm 100% confident that you missed the conversation transition from talking about Wrath of Ashardalon to Conquest of Nerath, which are both boardgames coming out in the next few months. Some quick googling will discover several places online where Rich Baker talks about Conquests of Nerath being the game that was first being developed 5-6 years ago.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;439927Weird. The file I got was only 45 minutes long. Re-downloading it now, it appears that it's still only 45 minutes long.

Mine was 45 minutes too, and around 70 megs in file size.

Quote from: Windjammer;439708('Hey Bill, let's shelve these 3 RPG hardbacks, and let's get out 2 boardgames instead')... have to go dumpster dive in their own archives?

I think the "new focus on boardgames" comes from something in addition to them running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to avoid the Hasbro beancounters chasing them with cleavers.

First you have the rise of the boardgame.  For adults with not a whole lot of time, "boardgame nights" are becoming more and more popular.  WotC had their own boardgames that were kinda rpg/boardgame crossovers, but decided not to compete in that market, sticking with RPGs as opposed to "going Hasbro".

However, then came FFG.  They have some very successful rpg-ish boardgames, traditional boardgames and traditional RPGs.  The success of WFRP3, a true boardgame-rpg hybrid changed WotC's mind.  

So now we're getting a whole variety of 4e-like boardgames, in which they have to do zero world-building, zero setting detail and zero rules association, they can just focus on game balance, which these days is really the only thing they know how to do.

Are they dumpster-diving for product?  Maybe, but they're also testing the rpg-boardgame waters.

Looking at the original file, 45 minutes here, too.

CRKrueger - I agree with most what you said, except that I don't think you're giving 4e nearly enough credit for its own hybridization of RPG and boardgame.  Almost every criticism of 4e as RPG can be understood from the perspective of its design not as an MMORPG wannabe but as a successful pioneer of exactly this hybrid (more so even than the much more recent WFRP3).  It should also be noted that for boardgames, balance is always necessary but never sufficient - there's a lot more to good (or even mediocre) board game design than pure balance.

Quote from: CRKrueger;439930However, then came FFG.  They have some very successful rpg-ish boardgames, traditional boardgames and traditional RPGs.  The success of WFRP3, a true boardgame-rpg hybrid changed WotC's mind.

Wait wait wait.

WFRP3 is a success, as in: it sells? Serious question. I have *no* idea.

Quote from: Benoist;439946Wait wait wait.

WFRP3 is a success, as in: it sells? Serious question. I have *no* idea.

Surprised me too, but yeah it moves, at least at the FLGS's around here.  They keep putting out pretty book and box after pretty book and box, you don't invest in all that quality if no one's buying.

Quote from: CRKrueger;439994Surprised me too, but yeah it moves, at least at the FLGS's around here.  They keep putting out pretty book and box after pretty book and box, you don't invest in all that quality if no one's buying.

High-quality niche products like hobbyist boardgames/RPGs/crossover lines are perfectly sustainable with lower-end sales if you charge an inordinate amount of money for them.